Joe Rogan Experience #1783 - Ben Burgis

Joe Rogan 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Ben Burgis 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music) All right, cheers, sir.

Ben Burgis 0:14 Mm-hmm, cheers. (glasses clink) Salut.

Joe Rogan 0:17 Salut. Mm.

Ben Burgis 0:19 Mm.

Joe Rogan 0:19 So this is for you.

Ben Burgis 0:20 Oh, thank you so much.

Joe Rogan 0:21 This is your own ... It's got a little JRE label on the back of it. This is, uh, your own bu- on the side, this little thing.

Ben Burgis 0:27 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:27 Um, this is a part of, uh, a thing we did with Fight For The Forgotten.

Ben Burgis 0:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:32 Which is, um ... I don't know if you know what that is, but it's a, a charity that my friend, Justin Wren, put together.

Ben Burgis 0:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:37 It's, um ... They build, uh, wells for people in the pygmy, uh, pygmy, um, population in, uh, Uganda and in, um, uh, the Congo as well. And so they did a thing with Buffalo Trace where we picked out one very specific batch and they, they literally gave us a barrel of whiskey. So we have ... It was one giant bottle and then a bunch of these bottles to give out to guests. So there you go.

Ben Burgis 1:03 Nice. Uh, man, this feels strange. I, uh ... You know, I've got to tell you, in the late '90s, I watched NewsRadio all the time, so, you know, get the, uh ... You know, feels, uh, feels weird having a drink with you.

Joe Rogan 1:14 Yeah. It feels weird just being me, so ...

Ben Burgis 1:18 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:18 (laughs) It's weird for p- It's weird for people to feel weird to meet me, so that's, that's odd too.

Ben Burgis 1:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:25 Um, so your book, uh, is, uh, speaks to my heart. Did you bring a copy?

Ben Burgis 1:30 Uh, I did not.

Joe Rogan 1:31 You have a book with you.

Ben Burgis 1:32 No, I have a book with me.

Joe Rogan 1:33 Oh.

Ben Burgis 1:33 This is, uh ... This is a book by my friend Adolph Reed. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:36 Oh.

Ben Burgis 1:37 So it's, um, about growing up in New Orleans under Jim Crow and, like, kind of how the South and the country has changed and how it hasn't changed. So, uh-

Joe Rogan 1:47 Mm.

Ben Burgis 1:47 This is good stuff, but, uh ...

Joe Rogan 1:48 Okay, cool. Well, that's a good book too, but tell everybody about your book.

Ben Burgis 1:51 Yeah. So my book is called Canceling Comedians While the World Burns: A Critique of the Contemporary Left, and I wrote that a while ago, so that was before we went through this, like, surreal experience where during weeks that the United States and Russia have been, like, closer to the brink of war than the Cuban Missile cr- you know, than they have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Somehow we've had new- weeks of news cycle about Joe Rogan, you know? I do- I don't know. (laughs) I don't know how that happened. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:17 Yeah, I'm a controversial character, apparently.

Ben Burgis 2:19 Apparently, yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:21 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 2:21 And apparently those controversies are the most important thing in the world.

Joe Rogan 2:25 Well, the most important thing in the world in media is ratings. And unfortunately, outrage is what sells. And, uh, if you could be upset at something, and so there's like a perfect storm with me. First of all, it was, uh, questioning the COVID narrative, and then it was having on doctors-

Ben Burgis 2:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 2:44 ... who also questioned the COVID narrative, and then it was me getting COVID and recovering very quickly but taking the wrong medication in their eyes.

Ben Burgis 2:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 2:52 And then it was, you know, like posting up the "Brought to you by Pfizer" videos and, like, showing, like, these, these people are, like, bought and paid for by pharmaceutical companies. And then it's all the other things. It's like e- every, uh, clip that we talked about before the podcast.

Ben Burgis 3:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:07 Like, every clip that I've ever said taken out of context, and if you smoosh them all together, how horrible it looks. But it's not really ... It's, it's not really that they think it's important.

Ben Burgis 3:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:19 It's they don't give a fuck what's important. They're just trying to stay alive and they're trying to get as many views as possible, and they're trying to escape what is, uh, this undeniable demise-

Ben Burgis 3:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:34 ... of modern mainstream news.

Ben Burgis 3:36 Well, that's the ... Yeah, we were talking about this a little bit before, uh, before we started, and I think what's really ... I mean, whatever. This is not like a mind-shatteringly original insight or whatever, you know? Lots of people have said this. But I think what's really gone on is that the economic collapse of traditional media has meant that the profit incentive now is just to cater to whoever you have left, right?

Joe Rogan 3:57 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 3:57 So, so if you have, you know ... Like, if you're on Fox then, like, you know, whatever, like, couple million conservative old people are, you know, watching-

Joe Rogan 4:05 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 4:05 ... at any given time. You want to give them the narrative that's going to keep them scared and angry and watching the news. If you're on MSNBC, then, you know, you spend the entire Trump years talking about Russia, you know, 'cause, like, that's what ... Like, that's what scares their audience.

Joe Rogan 4:17 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 4:18 Uh, and, uh, people don't ... Um, you know, and one thing that, that really disturbs me about this ... I mean, like, the book is about all of the things that people who I basically agree with are getting wrong, right? So in other words, like, I'm a socialist, I'm a columnist for Jacobin magazine. I-

Joe Rogan 4:37 Are you a straight-up socialist or are you democratic socialist? 'Cause I know that you, you've been represented as a democratic socialist.

Ben Burgis 4:43 Yeah, I-

Joe Rogan 4:43 Like, what do you ... What is-

Ben Burgis 4:44 So, I mean, look, the reason I put democratic in there, right? You know, which, um ... You know, which I, which I do, but, you know, the reason I put democratic in there is because there are obviously countries that have existed that have, you know, called themselves socialist that have, um, you know, not had things that I care about, like, you know, free speech and, you know, multiparty elections and, and-

Joe Rogan 5:03 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 5:03 And so I certainly don't want to associate myself with that. But, look, I mean, short term, I care very much about, you know, having, you know, socialized healthcare, about, uh, about having, you know, like, tuition-free higher education so people can go to school without being ... Having to be in debt for, like, decades, which is obscene. Uh-

Joe Rogan 5:23 Obscene.

Ben Burgis 5:23 I m- I mean, that's ridiculous. But-

Joe Rogan 5:25 Yeah, I'm with you 100% on both those things.

Ben Burgis 5:27 You know? And, um, and I do think that, like, the le- the level of inequality that we get from our current system is indefensible. That, in other words, uh, that if one person has more than another just because they, like, chose to work harder, then, like, that's one thing, right? I can ... You know, like-

Joe Rogan 5:47 Right.

Ben Burgis 5:47 That, you know, I would, you know ... Person A wants to stay home and watch Netflix and, you know, person B, you know, wants to work, uh, for, for more hours, then, like, you know, person ... You know, person B should get more money. I am totally fine with that. But what bothers me is when you have these massive inequalities that have huge effects on people's lives that are linked to things that, that aren't under their control, and I think we have a lot of that too.

Joe Rogan 6:10 I would agree with you 100%. Um, my position on this whenever people push back against the concept of socialism, or th- when I was, uh, supporting Bernie Sanders for president-

Ben Burgis 6:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:22 ... I was saying that, well, look at all the things that are technically a socialist concept that we accept, like the fire department. Imagine if you had to have money to get your fire put out. Like, we don't think that.

Ben Burgis 6:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:37 Like, if your house burns down, we call the fire department, they show up. Our taxes fund the fire department. That is essentially a socialist endeavor. I mean, it's a socialist, uh, institution.

Ben Burgis 6:48 Yeah. It's- it's taken outside of the, it's taken outside of the market. It's provided just as like a right that you should have-

Joe Rogan 6:54 Right.

Ben Burgis 6:54 ... just for, just for being a person, right? You know, you shouldn't have to do anything special to get your house put out if it's on fire, and you also shouldn't have to do anything special to get treatment if you're sick-

Joe Rogan 7:03 Right.

Ben Burgis 7:03 ... uh, to, to go to, to go to college in the first place.

Joe Rogan 7:07 Yes.

Ben Burgis 7:07 It seems to be that a lot of people who, like, don't think that there should be a higher minimum wage are the same people who will go turn around and say, "Oh, if they wanted to make more money, they should go back to school." But then they don't want to pay for that, right? So which-

Joe Rogan 7:18 Right. Exactly.

Ben Burgis 7:19 (laughs) ... which, you know, which one is it, right?

Joe Rogan 7:20 Exactly.

Ben Burgis 7:20 Like, should they be paid more doing what they're doing or should they go back to school? 'Cause if it's none of the above, then it sounds like you just don't think those people should have, like, good lives, or at least you don't have a plan to help them have good lives.

Joe Rogan 7:32 What's fascinating to me too is when you look at public school versus, uh, uh, public services like the fire department. Fire department people get paid well. It's a good job if you're a, a member of the fire department.

Ben Burgis 7:45 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 7:45 I have friends that are in the fire department. It's good benefits. The hours are cool because you get to work like 24-hour shifts. You sleep there.

Ben Burgis 7:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:52 You work there. You, like... My friend Ray was a fire, uh, fireman for years, and he would say like, he worked like a few days a week and then, you know, there were long shifts, and they weren't always called to fires.

Ben Burgis 8:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 8:05 So sometimes they're just cooking and working out and hanging out around the firehouse. But it's a great job.

Ben Burgis 8:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 8:11 It's, it's like a, a job that people look forward to getting. It's, it's difficult to get. How come that's not the same thing with teachers? Like, what, what kind of a fucking world do we live in where teachers don't get paid well? I mean, I'm not saying fire department people shouldn't be paid well. Of course they should be paid well. They should be paid great. It's a fucking-

Ben Burgis 8:29 Sure.

Joe Rogan 8:29 ... very risky job. It's very valuable to the community, but fucking so is teaching.

Ben Burgis 8:33 No, s-

Joe Rogan 8:33 How is there such a disparity?

Ben Burgis 8:35 So is teaching, and it's crazy that there are so many people who look at K-12 teachers and say, like, "Oh, how come, you know, how come they get summers off?" Or, you know, whatever, you know.

Joe Rogan 8:45 (laughs)

Ben Burgis 8:45 Or like, don't like that they, (laughs) uh, you know, which... No, it's ridiculous and-

Joe Rogan 8:49 It's so stupid.

