Thank you for insisting on the correct pronunciation of guillotine, Linus. You've bought yourself an extra week of life come the revolution with that remark.
I usually go for cold hard cash. To earn $1,000,000 in a year with a 40-hour work week, you need to get paid $480/hour. Enough to buy a new PS5 every hour you work. To earn $1,000,000,000 in a year with a 40-hour work week, you need to get paid $480,000/hr. Enough to buy the median American home every 45 minutes of work.
I am even more direct. A billion is a thousand millions. a million is a thousand thousands. I already know what a thousand means, so even a thousand thousands is A FUCKING LOT. It is not 10 thousand, which is "not much", or 100 thousand, which is "hefty"; it is 1000 thousands. And that is just one (1) million. 10 million is absurd money, 100 million is cosmic money. One billion?? ONE BILLION?? I am not kidding, if you are born with 1 billion dollars, no one in your family (parents, your partner and your children) will ever have to work. It is, literally, too much money. And there are people with tens to hundreds of it. That much money is the GDP of entire countries! Like, even if you get multiple MILLIONAIRES together, they would NOT have cash in the tens of billions. In that scale, 1 million dollars is nothing. NOTHING. A GRAIN OF SAND HAS MORE VALUE. But maybe this makes more sense to me, specifically, cuz I live in a metric country, so powers of 10 are obvious to see.
I compare it to average household income. The average US household income is about $80k so that means if you have $1mil then you could live the average US lifestyle for 12.5 years. That’s nice but nothing crazy. If you have $1bil then you could live the average US lifestyle for 12,500 years. Fuck that.
Indeed. The difference is a factor of 1000. If a billion were 100, a million would be 0.1. $100 to a dime. To a billionaire, a million dollars is a rounding error.
"We could find 12 more people" it's probably the funniest thing Dan has ever said. To be clear I find Dan funny all the time this is just probably one of his best.
Dan: "Does Linus deserve to be guillotined?" Luke: *Hyena laugh* Linus: 'Erm ackshully' I love these guys, hope they keep this trio for WAN show for eternity (Obviously eventually people move on or retire, but you know what I mean) Edit: Also Luke's face at 12:35 kills me lol Edit again for my own sake: 4:32 for the timestamp from the og comment
Linus opening a lobbying organization would unironically be a great idea. He has shown a belief in consumer rights protections from big tech companies in the past.
The problem with lobbying for consumer protections is that it isn't profitable. Politicians listen to oil lobbyists because oil makes a lot of money. Limiting the power corpos have will not make a lot of money
Hate to say it, but the channel would 100% die without Linus on screen. His personality, charisma, and clumsiness creates the entertainment value of the videos. The other people in the videos are all great as well, but without Linus there for them to play off of, the channel becomes one of a million other TH-cam channels. This channel is like the Chicago Bulls in the 1990's. Great team. Rodman, Pipen, Steve Kerr, all great players, but that team doesn't become one of the greatest ever without Jordan being the center of it all.
they just need to transition. As it is right now, Linus is on screen for the majority of main channel LTT. If they slowly hand off video appearances to other charismatic people, I think it can work. Obviously more nuanced than this, but I think the general idea stands
As a farmer I'll say this - 400 acres is not a full time job and you would likely need another job in order to make ends meet. Also, most farmers don't get to set their prices. If you have storage, you can hang on it in hopes the market price goes up, but it could also go down.
I mean, in the US that's just under an average size of a "farm" but often I think they're doing far more than just being corn/soybean/wheat farmers. I get this average is also skewed by small family farms that have say 100 acres or less and it's a dairy farm or personal farm like what my family essentially has (farmland is only about 80 acres, the rest is forest or swamp).
As a farmer also, I disagree. 400 acres of pistachios or almonds or peaches is plenty to make a good living working full time. Source: my family farms grapes and peaches
For people actually curious about the line: Marx defines two social classes: - Owners of the means of production - Workers. Do keep in mind his definitions were made back when companies weren't people and were owned by one guy or one family, but there are varying updates on this and even without updates the definition holds true. Now, a lot of people think "owning the means of production" means being a businessman. That's not correct. Owning the means of production means having power over key assets that control production/the economy. It's about being able to use these assets to exert political and social power. Putting it in context, Linus owns nothing. He has a company, yes, he employs people, yes, he is famous, correct, has a lot of money, yep. Can he stop making videos and cause a minor crisis in Canada? No. Can he use LTT to force worldwide legislation? Nope. Can he utilize Floatplane to control media in Toronto? Also no. A "worker" is someone who works to produce their wealth, and cannot do it through political means. Under Karl Marx's theory, Linus is a WORKER. His employer is TH-cam/Alphabet, who owns the means of production of tech videos. TH-cam controls which videos come in, which videos generate revenue, and how much of this revenue LTT (and by extension Linus) gets. Because LTT videos generate revenue and profit, and Alphabet takes that profit, it is ultimately a surplus value scenario no different than you and your employer. Matter of fact, just recently we saw this very clearly: Linus made one video that pissed off youtube, and TH-cam threatened to take down the channel (through a strike), and Linus had no choice but to back down. If TH-cam/Alphabet decides to fire Linus (i.e. ban LTT), his income is gone, puff, just like a regular employee. And to be very clear, I understand LTT is a legal company and in a free association with TH-cam through contracts, but I'm specifically talking through Marxist optics, it's a way of understanding these interactions without getting tangled in legal specific stuff. And yes Linus owns Floatplane and they can do whatever in it, but Floatplane lacks the political power and market share to be relevant. It can't project power, as explained before. TH-cam, however, projects a lot of power, a tiny algorithm change could swing whole elections. Now, granted, there are shades of grey. Linus has SOME influence, he has SOME power, like Hollywood celebrities, minor politicians, extremely well paying jobs like Neurosurgeon, Linus could be classified as "little bourgeois", he is the type that could buy a local politician on the city council, maybe one on a federal level, he could use his channel to promote his ideas and things like that. Thing is, the petit/little/small bourgeois is still a WORKER. It's like an iPhone: there is the base model, then the Plus, Pro, Pro Max. He can be a Worker Plus, someone in Hollywood could be a Pro Max, but ultimately they aren't in a different category, they still have the same issues as other workers, just with more money. And on that note, YES, there are cases where someone with LESS money and assets and power and influence than Linus IS considered part of the bourgeoise. Power - be it political, financial, social or military - is always measured in context. A guy scrapping the factory's floor with no power whatsoever can still be a father who controls all aspects of his single income family0, or maybe he is a leader in his local community, and so on. If you live in a small rural town where the entire economic output if just one factory, the owner of that factory is their Jeff Bezos. Proportionally they might even be bigger than Jeff Bezos. That all said, if one day revolution rises in Canada, I'd recommend Linus to gtfo and stay low or away for a while. Mobs of angry people in violent revolutions don't exactly consult theorists before doing stuff and a big house with a pool, cars and more value in tech products inside than the price of most people's total assets, I'd wager he would look very very tasty.
@@the_mastermage Hey, if you like three paragraphs under a TH-cam video, you're gonna love the almost two centuries of academic literature. Talk about in-depth!
