Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 1: Reporter from More Perfect Union recently went to a Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: Trump rally and instead of trying to find like the
Speaker 1: craziest people he possibly could at the rally, actually try
Speaker 1: to have a conversation with people and see if they
Speaker 1: might be able to find some common ground on something.
Speaker 4: Here's a little bit of how that went.
Speaker 5: Why Trump instead of Bernie Sanders?
Speaker 6: What I look at is more progressives like the Bernie
Speaker 6: Sanders factions and stuff like that. We actually see a
Speaker 6: lot of the same problems.
Speaker 7: And I would vote for Bernie Sanders before I vote
Speaker 7: for like a Ted Cruiser, market rubio.
Speaker 6: Things are more expensive.
Speaker 7: I think people were more scared.
Speaker 8: Our money doesn't have no value, and that's why people
Speaker 8: that's why we're having problems, this whole inflation thing.
Speaker 9: It's been building a building for multi decades and it's
Speaker 9: getting close. Now.
Speaker 5: You work in McDonald's, I do.
Speaker 8: Do you feel like you're getting everything out of work
Speaker 8: that you're putting into it.
Speaker 7: I believe that you get paid more.
Speaker 3: All I am doing is I'm working my ass off
Speaker 3: to get my money.
Speaker 4: I'm a hard worker, and I feel like I deserved more.
Speaker 6: I worked down in West Virginia. Yeah, on the rigs
Speaker 6: for Evil Big Red Haliburton, Oh my god, Halliburton. We
Speaker 6: were two weeks on, one week off, so you never
Speaker 6: got to go home. We were the lowest paid of
Speaker 6: all the workers out there. I only made thirteen to
Speaker 6: fifty when I got hired on for Halliburt. For Halliburton, YEP.
Speaker 6: Probably wouldn't have an Iraq War if it wouldn't have
Speaker 6: been for the Halliburton. There's cheney and stuff.
Speaker 3: We were expendable, that's all it was.
Speaker 6: Haliburton, Big Red they called it. You're just part of
Speaker 6: the machine, and the machine can be replaced.
Speaker 8: Can you really trust a billionaire help me understand why
Speaker 8: that's the thing for you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So with billionaires, I would say, honestly, no, you can't,
Speaker 7: I'll say with Trump when he debated Hillary Clinton in
Speaker 7: twenty sixteen, she said all these things about the tax laws,
Speaker 7: all this, and Trump said, where have you been for
Speaker 7: thirty years? You know you haven't done anything about it.
Speaker 7: And then he said, I know you're not going to
Speaker 7: do it because all your donors who fund your campaign
Speaker 7: benefit from the same tax breaks and tax.
Speaker 3: Laws I do.
Speaker 7: So whether it's left or right, these people they're not
Speaker 7: really going to change the tax laws from the donors
Speaker 7: that are funding their campaign.
Speaker 6: We lost our we lost our republic decades ago.
Speaker 5: We're living in an oligarchy.
Speaker 1: And that reporter John Russell, who not only does work
Speaker 1: for More Perfect Union but also has his own sub
Speaker 1: stack at the haller joins us.
Speaker 4: Now, great to see my friend, Good to.
Speaker 8: See you, manod Moarning everybody, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, So just talk to us a little
Speaker 1: bit about your approach here. How did you like was
Speaker 1: this the general consensus from the people that you talked to,
Speaker 1: or was this like kind of cherry pick the things
Speaker 1: that overlapped with some of your you know, worldview.
Speaker 8: Look, I poured drinks in the rust belt where I live.
Speaker 5: I'm above it. Right now forever.
Speaker 8: And you know, the county I worked in voted for
Speaker 8: Trump by seventy one percent. So when you know the
Speaker 8: bartender is like me, a white guy with a mullet,
Speaker 8: people kind of assume that you're on the same page.
Speaker 8: But when they find out I'm a card carryon labor leftist,
Speaker 8: I make no bones about that, there's always shock that
Speaker 8: sometimes we are on the same page. This was the
Speaker 8: hunch that I brought up to that Trump rally. I
Speaker 8: wanted to have organizing conversations. What would it be You know,
Speaker 8: if we're going to have mass movements and really address
Speaker 8: a lot of our problems, it's going to require not
Speaker 8: half of the working class, but everybody in it. So
Speaker 8: I wanted to see what would it be like if
Speaker 8: you had those organizing conversations with people in line.
Speaker 5: At the Trump rally, we you know, cuture the best
Speaker 5: parts that came out of there.
