During a heated debate on Sunday’s episode of Jubilee’s “1 Capitalist vs 20 Anti-Capitalists,” YouTuber and conservative-leaning businessman Patrick Bet-David offered one self-proclaimed “anti-capitalist” a free, first-class, one-way ticket to a communist country of her choosing.
“If I were to give you your $2,350, which is the cost to renunciate your citizenship, and I paid your first class flight to whatever communist country and $20,000, would you give up your [American] citizenship?,” Bet-David asked during the latest episode of “Surrounded” series.
Alannah, a flannel-wearing anti-capitalist he was debating, quickly responded: “Name me a communist country” to which he responded “Whichever communist country you want to go to” before listing off Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea as options.
“Those aren’t communist countries,” Alannah said as her allotted time ended.
The offer followed a heated debate between the pair about incentives in a socialist or communist society versus a capitalist society.
“We see in capitalism, the incentive is obviously monetary gain, maybe even collecting capital itself through land ownership,” Alannah said. “In a communist or a socialist country, you would see incentive would just evolve into – I know it’s a vague term – but the common good. You have an incentive to do your chores around your house because you don’t want to live in a filthy house, right? That makes sense. It doesn’t have to be just monetary.”
Bet-David asked Alannah to give him a case study that worked, to which she responded: “We don’t even need to look at case studies. We can just look at charity work.”
He quickly shot back, comparing North Korea’s communist system with South Korea’s capitalist system.
“North Korea’s GDP last year was $23 billion. If you lived in North Korea, you wouldn’t be able to do what you’re doing right now. You wouldn’t have a voice,” he said. “In South Korea, their GDP is $1.7 trillion – 70x better than North Korea.”
He then questioned if she would like to be free in a country where she can have a strong opinion, to which she replied “I like to be free, but that’s why I’m anti-capitalist, because capitalism removes that choice. There is no real incentive of capitalism because the incentive is survival. When you get into communism, the incentive is for the common good.”
In addition to debating whether incentives drive capitalism, Sunday’s episode saw Bet-David also argue that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system, equal wealth distribution would collapse within five years and that the U.S. is already more socialist than capitalist. Watch the full episode in the video below.
