Why Are Famous Communists Usually Rich Nepo Babies?

Why do so many prominent socialists and communists come from wealthy backgrounds? In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the surprising trend of rich kids leading leftist movements, from historical figures like Marx, Engels, and Lenin to modern influencers and activists. Discover the stories behind famous leaders, the psychology of privilege, and the recurring patterns that shape revolutionary ideologies. The Collinses explore whether wealth and upbringing influence political beliefs, and what this means for the future of social movements. If you’re curious about history, politics, or the sociology of power, this episode is for you!

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be exploring the phenomenon that you may not be aware of, which is most socialists and communist leaders, and I really mean most socialists and communist leaders.

Oh, like

Simone Collins: actual, like world leaders. Like, yeah, this is going into

Malcolm Collins: distant history of two modern times we’re born to incredible wealth. What? And, and the question is, is why, why does this trend happen? And it’s something I’ve seen as well with, you know, all the wealthy kids especially the ones who didn’t have to earn it being incredibly like the most communist socialist people I know.

Speaker 3: rude boy living in the shanty dorms. Please guide me from,

Simone Collins: yeah, no, there’s, there was this one like trust fund kid conference that you. You, it’s called a summit

Malcolm Collins: or something. Not summit. What was it called? Not Summit Ter,

Simone Collins: Nexus Global. Nexus.

Malcolm Collins: Nexus Global. And

Simone Collins: everyone in it was, it was really like kids [00:01:00] of, of, of very wealthy families who have basically family foundations that were charities talking about how they’re gonna spend their family foundation’s money.

Malcolm Collins: And it was all, all woke nonsense. And it was all, it was all

Simone Collins: like socialists too. Marxists and communists and, which is so weird. Yeah, because

Malcolm Collins: I, and it wasn’t like meant to be a Marxist conference. No. It was meant to be a rich kid conference. Yes. Okay. Yes. So you see this constantly. So let’s go over where we see this phenomenon playing out.

I’m just gonna. Read to you names here. Right? Okay. Okay. ‘cause see, this isn’t just a historic saying. This is a modern thing as well. Okay. Zhan, Ani. You know the guy who’s the communist running for the man of the people.

Yeah. What?

Born to Oscar nominated filmmaker, Miar Na and Colombian Professor Mohamed Mandi Young Zhan enjoyed a jet setting lifestyle before New York, India, and Uganda.

What family Vacations included film sets and academic conferences. Perfect prep for fighting capitalism. Right. But hey, at least he traded red carpets for red politics.

Simone Collins: Oh boy.

Malcolm Collins: Fidel Castro Fidel’s Co Fidel’s [00:02:00] father owned a 25,000 acre plantation with 500 employees, where little Fidel rode horses attended elite Jesuit schools and Boston around servants one advent goat.

He once staged a quote unquote revolt against his strict boarding school by locking himself in with candy, foreshadowing the real revolution, minus the sweets. From Castro’s family wealth in early Life stories Hassan Piker Hassan’s father was a VP at a billion dollar conglomerate and a board member of multiple forms.

Affording a posh Istanbul upbringing was private schools and family trips. Funny bit. Hassan once joked about his uncle Sikh hugger, the Young Turks founder, who we’ll go into next as a Nepo baby but skipped mentioning his dad’s empire. Talk about streaming from a glass house. Sec by the way, grew up in East Broad Wick, an affluent suburb with strong cool before the family settled and blah, blah, blah.

He, he also had a fantastically wealthy family, but less wealthy than Hassan. Hassan’s family was a, from what I can read. [00:03:00] Multi-billionaires wow. Or not multi-billionaires, but they ran multi-billionaire corporations. CEX was probably few hundred million. Either way, neither of them have to worry about money, so clearly that’s why they don’t care about lying about.

Do you think that both

Simone Collins: Jen and and Salon are trust? Kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. They never have to worry about money in their lives. Wow. If, if something went wrong or anything, they wouldn’t have to like, if, if Hassan really loses it for shocking his dog, like a psychopath.

I America Kaya, please just go. Just stop.

God Hassan, stay on the bed. It won’t stop. Yeah, well, neither will chat. I’m busy.

Malcolm Collins: And here’s the thing, I actually don’t even mind shot colors for people who aren’t aware of this.

