Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, But you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Robert doing the grune so
Speaker 1: we can start the podcast. Um, I think we should
Speaker 1: just start the podcast with you asking Robert, do you
Speaker 1: want to grunt so we can start the podcast. Um?
Speaker 1: That that seems avant garde. I don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: on guard means, but this is it could happen here,
Speaker 1: a podcast about how things are falling apart and how
Speaker 1: maybe maybe they don't always need to be falling apart.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could do better. Uh. Speaking of doing better,
Speaker 1: you know one thing that sometimes helps us do better
Speaker 1: getting getting in the face of people fucking ship up
Speaker 1: and being like, Hey, that's not that's not cool. Don't
Speaker 1: be doing that, Garrison. That's your leading take it from here. Yeah, Hi,
Speaker 1: So we I've been I've been trying to keep better
Speaker 1: a better job of like following ecological defense movements happening
Speaker 1: both in the States and in other countries. I know
Speaker 1: there was there was a big one up in Canada recently.
Speaker 1: There was a huge one in Germany too, just the
Speaker 1: other day. Yeah, I know the one, the one in Canada.
Speaker 1: There's a uh the uh I forget, I forget what
Speaker 1: the actual indigenous group is called. Um maybe maybe someone else.
Speaker 1: So the the um house on Sauti Um. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: people who who who took back their land and blocked
Speaker 1: the road off and now there and the wet suit end.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, thank you. Um there
Speaker 1: we go, Yeah, basically taking their land back, blocking off
Speaker 1: the road and now our same piece getting call then
Speaker 1: and we'll see how that develops. And in Guatemala there's
Speaker 1: protests against Canadian mining UM in Maya indigenous community that
Speaker 1: have have have gotten pretty heavily militarized at this point.
Speaker 1: There's fun, there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff of stuff on the psychological defense side of things, UM,
Speaker 1: including including in you know, the Pacific Northwest here with
Speaker 1: all of with all of the forests and and as such,
Speaker 1: in this area and part of this kind of exploration
Speaker 1: into into ecological defense, I wanted to talk with some
Speaker 1: people who are a little a little bit more well
Speaker 1: versed in this type of thing than I am. So
Speaker 1: I've there's the two people have agreed to talk with us,
Speaker 1: Um salmon Cat, both people who work who work on
Speaker 1: the kind of thing from like an activism standpoint. Yeah,
Speaker 1: say hi, hello, hey y'all. So very very thankful that
Speaker 1: they are to be talking with us today. So I
Speaker 1: thought we could we could probably just start by kind
Speaker 1: of discussing what forest defense is and how it kind
Speaker 1: of has a history specifically in this area, but but
Speaker 1: kind of more broadly, like if if people listened to
Speaker 1: the Earth First episodes, you know, that kind of that
Speaker 1: covered like anti pipeline stuff. We didn't really get much
Speaker 1: into like forest defense and you know, like the traditional
Speaker 1: like tree sits and that kind of thing. UM. So,
Speaker 1: so yeah, what's what's up with defending the forest? What's
Speaker 1: what's what's going on with that? Um? Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: that great intro. UM. I mean, forest defense is I
Speaker 1: think probably the most characteristic um type of direct action
Speaker 1: in this bioregion. And here we're talking from Cascadia right now.
Speaker 1: I actually moved out here from the East Coast ten
Speaker 1: years ago specifically to get involved with forest defense, because
Speaker 1: this place has an incredibly rich history UM of people
Speaker 1: basically just throwing down, risking life and limb to stop
Speaker 1: jain saws from taking down some of the oldest and
Speaker 1: most special for rists out here. UM. And so i'd say,
Speaker 1: you know, for forest defense direct action is in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways rooted right here UM, in this bioregion.
Speaker 1: And obviously, UM, like all kinds of movements, things have
Speaker 1: changed over the course of time. UM. Back in the eighties. UM,
Speaker 1: when in seventies, when forest defense was really really kicking
Speaker 1: up and stopping old growth logging, specifically out here, when
Speaker 1: it was kind of like rampant old growth, UM clear cutting. UM,
Speaker 1: it really took the shape of trying to focusing on ecology,
Speaker 1: focusing on the integrity of these ecosystems, and basically like
Speaker 1: doing everything possible to stop the chainsaws. And UM. Now
Speaker 1: obviously a lot has changed. We have the Northwest Forest
Speaker 1: Plan and some policies which are doing better to kind
Speaker 1: of like protect old places and old forests. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, the same ship is happening. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: the timber industry is great at using euphemisms to kind
Speaker 1: of cover up it's clear cutting anyways, and finding policy
Speaker 1: loopholes to get some incredible places. And now I think, um,
Speaker 1: where we're at with like the direct action movement is
Speaker 1: we're in the context of climate change, So we're not
Speaker 1: just defending forests for the stake of these like incredible
Speaker 1: ecological strongholds, but we're also defending them because we recognize
Speaker 1: that forest defense is climate defense. This is a like
Speaker 1: environmental justice issue, it's a human issue, it's a community issue. Um.
Speaker 1: And so now direct action I think is um, you know,
Speaker 1: happening not just the name of our forests, but in
Speaker 1: the name of our communities in our future. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's just as rich um now as it has ever been,
Speaker 1: and especially right now and especially since which I know
Speaker 1: we'll get into, people have been throwing down all over
Speaker 1: this bio region to protect what's left of our forests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's good to get into kind
Speaker 1: of why how the fires have impacted this because one
Speaker 1: of the shady things that has been done is we
Speaker 1: had I think most people in the country are where
Speaker 1: Oregon had unprecedented wildfires this year, and we had unprecedented
Speaker 1: wildfires last and we we're going to have unprecedented wildfires
Speaker 1: every year for a while. Um And whenever these fires
Speaker 1: run through, they don't like destroy every tree in their wake,
Speaker 1: but they char them. And logging companies then come in
Speaker 1: under the guise of like, well, we have to make
Speaker 1: this area safe so that like the fires don't burn
Speaker 1: here next year, So we've got to cut down all
Speaker 1: of these trees, um and and clear cut this part
Speaker 1: of area of public forests. So like as you're driving
Speaker 1: around in forests that you used to be able to
Speaker 1: do stuff, and you'll find areas that are just like
Speaker 1: blocked off because mining companies are coming or logging companies
Speaker 1: are coming through and clear cutting all of these trees
Speaker 1: that could very easily recover from the fire um or
Speaker 1: that weren't even burned by it. But we're just like
Speaker 1: in this area that they said, Okay, well we have
Speaker 1: to clear this out in order to make it safe.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of this way to like back door
Speaker 1: and the guise of fire protection like expand logging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just to add that to the logging companies love
Speaker 1: to say that the reasons we have increased wildfires because
Speaker 1: there's an overgrowth in the forest because of the Northwest
Speaker 1: Forest plant. Because there's more protections for the forest. Fires
Speaker 1: are happening worse because we're not getting there bogging the
Speaker 1: forest and removing all the fuel. Mh. So we have
Speaker 1: like this two part thing that like Kat just mentioned,
Speaker 1: where like, on the one hand, companies are like, we
Speaker 1: need to log more to prevent wildfire, which is bullshit
Speaker 1: and we can talk about why. And on the other hand,
Speaker 1: after fires burned through an area, they're like, we need
Speaker 1: to log because we need to help the forest recover ecologically. Also,
Speaker 1: we need to salvage all of the timber before it
Speaker 1: rots and goes bad, and like all of these reasons
Speaker 1: and so basically it's just like fire has become the
Speaker 1: excuse to just like log preemptively and log after the fact.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's a total total ship show. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the think this this kind of falls into capitalists
Speaker 1: trying to use climate change is just another way to
Speaker 1: find things to extract and things to grow on. Right,
Speaker 1: it's there they're going to try to find their own
Speaker 1: way to sneak in when all of this, you know,
Speaker 1: ecological disaster is happening to you know, sell you whatever
Speaker 1: green safe product is going to help against the collapse,
Speaker 1: or you know, package things in a way that makes
Speaker 1: it seem like it's solving this you know problem, but
Speaker 1: it's actually it's part of it's part of the same
Speaker 1: thing from the yeah yeah, yeah, yeah right. It's it's
Speaker 1: you see, that's in every single industry, and it's always
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna be like this because this is the
Speaker 1: only way that capitalism knows how to address this issue
Speaker 1: is abouty just turning it into another turning it into
Speaker 1: another thing to consume and another thing to sell in package.
Speaker 1: Pretty pretty grib Yeah. And there's I mean, there's cascading
Speaker 1: effects too, because they cut down these trees under the
Speaker 1: guise of making it safe for the next fire season,
Speaker 1: but which also makes a big chunk of land a
Speaker 1: lot more vulnerable to like mud slides and the torrential
Speaker 1: raining that we're having right now. Um, and that's also
Speaker 1: going to get more common because that's how fucking climate
Speaker 1: change works. It's it's just like comprehensive factory, comprehensive fatory.
Speaker 1: And let us be clear to that logging doesn't actually
Speaker 1: work to prevent wildfire, you know, even you know, they
Speaker 1: say that it does, but the kind of logging that
Speaker 1: they do in the name of wildfire prevention just looks
Speaker 1: like clear cuts. And we have a pretty robust body
Speaker 1: of science now showing that those kinds of activities actually
Speaker 1: make fire hazard more severe for local communities. So that's
Speaker 1: like one of the things they're doing. And we've been
Speaker 1: calling it just gaslighting, Like they're gas lighting all of
Speaker 1: us by saying, you know, there's nothing to see here,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to see here, we're taking care of you all.
Speaker 1: You know, we're barely logging at all. And then we've
Speaker 1: got community members on the ground, um, despite the closure
Speaker 1: orders who are like, actually there's a lot to see here,
Speaker 1: and you all are like completely devastating the landscape and
Speaker 1: further harming our communities. Um. So yeah, it's total gaslighting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: an Oregon has both in terms of like watching fires
Speaker 1: and watching logging, some like rules that are not in
Speaker 1: place in other areas, especially for like even for for
Speaker 1: press and the like. Like it's it's actually hard to
Speaker 1: get in to look at this stuff, um without you know,
Speaker 1: breaking some sort of law technically, which is not at
Speaker 1: all shady. Um. Yeah, Yeah, I feel like that's another
Speaker 1: important thing and maybe cat can jump onto is just
Speaker 1: um basically, I mean, I think what people aren't understanding
Speaker 1: is that after the fires, the these federal forest managers
Speaker 1: closed gates and essentially are converting public land into private
Speaker 1: land by you know, using the threat of violence to
Speaker 1: kick people out if they go onto their public land.
Speaker 1: And since and they say until at least the only
Speaker 1: folks allowed behind these gates are cops and loggers, and
Speaker 1: so this is like literally, um, you know, the enclosure
Speaker 1: of our public lands and like the privatization of our
Speaker 1: public lands so that cops and loggers can do whatever
Speaker 1: the hell they want. Yeah, And it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing I mean, it's the kind of thing that people
Speaker 1: if you're if you're if the if the Bundy's and
Speaker 1: that group actually meant the stuff they were saying, like
Speaker 1: the rhetoric they were putting out, it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing they would be piste off about. Two, Because you're right,
Speaker 1: it is the enclosure of public land by the government,
Speaker 1: um and corporations without any kind of consent from the
Speaker 1: people who are supposed to be the collective owners of
Speaker 1: that land. It's it's a again, something that a lot
Speaker 1: of people should be angry about, who aren't angry about
Speaker 1: because there's been this huge propaganda campaign in the Northwest
Speaker 1: about timber unity and the like and like supporting the
Speaker 1: timber industry, um by destroying like the single greatest gift
Speaker 1: this entire part of the world has. Uh it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty frustrating yeasting. Anyway, I have to we have to
Speaker 1: actually have a quick break so I can go watch
Speaker 1: my soccer game at the Timber Stadium. Uh, completely unrelated.
Speaker 1: So I'm an drive out to Wheeler, Oregon myself. But
Speaker 1: we all have different things to do during the break, um.
Speaker 1: But also in the break, I guess we could probably
Speaker 1: do an AD break here, because why not? All right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody loves ads. And we're back still talking about force defense.
Speaker 1: I wanted there's something that people should probably know before
Speaker 1: we go further about the way that that Oregon works.
Speaker 1: So for a while, Oregon is a place where you
Speaker 1: can't get elected um in a lot of parts of
Speaker 1: a lot of populated parts of Oregon if you're a Republican.
Speaker 1: So the Republicans just plain ice um and and pretend
Speaker 1: and like throw out some some social justice. The language
Speaker 1: while while still doing all of the extract of stuff
Speaker 1: they were going to do anyway. And that's the story
Speaker 1: with like Ted Wheeler, um and his family. So Ted
Speaker 1: Ted Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, comes from timber money.
Speaker 1: His father was a major Republican dontor. Not that the
Speaker 1: Democrats don't have a lot of extractive history behind them,
Speaker 1: but like it's it's very obvious what's happening with the
Speaker 1: Wheelers where um, they were huge republic and donors and
Speaker 1: huge backers of the right, and then Oregon had this
Speaker 1: kind of switch politically, um, and so Ted Wheeler just
Speaker 1: started throwing out nice social justice e language. But the
Speaker 1: the whole you know, he's he's I'm sure going to
Speaker 1: make a run for governor at some point in the
Speaker 1: near future. And you've got this like this dressed up
Speaker 1: very extractive logging industry and politicians that always find a
Speaker 1: way to kind of make it seem palatable to the
Speaker 1: liberal majority. Um that and they've gotten pretty good at
Speaker 1: that because it doesn't I don't know, I think maybe
Speaker 1: we're coming to the end of this period, but like
Speaker 1: I haven't, I haven't seen up until this last year
Speaker 1: a lot of widespread kind of outrage about the clear
Speaker 1: cutting um, and they also hide it pretty well. Like
Speaker 1: if you're driving through these beautiful public forests in Oregon,
Speaker 1: the areas that are right along the road will generally
Speaker 1: be pristine and you'll see old growth and everything. But
Speaker 1: sometimes you can see, as you like turn a corner
Speaker 1: or something that like, oh, that old growth only goes
Speaker 1: back a couple of couple of dozen yards and then
Speaker 1: it's a clear cut um, and they'll they'll they'll hide
Speaker 1: it so that it's it's not as obvious because they
Speaker 1: know what upsets people. So there's this, there's this kind
Speaker 1: of surprisingly um surprisingly thorough campaign to do as much
Speaker 1: of this as possible without upsetting people, um, which which
Speaker 1: means there's a potential to upset people, which means there's
Speaker 1: a potential to actually stop this if enough people get upset.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, you're you're you're going against folks
Speaker 1: who have thought a lot about how to do this
Speaker 1: in a way that isn't going to upset the apple cart.
