"Don't Understand...What Socialism Is": Yale Students on Capitalism; Georgetown's Jason Brennan on Young People and Socialism

In the first Pod and Man at Yale episode of the fall semester, Will Flanigan '27, Hilda Barragan-Reyes '26, and Stephen Morris '27 discuss free markets, capitalism, and Zohran Mamdani:

• Hilda Barragan-Reyes: “I think people don’t necessarily disagree with the premise that capitalism is the best system. I think they often don’t understand what capitalism is and what socialism is.”
• Stephen Morris: “I do think many people have a sense of guilt in that there’s a lot of factors beyond our control that affect how we got into Yale or what careers our parents had, and I think part of the instinct toward Socialism or toward interventionist policies in an economy is seeking either to rectify that or to rectify the guilt that people have about that.” 
• Will Flanigan: “People support socialism vocally because they want to be perceived as caring…at the same time they want to make a lot of money and be seen as very effective and hard working.”

Georgetown University's Jason Brennan looks at why the socialism appeals to the young and the misconceptions that have made socialism so popular:

• Brennan: “Groups will get some power and make decisions. Those decisions will have bad ramifications for everybody but people almost never blame the outcomes on the people who make those decisions.”
• Brennan: “Especially after the pandemic, the U.S. government spent a lot of money. Governments around the world spent a lot of money. They restricted supply because of how COVID works. And all of a sudden our money is worth less and there’s inflation. And people are like, who could have predicted that?”
• Brennan: “The profit motive actually gets people to act. People are frankly, they’re just not that altruistic. They like to claim they are…but they’re not.” 
• Brennan: “In the 20th century, we experimented with two fundamental ways of living. About 90 countries went capitalist and about 90 countries went socialist. Capitalism went 90 for 90. Socialism went 0 for 90.” 

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