Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2: Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
Speaker 2: and we are so excited about what that means for
Speaker 2: the future of this show.
Speaker 3: This is the only place where you can find honest
Speaker 3: perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
Speaker 3: not exist anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So if that is something that's important to you, please
Speaker 2: go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and
Speaker 2: you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free,
Speaker 2: and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Speaker 3: We need your help to build the future of independent
Speaker 3: news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get to some troubling developments with regard
Speaker 2: to this OpenAI whistleblower.
Speaker 4: We can put this up on this screen.
Speaker 2: He was a former researcher at OpenAI turned whistleblower, and
Speaker 2: he has sadly been found dead in his apartment in
Speaker 2: San Francisco. According to authorities, they ruled his death to
Speaker 2: be a suicide. They say police found no evidence of
Speaker 2: foul play. In October, The New York Times had published
Speaker 2: an interview with mister Bology. His name is Suchier Bology
Speaker 2: and he alleged that open ai had violated US copyright
Speaker 2: law while it was developing chat gpt, and he became
Speaker 2: so disturbed by what he learned about his you know,
Speaker 2: his allegations about their copyright violations, and how unethical this
Speaker 2: was and how damaging it ultimately was to the entire
Speaker 2: Internet ecosystem. He felt he could no longer remain at
Speaker 2: open ai, and then you know, came out as a whistleblower.
Speaker 2: We can put this next piece up on the screen,
Speaker 2: which includes some of his writings and thoughts. This is
Speaker 2: something that he posted relatively recently, says I recently participated
Speaker 2: in New York Times story about fair use and generative
Speaker 2: AI YM skeptical fair use would be a plausible defense
Speaker 2: for a lot of generative AI products. I also wrote
Speaker 2: a blog post to give some context. I was at
Speaker 2: open ai for nearly four years, worked on chat GPT
Speaker 2: for the last one and a half of them. I
Speaker 2: initially didn't know much about copyright, fair use, et cetera,
Speaker 2: but became curious after seeing all the lawsuits. When I
Speaker 2: tried to understand the issue better, I came to the
Speaker 2: conclusion that fair use seems like a pretty implausible defense
Speaker 2: for a lot of generative AI products for the basic
Speaker 2: reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the
Speaker 2: data they are trained on. I've written up the more
Speaker 2: detailed reasons for why I believe this in my post.
Speaker 2: Obviously I'm not a lawyer, but I still feel like
Speaker 2: it's important for even non lawyers to understand the law,
Speaker 2: both the letter of it and why it's actually there
Speaker 2: in the first place. That being said, he goes on
Speaker 2: to say, I don't want this to read as a
Speaker 2: critique of chat, GPT or open AI per se, because
Speaker 2: fair use and generative AI is a much broader issue
Speaker 2: than any one product or company.
Speaker 4: And I also went.
Speaker 2: Back to read the New York Times story that he
Speaker 2: references here that he was you know, he was really
Speaker 2: featured in and was kind of the main character in.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that he told the Times
Speaker 2: was quote, if you believe what I believe, you have
Speaker 2: to just leave the company. He had not taken a
Speaker 2: new job at that time. Back in October, he said
Speaker 2: he was working on what he calls personal projects. Was
Speaker 2: among the first employees to leave a major AI company
Speaker 2: and speak out publicly against the way these companies have
Speaker 2: used copyrighted data to create their technologies, and he believes
Speaker 2: the threats are more immediate than some of the you know,
Speaker 2: some of the things we've talked about on the show,
Speaker 2: like the potential extremely dystopian possibilities that have been raised
Speaker 2: by some of the people who are concerned about the
Speaker 2: AI future.
Speaker 4: He says the threats are more immediate.
Speaker 2: Chat GPTO and other chatbots, he said, are destroying the
Speaker 2: commercial viability of the individuals, businesses, and internet services they
Speaker 2: created the digital data used to train these AI systems.
Speaker 4: And obviously, if his view were to hold in let's say,
Speaker 4: a court of.
Speaker 2: Law, it really would fundamentally disturb, disrupt, undercut this entire
Speaker 2: now massive industry that all of Silicon Valley is effectively
Speaker 2: placing gigantic, multi billion, if not trillion dollar bets on
Speaker 2: the amounts of money that are at stake at this
Speaker 2: point in you know, AI development that are that already
Speaker 2: have manifested themselves are quite astric which is why you know,
Speaker 2: police say it was a suicide. We have no specific
Speaker 2: evidence to indicate otherwise. But when you see someone who
Speaker 2: is a key player blowing the whistle on these practices,
Speaker 2: who could potentially be a danger to a multi, multi
Speaker 2: hundreds of millions of dollar industry, billions of dollars industry.
Speaker 2: You have to raise questions about what exactly happened here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, And you know, if you look at the
Speaker 3: circumstances too, Like you said, at least the medical examiner
Speaker 3: or the police, they claimed that there was no foul play.