Speaker 8: There's a lot of crazy things in there too, But
Speaker 8: people are complicated, and if we're going to meet them
Speaker 8: where they are, you have to wade through that to
Speaker 8: get down to that class solidarity and see what's possible
Speaker 8: when you can get people into the same boat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I thought that the best part of
Speaker 2: the interview. We see how many people are out there
Speaker 2: and being like, oh my god, this one guy to
Speaker 2: Trump rally said something crazy and it's like goes viral.
Speaker 2: Obviously you took a different tactic here. What are some
Speaker 2: of the shared assumptions that you found whenever you were
Speaker 2: talking with some people at the rally.
Speaker 8: Well everybody, I mean we really, as you step back
Speaker 8: and think about it, we live in unbelievable times, you know,
Speaker 8: and we're all reacting to that in our own different ways.
Speaker 8: So the shared things were a sense of disbelief.
Speaker 5: Pick your issue.
Speaker 8: I mean, Elon Musk recently lost two hundred billion dollars,
Speaker 8: right and somehow still the second richest man on earth.
Speaker 8: You heard somebody who was working for Halliburton right there.
Speaker 8: He was making thirteen dollars an hour for Halliburton, and
Speaker 8: this was you know that there was a part of his.
Speaker 5: Interview that didn't make the cut.
Speaker 8: He said, we were pulling double digit millions, high double
Speaker 8: digit millions of natural gas out of the ground and
Speaker 8: we're getting paid thirteen bucks an hour. This is Elon
Speaker 8: Musks losing two hundred billion and being their world second
Speaker 8: richest man. I mean, everybody, regardless of where you're coming
Speaker 8: from on the spectrum, knows that that's crazy, right, and
Speaker 8: we're all having different reactions about what to do about it.
Speaker 8: But a lot of the times, the political landscape doesn't
Speaker 8: have a lot of alternatives to do something.
Speaker 1: So John, at this point, a Trump presidency isn't like
Speaker 1: a theoretical possible future. We lived through a Trump presidency.
Speaker 1: We know what the priorities were. They were class war,
Speaker 1: all right, But you know of the sort that we've
Speaker 1: had in this country for multiple generations at this point
Speaker 1: is big accomplishment was this giant you know, corporate tax cutting,
Speaker 1: three sense of which went to the top earners in
Speaker 1: the country, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Et cetera.
Speaker 1: So how do you still, based on your conversations with
Speaker 1: these individuals, but also based on your own analysis, how
Speaker 1: you to hold on to this idea that he's going
Speaker 1: to be on the side of the working class when
Speaker 1: it just wasn't the case when he actually had the
Speaker 1: power of the presidency.
Speaker 8: There's so many things I think about here, but we're
Speaker 8: really in the infant stages of trying to build working
Speaker 8: class solidarity. We haven't had the kind of movement that
Speaker 8: stick around and really work, not just on an election
Speaker 8: cycle basis at building working class solidarity, but you know,
Speaker 8: over the long term, partly because you know, the status
Speaker 8: quo doesn't want that to happen. If the left and
Speaker 8: the right of the working class were to ever unite
Speaker 8: on the themes that came up in these interviews, raining
Speaker 8: in billionaire power, ending all these forever wars, if working
Speaker 8: class people got together on those things, we would have
Speaker 8: a lot to win. The ruling class would have a
Speaker 8: far way to fall. So those kind of movements have
Speaker 8: really been kept down. But you know, you never really
Speaker 8: know what something's going to be like until you have it.
Speaker 8: So I think people are looking at Donald Trump and
Speaker 8: they're saying, well, you know, this guy who might go
Speaker 8: into a rally and do literally anything. I mean, humph
Speaker 8: the American flag. Right, That's just one example, but it's
Speaker 8: a sure sign to people that this billionaire is not
Speaker 8: like the others. They don't he doesn't fit into polite
Speaker 8: society that's handed down, you know, forty years of this
Speaker 8: painful stat nation that we all kind of feel. Now,
Speaker 8: is he going to go to that for the working class?
Speaker 8: Is he going to show up on a picket line
Speaker 8: like some of the people hoped he would.
Speaker 5: In our interviews. No, I don't think he's going to
Speaker 5: do that.
Speaker 8: But the big point to me is that the folks
Speaker 8: on at his rally they want him to show up
Speaker 8: on a pick of the line.
Speaker 5: They want him to support unions.
Speaker 8: You know, we can all have our best whether or
Speaker 8: not that's going to happen, But the big thing to
Speaker 8: me is that there is an apptite for anti establishment
Speaker 8: labor left organizing among the people you would least expect.
Speaker 5: To have that opinion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's been research from Jacovin in partnership with a
Speaker 1: think tank focused on working class politics. They've done a
Speaker 1: number of field sudi's testing different messaging and they found
Speaker 1: exactly what you're saying here is that Listen, you're not
Speaker 1: going to convert hardcore Trump supporters overnight.