So Hassan’s one of like the leading like, lefty streamers, right? And he got caught after. The dog had sat in a corner for four hours like yelling at his dog and then shocking it so [00:04:00] that it like yelped and went back in the corner when it just tried to get up and walk around. I’m actually like, shock colors, whatever.

Like for me, you know, like we do corporal punishment, like whatever. But forcing a dog to sit in one corner for four hours as a prop. And we can see on earlier videos, he used to chain it up to do this. Like we have a dog. We could use it as a prop, but we don’t like, that’s a psychotic thing to do. Yeah. I don’t have like my kid in the corner like shot collar to make sure they don’t, they don’t move from their spot like we should I under?

We

Simone Collins: should. Oh my gosh. No. But also next, next episode. Just expect to see Octavian in the corner with a big ass collar on.

Malcolm Collins: No, but I also love, oh, we gotta do that for Halloween. What are you Zo love son’s dog

Simone Collins: ta would love just sit him back on this window sill. He will just die, right? No. So

Malcolm Collins: the, the funny thing is, is like we have the whole like bop gate for us, like when we do light corporal punishment with our kids and, and, I so wanna be like in an debate with Hassan about this, and I’m like, yeah. And you know what the difference between you and Maria is, is I am [00:05:00] honest about the things I do as punishment because I’m willing to stand behind them. You are not. This is the difference between you and me and my friend. There you go.

When that came out, we didn’t go out there and be like, no, we, we would never do that. I’m like, we told you we were doing this beforehand in our episodes. Mm-hmm. Here’s all the science that shows that it’s a good thing to do. Probably. I mean, here’s our logic behind doing it. So I just love what a, what a and what I hate about Hassan most right now in, in terms of how he’s handling this, is he is forcing other people to put their reputations on the line and lie for him.

Simone Collins: I don’t think he’s forcing him. I think they’re voluntarily doing it.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, obviously my favorite was the one recently where the girl came out and she goes,

Speaker: I’m not No, no, no. There’s no shock. Like the electric prongs are taken out of it. ? Like it’s only a vibrates, like there’s a setting for vibrate and there’s a setting for shock.

True. That’s a fact. That’s a fact. Yes. So

Speaker 2: he, there’s only the, like since the prongs are in it, it only vibrates.

Malcolm Collins: . And then she said, and that had been taped over, and now we know that Hassan was showing one with shock prongs taken out and taped [00:06:00] over.

If you’ve never used one of these shot colors before. The prongs are removable in any of them. It’s a standard feature, right? You just take out the prongs. Because the idea is, is that once you use it for a certain period of time the dog gets used to it and then it only needs the beep and the rumble, and you don’t actually need the shock.

Things to contact the dog anymore. But Hassan had said that it wasn’t a shot caller, it was a rumble version. And a friend goes, oh, I went to his house. It was a shot call. He just took out the prongs by that point. But the dog’s not gonna yelp on the rumble setting, right? So Uhoh Anyway, side there.

Frederick Engles. Engles grew up in a sprawling family estate with mills across Europe. Think of Victorian downtown, Abbey downtown.

Simone Collins: Oh boy.

Malcolm Collins: Anecdote as a teen, he skipped business lessons to party in Manchester’s elite circles. Then used his inheritance to bankroll Marks irony. And the guy who co-wrote the anti-capitalist Bible was basically a trust fund kid subsidizing the proletariat.

Someone’s gotta do it. Linen [00:07:00]

Simone Collins: what? Sorry? You got thoughts here? I, I don’t, I mean, who’s gonna bankroll the socialists, if not Nepo babies though.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, this is, they don’t have

Simone Collins: the means of production.

Malcolm Collins: It’s not a, i i I, without getting, ‘cause people know I didn’t get any family wealth from my family.

I could have not exactly my family’s choice, although had always told me I wouldn’t inherit money, but it was all stolen as well. So like, it’s, it’s very public that there’s no way I could have gotten any money from my family, which is good. I like that everyone knows, you know. I could be a communist if I want to, but self-made people very rarely want to become communists.

That’s, that’s the problem, right? Like people who are successful within the capitalist system rather than just handed their money. And this is one of the reasons why I think you get this pattern. They see the value in the capitalist system. The people who are just handed everything, they have nothing but guilt and they wanna frame themselves as good guys.