Speaker 3: But I just think in the context of what you
Speaker 3: were just saying, there is obvious that we should at
Speaker 3: least take it seriously like we did with the Boeing investigation.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen. Open AI
Speaker 3: has a lot of steak right now. Right now, Sam
Speaker 3: Altman is donating one million dollars to the Donald Trump
Speaker 3: Inaugural Fund. The Financial Times and others have reported by
Speaker 3: the way that his feud with Elon Musk is like
Speaker 3: a potential existential threat to the company. They have talked
Speaker 3: about how he has made you know, and look, it's
Speaker 3: actually true. There is a huge divergence between AI theory
Speaker 3: of some of the people like David Sachs, Elon Musk,
Speaker 3: Mark Andresen around open source AI versus the closed quote
Speaker 3: unquote responsibility AI systems that open AI and Microsoft want,
Speaker 3: which is basically a monopolistic like gateway over their current systems.
Speaker 3: There are billions of dollars at steak, just personally for
Speaker 3: Sam Altman. There are trillions of dollars at steak, for
Speaker 3: Microsoft for its market cap, and for the entire tech industry.
Speaker 3: Put the next one up there on the screen, for example,
Speaker 3: open ai is quote Sam Altman quote worked for love.
Speaker 3: Now he's going to make ten point five billion. This
Speaker 3: is something that Elon has also talked about. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's miraculous. You start out as a nonprofit and then
Speaker 3: you eventually hit paydirt. Then you just go through all
Speaker 3: of this fake legal you know, maneuvering to convert yourself
Speaker 3: to a for profit organization that's worth one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty billion dollars, and now you're a multi billionaire on
Speaker 3: paper who's already quite well with Yes, he already.
Speaker 4: Was, but you know, I mean multi never hurts, right, And.
Speaker 3: Look, I don't think it's about money per se. It's
Speaker 3: about power. It's about control. And so if a single
Speaker 3: individual in this organization feels that this is a threat, yeah,
Speaker 3: look we got to take it seriously. There's just way
Speaker 3: too much here at stake and in a sense, I
Speaker 3: think we should take some of these people at their word.
Speaker 3: I don't even one hundred percent believe like AI is
Speaker 3: going to be the one hundred percent know the future,
Speaker 3: the determiner of everything, It's going to change the fundamental
Speaker 3: relationship of humanity to each other, et cetera. But if
Speaker 3: we take them seriously and they believe that to be true,
Speaker 3: then the stakes couldn't be higher. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like being in the forefront of the smartphone. It
Speaker 3: was a multi literal trillion dollar industry. So that's what
Speaker 3: they believe at the very least. Take a look at
Speaker 3: this whistleblower. I mean, there's a lot of sketchy people
Speaker 3: involved in these companies, Saudi's, you know, they've been investing
Speaker 3: in Silicon Valley, all these other foreign agents, governments, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people have a lot of money.
Speaker 2: This is a big money, high stage game that's being played,
Speaker 2: and you can see it too in the contours of
Speaker 2: this election. I mean, with both crypto and AI, which
Speaker 2: kind of like you know, linked as a certain sense,
Speaker 2: is like these technologies allegedly of the future, astronomical record
Speaker 2: breaking amounts of money spent you know, Elon, he has
Speaker 2: a lot of different motives, but certainly with him and
Speaker 2: Risen and David Sachs and others making sure that they
Speaker 2: can have a free hand to develop these technologies and
Speaker 2: benefit from these technologies in the way that they want
Speaker 2: was certainly a motivating factor in the way that they
Speaker 2: participated in this election. So Sam Altman right now is
Speaker 2: in is in suck up mode. You know, that's where
Speaker 2: the million dollars to Trump inaugural comes from. He also
Speaker 2: was asked about Elon and Tojin he was.
Speaker 4: Like, I'm sure it'd be great.
Speaker 2: Sure, no problems there. Elon the magnificent. I never had
Speaker 2: a bad word to say about him. Love the guy,
Speaker 2: he's he's wonderful. So he's you know, the vibe is panic, right.
Speaker 2: The vibe there honestly should be definitely penny. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: Elon now is probably the most powerful person in the world,
Speaker 2: in addition to already being the wealthiest person in the world.
Speaker 2: So you know that he's on the wrong side of
Speaker 2: him is potentially this is White devastating his own personal goal.
Speaker 3: At least my hope is because I think it's outrageous
Speaker 3: what they have done. You take a nonprofit, develop a
Speaker 3: consumer platform, you convert it to for profit. You sign
Speaker 3: a partnership with the largest tech company in the world.
Speaker 3: You lobby the government to create guardrails so that no
Speaker 3: new entrance can enter the space. You've created all these
Speaker 3: fake licensing agreements, incorporating it into Microsoft's like office environment.
Speaker 3: And you know, now we're talking about tech what was it,
Speaker 3: We're talking about Pentagon contracts and all this other stuff.
Speaker 3: I mean, the acceleration of this and it's its power
Speaker 3: in the United States in just the last five years
Speaker 3: is extraordinary. So yeah, oversight great, open source absolutely the
Speaker 3: less power these people have the better off in my opinion,
Speaker 3: especially again if we are to believe them. But any Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the one thing I think Elon is one hundred
Speaker 3: percent correct.