Speaker 1: So how do you upset the apple cart? I guess
Speaker 1: that is what I'm asking. Well, I think one way
Speaker 1: that we upset the apple cart is by bringing people
Speaker 1: out to these places. And you know, in the action
Speaker 1: that happened on Tuesday that looked like disrupting and disobeying
Speaker 1: a federal closure order in order to bring people out
Speaker 1: to these places. UM. You know, basically metaphorically walking behind
Speaker 1: what you were describing the beauty strip along the highway
Speaker 1: and seeing what's behind it. Um. And you know, as
Speaker 1: we were saying earlier, unfortunately, because of all these federal
Speaker 1: closure orders after the fire, that looks like risking um,
Speaker 1: you know, repercussion, state repression, arrest even um, in order
Speaker 1: to just lay eyes on it. But that is the
Speaker 1: way that we chipped the apple cart. We get people
Speaker 1: to see these places so that it cuts through the
Speaker 1: gas lighting that the industry is doing and people can
Speaker 1: literally viscerally feel and see the damage. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: no way to convince them that that's okay once they
Speaker 1: see it. And how do you do go about like
Speaker 1: finding people to bring into this, convincing people to come,
Speaker 1: Like what does kind of that effort look like? You
Speaker 1: want to answer this one cat, You did a ton
Speaker 1: of recruitment, Yeah, totally. UM. I think a big part
Speaker 1: of it is getting them while they're young. UM. I
Speaker 1: think that like young people right now are already pretty radicalized,
Speaker 1: um compared to ten years or so, probably because of
Speaker 1: I think George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and social
Speaker 1: the use of social media and those movements. UM. So
Speaker 1: I I am a college student and we're seeing like
Speaker 1: so many people coming in and ready to throw down,
Speaker 1: like they just cannot wait to get involved, and we'll
Speaker 1: kind of just show up to anything. Um. So I
Speaker 1: think that that's like a major tactic for sure. UM.
Speaker 1: And then also making sure that when you have like
Speaker 1: a an action that you're recruiting people for that it's
Speaker 1: I'm very easy to plug in. It's like very accessible,
Speaker 1: um and kind of just like having it organized very
Speaker 1: well so it's not daunting to come in. Do you
Speaker 1: want to add to that, Sam, Well, just to like
Speaker 1: share a little more about like how we did that
Speaker 1: with this particular action that happened on Tuesday. Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: you know, we it was a Tuesday, brainy, freezing middle
Speaker 1: of the forest planning this action, did not think and
Speaker 1: behind a federal closure order. So every one on site
Speaker 1: risking arrest, um and planning this action, it felt like
Speaker 1: we would be lucky as ship if we got ten
Speaker 1: people out there UM. But I will say, UM, it
Speaker 1: was easy as ship to get fifty people out there,
Speaker 1: and that's because people care. UM. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think we did. In terms of organizing strategy, we used
Speaker 1: the affinity group model, and so we had a core
Speaker 1: you know, there was a core group of organizers, and
Speaker 1: those organizers recruited through affinity groups and their affinity groups
Speaker 1: and UM. That helped to keep kind of information secure
Speaker 1: and UM, you know, everything tightly organized. But UM, people want.
Speaker 1: People were really desiring to get together and do something,
Speaker 1: especially the past couple of years of COVID, people are
Speaker 1: just like eager to do something. UM. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, you know, we we promised that this isn't
Speaker 1: just an opportunity to potentially get arrested, but this is
Speaker 1: an educational opportunity and a movement building opportunities. So while
Speaker 1: the road was blocked with a slash pile and a
Speaker 1: fire truck, there were workshops going on. There were hikes
Speaker 1: going on in the forest that's supposed to be cut. UM.
Speaker 1: There was discussions about know your rights trainings and affinity groups.
Speaker 1: We had a band um playing on top of a
Speaker 1: fire truck, and there was a dance party and basically
Speaker 1: you know, we're like building community and solidarity UM in
Speaker 1: a positive way while sucking shut up. I think that's
Speaker 1: the key. And I mean, where do you uh, how
Speaker 1: do how do you have like what is the I
Speaker 1: let me think of a way to phrase this. What
Speaker 1: is kind of the next step here? Because they haven't
Speaker 1: started logging this area yet, but they're kind of doing
Speaker 1: like the pre prep work. Um, what do you what
Speaker 1: do you think actually can be done to to halt it?
Speaker 1: Like is it? Is it a problem? Like? Because it
Speaker 1: seems to me that it's there's got to be like
Speaker 1: a mix of tactics there to actually get them to stop.
Speaker 1: And you're dealing with a number of different UM threats
Speaker 1: include not just at the state level, but these federal
Speaker 1: closure orders Like what is I don't know what what
Speaker 1: does the path forward look like to you? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: there's a preliminary injunction being forth by some nonprofits and
Speaker 1: so this is a really good example of different tactics
Speaker 1: coming in and so UM. The preliminary injunction is basically
Speaker 1: to state that what they're doing before a service is
Speaker 1: doing is illegal. UM. But before that that can be passed,
Speaker 1: they can come in at any point and log the area.
Speaker 1: And so that's where direct action comes in to slow
Speaker 1: them down and halp them as much as possible until
Speaker 1: the courts can process that injunction. And that feels really
Speaker 1: huge to Like what Kat just said is like where
Speaker 1: is the place of direct action in forest defense? This
Speaker 1: is like the golden moment for direct action while there's
Speaker 1: like an open legal case that we're waiting on a
Speaker 1: judge to settle, and the timber industry is like coming
Speaker 1: in ready to moot out the case by logging before
Speaker 1: it can even be decided. And like to just add
Speaker 1: a little bit more backstory to on, Like another reason
Speaker 1: why people are so pissed about this um is that
Speaker 1: you know, this watershed has been I think like beloved
Speaker 1: and also embattled since the eighties. Like the infamous Easter
Speaker 1: massacre logging event happened in the same watershed. Where could
Speaker 1: you explain, Yeah, yeah, no, totally um it M. A
Speaker 1: timber company was planning to clear cut log old growth
Speaker 1: forest out there and started moving on it on Easter
Speaker 1: um in the snow, and a bunch of badass direct
Speaker 1: action activists set up a five tiered blockade on a
Speaker 1: logging road to hold off the logging and successfully did
Speaker 1: for um days and days until a bunch of them,
Speaker 1: I think over a dozen folks got arrested, thrown in
Speaker 1: jail and the forest was clear cut. UM. So hence
Speaker 1: you know the Eastern massacre name UM. But a ton
Speaker 1: of folks who you know still work in forest defense
Speaker 1: in the spy A region. We're there and remember for
Speaker 1: that story, and we're with us UM when we were
Speaker 1: out there this week telling that story. And you know
Speaker 1: since then, between and now, people have been showing up
Speaker 1: again and again and again in this watershed because it
Speaker 1: is so special to try and fight off flogging. And
Speaker 1: myself and Cat have been a part of efforts over
Speaker 1: the past handful of years to um fight off a
Speaker 1: number of logging projects out there. We were successful in
Speaker 1: doing that. We actually like snacked the Forest Services grubby
Speaker 1: hands off of a bunch of oil growth because our
Speaker 1: scrappy friends spent days exploring this watershed and documenting, doing
Speaker 1: like site specific science citizen science documentation and giving it
Speaker 1: to the Four Service and we fought them and one
Speaker 1: and protected a bunch of the forest. And then the
Speaker 1: fires came through and they closed the gates and they
Speaker 1: secretly changed all of these contracts to include clear cut logging.
Speaker 1: And so that is why there's an open lawsuit because
Speaker 1: we believe it's illegal what they're doing. It's sketchy and illegal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it does. It does illustrate like kind of the
Speaker 1: depth of the fight necessary, not just in forest defense,
Speaker 1: but at all efforts of kind of resisting the extract
Speaker 1: of industries that are driving a lot of climate change.
Speaker 1: It's it's not enough, it's never enough to win the
Speaker 1: first victory. They're going to find some way to to
Speaker 1: to swoop around to the flanks and try to take
Speaker 1: it away from you like they're doing right now. Um,
Speaker 1: which is exhausting. Um, it seems exhausting, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you can ignore it. It's fucking exhausting. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: always say it is like our forests, our federal management agencies,
Speaker 1: they suffer from this powerful amnesia where they just like
Speaker 1: keep coming back with the same bullshit proposals. But like
Speaker 1: our movement does not suffer from that, and we are
Speaker 1: just like building power and getting stronger and getting more successful.
Speaker 1: So like when people left on Tuesday, um, there was
Speaker 1: a promise that people will be back if logging happens
Speaker 1: and we're very sure that that will be the case.
Speaker 1: And if if people are in the Cascadian bioregion and
Speaker 1: are like, well this sounds pretty sweet, I wanna, I wanna,
Speaker 1: I wanna keep keep some trees where they are as
Speaker 1: opposed to putting them on the back of a truck
Speaker 1: to drive somewhere else. How could they get involved? Where
Speaker 1: where might they reach out to? Well, there's a few
Speaker 1: different groups who were a part of this UM definitely UM,
Speaker 1: the Portland Rising Tide, Cascadia Forest Defenders, UM CAT can
Speaker 1: talk about Climate Justice League and UM maybe the action
Speaker 1: that you all put on yesterday as a follow up
Speaker 1: and like how folks can get involved with that UM
Speaker 1: But basically, yeah, you can follow us on Twitter, UM
Speaker 1: and Instagram and and please, UM, you know, keep a
Speaker 1: lookout because we will be we'll be getting it out
Speaker 1: far and wide if there is a call for folks
Speaker 1: to get out there again. Yeah. And Climate Justice League
Speaker 1: is an organ UM at the University of Oregon and
Speaker 1: people are free to just join the organization. Community members
Speaker 1: are also involved. UM. But we did put on an
Speaker 1: event it yesterday where Tyler Ferris of Ferris Logging or
Speaker 1: First Timber UM who is actually the company that bought
Speaker 1: the rights to Brighten Bush, which was the area where
Speaker 1: we did UM the action. On Tuesday, he was giving
Speaker 1: a speech at the University of Oregon UM to talk
Speaker 1: about post fire logging, which was just like crazy timing.
Speaker 1: They kind of just like put it in our lap.
Speaker 1: And so we recruited from that action or like, let's
Speaker 1: just dropt the hell out of this UM talk. And
Speaker 1: so we like showed up and kind of tried to
Speaker 1: sneak in. They were having zoom issues, which like luckily
Speaker 1: distracted them from the fact that there was like forty
Speaker 1: or fifty like pretty punk anarchy looking kids in the room. Um.
Speaker 1: But we like let him go on for a little bit,
Speaker 1: and then we started to ask him questions that he
Speaker 1: obviously didn't know the answer to. Um. We kept like
Speaker 1: asking questions about, you know, the science says this, but
Speaker 1: you're stating this where you getting your science from? And
Speaker 1: you kept saying things like, well, that's more of a
Speaker 1: political question and the statistics don't really back up what
Speaker 1: you're saying. Um. And then yeah, we just chanted and
Speaker 1: made him really nervous. Yeah, and as a heads up,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're looking to win an argument on
Speaker 1: a zoom call. You can just say, uh, the statistics
Speaker 1: don't back you up without citing statistics. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: really the easiest way to do that. I guess I
Speaker 1: am kind of curious for like you guys said, you've
Speaker 1: you've prevented you know, some of the stuff in the
Speaker 1: past by doing stuff like documentation. Um, and you know
Speaker 1: when when when that kind of thing becomes not enough.
Speaker 1: You know that this this area does have a rich
Speaker 1: history of kind of direct action stuff to protect forests
Speaker 1: with a get also like a mixed success, like by
Speaker 1: no means does direct action always always work to do anything?
Speaker 1: Right now, we still have the line three pipeline, We
Speaker 1: still have all of these things that direct action has
Speaker 1: tried to prevent. But it turns out a lot of
Speaker 1: the kind of direct action that's associated with these types
Speaker 1: of like ecological things is kind of more performative than
Speaker 1: anything else, you know, Like it it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a tree set is about gaining media media like publicity,
Speaker 1: because they're gonna get you down right like eventually, and
Speaker 1: it's and it's and it's gonna be painful because like
Speaker 1: you're not going to be sitting up there for years
Speaker 1: to to to to to to prevent the treat from
Speaker 1: being logged. So how close do you think we are
Speaker 1: into too, like reaching that kind of territory like it
Speaker 1: was in like the nineties and eighties where it is
Speaker 1: like a lot of a lot of people like blocking
Speaker 1: off roads and doing and and doing that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You know, more like you know what what it crosses
Speaker 1: into that it's more like autonomous. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: like led by a single organization by any means. See,
Speaker 1: it's more it's more decentralized. But did you see that
Speaker 1: kind of happening soon? And you know, how, how how
Speaker 1: do you think we can balance out direct action with
Speaker 1: like other like thoughtful means of trying to draw attention
Speaker 1: to these things and maybe actually and and other things
Speaker 1: like actually physically physically preventing the logging of certain areas.
Speaker 1: That's such a good question. And um, I'm really thankful
Speaker 1: that we're talking about strategy because um, kind of, like
Speaker 1: I mentioned, I moved out here like ten years ago
Speaker 1: to do force defense work and have seen so many
Speaker 1: instances in where people are trying to do direct action
Speaker 1: in a in a time and space where it doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. Um, where it's like basically slated too, it's
Speaker 1: gonna lose because um, it's just impossible too. As you said,
Speaker 1: you know, hold this blockade for weeks and weeks and
Speaker 1: weeks and the snow um indefinitely, you know, as we
Speaker 1: you know, as they continue to try to log indefinitely.
Speaker 1: So there's definitely a sweet spot for where um the
Speaker 1: sort of kind of the sort of direct action that
Speaker 1: we're talking about, like blockading, where that is most useful.
Speaker 1: And that sweet spot is definitely when there is another
Speaker 1: decisive move, like another like legal victory that's waiting in
Speaker 1: the wings or um, you know, we won one in
Speaker 1: Washington without a legal victory because we shamed the ship
Speaker 1: out of the Department of Natural Resources in the Seattle
Speaker 1: Times and they were like, whoa, We're sorry. Um. And
Speaker 1: so direct action held off something until we are able
Speaker 1: to sufficiently shame them and deter them. But typically they
Speaker 1: don't shame well um and so typically, um, you know,
Speaker 1: we need illegal there needs to be a legal element
Speaker 1: um backing it up. So direct action is a time buyer.
