Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson. We're moving to one

interview per week, released on Mondays, and a compilation podcast surrounding interesting topics

on Thursdays. In this episode, we investigate the principle set forth by Velfredo Perrito,

an economist born in 1848, which specifies that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes,

asserting an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs. This principle serves as a general

reminder that the relationship between inputs and outputs is not balanced. The Perrito principle

is also known as the Perrito Rule, the 8020 Rule, or the Matthew principle. That often uses the

principle to demonstrate the harsh reality that inequality is not a simple issue, and therefore

has no simple answer. The final section of the podcast is taken from Dad's 2019 lecture titled

The Deeper the Abyss, the Brighter the Light. And it makes up a long section towards the end of

the episode. Please note that even though it moves away from the direct discussion of the principle,

the remaining section of the lecture is how we can move forward, now that we can see the

Perrito principle at play, I hope you enjoy this episode.

The system in Russia, the Soviet Union, which was a collection of states, an empire, and the

system that Mao established in China, and the system that still exists in Korea as a remnant

of the Cold War, and systems in Southeast Asia and in Africa were all predicated on Marxist

presuppositions, presuppositions that were utopian in nature, and that posited a utopian future where

the property was held in common, and everyone had enough, and everyone was called upon to do what

they could, from each according to his ability to each according to his need, which is a lovely

sentiment, and you can imagine how it would be attractive even intellectually, because of course

other systems, all other systems produce vast disparities in income. It's like a natural law,

it's actually governed by, you can model it with a distribution called the Perrito distribution,

...