Speaker 4: But can you start to shift back.
Speaker 1: Some of the class realignment that has happened in the
Speaker 1: Trump era if you use economic populist messaging.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you know, the issues that seem
Speaker 1: to be top of mind in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: among at least some significant portion of their publican base,
Speaker 1: are these cultural like lightning Rod, You know, transgender issues
Speaker 1: is big right now. CRT was big a minute ago,
Speaker 1: and so it seems like there's almost more interest or
Speaker 1: the voting behavior tracks more with the cultural issues than
Speaker 1: it is with the economic interest that you know, we
Speaker 1: see the polls of the number who want to curb
Speaker 1: corporate power and want to lift the minimum wage, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, but that doesn't seem to be the what
Speaker 1: dictates the voting behavior.
Speaker 8: Yeah, my response to that is that we it's not
Speaker 8: surprising because we live we all live in this environment
Speaker 8: of engineered division. It's not to cheapen any of those issues.
Speaker 8: But do any of us really think that there's a
Speaker 8: good faith discussion that the reason why critical race theory
Speaker 8: is in the headlines has anything to do with a
Speaker 8: good faith discussion about anything in terms of racial equality.
Speaker 8: I mean, this is here, this is splashed all across
Speaker 8: the headlines with the intent to divide people, not to
Speaker 8: have a good faith conversation that should be part of
Speaker 8: building race and class solidarity. What we hear is you know,
Speaker 8: a know, divide and conquer tactic. I mean, there's a
Speaker 8: small group one percent of the people, the merchant class
Speaker 8: is the super rich they want to run things, they
Speaker 8: don't have enough numbers to do that, so they have
Speaker 8: to divide the working class and add their one percent
Speaker 8: to the fifty percent that hates the other fifty percent.
Speaker 8: I mean, really, it's simple to me, but I think
Speaker 8: we all have to remember that's what's happening and not
Speaker 8: take that for granted because it's having you know, it's
Speaker 8: keeping us apart, and it's just a false choice. And
Speaker 8: we have to if we're going to break ourselves out
Speaker 8: of that, realize who.
Speaker 5: The division from.
Speaker 8: All of these hot button issues that dominate the press,
Speaker 8: that that suck all the air out of the room
Speaker 8: that you could use to have a solidarity conversation, we
Speaker 8: have to realize who that.
Speaker 5: Division is serving. And people are smart.
Speaker 8: You know. My beef with all of the videos that
Speaker 8: go up to these Trump rallies is it's like, you know, oh,
Speaker 8: let's go stare at the zoo animals and let's pick
Speaker 8: out the craziest one so we can profit off of
Speaker 8: the clicks. Now, if you have a conversation with people
Speaker 8: in line, they can understand that they will say that
Speaker 8: back to you. But we got to get our politics
Speaker 8: in order. In a hurry to do something a little
Speaker 8: more than just react to these hot button things that
Speaker 8: are you know, engineered and have been pushed for forty
Speaker 8: years and financial billions of dollars to generate the reactions
Speaker 8: that we see all the time in our politics.
Speaker 5: We got to get beyond that and actually talk to people.
Speaker 1: Yeah we will shut John, Yeah, well John, I've always
Speaker 1: appreciated your work, and I do recommend people go check
Speaker 1: out the holler on substack because you live from the area,
Speaker 1: live in the area, work at a dive bar, like
Speaker 1: it's real for you, and so this image that comes
Speaker 1: from partisan media, whether it's you know, MSNBC or Fox
Speaker 1: News of like, oh my god, we're on the verge
Speaker 1: of civil war now.
Speaker 4: I live in a conservative area as well, where I
Speaker 4: grew up born and raised.
Speaker 1: I used to live actually in the area where you live,
Speaker 1: and we're born and raised now, and it never struck
Speaker 1: me as being accurate. It never struck me as like
Speaker 1: a reflection of the people that I know and interact
Speaker 1: with and friends with in my day to day life.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate you doing some work to highlight some
Speaker 1: of the areas where there's potential common ground and things
Speaker 1: that we could build from It's always great to see you.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3: Thanks ma'am.
Speaker 1: Interesting little catch on a new line in zooms terms
Speaker 1: of service. Trust me, this is interesting. I know it
Speaker 1: sounds like a very boring setup, but put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen. So they are now saying in their
Speaker 1: terms of service that you have to allow AI to
Speaker 1: train on all your data, audio, facial recognition, private conversations,
Speaker 1: unconditionally and irrevocably, with no opt out.
Speaker 4: Let me just read you.