Vladimir Linen Linn’s father with a high ranking inspector was hereditary nobility, affording elite schooling, and a family of state childhood tale. Young Vladimir [00:08:00] both hosted quote unquote revolutionary games in the garden, bossing siblings like a mini czar until his brother’s execution flipped the script.

From noble picnics to proletarian purges. Cha’s, upper middle class family owned estates. He grew up playing polo rugby at elite clubs and traveled Europe. Cha was a polo kid, polo kid. Oh no. As a kid, he staged quote unquote battles at the family ranch. They had a branch of course complete with toy guns and servants as quote

unquote enemies foreshadowing his real life.

Oh my God. Hmm. I love the sociopathy. The servants have to play the enemies. All of my friends on my side, and we’ll just gun down the sermons, which is what he did in real life.

Simone Collins: Good practice.

Malcolm Collins: Well, what we see is what Communist Revolution is really almost always are, is idiots who think they’re fighting for equality that these types of illegally educated people are [00:09:00] using.

And then a cabal of wealthy elites who are utilizing those idiots to centralize their power and assure an even less what’s the word I’m looking for here? Society where people can move between class distinctions. It’s really about solidifying elite power structures. Oh, and you see this with current communists as well, like that’s, that’s clearly what they want, right?

They do not want. They do not want, like if you go to your average Antifa rally and you’re like, great, we’re gonna help, like, the, the, the forgotten rural Rust Belt community. Oh that’s not who we were talking about. Uplifting. I was thinking more the, the, the Trans Trust Fund kids who, who literally, as I point out, like I don’t understand how anybody falls for you got these trans people who dress like

they’re literally like from the Capitol and the Hunger Games pretending that they’re like allied with like the, the, the working poor, right?

Like, no, you hate them and it’s very [00:10:00] clear when you talk about them that you hate them. Right? And it’s very clear that you don’t live in these communities. Despite the statistics I’ll give you. And we have another episode on this, I’m gonna do another episode on it in more detail. But like the trans murder rates are like super, super low, especially if you take out trans black people, which make up like 50%.

That blew my mind.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because it, it was typically discussed that like trans people, especially because many of them enter sex work to support their transition and whatnot, like are, are disproportionately exposed to risk, et cetera.

Malcolm Collins: It’s because they’re, they’re, they’re in upper class communities often and leaching off of upper class communities, even if they themselves don’t have jobs.

And, and this is what I’ve noticed is people will act like, well, I’m really poor when they’re living. It’s like their rich friend in Manhattan or something like that, who’s helping to pay for everything, right? And it’s like. Okay. I mean, you might technically be poor, but you are living in Manhattan.

Right. And I know for a fact if you were actually, everyone

Simone Collins: feels poor in Manhattan. Yeah. To be fair, you wouldn’t be doing

Malcolm Collins: that, right? Yeah. So clearly you’re getting money from [00:11:00] somewhere. Next one, pull pot. I dunno if you knew this one. Pole pot was a wealthy family was royal court ties. He grew up with French tutors and lived in the King’s palace as a page boy French tutor.

Page boy. Pull pot page boy pull pot. This is the one who did the Cambodian revolution where they had the killing fields and they just like, one of the most brutal communist dictators in in history. My gosh. French tutors page Boy. This does not check out. These people are good at rebrands. So the peasant utopia, the architect enjoyed elite scholar scholarships in Paris studying radio tech while shipping cafe lattes, oh, sorry.

Sipping cafe lattes before banning all that burg and cheese burgundies stuff back home. I can’t even say these comedy words. Bourgeois. That’s what what it is. Comedy words for Paint my American tongue for.

Simone Collins: You gotta the burgundies burgundy. Oh my god, Malcolm so much. Oh, it kills [00:12:00] me. It kills me so much.

Malcolm Collins: Jessica Milford from Burton’s eccentric mil fort nobility. Jessica grew up in a sping estate with servants debutante balls and fascist siblings. She once carved a hammer and sickle into her bedroom window to troll her dad. Then he eloped with a communist cousin to fight in Spain. Carl Marx. By the way, Carl Marx was also not poor.

Marx’s lawyer dad owned Ryan Vineyards funding Carl’s posh schooling in Bon, where he painted dued and racked up debts. Dued. Alright. You know, you know you’re classy young. Carl once got jailed for a drunken night out bailed out by Daddy’s cash. Later on he lived in Ingalls Mill money while writing manifestos.