Speaker 2: I think I differ on this because I don't think
Speaker 2: open source is the answer, although I think it's better
Speaker 2: than monopoly control from like a Microsoft, so I think
Speaker 2: it's superior to the sam Altman moder model. But I
Speaker 2: think there has to be significant government regulation to make
Speaker 2: sure that these new technologies benefit humanity rather than benefiting
Speaker 2: just you know a few.
Speaker 3: I don't disagree with you or like total private I
Speaker 3: actually for like a set standard, as in, this is
Speaker 3: our problem with social media and all these problems with moderation.
Speaker 3: It's like, okay, listen, we just pass a law that
Speaker 3: says you moderate per.
Speaker 1: The First Amendment.
Speaker 3: It's like, that's it. Take all this crap off the
Speaker 3: table on AI. It's like, no political interference with this.
Speaker 3: You have to have a copyright compensation, right, let's figure
Speaker 3: all this out first and not fall into the same
Speaker 3: trap as Section two thirty, like with the Internet in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six or whatever. And we're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know this bill click. I was at the White
Speaker 3: House Christmas tour and they have a photo of Clinton
Speaker 3: sending the first email in ninety six.
Speaker 1: On this like brick laptop.
Speaker 3: But you're like, I mean this thing is gigantic. I
Speaker 3: was like this this thick.
Speaker 4: Oh you don't mean literally, no, no.
Speaker 3: Like like a literal It looks like a brick from
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six. And you could see him hunched over
Speaker 3: like this. He can tell he doesn't even know how
Speaker 3: to type, which is hilarious, you know, like the classic
Speaker 3: boomer the boomer fingers and yeah, and I was look
Speaker 3: at it.
Speaker 4: It's crazy to think typ like on like actual typewriters.
Speaker 1: It was, you would hope. So I don't think so.
Speaker 3: From what I saw, he's got the classic like chicken
Speaker 3: peck thing going on. I think he sent it. I
Speaker 3: forget who he sent the email to. Anyway, My point
Speaker 3: is I was alive for that, right. So what we've seen,
Speaker 3: that acceleration happened, and at that time, nobody could have
Speaker 3: predicted with the Internet, you know, would have become. At
Speaker 3: that time, they called it the Information super Highway. So
Speaker 3: let's just set the standards now and then we don't
Speaker 3: have to worry as much and you can actually be
Speaker 3: better off for every everybody. We're going to have more entrance, etc.
Speaker 3: But instead, what's going to happen. You're gonna multily.
Speaker 1: You know already what it is.
Speaker 3: We've got lobbyists in Washington, we got a multi billion
Speaker 3: trillion dollar industry, you know, basically the S and P
Speaker 3: five hundred. If a single one of these stocks goes down,
Speaker 3: I think it's like the majority of the gains of
Speaker 3: the S and P five hundred is seven stocks. If Nvidia,
Speaker 3: which already by the way, didn't meet expectations in its
Speaker 3: last one, if it has a couple of down quarters boom.
Speaker 3: The whole US economy can go like that. So there's
Speaker 3: a lot riding on this, and it is very terrifying, Crystal,
Speaker 3: what are you taking a look at?
Speaker 2: Well, in the wake of their stunning defeat, Democrats and
Speaker 2: legacy media have been unusually receptive to hearing a little
Speaker 2: bit from Bernie Sanders and his assessment of what went wrong.
Speaker 2: Of course, this openness comes oh, roughly a decade too late,
Speaker 2: but it is much deserved. He's been cracked on many things,
Speaker 2: from our disastrous wars, to Wall Streets impunity, to the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party's disastrous abandonment of working class people. And now,
Speaker 2: in a viral clip, Bernie Sanders is sounding the alarm
Speaker 2: on America.
Speaker 4: Can oligarchy take a listen?
Speaker 5: We are moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of society.
Speaker 5: Never before in American history have so few billionaires, so
Speaker 5: few people, have so much wealth and so much power.
Speaker 5: Never before has there been so much concentration of ownership
Speaker 5: sector after sector, power of Wall Street. And never before
Speaker 5: in American history, and we better talk about this, have
Speaker 5: the people on top had so much political power?
Speaker 1: We can't go around the world.
Speaker 5: Take Oh, well, you know, in Russia, Putin has an oligarchy. Well,
Speaker 5: we got an oligarchy here too, And in this last election,
Speaker 5: in both parties, billionaires spent huge amounts of money to
Speaker 5: elect their candidates.
Speaker 2: Now the pathway too, this oligarchy was paid with many things.