Speaker 1: The specific lines here, So keep this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: They say, quote, you consent to Zoom's access use, collection, creation, modification, distribution, processing, sharing,
Speaker 1: maintenance and storage of service generated data. So that means
Speaker 1: when you're on Zoom and you're like doing your thing,
Speaker 1: they're collecting all of that for any purpose to the
Speaker 1: extent and in the manner permitted under applicable law machine
Speaker 1: and it's to be used for machine learning or artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: including for the purposes of training and tuning of algorithms
Speaker 1: and models. This is something that I've been focused on
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, this is a whole new world
Speaker 1: because the way that these new AI large language models
Speaker 1: work is they scoop up the technical term is scrape
Speaker 1: all of this data that they feed into these models
Speaker 1: to train them on human language and information and research
Speaker 1: and creative all of this stuff. And so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about, well, are you just allowed to
Speaker 1: take whatever you want? Sarah Silverman and other comedians and
Speaker 1: writers are pushing back. They're actually suing these big tech
Speaker 1: companies to regain you know, to get compensated at the
Speaker 1: very least, or set some sort of legal boundaries around
Speaker 1: what these companies are allowed to scoop up. But Zoom
Speaker 1: clearly working, you know here in Connections saying listen, we
Speaker 1: are going to use anything that you do on our platform.
Speaker 4: We are allowed to use in whatever way we want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is totally crazy.
Speaker 2: I'm definitely going to uninstall Zoom or at least try
Speaker 2: to use it as little as possible.
Speaker 3: You know, you just never know though. It's like, is
Speaker 3: Apple going to do this? You know, who's actually taking
Speaker 3: your data?
Speaker 2: This is just thankfully this guy was able to catch
Speaker 2: it in the terms of service. But that's that's it,
Speaker 2: I mean, and this is part of the creepy thing.
Speaker 2: You're always being recorded now, You're always, like I was
Speaker 2: with some friends, we're staying into Airbnb and we were
Speaker 2: out on the porch and one of them was saying
Speaker 2: something about his job. He works in a sensitive job.
Speaker 2: And I was like, hey, man, you shouldn't say that.
Speaker 2: Here he's like talking about I said, look these airbnbs,
Speaker 2: these things are all wired with ring cameras. Yeah, sure enough.
Speaker 2: I look up, there's like one sitting right there. Wow.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, you have to be kind of
Speaker 2: used to this world where there's like a privatized surveillance
Speaker 2: regime literally everywhere, and then in the world of AI
Speaker 2: they are using that even if the person who owns
Speaker 2: the camera is not using it, it lives on the
Speaker 2: ring server.
Speaker 3: What is Amazon going to do with that?
Speaker 2: Maybe they'll feed it into their algorithms to detect stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're already at a point where they are
Speaker 2: talking about facial recognition and all that stuff for crime.
Speaker 2: We know that this happened during the January sixth investigation.
Speaker 2: For example, you can read in the indictments they literally
Speaker 2: sent images the FBI did to the facial recognition team
Speaker 2: and we're able to id people off of that.
Speaker 3: That's the government.
Speaker 2: I mean, they have all of our you know, from
Speaker 2: licenses from passport photos, all kinds of information that they're
Speaker 2: ready to tap with zero warrant or any of that.
Speaker 2: And that's you know, you know, in terms of how
Speaker 2: the government is and who's stopping them from contracting some
Speaker 2: of the sperms and all these other end to get more.
Speaker 3: So it's a creepy situation.
Speaker 1: Extremely it also shows you how almost inherently exploited of
Speaker 1: these terms of service contracting are I mean you just
Speaker 1: you know, you download zoom they say like check the
Speaker 1: box that you agree. Who is really reading through the
Speaker 1: thirty pages or whatever a fine print of what exactly
Speaker 1: you're signing up for? And what choice do you have
Speaker 1: if you're you know, going to be a breaking points
Speaker 1: guest and we're like here's your Zoom link. Are you
Speaker 1: really going to be like, oh, I can't do this
Speaker 1: segment now because I don't agree with you know, paragraph
Speaker 1: thirty two, subsection B, part seven of the terms of service.
Speaker 4: No one is doing that.
Speaker 1: So basically, they set the rules and you have no
Speaker 1: choice if you're going to live in modern society but
Speaker 1: to agree to them. And sometimes those those rules are
Speaker 1: really dystopian and disturbing, as in this case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally so anyway, raising awareness. Fascinating and crazy story
Speaker 2: going on with We Work. As if the saga can't
Speaker 2: can still continue, just put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: We Work is warning of bankruptcy after years of losses
Speaker 2: and warns that the cancelation rate of current clients makes
Speaker 2: it so that it may be unsustainable to continue the business.