So literally it’s like the law doesn’t apply to me. I’m so rich. Level of rich there. Right.

Simone Collins: I mean, I, yeah, to, to be socialist or communist though, you have to be subversive and, and [00:13:00] subversiveness often requires a, a pretty sizable level of personal empowerment and confidence, which is easy to get when you’re wealthy.

Malcolm Collins: Well, if you look at what happened with Marx, it’s very clear. He wa grew up super wealthy. So wealthy, the rules didn’t apply to him. He never had to worry about working or a job or anything like that. And as soon as that stuff was required of him, because he didn’t expect it ever would be required of him, he’s like, well, I need some alternate system to pay for my lifestyle.

Right. Mm-hmm. And that’s when Engles started to support him.

Mm-hmm. But

the, the, the point here being is that he and a lot of these wealthy kids simply do not have a worldview where they are ever going to work. That, that. That is antithetical to to hear. Sorry, my, alright, we’re gonna keep going here, but we’re getting, we’re getting every name on the list here.

Mal is a don. This is insane. This is insane. So. Mao’s father was a prosperous farmer money lender with vast lands [00:14:00] afforded private tutors in elite schools. Teen Mao staged hunger strikes against his dad. Strict rules hiding in barns with books. Ironic for the guy who’d later starved millions in the great leap forward.

Well, he tried it. It wasn’t so bad. Yeah. Okay. Leon Troskey Trotsky’s. Dad owns massive farms with laborers. Young Leon had private tutors and summer horseback rides. He once commanded farm kids in mock battles prep for leading real armies, but was way more privileged than the proletariat sea championed.

Oh, now Pete Capone and an I know, and he’s a, what’s the word, anarchist, communist back in the 19th century. Oh. A Russian aristocrat and proponent of Anarchical communism was born into a noble land owning family descending from the ancient Warwick family. His father owned surfs across three provinces and kin, grew up in Moscow mansion with, with, attached estates educated at the Greek court and serving as a personal page to Emperor [00:15:00] Alexander ii. Good. Okay. On We’re not done here. Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh. Born Ang Kun to a Confucian scholar father who was an imperial magistrate ho, grew up in the rural Vietnamese village with some family star status perks, like private tutoring in classical Chinese texts.

Goodness. He flew kites. Fished in rivers and enjoyed a relatively carefree childhood in the elite college in ho, a top French academy for Vietnamese nobles for future leaders like Fa Von Don and Vo. Y Guan also studied at around age 10 he got expelled or nearly so for protesting French teachers, treatment of Vietnamese students for shadowing.

Sorry, I mute myself. Next here, Bertrand Russell, born into Britain’s Elite, the grandson of a two-time prime minister. No, these aren’t like kind of rich people. These are these super wealthy, super elite, super old blood [00:16:00] people. Is what we keep seeing here. You know, like in the Imperial family playing polo as a kid, et cetera.

Young Bertrand was orphaned early and raised by his strict Victorian grandmother at her luxurious pin book lodge in Richmond Park. A sprawling estate fit for royalty withs and servants and gardens galore. His private tutors. No need for regular school. Lived in isolation from other kids until 17, leading to a lonely but intellectually loaded childhood where he contemplated un aliveness, but was saved by books and mass.

I love, he’s so close to modern people. Bertin Russell. At 11, his brother introduced him to Euclid Geometry, which he called as dazzling. His first love. It’s working a lifelong package. He, he. Secretly ditched Christianity becoming an atheist at 18. After reading mills bonus as 18, he jetted to the 1989 Paris Exhibition and climbed the brand new Eiffel Tower, climbed it all funded by family wealth.

It has [00:17:00] stairs

Simone Collins: for the, he, he walked up the stairs, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that. Okay. Alexander Knik, Colney daughter of a Russian General from a Noble family. I’ve been to the top of it by the way. I just thought it meant he just took the

Simone Collins: elevator.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe he did. A Noble family was Ukrainian and finished roots grew up in luxury estate, servants, elite education.

Actually, I’m not even gonna say any more of these if I already recognize them. We’ve got a. Well, this one could be relevant to our Eastern European Inver Hoa. He’s an Albanian Communist leader, set of wealthy Muslim Landover and Kloss Merchant was ties to the Ottoman Elite. We got Tony Ben, I’ve heard of him.

