Sam Seder vs Libertarian Professor Walter Block (Full Debate) 

DEBATE TALK TIME LOG: -Final talk time: 19:28(Sam) - 33:03(Walter) -Final talk time(%): 37%(Sam) - 63%(Walter) Log: Talk time: 3:00(Sam) - 6:00(walter) Walter complains of interrupting Talk time: 5:40(Sam) - 10:30(walter) Walter complains of interrupting Talk time: 6:54(Sam) - 12:32(Walter) Walter complains of interrupting Talk time: 7:04(Sam) - 13:51(Walter) Walter apologises for interrupting Talk time: 8:08(Sam) - 14:33(Walter) Walter complains of interrupting Talk time: 9:52(Sam) - 17:48(Walter) Walter complains of interrupting Talk time: 12:19(Sam) - 18:22(Walter) Walter: "you've just gone on for 5 mins" (actual time = 2:30 mins) Walter: "we're supposed to share" (walter is currently talking 50% more than sam) (Walter then talks for 4:50 mins) Talk time: 13:40(Sam) - 23:26(Walter) Walter complains of interrupting Talk time: 14:19(Sam) - 24:53(Walter) Walter: "it's really hard to get a word in edgewise with you" Talk time: 14:21(Sam) - 25:23(Walter) Walter: "if you time how much we talk for, I think you'd have more time" (walter is nearly doubling Sams talk time at this point - reality is difficult for libertarians) Final talk time: 19:28(Sam) - 33:03(Walter)

Sam: Well, you're not answering my question. Walter: And I'm not going to. -This Debate, A Summary.

This guy is insane. He speaks for nearly all the time but thinks he is not being allowed to speak

This guy's debate strategy: go on and on for so long that your debate opponent forgets most of the various different points you rambled onto, then go in a fuss when he tries to point out a wrong statement you made, then interrupt him 10 seconds after you just whined about him interrupting you.

wow this guy with his obsession with interrupting, when he talks on and on and on repeating himself. Then sam talks for a couple minutes and he bitches he's not getting enough time. so irritating. Sam has the patience of a saint here.

"The number 6 is greater than the number 0." -Walter Block

Is Walter Block actually a real person, or is it Michael Brooks playing a character?

No interrupting = "let me drone on forever about my theories so you never have a chance to respond with facts"

I really thought “finally a libertarian PROFESSOR, this is gonna be more intelligent than the discussions with the other libertarians”. But ... wow

Rewatching this gem. “The real-world data is highly problematic for the theory” 😐 So...maybe you have a bad theory?

Block:"Do you agree that 2 is less than 4" Sam:"Yes" Walter: "Well, then you agree we should use child labor" *Nailed It*

"compulsory bisexuality" oh my goodness.

if you play chess and your opponent makes an illegal move, you are in fact allowed to interrupt

The simple answer to Walter Scott's first 20 minutes of rambling is that workers are, in aggregate, not paid their marginal productivity anymore. So if you raise the minimum wage, it would not result in layoffs because those workers would still be profitable to employ.

The crucial question should be: What is the point of a job you can't live on?

This guy is a definitive example of how being a professor does not mean you’re actually intelligent

Why do libertarians always look like they just walked out of a multi-decade Dungeons and Dragons campaign?

This professor has alleviated me from all guilt at not having attained a degree from an institution of supposed higher learning.

"You've gone on for about 5 minutes" "Well it's my show" "But we're supposed to share!" Is this guy supposed to be a Libertarian? Since when do Libertarians want people to share things that belong to them?

This shows once and for all that one can be a professor and still be a big time derphead.