Speaker 2: So in a new filing to the SEC, the company
Speaker 2: said it had posted Crystal a net loss of seven
Speaker 2: hundred million in the first six months of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: after recording ten point seven billion in net loss over
Speaker 2: the previous three years. Quote, our losses and negatives cattionals
Speaker 2: from operating activities raised substantial doubt about our ability to
Speaker 2: continue as a growing concern.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you might call that a growing concern in business.
Speaker 2: The company reported it has two point nine billion in
Speaker 2: long term debt as of June thirtieth. So this is
Speaker 2: just the latest casualty of the work from home crisis.
Speaker 2: This in commercial real estate. A lot of people Crystal
Speaker 2: actually thought that we Work would survive work from home
Speaker 2: because they were like, oh, well, the flexible business model
Speaker 2: means that you know, people only need a place like
Speaker 2: one or just times a week.
Speaker 3: They don't need to.
Speaker 2: Use it as much, and there was a good argument
Speaker 2: for it, except reality is caught up and it turns
Speaker 2: out that people really aren't coming in at all or
Speaker 2: just like basically defaulting into like coffee shops, and this
Speaker 2: entire business may collapse completely, which is crazy considering the
Speaker 2: entire history of this company.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was such a hot company for a while.
Speaker 1: The CEO did great job creating this whole like hip
Speaker 1: image around it, you know, huge investments that came in.
Speaker 1: They quote an expert here who I think really sums
Speaker 1: it up, who says they were brilliant in creating an
Speaker 1: aura of being the next big thing, but they were
Speaker 1: never financially successful. So even at the height of the
Speaker 1: we work hype cycle, they were not really making it.
Speaker 1: And so now in the pandemic when workers were forced
Speaker 1: to work from home and then decided that hey, I
Speaker 1: actually kind of like this at least hybrid remote work situation,
Speaker 1: and you have massive office vacancy rates. You know, when
Speaker 1: people say like work from home, they don't mean work
Speaker 1: from we work. They have increasingly set up their own
Speaker 1: dedicated spaces in their houses or apartments where they have
Speaker 1: an office setup where they are comfortable and able to
Speaker 1: then manage some of their like personal life responsibilities more adequately. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: people aren't really interested in commuting into where we work
Speaker 1: in the same way they're not interested in commuting into.
Speaker 3: Their office, exactly correct. And the other thing that's very interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at the history of this company,
Speaker 2: I don't know why it was obsessible we work for
Speaker 2: a while. There's a bunch of great books on we work.
Speaker 2: There's like four or five out there. The Apple series.
Speaker 2: Jared Leto plays Adam Newman, and his Anne Hathway does
Speaker 2: an incredible job of playing his wife Gwydeth Really no, sorry,
Speaker 2: not Gwenda Paltrow.
Speaker 3: Gwidea Paltrow's cousin life, who certainly makes it known throughout
Speaker 3: her life that she is Paltrow.
Speaker 2: Interesting though, is that this company was basically the poster
Speaker 2: child of the.
Speaker 3: Zero interest rate phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Where we Work basically fooled its investors, which, look, it's
Speaker 2: a good idea, let's be honest. But you know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of other companies out there that do what
Speaker 2: they do. Industrious Green whatever, Green Desk, I think that
Speaker 2: was one of their original name, etc.
Speaker 3: What they did is they fooled people in thinking.
Speaker 2: They were technology company by saying they were going to
Speaker 2: have proprietary whatever linked up the startup movement. They were
Speaker 2: getting forty times multiples, even though I think it was
Speaker 2: Scott Galloway actually wrote at the time, He's like, this
Speaker 2: is just a commercial real estate company.
Speaker 3: He's like, why is this being valued as.
Speaker 2: A startup because the upside of startup actually exists in software.
Speaker 3: This is not a software multiple. This is just rent.
Speaker 2: And Adam Newman convinced soft Bank to basically give it
Speaker 2: billions of dollars and effectively like throw it away and
Speaker 2: buy a bunch of leases. The only reason Crystal that
Speaker 2: this company had any value whatsoever, even post Newman crash,
Speaker 2: was because he had spent such colossal sums of money
Speaker 2: going out and acquiring leases at all these buildings that
Speaker 2: when you write down the forty billion or whatever valuation
Speaker 2: back to whatever the sane one was, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe we can actually squeeze some value out of this thing.
Speaker 3: I believe they went public Vice.
