687. May Day vs. Market Day: Why We Should Celebrate Free Markets Instead of Socialism

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. So by the time this episode airs, well, right now, as I'm recording, it is a cold, it is freezing on the East Coast, like colder than it's been since like 1989.

It is snowy, there's snow everywhere, but by the time this episode airs, it will be May and it will be warm, hopefully, and sunny outside. And I want to talk about what is celebrated May 1st, because it is a holiday, technically not when you get school off from or work off from, which is kind of funny because in a minute I'll explain what it is, but it is May Day is what it's called and it's not when ships or planes are going down or whenever you hear people go like May Day, May Day in the movies. That is not the kind of May Day we're talking about.

May Day is a very uncreative name because it's just what they celebrate May 1st. So that is that is May Day. So May Day is a holiday that's that celebrates the worker, it celebrates, you know, labor, it celebrates, you know, the the oppressed people.

And I say that in, you know, scare quotes because it's a very socialist holiday with origins that happened in like the 1880s. And I've talked about this before when I talked about Henry Ford and how great he was voluntarily raising minimum wages, things like that. But the the 1800s, this period of time is going to be very wrought with you like you're going to see the union movement.

You're going to see the labor movement. You're going to see people getting upset because at this time, this is where like the self made man in America is really going to manifest. This concept of the American dream is really it's always been there, but it's really going to come to to fruition, as they say, because you're going to see people like, you know, John D. Rockefeller go from, you know, living with a mom who was basically single because the father wasn't around much and, you know, not very rich to being one of the richest men in the country because he not because he, you know, inherited wealth or whatever, which that's not necessarily bad, but because he built himself into something he studied and he applied himself.

And you're going to see this happen a lot more. And so you're going to see this this era of a lot of wealth. You're right before the 1880s is going to be the Gilded Age.

And that's again, you're going to see all this. It's going to be this interesting time of new money versus old money. I did an episode on this a little bit ago where you have the people who did inherit great wealth and maybe they inherited it because their ancestors came over.

And, you know, even as indentured servants and raised themselves up socioeconomically back in, you know, 16, 1700s. And so even though it's inherited wealth, a lot of them are self-made as well. But you're going to have them versus this this new entrepreneurial wealth.

And it's very exciting. But what happened with that? Well, because all of a sudden you have this entrepreneurial wealth, these people starting businesses and they hire people. And that's amazing.

That's how the economy works. That's all the free market works. You're going to see workers start to get very mad because they're going to say, why is this guy rich when I'm working all day long in, you know, and I am toiling and I'm not making as much as they are like this isn't fair.

That guy isn't working. He's sitting up in his office all day. I should be working and or I should be sorry.

I should be the rich one. I should be making as much as him. And this is going to come in to this labor movement where you're going to see unions start to form with collective bargaining.

Unions are basically people are going to join unions and the unions are going to bully employers into paying, paying their people a certain amount, you know, shortening workdays, things like this, things that can happen voluntarily. Henry Ford is a perfect example of this. We did an episode on that a little bit ago.

So go back and find that one if you haven't. So you're going to go from. You're going to see two two polar opposites here, you're going to see people who proved that the market could improve working conditions, and then you're going to see these these union people who were like, no, we need force.

And it did come by force. It got violent. I mean, the union, the labor movement, they were starting they were starting like riots in the street.

There was one day and this is actually I think I'm going to make sure I'm reading this correctly. So it was May 1st, 1886, where the workers across the U.S. went on strike demanding an eight hour workday. Workdays were longer.

And I want to say this. That's not necessarily a bad thing. You know, eight hour workdays, that's fine.

But every employer could have decided that on their own and they could have worked one on one with their employees and saying, how long, you know, what work do you want to do? What are your hours? That could have happened. But the market wasn't allowed to adjust for that. And the unions were like, OK, well, we're going to make sure this happens.

And there were there were, you know, riots in Chicago. It was called the Haymarket Affair. That's May 4th, though, where there was a bomb thrown into a crowd during a rally and then the policemen fired into the crowd.

So it's just this chaos. It's this violent chaos. And this is what May Day is supposed to be celebrating.

May Day is looking at this as like this this liberation of the worker, this day of workers rights, this day when the unions, you know, overcame capitalism. And, you know, that's that's the United States history. But May Day is kind of a widespread socialist holiday that's going to be celebrated all over the globe.

