Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: I Guess denis of professor of economics and public Policy
Speaker 2: and the author of the best selling book The Deficit Myth.
Speaker 2: She's featured in a new documentary, Finding the Money. Please Welcome,
Speaker 2: Stephanie Calton.
Speaker 1: Definitely welcome.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Is a fascinating documentary. I will say, you are you
Speaker 4: are setting out correct me if I'm wrong, to fundamentally
Speaker 4: change how people see money. Yeah, that's a big ask
Speaker 4: and we got about seven minutes. I think a place
Speaker 4: to start is with MMT, Right, MMT, if you can
Speaker 4: help us defile what MT is, and I think what
Speaker 4: the narrative with the narrative you're hoping to get across
Speaker 4: with MT, what is the new economic narrative? It's no
Speaker 4: longer pull yourself up by your bootstraps. What is MMT
Speaker 4: telling us?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 5: In economics is widely known as the dismal science, right,
Speaker 5: because well, that's what MMT is trying to do better branding,
Speaker 5: because you know, in the dismal science, it's all about
Speaker 5: scarcity and we can never have the things that we
Speaker 5: want because there's always this really intrusive problem, which is,
Speaker 5: how are you going to pay for it?
Speaker 3: Where is the money going to come from?
Speaker 5: And the problem is that we treat money like just
Speaker 5: any other scarce good or service.
Speaker 3: In the economy.
Speaker 5: And what MMT is doing is saying, hold on a second,
Speaker 5: we're not on a gold standard anymore. We have this
Speaker 5: thing called a fiat currency. And it does make people
Speaker 5: nervous because a fiat currency sort of opens up space
Speaker 5: and it's kind of like, wait, is money real after all?
Speaker 5: And so MMT is an economic framework that tries to
Speaker 5: have an honest conversation that talks to people like grown ups,
Speaker 5: not in soul people, by telling them that you have
Speaker 5: to treat the government's budget like a household budget and
Speaker 5: speaking down to people. We want to be honest about
Speaker 5: the monetary system we have today, the capacities of the
Speaker 5: government to spend when you have a fiat currency and
Speaker 5: you're not tying your currency to gold and promising to
Speaker 5: convert into something that you could run.
Speaker 3: Out of, like physical gold.
Speaker 5: So we're opening up a conversation where there are still
Speaker 5: limits and you still have to make choices, but we
Speaker 5: can have an adult conversation about how the government can
Speaker 5: actually operate its budget when it doesn't face the same
Speaker 5: kinds of constraints that a household or a business face.
Speaker 4: I guess by that. I think that the big headline
Speaker 4: with this as well is the way we look at
Speaker 4: what the deficit means.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I hear.
Speaker 4: Deficit, You're hear it in the news. You hear every
Speaker 4: politician talking about a deficit equals bad yep. And the
Speaker 4: major narrative of MMPT modern monetary theory is deficit good.
Speaker 5: Correct, Every deficit is good for someone in parly financial terms.
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you why, because you're right.
Speaker 5: We use this word and it sounds inherently like something's
Speaker 5: gone wrong.
Speaker 3: If somebody is in deficit, there's a problem.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: You don't want to turn on the sporting game and
Speaker 5: find the announcer saying that your team is going to
Speaker 5: have to come back and overcome a seven run deficit
Speaker 5: if they're going to win the game. It's always a
Speaker 5: bad thing, right. But actually, if you think about what
Speaker 5: the government deficit is, it's just the difference between two numbers,
Speaker 5: that's all it is.
Speaker 1: So what, Yeah, I want to relase, Well, I guess
Speaker 1: we'll find that fine.
Speaker 5: Ing fine, It's fine in the sense that it's just
Speaker 5: a benign mathematical, like it's the difference between two numbers.
Speaker 5: It's not even higher order math, right, It's just how
Speaker 5: many dollars the government spends into the economy each year
Speaker 5: versus how many they take back out, mostly through taxation.
Speaker 5: So simple math. If they spend one hundred dollars into
Speaker 5: the economy and they only take ninety dollars back out,
Speaker 5: we label it a government deficit, and somebody records it
Speaker 5: as a minus ten on the government's ledger. What we
Speaker 5: forget to do is to recognize if they put one
Speaker 5: hundred in and only take ninety out, somebody gets ten.
Speaker 5: So the government's deficit is matched or mirrored by a
Speaker 5: financial surplus in some other part of the economy.