Speaker 2: Back for I think a fraction of what they originally wanted,
Speaker 2: but they still have so much debt on their books
Speaker 2: that the company still looks like it could fail. Yeah,
Speaker 2: seven hundred million dollar loss, even after all the riote offs,
Speaker 2: all the layoffs and all the other nonsense. So it's
Speaker 2: it's a massive indictment of business and venture capital and
Speaker 2: the venture capital just like banks, everybody was willing to
Speaker 2: give this guy money, Masayoshi san over at SoftBank, all
Speaker 2: of the you know, foolishness that they were up to
Speaker 2: in the twenty tens with we Work and with Uber,
Speaker 2: both which the Saudis were also invested in. Yeah, look,
Speaker 2: reality eventually catches up. That's we're finding out here Uber.
Speaker 2: Even by the way, in a lot of their filings,
Speaker 2: they're still burning through cash like nobody's business.
Speaker 3: It's like, when is this company going to turn a profit?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: A lot of and you pointed to the zero indust
Speaker 1: rate from That's exactly what it is. Because when money
Speaker 1: is super cheap, then these funders is like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: let's just keep floating them, Let's keep funneling more cash
Speaker 1: into them, and they can keep you know, servicing their
Speaker 1: interest payments on their debt et cetera, et cetera. Now
Speaker 1: that interest rates have gone up quite a bit, you
Speaker 1: see a lot of these I mean this is not
Speaker 1: a tech company, as you pointed out, but it positioned
Speaker 1: itself as tech adjacent by creating this certain brand and
Speaker 1: a certain look in the space, like let's put in
Speaker 1: beanbag chairs and have an app for it and convince
Speaker 1: you it's a tech company. It kind of reminds me
Speaker 1: of a little bit of what's happening right now with
Speaker 1: the AI craze, where it's like every startup is like,
Speaker 1: let's find some way to position ourselves as AI related
Speaker 1: in order to get funding. So, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: I sort of thought that they already were headed to
Speaker 1: bankruptcy a long time ago, but it makes sense that
Speaker 1: Covid would be and the work from home remote work
Speaker 1: revolution would be the death now for this company.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, it's a sad end, to be honest.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of people who put their whole
Speaker 2: life savings in this company, worked at the company, believed
Speaker 2: in Adam Newman, investors, all those A lot of those
Speaker 2: people already went pretty bust and now to go all
Speaker 2: the way to zero, that's a really ignominious end to
Speaker 2: the story. But anyway I said, I genuinely encourage people
Speaker 2: to watch that mini series.
Speaker 3: It's very good. The acting in it is incredible.
Speaker 9: Excuse me, guys, are you guys together? Have you guys
Speaker 9: ever been divorced? Have you been divorced?
Speaker 7: Have been divorced?
Speaker 4: Excuse me?
Speaker 9: Have either of you ever been divorced? It might be
Speaker 9: sensitive because you're to get divorced. It's not just something
Speaker 9: that your parents constantly reassure you wasn't your fault, even
Speaker 9: when you're not asking. It's also something that's political. I
Speaker 9: eat divorced laws. Who can get divorced?
Speaker 3: Who can't get divorced?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 9: Wait, what do you mean can't get divorced? Is it
Speaker 9: a thing to want a divorce but not be able
Speaker 9: to get one? And what does that sound like to you?
Speaker 9: Does that sound like a curtailing of freedom? The idea
Speaker 9: of not being able to leave a marriage because some
Speaker 9: people think there are too many divorces, that divorce laws
Speaker 9: have gotten out of hand and we should go back
Speaker 9: to the old way. But what does that even mean?
Speaker 9: So there's something called no fault divorces opposed to fault
Speaker 9: based divorce. Do you know what no fault divorces?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like without a reason, right.
Speaker 9: No fault divorce is what you file when you just
Speaker 9: want to dissolve your marriage, and you're not trying to
Speaker 9: assign blame to anyone. No one committed any mortal sins
Speaker 9: against your marriage. I mean maybe they did, but you
Speaker 9: just want to move on, so you file no fault
Speaker 9: divorce and let it be done. But for most of
Speaker 9: history that has not been the case. Do you think
Speaker 9: one person should be allowed to leave no matter what
Speaker 9: the other person thinks?
Speaker 6: No, no, No.
Speaker 5: That's too free, it's too liberal, it's just too.
Speaker 9: Up until the eighteen hundreds in England, it was basically
Speaker 9: impossible to get divorced. The law was such that a
Speaker 9: woman was, in a sense property of the man, and
Speaker 9: you can imagine how that might affect one's autonomy. So
Speaker 9: actually you had to get Parliament to approve divorces. Only
Speaker 9: about ten were passed in Parliament each year, and they
Speaker 9: were available only to the very wealthy, because if you're rich,
Speaker 9: you can do whatever you want. And that's always been true. Now,
Speaker 9: in the US, divorce has always been left to the states,
Speaker 9: and going into the nineteenth century, grounds for divorce were expanding.