I agree with the thrust of your argument, but want to propose some adjustments. I think you're absolutely right to define the capitalist class by their amount of political power and by their scale. And I think categorizing Linus as petit bourgeoisie is also a smart move; my quibble is that Marx believes that there are many more than just two classes. In addition to proletariat and bourgeoisie, there is also the petit bourgeoisie as you mentioned, the peasantry (who might not be reliant on a wage or who may be very small landowners or land renters who pay landlords out of their product), small artisans (people who might be self employed and sell a product to survive), etc. etc. Marx's point is that under capitalism, competition tends to reduce every other class into the main two classes, proletariat and bourgeoisie. Small artisans get outcompeted by mass produced goods and have to go work at a factory, or petit bourgeoisie small businesses get outcompeted by larger firms and become proletarianized (or perhaps they're so successful that they become part of the big bourgeoisie!). For this reason, I don't think it's really necessary to go as far as to say Linus is a worker. Yes, he works at LMG, but the proletariat is defined as people who own nothing on which to sustain themselves and have to do something else for income (wage work, being married to a wage worker, etc). Even if Linus didn't have LMG, he could live off rental income or his other businesses -- by his own admission, he doesn't have to work anymore. I still think you're absolutely correct in saying that Linus isn't really part of the big bourgeoisie and as Marx says, could certainly fall on different sides of different political conflicts between the proletariat and capitalist classes. That's the other thing the discussion in the video doesn't touch on as much -- the "line" between which rich we actually eat is a political one and really comes down to how things shake out in practice -- although if private property were abolished, Linus's day to day life would probably look different.
@@landrylevine4322 Thank you for the considerations, and I 100% agree. I tried my best to simplify the explanation without misrepresenting it, so I just mushed a lot of stuff under "worker", but as in all things social there is a lot of nuance. That said, while I don't know Linus finances personally, from the snippets he gives us, I'd say he is far closer to an actual proletarian comrade than it initially looks. LMG is a small company but with many branches. It has many sources of revenue besides TH-cam directly, mainly: - Floatplane - LTT Store - Sponsors But these revenue streams are not independent from the core business. LMG isn't Samsung or Sony who could be split into many smaller companies: - Sponsors only come to LMG because of their TH-cam audience, losing TH-cam means losing sponsors; - LTT Store has good products, but so far it still is the "LTT channel fan store" and without the free advertising on TH-cam, it wouldn't maintain the same revenue; - Finally, Floatplane can pay for itself (IIRC), but it also is the "LTT channel fan platform". It's success still is mostly tied to the TH-cam channel, and without the channel promoting it - and more importantly, the channel bankrolling the budget for their videos, team, equipment and so on - Floatplane wouldn't maintain LMG by itself. Even his other assets are quite minor compared to LMG. And to even liquidate those assets or repurpose them would be a substantial drop in lifestyle. And I'm sure he has other investments, but I wouldn't count them on being a substantial source of revenue. I always understood the "I can retire" talk in the sense that he can sell LMG or just hand the steering wheel to someone else, but now a "delete the channel and nothing changes" way. It's not even out of the ordinary for a employee to own assets and property, or have other revenue streams. There are actual real world worker's movements all around the world popping up against something very similar to TH-cam in that sense: contractor apps. Uber/Uber Eats/other delivery apps like iFood, or deliveries for logistical companies and online stores like Amazon, and so on. These workers and their unions claim that because these apps hold all the information, rules and can dictate who, how, when and for how much operates on their platform, they are essentially an employer. And while LMG and Linus have enough money to be a different category than a guy delivering pizza, in principle their relation to the platform is basically the same. But ultimately it is as you say - at the end of the day the line is entirely political and in a real world case it would entirely fall onto whatever the vibes are at the moment. There is no true answer until Linus is at the table or on the table.
Bill Gates owns approximately 270,000 acres of farmland. Which by itself sounds like a lot, but let’s put that into perspective. There is a ranch in Texas called King Ranch, it’s 825,000 acres- one ranch. Of the 2.26 billion acres of agricultural land in the US, 1.3 billion acres is for crop growing. If Bill Gates closed off all his farmland, it wouldn’t even raise prices in US. The US pays more out in acreage for crop insurance for damaged crops every year.
how would one know theres a stopping point and not just "eat" the whole thing? what then? end of country? this ideology is very silly - signed, poor eastern european guy
@@MB-jr3sm until we've eaten our fill was the one criterion there. In case you didn't notice, everyone is having a bit of fun, you need not take the comments seriously
As someone who lives in an area like Surrey (but in Texas) and thinks 400 acres is a lot of farmland, please recalibrate me by explaining what a little, a reasonable, and a lot of farmland are throughout the world.
@@cmasupra It depends on where you are and what you're doing with it. If you're using it to graze cattle because grass is about all your land can grow, 400 acres is hardly anything. If you're using it to grow specialty crops, like fruits and vegetables, 400 acres would be enough to make you very well off. You have to have the right ground and climate, though, to decrease your chances of crop failure. If you're a typical Midwest farmer growing corn and soybeans, 400 acres is okay as long as you don't have a big mortgage to pay. If you brought your last 100 acres in the last few years, then you're one bad year away from selling it all and getting a job in the city. If you're 55 years old, you've paid off your last mortgage and you're running solid, but nowhere new equipment, you can do fine with 400 acres. But that's just you. If you want to support two families off that farm, say you and one of your kids, that could be a bit of a struggle, depending on the year.
400 acres of good fertile land can be a lot. Where I live prices of farmland are probably the most expensive and have risen to 100k euros per hectare(~40k per acre). Large farms here have up to 100 acres. On the otherhand when I worked on a farm in Australia that farm had millions of acres.
Having Dan as a huge part of this topic was awesome and added so much depth to the conversation. Love it when we get to hear Dan talk and hear how smart he is :p
Hi! I am in the field of Political Science and worked as a Political Science and History consultant in the games industry for a while! Dan pretty much summarized very well how class struggle works and I am here to point out where Linus would fall into according to what I know about his material position in society (I do not have the full picture, but I believe what is public knowledge is good enough to measure it given Linus' openess about his life) His position would be quantified differently according to the specific ideology of the hipotetical revolution, but for the sake of simplicity let's say we are talking about a strictly Marxist-Leninist socialist revolution: In the advent of a victorious socialist uprising Linus would be considered either Petite Bourgeoisie or low level proper Bourgeoisie, in either case his options would be one of three: 1- Accept the collectivisation of his Private Property (not to be confused with personal property, his house, cars and personal assets would be probably untouched) and become an worker in a "new LMG" owned and run by his employees. 2- Leave the country without anything 3- Be eaten OF COURSE there are historical examples of many small scale capitalists/factory workers that have cut deals with the revolutionary powers to keep a few of their privileges while abdicating power, but those are the exception, not the rule. PS: I REALLY like how LMG discuss these themes in a sober way, even though I tend to not 100% agree with some of the cast's positions.
Excellent analysis, agreed that Linus is petit bourgeoisie or lower level big bourgeoisie and that he wouldn't likely be eaten unless he was incredibly politically active for the counter revolution. In all likelihood, he continues working at a collectivized LMG or he leaves the country
@@znth-gameworks I always interpreted it as more of a metaphor, strip them down of all their possessions and use the wealth to assist the needy (except for them, their newly acquired needy status would not count). It would only be literal in a more cartoony situation of them being so above the rest of society that the only thing there is to eat is the actual flesh of the rich as they are keeping all the food behind paywalls no one else can afford.
Linus is basically a petit bourgeois. The argument shouldnt be about the amount of money you hold nor what the billionaire's morality is. The important part of the argument is how much socio-economic and political power they wield. In this regard, Linus is somewhere between a small business owner and a corporate monopoly.
I don't even think its about the socio economic power, i just think that it is about your choices. Do you choose to screw people over even if you have a realisitc choice not to. Like as Linus mentioned at the start, the rules for rulers by CGP grey detail the realistic CHOICE quite well.