Speaker 2: You had Supreme Court decisions opening the floodgates of unlimited
Speaker 2: campaign contributions. You had the Republican Party's long held position
Speaker 2: carrying water for the wealthy, any of the Democratic parties,
Speaker 2: Clinton eir capitulation to these very same forces. All of
Speaker 2: these developments led to the money over everything nature of
Speaker 2: the recent presidential election, in which Kamala Harris raised record
Speaker 2: breaking amounts of cash in a record breaking amount of time,
Speaker 2: and where Trump openly prompts billionaires he would do their
Speaker 2: bidding if he was elected. Now his campaign received extraordinary
Speaker 2: bribes one hundred million dollars from Miriam Adelson over a
Speaker 2: quarter billion from Elon Musk. Musk's donation was of a
Speaker 2: size that, at least as far as we know, has
Speaker 2: never before seen in history. And Trump is already rewarding
Speaker 2: his big donors with consequential roles and what amounts to
Speaker 2: a brazen selling of government positions According to a CNN analysis,
Speaker 2: nearly three dozen of Trump's key administration picks were donors
Speaker 2: to his campaign. Now, of course, rewarding supporters with positions
Speaker 2: that is also nothing new, but the size and scope
Speaker 2: here are truly without parallel. So for comparison, Joe Biden
Speaker 2: staffed his admin with twelve people who had previously donated
Speaker 2: to his campaign or affiliated groups.
Speaker 4: But where those.
Speaker 2: Twelve combined for contributions of about one hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: Trump's key picks they combined for thirty seven million dollars
Speaker 2: and contributions. And that's without including Elon Musk, who put
Speaker 2: two hundred and sixty two million dollars in and now
Speaker 2: has this powerful hole of government position to remake the
Speaker 2: entire federal government to suit his personal whims and desires. Yes,
Speaker 2: American oligarchy has been a long time in the making,
Speaker 2: but in the incoming administration it is in full bloom
Speaker 2: like never before, and you can see the telltale signs
Speaker 2: both in government molding itself to serve favored oligarchs and
Speaker 2: in the behavior of wealthy elites who are vying for
Speaker 2: status as favored oligarchs. Toward that end, we've already been
Speaker 2: witnessed to some shameful billionaire groveling. According to NPR, major
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley executives like Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman,
Speaker 2: who had previously been Trump adversaries, are dishing out millions
Speaker 2: to the Trump and operation in order to curry favor
Speaker 2: with the incoming president. Salesforce CEO Mark Bennioff says he
Speaker 2: is quote turning the page on his Trump relationship, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure it doesn't hurt that Time, magazine owned by Bennioff,
Speaker 2: just declared Trump Person of the Year. Silicon Valley historian
Speaker 2: Margaret O'Mara told NPR, quote, taken together the donations and
Speaker 2: other celebratory gestures showcase and industry kissing the ring of
Speaker 2: an incoming president in hopes of something in return. It's
Speaker 2: just a recognition that there's not much to be gained
Speaker 2: in opposition, but perhaps there is something to be gained
Speaker 2: by being very clear about your support and hope.
Speaker 4: That Trump does well.
Speaker 2: Trump himself yesterday I actually commented on this shameless groveling.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 5: Did you talk.
Speaker 1: About terrors in that meeting at Hole?
Speaker 6: CEO Tim Cook, I did have a dinner with Tim Cook.
Speaker 6: I had dinner with sort of almost all of them,
Speaker 6: and the rest are coming. And this is one of
Speaker 6: the big differences I think between we were talking about
Speaker 6: it before, one of the big differences between the first term.
Speaker 6: The first term, everybody was fighting me. This term, everybody
Speaker 6: wants to be my friend. I don't know my personality
Speaker 6: changed or something. But I had, as you know, I
Speaker 6: had Sundar from Google, but I also had Sergei.
Speaker 7: Nobody reported that Sergey is the owner the primary along
Speaker 7: with his friend, as you know, and Sergei was here also.
Speaker 7: I can't believe you didn't pick that one up. Nobody
Speaker 7: picked that up. But I will tell you now. It's
Speaker 7: a big difference. The big difference is that the first time,
Speaker 7: everybody was fighting me.
Speaker 2: No, mister Trump, I don't think your personality changed, but
Speaker 2: apparently their.
Speaker 4: Self interested calculus did.
Speaker 2: And they all went in on the spoils of government
Speaker 2: largesse and to avoid getting crosswise with the new regime.
Speaker 2: So what does rule by a Cabala billionaires actually look like? Well, effectively,
Speaker 2: the project is.
Speaker 4: A familiar one.
Speaker 2: It's rugged individualism for you and pampered coddling for the
Speaker 2: favored few. They want to strip away all powers of
Speaker 2: the government to curb corporate access while juicing their own
Speaker 2: tax cuts, subsidies, and contracts. For a more granular view
Speaker 2: of how this project will operate, one person you should
Speaker 2: pay attention to a Silicon Valley investor, Mark Andresen.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Andresen says that he has been spending half his time
Speaker 2: in Florida with Trump, helping to staff and guide the
Speaker 2: incoming administration.
Speaker 4: He is also a close buddy of.
Speaker 2: Elon and ally, having invested hundreds of millions in Elon's
Speaker 2: Mary Spenser's and having backed him in his Twitter takeover.