Speaker 1: But that said, like obviously block hating things is not
Speaker 1: the only type of direct action, and part of the
Speaker 1: rich history of force events in the Spyer region is
Speaker 1: other kinds of more um necessarily you know, discrete kinds
Speaker 1: of direct action that obviously you know I'm um not
Speaker 1: a part of speaking on this radio show, but UM
Speaker 1: would would publicly, um, you know, say like those things
Speaker 1: probably need to happen, and I hope they fucking ha
Speaker 1: what what What I could say is that I've I've
Speaker 1: seen these things happening in other places, like in like
Speaker 1: in the Atlanta Defending Forest movement right now, I have
Speaker 1: I I have seen evidence that individuals not associated with
Speaker 1: any group are putting spikes and trees and that is
Speaker 1: that is, that is something that is happening, right, And
Speaker 1: all that takes is one person, right, It's that's not
Speaker 1: like a group of twenty people going into the forest
Speaker 1: to do that. That's the one person in an afternoon, right.
Speaker 1: So those are the types of like single person direct actions,
Speaker 1: which again, yeah, any type of direct action is going
Speaker 1: to be scary, right You're you're once you start doing that,
Speaker 1: that is you know, that introduces certain things that will
Speaker 1: is is kind of is kind of more frightening to
Speaker 1: you as a person, um, but but it's it is
Speaker 1: something that is happening in other places. Um, and it
Speaker 1: has showed to at the very least upset the people
Speaker 1: who are wanting logging to happen. Generally, they're not thrilled
Speaker 1: when they when they find when they find these things.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, yeah, because like it's like it's I mean,
Speaker 1: I think like when it comes down to it, it's
Speaker 1: like about knowing what your goal is with this tactic,
Speaker 1: like on you know, in in the action that happened
Speaker 1: this past week, there was an understanding that the goal
Speaker 1: was to you know, shine a light on this thing
Speaker 1: that's happening in secrecy, shame the Forest Service, and build
Speaker 1: movement move mint buildings so that we're ready when people
Speaker 1: need to throw down for real and in that might
Speaker 1: happen soon. We weren't trying to hold the space for
Speaker 1: weeks and weeks and weeks. Um, that wasn't the goal.
Speaker 1: So like going in being like what kind of an
Speaker 1: action are we trying to do? What are we trying
Speaker 1: to complish? Are we trying to be decisive? Are we
Speaker 1: trying to like shape the conditions necessary for success and
Speaker 1: like culture build or were trying like what are we
Speaker 1: actually trying to do? And then like coming away with that.
Speaker 1: Having having that, having a clear sense of that beforehand,
Speaker 1: I think really really is crucial. Bec I've definitely observed
Speaker 1: direct actions where that is not the case, that people
Speaker 1: have not thought those things through, and it becomes the
Speaker 1: kind of un fun version of chaos, um where you know, things,
Speaker 1: things don't really get done and you're just kind of
Speaker 1: sitting around and everyone's kind of slightly miserable because again
Speaker 1: you're in a freezing forest of and no one really
Speaker 1: knows what the hell they're doing. Um. So definitely having
Speaker 1: those kind of things thought through beforehand is extremely useful
Speaker 1: when you're deciding to trudge your way into some cold,
Speaker 1: dark woods. Yeah, we're going for chaotic good, not chaotic evil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well a little bit of chaotic. Well, it depends, it
Speaker 1: depends what it depends what we mean by evil evil
Speaker 1: evil to some people, we we yeah anyway, Um, and
Speaker 1: any other kind of historical notes on forest defense or
Speaker 1: any other kind of random random tidbits like to mention
Speaker 1: before before we close out. The one thing that I
Speaker 1: feel like it's super important to say to people is
Speaker 1: that forest defense is not just about protecting forests. It's
Speaker 1: about protecting all of us. We know now like forest defenses,
Speaker 1: climate defense. Our forests are our best natural tool for
Speaker 1: fighting climate change. And also like we need them here.
Speaker 1: Most of Oregonian get their drinking water from forests with watersheds,
Speaker 1: like they literally are sustaining all of us. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: we hope folks join, like not just for the sake
Speaker 1: of like being you know, hippie tree huggers, even though
Speaker 1: you know some of us are, but also because like
Speaker 1: we need to survive as a people and as a planet,
Speaker 1: and sorry, best way to do that it's it's the
Speaker 1: cheapest most advanced form of carbon capture we have yet.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it seems seems kind of asinine to chop
Speaker 1: that all down to build some shitty sheds. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: All right, well that's a sude. It's it could happen here.
Speaker 1: The podcast that occasionally has ads from Washington State Highway Patrol.
Speaker 1: On a completely unrelated note, Garrison, you want to talk
Speaker 1: about the Washington State Highway Patrol today, I sure would
Speaker 1: love to talk about our our good friends at the
Speaker 1: Washington State Patrol um because yeah, they just uh they've've
Speaker 1: they've come up on my radar. And in an unrelated matter,
Speaker 1: and now we're gonna talking about So now we're talking
Speaker 1: about them. Yeah. So this is the show about things
Speaker 1: falling apart and kind of part of societal and political
Speaker 1: stuff kind of crumbling. Usually that gets related to some
Speaker 1: type of law enforcement agency more often than not. And uh,
Speaker 1: in terms of like tensions rising in stuff, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, force gets force gets exerted via
Speaker 1: law enforcement, and uh, one such law enforcement Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and one such agency that does this is called the
Speaker 1: Washington State Patrol. UM. So they were I I don't know,
Speaker 1: I I just discovered them recently. UM. So they were
Speaker 1: founded exactly one hundred years ago. UM. And they were
Speaker 1: originally called the Washington State Highway Patrol. UM. Now they're
Speaker 1: just the Washington State Patrol. They removed highway, but they
Speaker 1: still do the same thing. They're basically glorified traffic cops,
Speaker 1: um who operate all around all around Washington State. UM.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk about some of the ways that
Speaker 1: they've been making things worse within the past decade. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm since they have a one hundred year history, I'm
Speaker 1: sure we can find lots of historical examples. UM. But
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna we're gonna do stuff that's more that
Speaker 1: is more recent, because this is you know, generally trying
Speaker 1: to keep things around the current, the current crumbling. Um.
Speaker 1: And because we're gonna talk about police, the first the
Speaker 1: first thing we're gonna be discussing, oddly enough, is a
Speaker 1: racism um because I know, um, when you think of
Speaker 1: Washington State Patrol, that's you know, it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: shocking that they might have a race issue. Um. So, Anyway,
Speaker 1: twelve years ago, researchers working with working with Washington State
Speaker 1: Patrol found that troopers were searching drivers from minority communities,
Speaker 1: particularly um local Native American tribes, at a much higher
Speaker 1: rate than than white people. And they recommend an additional study,
Speaker 1: which the Washington State Patrol declined to UH to investigate further.
Speaker 1: They they're like, no, um, no, no more studies. So meanwhile,
Speaker 1: since then, the troopers have continued to continue to search
Speaker 1: Native Americans at a at a rate much higher, more
Speaker 1: than five times than that of of of white people
Speaker 1: in the area. Yeah, so, but there are five times
Speaker 1: as the popular there. There's five times as many Indigenous
Speaker 1: people in Washington as white people right there, there's not
Speaker 1: oh yeah, so An analysis by Investigate West showed that
Speaker 1: the Patrol continued to do searches at a much elevated
Speaker 1: rates for for black people, Latino, Pacific Islanders, and natives
Speaker 1: within Washington State. UM. And yet when when troopers did
Speaker 1: decide to search white motorists, they were more likely to
Speaker 1: find drugs in contraband. UM. Which is something to Washington
Speaker 1: State Patrol actually acknowledges is that when when they search
Speaker 1: people of minority communities, they are less likely to find
Speaker 1: to find illegal things. Yeah, I mean that's yeah nationwide
Speaker 1: and very very robust data. So UM, government records obtained
Speaker 1: via like information requests and various other you know of
Speaker 1: public records searches UM also show that there there there
Speaker 1: is a state law that Washington State Patrol is supposed
Speaker 1: to collect and report semi annually to the Criminal Justice
Speaker 1: Training Commission in Washington. UM about you know, race and
Speaker 1: ethnicity data of motorists is stopped by troopers. But uh
Speaker 1: so this is supposed supposed to happen semi annually, but
Speaker 1: the agency report of those findings only three times in
Speaker 1: the past fifteen years, which isn't sounds kind of like
Speaker 1: the Portland Police not doing the things that federally they're
Speaker 1: supposed to do because they're so violent. Yeah, being out
Speaker 1: of compliance with a bunch of federal three three times,
Speaker 1: three times in fifteen years is not semi annually. Based
Speaker 1: on what I know, the term semi annually to semi decade.
Speaker 1: So yeah, UM based on responses for over thirty public
Speaker 1: records requests UM from from three different agencies looking looking
Speaker 1: at Washington State Patrol and more than like fifty interviews
Speaker 1: with current and formal law enforcement officials and people with
Speaker 1: experience interacting with Washington State Patrol UM and also data
Speaker 1: from millions of traffic stops. All this was looked at
Speaker 1: in total, examined about eight million traffic stops from two
Speaker 1: US and nine to US in fifteen. This is what
Speaker 1: Investigate West was doing UM. Which was which was the
Speaker 1: most recent data available, and the analysis found that UH
Speaker 1: it focused on twenty incidents of what researchers called like
Speaker 1: high discretion searches. That's when troopers had the most like
Speaker 1: personal leeway to decide whether or not to pull over
Speaker 1: and search a vehicle. UM. Black drivers were twice as
Speaker 1: likely to be searched as white drivers, and Latino specific
Speaker 1: calenders were eight percent more likely to be searched of
Speaker 1: of these incidents where officers had discretion and like they
Speaker 1: could choose whether or not to pull someone over. Um,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like it wasn't like they were like
Speaker 1: obviously speeding or doing you know, like like you know,
Speaker 1: like like regular like actually observable traffic violations. This is
Speaker 1: when like people can choose when they investigate. West thing
Speaker 1: got published, they contact Washington State Patrol and the spokesperson
Speaker 1: said that, uh, here's here's here's the quote. The race.
Speaker 1: Race was not the only factor when troopers decided whom
Speaker 1: to search, and that's partially because blacks, Native Americans and
Speaker 1: Latinos are more like more more likely to be searched
Speaker 1: regardless of how much discretion troopers have, which that doesn't
Speaker 1: really make very much sense. Um, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the person, I don't know what they mean is they're
Speaker 1: more likely to be searching regardless what the who was
Speaker 1: that bad a checking the copy? Which is weird because
Speaker 1: later on the spokesperson said that, um, in, same guy,
Speaker 1: we're in the basically we're agrees that we're in a
Speaker 1: basic agreement that minorities are searched at higher rates, but
Speaker 1: we find less contraband so um. And he also he
Speaker 1: also noted that complaints about like a racial bias encounted
Speaker 1: for little more than ten percent of all complaints of
Speaker 1: the state patrol filed last year. So I guess he
Speaker 1: thinks that's a good He thinks that's a good stat
Speaker 1: that yeah. Um. And another kind of not great thing
Speaker 1: is that the analysis found that not only are Native
Speaker 1: Americans more likely to be searched, but all of the
Speaker 1: most of those searches happen always that like the edges
Speaker 1: of reservations UM. The analysis found that the two highest
Speaker 1: concentration of searches in Native Americans by state troopers are
Speaker 1: on the US nineties seven, where it encounters um a
Speaker 1: reservation at OLC about about a mile from its intersection
Speaker 1: at a state road to one and more than one
Speaker 1: thirty miles south of the same when the same highway
Speaker 1: enters another reservation. So nearly one third of high discretions
Speaker 1: of high discretion searches. So when troopers can decide whether
Speaker 1: or not to pull someone over like like they they
Speaker 1: they have more discretion whether they can. So one third
Speaker 1: of those happened on these two stretches of highway right
Speaker 1: on the edges of these reservations, Like they're patrolling outside
Speaker 1: these reservations to specifically do this. Um there was I
Speaker 1: I saw an interview on this topic that we talked
Speaker 1: that talked to to Native Americans in this area and
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, every time we leave the reservation, we
Speaker 1: get pulled over. But then we watched tons of white
Speaker 1: motorists go by and no one cares, like and like
Speaker 1: and they're like you're doing like they're just speeding by,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Um So, yeah, that is. That is
Speaker 1: the first first you know, unsurprising tidbit about uh, some
Speaker 1: an organization who started as a highway patrol is, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're gonna pull people over who are not white more often.
Speaker 1: That is that's pretty not not super shocking. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then make a public statement like l o O yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that that does. That does sound a lot like
Speaker 1: with the Washington State Patrol. Uh sounds like, um so
Speaker 1: we're gonna So that that was that was the first
Speaker 1: obvious thing. Uh. This next part is a little bit
Speaker 1: more fun. Um. So in in in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: the Washington State Patrol made made the decision to fire
Speaker 1: eight troopers, which is you know, pretty pretty rare um
Speaker 1: And the reason why they got fired is because they
Speaker 1: used fake diplomas to claim pay raises. Yeah, so there
Speaker 1: was there was this whole scheme about getting fake diplomas
Speaker 1: to get the troopers more money, like like like individual
Speaker 1: people that there's this whole, this whole operation going on.
Speaker 1: It resulted in the in in eight in eight people
Speaker 1: getting fired. So troopers can can boost their pay about
Speaker 1: two percent by earning two a two year degree or
Speaker 1: four percent with a four year degree. And there was
Speaker 1: this group of of a troopers who just uh started
Speaker 1: just forging diplomas see Garrison. This is a separate conversation.
Speaker 1: But they didn't need to forge diplomas. They could have
Speaker 1: just become doctors of of of of of magic, like
Speaker 1: that's what I've tried to do religious PhD. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of fake diploma mills come on Washington
Speaker 1: State Highway Patrol. This this is pretty funny. So so
Speaker 1: the investigation began after federal agents shut down a diploma
Speaker 1: mill in the Spokane. Criminal charges were not filed, but
Speaker 1: the patrol to decide to fire these eight troopers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that is one of the more funny things we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about today, and I think it's time for
Speaker 1: an ad break. So yeah, speaking of funny, here's these
Speaker 1: ads that may or may not be the people we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Rob No unrelated, unrelated. Uh We're back, which
Speaker 1: is also unrelated. Yeah. Another thing that's putting pretty common
Speaker 1: around police is that the past few years, they generally
Speaker 1: don't think COVID is really real or I think that
Speaker 1: it is the past few years. Now that Robert, we're
Speaker 1: less than a month away from two. Yeah, I hate that.