It's going to be sometimes people call it International Workers Day. And it's something that's become like I said, like you don't really hear anybody in America talking about it as much as you, you know, for for as much as it is a holiday. You do get a couple posts from, you know, your local neighborhood socialists.

But this is this is what May Day is. This is what May 1st is. But it's so funny to me that this is something people celebrate when in reality, I think, you know, we should we should reframe it a little bit and maybe celebrate Market Day instead.

And and I don't want to say take back the holiday, because that sounds like we're trying to be violent or something. But no, take back. Take back the holiday.

Let's let's reframe what it actually means. One thing that socialists, I think, misunderstand about those of us who are free market is they think we hate the worker or something when a lot of us are workers. A lot of us are employees.

You know, not everybody is an entrepreneur and that's not everybody should be an entrepreneur because there are certain specializations or certain things. You know, the Miraculous Pencil, the Tattletwins book, we it shows us that we need people cutting down the you know, the the wood that is going to make the pencil and people working in a rubber factory. You need all these components.

But demonizing, you know, the man, as they call it, the the the people who start businesses, the entrepreneurs are so silly because a worker, yes, is working very hard. But that entrepreneur put his own money on the line or her money on the line and risked everything to see if a business would succeed. And most businesses don't succeed.

So there's a lot of risk that the business owner takes that, you know, the workers don't take. But that doesn't mean the workers aren't important. That doesn't mean those of us who don't like the socialist holiday are saying, oh, we hate workers because a lot of us are.

But let's talk about what May Day means. May Day represents the socialist belief that, you know, your job belongs to society because your individuality doesn't matter. OK, it means that the government should control working conditions and the government should control what's fair.

The government is the least fair entity in the entire world. They never have been. So the government should not be inserting itself into the workday at all.

And again, I don't want that to mean that I think working conditions were great back in the day. Yes, there were things that probably weren't great. Freedom is not perfect, but it's a lot better than socialism or these different ideologies that seek to control people.

Liberty is a little bit messy, and that's OK, because we err on the side of giving people the most individual freedom and the most opportunities to correct that mistake. And that can happen. You know, people can work with their employer and say, you know, this is the value that I'm creating for you.

I would really like to, you know, have a raise or I would like to make more money. And when we see people like Henry Ford, who, you know, he saw the workers were leaving because they felt like they weren't getting paid enough or, you know, they're they felt like they were working too much for minimal reward or the, you know, some of the machines may have been hazardous. And so he said, OK, I'm going to voluntarily raise that minimum wage and then I'm going to show my employees that it's worth taking a risk.

And when he was able to keep employees longer because they were getting paid more, but they were also taking their jobs more seriously, they were getting trained, they're becoming more skilled. And so it solved a lot of problems. And so that's the kind of free market working environment that we know is possible.

And that May Day demonizes, right, because they think the market is automatically bad because, no, we are we are one society. And you're you know, the whole point of the entire life is to forget your individual. I can't speak to that, guys.

Forget your individuality and opt towards the socialist, collectivist idea. So what if instead this year we celebrate Market Day on May 1st? We celebrate how great it is that people can choose what job they go to, that if they don't like what one employer pays or the work days or the workload, they can go somewhere else that they have the opportunity to do that. And they do that because of the free market, that if they don't want to work for an employer at all, they can start a business.

They can take that risk. And who knows, maybe it'll be so successful that people can trade goods and services and and create value for other people and most importantly, earn money. They can they can earn the money to improve their situation, to support their family, and then to keep the rewards, to keep the fruit of their own labor, to keep that money minus the taxation we have to pay.

But in a perfect world, keep keep more of it than you could under extreme socialism. So when you hear if you hear anyone talking about May Day and talking about, you know, how great labor unions are and how we needed unions to, you know, rein in these evil corporations that were stifling workers rights. You know, remember that market day that this new holiday I'm inventing today celebrates the opposite.

It celebrates how great the free market is and even creating job opportunities to begin with. So I will leave it there. Hope you guys are enjoying the sunshine by the time that this episode airs.

I'm hoping I'm I'm living for that sunshine right now in my 18 degree weather, but we will leave it there. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, I will talk to you later.