Speaker 2: In a podcast with Barry Weiss, Andresen confirmed that he's
Speaker 2: advising Trump on tech, business economics and the quote success
Speaker 2: of the country, and is also helping staff up Musk's
Speaker 2: DOGE Commission. Andresen and Musk have both been upfront about
Speaker 2: their plan to undercut any government regulator that has ever
Speaker 2: stood in their or their portfolio companies. In the case
Speaker 2: of Andresen's way, they are taking aim at the CFPP,
Speaker 2: which has been inconvenient for some of Andresen's Scammi re
Speaker 2: portfolio investments. The SEC, which has had the gall to
Speaker 2: check Elon on alleged stock manipulation, and furthermore, has tried
Speaker 2: to protect people from crypto scams and the NLRB, which
Speaker 2: allows workers to form unions. In addition, the incoming Trump
Speaker 2: administration is taking aim at specific regulations that the ascendant
Speaker 2: oligarchs find inconvenient. Reuters has reported that the Trump transition
Speaker 2: team is recommending elimination of an automated vehicle crash reporting
Speaker 2: requirement that has proven irksome to Tesla. You can see
Speaker 2: why Elon might not be a fan of this particular privision.
Speaker 2: According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, forty out
Speaker 2: of the forty five fatal crashes that were reported to
Speaker 2: the agency under this provision involved a Tesla, including an
Speaker 2: accident where a driver using autopilot careened into a tractor trailer,
Speaker 2: and another where Tesla hit a fire truck, killing the
Speaker 2: driver and injuring for firemen. The Trump transition team describes
Speaker 2: this data collection as quote excessive, but it proved extremely
Speaker 2: valuable in agency investigations, which led to twenty twenty three
Speaker 2: Tesla safety recalls. In other words, the data collection was
Speaker 2: good for public safety, but it was bad for Elon
Speaker 2: public didn't give Trump more than two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: million dollars, did they, So Elon apparently wins. Now this
Speaker 2: is a comparatively small example, but if it's your loved
Speaker 2: one behind the wheel of a Tesla car an autopilot,
Speaker 2: it becomes a little more significant. And there is no
Speaker 2: entity outside the government with the power to make sure
Speaker 2: that as autonomous vehicles become mainstream, drivers, passengers, and bystanderds
Speaker 2: are not put at undue risk for profit. Now that
Speaker 2: applies obviously, not just with vehicles, but with every sector,
Speaker 2: including the burgeoning AI and crypto sectors, which threaten the
Speaker 2: global financial system, systems of ethics, nation states, and potentially
Speaker 2: humanity itself. These billionaires are driven both by ideology and
Speaker 2: self interest to make sure that their power is unlimited
Speaker 2: by any pesky checks of representative democracy. Now, such a
Speaker 2: project requires a continuation of the war on New Deal programs,
Speaker 2: which in fairness, Republicans have been waging since the advent
Speaker 2: of the New Deal itself. Now that's important to oligarchs
Speaker 2: for a few reasons. First of all, a secure social
Speaker 2: safety net and financially stable working class is less desperate.
Speaker 2: They have more leverage, more ability to tell an abusive
Speaker 2: boss to piss off and negotiate for higher wages and
Speaker 2: better conditions. What's more, a government that delivers for people
Speaker 2: in a meaningful way builds trust. It earns the confidence
Speaker 2: of the public that imbues it with more potential power
Speaker 2: to check those oligarchic excesses. So it should be no
Speaker 2: surprise that, in a recent interview with Chris Williamson Andreson
Speaker 2: announced his desire to dismantle the remaining vestiges of the
Speaker 2: New Deal, pining for what he calls a reverse FDR.
Speaker 4: Take a listen.
Speaker 8: The other lens on this that I think about a
Speaker 8: lot is Curtis Yarvin. I was also a good friend
Speaker 8: of mine, and he the way he describes the American
Speaker 8: system that's running the people, the way he describes it
Speaker 8: is we are we are living under FDR's personal monarchy
Speaker 8: eighty years later without FDR right and the reason he
Speaker 8: describes that. He says, Look, when before FDR, the federal
Speaker 8: government was actually very small, Like the tax rates were
Speaker 8: like super low. The federal government didn't do very much.
Speaker 8: The FDR dramatically, you know, my orders of magnitude increased
Speaker 8: the size of the scope of the federal government. He
Speaker 8: did that for two reasons. One was the New Deal
Speaker 8: and then the other was World War Two. And so
Speaker 8: the federal government that Franklin Roosevelt left behind in nineteen
Speaker 8: forty five when he passed away was the government that
Speaker 8: he had built, which he had run the entire time
Speaker 8: from nineteen thirty three to nineteen forty five himself, in
Speaker 8: which he had staffed himself, and he had overseen himself
Speaker 8: and everything. And he built this basically this giant structure,
Speaker 8: and as Curtis basically says, as long as you had
Speaker 8: FDR running that it could run really well. And you know,
Speaker 8: we won World War two and save the free world
Speaker 8: and like it weren't and pulled the USIUD of depression,
Speaker 8: like the whole thing working.
Speaker 1: It was great.
