Ben Shapiro

And for people who don't understand free markets and don't understand capitalism, that's always an easy pitch because we live in a very, very prosperous time.

We are richer than any human beings in the history of mankind.

And so we tend to think that the natural state of things is being rich.

Again, if you took a person from 1800 and dropped them into modern American society, they would not know what is going on.

They would think that they dropped into materialist heaven because you can get anything you want at the press of a button delivered to your door with a magic device you hold in your hand.

And that thing was sourced from 70 different countries.

And you can do it affordably.

I know people talk about affordability.

And again, affordability is a malleable term because no one ever considers anything truly affordable.

But let's just put it this way.

Back in 1800, an hour of candlelight might have cost you several hours of work during the day because you had to go get wax or you had to go get whale oil.

Okay, today, electricity is free.

You flick on a light and it just stays on all day and you don't even think about it.

Because capitalism makes things better and it makes things cheaper.

But also because of that, we tend to not understand how capitalism works.

So when something fails, we blame, quote unquote, the system.

But we never allow the system, meaning free markets, credit for the success.

You want to know why it is cheap to fly coast to coast?

And it is, by the way, comparatively.

Look at the percentage of income people had to spend on an air ticket in 1960 versus the percentage of income that you have to spend on an air ticket today.