Speaker 1: Is wait, hang on, so did you guys meet backstage
Speaker 1: or something? Because what the hell? What is MMT? What?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: What's MT? What is? What does MT stand for?
Speaker 3: You? Hand it?
Speaker 5: So it's modern monetary theory, and so again the currency
Speaker 5: we're not under the old standard.
Speaker 3: We're in the modern fiat age to what we have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's well is a good car as you get.
Speaker 5: What you're walking around with. If you've got some of
Speaker 5: this stuff in your wallet is a tax credit? So
Speaker 5: those dollar bills that we're walking around with, we think
Speaker 5: of that as money, right, And we can use it
Speaker 5: to transact, We can use to buy and sell thing,
Speaker 5: We can use it to make purchases of.
Speaker 3: Goods and cases.
Speaker 1: And money is good.
Speaker 5: It's good to have it generally, and it's really good
Speaker 5: to have when you got to pay your taxes because
Speaker 5: this is what the government expects us to hand over at.
Speaker 3: The end of the day.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, money is good. I'm with you so far.
Speaker 3: But let's do this.
Speaker 5: What about that government deficit that you just mentioned, right,
Speaker 5: And I said, every government deficit is good for someone?
Speaker 5: Why because it's just a financial deposit into some other
Speaker 5: part of the economy.
Speaker 3: The question is good for whom and good for what?
Speaker 5: The government can increase its deficit to do things like
Speaker 5: feed hungry kids, tackle the climate crisis, fixed crumbling infrastructure.
Speaker 3: All of those things are ways.
Speaker 5: To use a government deficit that might have desirable results
Speaker 5: for people and for the economy.
Speaker 2: So money is good, deficit is good. I'm with you
Speaker 2: so far.
Speaker 1: So what's the bad? What's the problem? You have?
Speaker 3: A big part of the problem is the way that
Speaker 3: we've been.
Speaker 5: Taught to think about these things to try to stamp
Speaker 5: out deficits, to reduce them, to view them as inherently dangerous.
Speaker 5: They're not inherently dangerous, and as I just said, they
Speaker 5: can be used to help us accomplish important goals in
Speaker 5: the economy.
Speaker 2: So, for example, if I go to Caesar's Palace and
Speaker 2: I borrow like twohenty dollars in my credit card, I
Speaker 2: put it on red and I lose everything that's good.
Speaker 3: That's bad.
Speaker 1: Wait why is that bad?
Speaker 2: Though? Then?
Speaker 1: But doesn't the casino.
Speaker 3: It's good for the casino.
Speaker 4: And also, don't go to Caesar's Palace. That's a little
Speaker 4: ghost person.
Speaker 1: It's bad.
Speaker 4: Maybe go to MGM or this is something. But financially
Speaker 4: that's bad for him.
Speaker 3: But that's bad for you.
Speaker 5: But the point is to try to figure out and
Speaker 5: to wrap our heads around what it is we're actually
Speaker 5: capable of doing, because we're always told that we can't
Speaker 5: tackle big problems that we face. We can't deal with
Speaker 5: housing problems, or education, or climate, infrastructure, social security and
Speaker 5: medicare always come up, and everybody always says the same thing,
Speaker 5: we can't afford it. We have this deficit or we
Speaker 5: have this national debt where are you going to find
Speaker 5: the money to do these things? And so MMT comes
Speaker 5: in and says, look, it's not about finding the money.
Speaker 5: The money is created when the government spends, Congress authorizes
Speaker 5: the spending, and if the votes are there, the money
Speaker 5: is there.
Speaker 3: The thing you have to watch out for is inflation.
Speaker 5: So it isn't as if it's a free lunch. There
Speaker 5: are no constraints, there are no limits. There are limits,
Speaker 5: and the limit is inflation. You can't run out of money,
Speaker 5: but you can run out of things to buy.
Speaker 4: I mean, so this is correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 4: But if I'm going nutshell here, your essential argument is
Speaker 4: we're not bartering back and forth like this is an
Speaker 4: avatar for gold in our pocket. The government makes money.
Speaker 4: They can decide how much money goes out there. Right,
Speaker 4: you pay taxes. They don't need our taxes to fix
Speaker 4: big problems. They can make big money. It's on them
Speaker 4: to figure out how to spend it and put it
Speaker 4: into the economy in a way that can get big
Speaker 4: things done. And then the private businesses they're the ones
Speaker 4: who have the money. The government just has created that situation,
Speaker 4: and inflation becomes the boundary that they have to act
Speaker 4: underneath correct.
Speaker 5: Well done, well done, you do.
Speaker 4: She's a published author and created a movie and still
Speaker 4: assholes won't do the research. But here, here's the pushback.
Speaker 2: Here's the pushback memorizing the Wikipedia pitch.
Speaker 1: But here's the argument.
Speaker 4: Here's what's so compelling. And Ronnie is a great he's
Speaker 4: a useful idiot in this, and people are scared. I
Speaker 4: don't know a lot about money, and I think the
Speaker 4: narratives are our money. Teach me to be afraid of it.
Speaker 4: It's something that we shouldn't talk about because I don't
Speaker 4: understand the underpinnings of it. And I think what it's
Speaker 4: compelling about. Your argument is we can and have, like
Speaker 4: World War two, have figured out ways in which to
Speaker 4: create money and fix big problems. It's we almost need
Speaker 4: a giant, We need a big thing to focus on
Speaker 4: to get those problems done correct, to get the narrative
Speaker 4: around it, like I think it.
Speaker 5: Helps in COVID was that big thing for a period
Speaker 5: of time where governments around the world suddenly stopped asking
Speaker 5: the question how are we going to pay for it?
Speaker 3: And what are we going to do about this deficit?
Speaker 5: And they just pulled out I'll use the phrase the
Speaker 5: money bazooka, Right, countries realize that they're going to have
Speaker 5: to spend a lot of money to shore up people's
Speaker 5: lives and livelihoods through the pandemic. And so we spent
Speaker 5: some five trillion dollars just in the first twelve months
Speaker 5: or so of the pandemic. And I wish that climate
Speaker 5: was going to be that catalyzing event that kind of
Speaker 5: forces everybody to have that wake up moment and realize
Speaker 5: that we've been focusing on the wrong sorts of problems,
Speaker 5: that we really can tackle the problem of climate change.
Speaker 3: We can afford it. We got to watch out for inflation.
Speaker 2: Sure, Okay, Sure, So you'll say that MMT can be
Speaker 2: used to solve issues that we claim that we have
Speaker 2: no money for by basically the government making money, because
Speaker 2: that's where money comes from. Right. And you're saying, but
Speaker 2: doesn't that increase inflation inherently if you just keep making money?
Speaker 5: Well no, I mean the government has run deficits most
Speaker 5: of my life, with the exception of four years during
Speaker 5: the Clinton administration, the government's budget has been in deficit.
Speaker 5: Look at a country like Japan, They've had large deficits
Speaker 5: every single year for the last thirty years or so
Speaker 5: and no inflation to show for it, and we hardly
Speaker 5: had any inflation. Inflation didn't really become a problem until
Speaker 5: COVID came along and started breaking supply chains, and then
Speaker 5: wars in Ukraine and food and energy prices and so forth.
Speaker 5: But you can have large and persistent deficits without having
Speaker 5: an inflation problem. It's when those deficits collide against the
Speaker 5: backdrop of constraints in the real economy, where the economy
Speaker 5: can't resource, can't keep up and satisfy that demand. That's
Speaker 5: what happened in the COVID pandemic and in World War Two.
Speaker 2: So if it happened in World War two, and it
Speaker 2: happened in a COVID pandemic where inflation got out of control,
Speaker 2: where we had you had basically a limited spending on
Speaker 2: one single issue World two, Well, COVID then helping you. Well,
Speaker 2: you know what's evidence that MMT will work? Then if
Speaker 2: we had two real examples, I'm just jo yeah, no, no,
Speaker 2: because someone just briefed me on that and I'll just
Speaker 2: repeat it.
Speaker 5: So the evidence that it works is that MMT is
Speaker 5: a description of how government finance always operates, whether you
Speaker 5: have a budget deficit, a budget surplus, or a balanced budget.
Speaker 5: MMT is at work providing the explanation. So it isn't
Speaker 5: about ramping up deficits and running large chronic deficits. You
Speaker 5: can have a good, healthy economy in some cases, whether
Speaker 5: relatively small deficit or maybe even with a balanced budget.
Speaker 5: It depends on a lot of other things. So the
Speaker 5: evidence that it works is that it's a description, and
Speaker 5: we think a more honest and accurate description of the
Speaker 5: monetary system we have and how governments actually pay their bills.
Speaker 4: Now, as a I guess in theory how this takes
Speaker 4: greater effect and affects our lives and gets big things
Speaker 4: done Green New Deal that was a big part of
Speaker 4: the way in which we be funded. We need to
Speaker 4: start looking at money like through an MMT lens. Correct.
Speaker 4: That's also presupposes that you do have this paradigm shift
Speaker 4: that we start to see as a country as a collective,
Speaker 4: we start to see the usage of money differently. But
Speaker 4: getting people to have a cohesive change of mind and
Speaker 4: the way they see the world seems like impossibility. From
Speaker 4: the experiences I've had out on the road and at Thanksgiving,
Speaker 4: well look like how much of like, do we live
Speaker 4: in a culture where we can experience a paradigm shift
Speaker 4: or is that in and of itself an impossiblity.
Speaker 3: I hope. So, I mean TikTok is there. I'm kidding.
Speaker 3: I'm kidding. We're going to get better.
Speaker 1: Nope.
Speaker 5: But it's stuff like this, right, It's conversations like these
Speaker 5: that allow people to hear a different perspective.
Speaker 3: And also I think, you.
Speaker 5: Know, look with the what the last couple of years,
Speaker 5: what we've done, in some cases on a bipartisan basis
Speaker 5: and in some cases just with Democrats. But you had
Speaker 5: the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the largest climate bill
Speaker 5: we've ever had in the history of our country. We
Speaker 5: have the Chips and Sciences Act, which big investments in
Speaker 5: actual productive capacity here in the US, and the bipartisan
Speaker 5: Infrastructure Bill, which is repairing roads and bridges and you know,
Speaker 5: taking care of our infrastructure. So those are three big packages,
Speaker 5: which I would are you are just an extension in
Speaker 5: many ways of what the administration started doing with the
Speaker 5: COVID spending. And it's just another example of the government
Speaker 5: being able to mobilize the financial wherewithal to commit to
Speaker 5: spending money that it doesn't have because the money comes
Speaker 5: from the willingness of Congress to say yes. When Congress
Speaker 5: says yes and writes those bills, the legislation is the
Speaker 5: set of instructions that goes to the government's bank, the
Speaker 5: Federal Reserve, and it says we've committed to making these payments.
Speaker 5: Your job is our fiscal agent, is to carry out
Speaker 5: all of the payments we've authorized on behalf of the
Speaker 5: US Treasury. And that is just how government finance works.
Speaker 5: It's no more complicated than that. But we complicate it
Speaker 5: with stories about taxes and borrowing and debt and all
Speaker 5: the rest of it. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: the spending is really easy to carry out.
Speaker 2: Well, you see, you're a very smart person. You're saying
Speaker 2: things very calmly. Yeah, and everything seems like it's fine.
Speaker 2: So how do we get to what would you what
Speaker 2: can people walk away with like if.
Speaker 1: They want to like not be sad when they look
Speaker 1: at the who is always his questions? How do I
Speaker 1: not be sad?
Speaker 2: What's the what's the what's like the practical application? Because
Speaker 2: you'll you'll, well, I guess we just the three of
Speaker 2: us sat down here and we decided that the deficit
Speaker 2: is fine, and we can well okay, then so okay,
Speaker 2: so well.
Speaker 1: But what's the next step.
Speaker 2: Why would you actually, let's say we believe in MT
Speaker 2: or yeah, MMT. What what? What's the next thing? That
Speaker 2: I mean is belief enough? Do I just have to
Speaker 2: pray to MMT and then it what? What has to
Speaker 2: happen next?
Speaker 1: Who else?
Speaker 5: What has to happen next is that the people that
Speaker 5: we elect to represent us have to go in there
Speaker 5: and and take decisions using the incredible power that they
Speaker 5: have called the power of the purse. That they've got
Speaker 5: to take decisions about whether to fund programs, whether to
Speaker 5: cut programs, not on the belief that they ought to
Speaker 5: be operating their budget like a household. But when these
Speaker 5: decisions come up about Social Security and Medicare, or continuing
Speaker 5: with the Inflation Reduction Act and staying you know, in
Speaker 5: the game on climate change and going even beyond what
Speaker 5: that legislation did. What I think gives me hope anyway,
Speaker 5: is that we've demonstrated what we're capable of and that
Speaker 5: we can build on it and not revert back to
Speaker 5: old ways of thinking about austerity and the need to
Speaker 5: reduce deficits, because that's when you hammer your economy. That's
Speaker 5: when people have a lost decade. That's when all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, you know, the prosperity that is within reach
Speaker 5: starts to slip through our fingers.
Speaker 2: So when the irs comes from my taxes, I just
Speaker 2: got to tell them, like yoll, deficit is good.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it. Don't worry boy that you need
Speaker 1: to You know what you need to do.
Speaker 4: You need to take some THC or some d MT
Speaker 4: and let.
Speaker 3: The MMT just wash over you.
Speaker 4: Let the paradigm shift come to you.
Speaker 1: Ronnie Jack, Yeah, I think I'm in it right now.
Speaker 4: Well, Finding the Money will be released in select theaters
Speaker 4: nationwide and on demand May third from More information go
Speaker 4: to Finding moneyfilm dot com. Seventy Keelton, We're gonna take
Speaker 4: a quick break.
Speaker 1: I guess the rights of staff right out of the
Speaker 1: New York fore who.
Speaker 2: Lato's book is called Filter World, How Algorithms Flattened Culture.
Speaker 2: Please welcome Kyle, Shake up, Kyle, Kyle, Kyle.
Speaker 1: I like this book. I'll tell you why.
Speaker 4: I've been in grumpy asshole about culture for years now,
Speaker 4: and this book validates so many of the things I've
Speaker 4: been telling other people.
Speaker 1: Tell me, how am I right?
Speaker 6: How?
Speaker 4: How do algorithms flatten culture?
Speaker 6: How has everything gotten worse in the past second or something?
Speaker 6: I like seeing the sticky notes by the way, like
Speaker 6: this is a demonstration.
Speaker 1: I'm really on all of this. Please it's like a
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 6: But yeah, I think we're surrounded by these machines right now,
Speaker 6: which are algorithmic recommendations, and everything from your email to
Speaker 6: your Facebook feed, to your text messages to a TikTok video,
Speaker 6: it's all sorted for you. So I think that kind
Speaker 6: of affects culture in two ways. Whereas consumers we become
Speaker 6: more passive, we're like more accustomed to just getting stuff
Speaker 6: handed to us that already agrees with our viewpoint and
Speaker 6: like our tastes. And then on the other side, the
Speaker 6: creators of culture kind of have to mold their work
Speaker 6: to fit these algorithmic platforms. So they have to figure
Speaker 6: out what works on Instagram, what works on TikTok, and
Speaker 6: then like adapt their work to that rather than just
Speaker 6: doing what they might want to do on their own.
Speaker 4: I actually you mentioned here, which I think is a
Speaker 4: good example of it, and part of what you ruminate
Speaker 4: on is this generic coffee shop. Tell me about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was this kind of coffee shop design that
Speaker 6: I started encountering just traveling around as a journalist, probably
Speaker 6: around twenty fifteen twenty sixteen. And I think everyone can
Speaker 6: recognize it, especially in New York if you've been to
Speaker 6: almost any cafe around here. There's white subway tile on
Speaker 6: the wall, there's reclaimed wood furniture, there's hanging Edison bulbs
Speaker 6: with those like exposed wires. There's succulents and little ceramic.
Speaker 1: Jars, a neon sign that says I love.
Speaker 6: Absolutely avocado toasts and script or whatever. And I think
Speaker 6: the reason why you find this everywhere, like whether you're
Speaker 6: in Beijing or Berlin or Los Angeles or a bali
Speaker 6: or wherever you go, is because our tastes have kind
Speaker 6: of been homogenized by platforms like Instagram. So there's like
Speaker 6: a particular aesthetic that works for Instagram, and everyone puts
Speaker 6: it out there, and then everyone else on the platform
Speaker 6: slowly copies that. And I think that's true for a
Speaker 6: coffee shop owner, which I interviewed a bunch of for
Speaker 6: the book, but it's also true of musicians or a
Speaker 6: chef making a kind of food that looks good on
Speaker 6: Instagram or a producer making a beat for TikTok. So
Speaker 6: I think we're all kind of getting funneled into these
Speaker 6: weird tracks.
Speaker 2: And when I visit coffee shop like that overseas all
Speaker 2: around America, I.
Speaker 1: Feel at home those places familiar to it.