Ben Burgis 8:50 And they don't, um... You know, and I guess what gets me is when people see someone like a unionized school teacher who has some good benefits, a little bit of job security, not nearly as good as it should be, like we've been talking about, right?

Joe Rogan 9:03 Right.

Ben Burgis 9:03 You know, (laughs) but like... And they say, "Oh, well, why should they have those things when I don't?" Instead of saying, "Well, how can I get those things-"

Joe Rogan 9:10 Yes.

Ben Burgis 9:10 "... right, so I can (laughs) have them too?"

Joe Rogan 9:12 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 9:12 You know, because it doesn't, you know, it doesn't benefit you, right, as an ordinary person if like somebody, uh, who has a job like that is paid less. In fact, what it, it does is it's bad for your kids if they go to public schools because the kinds of things that teachers unions want, like smaller class sizes-

Joe Rogan 9:30 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 9:30 ... are things that are, you know, like the conditions that they teach in are the same conditions that the kids are, are learning in, right? So I think it actually benefits everybody. Like, I think that, uh, Finland, uh, is supposed to have the best public schools in the world by a lot of, um, by a lot of metrics, the best school system, you know, in the world. Uh, they actually don't really have private schools in, in Finland. And, you know, it's very strong unions, you know, people are certainly, you know, certainly getting a better deal as teachers there than they, they are here. But so many people think the solution is to, you know, is to privatize things or, you know, is, is to, you know, is-

Joe Rogan 10:08 That's the solution if there's no other options. I mean, if you, like, if you're a guy right now and you have-

Ben Burgis 10:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 10:13 ... a child and you have enough money to put them in a really good school-

Ben Burgis 10:16 Sure.

Joe Rogan 10:16 ... that you have to pay for versus a really shitty school that you get for free, that makes sense.

Ben Burgis 10:21 Yeah, I don't blame anybody for making that decision as an individual. I mean, like what I would ask-

Joe Rogan 10:25 But they shouldn't have to make that decision.

Ben Burgis 10:26 Yeah, exactly. I think what we should have are like excellent public schools-

Joe Rogan 10:29 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 10:30 ... so that, like, everybody can just do that.

Joe Rogan 10:32 Imagine.

Ben Burgis 10:33 I mean... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:34 Imagine if that's controversial. Like, literally one of the most important things for the future of our society is raising children correctly and educating them. B- by correctly, meaning like-

Ben Burgis 10:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:46 ... giving, giving them the opportunity to grow and pursue their interests and find out where they fit in life and have enthusiastic, well-paid teachers, not people that feel like they're being taken advantage of and fucked with and just the, just exhausted all the time.

Ben Burgis 11:00 Well, it's weird too, because a lot of the same people who are hostile to that will say when they're talking about like corporate CEOs, like, "Oh, you can't complain about how much they're paid because they have to be," you know, like, like, "You have to have that as an incentive."

Joe Rogan 11:12 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 11:12 Or, "They're, they're not going to give you their best work if they're not being paid, you know, 500 times (laughs) more, you know, than people who work there." Uh, but it's like, wait a second. So, so why doesn't that logic go for like teachers or other public employees that, like, if, if they're paid more, you know, then you're gonna get, you know, then you're gonna get a better performance out of them? Why is it only CEOs?

Joe Rogan 11:31 Well, it just... We have a very distorted set of values when it comes to, like, what's important. And this is, again, not saying that, that fire department people are not important. They're fucking hugely important. I respect them very much and I'm glad they get paid well.

Ben Burgis 11:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:45 But I mean, they should get the... It, it should be like that with all of what I would think of-... social services, services for the community that we would gladly pay for with taxes, fixing infrastructures, fixing roads. The problem I think with a lot of people is they just don't trust government-

Ben Burgis 12:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:02 ... to handle the money well. They think that you're going to get a lot of bureaucracy, it's going to be bloated, there's going to be a shit load of people that are working, they're not going to resolve it, and it's going to be the, sort of that same situation where if you donate to charities and then you find out that like 90% of the money goes to infrastructure-

Ben Burgis 12:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:18 ... and bureau, and, and, you know, just w- some of those shitty charities, where so much money goes to the people that are working there that very little of it goes to the actual charity itself.

Ben Burgis 12:28 Well, of course, that's the private sector too, but yes. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:31 Yes, it is, it is with everything, but-

Ben Burgis 12:32 You know, I, I, I guess I would just say one thing about the bureaucracy thing, 'cause like I know that that's something that's like an easy association-

Joe Rogan 12:38 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 12:38 ... in lots of people's minds, right, you know, that like more government means more bureaucracy, and if you're thinking about people who are like petty gatekeepers, you know, who are like going to be able to approve or deny something, it's like very natural to like resent people like that.

Joe Rogan 12:51 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 12:52 Uh, but what I would say is that w- who, what, what situation is actually going to give bureaucrats more power? Is it going to be if you have something like Medicare for All, for example, where, or, you know, just like how public schools already work, right, the K-thr- K through 12, that like every kid has to be educated, you know, like, like you don't have to go through a special process. So if it's universal programs, then you don't have what you have with means-tested programs, where there's somebody who's like looking over your application and deciding whether or not, you know, you qualify, and, you know, deciding which hoops you have to jump through.

Joe Rogan 13:26 Right.

Ben Burgis 13:27 And like that really seems to me like where bureaucrats are really going to get, you know, most of their power. And that's not to say, like when I was saying that, I'm not saying that like there are no legitimate complaints about like any of the agencies that do these things. Of course there are, right?

Joe Rogan 13:41 Of course.

Ben Burgis 13:41 You know, but what I would ask though is what the, what the options are, right? So 'cause, 'cause if you privatize something, then you're still, you know, you're still having decisions be made by, you know, decision-makers who, you know, who you don't necessarily, you know, like might be very distant from you. But the difference is at least when it's public then, you know, theoretically, right, you can at least elect the people who are, you know, who are overseeing it. Whereas if something is like subcontracted out to a private corporation, then like that's not even true anymore, right?

Joe Rogan 14:17 Right.

Ben Burgis 14:17 Like there's another layer in between you as like an ordinary person and control over this, this institution. I mean, like if, uh, you know, if the federal government does anything bad then we can, you know, theoretically, uh, get, you know, get rid of them, although I think there are a lot of very undemocratic things about America's political system that make it way harder to do that. I mean, the fact that we've only got two political parties that are basically allowed to participate at all, the, the fact, you know, like-

Joe Rogan 14:42 Yeah, you could go on and on.

Ben Burgis 14:42 We could go on and on, right?

Joe Rogan 14:44 The money that's involved in getting these people elected.

Ben Burgis 14:46 Yeah, the money, definitely, right? Uh-

Joe Rogan 14:48 Exorbitant amounts of money from special interest groups.

Ben Burgis 14:51 Yeah, no question, right? So, um, like I think it's, I think we've got like, (laughs) you know, we've got like a little bit of democracy there, not nearly as much as we should, right? But, like Jeff Bezos isn't up for election by anybody, right?

Joe Rogan 15:05 Right.

Ben Burgis 15:06 Like, like, like he's just there, right? So like if you have, you know, like if, for example, you know, you, you didn't have like the, uh, public post office, right? It was, it was just like Amazon, you know, taking the, you know, like Amazon trucks and that's it.

Joe Rogan 15:19 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 15:20 Then now you're talking about an institution that, uh, that there's no democratic control over, right? There's some like a little bit of indirect control in the case of the, uh, the post office, which, you know, by the way, I would point out that like when conservatives talk about, you know, bureaucracy and inefficiency and stuff like that, they always bring that up. But like if you actually look at polls, like 90% of Americans like the post office, you know.

Joe Rogan 15:44 The post office is amazing. They can get a fucking letter across the country for less than a dollar.

Ben Burgis 15:50 (laughs) Right, yeah. Right.

Joe Rogan 15:51 How crazy is that?

Ben Burgis 15:52 Yeah, you could write-

Joe Rogan 15:52 What is the cost for a stamp?

Ben Burgis 15:54 Uh-

Joe Rogan 15:54 Let's hit that now.

Ben Burgis 15:55 Yeah, it's like, uh, I know it's less than a dollar. It's, it's been a while since I actually, uh, you know-

Joe Rogan 15:59 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 16:00 ... like I think my wife usually like buys the stuff at the post office.

Joe Rogan 16:01 I just email stuff. I don't fucking mail shit anymore. But like-

Ben Burgis 16:04 But like, but the fact that you can take a letter from Austin to like rural Alaska-

Joe Rogan 16:09 For a buck.

Ben Burgis 16:10 ... for a buck is-

Joe Rogan 16:11 Fucking bonkers.

Ben Burgis 16:12 It's ridiculous. And no private company would, would have the, uh, the incentive to, to do that, right? You know.

Joe Rogan 16:17 Right.

Ben Burgis 16:17 And, and I think that that's, uh, like one of the things that Bernie Sanders was talking about, uh, the two times he ran for president, you know, it's not one of the things that was played up the most, is, um, postal banking, you know, which is the idea that you could have like bak- basic banking services offered at the post office, which they actually do have in some Scandinavian countries. And that was-

Joe Rogan 16:39 Basic banking services like deposits and ex-

Ben Burgis 16:41 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:41 ... withdrawals and stuff like that?

Ben Burgis 16:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:43 At the post office?

Ben Burgis 16:44 At the post office, which is-

Joe Rogan 16:45 Why would you do that?

Ben Burgis 16:45 Which is, uh, because it's a public institution that already exists everywhere, right? You know, there, there are post offices all over the place. Uh-

Joe Rogan 16:51 So they would sort out money as well as mail? What if the money goes to the wrong places like the mail sometimes goes? I get mail from wrong people sometimes.

Ben Burgis 16:59 Well, the mail does sometimes go to the wrong places. I would point out if you look at like FedEx-

Joe Rogan 17:02 Or to wrong people I should say.

Ben Burgis 17:03 You know, FedEx versus the, you know, versus the post office, you know.

Joe Rogan 17:06 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 17:06 It's, it's the, the- I- I don't, I don't actually think the, uh, the failure rate, you know, is, uh, is worse with the, with the, uh, the USPS.

Joe Rogan 17:14 No. We have a problem-

Ben Burgis 17:15 But-

Joe Rogan 17:15 ... with UPS here. We get, our, our fucking packages get stolen.

Ben Burgis 17:18 Yeah, and I... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:21 They just leave them here and we're not here and someone snatches it.