(Walter denies emperical data) "Okay, fine. What is the value of a market in which people cannot live?"-Sam "I'm not going to answer that, but which number is higher, 2 or 4?"-Walter I think even when I was a Libertarian, I would have had the integrity to acknowledge Walter as a condescending and obnoxious piece of shit

"Sam, what's a bigger number, 1 or 0?" "1, obviously." "Sam, i it better to have shelter or not to have shelter?" "To have shelter, of course." "Sam, is it better to have food or to starve?" "To have food!" "So a slave who has shelter that he isn't paying for our of pocket and who is fed is in a better situation than a free black who has none of those things, even if his wage is $0.00 per hour." Libertarianism, folks.

Good lord, this guy Block is absolutely insufferable, in addition to being a complete lunatic.

"Which number is higher: 4 or 2" This guy is a tenured professor -_-

SHUT UP - I'M MAKING A STRAWMAN HERE!

"The market doesn't give you wages, what gives you wages is productivity!" That's complete non-sense. If the MW had kept up with productivity over the past 40 years it would be about $21/hour now. The reason it isn't is that the extra value of that productivity has gone to the most wealthy sectors of society because of changes in "the market" granted by changes in policy.

I’m pretty sure this guy talked twice as much as Sam.

Such a tragedy that we no longer have elevator operators being paid $0.40 an hour.

Imagine how cathartic a moderator would be. "Professor, your time is up..."

The fact that he keeps bringing up how Sam is "interrupting" him is a sign of weakness. He knows his points are being shattered and he just panics. Classic pathetic libertarians. They want to believe in their fantasy land and freak out when people start pointing out how flawed it is.

This guy is allegedly a professor of economics and yet he uses the same laughable arguments as a 13 year old neckbeard.

😂😂😂 ahhhh this is where the "HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY" soundbite comes from in the DJ Danarchy break song! 😂😂😂

Walter always assumes that the employer always pays what the employee is worth. No, employers want to pay as little as possible. The thing is that Block is from the Austrian school of economics which doesn't care about empirical evidence. It's based on logical syllogistic thinking. The problem with that is that something which sounds true in theory doesn't necessarily have to match with empirical reality.

Professor Block is so adept at the Gish Gallop that he won't let Sam speak even when he was being directly queried. In one of Block's ramblings, he asked 5 questions in a row, and when Sam tried to answer a question to make sure Block's tirade wasn't getting ahead of itself, Block says Sam is interrupting. Intellectual dishonesty by overwhelming the opposing views with unanswered, presupposed argumentations.

My hat off to you Sam Seder for having patience with this guy. You showed amazing restraint with Professor Walter Block, who was absolutely insufferable. There was something seriously wrong with his social skills. He would totally fly off the handle for the times interruptions that were entirely sensible. The interruption itself lasted shorter time, than his complaints about the interruptions. Ironically Sam did not need to talk very much to prove that libertarians are serious weirdos. I've talked to libertarians myself on multiple occasions as well as as other people on the political fringes such as communists. But I seriously think libertarians must be the people most disconnected from reality and with the most bizarre social skills. They remind me of the difference between a lawyer and a moral philosopher. The confuse the law with morality.

"You have to be careful with that empirical stuff" -Libertarian

Professor somehow presuposes that workers productivity is how much his employer is willing to pay him.I believe this is a very big mistake. There is no such thing as "his productivity is 6,7,that is his salary,therefore if you raise it to 8 he will be fired". If a worker is payed 10 dollars an hour,chances are he earns at least 20 dolars for his employer.Workers productivity should be measured in profits,not how much an employeer is willing to pay,as every employeer is going to offer lowest possible salaries,in order to achieve greatest profits. Yes minimum wage thing is going to cut huge profits,but are we supposed to have economy for the people or for the 1 percent?

Productivity, productivity, productivity .... if I am "$6.50 productive" they will fire me if I cost $6.75 ...but if my productivity goes up several times over in the last 30 years (like it actually has) and the corporations just keep all the extra 'productivity profits' and continues to pay me at the wages they paid me 30 years ago (like they do all workers today in real terms) then it's time to level the playing field, because your stupid 'Laissez-faire market place' is broken as hell.