Speaker 9: This worried some people. In eighteen forty seven, the Missouri
Speaker 9: Supreme Court noted that too great a facility in obtaining
Speaker 9: divorces is exceedingly injurious to the good morals and happiness
Speaker 9: of domestic life. Now, to many of us, divorce is
Speaker 9: just something you do when your first family finds out
Speaker 9: about your second family, and it's basically no big deal.
Speaker 9: But many people are still worried about the deletarious effects
Speaker 9: of divorce. Conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro and Timpoole and
Speaker 9: Stephen Crowder have all essentially blamed no fault divorce for
Speaker 9: family breakdown.
Speaker 10: Hi, this is Office of Commerce and Nadler.
Speaker 9: Hi, I'm a constituent. Basically, I'm calling because my wife
Speaker 9: is trying to divorce me, and I'm just wondering what
Speaker 9: the congressman can do about that.
Speaker 7: So unfortunately, we're only able to assist with federal agencies.
Speaker 9: Okay, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Of course, take care of me.
Speaker 10: Bye.
Speaker 9: One person in the Washington Examiner frames the fact that
Speaker 9: your spouse can divorce you unilaterally as a violation of
Speaker 9: your constitutional rights. The fourteenth Amendment mandates that no person
Speaker 9: be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process
Speaker 9: of the law, but spouse's sued for divorce have no
Speaker 9: right to their day in court, no weighing of evidence
Speaker 9: takes place. Only one spouse need allege without proof or
Speaker 9: specificity irreconcilable differences, or that the marriage has irrevocably broken down,
Speaker 9: or Stephen Crowder saying my then wife decided that she
Speaker 9: didn't want to be married anymore, and in the state
Speaker 9: of Texas that is completely permitted now. The first no
Speaker 9: fault divorce law was signed by Ronald Reagan in California
Speaker 9: in nineteen sixty nine. What was the last thing, Oh, state?
Speaker 11: That was Idaho?
Speaker 3: It's good, yuess, it's actually New York.
Speaker 11: You know a year New York U.
Speaker 8: Seventy nine.
Speaker 3: No, No, that's not true.
Speaker 9: But there are still obstacles to getting divorced. I recently
Speaker 9: sat down with Naomi Khan, co director of University of
Speaker 9: Virginia Law's Family Law Center, to get some clarification on
Speaker 9: this stuff.
Speaker 11: No fault in most states does not mean that you
Speaker 11: just drive down to the court, say to the clerk,
Speaker 11: I want a divorce, and you're divorced two minutes later.
Speaker 11: In some limited circumstances, in some states it can be
Speaker 11: much quicker, but in many states, if not most states,
Speaker 11: there needs to be some waiting period. There needs to
Speaker 11: be some separation or there needs to be a finding
Speaker 11: of irreconcilable differences before a divorce can be issued.
Speaker 9: It depends on the state. But if you live and
Speaker 9: say Louisiana, you and your spouse must have lived separate
Speaker 9: and apart for three hundred and sixty five days, if
Speaker 9: you have children, one hundred and eighty days.
Speaker 3: If you don't, what about.
Speaker 4: Waiting periods for getting a divorce, You mean.
Speaker 6: Like you have to be separated for a year or
Speaker 6: something like that.
Speaker 8: Ambivalent on that, I'd.
Speaker 9: Say, if there's a mutual decision and there's no love loss,
Speaker 9: then they shouldn't be a witless.
Speaker 11: Fer A waiting period could if anything, if it's a
Speaker 11: high conflict divorce, it could make the conflict become even
Speaker 11: more extreme. To think about where there's violence, think about
Speaker 11: where there's another relationship. But it's very hard to do
Speaker 11: these to do these studies, and so we don't really
Speaker 11: have great statistics on whether a waiting period would help.
Speaker 9: Waiting periods are especially a thing in covenant marriages. What
Speaker 9: is a covenant marriage? People in a covenant marriage who
Speaker 9: want a divorce must go through marriage counseling and be
Speaker 9: separated for at least eighteen months if they have underage children.
Speaker 9: In other cases, including those involving spousal or child abuse,
Speaker 9: couples in covenant marriages have to be separated for at
Speaker 9: least a year before a divorce can be granted.
Speaker 3: If there's an abuse involved.
Speaker 5: I with who daughter when is married out?
Speaker 3: O U T out capital let is out.
Speaker 9: So that's in Louisiana and covenant marriage is only in
Speaker 9: three states and almost no one chooses that option, but
Speaker 9: some people love the idea. The Texas GOP recently added
Speaker 9: to its party platform. We urge the legislature to rescind
Speaker 9: unilateral no fault divorce laws to support covenant marriage, and
Speaker 9: to pass legislation extending the period of time in which
Speaker 9: a divorce may occur to six months after the date
Speaker 9: of filing for divorce.
