WOLFF: How do you respond to a classic defense move
by the people who want to defend capitalism: that somehow all of this technological advance,
the credit for it goes to capitalism? That, without capitalism, somehow we would all be
working with donkeys and wheelbarrows or something like that. How do you
respond? You must get that a lot. LIU: For sure, and I think people
in the tech industry, especially, like to weaponize it. They will say things like,
"The only way to have technological progress is if you have a certain degree of inequality."
And I think they have something to that argument, and what they're saying is that in the kind of
world we have now, if you just look at history, there has been both technological and innovation
and this very capitalist kind of inequality at the same time. So if you just take it purely
from historical perspective, there is something to that. I don't think that's necessarily true in the
abstract, and I don't think that it is impossible to design a society where you do have innovation,
where you are producing inventing useful things without these kind of capitalist structures.
And moreover I think the kind of important point here is that: Who is actually creating
these technologies? Who is writing code? Who is soldering hardware? Who is coming up
with these ideas that are being commodified by these capitalist enterprises? It's not
the CEOs. It's not the shareholders. It is the workers and it's workers in a whole
variety of different roles, a whole variety of different places. You have people who are in
all these different parts of the supply chain who are creating the technologies that are being used
by these companies, and most of them are not being paid very much for it. They're not being
recognized for it. None of them are going to be on the cover of TIME magazine. None of them are
going to be shot into space along with Jeff Bezos. And so I think what we have is a very classically
capitalist example of a few people on top taking credit for the work done by millions and
even billions of other people. And there is a way in which the media and society as a whole ascribes
all of these inventions to the people on top, despite all evidence to the contrary. It's not
like you have to thank Jeff Bezos for every Amazon package that's delivered to your house. You don't
have to thank Elon Musk for every Tesla. I don't think he even knows how to build a car on his own,
right? This is not something... The people who we recognize as being these captains of industry,
the best case you can say for them is that they were in the right place at the right
time. They were able to assemble a lot of people together. They were able to create these teams and
create these brands. Sure, that may be something to be applauded.
By the end of the day, all of the work that these companies have produced is produced by teams.
It's produced by a lot of people, and I would say that if we can do it under these circumstances,
if we can create the products that are being created in this way, well, what if we could
create it in a more egalitarian way? And I know your work has a lot to do with cooperatives and
much more democratically governed ways of running a workplace. I think that is very fruitful,
and that's definitely something we should be looking into. And especially because there
is a strong critique to be made of the kinds of products that come out of capitalist enterprises,
because they are inherently undemocratic. They are inherently made for the benefit of a small number
of people and in a way that benefits shareholders. So, if we think about "Okay what are the products
that we actually want to congratulate capitalism for?". What, cryptocurrencies?
Delivery, gate delivery apps that result in gig workers being exploited to the bone?
All these "software as a service" platforms that don't actually deliver much value for society as
a whole? There is a strong correlation between the kinds of products that are
being produced and the way that companies run, and if you had a much more democratic
corporate structure, then maybe, we would have more useful products. Maybe, we would have
products that aren't incredibly exploitative, or just degrade the natural environment, or
are just not useful for the vast majority of people, are you know, instead, toys for rich
people to play with. And so I think to the argument that capitalism is the only reason
we have a technological process, I would say: well, capitalism is the reason we have all of
these useless products and why we have all these exploited people. It's why we have all
these billionaires. I think there is a kernel of innovation that capitalism has been able to take
advantage of. I don't think that is intrinsic to capitalism. I don't think it's impossible, and if
you look at, for example, historical examples of scientific innovation, many of them were produced
completely outside the realm of capitalism. WOLFF: Yeah, it's always struck me, just to add,
that the enormous wealth concentrated in the Jeff Bezos's and the Elon Musk's and all of that,
that's money that is not being used to provide the education, the opportunities for millions of
other people whose mental creativity is thereby undercut. They have wonderful ideas of how to
improve human society, but they'll never see the light of day because that money is being used to
send Jeffrey Bezos off into space because it's an amusement. And then to claim "Well,
we are the efficient cause of technical change", you are at least, at the very least, a major
barrier to the technical change we could have in a society that distributed its wealth more equally.