Speaker 8: But if you let an organization of that size and
Speaker 8: scope run without its founder CEO for eighty years, you
Speaker 8: end up with what we have now, which is just
Speaker 8: like basically an out of control bureaucracy, like an out
Speaker 8: of control system in which people can't even make positive
Speaker 8: change even if they want to. Yeah, and again that's
Speaker 8: why you could have in the US, you could have
Speaker 8: reason for optimism, which is Okay, what do you need, Well,
Speaker 8: you need another FDR like figure bit in reverse, right,
Speaker 8: you need somebody and a team of people around them
Speaker 8: who's actually willing to come in and like take the
Speaker 8: thing by the throat and make the changes, by the way,
Speaker 8: make the changes that FDR would probably make if he
Speaker 8: were here to make them. But he's not right, and
Speaker 8: so somebody else has to step up and do that.
Speaker 8: It has to be a president because nobody else conceivably
Speaker 8: has the power to do that. But you know, we
Speaker 8: will see how much this president can do. But like that,
Speaker 8: that's a lot of what this administration plans to do.
Speaker 2: So what you're hearing there, in spite of the modern
Speaker 2: technochine the Trump was branding, all of that is a
Speaker 2: bottom old school Koch Brothers right now style Paul Ryan
Speaker 2: esque austerity economics, austerity for you anyway, not necessarily for them.
Speaker 2: Also noteworthy Ann and Dreeson's response is the name checking
Speaker 2: of his friend Curtus Jarvin. Now Jarvin opposes democracy outright,
Speaker 2: He would say that himself in favor of either overt
Speaker 2: monarchy or sort of feudal corporatism with CEOs functioning as
Speaker 2: effectively kings. Doubtedly a pretty cool philosophy if you are
Speaker 2: in line to be one of those corporate god kings.
Speaker 2: Not so much for those of us who would like
Speaker 2: to continue having some say in our governance and social contract.
Speaker 2: Now this raise another important point which helps to illuminate
Speaker 2: some of the early Trump administration moves. These guys hate democracy,
Speaker 2: and again this isn't new. There's a long strain of
Speaker 2: elite opposition to democratic governance that stretches all the way
Speaker 2: back to the founding fathers. And the biggest bulwark against
Speaker 2: an anti democracy ideology is a capable, democratically elected government
Speaker 2: providing clear material benefits. FDR understood this well. He understood
Speaker 2: how critical that was in his fight against fascism. In
Speaker 2: one of his fireside chats, he proclaimed, quote, history proves
Speaker 2: that dictatorships do not grow out of strong and successful governments,
Speaker 2: but out of weak and helpless ones. If by democratic methods,
Speaker 2: people get a government strong enough to protect them from
Speaker 2: fear and starvation, their democracy succeeds. But if they do not,
Speaker 2: they grow impatient. So if you believe in democracy, the
Speaker 2: best way to see at flourish is to build government
Speaker 2: capacity to deliver for people. And if you hate democracy,
Speaker 2: the best way to undermine it is to attack the
Speaker 2: most popular and successful elements of that government, to starve it,
Speaker 2: to shrink it, to make it incompetent, to make it corrupt.
Speaker 2: That's why Social Security and Medicare have long been targets
Speaker 2: for the right and for anti populace in general. Is
Speaker 2: not in spite of their popularity, but because of it.
Speaker 2: And the same logic for our government's most popular agencies applies,
Speaker 2: such as the US Postal Service. Now, the USPS does
Speaker 2: honestly a truly markable job delivering mail to every single
Speaker 2: location in the country, no matter how remote, on a
Speaker 2: daily basis. It's a marvel and it is second only
Speaker 2: to the National Park Service as America's favorite agency. So
Speaker 2: naturally it's now being targeted by Trump for elimination. That
Speaker 2: has a dual benefit for oligarchs. Not only does the
Speaker 2: destruction of a popular government function further undermine popular commitment
Speaker 2: to democracy, it also gives an immediate sop to corporations
Speaker 2: like UPS and to FedEx. In spoiler alert, delivering to
Speaker 2: a remote village in Alaska or a mountain hamlet in
Speaker 2: the hollers of West Virginia, it's not profitable so many
Speaker 2: rural Americans will almost certainly be cut off from pustal
Speaker 2: service entirely, or there be price gouge, charge exorbitant fees
Speaker 2: if Trump allows profit to become king in mail delivery, cut, deregulate, privatize,
Speaker 2: but keep the goodies flowing always to the top. That's
Speaker 2: the playbook, pain and sacrifice for the masses, bonanza.
Speaker 4: Of large s for the favorite oligarchs.
Speaker 2: Bernie is right to sound the alarm about American oligarchy
Speaker 2: because we are watching this project reach new levels of
Speaker 2: brazenness and control with few checks insight.
Speaker 4: And to me, this is my central concern.
Speaker 3: And if you want to hear my reaction to Bristol's monologue,
Speaker 3: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 4: All right, Sager, what do you take a look at?
Speaker 3: Well, At the risk of sounding like a college junior
Speaker 3: who just got back from study abroad, I'm about to
Speaker 3: regale you all about the country of Japan. It's been
Speaker 3: about two weeks since I got back, and it still
Speaker 3: feels like a dream.