Speaker 11: It's not finding very few people opt into the covenant marriage,
Speaker 11: but three states do have that as as an option.
Speaker 9: Steven Crowder also lays out this scenario. If a woman
Speaker 9: cheats on you, she leaves, she takes half.
Speaker 11: States will divide something that they call either community property
Speaker 11: or marital property, and that generally speaking will be the
Speaker 11: property that was acquired by either spouse through the efforts
Speaker 11: of either spouse during the course of the marriage. In
Speaker 11: some states, there's a presumption of equal division. In most
Speaker 11: states there is not its equitable and equitable can made
Speaker 11: that one spouse would get seventy percent of the assets
Speaker 11: and the other would get thirty, but it's up to
Speaker 11: the court or Since about ninety five percent of divorce
Speaker 11: cases settle, it's up to the people or to their
Speaker 11: attorneys doing the negotiation.
Speaker 9: Who would actually be impacted by going back to a
Speaker 9: no fault system.
Speaker 11: There's been some evidence that the introduction of no fault
Speaker 11: divorce has actually led to a reduction of female suicide.
Speaker 9: That's right. In states that introduced a unilateral divorce, we
Speaker 9: find an eight to sixteen percent decline in females suicide,
Speaker 9: roughly a thirty percent decline in domestic violence for both
Speaker 9: men and women, and a ten percent decline in females
Speaker 9: murdered by their partners. Domestic violence appears to have declined
Speaker 9: by somewhere between a quarter and a half between nineteen
Speaker 9: seventy six and nineteen eighty five in those states that
Speaker 9: reformed their divorce laws. So, despite this available data and
Speaker 9: the massive inconvenience getting divorced already is. There are a
Speaker 9: number of legislators who are pushing for this. The Nebraska
Speaker 9: GOP has affirmed its belief that no fault divorce should
Speaker 9: only be accessible to couples without children. Louisiana is debating
Speaker 9: whether to recommend the elimination of no fault divorce. Senator
Speaker 9: from Ohio jd Vance said, these marriages were fundamentally you know,
Speaker 9: they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy,
Speaker 9: and so getting rid of them and making it easier
Speaker 9: for people to shift spouses like they changed their underwear,
Speaker 9: that's going to make people happier in the long term.
Speaker 9: And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads,
Speaker 9: though I'm skept to call, but it really didn't work
Speaker 9: out for the kids of those marriages. Now, I've seen
Speaker 9: no data supporting the idea that making it harder for
Speaker 9: people to get divorced helps anyone, and that maintaining some
Speaker 9: family unit, even though it's terribly acrimonious or maybe even violent,
Speaker 9: offers any benefit to the parents or the kids. What
Speaker 9: if only one person doesn't want to be in that
Speaker 9: relationship anymore.
Speaker 10: You can't force you can't force that person to stay
Speaker 10: in the relationship they don't want anymore. You can try
Speaker 10: as much as you want, but if that's their.
Speaker 3: Decision, you have to get divorced.
Speaker 10: But you have to mutually respect that person's decision. If
Speaker 10: they don't want to be with you anymore, you can't
Speaker 10: force them.
Speaker 9: Historically, stricter divorce laws haven't even done a great job
Speaker 9: of keeping people from getting divorced. In the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 9: Indiana was known as a divorce mill because of its
Speaker 9: lacks divorce laws, so they ended up dealing with what
Speaker 9: they called migratory divorce. And so the thing here is
Speaker 9: that most divorces are mutually upon, so couples just figure
Speaker 9: out how to make it happen. Couples often colluded to
Speaker 9: attain a divorce the state did not want them to have,
Speaker 9: and divorce became increasingly easy to obtain. Collusion was the norm.
Speaker 9: For example, in New York, you could only get a
Speaker 9: divorce on grounds of adultery, so an entire cottage industry
Speaker 9: had developed to fabricate evidence of adultery that could be
Speaker 9: used in divorce court. Okay, now, despite there certainly being
Speaker 9: people in power and even federally who seem unhappy with
Speaker 9: divorce laws as they stand. This is right now, not
Speaker 9: a top concern for lawmakers. This still seems pretty fringe,
Speaker 9: although you never know how things can change. And to
Speaker 9: my knowledge, no presidential candidate has mentioned this, but if
Speaker 9: they have and I'm wrong, leave a comment down below.
Speaker 9: If you had any thoughts on this at all, leave
Speaker 9: a comment. If you didn't like my hair, leave a comment. Share,
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