$6 > $0, but what's the difference? Those are both starvation wages, the only difference being with $6 dollars an hour you might only starve to death in several months as opposed to several weeks with $0 wage.

I feel for his students

Don't major in Economics at Loyola University.

This guy is a professor?? At a University?? "HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY.....SHUT UP" With all this talk about minimum wage....they need to talk about the intellectual standards of certain universities....

Is it me or does Mr Block appear to be a five year old with an adults voice?

The part near the end where Sam points out that Corporations can't go to jail. Absolutely unravels the heart of the myth of the concept behind free association

"Being shot in the head twice is better than 6 times! I win!"

This guy is making this assumption that everyone is paid according to their productivity. Isn’t paying people less than they produce what makes capitalism capitalism?

Listening to this professor is a real test of patience. If you can make it the whole "debate" you are pretty good

- "Do you agree that 6 > 0?" - "Yes" - "Then I won the debate."

Every time I watch a new video with Sam debating a Libertarian, I keep thinking I'm no longer going to be shocked by the irrational logic, but man every time I am wrong......so so wrong. I did not think there was a party that existed that is even crazier than the hard-right GOP.

"$6 dollars an hour is better than nothing" - Walter Block: A Professor

Poor Sam. This is going like most discussions I've had with a libertarian: they give a long rambling description that amounts to "Supply and demand" Then you say, "right, I got it but there seem to be more market forces at work here because if you look at the data..." Then they cut you off to say: "No I don't think you understand what I'm saying" and then repeat their supply & demand example in more torturous detail. "See it costs more to pay someone $10/hour than $7/hour because 10 is greater than 7 so Joe the shop keeper is going to try to cut his staff if he has to pay them more because it's more expensive (remember 10 is greater than 7)... so that means fewer people will be employed which is..." Libertarian must be Latin for overly impressed with trivial concepts.

This is a masterclass in discipline from Sam

I was laughing so hard I fart when he started talking about bisexuals not discriminating.

"Well, the emperical data is problematic. Just focus on the logic of it." - Libertarianism in sum

Block: "Sam, you keep interrupting me telling me to answer the question. Let me waste time and spend the next two minutes minutes to complain about you interrupting me rather than answering the question."

It seems to be a consistent defect in the intelligence of libertarians that they cannot see two feet in front of them when the solution requires being able to see what is just beyond the horizon. This "professor" is a classic example. (I hope the board of trustees at Loyola realize they could outsource his position to Mumbai for 10 cents on the dollar and get much better productivity and intellectual content). I am surprised Sam did not point out the obvious flaw in the professor's grand theory that 6 is better than nothing. Sam talked all around the point but never got to it. Walmart is the empirical evidence of what happens when you suppress wages and take advantage of people trapped such that this is their best option. That is real world and quantifiable. The point is there is COST TRANSFERENCE. So, as an underprivileged person who can only wash the professor's car at 6 bucks an hour, when it cost $20 an hour to live, I turn to welfare or crime to make up the difference. So in order for the professor to profit from his enterprise, everyone has to pay taxes to fund welfare, build prisons, pay for an ever growing police state, and pay for public defenders to ward protect the professor's assets from the serfs. Then there is the emotional cost of dealing with the victims of the crime which is directly attributable to the crime wave. The flaw in this ignoramus professor's and all libertarians of his ilk is they think they arel not affected by this cost transference, and they live in the illusion that the cost of the police state is other peoples problems. Meanwhile the Waltons are feudal kings over 2 continents and their business model that crushes competition and lowers wages so there is ever shrinking economic activity as they suck up huge portions of the world's capital and labor resources into their libertarian tax free offshore banks. They pass on the costs of keeping the roads paved, ports dredged and operational, security forces to protect their inventory as it travels from third world countries to Bubba Oklahoma, and their work force marginally fed enough to ring up the cash registers and stock shelves to everyone else. Welcome to Libertania America.,

No offense, but this Dr. Block is insane. How do you conflate sexual orientation and legal commerce? How do you say "your living conditions are shit but hey at least you have $6 and not 0"?... (How do you mess up subject verb agreement and treat minimum wage a plural noun?) forgetting about that last point it just goes to show you can be really privileged and intelligent and have a high IQ and still be completely misguided, out of touch and even dangerous.