Speaker 1: That's why I can't shut up about it. Going there
Speaker 1: genuinely made.
Speaker 3: Me questions some pretty foundational myths about the United States.
Speaker 3: It's the only place on Earth I've ever been where
Speaker 3: I would easily consider leaving the US for maybe Switzerland.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 3: But since I'm a loyal American and I'm never going
Speaker 3: to give up on this place, I thought I would
Speaker 3: take a look at why is it such an amazing place?
Speaker 1: What can we learn from it?
Speaker 3: First, this may sound tried, but it is perhaps the
Speaker 3: most remarkable thing about it.
Speaker 1: There are no fat people in Japan.
Speaker 3: This is remarkable because of how much it cuts across
Speaker 3: the grain of every other developed society. Japan, by all accounts,
Speaker 3: should be the opposite. It is a G seven nation,
Speaker 3: the third largest economy on Earth. It has a population
Speaker 3: rich enough to afford the creature comforts of life. It
Speaker 3: is plenty consumerists, and yet they somehow defy the trend
Speaker 3: in an opposite way to the US and the entire
Speaker 3: Western world.
Speaker 1: Japan has an obesiitie rate of four percent.
Speaker 3: Compare that to the US of nearly forty percent, with
Speaker 3: the vast majority of our population clocking in it at
Speaker 3: a classification of overweight.
Speaker 1: So how do they do it?
Speaker 3: The answer that Johann Hari arrives at is basically culture.
Speaker 3: Japan has a food culture that prioritizes simple food, high
Speaker 3: quality ingredients, lots of nutrition. Children are taught and encouraged
Speaker 3: at a very young age to not eat to access.
Speaker 3: Schools can go as far as banning outside lunches to
Speaker 3: encourage healthy eating that they provide. Furthermore, the government actively
Speaker 3: penalizes people for being fat. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 3: they enacted something known as the Metabo Law, which said
Speaker 3: that once a year, every workplace and local government in
Speaker 3: Japan has to bring in a team of nurses to
Speaker 3: measure the wasteline of adults between the age of forty
Speaker 3: and seventy four. If your measurements are too high, you
Speaker 3: are referred to counseling and workplaces that must actively help
Speaker 3: you lose weight. Companies that have too many employees that
Speaker 3: are fat are then subject to fine. Beyond that, though,
Speaker 3: is what Johan gets to They just have a better lifestyle.
Speaker 3: Elderly Japanese people gather in public parts almost every morning
Speaker 3: for group exercise. Day to day life in a city
Speaker 3: like Tokyo requires traversing several flights of stairs walking from
Speaker 3: one place to another. My average step count when I
Speaker 3: was there was sixteen thousand per day. Now, of course
Speaker 3: I was a tourist, but I could see easily just living,
Speaker 3: going to work, and going out to eat would require
Speaker 3: a ton of walking, way more than most Americans do.
Speaker 3: And what's amazing is that this does not require anything crazy.
Speaker 3: The Japanese eat plenty of seed oils, they have plenty
Speaker 3: of candy, they have a lot of junk food, They've
Speaker 3: got red dye in their cereal.
Speaker 1: They just don't eat that much of it. If you do,
Speaker 1: you're publicly shamed.
Speaker 3: Instead, they just eat variations of fish, meat, rice, fermented vegetables,
Speaker 3: and broth. It is incredible how full that you can
Speaker 3: feel on such a meal, and just how much weight
Speaker 3: you can lose if you do. In a sense, as
Speaker 3: Johan writes, this solution is staring us right in the face.
Speaker 3: It's lifestyle stupid. Building on that is carrying over the
Speaker 3: reverence for respect of the body to then respect for
Speaker 3: each other. I cannot tell you how astonishing it is
Speaker 3: to feel as physically safe in a major city as
Speaker 3: you do in Tokyo.
Speaker 1: I have traveled the globe.
Speaker 3: I've probably been to almost every major city in the
Speaker 3: United States and arguably every major so called global city.
Speaker 3: Absolutely nothing compares to Japan. It is difficult to describe,
Speaker 3: but perhaps best related anecdotes. I witness children as young
Speaker 3: as seven or eight years old taking the subway by themselves,
Speaker 3: walking home in the dark. Their parents have no fear
Speaker 3: anything will happen to them. You board a train, the
Speaker 3: conductor doesn't even check your ticket. The assumption is you're
Speaker 3: just sitting in your assigned seat. You visit a store,
Speaker 3: there are no smile, you're on camera stickers, there is
Speaker 3: no fear. People don't steal anything. Take a look at
Speaker 3: the Apple store in Japan.
Speaker 9: All the iPhones displayed aren't attached to any security device.
Speaker 9: The phones just sit on a mag safe charger, which
Speaker 9: means you can literally pick them up and.
Speaker 4: Examine them without any restrictions.
Speaker 9: And this doesn't just apply to iPhones, but the other
Speaker 9: things in the store, like headphones, Like I could totally
Speaker 9: just pretend these are mine and walk out, which is crazy.