@@normalchannel2185 Idc if the billionaire happens to be nice, the system creates a class with incredible power over both their employees and directly or indirectly societal politics. This creates an incentive for this class to use this power to enrich themselves even more, often at the cost of others.
Dan saying: "alright I'll go get the one in my car" is such comedic genius. Not joking, with his knowledge and comedic timing, I wouldn't be surprised if he started stand-up comedy and killed it.
Something like 100 people get to have a great job that they probably enjoy doing because of the work that Linus did building his company, him being their boss doesn't make him evil.
i think this is the part that makes it difficult i mean from what we have seen over the years Linus seems to be a good boss and I think the biggest ne for me is that he still works despite pointing out several times he didin't need to. I think the other thing is that he didn't sell out when he could have. im not a shill for the rich by any means but Linus should be okay in this situation IMO
The odd thing about rulers is that their power comes from the fact that at least some people listen to them, rather than raw physical power like in the Animal Kingdom.
@@noonesaidthis23 Not entirely, Jeff Bezos probably has more money than Putin and yet Putin is the one having hundreds of thousands if not millions of people killed due to his government power.
Rulers are nothing without people to rule over, sometimes the workers forget they have bargaining power. Of course this is more nuanced than "dont take exploitative job offers" as some people really need a job, but technically if everyone refused to work for a company that company would die out
17:40 I can't imagine Linus sending an `@everyone` message on Teams demanding Riley come in and record Tech Linked during a Hurricane. Regardless of bank account, anyone pulling the "You're expected to work your shift and possibly die, or lose your health insurance." deserves the French haircut.
Listening to this I'm over here thinking "Low-key I kind of wish he would?" 😅 We could totally use more money in politics coming from the good ones actually advocating for us little people. 🤔🤷🏻♀️
Its really quite simple, the standard is set on economic hoarding. By definition net worth is the metric and the line of eat the rich comes from whether your work creates your income or if your assets do.
Yeah that's exactly how I view it too. Are you working for your money or are you one of those people who think their wealth should increase just for existing?
in my opinion, eat the rich depends on morality, if you cheat the state or people then obviously you deserve it, having a s**tload of money doesnt mean anything if you are a decent human
16:30 it's the fact that you have ownership of others homes and have unilateral control over whether or not they become homeless, not whether you charge rent.
Agreed, but assuming he won’t make them homeless because family. I don’t see as him being a landlord because the multiple houses are being used for people to live in it. Not for profit. And the simple solution is to transfer the ownership to his relatives if the line is being drawn in the number of houses.
sadly, only dan understands the question, but no one has the patience to let him explain it... the question is about if you believe his "work" actually contributes more value than his meat would... it depends on if you believe that the "work" of managing capital and bearing risk actually adds more value that the meat on your bones would add to a soup
The line in most traditional leftist theory is less about amount of wealth or assets and more about your role in society. Private businesses and their owners have varying degrees of control over how society is organized (alongside the government of course). This doesn't mean they should be "gotten rid of" but it's a fact that there is an outsized private control not just in their own businesses but in the organization of society and how people get to live their lives
Iirc the onion guy wasn't even super rich - the reason he was able to do that is that the price of onions became dirt cheap. Then he bought up all the onion futures and was able to artificially increase the value of the onion since he had complete control. With that said, I'm not sure whether that's meaningfully different in terms of whether that guy would be guillotineable
The wealth isn't the important question, the ethics on how the wealth was acuminated and their day to day impact on society is. A lower management could be just as much of an a-hole as a billionaire, the only differences how big of an impact they have. A blanket off with the head policy using an arbitrary wealth indicator doesn't serve society at all as it hurts the near wealthy more than the actual wealthy. The big business owners and landlords can all escape while the smaller local owners who actually helps the community they live in get persecuted. My grandpa was in the 'owner class' in China. He bought the car repair shop he was working for on the cheap before WW2. He paid his employee about as much as he paid himself, even paid employees extra during family emergencies, and was practically the most affordable garage around. He also repaired military vehicles for free as they were pushing out the Japanese. When the Communist Revolution rolled around, they didn't care about ethics or the defenses from the workers and those in the local community. Those defended him had to switch side or else they would face death. My grandpa only survived because he was willing to sign every confession the Revolution written for him from cheating customers to beating workers. The Revolution didn't care about ethics, only status.
Linus has assets, but doesn’t have the power to change whatever he needs to protect and grow those assets. He can’t change how TH-cam works because it inconveniences him. He can’t put enough money into politics to significantly affect local, national, and global politics. He works within a system, he does not control the system.
I think the line should be drawn if there is rent seeking behaviour. Rent seeking is what economists define as when you cross over reasonable profit. When there are goods with inelastic demand such as food, water, eletricity, healthcare, shelter etc etc their prices are determined by what they can extort over the underlying value. The price for those needs is ultimately paid by every employer from the base demands for pay and eat into the consumer economy for a country. Linus is in too competitive an industry to engage in rent seeking.
I think this is the line in my opinion as well. This type of behavior is what we generally see that triggers people's "something here is not fair" senses.
@@gyll4201 It's not just unfair for people, it's also bad for the economy. economics as a field started with the phsiologians labelling the 'sterile class' (lords of the land) as what is holding back the economy. they then said no lmao
no. Rent-seeking is a concept in economics that states that an individual or an entity seeks to increase their own wealth without creating any benefits or wealth to the society
Unfortunately it feels like the safest thing to do with capital in Canada is to stockpile houses, unless you can find some way to exploit TFWs. Even when you look at a successful business like LMG I feel like it would be better served by packing up and moving to the states. There are clearly personal benefits, but I would be curious to see if Linus thinks there are any competitive business advantages to being in the GVA.
He already said in a previous Wan show that he is staying in the GVA because all his employees live there and that moving away to save a bit on rent/taxes would only add money that he doesn't _need_ in his bank account.
a part of this conversation that is always missed is the money is made by providing things people want to buy, is it the billionaires fault he was given the money?
Can I just say I really enjoy you guys discussing more philosophical/sociological topics? I really enjoy your guys perspective especially considering Linus' wealth
Like you say towards the end, power is an important measure. If you define "Power" as "the capacity to exert influence or control that overrides the personal agency of others", then you have a metric with which to determine whether Linus needs to be consumed. However, capacity and application are very different. Capacity to do harm doesn't equate to actually doing harm. For example, any child holding a puppy has the capacity to harm it. But it'd take a very sick puppy to discipline the child for simply having that capacity. So our equation needs to look something like: Power * Application = Dinner Time If "Application" is a value from 0 - 1, then that determines how much of Linus is on the table. Let's set a 30% threshold for safety (i.e., if Application < 0.3, dinner's cancelled). For the record, I don't think Linus deserves to be eaten. Fun thought experiment though.
the eat the rich example is actually pretty easy to draw the line for on what it actually means. The line is are you producing the product with your employees and do the employees see a reward equal to their contribution to the product. Basically are you exploiting workers for your own financial gain without returning the true value of their work to them. Linus is in one of the wierd spots on this since he doesnt run LMG as a coop but from the outside looking in everyone has a fairly equalish say in how the company goes and they are all compensated fairly. The idea is more or less eating the CEO that makes over 300 times the wage of their average employee.
So the line would be set in the court of public opinion based on each case; case being each person being judged by their previous & assumed future actions.