Ben Burgis 17:24 Yeah, well, I don't, I don't know if that's, uh, you know, if the alternative is they, uh, they, they put the thing on the, you know, sorry-

Joe Rogan 17:30 Yeah, put the fucking thing on the door, man. We'll come get it.

Ben Burgis 17:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:33 You got a lazy UPS driver. But you're subject- like at home I got a great guy.

Ben Burgis 17:37 Good.

Joe Rogan 17:37 But it's, it's like you're subjected to the whoever the fuck it is that's running that route, you know, unfortunately.

Ben Burgis 17:43 No, fair enough, right? But, uh, but what I would just point out is this, that like right now there are a lot of people who for one reason or another they can't get a bank account, right? You know, that they have, um, that, um, I mean, the most like extreme case might be like somebody who's, who's like homeless, you know, so they don't have an address. But like even short of that, right, there are people who for one reason or another have trouble getting a bank account, so you have all these like parasitical like cash, you know, check-cashing, you know, businesses-

Joe Rogan 18:10 Right.

Ben Burgis 18:10 ... and stuff like that-

Joe Rogan 18:11 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 18:12 ... that like prey on people like that. And I think having some kind of public alternative would like go a long way to, to helping with that issue. There are countries that already exists, you know. So, so I think that like in the short term-... like, the stuff that makes sense to me is finding ways, you know, where it makes sense, it might not always make sense. Right? You know, but finding ways that you can expand what's not just, like, you have to find some private corporation to, to do it for you, uh, but that can

Ben Burgis 18:42 be within the sort of, um, you know, the public, uh, the public sphere. And then, look, I mean there are things that we'll probably always need, um, you know, private businesses for. I'm under no illusions about that. You know that you, you know, if you don't want to have, like, the way grocery stores were in like the Soviet Union in 1985 or whatever, right? (laughs) You know, you, you have to have, uh, you know, like there are certain things, price signals and you know, firm failure you probably do need to have. But I do think, like, at the sort of outer edges of what I would like, that it would be good if it was a long-term goal to move towards having it be more of a norm. That, um, that, you know, workers, like, own, like, a lot of, uh, a lot of private businesses, you know?

Joe Rogan 19:26 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 19:26 That there are, you know, if you look at like the Mondragon Corporation in Spain, you know, that, that, that has like 80,000, you know, worker members, you know, who, who own that. You know, you have like the equivalent, like an operating agreement which is like the equivalent of a union contract, but there's no, like, separate boss to negotiate with. Um, and you, you know, might not necessarily directly elect managers because there could be things that are like, you know, technical things that, you know, managers have to do that, like, you want that to be more of a traditional job application. But you can at least elect the people who, who hire them. And even if I could like, you know, whatever, like a magical genie would just like somehow grant me (laughs) , you know, that like all of my political preferences were, were satisfied in ways that I don't think they're going to be any time soon given all those problems with America's political system we talked about earlier. But like, even if that happened, I don't think that like every single business should have to be like that, that if you, you know, like, hire a guy to, you know, to do, like, graphic design for your podcast for 10 hours a week or something, that they have to have, like, voting rights and a cooperative, like that would be silly. But I think that you can... I think we could move towards an economy where that was like a much more common thing, and I think that'll be way better off because the way it is in, like the kinds of corporations that dominate the economy right now, where you'll get like Amazon workers who, um, are like sometimes like working at the warehouse and then they have to have like a second job at night, uh, and their boss literally has enough money off of that to buy his own spaceship, right? That, that strikes me as a level of, of inequality that's really hard to justify by the principles that we kind of started with.

Joe Rogan 21:07 Well, what did, what do they pay at Amazon? Do they, are they-

Ben Burgis 21:10 So, so I think-

Joe Rogan 21:11 ... egregiously underpaid?

Ben Burgis 21:12 Uh, I don't think that they're egregiously underpaid by the standards of the, uh, standards the, of like, you know, corporate America as a whole. I think, I think it is up to, you know, 15 now. Uh, I'd have to check the exact numbers, but I think that the... But like what I would, what I would question is just this though, right? Like, when you're dividing up, right? Like the revenues that the whole company is making then you say, like, there are lots of ways that if you are in a cooperative and people could vote on pay scales, there are lots of things you could do to convince somebody-

Joe Rogan 21:41 You mean like employees vote on pay scales?

Ben Burgis 21:43 Yeah. Like if you have like a worker cooperative. Right?

Joe Rogan 21:45 Right.

Ben Burgis 21:45 You know, then-

Joe Rogan 21:46 But the problem with that is a lot more workers than there are Jeff Bezos's and if they decide to say like, "We, we should get most of the money."

Ben Burgis 21:53 Okay. But they... But, but what do you think, what do you think Jeff Bezos is, is doing? Like, what's the, uh, um-

Joe Rogan 22:00 Right now?

Ben Burgis 22:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:00 Coke.

Ben Burgis 22:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:02 He's doing coke and he's banging his girlfriend on a yacht. He's living like a guy who's got $183 billion.

Ben Burgis 22:07 (laughs) And going to space. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:09 Yeah. He's going to space on a rocket ship that looks like a dick. He's shooting a giant metal dick up into the heavens, he's literally trying to fuck space. Yeah, that's what he's doing. That's what you're supposed to do when you make that kind of money. With my fascination with Jeff Bezos is his transformation from nerd to like this, like, muscle looking guy.

Ben Burgis 22:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:26 He looks like a jujitsu black belt. He looks like a tank. It's kind of crazy. And he's, now he's got... He used to have this, like, very respectable normal wife and now he's got this bombshell girlfriend. It's kind of hilarious. I love it. I love a good cliche. I really do. I love the fact they have to take down a bridge because he made a yacht that is so fucking big in order for it to get out of the, the place where they're making it-

Ben Burgis 22:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:50 ... they have to disassemble a fucking bridge. And he's like, "Yeah, dissemble the bridge."

Ben Burgis 22:55 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:56 What the fuck man? Why do you need a yacht so big they have to...

Ben Burgis 23:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 23:00 What are you doing? What are you doing? He's just out of control. But that's like... I feel like everyone that gets to that level of wealth-

Ben Burgis 23:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:08 ... seems to go out of control.

Ben Burgis 23:10 Yeah. No, it, it definitely does. (laughs) It definitely does seem that way, right? And then their, their kids, in many cases, start out of control because they grew up their entire lives like having this, like, level of wealth that makes it easy to get anybody to do whatever you want them to do.

Joe Rogan 23:25 That's part of the problem. The other part of the problem is there's no time to be with the kids.

Ben Burgis 23:30 Right.

Joe Rogan 23:30 So, when you're working and you're the CEO of Amazon, I mean, the fucking hours that guy was putting in is probably insane. He's probably working... When he was working, he's not the CEO anymore, but he's probably working 16 hours a day. How the fuck can you instill some sort of sense of normalcy in your children when you're never home?

Ben Burgis 23:48 Right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 23:48 It's not really possible. It's... And so then you compensate with gifts and-

Ben Burgis 23:53 And, and now he's way too... Yeah. Now he's too busy, you know-

Joe Rogan 23:55 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 23:55 ... snorting coke and, you know, going into space and all that stuff.

Joe Rogan 23:57 And, and banging his bombshell girlfriend. Woo.

Ben Burgis 24:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:00 Yeah. I've, I've, I feel what you're saying. Do you think that... Do you have hope?... for, uh, the-- I mean, there seems to-- such a-

Ben Burgis 24:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:08 ... polarization in this country. There's, uh, people that are-- completely disagree with on the right-

Ben Burgis 24:12 Yep.

Joe Rogan 24:12 ... that are like, "Pull yourself up, bury bootstraps," all that stuff. Like that, that is nonsense talk. When people talk like that, I'm like, "Jesus Christ, man, not everybody is starting from the same position." It's a, it's a cr- a crazy disparity.

Ben Burgis 24:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 24:23 And until we address that as a society, until we look at e- these impoverished communities that have been impoverished for decades and decades and decades, and, you know, if you really want to talk about where my real feelings of socialism lie, my feelings of socialism are there are communities, and it's not just inner cities, it's like Appalachia-

Ben Burgis 24:42 Sure.

Joe Rogan 24:42 ... it's these coal mining towns, like, we have to dump money into these places and help these folks. Because if you don't, you're going to have people that come out of there and they're going to cost you exponentially more money and all the problems that they create in their own lives, in other people's lives, with whether it's c- crime or whether it's drug addiction or whether it's, you know, whatever despair that comes out of these horrific starting points that these people are from, that can be fixed. And this is like where I'm a bleeding heart. And-

Ben Burgis 25:11 Well, yeah, I mean it can be fixed but like it, it sure hasn't been. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:14 It hasn't been even addressed.

Ben Burgis 25:15 Uh-

Joe Rogan 25:15 It's not even addressed. They n- there's no talk whatsoever about looking at communities like Baltimore-

Ben Burgis 25:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:21 ... and saying, "Hey, this has been fucked from the beginning." Like what do we do? Like look at the red line laws they instituted, look at the fact that the same... What was his name? Woods? What was the, uh, the cop that we had on? Michael. Michael Woods. He was on, um, he was a police officer in Baltimore.

Ben Burgis 25:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:39 And he, uh, was working there and one of the things that he noticed was they found a rap- like a, a, you know, a, a, a arrest sheet from like-

Ben Burgis 25:50 Mm.

Joe Rogan 25:50 ... the 1970s.

Ben Burgis 25:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:51 And it showed all of the same exact crimes that they're dealing with in the current time all in the same areas.

Ben Burgis 26:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 26:01 And they were all happening this, in the, like the same thing was going on, all the different arrests for violence and drugs and all this different stuff, and he was like, "Jesus Christ, this is not..." Like and he felt this feeling like, "I'm, I'm in a system that's broken. Like you're not gonna fix this. Like you're just gonna keep arresting people and you, you keep having this, y- you know, the systemic equali- inequality in this area that's just been fucked from for decades."

Ben Burgis 26:29 Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, I think that 'cause by the time you're dealing with it on that level you're d- you're treating symptoms, you know-

Joe Rogan 26:35 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 26:35 ... the, that, like it's, it's already... The problem has, uh, has already happened. And, you know, don't get me wrong, I know people commit crimes for all kinds of reasons. I'm not saying it's all economic, but like also I don't see a lot of like kids in the suburbs joining gangs, right? Like there, there is a reason-

Joe Rogan 26:51 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 26:51 ... there is a reason for that, right? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:53 For sure. Yeah.