Speaker 1: It's like, I mean, fun it's it's like, it's almost two.
Speaker 1: Almost ten percent of your entire life has been COVID.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to think about math um yea. So
Speaker 1: generally they don't think COVID is real. And also they
Speaker 1: think vaccines are the mark of Satan or something. Well
Speaker 1: obviously they are, but yeah, so in in in mid
Speaker 1: October this this past October, Washingtons Tate Patrol announced that
Speaker 1: one twenty seven of its employee is at lost their
Speaker 1: job after the state's COVID nineteen vaccine mandate deadline of
Speaker 1: October eighteenth. So unlike the Portland Police Bureau who WHO,
Speaker 1: the port who port and many other cities where city
Speaker 1: officials caved to the demands of the police that vaccine
Speaker 1: mandates not be not be extended towards police. Uh, this
Speaker 1: did not happen in Washington, and they actually got it enforced.
Speaker 1: So over a hundred uh patrol employees quit quit their job,
Speaker 1: including a sixty four commissioned officers. It was like six
Speaker 1: sixty seven troopers, six sergeants, and one captain. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know, Washingtonate Patrol has about two thousand personnel
Speaker 1: within like between like eight districts. UM. So losing like
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty seven of them is not a
Speaker 1: is not an insignificant loss. Um And it's it's been
Speaker 1: a it's it has been been trying to hire a
Speaker 1: lot more people in the in the past. In the
Speaker 1: past like a few months speak. Because of this, they've
Speaker 1: been they've been trying to do a lot more recruitment,
Speaker 1: which is why they're UM. I've heard from other people
Speaker 1: that they are putting uh advertisements out on the internet
Speaker 1: to become a Washington State trooper. That makes sense. This
Speaker 1: is something I've I've heard from from people online. When
Speaker 1: I've been doing all of this uh deep deep, extensive
Speaker 1: research so yeah, they are, they are, they are recruiting.
Speaker 1: Uh So, if you uh want to be uh Washington
Speaker 1: Patrol officer, don't don't. Actually that's a bad idea. Um,
Speaker 1: don't do that. Yeah. I means as you want to
Speaker 1: like really funk with people who live on a reservation.
Speaker 1: If that's if that's your goal. It seems like Washington
Speaker 1: State Highway Patrol is your your dream career, or have
Speaker 1: another option for you. You You could also just get COVID
Speaker 1: and die. Well, yeah, that is an option. That's an
Speaker 1: option to thing I think might be freedom is what
Speaker 1: makes this nation great. Uh so I think you know
Speaker 1: of the choice. Anyway, continue, I'm going to send a
Speaker 1: picture inside our group chat first because we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: talking about one one specific evil dude. Next, I'm setting
Speaker 1: a picture in the group chat that I want you
Speaker 1: to look at first, just so you get a sense
Speaker 1: of who we're talking about. Oh based, okay, I'm I'm excited.
Speaker 1: Yeah alright? Oh no, oh no, the bow tie really
Speaker 1: brings it all together. Oh no, you said bow tie,
Speaker 1: which does not make me optimistic? And Robert, oh no,
Speaker 1: what is wrong with it? Who? Yeah? Who puts a
Speaker 1: bow tie on a uniform. Like, guys, I found a
Speaker 1: better quality image. Um, good god, there we go, same
Speaker 1: image better he looks like Tucker Carlson and the Starship
Speaker 1: Troopers universe when he gets drafted. So this is the
Speaker 1: next guy we're talking about. Um, somehow feels like I
Speaker 1: hate crime towards the Weasley family. So yeah, it feels
Speaker 1: like a hate crime towards the guy based off Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson in Starship Troopers. So this would be a big
Speaker 1: fan of ron Ron Weasley's family. This this is This
Speaker 1: is Sean carr Um, a former Washington State Patrol a
Speaker 1: sergeant um who resigned for reasons. We will discuss fun.
Speaker 1: That's exciting. Yeah yeah anyway. Um So in two US
Speaker 1: and fifteen and associated press investigation uncovered about a thousand
Speaker 1: officers in the United States who lost their badges over
Speaker 1: a six year period for sex crimes or misconduct such
Speaker 1: as like, uh, this is this is a quote here,
Speaker 1: which I disagree with framing here, But this is this
Speaker 1: is a quote propositioning citizens or having consensual but prohibited
Speaker 1: on duty intercourse, which is, uh, a pretty bullshit way
Speaker 1: to frame that because basically you're it's it's police raping people.
Speaker 1: Um and police officers being accused of like using their
Speaker 1: power over people to rape them is extremely common. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's often just like yeah, well the person said okay,
Speaker 1: And it's like, well they said okay to a person
Speaker 1: with a gun in the legal power to murder anyone
Speaker 1: they want or put them in jail. Like, like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of Yeah, you know, I would argue, you
Speaker 1: can't consent uh to sex with a police officer who's
Speaker 1: on duty in an uniform because it's they have the
Speaker 1: power to murder anybody they want or or who just
Speaker 1: arrest you. Like, like, it's a lot of stuff. So,
Speaker 1: like there's a studied at least a few years ago
Speaker 1: that an analyzed data of like a five hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty arrest cases from the years of two US and
Speaker 1: five to two US and seven just two years and
Speaker 1: uh a four hundred officers employed by like three D
Speaker 1: twenty non non federal law enforcement agencies located throughout a
Speaker 1: forty three states. Um and findings indicated that a police
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct includes a serious forms of sex related crimes,
Speaker 1: and the victims of sex related crimes by police are
Speaker 1: typically younger than eighteen years old. Um So it's it
Speaker 1: happens a lot with miners. So there's a lot like
Speaker 1: like more like a ridiculously common like if you if
Speaker 1: you google is, which I honestly don't recommend, but you
Speaker 1: can find like dozens of stories coming out like basically
Speaker 1: every like not you'll find at least one new story
Speaker 1: every month of a kid getting raped by police. It
Speaker 1: happens pretty commonly. So over the past ten years in
Speaker 1: the Washington State Patrol, they've investigated and confirmed four cases
Speaker 1: of what they call sex on duty UM, according to
Speaker 1: the agency, and this is including including Shan Karr now
Speaker 1: Sean Car's cases particularly sensitive for the agency because he
Speaker 1: was married to the uh the daughter of the Washington
Speaker 1: State Patrol Chief UM and and Shaun Carr was also
Speaker 1: himself a sergeant, so he was connected to like the
Speaker 1: big leagues at the Washington State Patrol. So Carr met
Speaker 1: a civilian woman who also works at Washington State Patrol
Speaker 1: but as like you know, like has like an office job,
Speaker 1: so they isn't isn't a trooper um. They met in
Speaker 1: twelve and struck up an online friendship, and a few
Speaker 1: months later they both of them told investigators that the
Speaker 1: relationship did turn sexual. Um Car admitted to six sexual
Speaker 1: encounters for the next like five years with the woman,
Speaker 1: of five of which happened when he was on duty
Speaker 1: and like on state property or driving a vehicle or
Speaker 1: while in uniform. UM. But the woman recalled as many
Speaker 1: as as twenty and all but one of them were
Speaker 1: when he was on duty and well. And so the
Speaker 1: woman said that most of their encounters were were what
Speaker 1: she would describe as consensual, but she described three incidents
Speaker 1: where Carr did uh pushed the boundary, and she she
Speaker 1: she has described being raped by him multiple times. UM,
Speaker 1: so there was there was an incident. I think the
Speaker 1: first one happened in the beginning of UH with inside
Speaker 1: his patrol car in a church parking lot. UH. The
Speaker 1: woman had recently started dating another man, and Carr wanted
Speaker 1: to know who it was. When she wouldn't say so,
Speaker 1: he UH he grabbed her arm hard enough to leave bruises,
Speaker 1: and the woman said that Car made her pick from
Speaker 1: two options, give up the name of the man or
Speaker 1: give car oral sex. Um Car later told investigators that
Speaker 1: he said this in a quote joking context. Oh that's
Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking, because that's almost exactly my
Speaker 1: my tight five for my stand up set. I mean
Speaker 1: some some comedians for some reason do like making jokes
Speaker 1: like that and not not not great usually not great
Speaker 1: to normalize that kind of thing. So um. The woman
Speaker 1: said that she did like like sea his his like
Speaker 1: commands and she's which she said, we're like very much
Speaker 1: not done. Yeah, and she said it's very much not consensual. Um.
Speaker 1: She she told investigators that he raped me on the
Speaker 1: side of the road. Um and if and if it
Speaker 1: was any and else besides car, she she she she
Speaker 1: said she would have called nine one one. Um. So
Speaker 1: the second time happened when a car backed her into
Speaker 1: a corner of a highway away station and forced her
Speaker 1: to have sex with him. Um. She called it a
Speaker 1: coerced Car said that consent was mutual. So despite the
Speaker 1: sexual assaults, uh and and and like and you know
Speaker 1: and and like assaults you know, like you know, grapping
Speaker 1: someone's arm hard to leave a bruise, she said. The
Speaker 1: woman said she kept in touch with Car because she
Speaker 1: was going through a difficult time in her life and
Speaker 1: she needed somebody to talk to. Complicated. That's yeah, that
Speaker 1: this is even as not like people who are imbutive
Speaker 1: can also be emotionally supportive sometimes like that's one of
Speaker 1: the things about abuse, that said, a real, real motherfucker.
Speaker 1: It's not simple. So yeah, Car, Car may not have
Speaker 1: gotten in trouble had the woman not confided in another
Speaker 1: patrol employee after she left her job. UM. Then the
Speaker 1: other other patrol employee mentioned the situation to someone higher up,
Speaker 1: triggering in investigation UM. And then in nineteen the woman
Speaker 1: formally reported Car to uh TO to like the Patrol
Speaker 1: Office of Professional Standards. SO records story that the patrol
Speaker 1: of pretty quickly confiscated cars, badge, and gun and placed
Speaker 1: him on home assignment, where he remained until he and
Speaker 1: he resigned voluntarily. UM. The patrol gave gave the case
Speaker 1: to the Sheriff's office to investigate because of the criminal
Speaker 1: nature of the allegations. SO. Car's personal file includes other
Speaker 1: on job violations, including using a taser on a drunk
Speaker 1: driving suspect. He was handcuffed, and records show that in February,
Speaker 1: Car was accused of a frequenting a coffee stand and
Speaker 1: making unwanted advances on an employee by waiting near her
Speaker 1: car until her shift ended, and making derogatory comments about
Speaker 1: her boyfriend. Um, so he was also stalking this barista,
Speaker 1: is what it sounds like. Um? Yeah, yeah, that's that
Speaker 1: is what that sounds like. Pretty terrifying. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: car after the woman told investigators that she was raped.
Speaker 1: After UM, the the county sheriffs recommended hard to be filed.
Speaker 1: But she wasn't willing to. Um. She wasn't willing to testify.
Speaker 1: She did not want to. She did not want to
Speaker 1: do that. Um. But but she she didn't tell prosecutors
Speaker 1: that she didn't have one wish that that car again,
Speaker 1: the son in law of the state patrol chief be
Speaker 1: be not not allowed to police again. UM. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty reasonable request. Car of obviously denied all the
Speaker 1: accusations of non consensual sex and assault. But you know,
Speaker 1: I did admit to a to a consensual sexual relationship
Speaker 1: on duty um, as well as other you know, like
Speaker 1: patrol regulation violations. Um. He he resigned in July before
Speaker 1: the patrol could decide whether or not to fire him. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the state went about trying to strip him
Speaker 1: of his law enforcement cert of occasion requirement to carry
Speaker 1: a gun and badge and be hired as law enforcement
Speaker 1: in Washington, getting de certified for misconduct by the Criminal
Speaker 1: Justice Training Center in Washington is very hard. Very few
Speaker 1: people have actually been decertified. Yeah, and to to be certified,
Speaker 1: the panel must be a panel must be convinced that
Speaker 1: on duty behavior rose to the level of official misconduct
Speaker 1: and constituted a crime committed under the color of authority
Speaker 1: as a peace officer. That's the that's the color of
Speaker 1: authorities an interesting way to phrase that. Cars attorneys argued
Speaker 1: that the state failed to make to meet this high
Speaker 1: bar and there was quote no legal basis to de
Speaker 1: certify car. Meanwhile, the c j a t C, the
Speaker 1: Criminal Justice Training Center alleged his behavior did constitute official
Speaker 1: misconduct and failure of duty, but without actually they didn't
Speaker 1: act actually include the sexual assault allegations. Instead, it contended
Speaker 1: that he used state resources for his own benefit or
Speaker 1: neglected to do his duties when he was engaged in
Speaker 1: sexual activity on duty. So they didn't actually include sexual
Speaker 1: assault or anything in this. They just said you were
Speaker 1: basically like you were because you were doing because you
Speaker 1: were having like sexual activity on duty, you weren't doing
Speaker 1: your job, and that's the reason that we want to
Speaker 1: decertify you. Um. So the date of Washington has about
Speaker 1: eleven thousand certified officers at any given time UM, and
Speaker 1: since to us in three they've decertified like two hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty and at least four of them for on
Speaker 1: duty sex and one of those cases was overturned on
Speaker 1: appeal UM. But in one around mid May, the c
Speaker 1: j TC in its final order said that Cars constituted
Speaker 1: UH crimes of of failure of duty and official misconduct by,
Speaker 1: among other things, quote, intentionally choosing to to his own
Speaker 1: sexual gratification rather than using his on duty time to
Speaker 1: perform his lawful responsibilities as a peace officer. So he
Speaker 1: he did get de certified, but again not actually discussing
Speaker 1: the actual like assaults and rapes. Um. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: the the Sheriff County Prosecutor's office designed declined to pursue
Speaker 1: charges on the case last year when the woman was
Speaker 1: unwilling to testify, but the the deputy prosecuting attorney UM
Speaker 1: did say that she she believed they just happened, like
Speaker 1: like she she believes this that the stuff happened. But
Speaker 1: because of the lack of evidence due to time passing
Speaker 1: and the woman not wanting to testify, there it's hard
Speaker 1: to prove guilt in court, So they're not going to
Speaker 1: pursue these charges at the moment. Yeah, So that that
Speaker 1: is UH, that is Shawn Karr. So that yeah, he
Speaker 1: is not not not allowed to police as of That
Speaker 1: is a cursory glance at off in the Washington State Patrol. Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess one of one other thing I found out
Speaker 1: today is that so Washington State Patrol has a has
Speaker 1: a psychologist for recruitings basically for if you want to
Speaker 1: join the patrol, you have to go like through like
Speaker 1: a psychological screening. Sure, that makes sense. And he just
Speaker 1: just resigned because he was he was he was probably
Speaker 1: going to get fired. Um. This was after Seattle Times
Speaker 1: and Public Radio Northwest News Network UH published a piece
Speaker 1: show showing that since UH the psychological screenings rejected where
Speaker 1: is it? UH rejected of white candidates over the past
Speaker 1: four years. Um, but the psychologists that they hired, UH
Speaker 1: rejected of black candidates, of Hispanic candidates, and forty one
Speaker 1: percent of Asian candidates. So again, I'm not pro people
Speaker 1: being police in general, but there is a clear disparity
Speaker 1: on who they are wanting to become police, like who
Speaker 1: like who are they they're letting in a lot more
Speaker 1: white candidates than they are letting in candidates of color.