This conversation isn’t about numbers or logic. It’s a feelings conversation. If you feel that ownership of business at all without full redistribution to workers is unjust, then Linus isn’t surviving the cut. If you have even somewhat of a belief in capitalism, then Linus is doing great and nothing he has is an issue. He earned all of it and his theoretical net worth is well over 100 million
Linus would be considered petite bourgeoisie, which depending on ones specific political philosophy can be seen to have (or lack) varying degrees of separation from the haute bourgeoisie. Views on the petite bourgeoisie's suitability as potential allies of the proletariat is also wildly varying. I think this is all a result of the sort of nebulous social position that the petite bourgeoisie represents and the complexities of the power dynamics at play in that transitional position between worker and owner. So all that is to say, Linus's suitability to be eaten varies from one school of thought to another.
This was a surprisingly interesting topic and conversation BTW, love to see more politics-economics topics coming to the show, especially because the discussion is rolling and people participating here have actual brains and logic. Very good one guys !
If Linus was super serious about not being guillotined, he could always set up LMG as a co-operative where his employees share in equal ownership. Thats kinda what Nebula is btw.
It has almost nothing to do with “lifestyle”, it has to do with power dynamics between those that own and those that sell their labor to those that own. Wealth does play a part in it for me personally, there’s almost always going to be a greater difference in exploitation required to acquire $1billion vs $10million. Ultimately, the problem is not so much with any one individual regardless of wealth it lies with the system(s) that incentivizes and enables this kind of extreme wealth and exploitation. So if we want to talk about liability or “fault” with the rich then you could look at level of wealth as an indicator of how integrated with or supportive of those systems they are. You can also look at who opposes changing this system actively as a direct measure. To answer Linus’ question “Is it about the power?” Yes, yes it is. Always has been. The Superman thing is just inherently an unreliable way to run a society, we should divest power away from so few unaccountable individuals. That’s literally why democracy exists in the political space. This finally brings us to where we should be going, divesting power from unaccountable individuals in the economic space as well, aka things like unions, worker councils, co-ops, and ultimately something like democratic socialism. The rich as a term or label is really just another way of identifying who has accumulated too much power (via wealth) and “eating” them to me should mean reducing their power to a far more reasonable level so that the absurd disparity between the top 1% and the bottom 90% is substantially reduced and the systems that enabled that to happen in the first place are reformed enough so as to prevent or limit the ability of individuals to accrue that kind of power again going forward.
The limit needs to be tied to socio-political power. If nobody voted for you, and yet your opinions can have a vast influence on society, perhaps excluding people in naturally influential positions like a news anchor or TH-cam, then you have too much individual power. See people like Larry Fink, who is extremely politically active and very "hands on". Letting his political views determine who his equity fund invests in. Nobody voted for him, lots of people probably don't even know who he is, and yet he can actively and significantly influence business practices to the point of turning entire industries worth of companies into activist organizations.
If Dan didn't know Linus he would 100% argue that he should be eaten but he can't because he knows him. It's almost as if most of these really wealthy people you've never heard of and are just normal people.
Linus, you're not contributing to a house supply problem by owning a house, and you are not helping by selling a house. There are a number of houses and people that need them. If you want to actively help the supply problem, you need to build new houses. That's why private investment in housing is actually good because a lot of people can't afford or dont understand or dont like taking the risk of building and buying a house. Vacancy rates are typically low. We just need more houses. More land for housing is needed and cheaper building methods.
Groceries are so expensive, I read the title as "Does Linus Have Enough Money To Afford Food?" Lol
Same. It took me a few seconds into the video before I realized "Eat the Rich"
Same.
Yeah, me too...took me a few minutes.
Of course everyone is thinking this is figurative...the Dutch didn't think so in 1672.
is that not what it was? its changed now lol
I mean it is starting to become the same question lmao
Thank you for insisting on the correct pronunciation of guillotine, Linus. You've bought yourself an extra week of life come the revolution with that remark.
I owe Dan an apology. I was not familiar with his revolutionary game.
Dan is like 1 skipped meal away from starting a revolution
Game is supposed to recognise game
@@smalltime0 dangerously based
Dan is the think-tank when it comes to this stuff.
I think it can be argued that Linus is just petite bourgeoisie. Don't know though, Marx wasn't very clear on digital media factories
This always helps me get a sense of scale on how big a billion actually is.
1 million seconds = 11.574 days
1 billion seconds = 31.71 years
I usually go for cold hard cash.
To earn $1,000,000 in a year with a 40-hour work week, you need to get paid $480/hour. Enough to buy a new PS5 every hour you work.
To earn $1,000,000,000 in a year with a 40-hour work week, you need to get paid $480,000/hr. Enough to buy the median American home every 45 minutes of work.
I am even more direct. A billion is a thousand millions. a million is a thousand thousands. I already know what a thousand means, so even a thousand thousands is A FUCKING LOT. It is not 10 thousand, which is "not much", or 100 thousand, which is "hefty"; it is 1000 thousands. And that is just one (1) million. 10 million is absurd money, 100 million is cosmic money. One billion?? ONE BILLION??
I am not kidding, if you are born with 1 billion dollars, no one in your family (parents, your partner and your children) will ever have to work. It is, literally, too much money. And there are people with tens to hundreds of it. That much money is the GDP of entire countries! Like, even if you get multiple MILLIONAIRES together, they would NOT have cash in the tens of billions.
In that scale, 1 million dollars is nothing. NOTHING. A GRAIN OF SAND HAS MORE VALUE. But maybe this makes more sense to me, specifically, cuz I live in a metric country, so powers of 10 are obvious to see.
I compare it to average household income. The average US household income is about $80k so that means if you have $1mil then you could live the average US lifestyle for 12.5 years. That’s nice but nothing crazy. If you have $1bil then you could live the average US lifestyle for 12,500 years. Fuck that.
1 million seconds = 11.574 days
1 billion seconds = 11574 days = 31.71 years
Indeed. The difference is a factor of 1000. If a billion were 100, a million would be 0.1. $100 to a dime.
To a billionaire, a million dollars is a rounding error.
"We could find 12 more people" it's probably the funniest thing Dan has ever said.
To be clear I find Dan funny all the time this is just probably one of his best.
Dan: "Does Linus deserve to be guillotined?"
Luke: *Hyena laugh*
Linus: 'Erm ackshully'
I love these guys, hope they keep this trio for WAN show for eternity (Obviously eventually people move on or retire, but you know what I mean)
Edit: Also Luke's face at 12:35 kills me lol
Edit again for my own sake: 4:32 for the timestamp from the og comment
It fits SOOO well for linus joker speech lmao
U got too much time on ur hands
@@okbristopher huh?
I love that the debate quickly centred on whether or not to get dbrand to sponsor it.
Linus and Luke have said they will likely keep doing WAN even into retirement because they have nothing better to do on a Friday night
Linus opening a lobbying organization would unironically be a great idea. He has shown a belief in consumer rights protections from big tech companies in the past.
The problem with lobbying for consumer protections is that it isn't profitable. Politicians listen to oil lobbyists because oil makes a lot of money. Limiting the power corpos have will not make a lot of money
@@theredbaron745 and lawyers are expensive too!
@@theredbaron745 That's why capitalism is the perfect trap heh
Hate to say it, but the channel would 100% die without Linus on screen. His personality, charisma, and clumsiness creates the entertainment value of the videos. The other people in the videos are all great as well, but without Linus there for them to play off of, the channel becomes one of a million other TH-cam channels. This channel is like the Chicago Bulls in the 1990's. Great team. Rodman, Pipen, Steve Kerr, all great players, but that team doesn't become one of the greatest ever without Jordan being the center of it all.