Ben Burgis 26:53 You know, the things that like really drive up the violent crime rate, you know, are things that have a lot to do with poverty and, and inequality. And I think that if you, you know, you talked about Appalachia, I mean like the Obama administration's like response to like all the coal, you know, like the sort of misery caused by all the coal mines closing was to, you know, just kind of sprinkle the region with like a, a few-

Joe Rogan 27:13 Well how about that learn to code bullshit?

Ben Burgis 27:15 Well that's exactly it, right? 'Cause like-

Joe Rogan 27:16 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 27:17 ... they, they put up these technology training centers so it's essentially telling people to learn to code 'cause like yeah, if you're like a 50-year-old (laughs) laid off coal miner, you'll definitely get the coding job and preference over the 22-year-old kid, you know, who just, uh, who just graduated. It's, it's absurd. And, and then like Trump came in and he said he was going to bring the jobs back and there are fewer jobs there than, you know, than ever, right? I mean, I, I don't think that, I don't think any of these people are, are serious about helping working class people either in places like Baltimore or in places like Appalachia because-

Joe Rogan 27:47 Right.

Ben Burgis 27:47 ... the, you know, I think the, I think the Democrats increasingly, the kind of liberalism that's dominant in the Democratic Party right now I think isn't really about that. I think that what it's really about is trying to have like a more diverse ruling class. Like I know that sounds like an oversimplification but I really think a lot of it's just about that, right? You know, that like what they, like to the extent they're concerned with social justice, what they're concerned about is disparity, you know. That you have, um, more black people than white people who are, you know, living in poverty and going through a criminal justice system and all of this stuff. And that's absolutely true, right? That that is, and that is completely a result of the fact that, you know, up until the 1960s we literally lived in an apartheid country, you know. That in much of the United States, you know, there, the, you know, we had, uh, Jim Crow laws, you know, on the, on the books, you know, and, and they're, I think there's, I think the horrible racial history of the United States is the reason for that. But what's the goal, right? Is the goal is what you count as justice having like exactly demographically correct proportions-

Joe Rogan 28:47 Right.

Ben Burgis 28:48 ... of every group living in poverty and-

Joe Rogan 28:51 But it's also this-

Ben Burgis 28:51 ... you know, being like all of that stuff? Like it's, it's ridiculous. And I was just gonna say like the Republicans are even worse, right? I mean like Republicans when they claim that they're like big populists now it's like well what do you actually want to do? Do you want Medicare for all? Do you want-

Joe Rogan 29:02 Right.

Ben Burgis 29:02 ... you know like they don't support any of that stuff.

Joe Rogan 29:05 Well it's also their positions are weaponized, you know, and it's, there, there's so much polariza- I think it, it's, it's very unhealthy to have two positions, a red position and a blue position, because people are so malleable, they're so easily manipulated and they want to be a part of a tribe.

Ben Burgis 29:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 29:20 And they'll just subscribe to these ideas and then they, they take comfort in the fact there's other people that agree with them so then they get in these Facebook groups and they, they just like, you know, talk about stuff that everyone else in their little echo chamber agrees with and, and they feel like the whole world should bend to their will. And it's just...

Ben Burgis 29:37 Yeah, I mean that's-

Joe Rogan 29:38 It's a bizarre time.

Ben Burgis 29:39 Absolutely. I mean the, I mean we, um, you know, what we were talking about earlier about the fact that the collapse of traditional media means that everybody gets to curate, you know, their own little media diet, right?

Joe Rogan 29:52 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 29:52 You know that you can-

Joe Rogan 29:52 That's a problem too, right?

Ben Burgis 29:53 It's so easy now to just like expose yourself to absolutely nothing all the time except people who agree with you because yeah, if there are only a couple million people watching like one of the, you know, traditional networks, uh, at any given night, well th-... then, you know, what's their profit incentive? Their profit incentive is to, like, relentlessly pander to whatever audience they have, they have left. So if, you know, if you're Fox, you know, you, you scare old, you know, conservatives and, you know, whatever. Like, MSNBC has their own version, like we were talking about. But I think that, like, this is why I try to, like, go out and do debates all the time, because which, like, some people, and this is one of the things I talk about in the book, right? Some people on the left don't like that, right? They say that, like, if you're, um, you know, if you're... Like, if you talk to a bad person basically, right? You know, they'll say like, "Oh, you're platforming-"

Joe Rogan 30:40 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 30:40 ... "you know, that, that person."

Joe Rogan 30:42 That's so stupid.

Ben Burgis 30:42 Which is a word I hate so much, but they have, uh ... (laughs) But, but-

Joe Rogan 30:46 I get that more than anybody.

Ben Burgis 30:48 Yes?

Joe Rogan 30:48 'Cause I, I, you know... People want to say that I'm like a, a fake liberal because I talk to conservatives and I'm friends with some conservatives. Like, that is the dumbest fucking thing to ever... You, you, we need to communicate with each other. We're supposed to be in a community. The community is the human race-

Ben Burgis 31:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:04 ... first of all, and then the United States second. We're supposed to be a community. And if there... I have a lot of friends that have completely different perspectives-

Ben Burgis 31:12 Yeah, sure.

Joe Rogan 31:12 ... than, than me. They... I have a lot of friends that are, like, very Christian, I have friends that are very Muslim, I have friends that have, you know, no religious affiliation whatsoever.

Ben Burgis 31:23 Sure.

Joe Rogan 31:23 I have friends that are right wing and left wing. And I don't, I don't mind all those things. As long as you're not a suppressive person, you're not suppressing people that have an opposite position or an opposite perspective, like, why not? Like, what are we doing here? Aren't we just talking to each other?

Ben Burgis 31:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:38 Shouldn't we, like, communicate with people that are ... And th- but when I have people on, you know, you'll, I'll get all this pushback, like ... Or someone like Ben Shapiro.

Ben Burgis 31:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:48 Ben Shapiro's a lovely guy. Meet him, get to know him, he's very nice. I don't agree with him a lot.

Ben Burgis 31:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:54 A lot! On a lot of stuff.

Ben Burgis 31:55 Yeah. I mean, look, if, if, uh-

Joe Rogan 31:56 But I love the guy.

Ben Burgis 31:57 Sure. I mean, look, if, if, you know, Ben Shapiro ever wanted to, like, come on my show and argue with me, I would, I would 100% do that, right? Because-

Joe Rogan 32:03 I bet he could.

Ben Burgis 32:04 Okay. Well, you know?

Joe Rogan 32:05 But he talks really fast, you gotta be careful, 'cause it's hard to keep up with him.

Ben Burgis 32:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:08 It's like his fucking brain is on a different RPM, you gotta... You... Whenever I talk to him, I try to slow things down.

Ben Burgis 32:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:17 "Slow down, youngster." (laughs)

Ben Burgis 32:21 (laughs) That's awesome.

Joe Rogan 32:22 Um-

Ben Burgis 32:22 But he's very enthusiastic.

Joe Rogan 32:23 Yeah, I don't agree with him on a lot of things, uh, particularly on gay issues. He thinks that gay folks, uh, shouldn't just ... They should just not do it. It's, it's this-

Ben Burgis 32:31 Which is, it's this, which is ridiculous. Like, you're gonna-

Joe Rogan 32:33 It's the strangest position. I just don't understand that position.

Ben Burgis 32:35 So, so like you ... If you're gay, you have, like, a moral obligation to just be celibate for your entire life?

Joe Rogan 32:41 No, you're supposed to actually engage in heterosexual sex. Yeah.

Ben Burgis 32:45 Oh, okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:47 But what's, but what's amazing is that this is-

Ben Burgis 32:48 That's, that's where-

Joe Rogan 32:48 Well, this is where it falls apart, right? Because this is all based on ancient writing.

Ben Burgis 32:52 Ugh.

Joe Rogan 32:53 Like who ... See, 'cause God said this? Like, te- ... Who said God said this? Who are these fucking people? And what else did they say God said? Did they say anything about zombies?

Ben Burgis 33:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:01 Did they say anything about people coming back from the dead? Like, what did God say to do ... I mean, how much did they say that doesn't make sense? Did they say anything about parting oceans and like did, did anybody like-

Ben Burgis 33:11 Well-

Joe Rogan 33:11 ... lead someone to a place and-

Ben Burgis 33:13 Well, you-

Joe Rogan 33:14 ... part a sea?

Ben Burgis 33:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:15 'Cause that doesn't seem real. Maybe someone was lying.

Ben Burgis 33:18 Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 33:19 (laughs)

Ben Burgis 33:19 That's, that's, that's, uh, that's like-

Joe Rogan 33:20 It's like-

Ben Burgis 33:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:22 I mean, anybody who does ... Anybody who knows gay people-

Ben Burgis 33:24 Ugh.

Joe Rogan 33:25 ... right? Like, there ... I have gay friends that are like, you could never tell they're gay-

Ben Burgis 33:29 Good.

Joe Rogan 33:29 ... 'cause, uh, they don't ... You know, they just seem-

Ben Burgis 33:32 Sure.

Joe Rogan 33:32 ... like a man. And then I have gay friends who are like, "Oh, no straight guy acts like that."

Ben Burgis 33:37 Yeah. They're like gay from space, right? That's really-

Joe Rogan 33:39 Yes!

Ben Burgis 33:39 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:39 This is super gay.

Ben Burgis 33:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:40 Like, when you meet a super gay person that, first of all, they enjoy behaving that way.

Ben Burgis 33:45 Sure. Sure.

Joe Rogan 33:45 That is how they like to talk, that's how they like ... Like-

Ben Burgis 33:48 Sure.

Joe Rogan 33:48 ... Justin Martindale's a great example. My friend Justin.

Ben Burgis 33:51 Ugh.

Joe Rogan 33:51 He's gay as fuck, but he's hilarious. I mean, he's hilarious with it, he's like ... He's a joyful gay person. You wouldn't get confused when you're around him.

Ben Burgis 33:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:59 You wouldn't say, "W- what do you think this guy is?" Like, that guy is gay, you know? But like, that's how he is, man. This idea that this is-

Ben Burgis 34:07 Yeah, that's how he is and the idea that-

Joe Rogan 34:07 ... he's supposed to make a choice to have sex with women. Like, fuck off.

Ben Burgis 34:10 Yeah. That's, that's sounds like a good deal for the woman, too. Jesus. Ugh. Yeah. And, and-

Joe Rogan 34:14 Poor woman. He's closing his eyes thinking about beards and shit.