British Socialist politician born Anton Woods Wood Ben. That’s aristocratic name if I’ve ever heard of one. The aristocratic son of a vi count and the grandson of a barronett lived off of inherited wealth. Jessica Milford, British writer and activist from the aristocratic Milford family Philip Tony b British com Communist journalist and writer, son of renowned historian, Andrew to Tony b from the intellectually [00:18:00] elite family benefited from nepotistic connections and Esmond Rahmel.

Lee nephew of Winston Churchill. He was a British communist and he was Winston Churchill’s nephew. Born to aristocratic privilege, youth, family wealth and education for becoming a communist fighter in the Spanish Civil War. So Churchill goes and has this Africa adventure and this guy goes to the uh, so thoughts on this?

‘cause this is really a full list. This is modern to ancient from the beginning of this to Zhan Ani, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah. So it makes me think about, the, the sort of other angle that a lot of people have looked at the systematic disempowerment or wealth redistribution of wealthy families in. Typically like communist and socialist regimes and how over time, both in like Eastern Europe and in in Asia, descendants of those families that were systematically disempowered just end up in very influential and wealthy positions again.

Yeah. So, and I just feel like you get ba this is just another element of disproportionately wealthy and intellectual families [00:19:00] producing disproportionately wealthy and influential people. It just so happens that they chose to use the. Government corruption slash like socialist scam to obtain their power and wealth in this case, but like are using the same tactics that a capitalist would use.

Malcolm Collins: I want to expand on your point before I disagree with your point. Okay. Okay. So, and to expand on your point, the study she’s citing, which I personally find fascinating and show how much of competence is genetic. Couple studies that in China they did a fairly good job of consolidating wealth among a few elite families and then disenfranchising all the other elite families and putting them on the.

Society and then the bottom of society with raised, it’s like higher class and it was much easier to get jobs and positions. If your ancestors had been farmers and if they had been like you, you were treated with active derision in your daily life. Well today, you know, a hundred years later, if you look at the people who are in leadership positions within the Communist party I think it’s something like.

45% of them or something are descended from those very people who are put on the [00:20:00] bottom of society at the beginning of the Communist revolution. And so it just sort of like re resource itself. This is part of why Cambodia has never really economically recovered when other regions have economically recovered like Vietnam and China.

Because in China and Vietnam, they just treated their wealthy elite during the communist period. Like underclass citizens in Cambodia, they were systematically eradicated. And because of that, Cambodia has never been able to really re industrialize them the same way because they just don’t have that class of people anymore.

And I think in Cambodia now, a lot of wealth is, is just owned by Chinese. Who, who came in because they still had that class of people who could come and soak everything up. I’ve heard

Simone Collins: that. Yeah.

So one number that I was able to find on this is that Chinese people own, uh, 92% of the business assets in Cambodia. This is what happens if you eat the rich in your country, the rich from another country come and take over. .

Simone Collins: Well, and there’s actually, that’s the case a apparently in a lot of a lot of,

Malcolm Collins: well, we have another episode on this, the [00:21:00] Jews of Asia.

But the point is, is you benefit from this elite class enormously. And, and what, what communism really is, is a revolt. Of a few factions with that elite class against the rest of that elite class using the poor to achieve that end. Mm-hmm. It is not and people can be like, oh, well, real Communism’s never been tried.

That’s not the way communism is supposed to be done. And I will say that communism may work in a world with ai. We can talk about that. We’ve talked about that. That’s the point, is that

Simone Collins: the, the, the, the actually respectable leaders in, in communist theory pointed out that this is a post scarcity.

Arrangement system only. Right? But

this makes sense in a post a GI super prosperous world. Sorry, but just,

Malcolm Collins: just quickly here, I agree with what you’re saying, but I wanna explain why it doesn’t work. Pres scarcity. Okay. Where you still have any degree of scarcity? Well, it’s obvious because the why

Simone Collins: you basically need just infinite resources created by people who aren’t people so that no one has the word.

Malcolm Collins: That’s not why. [00:22:00] So like on paper, communism could work like this idea that you could give ownership of the means of production to the people, right? And then sort of decentralized power entirely and have everybody sort of a agree on this decentralized worker owned world, right? Like this.

Could hypothetically exist. The problem is as many people have tried to create this before, like not all communist efforts were disingenuous, but when you decentralize power to that extent, the extent that it exists within quote unquote real communism.