Made it to 34:00 Sam Seder has the patience and willpower of a god

sam: "living wage" economics professor: "what did you call it? living wage?"

And this man is an actual college professor?

Amazing that Block argues that the wage someone gets is in accordance to their productivity.

He's comparing orientation, which isn't a choice, to discrimination? I would've hung up.

The one substantive value this Professor did bring to the table was to show how silly it is to hyper focus on "interruptions" in a debate setting. For that, I truly thank you.

"Hey hey hey hey hey hey!"

Fine...3 cents is better than 0. Does that seem like a good wage? This dude walter block is grasping.

This guy has a completely unrealistic view of the world. When poor people are working 50-60 hours a week, how on earth do they get the opportunity to meet a different employer who might pay them more? How does he think this works? Employers just go to other businesses to fish for employees? No. what happens is employers (usually) figure out that their employee is stuck and needs the job to eat/survive/pay bills, and not only is the employee unable to find time to schedule an interview for a different job, but even if he/she did, they would have no reference from their current employer. What these people don't get is that ANY time you make a person choose between their own profit and treating someone beneath themselves decently, personal profit will ALWAYS WIN. Also, if an employee is not working well enough to make at least minimum wage, get a new employee instead of paying them less than need to survive. "Better than $0" is a crap argument when it prevents a person from getting a better job or help otherwise.

At 8:07 his argument falls apart when he mistakenly suggests that wages are connected to productivity. This is where classic economic theory has fell apart since 1980. Yet these economists want to keep regurgitating this out like it is a fact.

"..the real world empirical data is highly problematic..." Gee I'm increasingly convinced that the Libertarian mindset is equivalent to that of the second grader.

The libertarian personality is one that, I'd argue, is more attracted to principles and axioms than most people. Why? I think the personality is basically insecure and so is attracted to the certainty that principles and axioms can provide. The general distrust of institutions -- except for the market (but they don't really see the market as an institution but as individuals pursuing self interest) -- I'd interpret as a distrust of authority and where does that distrust come from? Experience. What experience? What experience with authority do young people have? Parents, teachers, even the de facto "authority" of social groups at school. So, it is no coincidence that the focus of the libertarian mentality is "no one can tell me what to do." In my own arguments with two different libertarians, each insisted (one to the point of using all caps and probably screaming at his computer as he wrote to me) that their economic arguments regarding the minimum wage issue were not controversial among economists but were "established science". See the irony here? The profound distrust and fear of authority of institutions -- which are a social phenomenon and something they have no control over -- versus the authority of "science" or a priori facts, Randian objectivism (which has long been debunked by science). Notice how frequently Block refers to axioms. Axioms are fine if they really are not controversial and established science, but this is where things get murky and where ironically, belief takes over fact. Ultimately, at the core here is a belief system -- that the axioms are not to be questioned or nuanced or contextualized, that they are dogmatic, truth -- and so, like any fundamentalist interpretation of facts or phenomena, the emphasis is not on evidence or even a recognition that the facts or phenomena can be understood in more than one way, but on the fundamental dogma. It's the dogma that matters, the righteous belief that there is only interpretation of facts -- theirs -- and everyone else is an infidel. And this is why critics of libertarianism sometimes compare it with religion.

The idea that anyone's "productivity" can be objectively measured as a dollar amount is fucking ludicrous. How can a man who thinks people with low "productivity" should starve and die on the street claim that his ideology is more ethical?

me before: it's professor, so this one might actually be able to address sam's criticism and have a mature discussion the video: HEY HEY

Supply-side economics is just a way for employers to have the power vs the workers. When workers get more money, they by more things & thus the companies have to produce more of those things & hire more people to make those more things!

