Dr. Richard Wolff has received his undergraduate, graduate,
and PHD from three most famous American universities. His field of study and
the subject he teaches is economics, which may not seem to be out of ordinary
at first. However, considering his studies in Marxist economy and communism in
which he believes also, a taboo subject in any educational system in the United
States, especially in economics department where only capitalist economy should
be discussed, makes him very different, and one could imagine what a hard
professional life he has been going through. Having great interest in his
thoughts and vision, I follow his weekly discussion, along with his speeches
and interviews. Yesterday, I saw an interview of him on the youtube, and when
the interviewer claimed to be originally from Iran, I became more interested to
watch it.
Patrick Bet-David who is the CEO of PHP Agency, Inc.
conducts the interview. He has a mural of several white men behind him. The picture
is edited to look as if those men are in conversation with each other. I tried
to get a feeling of what this guy presents by such mural, but the combination
was so far apart that it was hard to make sense out of it. Einstein is sitting across
from Martin Luther King, both are known to have had liberal mind sets. In the
middle is a picture of Abe Lincoln, whose fame stems from his agenda in freeing
blacks from slavery, success of which can be measured by political environment
of today in the United States, resulted from killing of George Floyd. He is
sitting next to John F Kennedy, another American famous president who was also
killed by gun while in the office. So far, we see pictures of those who are
famous and liberal minded, whether a correct assumption or not, depends on
liberal is defined. Then, on the left side of Lincoln, Milton Freedman is
sitting next to the Shah! Considering the crimes of Milton Freedman with his
economic theories (well explained by Naomi Klein in her famous book “The Shock Doctrine”),
and the Shah with his well known history of being installed in power by the
West and his crimes against the left in Iran, which was rightfully replace by the
more vicious government of today, the combination of these people make one
wonder what is the purpose behind it. There are three other people standing on
the back, whose faces could not be distinguished. There are other pictures or
statutes of the Hulk and the Joker and Batman, which are too ridiculous to
analyze. Therefore, the visual surrounding would not explain much, except that
either this guy is a genius trying to create a consensus among the Left and the
Right, or he is a swindler making money by fooling others.
This program is called Valuetainment, which at first one
would think what he means by value is spiritual significance or worth. By the
end of the show it is clear that value means money. He starts by asking Professor
Wolff if he could call him Rick. Then the interviewee is asked at this point,
of course in a joking manner, why he hates the rich when his name is Richard,
as if he had a choice in naming himself! As humble as Dr. Wolff is, he responds
that many of his friends are rich and he has nothing against the rich, but
against the system. Getting in a personal basis from very beginning is a
benefiting tool, in order to make the person feel right at home and open up,
which follows by asking him to talk about himself, his childhood and his
career. Of course Dr. Wolff is an educator and would not seem to be distracted
from his line of discussion, and his aim is educating those who falsely believe
that wealth means happiness. He responds to each question accordingly, even
when the question becomes so personal as to his children’s ideology and who
cooks at home and whether his wife is a better cook or who decides about the
paint and furniture of the house, in order to bring home the point that every organization
needs someone on the top, whose knowledge is better than others, and therefore
a workplace by communal consensus would not work. One thing that the
interviewer claims, which is puzzling to say the least, when he talks about his
past and how he and his family escaped after the revolution of 1979 in Iran, is
what his father used to make when he owned manufacturing of some European
cosmetic brands of Revlon and Max Factor. He said his father made $100K per
month. It is probably with today’s value of dollar, and he probably meant the
amount of the revenue of his father’s company, not the father’s earnings, which
is still too high. This claim makes one wonder whether this guy’s other
statistics and numbers were correct. He confronts his interviewee many times
after the respond is made, sometimes by interrupting him in the middle of the
point Wolff is making, such as the time they talk about the contrast between slavery
and feudalism with capitalism.
The best part of the interview (actually debate) is when Dr.
Wolff explains future of capitalism, monopoly. He explains why and how a
capitalist venture becomes monopolistic, when Patrick asks him to give an
example of a monopoly that exists today, and he gives two examples. Not still
getting the nature and the causes of a monopoly, the interviewer keeps asking
the same question, which Dr. Wolff doe not bother repeating himself, as he had
already explained how a monopoly forms, and further explained that sometimes
two or more monopolies agree to share the market, in the example of Amazon and Walmart.
It came to my mind of my own experience with monopoly. I lived in the small
town of Castro Valley in Northern California for the last decade of the 20th
century. There was a coffee shop on Redwood road which was populated by working
men and women every morning, from 6 to 8 for those who were on their way to
work, and the rest of the day for others. The owner had been a prominent Castro
Valley resident who started a small shop and was grown to accommodate many of
the coffee drinking residents. People would spend about 5 to 15 minutes in the
shop on their way to work daily, to get the latest news flash of the day. Many of
the patrons got to know each other only by buying coffee every morning. The largest
size coffee was one dollar, and even when someone bought a smaller size, the
patron would not collect the rest of his
money, leaving it for the kids working there. In mid-nineties another coffee
shop was opened in the same block, called Starbuck. The aroma of the coffee
would emit from the new store, to cover several blocks over. Of course, the
name of the store had already been advertised so many times, which our local
store owner could not afford to do, and kept losing its customers. Our local
store kept experiencing the loss of his decades old business, to the point that
he could compete with the new store and closed it down.
After the show, I subscribed to valuetainment and checked
other interviews. They were all debates for Patrick to make a point that his
capitalist agenda and money making skims worked. Youtube presentations are also
a part of the skim, showing that he can interview famous people from different
walks of life. Patrick Bet-David is actually selling air and false hope. We are
used to hearing people with unfulfilled claims, from presidents to showmen to
entertainers. However, anyone with the same type of personality has a certain
name in the country of his origin. That person is called a charlatan in Iran.
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