Speaker 1: Uh so this this uh, this psychologist screener is is
Speaker 1: no longer on the job as of like a few
Speaker 1: days ago. Um. Yeah, so just another another level of
Speaker 1: stuff because yeah, you know, there's they want there to
Speaker 1: be more white officers than anything else. Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that is the Washington State Patrol. I guess
Speaker 1: the one other thing I want to do is I'm
Speaker 1: gonna again send in the group chat. Their their current logo,
Speaker 1: their current logo current You're I hate it when you
Speaker 1: do this. I'm afraid. I don't know, Sophie. Maybe it'll
Speaker 1: be fine. I mean, it's actually it's it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of fun. That's their logo. That is their current logo.
Speaker 1: They design it in like paint. Yes, they probably. They
Speaker 1: probably did design it an m S paint. Oh man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that looks like it belongs in an angel Fire website.
Speaker 1: Gar So do you know what angel Fire was? Oh
Speaker 1: my god, you fucking teenagers. Um yeah, that looks like
Speaker 1: it belongs in an angel I will I will let
Speaker 1: all of the other people who feel very old right
Speaker 1: now know that it looks like something you'd see in
Speaker 1: an angel Fire website, like shittlely animated blinking across the screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like it looks like something from a ninet
Speaker 1: nineties website. All right, well now I'm both angry about
Speaker 1: the police and I feel a thousand years old. So
Speaker 1: this is good? What a good? What a good? What
Speaker 1: a good feeling? Well that that wraps that. That wraps
Speaker 1: it up for today. Um and hey again I have
Speaker 1: heard that they are recruiting and they should have a
Speaker 1: new psychological screener soon. So great, there we go. I'm
Speaker 1: imagining the primary psychological screening is you're white, right, that's
Speaker 1: that's that is what it used to be. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm imagining that's what it's going to be still, but
Speaker 1: probably Garrison maybe not. All right, well this has been
Speaker 1: a great time. I'm sure everybody's feeling good. Uh goodbye,
Speaker 1: get out of my house. Welcome to the hug Cast.
Speaker 1: This is a crypto podcast where we talk about the
Speaker 1: best n f T investments and how you can get
Speaker 1: rich to bro if you just accept the wave of
Speaker 1: the future and decentralize your finance and invest in a
Speaker 1: bank that can take all of your money overnight. And
Speaker 1: disappeared because it was really just being run by a
Speaker 1: guy in Macedonia and he it was just a rug
Speaker 1: pole the entire time. And you lose your life savings
Speaker 1: and you have no recourse. And that's the fucking future
Speaker 1: of investments. Bro. Hey, bro, you're fired. Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 1: This is it could happen here podcast about how things
Speaker 1: are bad, sometimes a podcast about how to make them
Speaker 1: less bad. Today we're talking about the former how things
Speaker 1: are bad, and we're talking about financialization, um, and specifically
Speaker 1: the financialization of like human beings and the endeavor to
Speaker 1: create art. Uh and so well, art art is a
Speaker 1: broad broad term. I mean, I said the endeavor to
Speaker 1: I'm sure they all want to be creating art. Well,
Speaker 1: this won't make any sense to people yet, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna give a brief overview. There's an article
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic that dropped down November twenty nine called
Speaker 1: what Happens when You're the Investment. It's by Rex Wouldbury, um,
Speaker 1: who I hate. UM. So as a note, okay, let
Speaker 1: let me just get the the the nut of the
Speaker 1: article is, and that there's been a couple of other
Speaker 1: articles on this guy. Um. His name is Alex mass
Speaker 1: mesh Um and he is a French kid I think,
Speaker 1: who decided to token ize himself. And what that means
Speaker 1: is so like, you've got the ethereum blockchain, right, he
Speaker 1: basically he's he's putting he's carving up aspects of his
Speaker 1: like potential future earnings, and he's putting those on the
Speaker 1: Ethereum blockchain as like tokens that people can buy. And
Speaker 1: the idea is that this kid had wanted to like
Speaker 1: start a business and be an entrepreneur, but he didn't
Speaker 1: have any money. So using like on the ether blockchain,
Speaker 1: he turned himself into tokens basically like his potential future
Speaker 1: earnings and his time. And basically people are able to
Speaker 1: buy up coins effectively, I mean not coins, but tokens shares.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, dollar sign Alex is like the name of
Speaker 1: the token, which basically shares they're buying. He's turned himself
Speaker 1: essentially into a publicly traded company kind of um. And
Speaker 1: holders of his coins are like, he's splitting up fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of his income for the next three years basically
Speaker 1: among people who like hold his coins. And he raised
Speaker 1: like twenty grand this way um. And it's not just
Speaker 1: like it's not just his future earnings that are being
Speaker 1: kind of tokenized. You can also use tokens to like
Speaker 1: buy retweets from him, or one on one conversations or
Speaker 1: and here's a line I love and introduction to someone
Speaker 1: in his network. And and it's the overall idea. Because
Speaker 1: there's you can find some other good articles. Good as
Speaker 1: an interesting word to use. You can find other interesting,
Speaker 1: fascinating articles about this, this idea, which is like human
Speaker 1: beings token izing their future earning potential um in order
Speaker 1: to uh raise money um and and it's uh the
Speaker 1: way this is usually sold as a good thing. In fact,
Speaker 1: I should probably just read a quote from this Atlantic
Speaker 1: article to give you an idea of how uh mass
Speaker 1: measure is or of how um um the the author
Speaker 1: of the article, Rex good would Bury is is trying
Speaker 1: to sell this ship. We all have the slightly annoying
Speaker 1: friend who insists that she knew about so and so
Speaker 1: before they were even famous. When it comes to Taylor Swift,
Speaker 1: I'm that friend, and I'm more than slightly annoying about it.
Speaker 1: I was a Taylor fan in her pre fearless full
Speaker 1: on Country days, years before Conway interrupted her on stage
Speaker 1: at the v m as, But in our current constructive fandom,
Speaker 1: I'm treated no differently than a fan who discovered Swift
Speaker 1: on SNL a few weeks back. This would be different, though,
Speaker 1: if Taylor had done what mass Measure did and turned
Speaker 1: herself into an investment, she could have issued a social token.
Speaker 1: Whereas non fungible tokens or n f t s are
Speaker 1: so called because of the uniqueness of a digital asset,
Speaker 1: social tokens are fungible. In other words, each Alex token
Speaker 1: is interchangeable with every other Alex token, just like a
Speaker 1: dollar bill can be traded for any other dollar bill.
Speaker 1: Say Taylor issued had issued her own token, Let's call
Speaker 1: it a dollar signs swift, and say she had sold
Speaker 1: dollar signed Swift to her biggest fans. Yeah, say I
Speaker 1: was one such fan. Over time, as Taylor's popularity grew,
Speaker 1: the value of the Swift token would have appreciated. As
Speaker 1: an early believer, I would have shared in the financial
Speaker 1: upside of her growing fame. The Swift token I had
Speaker 1: brought for a hundred dollars in two thousand seven might
Speaker 1: be worth a hundred thousand dollars today. The Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: mini economy would serve both the singer and early fans
Speaker 1: like me. As an artist, Taylor could have funded her
Speaker 1: work by selling dollar signs or swift tokens. She might
Speaker 1: not have needed to sell ownership of her master's and
Speaker 1: she might not have been forced to re record her
Speaker 1: albums to take back control over her art. Taylor's fans,
Speaker 1: for their part, would have been rewarded for a decade
Speaker 1: of patronage. Were all evangelists for our favorite artists, Yet
Speaker 1: we capture little of the value that we helped create.
Speaker 1: And then there's a lot that, like I find unsettling there.
Speaker 1: One of them is the idea that like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: fact that I was a fan of someone earlier means
Speaker 1: I should get some sort of reward for it, Like
Speaker 1: I should be treated differently because I liked it earlier,
Speaker 1: which you might recognize like the thing that everybody has
Speaker 1: been shipping on for like fandoms for years now, Like
Speaker 1: it's been a it's been a huge thing where like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're being an asshole if you're if you're talking about
Speaker 1: like if you think you have some additional ownership of
Speaker 1: Star Wars because you watched it ten years before the
Speaker 1: fans today, and so you like different stuff in it,
Speaker 1: Like that's we all recognize that is like toxic um.
Speaker 1: But the the whole argument of this article is that like, no,
Speaker 1: this is how the entire future of creativity should work.
Speaker 1: We find unsettling. And it also it also ties into
Speaker 1: like a really concerning development in paras social relationships of
Speaker 1: like able to invest in someone to buy a conversation
Speaker 1: with them in like this really weird way. Um And
Speaker 1: the fact that young artists are going to be pressured
Speaker 1: into this kind of thing is really scary. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: there's like one of the things mass Measure did as
Speaker 1: like um uh as an experiment, was like allow people
Speaker 1: who had bought his tokens to make life decisions for him,
Speaker 1: like tell him when to wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and whether or not to eat red meat and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And he stated that like, well, none of
Speaker 1: this is binding, right, Like I'll I might do what
Speaker 1: they say, but like I'm not going to do anything
Speaker 1: crazy or whatever. But also this is like the first
Speaker 1: iteration of this um. And I like this Atlantic article,
Speaker 1: which I think is unhinged for reasons we'll get into,
Speaker 1: but it's purely talking about like look at this incredibly
Speaker 1: successful person I imagine if they've gotten to be incredibly
Speaker 1: successful using this method instead, and it might have like
Speaker 1: spared them this thing. But what I keep thinking about
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, well, the vast majority of people, like
Speaker 1: there's no reason to invest in them, Like yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: if you come out with a great song or a
Speaker 1: great video, like, yeah, you could get investments, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure that could work out. I'm sure, like Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: is a successful enough person, I'm sure she could have
Speaker 1: found a way to succeed under that system too. But
Speaker 1: what I think will be much more common because there's
Speaker 1: no real reason to anticipate that the average person will
Speaker 1: have an earnings potential. If you give them twenty grand,
Speaker 1: that's greater than twenty grand. Um. The most likely thing
Speaker 1: is that like people just buy shares and poor people
Speaker 1: to make them do fucked up ship. Yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be How would you not how would that not be
Speaker 1: where it goes? Yeah, that's that. That's the only way
Speaker 1: that this is going to get like used on a
Speaker 1: large scale. People just selling themselves. People are people are
Speaker 1: gonna use the ether blockchain to like crowdfund and crowd
Speaker 1: h cast a new jackass basically like it's going it's
Speaker 1: not going to be like a thousand Taylor Swift's all
Speaker 1: token izing themselves. It's going to be like millions of
Speaker 1: people in the global self issuing tokens to like vote
Speaker 1: on whether they roll down the hill in a barrel
Speaker 1: or in like a fucking porta potti. Like it's just
Speaker 1: it's a nightmare to be to contemplate people actually adopting this.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's a lot of Really the thing
Speaker 1: I think is the most incredible part about this is
Speaker 1: that like, okay, so like it basically doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: like economic theory you used to look at it. It's
Speaker 1: like every single one of them tells you something, just
Speaker 1: like absolutely talked about it, and like, you know, because
Speaker 1: because I mean, there there there's there's there's some extent
Speaker 1: to which I look at this and it's like, this
Speaker 1: isn't that much different than the fact, you know, it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so you're paying someone to do whatever you want, but like, okay,
Speaker 1: like that's not that much different than just a job, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's not it's not inherently that much different
Speaker 1: than the fact that everyone is forced to just do
Speaker 1: wage labor. But also like there's one was interesting things
Speaker 1: to me that I thought about this when I was
Speaker 1: what I was reading this was so, do you just
Speaker 1: know what capitalization is? Yeah? So this is this is
Speaker 1: just capitalizing a person, right, Like it's literally taking a
Speaker 1: person public effect putting turning them into like a tradeable
Speaker 1: share and it's like an investment. Yeah, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is all one of the things that like a Forbes
Speaker 1: article I found point is that this is another kind
Speaker 1: of unregulated securities training. Yeah yeah, yeah. But what's what's
Speaker 1: interesting to me about it is that like, okay, so
Speaker 1: you know this is also already how accounting wise, every
Speaker 1: corporation sees a person, right like every every every every
Speaker 1: person in the asset book is you know, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like a wage is just capitalization, right, It's like how
Speaker 1: much will you pay now for this much money later?
Speaker 1: You could, but it's like people are doing it to
Speaker 1: themselves now, which just like this. Yeah, you could argue
Speaker 1: that like elements of this or how like banks treat
Speaker 1: you when you get a mortgage, right, um, like, but
Speaker 1: but also that's much more rigorous and limited, like it
Speaker 1: has like regulations and has rules for how those things work.
Speaker 1: It's not some like twelve year old getting of like
Speaker 1: like going on to coin base and buying part of
Speaker 1: you as a joke with your with like his dad's money, right,
Speaker 1: Like because it's like yeah, because what if it's like
Speaker 1: there's no law against a seventeen year old I guess
Speaker 1: if maybe their parents may need to consent, but there's
Speaker 1: no law against the seventeen year old getting a facial
Speaker 1: tattoo of like the doors of a concentration camp on
Speaker 1: their face. But what if some kid tokenizes himself for
Speaker 1: forty grands so he can drop an EP and that's
Speaker 1: what like a bunch of four channers who buy up
Speaker 1: his his shares want him to do um. And maybe
Speaker 1: the fucking kid does that because he knows it's going
Speaker 1: to get him, because his brain is not done and
Speaker 1: he knows it's going to get him. A bunch of
Speaker 1: fucking social media uh clouds and like it's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of and there's no way to regulate that. Like
Speaker 1: it's just an inherently toxic proposition that I don't think
Speaker 1: the government would. I don't know what side of this
Speaker 1: the government would even step in on, Like what is
Speaker 1: the regulation of people deciding I'm letting random strangers who
Speaker 1: pay me money vote on what I do with my life.