Ben Burgis 34:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:17 Ugh. It's so dumb.

Ben Burgis 34:19 Yeah. And, and I think, uh ... (laughs) And also, I mean, we could talk too about, like, okay, so there's the parting of the Red Sea stuff, there's also the, like, slavery in the Bible, right? Like, that's, uh-

Joe Rogan 34:29 Oh, God.

Ben Burgis 34:30 You know, like-

Joe Rogan 34:31 A th- a ton of it. You know, and, and then treating women as second-class citizens, condoning slavery. There's a lot of murder in the, in the Bible for disres- disrespecting people. Like, how about that, uh, the, the one guy when, uh, the kids called him bald and they sent the fucking bears-

Ben Burgis 34:45 (laughs) Yeah, the she-bears-

Joe Rogan 34:45 ... to kill all the kids?

Ben Burgis 34:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:47 The kids, they killed the bear. The k- the bears killed the kids-

Ben Burgis 34:50 Because they called him old bald head.

Joe Rogan 34:50 ... 'cause they called him a bald guy. Like, what the fuck?

Ben Burgis 34:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:53 Coming from a bald person, let me tell you something, that's an overreach.

Ben Burgis 34:57 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:59 That's ridic ... But it's this idea that-

Ben Burgis 35:01 You don't, you don't, you don't, you don't think if, like, some kids teased you about that, they would deserve the death penalty?

Joe Rogan 35:04 No. Listen, I think there's some things that are fascinating about religious traditions.

Ben Burgis 35:08 Sure. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:08 That I think they can act as a scaffolding for moral behavior.

Ben Burgis 35:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:12 And some of the, like, the kindest, nicest people I know are Christians.

Ben Burgis 35:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 35:15 And I think that there's something about that sort of structure, that re- that religious structure. When I was younger, I was m- much more of a, what you would say like a traditional, like, agnostic or atheist.

Ben Burgis 35:26 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 35:26 Like, I thought it was dumb. I thought that religion was dumb. I don't think it's dumb anymore, and I think it's greatly beneficial to some people, and I think it does give them a structure. And if you ... Jordan Peterson said something that really made a lot of sense to me.

Ben Burgis 35:38 Oh.

Joe Rogan 35:38 He said, "It's not whether or not I believe in God." He goes, "But if you live your life like God exists, you will have a higher quality of life." And this, that if you live your life like you are a part of this en- enormous community-

Ben Burgis 35:54 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 35:54 ... of loving beings that are all connected to this higher power, and that you have this like moral obligation to be a good person, and that there's great value and benefit in that. And then there's a, there's a spiritual path to take of a righteous person who's really trying to do good in this world. And I think for a lot of people, religion can act as a scaffolding to sort of substantiate and enforce those kind of positive-... traits and positive paths of life. And I think there's great benefit in that. I think it's, there's great good in that.

Ben Burgis 36:29 Yeah. I mean, look, I'm an atheist but, uh, you know, but I have tremendous respect for, uh, Christians who get what you just described out of it.

Joe Rogan 36:40 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 36:40 I- I have to say there are Christians who get very different things out of it, right?

Joe Rogan 36:43 Yes.

Ben Burgis 36:43 You know, that they, that they want to, like, you know, ban abortion and make gay people go back in the closet and all that stuff, you know?

Joe Rogan 36:50 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 36:50 But, like, but look, I mean, I- I think, like, Cornel West, you know, I- I- I think that's a, that's a Christian I have-

Joe Rogan 36:56 Yes.

Ben Burgis 36:56 ... immense respect for. Uh-

Joe Rogan 36:57 He's, uh, have you ever met him?

Ben Burgis 36:59 Uh, no. No. I, I have, um... He was on, uh, like, so I used to do a segment on the Michael Brooks Show, and I think he was on that at least, at least once, or a couple times.

Joe Rogan 37:07 I miss that guy.

Ben Burgis 37:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:08 He was great.

Ben Burgis 37:10 Yeah. He was. He was, he was, uh, he was one of my, my closest friends for the last couple years before he, uh, before he passed. That was just-

Joe Rogan 37:17 He was a funny dude, too, man.

Ben Burgis 37:18 He was very (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 37:19 He was funny.

Ben Burgis 37:19 He was a very funny guy. What he would do, like, the-

Joe Rogan 37:20 Good impressions?

Ben Burgis 37:21 ... the, like, Nation of Islam Obama, you know? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:25 (laughs) He was just a, a really thoughtful, interesting guy who knew a shitload about politics and, you know, and about socialism. And he was a really good guy to sort of defend these positions of democratic socialism, too. 'Cause he, he didn't seem like a bad person, you know? Like, uh, when... And even in critiquing other people-

Ben Burgis 37:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:45 ... that dis- disagreed with him, I felt like he did it, for the most part, pretty reasonably.

Ben Burgis 37:49 Yeah. Well, I think the one thing that he really got, and I actually think he helped me to get, you know, since, in the, you know, in the year since I met him, is that, um, like, a lot of people who, who agree with, with his position, with my position, uh, don't think nearly enough (laughs) about what's gonna be appealing to, like, most ordinary people, right?

Joe Rogan 38:12 Right.

Ben Burgis 38:12 You know, that they have. 'Cause, like, if you're just, you know, like... Which is one of the reasons I wrote the book, that, like, that stuff was starting to drive me crazy, you know? That, like, it seems like what a lot of people want to do is be part of an in-group and, like, yell at everybody who, who doesn't, you know, who isn't, like, already on board with, like, every single thing on, on a checklist. And, and that's just not gonna, that's just not gonna work, right? I mean, that's like... Like, if you actually care about this stuff, right? Like if you think, "Yeah, I- I think that we have, like, a grotesquely unequal society. I think that, you know, I think we need to have national healthcare. We need to, uh, you know, not fight all these wars around the world," all of that stuff, and, like, you're actually talking about this stuff 'cause you care about it, which, let's be honest, not everybody does. I mean, some people, politics is like a weird hobby for them, right?

Joe Rogan 38:58 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 38:58 You know? But, like, if you really care about that stuff, then you want to present that in a way that's going to appeal to ordinary people who haven't read everything that you've read, who, who aren't, like, necessarily don't have all the same, like, subculture, you know, sensibilities, uh, that, that you have. So like, yeah, I mean, it drives me, it drives me crazy when I see people who, who want all the things that, you know, all the things that I want, who are, instead of trying to, you know, find ways that they can explain this to people who might, like, you know, agree with them on some things, disagree with them on some things, like a lot of people... Like, most people aren't, like, centrists in the way that the media means when they say centrist, right? Which is like the, you know, whatever, socially liberal, fiscally conservative, all that stuff, right? You know, like, like most people, I think, just have weird combinations of, of views, right? Which is because, like if you spend all of your time thinking about politics and tweeting about politics and all of that stuff, you're, like, kind of an unusual person. Most people don't do that. They have other things that they have to do. So they might have political reactions to things, they have political impulses, but like, they haven't necessarily thought through every single thing, you know, to-

Joe Rogan 40:13 They probably don't have the time.

Ben Burgis 40:14 Yeah, the, of course they don't have the time.

Joe Rogan 40:15 If you want to get involved deeply into the weeds in politics-

Ben Burgis 40:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:19 ... you're gonna... It's tremendous amount of hours, for years and years and years, just to get a base understanding of what's going on.

Ben Burgis 40:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:27 That's why it's so impressive when you talk to someone who really does know a lot about politics. Like, whenever I talk to, like, my friend Kyle Kulinski-

Ben Burgis 40:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:33 ... whenever I talk to him about politics, like-

Ben Burgis 40:35 Yup.

Joe Rogan 40:35 ... that motherfucker knows a lot.

Ben Burgis 40:37 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 40:37 Like, so when we had The End of the World podcast-

Ben Burgis 40:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:39 ... when it was the election, um, this past year.

Ben Burgis 40:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:43 Or, uh, when we brought him on, like, I brought him on and go like, "You're the voice of reason."

Ben Burgis 40:46 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 40:46 "Like, you actually understand what's going on here." And he called it every step of the way.

Ben Burgis 40:50 Wow.

Joe Rogan 40:51 See, all these people that had, like, these conspiracy theories about Trump, like, "Oh, the mail-in votes," he explained. He's like, "The mail-in votes are going to be majority Democrat votes."

Ben Burgis 41:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:01 And he goes, "So if you look at Trump getting way ahead in places like Pennsylvania, and there's a couple of these other states," he's like, "this is what's going on. There's a lot of the Republican folks are gonna show up and they're gonna vote in person."

Ben Burgis 41:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 41:13 "And then the mail-in is going to be overwhelmingly Democratic."

Ben Burgis 41:16 Yup.

Joe Rogan 41:16 "And then he's probably gonna lose a lot of numbers overnight." And they're like, "Oh, he went, we went to bed and he was ahead, but then the m-" It's like, Kyle Kulinski explained it, explained it all on the podcast clearly, called it.

Ben Burgis 41:29 Uh.

Joe Rogan 41:30 Just call... And that's because that's a guy who's been, like, really studying politics at a, uh, a, like, very comprehensive level for a long time. And he can give you the, like, the real information about it.

Ben Burgis 41:43 Yeah. And most people, like you said, they, they don't have the time. I mean, especially when you're in a increasingly precarious economy where lots of people, like, might have a couple of jobs and, like, drive an Uber on the side, you know, like just, just 'cause they're trying to-

Joe Rogan 41:57 How the fuck do you have time?

Ben Burgis 41:58 Yeah, of course.

Joe Rogan 41:59 Unless you're just listening to podcasts all the time and, you know-

Ben Burgis 42:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:02 ... like really educational podcasts on-

Ben Burgis 42:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:03 ... on, on politics. Like, and even then, you're gonna get a, a cursory sort of understanding of it.

Ben Burgis 42:10 Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, I think that what, you know, what-... what you should really be when you approach people to, to try to convince them of the things that are, that are important to you, like, you shouldn't start from a place of, "Do you," you know, "do you have all the, like, right," you know, "do you have all the right positions?"

Joe Rogan 42:27 Right. Right.

Ben Burgis 42:27 "Like, all of this stuff?" Uh, because, you know, by definition, look, if everybody, (laughs) you know, if everybody agreed with me about all this stuff, we'd be living in a very different country right now, right?