"it's really hard to get a word in edgewise with you" Says the man who got the most speaking time.

I have absolutely no idea how Sam is this patient.

"well it IS my show" "Sam.. we're suppose to share" ... Not very Libertarian of him :P

Who is this guy? "Please don't interrupt me"

Now I’m convinced this guy has the maturity and intellect of a child. He gives me hope that I too can become a professor some day with a bar that low.

Walter Block might literally be a 5th grader in a grown man's body.

Yessss I've heard the famous "hey hey hey hey shut up" 😂😂😂😂😂😂 omg this professor is like a child

I love the way Sam tries to keep him actually on topic.

Both the elevator operator and the full service gas station attendant are incorrectly cited as examples of lost jobs due to their employers not wanting to pay a higher wage. Neither were necessary employees to start with. They had no necessity in the first place. They were both employed as status symbols. They lost their jobs due to changing mores, not changing salaries. Building operators wanted to make their guests feel rich, so they hired elevator operators to do a function that was built into the elevator. No operator was ever needed. Not when they were operated by lever, and not when operated by button. You'll note extremely luxurious building (Trump Tower, anyone?) still use them. It isn't because Donald Trump can't figure out how to jab a finger onto a button. Elevator operators went away in most buildings because people became less comfortable with them, and didn't demand them. So yes, cost benefit came into play, but it would have been too high a cost at .25 an hour. Nobody wanted elevator operators anymore. In the case of the gas station attendant, we had this thing called the gas shortage in the 70s. And that's what caused the decline in attended stations v self-service. Once people got used to self-service, they didn't want them back. And frankly, who misses them? Gas companies encouraged drivers to feel pampered. But the big gas companies don't own many gas stations anymore, they're owned by independent operators or chain stores. Most money is made in the convenience stores attached. So why would Town and Country or 7-11 hire attendants? They wouldn't hire them at minimum wage, they wouldn't hire them for a dime. They don't need or want them. And people mostly don't miss them. On the other hand, you can get a job working the counter of the 7-11 overnight, when gas stations used to be closed. So there's that. We had a full service station in Augusta for a while. They didn't get enough business and closed. Not enough people wanted, or were comfortable with, full service gas stations. It's faster to swipe my card, fill up, and drive away. Done and done. And I don't have to tip the electronic pump.

Just in case you missed it the first time, here's the greatest batch of blithering Libertarian insanity that's ever been on the show. Enjoy!

38:09 This is what you're more than likely here for.

Looking back at this I can see how Sam has become far more adept at arguing against positions like Professor Block's. Block assumes a strict connection between what he calls 'productivity level' and wages, a connection which exists in theory, but not in the real-world.

Instructive that Libertarians and NeoCons alike are desperately interested in fixing all of the issues and problems at the very bottom of the economic system but everything at the top is working just fine apparently. Who knew?

The idea that all employers pay their staff based on productivity is ridiculous. Most will pay their staff the minimum they can get away with!

Imagine being a professor and training in ideas so divorced from reality. Don't get me wrong, when I did my degrees I flirted with immature theories, but over time I learned to reign them in. Moreover, Sam talks for 10 seconds, the guy interjects for 4 minutes of abstract nonsense, Sam tries to get a word in and gets told he's interrupting. If you're going to request no interruptions, don't speak for such protracted periods of time. Then the guy complains when Sam has a short monologue outlining Block's position, with which he doesn't even disagree. If the guy is in total agreement with everything you've said, he's not entitled to start a rebuttal. Block's behaviour indicates that he's not looking for a dialogue, but for a pacified host that will give a platform to his theories. I try to be respectful of people who think differently, but this guy is simply not an honest actor. He is a charlatan churning out ideological justifications for horrific inequality.