Speaker 1: What do you ever think it reminds me of a
Speaker 1: lot is like the micro lending stuff from the nineties,
Speaker 1: where it was like, oh, well, we'll like empower these
Speaker 1: people by we'll go in and uh, We're going to
Speaker 1: give them like a small amount of money and have
Speaker 1: to pay back. And it was like, you know, and
Speaker 1: and all of the same stuff that you're reading, all
Speaker 1: the arguments about why this is a good thing or
Speaker 1: actually the name as the micro lending ones and that stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. There there were two ways it turned out.
Speaker 1: One was basically you get the scenario where both sides
Speaker 1: are scamming each other where you know, all the people
Speaker 1: who are getting these micro loans are just they're just
Speaker 1: taking the money and walking right like that's you know,
Speaker 1: the their their their things. Oh this is what I
Speaker 1: can just get money like this and we can just
Speaker 1: keep I just keep not paying it back, and so
Speaker 1: this I'm scamming them. But then on the other side
Speaker 1: you have these people who are like, oh cool, I
Speaker 1: can give this person this loan and turn them into
Speaker 1: a debt peon and it and you know, and and
Speaker 1: the the the really depressing side about it is so
Speaker 1: that the people who couldn't get away, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: we're literally reduced the debt pions and you know, I
Speaker 1: mean there's a huge wave of suicides in India probably
Speaker 1: don't say examples, wave of suicides, people drinking past a
Speaker 1: side because they couldn't pay off these loans and so
Speaker 1: and and the thing that's different about this is that
Speaker 1: like I mean, ay, you're doing it to yourself. But
Speaker 1: then be again, there's no regulation. But that also means
Speaker 1: there isn't any way to force someone to do what
Speaker 1: you're going It's unclear how it's going to be enforced.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that is clear it is like
Speaker 1: what does losses look like? Like what what happens when
Speaker 1: someone like you cannot make back on like an investment,
Speaker 1: But if the investment is a person, how does that work?
Speaker 1: And if someone's contractually obligated to give a certain share
Speaker 1: of their income, what happens when there's not enough income
Speaker 1: for that? Like like you know, so those types of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's no answer to that, uh, And there's
Speaker 1: nobody like the money that's going to be whatever made
Speaker 1: in this is going to be made before anyone steps
Speaker 1: into to try to answer that if anyone ever does, like, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna be the next because I think we're
Speaker 1: I think we're heading for a crash with with n
Speaker 1: f t s. Like there was just an article today
Speaker 1: about how what of nfc T trading is done by
Speaker 1: like ten percent of people, which further back because the
Speaker 1: allegations of n f t S is that most of
Speaker 1: what's happen opening isn't people actually buying them. It's people
Speaker 1: like the same person using multiple wallets basically trying to
Speaker 1: jack up the perceived value by throwing a bunch of
Speaker 1: other Internet money that they already have. So these these
Speaker 1: whales who have like a bunch of crypto gaming the system,
Speaker 1: and we've seen some of it, and the biggest n
Speaker 1: f t S sale it was like half a billion
Speaker 1: dollars and it was a guy selling it to himself
Speaker 1: and then transferring it back into another wallet to try
Speaker 1: to make it look like it was worth half a
Speaker 1: billion dollars even though no one had actually really paid
Speaker 1: that for it. Um so I and I think you
Speaker 1: know that. And kind of what we've seen with the
Speaker 1: regulations the governments announced for n f t s. I
Speaker 1: think that's a problem for them in the near future.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't be surprised to see this takeoff next,
Speaker 1: especially given like the creator economy that we're seeing on
Speaker 1: like the kind of that yeah TikTok, Like, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprised if you saw a rash of big TikTok
Speaker 1: stars tokenizing themselves. And like I'm not even sure, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm sure it would be a mix of the person
Speaker 1: making the tokens being the one doing the scam and
Speaker 1: the person receiving or the people buying the tokens being
Speaker 1: the one doing. Like I'm sure it would be a
Speaker 1: mix of different kinds of exploitation. But it's not gonna
Speaker 1: be good, I mean, and and just like it's gonna
Speaker 1: make like I don't know, fifty people super rich when
Speaker 1: they when they first start trying it, right like that
Speaker 1: that is that is like when this happens, like when
Speaker 1: a TikTok star with five million followers, when they do this,
Speaker 1: they will make boatloads of money. It's just unclear what
Speaker 1: happens after that. Yeah, well, Fleet of Mexico, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that would be the smart thing. That would be the
Speaker 1: smart thing to do. Yeah, In this Forbes article I found,
Speaker 1: which is a thousand times better than the Atlantic article, Like,
Speaker 1: even though it's written by someone I think who's also
Speaker 1: into crypto, it's just it Actually it asks some of
Speaker 1: these questions we've been talking about UM, and it cites
Speaker 1: David Hoffman, who's the CEO of a of a token
Speaker 1: ized real estate platform UM on what he sees as
Speaker 1: some of the problems. Like he, as a guy who's
Speaker 1: supports aspects of this kind of thing, sees is the
Speaker 1: problems with this and uh, it's yeah, let sec um
Speaker 1: Hoffman re returning to his core problem with the personal
Speaker 1: token model model, Hoffman re emphasized that the assurances and
Speaker 1: utility that come with some of these tokens don't exist,
Speaker 1: for with with certain kinds of tokens don't exist for
Speaker 1: like these personal tokens. How risky this investment is is
Speaker 1: completely defined by the individual. In his disclaimer, he's and
Speaker 1: he's talking about one of the guys who's token himself,
Speaker 1: this guy named Kerman. In his disclaimer, he says this
Speaker 1: is a highly risky investment and that you could lose
Speaker 1: all your money, which is a terrible thing to say
Speaker 1: because with personal tokens. The issuer is in complete control
Speaker 1: over exactly how risky the investment actually is. It's largely
Speaker 1: up to them whether there are risks or not, which
Speaker 1: is like a kind of illegal securities trading that I
Speaker 1: don't think we've ever anyone's ever done. Um Like, it's this,
Speaker 1: It's this fascinating new con where you're literally the you're
Speaker 1: you're doing securities trading, but instead of it being over
Speaker 1: a company, it's just you and technically there's no consequences
Speaker 1: if you just take the money and run, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know what kind of contract, Like, you couldn't have
Speaker 1: a contract that says that you could say, they're that
Speaker 1: you're obligated to pay out your future earnings, but you
Speaker 1: couldn't have to work Like that's not enforceable. You can't
Speaker 1: like contractually obligate someone two to like work, like you're
Speaker 1: allowed to quit a job. I mean, I guess you
Speaker 1: could put penalties in it, but I don't, like none
Speaker 1: of the current ones have anything, I mean, or they
Speaker 1: could go to The other option is is that they
Speaker 1: could go to jail for fraud if they try to
Speaker 1: if they try to not follow through on the investment.
Speaker 1: If you say like, yeah, I I invested in you
Speaker 1: and you said that you would do these things, you
Speaker 1: didn't do them. Now you can go to prison. That
Speaker 1: is the other Yeah, and I think that will at
Speaker 1: some point, like will be scams and some of that
Speaker 1: will come in. But like none of these current ones,
Speaker 1: none of them are saying, here's my specific I'm going
Speaker 1: to make this special. It's not like if you like
Speaker 1: like with a Patreon, right, You're you're paying a little
Speaker 1: bit at a time on an ongoing basis for a
Speaker 1: very clear product. Generally, this is so far. These aren't that.
Speaker 1: They're just like, I'm gonna try to do something that
Speaker 1: makes money and if it does, you get a cut
Speaker 1: of it. And that's it's so much like there's nothing
Speaker 1: that's stopping mass Metch from saying like, hey, my my
Speaker 1: and my attempt didn't work. Uh so we're done. No
Speaker 1: no money for anybody like that, and I you're not.
Speaker 1: There's no accounting requirements, there's no there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: ways in which it's sucked up from a financial except
Speaker 1: it's not it's not his, it's not it's not you're
Speaker 1: not investing in his business. You're nesting in him. So
Speaker 1: even if even if even if he takes another job,
Speaker 1: there's still it seems to be contractually obligated to still
Speaker 1: get that of his income. Yes, And I think that's
Speaker 1: that's the area in which I think it would be
Speaker 1: abusive for the person being to ganized because most people
Speaker 1: aren't gonna like most people don't make that much money.
Speaker 1: So they raise someone manages to like raise five or
Speaker 1: ten grand and then just winds up for years giving
Speaker 1: a cut of their income that winds up being more
Speaker 1: than they got initially to a bunch of like it's
Speaker 1: almost like a like a payday loan that you've blockchain.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know, Okay, so this is this is what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about because so there's I don't know if
Speaker 1: I talked about this on the show, but there's a
Speaker 1: thing in China where they've been kind of cracking down
Speaker 1: it now for stunning nineteen Like literally every single app
Speaker 1: like had a like had a pet a loan thing
Speaker 1: in it, so like like your flashlight app would have
Speaker 1: would offer you a pet a loan, and it was
Speaker 1: basically it was yeah, they were there was originally tied
Speaker 1: in with like people who buy um. You know, I
Speaker 1: was originally tied in with like like the the the
Speaker 1: services that, like their version of Amazon, for example, would like,
Speaker 1: oh hey, we'll give you a loan so you can
Speaker 1: buy this, you can order fried chicken. And I was
Speaker 1: always wondering when it has become to the US, and
Speaker 1: I think it might never hope, I mean hopefully it
Speaker 1: never does. And I think it might not just because
Speaker 1: of how like powerful our paid a loan industry is.
Speaker 1: But it's like we've we've now invented. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen, but like dumber, like our our version
Speaker 1: of it is like this thing, which is just you know,
Speaker 1: it's what what if? What if paid a loans but
Speaker 1: on the blockchain? Except you know when I guess this
Speaker 1: is the everything you know that that we've've been getting at,
Speaker 1: is that the difference between this being a paid a
Speaker 1: loan and this being you scammed a bunch of people
Speaker 1: is what the enforcement mechanism looks like. And you know
Speaker 1: this this this comes back to some other things I
Speaker 1: think you're interesting about. This one is that you know,
Speaker 1: so the whole the huntline n f T drift right
Speaker 1: is based on convincing people that there's value in ownership
Speaker 1: right there, Like ownership itself has inherently has value. And yeah,
Speaker 1: but but this this is not that this is this
Speaker 1: is you know, this is going back to know your
Speaker 1: value value is built on labor, right well, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like labor and like like personhood, like like you as
Speaker 1: a personal brand is the thing that they're trying to
Speaker 1: get at. But the thing, the thing that's missing here though,
Speaker 1: is that in order for like you know, in order
Speaker 1: for like labor to produce value right in this way,
Speaker 1: there has to be like there has to be a
Speaker 1: way for you to force them to pay you like
Speaker 1: you need you need coercion for it. And if there's
Speaker 1: no coercion, then you know, you just take a bunch
Speaker 1: of money and leave. And and that that I think
Speaker 1: is like this, this is going to be the battle
Speaker 1: over like if this becomes a thing, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: you know, the people who buy these things are gonna
Speaker 1: wind up like trying to you know, I think they're
Speaker 1: gonna be the ones you try to put your regulation
Speaker 1: because they're gonna you know, they're gonna go in. They're
Speaker 1: gonna be I want to get my money back, and
Speaker 1: that could end really, really really badly if you know,
Speaker 1: I mean it probably will. I like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how popular I think this will be because I think
Speaker 1: that I hope this is a maybe if there'd never
Speaker 1: been like a Patreon or something, But the actual use
Speaker 1: case of this seems to already be well served by
Speaker 1: the existing capitalist infrastructure. Like people, I think more people
Speaker 1: wanted back a creator's Patreon than they want to like
Speaker 1: own pieces of a person's time and earning potential like that.
Speaker 1: That seems like a more niche and weird desire to
Speaker 1: people than just like, oh, yeah, these guys make a
Speaker 1: video I like every week, so I'll throw them three dollars. Well,
Speaker 1: I think. I think the difference though, is that Patreon
Speaker 1: money gets you money for normal people. This gets you
Speaker 1: money from like tech bros. And that. Yeah, that's always yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a griff designed to And I want to
Speaker 1: dive back into this Atlantic article because it's so bad
Speaker 1: in such a comprehensive way that I think it deserves analysis.
Speaker 1: That's what what put a pin in what you said.
Speaker 1: But I want to start with, like how the person
Speaker 1: writing this, this Rerex motherfucker, like his his concept of
Speaker 1: the the history of the Internet. Um, because it's completely wrong. Quote.
Speaker 1: We're on the precipice of the third era of the Web.
Speaker 1: The web's first era was about information flowing freely. Think
Speaker 1: Google giving you access to the world's knowledge. Most of
Speaker 1: us were passive consumers in this era. The second era
Speaker 1: was the social web Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. People began to
Speaker 1: create their own content, and that content became the lifeblood
Speaker 1: of the big platforms. We became active participants, but the
Speaker 1: platforms devoured all the profits. The promise of the Internet
Speaker 1: and the Internet was to erase the gatekeepers. Instead of
Speaker 1: waiting for a record label to sign you, you could
Speaker 1: share your music on Spotify, instead of asking a publication
Speaker 1: to share your words. You could tweet, instead of being
Speaker 1: tapped by a studio execut You could become a YouTuber.
Speaker 1: What happened is that these platforms became the new gatekeepers.
Speaker 1: The third era of the web is about writing the ship.
Speaker 1: Social capital becomes economic capital. Value no longer accumulates to
Speaker 1: brokers and intermediaries. That's number one, completely wrong, But one thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The first era of the Internet, I would say, was
Speaker 1: about the idea that information should flow freely, and Google
Speaker 1: came in like a decade or more into that period,
Speaker 1: Like I had been on the Internet five years before
Speaker 1: Google hopped into that ship, and Google was actually the
Speaker 1: start of of the end of that period. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's it's the idea that, like the social web was
Speaker 1: people creating their own content. Most of the social web's
Speaker 1: initial capital and like all of its initial money, came
Speaker 1: from taking content that people were being paid to make
Speaker 1: on legacy platforms that had existed before social media, taking
Speaker 1: that content, putting it on social media, and then monetizing
Speaker 1: that without paying money back to the people had made
Speaker 1: the content. The money in social media did not initially
Speaker 1: come from people making their own content. And the way
Speaker 1: that they mean it, like yeah, you at college humor
Speaker 1: or whatever, we're making your own content and sharing on
Speaker 1: social media, but you've been doing that before social media.