Sports references don't work around these folk. Try comparing it to Apple without Steve Jobs next time 👍
disagree - maybe not forever
People said that about matpat but their channels are nowhere near dead
@@lovelyhippo7826cause apple has been doing so poorly
they just need to transition. As it is right now, Linus is on screen for the majority of main channel LTT. If they slowly hand off video appearances to other charismatic people, I think it can work. Obviously more nuanced than this, but I think the general idea stands
This was legitimately a very interesting conversation!
As a farmer I'll say this - 400 acres is not a full time job and you would likely need another job in order to make ends meet. Also, most farmers don't get to set their prices. If you have storage, you can hang on it in hopes the market price goes up, but it could also go down.
I mean, in the US that's just under an average size of a "farm" but often I think they're doing far more than just being corn/soybean/wheat farmers.
I get this average is also skewed by small family farms that have say 100 acres or less and it's a dairy farm or personal farm like what my family essentially has (farmland is only about 80 acres, the rest is forest or swamp).
I was just going to say "400 acres isn't much."
As a farmer also, I disagree. 400 acres of pistachios or almonds or peaches is plenty to make a good living working full time.
Source: my family farms grapes and peaches
@@BannedOnMain you grow luxury products, not everybody can do that, somebody has to grow wheat, corn or rice.
Yeah that was something I noticed as well, unless you are growing some kind of specialty crop that’s a pretty small farm.
Well Linus may be rich enough to eat, but there's so little meat on him it's hardly worth it.
lmao and why eat him when you could have an indentured IT worker for life instead. Unlike every other owner Linus is highly skilled
@@alexrogers777journalist _and_ educator, to boot!
watercooled full temu 2000 inch screen guillotine
Needs more RGB
For people actually curious about the line:
Marx defines two social classes:
- Owners of the means of production
- Workers.
Do keep in mind his definitions were made back when companies weren't people and were owned by one guy or one family, but there are varying updates on this and even without updates the definition holds true.
Now, a lot of people think "owning the means of production" means being a businessman. That's not correct. Owning the means of production means having power over key assets that control production/the economy. It's about being able to use these assets to exert political and social power. Putting it in context, Linus owns nothing. He has a company, yes, he employs people, yes, he is famous, correct, has a lot of money, yep. Can he stop making videos and cause a minor crisis in Canada? No. Can he use LTT to force worldwide legislation? Nope. Can he utilize Floatplane to control media in Toronto? Also no. A "worker" is someone who works to produce their wealth, and cannot do it through political means.
Under Karl Marx's theory, Linus is a WORKER. His employer is TH-cam/Alphabet, who owns the means of production of tech videos. TH-cam controls which videos come in, which videos generate revenue, and how much of this revenue LTT (and by extension Linus) gets. Because LTT videos generate revenue and profit, and Alphabet takes that profit, it is ultimately a surplus value scenario no different than you and your employer. Matter of fact, just recently we saw this very clearly: Linus made one video that pissed off youtube, and TH-cam threatened to take down the channel (through a strike), and Linus had no choice but to back down. If TH-cam/Alphabet decides to fire Linus (i.e. ban LTT), his income is gone, puff, just like a regular employee.
And to be very clear, I understand LTT is a legal company and in a free association with TH-cam through contracts, but I'm specifically talking through Marxist optics, it's a way of understanding these interactions without getting tangled in legal specific stuff. And yes Linus owns Floatplane and they can do whatever in it, but Floatplane lacks the political power and market share to be relevant. It can't project power, as explained before. TH-cam, however, projects a lot of power, a tiny algorithm change could swing whole elections.
Now, granted, there are shades of grey. Linus has SOME influence, he has SOME power, like Hollywood celebrities, minor politicians, extremely well paying jobs like Neurosurgeon, Linus could be classified as "little bourgeois", he is the type that could buy a local politician on the city council, maybe one on a federal level, he could use his channel to promote his ideas and things like that. Thing is, the petit/little/small bourgeois is still a WORKER. It's like an iPhone: there is the base model, then the Plus, Pro, Pro Max. He can be a Worker Plus, someone in Hollywood could be a Pro Max, but ultimately they aren't in a different category, they still have the same issues as other workers, just with more money.
And on that note, YES, there are cases where someone with LESS money and assets and power and influence than Linus IS considered part of the bourgeoise. Power - be it political, financial, social or military - is always measured in context. A guy scrapping the factory's floor with no power whatsoever can still be a father who controls all aspects of his single income family0, or maybe he is a leader in his local community, and so on. If you live in a small rural town where the entire economic output if just one factory, the owner of that factory is their Jeff Bezos. Proportionally they might even be bigger than Jeff Bezos.
That all said, if one day revolution rises in Canada, I'd recommend Linus to gtfo and stay low or away for a while. Mobs of angry people in violent revolutions don't exactly consult theorists before doing stuff and a big house with a pool, cars and more value in tech products inside than the price of most people's total assets, I'd wager he would look very very tasty.
I very much like this in depth look at Marxist view. Very cool.
@@the_mastermage Hey, if you like three paragraphs under a TH-cam video, you're gonna love the almost two centuries of academic literature. Talk about in-depth!
I agree with the thrust of your argument, but want to propose some adjustments. I think you're absolutely right to define the capitalist class by their amount of political power and by their scale. And I think categorizing Linus as petit bourgeoisie is also a smart move; my quibble is that Marx believes that there are many more than just two classes. In addition to proletariat and bourgeoisie, there is also the petit bourgeoisie as you mentioned, the peasantry (who might not be reliant on a wage or who may be very small landowners or land renters who pay landlords out of their product), small artisans (people who might be self employed and sell a product to survive), etc. etc. Marx's point is that under capitalism, competition tends to reduce every other class into the main two classes, proletariat and bourgeoisie. Small artisans get outcompeted by mass produced goods and have to go work at a factory, or petit bourgeoisie small businesses get outcompeted by larger firms and become proletarianized (or perhaps they're so successful that they become part of the big bourgeoisie!).
For this reason, I don't think it's really necessary to go as far as to say Linus is a worker. Yes, he works at LMG, but the proletariat is defined as people who own nothing on which to sustain themselves and have to do something else for income (wage work, being married to a wage worker, etc). Even if Linus didn't have LMG, he could live off rental income or his other businesses -- by his own admission, he doesn't have to work anymore. I still think you're absolutely correct in saying that Linus isn't really part of the big bourgeoisie and as Marx says, could certainly fall on different sides of different political conflicts between the proletariat and capitalist classes. That's the other thing the discussion in the video doesn't touch on as much -- the "line" between which rich we actually eat is a political one and really comes down to how things shake out in practice -- although if private property were abolished, Linus's day to day life would probably look different.
@@landrylevine4322 Thank you for the considerations, and I 100% agree. I tried my best to simplify the explanation without misrepresenting it, so I just mushed a lot of stuff under "worker", but as in all things social there is a lot of nuance.
That said, while I don't know Linus finances personally, from the snippets he gives us, I'd say he is far closer to an actual proletarian comrade than it initially looks.