Mm-hmm.

Anyone who. Is willing to subvert that system, say, actually I’m not going to let go of my decentralized power.

Can concentrate power and then take it from the decentralized architecture. Which is why communist systems always turn into because if you’ve said, oh, well, we’re all giving up all of this and all of this and [00:23:00] all of this, and one person’s like, well. I’m gonna be running the, let’s just say like, and you could do this from any position of government, eventually centralized power.

Whether you are checking to make sure the supply lines are working correctly or running the supply lines or running you know, quota checks or running, you know, anything like that. You, you can easily, or you determine, you know, the exchange rates are you, you know. Anything where you have a degree of power, you can just further concentrate that power and then create a crony system where everyone under you, because they are getting disproportionate wealth because of you, and disproportionate power because of you has a, has a, a, a vested interest in maintaining this new system.

I do not think that many of the communists who go and start these systems realize that that’s what’s gonna happen. They think that they are actually going out and redistributing wealth in, in some sort of meaningful context. And what ends up, and, and the reason I think they hold these beliefs is when you are incredibly wealthy and you grow up, you are not.

[00:24:00] Punished for wrong beliefs. You are not punished for making mistakes. You are not punished for I, when I mean punished, I don’t mean like by your parents, I mean by reality, right? People who make their own money if you make a mistake, like right now, like we don’t have a job. Like we’re working on a startup.

We’re trying to make this work. We just got turned down by Andreessen. So, and we, we were, you know, on our way with them. So now we’ve gotta find out what we’re gonna do next. And, this is, you know, five kids, right? Like, I get punished for my mistakes if I don’t perform. I can’t create something that people wanna use with, you know, parisa.io, our school system, or our fab.ai, our you know.

Online agent system for like chat bots or the new system we’re building with our fab AI that will allow you to have like persistently online bots that are just sort of always running and can like, give you phone calls and answer your texts and send you texts and send you emails and do coding for you.

And, and we’ll have like persistent personalities which evolve over time. Think of it like a. [00:25:00] Tamagotchi human, I, I don’t know how to put it right, like a, a, a pocket human. Very excited to start releasing those onto the world because the ones we have in our test environment are really cool. But where am I?

Was this stuff? Yeah, I’ve, I’ve had to, and, and we’ve, we’ve built it before. You know, we’re basically

Simone Collins: saying trust fund kids and nepo babies. Are, are, are doing bowling, but with the bumpers on. Yeah. And if you’re doing

Malcolm Collins: bowling with the bumpers on, you choose the, the, the thing that makes you look, you’re just throwing the ball.

Simone Collins: You’re just throwing the ball. You’re not, you’re not really aiming in any meaningful way. Whereas with the rest of the world is, is playing with the gutters and they end up in the gutters when they screw up and, and that changes everything and they quickly learn.

Malcolm Collins: For example, how incompetent the masses are.

One of the, the first things you learn if you’re managing lots of people is how incompetent your average person is. And that, that it is really hard. I mean, that’s what makes management hard is you can’t just handle everything yourself. Right. And fortunately AI has fixed that for me because now I just [00:26:00] use more and more AI employees and I’m working on building more and more AI employees.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, it enables you to, to you, you now only have to work or. Can choose to work with the top 0.1%, which is so nice. You don’t have to depend on anyone else.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is going to potentially make a system like communism, well not traditional communism, maybe some sort of like UBI system, but that will have huge negative effects.

Watch all our videos on how bad UBI is. So like, I don’t know where humanity is going. We’ll probably need some sort of like simulated hardship, especially once we enter a

Simone Collins: Yeah. People are gonna need to have jobs.

Malcolm Collins: That’s it. Yeah, he’s gas. But what I can say is we’re not headed to gay space communism.

It’s, it’s very unlikely when you look at fertility rates because people who accept these types of ideas have incredibly low fertility rates. And they have historically, as well as we pointed out, like East Berlin have much lower fertility rates than West Berlin East Austria, which, by the way, one of our fans didn’t realize that Austria was divided like Germany.

It was had much lower fertility rates than West Austria. And the Soviet states had lower fertility [00:27:00] raise. And so the, the, during the baby room, and so the question is, is like, how do you, people and I, and you know, within most countries, the more leftists you are, the fewer kids you have, so they’re just not gonna exist in the future. And so we’re much more likely to have like the austere techno Puritan like spaceships and, and, and Catholic spaceships and the, we’ll, we’ll say, right? We’re, we’re heading much, much more to the war hammer future.