Joe Rogan 42:36 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 42:36 You know, like, like, so, so I think that you need to assu- The real question, like, is does somebody have, like, values that are just, like, totally incompatible with mine and, or do they just have, like, economic interests that are gonna, like, lead them to, like, they're never gonna agree with me, right? Like, li- li- like, Jeff Bezos and I are never gonna agree on, like, what tax rates should be for obvious reasons, right? (laughs) You know? Like-

Joe Rogan 43:00 I would like you to talk to him though.

Ben Burgis 43:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:02 I think that would be an interesting conversation. I don't, I've never heard him discuss money in terms of, like, wealth and taxes and things like-

Ben Burgis 43:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:09 I wonder what his position is on that. I feel like there's a system that's in place-

Ben Burgis 43:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:13 ... that you would almost be negligent if you didn't take advantage of it.

Ben Burgis 43:18 Sure.

Joe Rogan 43:18 You know? If, if you're a guy who's making a lot of money and this is, this is how-

Ben Burgis 43:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:22 ... you could pay X amount of taxes and this is, like, y- these are your deductions and this is, like, the law. You follow the law to a T. And then the rest of it you can give out charitably if you choose to. But, like, I wonder what his position is on all that stuff, like, when you've got that kind of money.

Ben Burgis 43:41 Yeah, I mean, I think it, I, my suspicion is that it starts to look very different, right? (laughs) You know? When y-

Joe Rogan 43:46 Once you get all that cash, right?

Ben Burgis 43:47 Yeah, right, you know, (laughs) like, you're gonna, you know, like, you're gonna feel very... It's really hard to convince somebody that, like, who's benefiting that much from the way things are now-

Joe Rogan 43:57 Did you see the image of him at the, uh, New Year's party with his girlfriend?

Ben Burgis 44:01 No. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:02 Jamie, help me out. This is so important because, uh, someone needs to superimpose this with a, uh, an image of Jeff Bezos from, like, 1989.

Ben Burgis 44:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:11 (laughs) Like, w- what he looked like when he started Amazon versus what he looks like now. I mean, when did he start Amazon? It must have been in the '90s, right, because it was an online-

Ben Burgis 44:20 I think so. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:21 ... books, book thing. Yeah.

Ben Burgis 44:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:22 And he was like this kind of nerdy guy.

Ben Burgis 44:25 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:25 Now look at him, and look at his girlfriend. I mean, this is amazing. Look, he's got fucking heart and, uh, uh, but in his defense-

Ben Burgis 44:31 The heart sunglasses. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:32 In his defense, this was actually a, um, party that was for, um, it was like a disco theme party.

Ben Burgis 44:40 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:40 So you're supposed to dress like this.

Ben Burgis 44:42 Okay, okay.

Joe Rogan 44:42 So everybody dressed like that. They all dressed silly.

Ben Burgis 44:44 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:44 It was just a, it was a fun party. So he had these glasses. They were like heart-shaped lenses.

Ben Burgis 44:49 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:49 And, and he's got this bombshell girlfriend who's leaning on him. I love it. I f- I love excess. I love when people are preposterous, you know?

Ben Burgis 44:56 Yeah. Yes, and-

Joe Rogan 44:57 That's it. I love it.

Ben Burgis 44:58 No, no, I mean, f- fair enough, like, and again, I don't blame anybody as an individual for, like, taking it, like, like, look, if, if you're told here are the rules, right?

Joe Rogan 45:07 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 45:07 That this is, like, that everybody has to function in, like, within reason, like, if you're not, like, you know, doing some things that I do think, you know, Bezos has done, but, like, you know, but if, you know, but there are, like, a list, you know, like, if you're not, like, busting unions and this and that, right? Then, like, look, if you-

Joe Rogan 45:24 Look at that.

Ben Burgis 45:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:24 Just look it, how it started. How's it going? They, they did it. Someone did it. (laughs)

Ben Burgis 45:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:30 Ah.

Ben Burgis 45:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:32 Look at that. That's fucking amazing.

Ben Burgis 45:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:34 That's amazing. Work hard folks, and you don't have to be a dork.

Ben Burgis 45:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:38 Imagine, shave your head, get a bombshell girlfriend. Whoo, I love it.

Ben Burgis 45:43 You have to-

Joe Rogan 45:43 Happy days are here.

Ben Burgis 45:45 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:45 Let's go.

Ben Burgis 45:46 100 billion dollars help?

Joe Rogan 45:47 That guy's lived different lives. He's lived di- uh, billions of dollars, hundreds of billions, not hundreds of millions, sir, hundreds of billions. That's outrageous.

Ben Burgis 45:56 Yeah, no, I mean, he's on track to be the first trillionaire, right? It's, uh, that's what they-

Joe Rogan 45:59 Oh, there's trillionaires out there.

Ben Burgis 46:01 Yeah. Okay, are there?

Joe Rogan 46:02 Yeah, I guess, sure.

Ben Burgis 46:02 'Cause I thought, I thought they were saying, like, in 2020 they were saying that, like, at the end of the... Okay.

Joe Rogan 46:06 No, the trillionaires are all nonpublic.

Ben Burgis 46:09 Okay.

Joe Rogan 46:09 See, if you think about, like, the royal families-

Ben Burgis 46:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:11 ... like, they, they, they don't have to disclose their wealth. These people that have l- literally-

Ben Burgis 46:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:17 They own countries.

Ben Burgis 46:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:18 I mean, e- if you think, I mean, I wouldn't have to name the n- the countries.

Ben Burgis 46:22 Sure.

Joe Rogan 46:22 But they are... I know for a fact 'cause I have talked to people who are in fact billionaires, who are very wealthy business people that laugh and they've told me the royal families in some of these countries are worth trillions of dollars and they don't have to disclose it. So when you get this public list of who the richest people in the world are, that's the richest people publicly, that, you know, like, they have to disclose it. They're not, they're not oligarchs. They're not people that are in char-

Ben Burgis 46:45 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 46:45 ... literally in charge of the oil, all the oil in a particular part of the world where billions of dollars are coming out every day. Like, come on, there's a shitload of money involved in that.

Ben Burgis 46:57 Yeah, and I mean, the thing is even if you're not, like, one of those people, right, like, you know, the, the non- (laughs) you know, nonpublic trillionaires, uh, you know, from those countries that you're talking about, like, one thing that I think people often don't think about enough when they think about stuff like this is, okay, if you have a system where you're going to get, like, wealth gaps that extreme, right?

Joe Rogan 47:19 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 47:19 You know, that you can, you can have people who are trillionaires maybe or who at least have hundreds of billions of dollars, then you're just not going to have political democracy the way that we should have it because, you know, the idea that, like, everybody's going to have the same amount of influence-

Joe Rogan 47:35 Right.

Ben Burgis 47:35 ... on the government is just ridiculous when-

Joe Rogan 47:37 It's ridiculous.

Ben Burgis 47:37 ... you know, once you get to that level, right? Because, like, if you work at an Amazon warehouse and you want to, like, call your congressman, you'll be lucky if you have a conversation with an intern.

Joe Rogan 47:46 But Jeff Bezos can make a phone call to Biden.

Ben Burgis 47:49 Yeah, no, absolutely and Bid- and Biden-

Joe Rogan 47:50 And he'd be like, "Hey, motherfucker."

Ben Burgis 47:50 ... would take the call, right? (laughs) You know 'cause if you told him, right, you know, that-

Joe Rogan 47:55 "Listen, bro, take a couple extra Advil and let's have a conversation."

Ben Burgis 47:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:58 "I need to be awake for this one." Yeah.

Ben Burgis 48:00 Yeah, (laughs) which, which he might have to for Biden, but yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:03 What, what happened to the left where somewhere along the line, this is to get back to your book-

Ben Burgis 48:07 Yeah, sure.

Joe Rogan 48:07 ... and the subject that we started with.

Ben Burgis 48:09 Yep.

Joe Rogan 48:09 What happened to the left where they are willing to, they, there's something that happened-

Ben Burgis 48:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:16 ... where they became-... ex- the, the side that accepts censorship-

Ben Burgis 48:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:22 ... and even promotes it. And my, my thought is that something morphed during the time where social media became... It became a tool of a lot of right-wing people. And, uh, this is actually, like, pre-Trump-

Ben Burgis 48:40 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:41 ... but was certainly accentuated during the Trump Administration. It's like people had a chance to anonymously say things through social media that maybe they wouldn't say around the office. Because, like, say if you have, like, 10 people in your office and nine of them are Democrats and you're a Republican.

Ben Burgis 48:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:59 You really have to keep your mouth shut, right? But when you get on Twitter, you can talk all kinds-

Ben Burgis 49:03 Sure, sure.

Joe Rogan 49:03 ... of crazy shit, or Reddit or whatever, and then all the other people that agree with you, they, they get attracted to you, and then you form these echo chambers, and then some of them are very aggressive in sort of pushing these ideas out. And we saw that a lot with, like, Milo Yiannopoulos, and there was a lot of, like, these, like, very influential online right-wing people that were, you know, they had, like, cheers from the fans and they had, like-

Ben Burgis 49:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:34 ... these throngs of supporters, and they silenced those guys. They pulled those guys off social media, and they found out that it was effective to do that. And then it became a thing that they got really into, where they're into silencing-

Ben Burgis 49:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 49:46 ... dissenting opinions. And it's gone so far that they're doing it left-wing people that step even remotely outside of the bounds of the orthodoxy, remotely outside of the bounds of what they consider to be the rigid, this, the r- rigid maintaining of this ideology.

Ben Burgis 50:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 50:05 They step outside of that, they, they silence people. And they're pulling videos down left and right off of Instagram and TikTok and O- and, and Twitter in some ways. Twitter's like less censorship-oriented, even though people think of Twitter as being, like, a, a very censored place. It's one of the more lenient-

Ben Burgis 50:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 50:23 ... online platforms. But what the fuck happened?