Speaker 9: But you know what's even crazier. Even their most expensive
Speaker 9: devices like iPads and MacBook pros are only connected to
Speaker 9: one thing, which is the charging cable, so you can
Speaker 9: literally just unplug the devices and pick them.
Speaker 1: Up as you please.
Speaker 9: The absence of security just goes to show how much
Speaker 9: trust and honesty is part of the Japanese culture.
Speaker 3: The level of safety is so high much of the
Speaker 3: general nuisance of life is removed entirely. When you feel
Speaker 3: true peace in an urbanment environment, amazing things can happen.
Speaker 3: You can send your kids to school without fear. You
Speaker 3: can open a business without thinking that people are going
Speaker 3: to steal from you. Your transaction costs go down because
Speaker 3: you don't fear being cheated. All of it comes back
Speaker 3: to respect to a culture. We're at a crosswalk. Nobody
Speaker 3: absolutely nobody well jaywalk because it is understood such a
Speaker 3: high quality of life is attainable only if everyone mutually
Speaker 3: agrees not to disturb.
Speaker 1: The peace and to follow the rules.
Speaker 3: But that when finally, what really changed my American heart
Speaker 3: was this idea. What if the best place in the
Speaker 3: world is not a place that invents something, but instead
Speaker 3: refines it. Japanese culture is built on refinement. Its own
Speaker 3: history is incredible. It was a place entirely closed off
Speaker 3: from the world for centuries. It woke up one day
Speaker 3: and was shocked to find itself the potential prey of
Speaker 3: the imperial Western powers. Instead of succumbing to the imperialist West.
Speaker 3: They decided to do what they do, but even better.
Speaker 3: They sent envoys across the globe. They gathered information about technology, railroads, banking, education,
Speaker 3: and in a single generation went from a peasant farming,
Speaker 3: feudal society to a rival industrial power capable of destroying
Speaker 3: the Russian Colossus. Their major crime actually was accelerating imperialism
Speaker 3: and militarism past what even the West would dream of
Speaker 3: in its conquest of all of East Asia. Eventually, of course,
Speaker 3: that became their downfall, and yet even then, from the
Speaker 3: literal ashes, it rises up to do it all over again.
Speaker 3: In the last seventy five years, it went from a
Speaker 3: place raised to the grid to the third largest economy
Speaker 3: in the world. They did it again by not inventing
Speaker 3: things per se, but by refining them. The Japanese didn't
Speaker 3: invent the automobile, and yet today Toyota is the best
Speaker 3: selling car brand in the world. Why by refining the
Speaker 3: car to be cheap, easy to fix, and reliable for
Speaker 3: the most major pursose purchase that most people on Earth
Speaker 3: will make. This extends to consumer electronics, to fashion, to food,
Speaker 3: to everything. While I was in Japan, I was just
Speaker 3: amazed at how the so called best of anything, it's there.
Speaker 3: Best men's fashion Japan, no question. The level of attention
Speaker 3: to detail, the cultural reverence of craftsmanship means you can
Speaker 3: find the highest.
Speaker 1: Quality clothing in Tokyo.
Speaker 3: If you like coffee like I do, you will find
Speaker 3: yourself oceans away from South America and Africa drinking the
Speaker 3: best cup that you will ever find.
Speaker 1: If you want the best pizza, it's probably in Tokyo.
Speaker 3: Yes, I know it sounds crazy to the millions of
Speaker 3: people who flock to Italy every year. Don't take my
Speaker 3: word for it, take it from the people who tried it.
Speaker 3: The Michelin Guide for Tokyo boasts dozens of non Japanese restaurants,
Speaker 3: although if you have me, there's no reason to go
Speaker 3: and not just eat Japanese food. The same applies for
Speaker 3: basically every subcategory of Western life that requires any attention
Speaker 3: to detail and craftsmanship. In fact, one way that you
Speaker 3: know Japan is amazing is that their own population, which
Speaker 3: is very wealthy by any global standard and can easily
Speaker 3: afford to travel, has no desire to leave. Only fifteen
Speaker 3: percent of the population has a passport, less than eight
Speaker 3: percent speak English fluently.
Speaker 1: They don't need to or care. They live in a
Speaker 1: great place. So I'm going to end with this.
Speaker 3: If you look for a through line between everything that
Speaker 3: I've discussed here, it's a culture is more important than
Speaker 3: anything else. That's why we are absolutely subject to the
Speaker 3: pressures of our environment. When you have a strong culture
Speaker 3: and a strong foundation, you can mold that environment to
Speaker 3: what you.
Speaker 1: Most highly value.
Speaker 3: In Japan, they have decided to mold their environment around
Speaker 3: mutual respect, prosperity, and dignity. That is a very hopeful
Speaker 3: story that all of us should consider as we decide
Speaker 3: what type of country that we want to live in.
Speaker 1: So that's it, Krystal, I love that place.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my my reaction to
Speaker 2: Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Counterpoints will have a great show for it everybody tomorrow
Speaker 3: and we will see you all then.