Okay. Than the I, I, I’d say even Starship troopers or star Trek futures. So it. I, I think that that’s it. I think it’s if that, I also think that if you are born into wealth and privilege and you expect to inherit money, and I have noticed this, the kids who go communists are the kids whose parents set up systems for them, where they inspect to inherit wealth.

If I look at my wider family, which I’ve often pointed out is in incredibly successful you know. The we, I, I, I know the way I was raised, I was always raised with the expectation that I’d inherit nothing. And not only have we been incredibly successful financially, like most of them, I am the, the big failure in the [00:28:00] family.

I, I literally have three siblings or cousins that run. A fund that’s like around a billion dollars. And then others that run like major AI studios and stuff like that, that you’ve heard of. And he means each, they’re, it’s not the

Simone Collins: same.

Malcolm Collins: These are all separate funds. It’s not the same. No, it’s, it’s separate funds that they other people gave them control of, not like family money or something like that.

And so, and they’re usually pretty conservative. Most of my family’s pretty conservative except for one of the uncles who used to run the Fed, but he wasn’t raised in the family. So, the, or at least they’re not like far woke or whatever. Right. And so, I think that what it is, that it depends on how you’re raised as a family.

Are you raised with sort of the expectation of a life of luxury without and this is, I’ve noticed this with rich families as well, which can create this problem, is the family will. Give disproportionate attention to and disproportionate money to whoever is the loudest member of the family. And whoever is willing to do the most, you know, work on trying to gain control of the trust and everything like that.

And these are often the least competent [00:29:00] individuals. Because they, they don’t have another way to make money, right? Like if you, if you’re competent, you go out and you make money in some other way, and if you’re incompetent, well then you stay within the family. And so, their lifestyle structurally looks like communism.

And I think the reason they argue for communism is because. They think, could I go out in the world and like, make something useful that people want and will pay for? And that helps other people. Like, no, like I don’t wanna do that. So I will play a game that doesn’t have metrics, right? Which is the game of revolution and a game that can make everybody’s life like my life.

So I don’t have to live with this cognitive dissonance without really thinking about the actual consequences of what they’re doing. Any thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: I am curious to know if there are any major communist or socialist leaders who came from a background of poverty? Did you look that up?

Malcolm Collins: I can look that up.

I mean, I’m sure it’ll find at least one.

Simone Collins: Sorry, I’d look it up, but he’s gassing. I’m trying to get him [00:30:00] to. Let it out. Trying The stomach massage, the, the the foot thing, the, the back pats, the burping bubbles. Gotta go.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I, I need almost all of them in that list, right? Like there are, yeah, yeah. There’s not many left after that list, but like, potentially.

I just wanna see how long, how far down it has to go in terms of being Stalin.

Simone Collins: Did you mention Stalin?

Malcolm Collins: Stalin, I’ll, I’ll look up Stalin might be, but Stalin was the consolidator, right? He was the guy who had to make things work. He wasn’t actually like a communist, communist, you know? He was like I’m gonna take advantage of these rich idiots and have them all murdered.

So that I can rule things my way. Let’s see. Well, I’ll, I’ll check out Stalin here.

Simone Collins: You asked Rock. No, he

Malcolm Collins: was impoverished. Yeah,

Simone Collins: Stalin. There you go. That makes sense. ‘cause he was a tough mofo, like

Malcolm Collins: Right. But he also wasn’t like motivated by communist ideals either. He was motivated by power and well killing the, the rich bergon Jeep people or [00:31:00] whatever.

Simone Collins: The bourbon beans. Joseph

Malcolm Collins: Stalin kyle Gorbachev, but again, he like worked his way up. So that’s not really Hugo Chavez, that’s a, that’s not a, a, a great way. See there were a

Simone Collins: couple,

Malcolm Collins: but these, these are more people who worked, they were not ideological

Simone Collins: pioneers. They were more famous leaders.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Yeah, this is interesting.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, I mean, I, I, I’ve noticed the trend, I’ve really wondered about it. The, maybe this, this is, this dovetails with the concept of luxury beliefs as well. That, especially in a, in a pre singularity world, socialism and communism is a luxury belief and it’s not practical and only more resourced people can have.