LMG is a small company but with many branches. It has many sources of revenue besides TH-cam directly, mainly:
- Floatplane
- LTT Store
- Sponsors
But these revenue streams are not independent from the core business. LMG isn't Samsung or Sony who could be split into many smaller companies:
- Sponsors only come to LMG because of their TH-cam audience, losing TH-cam means losing sponsors;
- LTT Store has good products, but so far it still is the "LTT channel fan store" and without the free advertising on TH-cam, it wouldn't maintain the same revenue;
- Finally, Floatplane can pay for itself (IIRC), but it also is the "LTT channel fan platform". It's success still is mostly tied to the TH-cam channel, and without the channel promoting it - and more importantly, the channel bankrolling the budget for their videos, team, equipment and so on - Floatplane wouldn't maintain LMG by itself.
Even his other assets are quite minor compared to LMG. And to even liquidate those assets or repurpose them would be a substantial drop in lifestyle. And I'm sure he has other investments, but I wouldn't count them on being a substantial source of revenue. I always understood the "I can retire" talk in the sense that he can sell LMG or just hand the steering wheel to someone else, but now a "delete the channel and nothing changes" way.
It's not even out of the ordinary for a employee to own assets and property, or have other revenue streams.
There are actual real world worker's movements all around the world popping up against something very similar to TH-cam in that sense: contractor apps. Uber/Uber Eats/other delivery apps like iFood, or deliveries for logistical companies and online stores like Amazon, and so on. These workers and their unions claim that because these apps hold all the information, rules and can dictate who, how, when and for how much operates on their platform, they are essentially an employer. And while LMG and Linus have enough money to be a different category than a guy delivering pizza, in principle their relation to the platform is basically the same.
But ultimately it is as you say - at the end of the day the line is entirely political and in a real world case it would entirely fall onto whatever the vibes are at the moment. There is no true answer until Linus is at the table or on the table.
=
"Et Tu Luke?"
[Lu-kay]
*Duke ( _or Duce!_ 😂)
Loo-kay
Luke, eh?
Proper latin would be Luci, pronounced 'loo-kee'
I think the line isn't how much money you have, it's how exploitative you are. I wouldn't say Linus is exploitative.
its how manipulative of society you are imho.
@@turtlefrog369 Similar concepts, really
Bill Gates owns approximately 270,000 acres of farmland. Which by itself sounds like a lot, but let’s put that into perspective. There is a ranch in Texas called King Ranch, it’s 825,000 acres- one ranch. Of the 2.26 billion acres of agricultural land in the US, 1.3 billion acres is for crop growing. If Bill Gates closed off all his farmland, it wouldn’t even raise prices in US. The US pays more out in acreage for crop insurance for damaged crops every year.
Iirc that video is based on the book "dictator's handbook". Good book
You recall correctly.
Suggestion: start from the top and work our way down until we've eaten our fill and then we will know where the line is
interesting suggestion
how would one know theres a stopping point and not just "eat" the whole thing? what then? end of country? this ideology is very silly - signed, poor eastern european guy
@@MB-jr3sm until we've eaten our fill was the one criterion there. In case you didn't notice, everyone is having a bit of fun, you need not take the comments seriously
"Eat the rich!"
But I'm not hungry...
Before They Eat You though. You might not be hungry now but they'll never be satisfied and one day inevitably it'll be you on the plate
Tough.
@@ThePlayerOfGamesobligatory pride flag.
@@yesornoandmaybesowhat?
16:07 do not give D Brand any ideas Linus they WILL do it.
My favourite episodes are when Luke gets super excited about Linus Town
Luke thinking 400 acres of farmland is a lot.....
I'm willing to assume he means 400 square miles or something lol
As someone who lives in an area like Surrey (but in Texas) and thinks 400 acres is a lot of farmland, please recalibrate me by explaining what a little, a reasonable, and a lot of farmland are throughout the world.
@@cmasupra It depends on where you are and what you're doing with it.
If you're using it to graze cattle because grass is about all your land can grow, 400 acres is hardly anything.
If you're using it to grow specialty crops, like fruits and vegetables, 400 acres would be enough to make you very well off. You have to have the right ground and climate, though, to decrease your chances of crop failure.
If you're a typical Midwest farmer growing corn and soybeans, 400 acres is okay as long as you don't have a big mortgage to pay. If you brought your last 100 acres in the last few years, then you're one bad year away from selling it all and getting a job in the city. If you're 55 years old, you've paid off your last mortgage and you're running solid, but nowhere new equipment, you can do fine with 400 acres. But that's just you. If you want to support two families off that farm, say you and one of your kids, that could be a bit of a struggle, depending on the year.
400 acres of good fertile land can be a lot. Where I live prices of farmland are probably the most expensive and have risen to 100k euros per hectare(~40k per acre). Large farms here have up to 100 acres. On the otherhand when I worked on a farm in Australia that farm had millions of acres.
There are really rich people in my area that own less than 10-20 acres of land.
Having Dan as a huge part of this topic was awesome and added so much depth to the conversation. Love it when we get to hear Dan talk and hear how smart he is :p
Yeah, i didn't know Dan was a comrade like that.
Hi! I am in the field of Political Science and worked as a Political Science and History consultant in the games industry for a while!
Dan pretty much summarized very well how class struggle works and I am here to point out where Linus would fall into according to what I know about his material position in society (I do not have the full picture, but I believe what is public knowledge is good enough to measure it given Linus' openess about his life)
His position would be quantified differently according to the specific ideology of the hipotetical revolution, but for the sake of simplicity let's say we are talking about a strictly Marxist-Leninist socialist revolution: In the advent of a victorious socialist uprising Linus would be considered either Petite Bourgeoisie or low level proper Bourgeoisie, in either case his options would be one of three:
1- Accept the collectivisation of his Private Property (not to be confused with personal property, his house, cars and personal assets would be probably untouched) and become an worker in a "new LMG" owned and run by his employees.
2- Leave the country without anything
3- Be eaten
OF COURSE there are historical examples of many small scale capitalists/factory workers that have cut deals with the revolutionary powers to keep a few of their privileges while abdicating power, but those are the exception, not the rule.
PS: I REALLY like how LMG discuss these themes in a sober way, even though I tend to not 100% agree with some of the cast's positions.
Excellent analysis, agreed that Linus is petit bourgeoisie or lower level big bourgeoisie and that he wouldn't likely be eaten unless he was incredibly politically active for the counter revolution. In all likelihood, he continues working at a collectivized LMG or he leaves the country
+
More like two options as no one sane is actually into vore
@@JohnnyYeTaecanUktena it's just a TOS-safe way of saying he would have to otherwise fight for his life
@@znth-gameworks I always interpreted it as more of a metaphor, strip them down of all their possessions and use the wealth to assist the needy (except for them, their newly acquired needy status would not count). It would only be literal in a more cartoony situation of them being so above the rest of society that the only thing there is to eat is the actual flesh of the rich as they are keeping all the food behind paywalls no one else can afford.
Linus is basically a petit bourgeois. The argument shouldnt be about the amount of money you hold nor what the billionaire's morality is. The important part of the argument is how much socio-economic and political power they wield. In this regard, Linus is somewhere between a small business owner and a corporate monopoly.
This!
I don't even think its about the socio economic power, i just think that it is about your choices. Do you choose to screw people over even if you have a realisitc choice not to. Like as Linus mentioned at the start, the rules for rulers by CGP grey detail the realistic CHOICE quite well.
@@normalchannel2185 Idc if the billionaire happens to be nice, the system creates a class with incredible power over both their employees and directly or indirectly societal politics. This creates an incentive for this class to use this power to enrich themselves even more, often at the cost of others.
@@pinkomooreno system prevents a ruling class to exist
@@pinkomoore I think you've completely lost the plot if you think Linus is anywhere near this
Good thing I’ve got this bottle of Chianti.
But can you afford the Fava beans?
I love that Linus knows about CGP Grey thats awesome.
i mean cgp gray is not a small youtuber by any means.
Dan saying: "alright I'll go get the one in my car" is such comedic genius. Not joking, with his knowledge and comedic timing, I wouldn't be surprised if he started stand-up comedy and killed it.
Something like 100 people get to have a great job that they probably enjoy doing because of the work that Linus did building his company, him being their boss doesn't make him evil.
i think this is the part that makes it difficult
i mean from what we have seen over the years Linus seems to be a good boss and I think the biggest ne for me is that he still works despite pointing out several times he didin't need to. I think the other thing is that he didn't sell out when he could have.
im not a shill for the rich by any means but Linus should be okay in this situation IMO
The odd thing about rulers is that their power comes from the fact that at least some people listen to them, rather than raw physical power like in the Animal Kingdom.
their power comes in money bro
@@noonesaidthis23 Not entirely, Jeff Bezos probably has more money than Putin and yet Putin is the one having hundreds of thousands if not millions of people killed due to his government power.
@@noonesaidthis23 Which again is because people listen to money
Rulers are nothing without people to rule over, sometimes the workers forget they have bargaining power. Of course this is more nuanced than "dont take exploitative job offers" as some people really need a job, but technically if everyone refused to work for a company that company would die out
@@Philip-qq7ql it's more than that. Check out what linus told us to earlier, CGP Grey's rules for rulers
We bout to be eating good
“Eatin’ good in the neighborhood!” 😂
"Your rent is coming down, I'm sorry. We have to pay you now." Dan, this is called a land daddy
10:15 Luke is using so many words to define "Exploiting employees" without hitting any words.
16:35 "Land Bro" is probably the only kind of Land Person that will be spared.
17:40 I can't imagine Linus sending an `@everyone` message on Teams demanding Riley come in and record Tech Linked during a Hurricane.
Regardless of bank account, anyone pulling the "You're expected to work your shift and possibly die, or lose your health insurance." deserves the French haircut.
You replied to yourself twice. Cringe
@@yesornoandmaybeso you can call me the Cringeler
Dan is pretty based. Also Linus could totally buy politicians in the US. A an NC state rep. flipped for like $50k a few years ago.
Listening to this I'm over here thinking "Low-key I kind of wish he would?" 😅
We could totally use more money in politics coming from the good ones actually advocating for us little people. 🤔🤷🏻♀️
@@coololds That just exacerbates the problem of money controlling decisions rather than logic or common good ...
I think communist* was the word you meant to use
@@3nertia Canada is the example undermining the argument, Trudeau is worse than incompetent.
@@yamerojones Based on what?
Where the line is, is where linus
Dan needs to be involved in these shows a lot more often. The guy is a treasure haha
Its really quite simple, the standard is set on economic hoarding. By definition net worth is the metric and the line of eat the rich comes from whether your work creates your income or if your assets do.
If your main contribution to society is your wealth, you are by definition exploiting the work of others to create wealth instead of participating.
Yeah that's exactly how I view it too. Are you working for your money or are you one of those people who think their wealth should increase just for existing?
@@Rudyliciousness What happens when you retire and your main contribution to society is now your accumulated wealth?
Dan is such a mood
9:42 Linus doing his best Dr Zoidberg impression.
Omg 😅😅😅😅😅
Nailed that lmao
in my opinion, eat the rich depends on morality, if you cheat the state or people then obviously you deserve it, having a s**tload of money doesnt mean anything if you are a decent human
History shows that when it gets to that point and you have any amount of money that someone is envious of you your gonna be in trouble
LLT town coming soon
My line is simple: Murder and cannibalism is wrong.
Its cool to see how Linus manages interactions with his team. He is potentially 100x higher in net worth, but still a nice and reasonable person.
16:30 it's the fact that you have ownership of others homes and have unilateral control over whether or not they become homeless, not whether you charge rent.
Agreed, but assuming he won’t make them homeless because family. I don’t see as him being a landlord because the multiple houses are being used for people to live in it. Not for profit. And the simple solution is to transfer the ownership to his relatives if the line is being drawn in the number of houses.
Dan is an absolute hoot!
If you dont dare to weigh in the conversation you know where you stand :P
Linus: "...I just don't care..."
That sounds an awful lot like, "Let them eat cake!"
sadly, only dan understands the question, but no one has the patience to let him explain it...
the question is about if you believe his "work" actually contributes more value than his meat would... it depends on if you believe that the "work" of managing capital and bearing risk actually adds more value that the meat on your bones would add to a soup
The line in most traditional leftist theory is less about amount of wealth or assets and more about your role in society. Private businesses and their owners have varying degrees of control over how society is organized (alongside the government of course). This doesn't mean they should be "gotten rid of" but it's a fact that there is an outsized private control not just in their own businesses but in the organization of society and how people get to live their lives
Iirc the onion guy wasn't even super rich - the reason he was able to do that is that the price of onions became dirt cheap. Then he bought up all the onion futures and was able to artificially increase the value of the onion since he had complete control.
With that said, I'm not sure whether that's meaningfully different in terms of whether that guy would be guillotineable
I really enjoyed this banter. Sides presented arguments, were respectful, had opinions, defended them, and still friends at the end. Love it!
Dan has read his Marx. Lol.
The wealth isn't the important question, the ethics on how the wealth was acuminated and their day to day impact on society is. A lower management could be just as much of an a-hole as a billionaire, the only differences how big of an impact they have. A blanket off with the head policy using an arbitrary wealth indicator doesn't serve society at all as it hurts the near wealthy more than the actual wealthy. The big business owners and landlords can all escape while the smaller local owners who actually helps the community they live in get persecuted.
My grandpa was in the 'owner class' in China. He bought the car repair shop he was working for on the cheap before WW2. He paid his employee about as much as he paid himself, even paid employees extra during family emergencies, and was practically the most affordable garage around. He also repaired military vehicles for free as they were pushing out the Japanese. When the Communist Revolution rolled around, they didn't care about ethics or the defenses from the workers and those in the local community. Those defended him had to switch side or else they would face death. My grandpa only survived because he was willing to sign every confession the Revolution written for him from cheating customers to beating workers. The Revolution didn't care about ethics, only status.
Linus has assets, but doesn’t have the power to change whatever he needs to protect and grow those assets. He can’t change how TH-cam works because it inconveniences him. He can’t put enough money into politics to significantly affect local, national, and global politics. He works within a system, he does not control the system.
Best LMG clip I've ever seen and I've been watching for like 8 years
And THIS is why having a blanket rule for what makes someone ‘evil’ is damgerous
I think the line should be drawn if there is rent seeking behaviour. Rent seeking is what economists define as when you cross over reasonable profit. When there are goods with inelastic demand such as food, water, eletricity, healthcare, shelter etc etc their prices are determined by what they can extort over the underlying value. The price for those needs is ultimately paid by every employer from the base demands for pay and eat into the consumer economy for a country. Linus is in too competitive an industry to engage in rent seeking.
I think this is the line in my opinion as well. This type of behavior is what we generally see that triggers people's "something here is not fair" senses.
@@gyll4201 It's not just unfair for people, it's also bad for the economy. economics as a field started with the phsiologians labelling the 'sterile class' (lords of the land) as what is holding back the economy.
they then said no lmao
So in one word, Greed.
no. Rent-seeking is a concept in economics that states that an individual or an entity seeks to increase their own wealth without creating any benefits or wealth to the society
Dan was on fire in this one 😂
You're not supposed to know about Grey's face.