Speaker 2: No, it's true, but I mean the point is, like
Speaker 2: I hate social media as much as anybody.
Speaker 1: Everyone can testify to this.
Speaker 2: I hate social media, testify, So this is this is
Speaker 2: But when we'll talk about algorithms pushing taste, I mean,
Speaker 2: just to be Devil's advocate a little bit, Like we've
Speaker 2: had aesthetics become popular before computers existed. So how much
Speaker 2: of this is algorithms and how much of it's just
Speaker 2: humans kind of having this like the meta game of
Speaker 2: human art. Yes, it's kind of finding a balance to
Speaker 2: what everyone kind of likes.
Speaker 6: We're always chasing each other, right, Like culture is a
Speaker 6: process of copying stuff and finding a style that works
Speaker 6: in the mainstream. But I think now we're just really
Speaker 6: in these funnels that are directing us in like a
Speaker 6: bigger and faster way toward each other. Like we're all
Speaker 6: being shoved into these set tracks much more.
Speaker 3: Than we were.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm saying how much of this is algorithm's
Speaker 2: fault and how much of this is we are just
Speaker 2: humans are.
Speaker 1: This is humans are bad.
Speaker 6: I think it's like.
Speaker 2: Humans are bad and dumb, and we have that taste
Speaker 2: and eventually the machines they they call us.
Speaker 6: I think it's the humans had bad habits like we are.
Speaker 6: We want to be passive, we want to be lazy.
Speaker 6: We don't want to get too far out of our
Speaker 6: comfort zones, and these algorithmic platforms make it so easy
Speaker 6: to not do that, Like we don't have to go
Speaker 6: we don't have to see things we don't like, we
Speaker 6: don't have to listen to music that's unusual for us.
Speaker 6: So I think it like enables those innate tendencies, and
Speaker 6: that makes us more boring, like makes us more boring consumers.
Speaker 6: It makes culture kind of more generic overall. And I
Speaker 6: worry that we like can't get out of that laziness,
Speaker 6: Like we can't get out of that habit that we're
Speaker 6: in because of the platforms.
Speaker 4: I think a lot about like, our taste is part
Speaker 4: of how we define who we are, how we interact
Speaker 4: with the world, right, And I think for me, the
Speaker 4: stuff that I have grown to fall in love with.
Speaker 1: You find it before the Internet. I'm that old, But
Speaker 1: like I fell in love like the cool.
Speaker 4: High school friend who recommends you liquid swords and you
Speaker 4: have a long commute to school, and so you play
Speaker 4: it and you sit with it and it becomes interesting
Speaker 4: and part of your identity. You find it like sort
Speaker 4: of have to meet a moment with a part of
Speaker 4: taste to find it in for it to actually stick
Speaker 4: to you. And what I worry about with algorithms, like
Speaker 4: we are we executing serendipity?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I think so in a way, because everything is presorted
Speaker 6: to appeal to us, like you are not seeing something
Speaker 6: that's totally outside of your fami of reference. So in
Speaker 6: that case, when your friend in high school recommends an
Speaker 6: album to you, there's this like passion to that, there's
Speaker 6: like a creativity to that. They really enjoy it, so
Speaker 6: they want to give it to you, and you're more
Speaker 6: likely to sit with it and give it some patience
Speaker 6: and try to understand what they meant by giving it
Speaker 6: to you, whereas when an algorithmic feed gives you something,
Speaker 6: there's no feeling there, like there's no creativity there's no
Speaker 6: enjoyment of that piece of culture. It's just that enough
Speaker 6: data suggested to a sorting machine that you would like
Speaker 6: this bit of stuff. I'm like, that is kind of
Speaker 6: depressing to me as someone who enjoys, like your data
Speaker 6: likes this.
Speaker 3: Have more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, stop stop at the beestro life, look at
Speaker 4: the beestrow lines.
Speaker 2: So you guys, you guys are both Brooklyn hipsters. Okay,
Speaker 2: you want some human to come and tell you what's good,
Speaker 2: But like, what about what about the situations when we
Speaker 2: go on Instagram or inert social media whatever, and then
Speaker 2: they recommend the something to buy, like a piece of
Speaker 2: clothing or or.
Speaker 1: Let's not go into what I buy.
Speaker 2: But like, uh yeah I was. I was running my
Speaker 2: head through all the stuff, like I said on TV,
Speaker 2: but uh, recommend something and you go actually like this,
Speaker 2: I actually do, like I hate that minute.