I stopped writing "my productivity is $10 an hour" years ago. It let me sneak into a $20 an hour job. plus I learned that if I do a task worth $50 an hour my productivity magically goes up! Amazing! The professor is whack; real people don't work the way his theory assumes.

“We assume as an axiom that wages equal productivity” So you’re both empirically wrong and begging the question, professor...

HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY, I finally found where this came from 38:10

I love how he just rambles incoherently from assertion to assertion and gets mad that Sam's "interrupting" him every time Sam tries to interject a point or ask a question, then this "economics professor" goes "THE NUMBER SIX IS GREATER THAN THE NUMBER ZERO, SIX IS GREATER THAN ZERO, HURRRP A DURRP A DUUUUUURRRRRR"

Just listened to this debate. This guy actually is given the responsibility to teach our youth?? I wish I had the talent you have to respond so quickly with the correct information to allow every to see how ridiculous his ideas & flawed theory is. I know immediately. Thanks Sam. I wouldn't pay this guy to clean out my garage.

I very much like Walter Block. I very much agree with Walter Block. I don't agree with Mr. Seder on much. I say that to say this. Mr. Seder was extraordinarily gracious in the face of Block's obnoxiousness. Maybe Block was having a bad day. But kudos to Sam for his manners and dignity.

Poverty is violence and coercion, Block is silly

Sounds like this guy would Sue someone for not allowing him to date them

In a laisse faire economy your civil rights are Governed not by society, but by the amount of money you have. Sure the rich and morally unbound are going to agree, but where does that leave everyone else? Of course people are going to lose their jobs to automation when automation becomes competitive, and that's okay, we don't have to do that menial work anymore, we can get machines to do it. Society as a whole becomes more productive when we spend more time working on abstract concepts and less time on menial labor. If nobody has to work for their meal because food is so cheap, those people would be free to formulate on more complicated problems. Even if those people are unable to contribute to society in the form of innovation, they could at least help determine what society wants by means of how they spend their money. If they spend a large amount of their income on quality clothing, the people want quality clothing and it gives them motivation to strive for automating the process of manufacturing in the textile industry. This is turn establishes what priority should be taken in automation and innovation, by giving society as a whole economic power, directs innovators as to where innovation would be most valued. The purpose of trade is to change, not rely on methods that work good enough, if a small group of people hold all the money, they might consider it good enough, but society as a whole won't. They might consider washing cars by hand good enough, but people without cars, the ones washing the cars, won't. Also I like how he says "happily employed at minimum wage" in the relative sense, they're not happy, happier than an unemployed broke person yes, happier than average, no. This is arguing that the solution to having no job is having a shitty dangerous job which still leaves you in poverty, wasting your time in a dead end, go nowhere career, what a glorious solution. This idea is dependent upon the idea that productivity can't increase, or that the amount of output people can achieve should be held to the same standard as the naturally gifted. "Learning on the job is more important" Yeah, because learning the repetitive task of sweeping floors or pushing buttons on an elevator all day is going to make a doctor eventually. How many generations is that going to take though? People don't live forever, performing repetitive tasks and hoping for a change was a pretty intelligent man's definition of insanity.

Just listened to this again. This moron is hilarious. - Answer my question please? - No, let me ask YOU a question. Which.. - Hold on. I want you to answer my question first. - HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY SHUT UP! I HAVE SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT TO SAY!!! - *sigh* OK, go on.. - Now.. which number is higher, six or zero? - *sigh*

Wow! This guy is obnoxious and it's so sad that he's a professor. I feel sad for his students.

Has anyone else noticed that libertariens all throughout the years whenever Sam makes a really rational point they all pretend they cant hear him for like 10 seconds and then say phones gone out or theres dead air, or they just go flat silent ? lmao

His argument for removing the minimum wage: companies can pay less than the current minimum wage so other companies can come in and still pay you less than the current minimum wage, while making it seem like they’ve done you a favor.