#441 – Cenk Uygur: Trump vs Harris, Progressive Politics, Communism & Capitalism
Episode publishedPodcast: Lex Fridman PodcastLex Fridman Podcast
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The following is a conversation with Ceng Uygur, a progressive political commentator and host of the Young Turks. As I've said before, I will speak with everyone, including on the left and the right of the political spectrum, always in good faith with empathy, rigor, and backbone. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I say stupid, inaccurate, ineloquent things, and I frequently change my mind as I'm learning and thinking about the world. For all this, I often get attacked, sometimes fairly, sometimes not. But just know that I'm aware when I fall short, and I will keep trying to do better. I love you al
So in order to do that, Lex, we gotta, talk about where we are in the political spectrum. And, in fact, there's 2 different, spectrums now. People often think of left, right, and that's true. That exists. But layered on top of that is now populist versus establishment. So I'm center left on the left right spectrum, but I'm all the way on that populist end of of the second spectrum. Mhmm. So where does progressivism lie within that? Well, I would argue that it's exactly in those places. It's populist, and it's on the left, but it is not far left. So far left is a different animal. And we could
There's a lot of questions I can ask there. So on the circle of liberty, yes. So expanding the number of people whose freedoms are protected. But what about the magnitude of freedom for each individual person? So, expanding the freedom of the individual and protecting the freedoms of the individual. It seems like progressives are more willing to expand the size of government, where government can do all kinds of regulation, all kinds of controls in the individual.
So, Lex, what we're probably gonna talk about a lot today is balance. And so, a lot of people think, oh, I I'm on the right. I'm on the left. And that comes with a certain preset ideology. So the right is always correct. The left is always correct. So there's 2 problems with that. Number 1, how could you possibly believe in a preset ideology if you're an independent thinker? It's literally, by definition, not possible. If you say I lent my brain to an ideology that was created 80 years ago or 8 years ago or an 8 800 years ago, and I'm not gonna change it, you're saying, I don't think for mysel
So that's an interesting distinction here. So you're actually, as far as I understand, pro capitalism Yes. Which is an interesting place to be. That's the thing that probably makes you center left and then still populous. You're you're full of, beautiful contradictions, let's say this, which will be great to untangle. But what's the difference between corporatism and capitalism? Is there a difference So
I I really believe in capitalism. I I don't think that there's really a second choice. The where it gets super interesting is the distinction between capitalism and socialism because that's not at all as clear as people think it is. And people often say socialism and communism as synonyms when they're not synonyms. Right? And so I view it as there's basically 4, distinct areas. It's obviously a spectrum. Everything is a spectrum. Right? On one end, you have communism on the left, and on the other end, you have corporatism on the right. Okay? And I would argue that capitalism is in the middle.
That's actually a really interesting way to put it because when everyone is equal, nobody is in power, And human nature is such that there's everybody's there's a will to power. So when you create a power vacuum, somebody's going to to fill it. So the alternative is to have people in power, but there's a balance of power. An
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