Ben Burgis 50:26 Yeah, I mean, the Milo case is interesting actually, because I think that, um... I mean, I understand that, like, he got kicked off of Twitter, and that was definitely part of it, but, like, uh, he was still riding pretty high after that happened. Like, I think that in Milo's case, and this is what, you know, when I, you know, kind of try to tell people, that, like, the ways that, like, some people on the left, like, want to, like, deal with figures like this, like, forget morality for a second. They're just not gonna work, right? So, so, like, here's what I mean by that, right? That, like, Milo's career was built on people trying to, like, you know, stop him and heckle him and, you know, stop him from speaking and all that stuff, you know? That, like, my view on that guy is that, honestly, you know, he w- he wouldn't be that interesting if he just showed up on a college campus and, like, just talked and nobody, (laughs) you know, nobody interrupted him. But, like, that was why, like, 'cause it was like, "Oh, he's, like, speaking edgy forbidden truths," and, like, you know, it was the Dangerous Ideas Tour, that's what it was called. Like, I think where Milo really got, uh, dropped, like, like, where Milo, like, was really ended, right, and I'm not saying there aren't other cases that are more like what you're talking about, but it seems to me that where Milo was really ended was when the right dropped him after the age of consent stuff. Like, he, he-

Joe Rogan 51:36 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 51:36 ... was gonna speak at CPAC, and they canceled that. He had his book deal, you know, got dropped. But-

Joe Rogan 51:41 But it wasn't just the right dropping him. I mean, that was, uh, across the board, people dropped him because of that.

Ben Burgis 51:45 Well, I, I mean, everybody else had always hated him, right? But then, like, after that happened, right, you know, that...

Joe Rogan 51:49 That was just, uh, a thing where it, it felt like, um, it was, uh, so unacceptable to so many people-

Ben Burgis 51:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:57 ... that i- it was... I mean, it's very rare that one idea-

Ben Burgis 52:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:02 ... becomes a thing that completely stops all the momentum that someone had. Like, he was a very popular cultural figure-

Ben Burgis 52:08 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 52:08 ... and then he vanished.

Ben Burgis 52:10 Yeah, but-

Joe Rogan 52:10 Like, it's essentially been not just deplatformed, but-

Ben Burgis 52:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:13 ... removed from the cultural conversation.

Ben Burgis 52:15 Yeah, I mean, like, a week before that happened, he was on Bill Maher, right? You know, that's, that's so-

Joe Rogan 52:19 I know, isn't that wild?

Ben Burgis 52:20 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:21 And Bill Maher was praising him and comparing him-

Ben Burgis 52:23 He was.

Joe Rogan 52:23 ... to Christopher Hitchens.

Ben Burgis 52:24 Christopher Hitchens, yeah, (laughs) which, which I-

Joe Rogan 52:25 It's wild.

Ben Burgis 52:26 ... do not think Milo Yiannopoulos deserves, but the, but yeah, look, I think that, um... I mean, I think that there are a couple things, uh, going on there, uh, with the, um, the, with- with censorship. I mean, I would push back a little on, on the idea, you know, that the, that the right isn't, like, plenty pro-censorship in lots of ways, like, like, I think, I think they are.

Joe Rogan 52:45 No, I wouldn't say that.

Ben Burgis 52:46 Okay, well-

Joe Rogan 52:47 I, I think-

Ben Burgis 52:47 ... so we disagree on-

Joe Rogan 52:48 Listen. No, I, I think that people politically like to silence their opposing.

Ben Burgis 52:53 Oh-

Joe Rogan 52:53 Or their opposition. When-

Ben Burgis 52:54 Okay.

Joe Rogan 52:54 ... when someone opposes their position, I think they like to do that. What I think is, like, the left has traditionally been ACLU-

Ben Burgis 53:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:01 ... which-

Ben Burgis 53:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 53:02 ... th- those Jewish lawyers supported the idea of Nazis being allowed to say whatever they want, because they said that this... The counter to that, the opposite of that, is that suppressing speech and it's a terrible, dangerous road to go down. And the answer to-

Ben Burgis 53:15 They were absolutely right.

Joe Rogan 53:16 ... bad ideas is not silencing those ideas. It's better ideas. That's my position.

Ben Burgis 53:21 Yeah, that's-

Joe Rogan 53:21 And that's an old school liberal position, but that doesn't exist that much in the left wing of today.

Ben Burgis 53:27 Yeah, I mean, that's 100% my position. I, I think that, um, and- and I think that it's really dangerous that a lot of people... Like, even though most of the stuff you're talking about is driven more by, like, uh, mainstream liberals, um, that, like, it's not like, you know, whatever, you know, people running, like, these insanely profitable social media companies, right? It's not like they want all the stuff I want, right? (laughs) You know?

Joe Rogan 53:50 Right.

Ben Burgis 53:50 But, like, but, uh, but I, I, I see way too many people on the left going along with it, and I think it's super shortsighted, right? Because, like-

Joe Rogan 53:56 How- how did it happen though? Do you think it happened by what I'm saying, that, like, they found it was effective for silencing people they felt was problematic, so they just adopted these ideas and then they sort of shifted their, their, their ethics?

Ben Burgis 54:10 I think there's some of that. I think that, I think that a lot of it is that a lot of people feel...... powerless to change the world in any way that actually matters, and so they end up getting sucked into these, like, culture war distractions about who said what in 1995 that we can, like, get mad at them about-

Joe Rogan 54:30 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 54:30 ... and, you know, what the, you know, whatever, like, just, just whatever, like, weird nonsense people are arguing about this week, right? The green M&M, you know? And, and that, like, some of this stuff is part of that, right?

Joe Rogan 54:39 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 54:39 That, like, they have a... That, like, if you don't... Like, if you can't actually, you know, change the world, like, create a more equal society or whatever, you can at least get somebody fired. You can at least get somebody kicked off. And then you felt like you've won something. And I think that that's... Again, I think it's incredibly dangerous because, like, people who want, for example, you know, Spotify to, to kick you off, you know? There, there was a, there was a move on, you know, petition, you know, for them, them to do that. Uh, that, like, what I always want to say is even though... And the thing that really gets me about the calls for censorship is... Okay, I think there are principled reasons that, you know, free speech is important and we should have, like, open, you know, open debates about controversial ideas. I think there are ways that we have a better society if we do that. But also, I think it's, it's crazy that anybody who basically agrees with me about politics would support, uh, i- increased corporate censorship, right? Because if you have, like, some, like, social media company, right? You know, that's, that's going to be owned, you know. Like, they're gonna have, (laughs) you know, some CEO who's partying like Bezos in that, you know, in that picture, you know. Like, is, uh... Are they... You know, whose side are they going to take when there are future things where people say that something is misinformation, you know?

Joe Rogan 55:57 Right. Exactly.

Ben Burgis 55:57 That they... You know. 'Cause, like-

Joe Rogan 55:58 Exactly. And by what definition is it misinformation?

Ben Burgis 56:01 A- 'Cause the problem is that every, every political argument is, to some extent, an argument about facts, right? Like, that, like, in, uh, 2002, even though my position was, you know, as, like, a college, like, anti-war activist was that even if Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction, I'd still be against the war 'cause, you know, I think the rationale still wouldn't have made sense to me. But, like, that was, like, part of what people were arguing about, was whether there was mass destr- you know, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And look, if you had social media companies in 2002 in the way that you do now and they had, uh, misinformation policies, who would be more likely to get bounced for misinformation? People who said... Who agreed with the, you know, the government, agreed with the New York Times, said there were WMDs, or people who thought that, like, Bush administration officials were conspiring to lie to the public?

Joe Rogan 56:51 Right.

Ben Burgis 56:52 You know, like... And I think that who's gonna, like... If there's something that comes out tomorrow about, like, some horrible labor practice at Amazon, uh, who are these companies more likely to side with, right? You know, people who say, "Yeah, they did this thing," right? Or, uh, or the, the company saying, "No, it's, it's, it's a lie. It's misinformation." And I, I think the, the issue with free speech is always who gets to decide.

Joe Rogan 57:18 Right.

Ben Burgis 57:18 Right? Like, uh, and, and I think this is the same reason... I mean, look, this is the same reason I don't like, um, you know... I don't like the, uh, I don't like the CRT laws either, right? Because I, I, I don't like the idea that there are gonna be people who are second-guessing, you know, uh, what happened in some, you know, some classroom to say, like, "Was this too close to, like, you know, to, to, to one of these ideas that we don't like?" Right? "Did you talk to your students about something that, like, flew a little bit too close to the sun of CRT?" And that, that makes me ner-

Joe Rogan 57:50 By CRT, you're talking about critical race theory.

Ben Burgis 57:51 Oh, yeah. Sorry.

Joe Rogan 57:52 Just so people-

Ben Burgis 57:52 Critical... Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. Critical race theory. Um, yeah. And I think that, like, actual critical race theory, there are parts I agree with, there are parts that I disagree with, but I don't want to live in a soc-... I want to live in the kind of society where when there's so, like, some controversial idea that's out there, you know, like, that, like, people can talk about it and debate about it and, like, if you can, you know, d-... Like, you could discuss it with students in a, in a classroom. Like, I think ideally, the way that education should work, it should foster critical thinking, like, instead of, like, "This is exactly what you should think."

Joe Rogan 58:21 For sure.

Ben Burgis 58:22 You know? You should be encouraging students to, like, you know, to think about it, you know, more clearly and to argue about it and to, you know, and to decide, um, and to decide what they think, right? You know? Beca-... Like, ultimately if you want people to be citizens in a democracy, right? To the extent that we have one of those, like, that's, that's what you want. Like, that's h- that's how you want them to grow up, I hope.

Joe Rogan 58:43 Yeah. On, uh... Ab- absolutely. You want discussion. This the way you sort out... If you're an observer, the way you sort out who has the better argument is to watch them discuss. You remember the Gore Vidal and, um-

Ben Burgis 58:56 William F. Buckley.

Joe Rogan 58:57 ... William F. Buckley speeches?

Ben Burgis 58:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:58 You know, which is a great documentary. What is it called? What is it-

Ben Burgis 59:00 Uh, Best of Enemies?

Joe Rogan 59:01 Best of Enemies.

Ben Burgis 59:01 Yup.

Joe Rogan 59:02 It's a fantastic documentary where it shows that... I mean, this is the difference in our culture today versus then. These guys... I believe it was on ABC. These guys had this, like, really, uh, highly-rated debate series. I think they did, like... How many of them did they do? Six of them or something like that?