Speaker 1: Social media just actually made it less profitable eventually, Like
Speaker 1: the way he summarizes this is so wrong because what
Speaker 1: the social web actually did. And the other thing I'd
Speaker 1: argue is that the first era of the Internet, the
Speaker 1: like early days when things are happening on like forums
Speaker 1: and and weird little angel fire websites and like even
Speaker 1: my space, um, which I think is kind of my
Speaker 1: Space kind of straddles the first in second eras uh
Speaker 1: that was fundamentally much more an era of people creating
Speaker 1: their own content, because the the lifeblood of uh social
Speaker 1: media today isn't people really making their own content, it's
Speaker 1: people reacting to content that other people made. Um. And
Speaker 1: again it just shows the fact that he's he's summarizing
Speaker 1: it this way in a way that I think is
Speaker 1: so wrong and inaccurate to how things actually developed. Uh.
Speaker 1: Is characteristic of his attitude towards this stuff, where he's
Speaker 1: kind of seeing the only real meaningful evolutions in in
Speaker 1: in the Internet through the corporation that monetized it, um.
Speaker 1: Which is just telling of like how this guy actually
Speaker 1: sees the way the Internet has developed. And you will
Speaker 1: not be surprised to know, Uh, this motherfucker is an
Speaker 1: investor at Index Ventures. UM. Yeah, like he's he's he's
Speaker 1: a guy whose business is capitalizing things, um. And so
Speaker 1: that's the only way he sees the development of the Internet,
Speaker 1: even though that's not the accurate way of looking at
Speaker 1: how the Internet evolved. And I think I think that
Speaker 1: there's one more really important thing that he leaves out here,
Speaker 1: which is that because you know, like we're talking oh,
Speaker 1: this is the third age the Internet. Like, no, the
Speaker 1: third day of the Internet started, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: the mid early tends. When I would say when gamer
Speaker 1: Gate hit is when I would I would I mean,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a little offend. It depends which it
Speaker 1: depends what you mean by age. So one of my
Speaker 1: friends worst in advertising, and he was talking about this
Speaker 1: where you know, we can we can talk about like
Speaker 1: gammer gating the sort of fascist males, but there was
Speaker 1: something else happening back end, which was the Internet of
Speaker 1: things stuff and the Internet things stuff off like you know,
Speaker 1: like nobody, it's kind of a I don't know, like
Speaker 1: I think we mostly think about it's like it's kind
Speaker 1: of a joke or like it just sucks. But really
Speaker 1: what it was was that that that was the period
Speaker 1: in which people figured out that the thing that the
Speaker 1: actual money and be made on the Internet was from
Speaker 1: selling people's personal information. And that and the and and
Speaker 1: the Internet things like just dramatic, like just indescribably increased
Speaker 1: the amount of data that you could extract from people.
Speaker 1: And that that was that's the actual that was the
Speaker 1: actual change of like like that that that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the thirty of the Internet, and that the earth of
Speaker 1: the Internet will last basically for every until we destroy it,
Speaker 1: which is that you know, the commodity is just all
Speaker 1: of all of the information about who you are, where
Speaker 1: you go, like what you buy, who you talk to.
Speaker 1: That just being sold off to two advertisers is you know,
Speaker 1: the thing that he's very very carefully not talking about
Speaker 1: and instead focusing on, Oh, it was using was creating content.
Speaker 1: And it's like, no, they the Internet, that the just
Speaker 1: they they sold spying on the entire world. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think there's there's two good ways to to divide
Speaker 1: the Internet into ages, and the ages would be slightly
Speaker 1: different each way. One is kind of how you're doing
Speaker 1: it is the way in which it was monetized, Right,
Speaker 1: That's that's that's one way too. And and then if
Speaker 1: that's the case, it's going to start with it was
Speaker 1: not at all. It was an entirely public project and
Speaker 1: everybody on it was on it through like a university,
Speaker 1: and like people did not pay to access it. Other
Speaker 1: than that you had to be at an institution or
Speaker 1: a university. And then like we get to the kind
Speaker 1: of the dot the era before for the dot com
Speaker 1: boom and of the dot com boom, and then like
Speaker 1: the early pre social internet stuff like something awful and
Speaker 1: like having stumbled upon and and whatnot, and like those
Speaker 1: sending traffic to sites like where I used to work,
Speaker 1: cracked and um. And then kind of the social media,
Speaker 1: which is the start of as you said, like the
Speaker 1: data being monitored monetize, like individuals data being the thing
Speaker 1: either that's being directly monetized or it's being used to
Speaker 1: deliver like targeted adds to you. Um. And then there's
Speaker 1: like if you think about it in terms of content,
Speaker 1: it's it starts like for the first era wouldn't even
Speaker 1: involve Google because it would be like the start of
Speaker 1: usenet up to eternal September in nine and then you
Speaker 1: know on from there. Um. But either way, this guy
Speaker 1: doesn't like everything he says about the history of the
Speaker 1: Internet is dumb. It's just a very simplified version and
Speaker 1: you don't actually look at like the interocking systems um.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, yeah, I don't know why he describes
Speaker 1: it this way, because it is it is, like it's
Speaker 1: accurate if you squint and don't think about it. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's weird because like this article is like it's
Speaker 1: four tech Bros. So I don't know why he describes
Speaker 1: it this way, because I feel like he could describe
Speaker 1: it a lot more accurately. Um if you if you
Speaker 1: wanted to. Well, it's something i'm gonna get into. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say this point like twice eveisode. I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: into the neo liberalism episodes. And I'm writing but one
Speaker 1: of one of the key features of neoliberalisms that they
Speaker 1: lie is that the neo liberals have to have two
Speaker 1: versions of what they believe. They have the version that
Speaker 1: they tell everyone else, which is completely a lie and
Speaker 1: is not what they believe at all. And then it
Speaker 1: has they have the version that they tell to each other,
Speaker 1: which is what they actually believe, and they completely they
Speaker 1: contradict each other completely. They mostly believe things. Everything that
Speaker 1: they say in public is just a complete lie. And
Speaker 1: that I think that's what he's doing here, which is
Speaker 1: that this that like that history of the Internet is
Speaker 1: the one you sell the public consumption, because yeah, that
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the lie you tell people to take
Speaker 1: money from them. And then he has the thing that
Speaker 1: he believes, which he will not ever tell you because
Speaker 1: you know if if if he tells you what like
Speaker 1: he actually wanted to do, you would run screaming from
Speaker 1: the room. And you can read between what he wants
Speaker 1: you to believe. I think is made very clear by
Speaker 1: how he divides, by the fact that when he starts
Speaker 1: like dividing up the ages of the Internet, he says,
Speaker 1: the first one is the time in which people wanted
Speaker 1: information to be free. And what he's kind of saying
Speaker 1: by doing that is thing like that was an infant
Speaker 1: stage of the Internet. And obviously the natural evolution of
Speaker 1: the Internet is for every single thing on it to
Speaker 1: become monetized. And because I also believe the Internet should
Speaker 1: be every aspect of our lives, like this is megaverse
Speaker 1: guy or a metaverse guy, like I think the Internet
Speaker 1: should should be involved in every aspect of life. That
Speaker 1: means every aspect of life should be financialized. Um, and
Speaker 1: that's extremely radical, but it does not sound that way.
Speaker 1: When you describe it that way, people's heads go over it.
Speaker 1: But like, what he's saying is deeply radical. And I
Speaker 1: think also like again, you want to talk about like
Speaker 1: the first and not just the early age, because the
Speaker 1: first people who kind of built the backbone of the
Speaker 1: Internet were mostly like very radically anti uh capitalizing on
Speaker 1: like there was this idea that like it absolutely should
Speaker 1: be as free as possible. Like Steve Wozniak, the guy
Speaker 1: who functionally invented the personal computer, had a background like
Speaker 1: as a phone freaker, like literally literally robbing phone companies
Speaker 1: to get like free phone calls and stuff like these,
Speaker 1: Like most of the early Internet pioneers were like some
Speaker 1: kind of criminal um And the early ages of like
Speaker 1: Internet content being monetized mostly started with people doing ship
Speaker 1: for free. Like that was how the people who made
Speaker 1: money on it. That's how all of my bosses and
Speaker 1: that's how fucking I got started. Was like you would
Speaker 1: just start making ship and you would put it out
Speaker 1: for free, and eventually like that would get enough traffic
Speaker 1: that you you you you draw ads to you and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and you'd make money. But it was always like all
Speaker 1: of the content that that made the Internet, and all
Speaker 1: of the content creators who were huge now mostly started
Speaker 1: um doing something like even it was just like throwing
Speaker 1: up videos on YouTube, right or like going on. And
Speaker 1: that's that's less the case with the zoomers now because
Speaker 1: a lot of them got started on at things like
Speaker 1: like twitch, where the idea is to from the beginning
Speaker 1: be trying to monetize yourself and while you're like building
Speaker 1: a brand, you're constantly monetized. But that's a really recent change,
Speaker 1: and I actually I find it kind of unsettling because
Speaker 1: that was I don't know, it's a mix because I'm
Speaker 1: certainly not of the I'm not of the of the
Speaker 1: mind that like, if someone is asking you to do work,
Speaker 1: you should be getting paid for it. But if you
Speaker 1: are trying to if you are trying to like build
Speaker 1: a life as a creator, the best way to do
Speaker 1: that creatively is to just make the things that you
Speaker 1: think are cool and then make like if if other
Speaker 1: people like it, you make money. Like better things get
Speaker 1: made than that that like that that is the way
Speaker 1: the best art gets made. I think it's a few
Speaker 1: things going on here because like the way I think,
Speaker 1: like I think. Actually, the reason why he frames it
Speaker 1: this way is because he's trying to get back to
Speaker 1: his idea of freedom. Right. He describes like the golden
Speaker 1: age of the Internet being information flowing freely. He thinks
Speaker 1: that the blockchain is a new version of that. So
Speaker 1: that's why he's framing it in this way. The second
Speaker 1: thing is in terms of artists and creators. Um, if
Speaker 1: you think about like, yeah, like when like the when
Speaker 1: the early age of what he calls like the of
Speaker 1: what we we kind of all been refrained to it.
Speaker 1: Like the second area when like era of like when
Speaker 1: social media and like content creation like sites are a thing.
Speaker 1: That's like just use YouTube as an example. Um. Because
Speaker 1: there was a low saturation and content, it was easier
Speaker 1: for someone to rise up and gain a platform. Let's
Speaker 1: say someone like Bo Burnham right, who started as just
Speaker 1: a kid and now is like a very popular comedian. Um.
Speaker 1: But then YouTube instead of backing creators like that, um,
Speaker 1: which they did a little bit, but they did not
Speaker 1: as much. They instead started, uh. Like the thing that
Speaker 1: happened was like, uh, YouTube really incentivizing sharing like late
Speaker 1: night content and sharing like like TV clips of TV
Speaker 1: shows and like using like doing using legacy media on
Speaker 1: their platform. And that's the things they really backed. That's
Speaker 1: the things they really pushed into your feet. It's like
Speaker 1: tonight show clips. UM. So a lot of those original
Speaker 1: original content creators kind of got left behind and hour
Speaker 1: are now like just their own are running on their
Speaker 1: own personal brands, some of them use Patreon for example.
Speaker 1: But it's also it's impossible to do this now because
Speaker 1: there's an oversaturation of content. The only thing that's done
Speaker 1: this recently is TikTok because it was a brand new platform.
Speaker 1: There was again a new opportunity for a lot of
Speaker 1: kids to gain to gain a lot of audiences really quickly.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just I to based on what you're saying,
Speaker 1: I think that like TikTok is the closest to how
Speaker 1: couch it happened on the Internet before everything, because because
Speaker 1: it is like, you're not starting from like everyone starts.
Speaker 1: I guess knowing you could make money, but that was
Speaker 1: the same way you start because you're like you're doing
Speaker 1: a thing, and if that thing takes off, then there's
Speaker 1: ways to monetize and like that. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: why probably white bar white is so popular. Generally, growth
Speaker 1: on TikTok is pretty Uh, it's pretty organic. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not it's not boosted by big brands, uh, the
Speaker 1: same way you know, stuff like YouTube is, and now
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna be edging in that direction. But it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not, it's it's not there yet. So
Speaker 1: and his argument in this is to get back to
Speaker 1: just being like a small content creator getting your stuff seen.
Speaker 1: His solution to this problem of like YouTube and stuff
Speaker 1: backing like these large like light night shows and back
Speaker 1: in these large like corporately funded things. His solution is
Speaker 1: that if you're a small if you're a small content creator,
Speaker 1: you should sell yourself as an asset to other people
Speaker 1: on the internet. Right, So, because like his his idea
Speaker 1: is that he wants to get rid of the gatekeepers
Speaker 1: of the Internet and go back to how the Internet was.