20:35 "Clothing & food" & Kool-Aid...
Alternate Title: Linus preemptively beggs for his life before the angry mob forms.
Dan: We can find 12 more people
Linus: wooosh
I lost it on Linus: "But if someone else seasoned me?"
Dan: "PUT SOME FRANKS ON THAT"
"The rules for rulers" is one of the most amazing videos I've ever seen
Luke- "Chop them both!" KING.
Unfortunately it feels like the safest thing to do with capital in Canada is to stockpile houses, unless you can find some way to exploit TFWs.
Even when you look at a successful business like LMG I feel like it would be better served by packing up and moving to the states. There are clearly personal benefits, but I would be curious to see if Linus thinks there are any competitive business advantages to being in the GVA.
He already said in a previous Wan show that he is staying in the GVA because all his employees live there and that moving away to save a bit on rent/taxes would only add money that he doesn't _need_ in his bank account.
It always comes back to Linustown.
a part of this conversation that is always missed is the money is made by providing things people want to buy, is it the billionaires fault he was given the money?
Can I just say I really enjoy you guys discussing more philosophical/sociological topics? I really enjoy your guys perspective especially considering Linus' wealth
This is complicated yeah, but angry mobs don't do complicated ;)
Like you say towards the end, power is an important measure.
If you define "Power" as "the capacity to exert influence or control that overrides the personal agency of others", then you have a metric with which to determine whether Linus needs to be consumed.
However, capacity and application are very different.
Capacity to do harm doesn't equate to actually doing harm.
For example, any child holding a puppy has the capacity to harm it. But it'd take a very sick puppy to discipline the child for simply having that capacity.
So our equation needs to look something like:
Power * Application = Dinner Time
If "Application" is a value from 0 - 1, then that determines how much of Linus is on the table.
Let's set a 30% threshold for safety (i.e., if Application < 0.3, dinner's cancelled).
For the record, I don't think Linus deserves to be eaten.
Fun thought experiment though.
Well, I am glad that they are not going to scissor each other.
I was thinking of a different interpretation when I first saw this
Hello there Linus xD
... is it weird that the image of Dan with a "people to guillotine list" and in some type of clean-cut uniform is just so... easy to imagine?
the eat the rich example is actually pretty easy to draw the line for on what it actually means. The line is are you producing the product with your employees and do the employees see a reward equal to their contribution to the product. Basically are you exploiting workers for your own financial gain without returning the true value of their work to them. Linus is in one of the wierd spots on this since he doesnt run LMG as a coop but from the outside looking in everyone has a fairly equalish say in how the company goes and they are all compensated fairly.
The idea is more or less eating the CEO that makes over 300 times the wage of their average employee.
Love how this video begins with Luke just giving off a big sigh lol
There's a fun film called The Million Pound Note where the idea of having but not spending money is the premise - worth a watch
Queue: Muse - Uprising
When Luke said the company is an inverted pyramid, does he imply that the pyramid is rotated 30 degrees?
60 degrees 😉
Alternate title: *Is Linus Enough to Eat?*
_How long would I survive only eating Linus?_
@@gulapula it would depend on how much energy you spend per day, I guess.
well yea i dont see taco shops sponsoring LTT yet so he has to buy his food:D
3:59 you just know Dan has been watching some Second Thought
my favorite car review channel
oh, second thought sucks
So the line would be set in the court of public opinion based on each case; case being each person being judged by their previous & assumed future actions.
This conversation isn’t about numbers or logic. It’s a feelings conversation.
If you feel that ownership of business at all without full redistribution to workers is unjust, then Linus isn’t surviving the cut.
If you have even somewhat of a belief in capitalism, then Linus is doing great and nothing he has is an issue. He earned all of it and his theoretical net worth is well over 100 million
This clip hits differently after the recent healthcare CEO-related events
18:00 Idk if I want the multi billionaire keeping the most powerful dude in check, speaking in irl terms of course.
Linus would be considered petite bourgeoisie, which depending on ones specific political philosophy can be seen to have (or lack) varying degrees of separation from the haute bourgeoisie. Views on the petite bourgeoisie's suitability as potential allies of the proletariat is also wildly varying. I think this is all a result of the sort of nebulous social position that the petite bourgeoisie represents and the complexities of the power dynamics at play in that transitional position between worker and owner. So all that is to say, Linus's suitability to be eaten varies from one school of thought to another.
I feel like any ideology that talks about "bourgeois" and "proletariat" is brainrot in the first place
One of the most amusing clips on this channel in a while.
This was my favorite part of that WAN show episode lol. Glad the Clips channel felt the same.
Where is the line, well how about here LINEus?
This was a surprisingly interesting topic and conversation BTW, love to see more politics-economics topics coming to the show, especially because the discussion is rolling and people participating here have actual brains and logic. Very good one guys !
If Linus was super serious about not being guillotined, he could always set up LMG as a co-operative where his employees share in equal ownership. Thats kinda what Nebula is btw.
It has almost nothing to do with “lifestyle”, it has to do with power dynamics between those that own and those that sell their labor to those that own. Wealth does play a part in it for me personally, there’s almost always going to be a greater difference in exploitation required to acquire $1billion vs $10million.
Ultimately, the problem is not so much with any one individual regardless of wealth it lies with the system(s) that incentivizes and enables this kind of extreme wealth and exploitation.
So if we want to talk about liability or “fault” with the rich then you could look at level of wealth as an indicator of how integrated with or supportive of those systems they are. You can also look at who opposes changing this system actively as a direct measure.
To answer Linus’ question “Is it about the power?” Yes, yes it is. Always has been. The Superman thing is just inherently an unreliable way to run a society, we should divest power away from so few unaccountable individuals. That’s literally why democracy exists in the political space. This finally brings us to where we should be going, divesting power from unaccountable individuals in the economic space as well, aka things like unions, worker councils, co-ops, and ultimately something like democratic socialism.
The rich as a term or label is really just another way of identifying who has accumulated too much power (via wealth) and “eating” them to me should mean reducing their power to a far more reasonable level so that the absurd disparity between the top 1% and the bottom 90% is substantially reduced and the systems that enabled that to happen in the first place are reformed enough so as to prevent or limit the ability of individuals to accrue that kind of power again going forward.
massive respect to Dan this one around, i've never seen someone explain this so calmly while making jokes, to people who probably don't agree with him
The limit needs to be tied to socio-political power. If nobody voted for you, and yet your opinions can have a vast influence on society, perhaps excluding people in naturally influential positions like a news anchor or TH-cam, then you have too much individual power.
See people like Larry Fink, who is extremely politically active and very "hands on". Letting his political views determine who his equity fund invests in. Nobody voted for him, lots of people probably don't even know who he is, and yet he can actively and significantly influence business practices to the point of turning entire industries worth of companies into activist organizations.
The ceo of Arizona tea is a great example for where the line is.
That's a paddling...
i got 8 ads on a video about where the line is to kill the Ritch
If Dan didn't know Linus he would 100% argue that he should be eaten but he can't because he knows him. It's almost as if most of these really wealthy people you've never heard of and are just normal people.
Linus, you're not contributing to a house supply problem by owning a house, and you are not helping by selling a house. There are a number of houses and people that need them.
If you want to actively help the supply problem, you need to build new houses. That's why private investment in housing is actually good because a lot of people can't afford or dont understand or dont like taking the risk of building and buying a house. Vacancy rates are typically low. We just need more houses. More land for housing is needed and cheaper building methods.