Malcolm Collins: What, what socialism and communism are, is they’re functionally a monopoly of the state by one company. Yeah. Like that’s what they always turn into. We try to keep them decentralized. This is why I often say that extreme [00:32:00] libertarianism and extreme communism. Are functionally the same belief system.

Yeah. Because both systems end is with, and, and this is the thing, when I say functionally the same, neither of them intends on this being the outcome, but both of them lead to this outcome by decentralizing power too much because we decentralize power in a systemic way. You allow anyone who is willing to.

Play counter to the system to recentralize power among themselves. Mm-hmm. And so with extreme libertarianism, you end up with one company owning everything, or maybe in a better case, like three or four companies owning everything. And then in communism you end up with just one company owning everything.

I mean, what is. A state that decides where things go, like where food is distributed, where housing is distributed, any different from a company, factory town.

Simone Collins: Yeah. In the end, right.

Malcolm Collins: And you can say, well, the company, factory town, at the end of the day yes, it decides how you [00:33:00] eat, how you get your food, it manages all that.

But at the end it’s exporting profits to the owners, right? Yeah. And I’m like, well, communist systems functionally do the thing for the leadership. I mean, look at the way. You know, they’re living in North Korea, and you could say, well, it’s not supposed to do that. And it’s like, it doesn’t matter that it’s not supposed to do that the, the person with the most power in the system.

Basically, even if they didn’t want to abuse that power, they’re forced to because the people under them with the next most power are gonna want their payoff. They’re gonna be like, where’s my, so you don’t just need one person to be like perfectly moral for a communist framework to work. Yeah. You need an entire chain of leadership to be perfectly moral.

And that’s not realistic. No. Outside of a world with ai. If AI was managing that leadership and checking so it could work.

Simone Collins: It could work Well, this was interesting. Thank

Malcolm Collins: you.

Simone Collins: And I love you a lot.

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: gotta go take care of this noodle.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you so much. I’m sorry you got a a cry baby there. He’s

Simone Collins: [00:34:00] gassy.

He’s a gassy giant.

Malcolm Collins: And as you say, like I feel, I do agree that I think communism and stuff like that is gonna come back to the left. And I think one of the things they’re gonna be surprised about a lot of people on the right is we’re like, well, I mean was ai It could work. Yeah. I mean, AI really is probably gonna take most jobs.

We should be looking at how we’re gonna, economically speaking. Yeah.

Simone Collins: All right. I’m gonna go help him fart. I love you. Love you too. I’ll see you downstairs later. Bye. Bye.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, just go for it. All right, let’s have a look here. It’s being weird for me. Sorry.

Simone Collins: Oh, what am I making you for dinner, by the way. Oh, we have one more night that curry. I was thinking maybe some kind of

Malcolm Collins: your enchiladas are always really good if you make them with something like this. Taquitos.

Simone Collins: Is it okay if I do taquitos with mozzarella?

‘cause we, we only have American cheese and mozzarella left. We don’t have any.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that works. But I, you’ve gotta cut what’s in it. Into smaller pieces if you’re doing taquitos, because it’s pretty big chunks in this one.

Simone Collins: Okay, then I, I will, I will finally chop it [00:35:00] hands in. Gloves?

Malcolm Collins: Yes, you will put your hands in chain mail because I do not want another finger coming off.

I am sorry Simone, that I am such a strict task master as a husband. The ketos we’re good to go. I’ll, I’ll do it.

Fight the Titan? No. Why does Titan have to fight us? Titan? Why a b***h or no? Toasty? I’m trying Torsten. She’s trying to help your sister. What do you Torsten? Torsten? No. What do you think mommy is doing? How do you think that makes me feel buddy? Look like the twin us. In what way Get you dressed and warm for outside, buddy.

Simone Collins: Oh, excuse me. Why would you do this? Excuse me. I don’t think that’s trying to tricky take, take a picture of You look great, buddy. I, yeah, you look very. See I wanna swipe your hair to the side, oc.[00:36:00]

Yes, you. Oh, Torson, what is the trick that you think that we’re playing on you? The trick that are playing on us is putting evil socks that, and putting evil shirts on us. But these are just regular shorts and socks that you need for like life. Torson. What the, can you put your boots on please?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe