Here. (I noted previously that the texts of the opening statements were available here.) I haven't watched the video, but I do recall one mistake I made: I should not have seemed to agree with Professor Caplan that social security should be means-tested. Social security is a social insurance scheme, everyone contributes, and everyone collects from it. It is not charity, but insurance. The fact that everyone collects from the insurance scheme they contributed to is another reason it is such a popular political program, a point I did make.
One curious bit during the Q&A was a fellow who was quite incensed that I pointed out, correctly, that the capitalist ruling class in Germany supported Hitler because they were afraid of genuine socialists (not social democrats). My point--which alas Professor Caplan steadfastly ignored--is that a serious discussion of the merits of capitalism or socialism should not be based on the bad behavior of self-proclaimed capitalists or socialists.
It was striking that Professor Caplan did not have any real reply to my basic point about the logic of capitalism:
[C]apitalist producers must reduce their costs, for if they don’t, their competitors will do so and then drive them out of business. Since the logic of capitalism demands reduction of production costs, and since the wages of most people under capitalism are simply “production costs” to be reduced or eliminated, this cannot end well. The only humane alternative is socialism, that is, ultimately taking collective control of the immense productive power that capitalism generates, so that its purpose is not the endless pursuit of profit, but producing what human beings need to live and flourish.
ADDENDUM: During the debate, Professor Caplan responded to my observation that Pinochet was also a huge fan of "Chicago School" free-market economics. (My point, again, was that the professed allies of capitalism and socialism are irrelevant to a serious discussion.) Professor Caplan offered the rather ghoulish response that Pinochet only killed about 3,000 people during his reign of fascist terror. Defense-by-body-count is not really my cup of tea, but if you go that route, the population of Chile at that time (about 9 million people) is relevant: by way of comparison, it would be the equivalent of murdering more than 90,000 Americans for political reasons (and more than 750,000 tortured--see below). S. Wallerstein, a longtime reader from Chile, also wrote with some useful additional information:
The official figure is 3,227 killed and disappeared and 28,459 tortured. Those figures underestimate the total because in order to be listed family members had to file a report (for which they received a small pension, which is an incentive of course) in the case of those killed and disappeared, and the victims of torture also had to file a report (for which they received a small pension too), but in many cases, especially that of women who were almost always raped or sexually abused during the torture, no report was filed.
If you want to use the figures, the sources are two "non-partisan" commissions, one on deaths and disappearances and the second on torture (headed by a Catholic bishop), called the Rettig Commission and the Valech Commission respectively. Looking a bit more, I see that since the original commissions, they have found 30 new cases of deaths and disappearances and 9795 new cases of torture.
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