Ben Burgis 59:18 I don't remember how many, but they did a few, yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:20 They did quite a few. So they were going back and forth, um, and William F. Buckley, who was a famous conservative, Gore Vidal, who was a famous liberal, and they had these fascinating discussions. And they did them on national television, and, uh, they became this point of discussion through the entire country and the world, where people sat down and, you know, th- some people took Buckley's side, some peop- people took Gore Vidal's side. And this is how we sort things out. We don't sort things out by silencing people. We don't sort things out by saying, "You have an unacceptable position because it doesn't fit in with what I'm saying," or, "It causes this or that," and i- it's just an... It's a, it's a dangerous way to, to set a precedent because you're filtering ideas. You're filtering ideas through your own standards. And I don't think that's good 'cause I, I think it's, it's, it's bad for you too. It's bad for your ideas 'cause if your ideas can't stand the vetting-

Ben Burgis 1:00:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:19 ... of the, of, of an opposing position, then your ideas might suck and you maybe should look at them. Is so- maybe you're lazy-

Ben Burgis 1:00:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 ... and you don't want to go through the, the-... hassle-

Ben Burgis 1:00:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:30 ... of, of debate or, or of, like, serious discourse. But if your ideas can't handle that kind of a discussion, you probably shouldn't have them. You shouldn't adopt them. You shouldn't be-

Ben Burgis 1:00:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:41 ... holding on to them. That's my position on all this. And I think this, whenever someone's trying to silence someone, it's, it's more political than it is anything.

Ben Burgis 1:00:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:49 It's more this person has an incredible amount of influence and they don't align up very rigidly with what our ideology is, and they could cause us problems if they discuss certain things in an unorthodox way, and we don't like that. So we're going to silence them and we're going to ch- pretend that they're something that they're not. And we're going to do that openly, and it's going to be obvious.

Ben Burgis 1:01:15 Yeah, and I think, and I think especially, like, look, if you think the status quo is totally fine, that, like, everything is the way that it should be, I can, I guess, understand that.

Joe Rogan 1:01:22 Who the fuck thinks that?

Ben Burgis 1:01:24 (laughs) I don't know. That's a crazy argument. Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:26 There's not a single person alive that thinks everything's perfect.

Ben Burgis 1:01:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:30 Right? Is there?

Ben Burgis 1:01:31 I, I mean, if so, I haven't met them. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:01:33 I never met them.

Ben Burgis 1:01:34 But-

Joe Rogan 1:01:34 ... so I don't think you can have that argument.

Ben Burgis 1:01:37 Yeah, so I mean, if you think that there are things that are really seriously wrong with the society that you live in right now...

Joe Rogan 1:01:43 Have discussions.

Ben Burgis 1:01:44 ... then, then you, like the last thing that you want to do is to make it harder to get your ideas out- about that out there. So, uh, you know, so people can, people can talk about them, people can, you know, people can, can hear about them, right? Like, I, I think that if you, you know, if you want, um... If you want to have, like, you know, in my case, you think that like we have, you know, we have way too much economic inequality, I think it's particularly crazy to support, like, more corporate censorship.

Joe Rogan 1:02:12 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 1:02:12 Because again, who do you think (laughs) , you know, who do you think is going to get censored, right? Like, like-

Joe Rogan 1:02:17 Exactly.

Ben Burgis 1:02:17 ... if, like, if it's, uh, you know, I mean, if there's some Starbucks worker who's, like, you know, got fired when they were trying to organize a union, and Starbucks says that, "No, they weren't really fired for that, it was really, you know, because they-"

Joe Rogan 1:02:29 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 1:02:29 "... you know, whatever, they-"

Joe Rogan 1:02:29 Showed up late.

Ben Burgis 1:02:30 You know, they showed up late.

Joe Rogan 1:02:31 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 1:02:31 Um, I mean, okay, so somebody's lying.

Joe Rogan 1:02:35 Right.

Ben Burgis 1:02:36 Uh, do we want, you know, Twitter or whatever platform to be making decisions about like who's lying-

Joe Rogan 1:02:43 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 1:02:44 ... and like, oh, which, which, which of these sides is misinformation (laughs) ? Uh, I don't, right? Like not just because like I support free speech, though I do, but also just because like I don't, I don't trust at all, right, you know, that they're going to take the side that I would want to on that.

Joe Rogan 1:02:56 Of course. And so one of the things that I talked about when I made a video recently, when they said that, uh, I was setting- saying misinformation. And I was saying, well, look at what used to be misinformation just a few months ago that's now fact. There's like the lab leak theory. The lab leak theory, if you said that before, you'd get kicked off of social media. Now it's on the front cover of Newsweek.

Ben Burgis 1:03:18 Yeah, I mean it's-

Joe Rogan 1:03:18 The, uh, the idea that if you get vaccinated, you can still spread COVID and you could still get COVID. That was crazy talk. Rachel Maddow was on television saying, "The virus stops with you. You can't spread it. You can't catch it. It stops with you if you're vaccinated." That's not true. We know that's not true.

Ben Burgis 1:03:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:34 So that was... If you said that I think people who are vaccinated can still catch COVID and they can still spread COVID, that would be misinformation. But now that's accepted as fact. There's a bunch of those.

Ben Burgis 1:03:45 Yeah, I mean, I think in that case, I think that might be less like, um, you know, people didn't know that and more just kind of Rachel Maddow's an idiot. Because like if you, um, you know, because what they always said is like the effe- like, you know, whatever it is, even for like the original version of COVID, uh, that, you know, wild COVID, whatever they call it, right?

Joe Rogan 1:04:04 Mm-hmm.

Ben Burgis 1:04:04 They, like, you know, whatever, 90 something, you know, percent, you know, like, uh, rate of effectiveness of like Pfizer or, uh, they, you know...

Joe Rogan 1:04:11 Yeah, but if you read the literature, that's not really even accurate.

Ben Burgis 1:04:14 I, I mean, what, you know, but, but this is the thing, like whatever you think the effectiveness rate is, right? Like, it was never 100%, and if, and if like Rachel Maddow thought that it was 100%, that's like, that one seems more like an issue of like Rachel Maddow not understanding, you know, medical science. But again, I don't, I don't want-

Joe Rogan 1:04:33 So that would make it misinformation.

Ben Burgis 1:04:36 Right. Yeah, and-

Joe Rogan 1:04:36 So it's the same thing. That's my point.

Ben Burgis 1:04:38 Yeah, sure. I mean, I mean like actually, so here's an example I completely agree with. At the beginning of the pandemic, um, like back in, was it like March, you know, 2020, maybe until sometime in April, uh, Fauci, the CDC, everybody was saying, uh, don't wear a mask.

Joe Rogan 1:04:53 Right.

Ben Burgis 1:04:53 You know, and you know, as we established, I'm not some, you know, like there are a lot of things that I would rather spend my time on than like trying to sort through all the COVID stuff. But like, even I at the time was like, "Wait, wait a second, that doesn't make sense. Why not?" Right? Like, you know, what, why would that, like the reasons they were giving didn't make sense to me. And then they kind of said, I mean like I know some people say this is an oversimplification, but I think if you go back and look at it, this is kind of what they said, "Oh, we lied about that," so that like all the masks wouldn't get, you know, get bought up.

Joe Rogan 1:05:20 That's not an over simplication- simplification at all. That's exactly what they said.

Ben Burgis 1:05:24 And, and which is crazy to... Like the thing that's crazy to me is like, okay, if you're going to do that, and I don't think (laughs) you should have done it, but if you're going to do that, like you have to resign after that, right? Like once you've, once you've sp- like shown that you were willing to like lie, lie to people, like, like if, if you think it's important that people trust, you know, medical authorities, which, you know, I mean, I can see why, public health crisis, you know, that you'd think that was important.

Joe Rogan 1:05:48 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 1:05:48 Like, what's going to undermine that more? Right? People, um, you know, random people on the internet, uh, you know, s- like saying things that, you know, that might not be true about it, or, you know, or people going on podcasts, you know, who, uh, who might say things that are wrong, or like the (laughs) CDC like admitting that they were lying about something-

Joe Rogan 1:06:08 Yeah.

Ben Burgis 1:06:08 ... something important? That's gonna, that's gonna undermine that, that's gonna undermine that like crazy, and I would not have wanted people who were pointing things like this out at the time that like, "Oh, the stated reasons why masks were supposed to be bad didn't really make sense," which they didn't, right? You know, because it was like, "Well, it's going to encourage people to be reckless." And it's like, well, okay, that's an argument against like seat belts, right?

Joe Rogan 1:06:27 I don't think that was the, uh, the encourage-

Ben Burgis 1:06:29 I mean, that, that was one, that was one that they used, right? But th-

Joe Rogan 1:06:31 No, but not Fauci. I don't think Fauci used that argument.

Ben Burgis 1:06:33 Yeah, I think the WHO did. Uh, like I think there was like if you go, went to their website, I think that's one of the things that they said there at one point. Uh, but they'd also say, "Well people don't know how to use them properly." So like they're going to like end up, it's going to end up being more dangerous. Uh, you know, and there were a bunch of things they threw out.... none of it quite seemed to add up, you know, even at the, you know, even at the time. And then again, then they came out and said, "No, actually..." Like, it's not like the science changed-

Joe Rogan 1:06:58 Right.

Ben Burgis 1:06:58 ... you know, when that happened. And I, and I think that, um, I certainly wouldn't have wanted people who were pointing that out t- to not be able to do that 'cause of some misinformation policy.

Joe Rogan 1:07:09 Don't you think that the issue really was that people were afraid? And when people are afraid, then they will support harsher measures to ensure safety. And one of those measures would be to silence people that may be spreading information that could get people in trouble.

Ben Burgis 1:07:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:26 So they're willing to compromise their values because they think there's a greater good to be had, like this is a different time. And that's one of the more dangerous-

Ben Burgis 1:07:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:32 ... things about a thing like a pandemic, because people will compromise their positions because they feel like there's a greater good to be, uh, re- achieved, and so we need to silence these people. Like, this was during the presidential campaign.

Ben Burgis 1:07:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:44 And this is one of the things that I found out, um, that I, that I was really shocked by, that Twitter banned... Uh, Bret Weinstein had a thing that he had put together called Unity 2020.

Ben Burgis 1:07:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:55 And the idea was instead of this rigid, uh, two-party system where you have people on the left and people on the right, what if you had, like, a really reasonable person, a well-balanced person from the right and a really reasonable, well-balanced person from the left, and we brought them together, very popular people-

Ben Burgis 1:08:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:13 ... and put together, like, a party and called it, like, the Unity Party? And so he made a Twitter page, and, and Twitter banned the page. And-

Ben Burgis 1:08:21 What, what was the reason they gave?

Joe Rogan 1:08:23 Some bullshit reason.

Ben Burgis 1:08:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:24 But the reason was they were terrified that these popular podcasters and people were going to take votes away from the left. Because these people like Weinstein and his wife or... They're progressives. I mean, they taught at a very progressive university. There's a lot of people that