Speaker 1: But the algorithm got me. Yeah, my wife, my algorithm,
Speaker 1: the algorithm got me.
Speaker 2: I bought this thing, you know, whether it's chewing gum
Speaker 2: that comes from a tree in grease or whatever.
Speaker 1: It was like but and I actually enjoy it.
Speaker 2: So like, you know, we were arguing against algorithms too,
Speaker 2: But how much of this is you know, beneficial.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 4: Not everybody has a cool high school friend. Most people
Speaker 4: have a shitty one that maybe should be replaced by Yeah.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 6: I feel like sometimes the algorithms judge us too well,
Speaker 6: like they know exactly what we're going to look at,
Speaker 6: they know what niche products we're going to want to buy,
Speaker 6: like the resin gum or like weird natural.
Speaker 1: Well, are you going up too? Oh? Absolutely? Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: We all have those things that are like, oh you,
Speaker 6: the algorithm says that I must like this, therefore I
Speaker 6: like it, and so I think it just like guides
Speaker 6: us towards those things, and we feel an anxiety from
Speaker 6: being perceived too well. In a way, it's like, oh no,
Speaker 6: the machine knows me, And I think that inspires bad
Speaker 6: feelings as well. Like in the book I write about
Speaker 6: algorithmic anxiety, which was this academic term for basically the
Speaker 6: lack of power and agency you have in relation to
Speaker 6: the algorithm. You don't know how it works, you don't
Speaker 6: know why you're getting recommended resin gum from Greece. You
Speaker 6: just know that it's like you have been evaluated and
Speaker 6: this is directed at you.
Speaker 2: But now I know, But now I know that we
Speaker 2: actually might be friends because you both get the same.
Speaker 1: For the Greek gun thing. Yeah, you don't know what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the cool kids. That's what I want to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So they say, if politics is downstream from culture and
Speaker 4: we all are moving into this flattened culture, what does
Speaker 4: this mean from thirty thousand foot view to what it
Speaker 4: does toward politics?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it affects everything, Like it affects culture,
Speaker 6: It affects geography, cities, also politics. And in culture, algorithms
Speaker 6: kind of funnel everyone toward a generic average where there's
Speaker 6: just this like style that works for everyone. But I
Speaker 6: think it's slightly different in politics, like it's sorting people
Speaker 6: into these very extreme groups that are very far from
Speaker 6: each other. So like in the US, maybe there's two
Speaker 6: big buckets, like you're either a Democrat or a Republican,
Speaker 6: and there is one way to be those things. There's
Speaker 6: no internal diversity. It's hard to have different opinions at
Speaker 6: the same time. It's just like you've been sorted into
Speaker 6: this bucket or this bucket, and then you've experienced a
Speaker 6: lot of pressure to stay in there.
Speaker 2: So how come algorithms are flattening the culture when it's
Speaker 2: bad for us, meaning everyone seeing the same thing. But
Speaker 2: when it comes to politics, and maybe it would be
Speaker 2: better if we couldn't ruin this direction. It's making using
Speaker 2: the worst possible things.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's totally true. It's like opposing forces in
Speaker 6: a way. I mean, I think culture is like a
Speaker 6: thing that many people experience collectively, Like it's a thing
Speaker 6: that we can all enjoy it together in a way
Speaker 6: sometimes whereas yeah, and in like a Tailor Swift context,
Speaker 6: everyone can like telor Swift.
Speaker 1: If there's a tall we do, and we do we
Speaker 1: do to be clear.
Speaker 6: So if we could find the tailor Swift for politics,
Speaker 6: that would be amazing. But I think something I think, I.
Speaker 1: Think it's there.
Speaker 6: We go, Okay, we've figured it out. The algorithmic solutions
Speaker 6: of politics is Tyler Swift. But yeah, I mean, maybe
Speaker 6: it's just that there can be no one solution to
Speaker 6: such opposing viewpoints.
Speaker 2: Even computers can figure it out.
Speaker 6: Until we have the president that is the algorithm. Unfortunately,
Speaker 6: how old is that algorithm?
Speaker 1: Yes, well, none of them are that old.
Speaker 3: This has only been a decade.
Speaker 1: You'll you know what, It sounds like a decent option
Speaker 1: that a lot of people could get behind a filter.
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