Speaker 1: But his solution for doing that is just by selling
Speaker 1: you as a person brand to other people on the
Speaker 1: Internet who are like tech bro investors. So that that's
Speaker 1: why it's framed this specific way. So I think when
Speaker 1: we're all are like talking about like, why does he
Speaker 1: describe it this way, what's all this weird stuff going on,
Speaker 1: It's because that's how he's rationalized in his brain, is
Speaker 1: for how what he thinks being a free artist is,
Speaker 1: and he thinks this is going to be the new
Speaker 1: method to get there. There's another important sort of macro
Speaker 1: thing to think about this year, which is that the
Speaker 1: underlying basis of all of this right is the assumption
Speaker 1: that everyone is an entrepreneur, is that you know, like
Speaker 1: every everyone is doing all of their stuff at all
Speaker 1: times because they want, you know, in order to be
Speaker 1: a business owner. And this has been like you know this,
Speaker 1: this has been the great ideological victory of the right
Speaker 1: in the last fifty years, is that they convinced everyone
Speaker 1: that like every single person is you know, like you're
Speaker 1: stime temporary embarrassed Millonariy syndrome. It's like even people who
Speaker 1: are working jobs, right, like working wage labor jobs, think
Speaker 1: of themselves as you know, content creators. And a content creator,
Speaker 1: you know, is a small business owner. And this has
Speaker 1: an immensely coercive while I'll a coerse or two, but
Speaker 1: corrosive effect on you know, anyone working together to do
Speaker 1: something because you know, oh, you're not you're not you're
Speaker 1: not a worker, You're just like you're a content creator,
Speaker 1: You're you know, you're a small business owner. You're like
Speaker 1: you know, you what and and and that's you know this,
Speaker 1: This is a very long running thing that once of
Speaker 1: incredibly powerical people have been trying to do really since
Speaker 1: like i mean arguably like the thirties, but the complete
Speaker 1: success of that and the way that you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're they're selling exactly the same thing that they were
Speaker 1: selling in like the eighties, but now it's this like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're trying to get people to do it
Speaker 1: to themselves. And also they throw all of this like
Speaker 1: sort of nonsense tech jargon at you to get you
Speaker 1: to sort of like stop looking at the fact that
Speaker 1: this is just sort of you know, this is this
Speaker 1: is this is just the the new, even worse version
Speaker 1: of everyone being a worker who thinks that they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, also going to be a SMO this owner someday. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't have anything else really to
Speaker 1: say about it other than this, but like, I mean,
Speaker 1: this was a good amount to say. I just think
Speaker 1: this is so I think it's such an example of
Speaker 1: kind of the way in which the worst people in
Speaker 1: the world are trying to steer the internet, um, and
Speaker 1: by steering the Internet, steer the soul of like the
Speaker 1: human race. Um. Like this is a vision of the
Speaker 1: future this guy is sharing. And this article that I
Speaker 1: isn't isn't positioning itself as radical, but includes some like
Speaker 1: deeply radical ideas about how the world should go. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I should also note that he's also
Speaker 1: just like blatantly wrong every time he brings up a
Speaker 1: number UM like he taught he he points out in
Speaker 1: this article that forty six million Americans own cryptocurrency. The
Speaker 1: real number is more likely about one million kind of
Speaker 1: it at most, like by every credible I have no
Speaker 1: idea where he's getting forty six milli in Americans own cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: And again, the stat just came out, and that's part
Speaker 1: of his argument is that like, obviously people love the
Speaker 1: blockchain and these tokens, and like this is this is
Speaker 1: inevitably going to get more and more popular um and
Speaker 1: when again, the reality is that every real thing that's
Speaker 1: happening on the on the blockchain is pretty much versions
Speaker 1: of a security scam that the government has just announced
Speaker 1: they're going to finally start regulating. But yeah, I wanna
Speaker 1: so that the stat the study that just came out
Speaker 1: today was that analysis of six point one million trades
Speaker 1: of like four point seven million n f t s.
Speaker 1: It shows that the top ten percent of traders were
Speaker 1: responsible for of trading UM, which again is more evidence
Speaker 1: that all that's happening is people boosting prices also the average,
Speaker 1: the vast majority, like more of an FT sales are
Speaker 1: for less than two hundred dollars. Some of them are
Speaker 1: for just pennies. Like what the stuff that you're hearing
Speaker 1: about is all ridiculous outliers, and its outliers specifically because
Speaker 1: people are pumping stuff up in order to try to
Speaker 1: call on someone um. And that's the whole basis of
Speaker 1: this guy's the structural argument, the reason that he's attempting
Speaker 1: to argue that like there's actually desire here and that
Speaker 1: this is in fact the future of the Internet is
Speaker 1: based entirely upon like numbers that are either bad or
Speaker 1: he's or he's deliberately using he's deliberately lying about the
Speaker 1: numbers because there is no credible number evidence I've ever
Speaker 1: heard that forty six million Americans currently owned cryptocurrency or
Speaker 1: even have ever owned cryptocurrency. Yeah, and I think the
Speaker 1: other kind of nail on the coffin for this idea
Speaker 1: and why I don't think it's going to catch on
Speaker 1: the same way these guys think it think it does.
Speaker 1: And this is something he acknowledges in the article, is
Speaker 1: like not a lot of people know how the stockic
Speaker 1: change works, Like very like he he says, I think
Speaker 1: it's like I don't know, like he I forget that
Speaker 1: what number he says, but um, but he says like
Speaker 1: not not tons of people actually use or know what
Speaker 1: the stockic stockic changes. Um. And the reason why Patreon
Speaker 1: was so successful and why it's so useful for content
Speaker 1: it is because it's a very intuitive system. It's very
Speaker 1: clear how it works, it's clear what you're doing. There's
Speaker 1: no really questions about where your money is going or
Speaker 1: what's happening this. I don't think this is ever I
Speaker 1: don't think this whole personal investment thing is ever going
Speaker 1: to actually go off because people don't understand what the
Speaker 1: blockchain is and it's too much work to explain it
Speaker 1: to them. Um. And just because of how much work
Speaker 1: it is to wrap your mind around, like so where
Speaker 1: is my money going? What do I have to set up?
Speaker 1: How does that work? That's way too much of a headache.
Speaker 1: Because in order for this to actually work, you need
Speaker 1: this to break out of the tech bro bubble or
Speaker 1: else this is just gonna be this small tech brow
Speaker 1: thing of people handing over the same one dollars to
Speaker 1: all their friends in a circle. Um, which is what
Speaker 1: it is currently, and I in order to break out
Speaker 1: of that circle, they need to get you know, your
Speaker 1: grandmother to learn what crypto is and how blockchains work.
Speaker 1: And that's not gonna happen. Um. So I think that
Speaker 1: is the one other nail in the coffin for this
Speaker 1: type of idea is like Patreon is easy, Patreon makes sense.
Speaker 1: This thing it is not nearly as intuitive for supporting
Speaker 1: a YouTuber you like, yeah, oh, okay, cool. I actually
Speaker 1: found evidence on where that forty six million Americans number
Speaker 1: comes from. Yeah, so basically number one. I found like
Speaker 1: a fucking crypto news source pointing out that, like when
Speaker 1: people started tweeting that forty six million Americans is based
Speaker 1: on a study we'll talk about a second, but like
Speaker 1: when people started tweeting about this, like the immediate response
Speaker 1: in the bitcoin subredit was like, well, that's not fucking possible. Uh.
Speaker 1: Like one of the people in the bitcoin subred it said,
Speaker 1: sounds very high. I don't know a single person who
Speaker 1: owns it. And this says woman, six or seven people
Speaker 1: own it. Yeah, And and it comes from a study
Speaker 1: conducted in January by the New York Digital Investment Group
Speaker 1: servying a thousand participants with incomes over fifty dollars, so
Speaker 1: that that seems valid. Wait, they just said it's over
Speaker 1: fifty This is okay, this method, Yeah, this this method.
Speaker 1: You will get a few like Pew released to studies
Speaker 1: suggesting that like six of Americans have used cryptocurrency at
Speaker 1: some point, and like all of what's coming out as
Speaker 1: kind of sketchy, all of the data. There's like reasons
Speaker 1: to be kind of unsettled about it. But also like
Speaker 1: one of the things that you studies showed is that
Speaker 1: the vast majority of Americans have heard of cryptocurrency, uh,
Speaker 1: and most haven't used it, Like the vast majority have
Speaker 1: not chosen to get involved. Like, however accurate you think
Speaker 1: this is? Like there's another article coming out that says
Speaker 1: that came out and I guess May of this year.
Speaker 1: That's said that's based on a Gemini study, which is
Speaker 1: Gemini is a crypto exchange that over fifty million Americans
Speaker 1: are likely to buy crypto in the next year, um,
Speaker 1: which doesn't seem to have happened. Uh, Like I I
Speaker 1: just don't see. There's all sorts of like weird little
Speaker 1: studies commissioned to buy weird little groups. But it really doesn't.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's it's again kind of part of
Speaker 1: the grift. Like I'm not seeing a lot of rigor
Speaker 1: in any of this um anyway, whatever, We've talked enough
Speaker 1: about this ship. I just I think we all as
Speaker 1: soon as we read the article, well we're so like
Speaker 1: appalled by it that what we should probably we talk
Speaker 1: about this for forty five minutes. Yeah, welcome to It
Speaker 1: Could Happen Here, a podcast about how society is following
Speaker 1: apart and about how to put it back together again.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Christopher Long and Today and for the
Speaker 1: next few days, we're doing something a bit different. We're
Speaker 1: going to take a deep dive too some of the
Speaker 1: people who got us into the mess we're in today. Now.
Speaker 1: When we've talked about our enemies and it could Happen here,
Speaker 1: we've mostly focused on fascism, and for good reason. But
Speaker 1: for the next few days we're focusing on a different enemy.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, the Nazis will show up. That enemy is neoliberalism.
Speaker 1: New liberalism is the single most successful political movement of
Speaker 1: the twenty centuries. No other political movement in human history
Speaker 1: has directly controlled so much of the globe. It is outmaneuvered, outlasted,
Speaker 1: or simply destroyed every ideology that sought to oppose it,
Speaker 1: and has reigned virtually unchallenged for fifty years. After exploded
Speaker 1: on the political scene in Chili, their victory has been
Speaker 1: so total that even the earthWhile opponents have adopted its
Speaker 1: core principles. Margaret Thatcher famously bragged that her proudest accomplishment
Speaker 1: was creating Tony Blair, basking in the irony that neoliberalism
Speaker 1: would be implemented across the globe, in large part by
Speaker 1: labor and socialist parties. Today, even erstwhile communist countries maintained
Speaker 1: so called special economic zones with the laws of neoliberalism
Speaker 1: are allowed to run rampant in exchange for GDP increases,
Speaker 1: and their communist supporters in the West have come to
Speaker 1: belief that capitalism is a far more powerful engine of
Speaker 1: economic development and the state planning advocated by their forebearers,
Speaker 1: thus internalizing the greatest principle of neoliberalism even as they
Speaker 1: clan to oppose it. All of this, of course, raises
Speaker 1: two questions, what actually is neoliberalism and how did it
Speaker 1: come to rule the world today. We're going to try
Speaker 1: to answer the first question by looking back at the
Speaker 1: original neoliberals and examining what they believed, because it's not
Speaker 1: what you think. There are many places you can begin
Speaker 1: the story of neoliberalism. I'm choosing to start in France ninety. Now,
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties are a bad time to be a
Speaker 1: free trade market liberal. And just to clear this up,
Speaker 1: early liberal in the European context, which is where a
Speaker 1: lot of the beginning of the story takes place, does
Speaker 1: not mean the same thing as it does in the
Speaker 1: American context. European liberalism up to this point is about
Speaker 1: free trade markets, individual liberty and rights, etcetera, etcetera. But
Speaker 1: it's anti state interference. To be somewhat reductive, It's kind
Speaker 1: of closer to what conservatism is in the US, but
Speaker 1: it's not identical. So here that in mind. As the
Speaker 1: story goes on, dirties saw the rise of fascism and
Speaker 1: social democracy and communism, each with his own form of
Speaker 1: government spending and economic planning, which liberals absolutely detested. Now
Speaker 1: the thirties have been full of liberals gathered you try
Speaker 1: to figure out what to do next. In in in seven,
Speaker 1: Walter Lippmann, an American writer who would become most famous
Speaker 1: for inventing the term cold war, wrote a book called
Speaker 1: an Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society, which
Speaker 1: argued that totalitarianism is a product of not having individual
Speaker 1: private property at the state needs to be limited to
Speaker 1: a ministering justice and not you know, giving people things
Speaker 1: that they need. And so a lot of liberals read
Speaker 1: this and go, oh cool, we should organize a conference
Speaker 1: to talk about this book and our ideas. And the
Speaker 1: product is in et Litman colloquium. Now, a bunch of
Speaker 1: extremely important near liberals show up at this conference, including
Speaker 1: one Friedrich August von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Wilhelm rope Ki,
Speaker 1: and Alexander Rusto, and they start talking about the need
Speaker 1: for a new kind of liberalism to oppose communism, Kanadianism, fascism,
Speaker 1: and what they call Manchester or Las Fair liberalism, in
Speaker 1: which the state didn't do defeat it all in political
Speaker 1: life and let the economy run an autopilot. Now, the
Speaker 1: German sociologist Alexander Rousteau, who we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: more in a second comes up with the term neo
Speaker 1: liberalism to define the new set of principles that they're
Speaker 1: trying to develop, and they think the new liberalism should
Speaker 1: prioritize the price mechanism, free enterprise, the system of competition,
Speaker 1: and importantly, a strong and impartial state. Now this is
Speaker 1: the origin of new liberalism as a term. And it's
Speaker 1: important to understand two things from the outset, because the
Speaker 1: new liberals are going to spend the next fifty years
Speaker 1: lying about this. One. Near liberalism favors a strong state
Speaker 1: to make the market work. And to new liberalism is
Speaker 1: not the same thing as classical liberalism. Now, new liberals
Speaker 1: essentially invented the whole I make classical liberal thing in
Speaker 1: the fifties. But if you read the original stuff that
Speaker 1: they wrote, if you if you go back to nineties,
Speaker 1: if you go back to nineteen thirties, and you read
Speaker 1: what they write, the new liberals are extremely clear that
Speaker 1: they are not classical liberals and that in fact their
Speaker 1: political project is different from the twentieth century nineteenth entree
Speaker 1: liberal project, in which the state is supposed to be
Speaker 1: a night watchman and not actually interfere in the markets
Speaker 1: at all. The neoliberals, originally before they you know, start
Speaker 1: lying about their actual origins, reject this principle and come
Speaker 1: to believe that, in fact, a strong state is necessary
Speaker 1: to ensure that markets work. So now you have Lenar
Speaker 1: liberalism as a thing, but nothing really happens much until
Speaker 1: after World War two because world were to almost everyone
Speaker 1: is just doing state economic planning. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: all of these people rambling off to the side about how, oh,
Speaker 1: the market is the most efficient way to plan a system.
Speaker 1: Nobody listens to them because they're fighting a war, and
Speaker 1: the way you fight wars is doing state planning. And
Speaker 1: after a world war to the situation for new liberals
Speaker 1: is even worse because having you know, gone through the
Speaker 1: experience of entire society is turning their entire economies and
Speaker 1: systems into planning agencies in order to you know, mobilize
Speaker 1: the total war effort. People will after the war come
Speaker 1: back and go, oh, hey, we can do this to
Speaker 1: other parts of the economy. So this means that everyone,
Speaker 1: and this is not just the communist states, this is
Speaker 1: you know, this is Britain is doing Kanesianism. They're doing planning,
Speaker 1: they're doing state welfare programs, and the New Deal is
Speaker 1: spreading also across the globe. Now in response to all
Speaker 1: of this, Hiak and his allies do two things. The
Speaker 1: first is found in the Chicago School of Economics, and
Speaker 1: the second is to assemble the avengers of taking food
Speaker 1: from children. The mont Pelion Society. The mont Pellion Society
Speaker 1: is the central neoliberal institution, which is a weird thing
Speaker 1: because in a lot of ways it's essentially just a
Speaker 1: closeted debate society intended to allow Neiler both to work
Speaker 1: out their political principles behind closed doors. Now, at this
Speaker 1: first meeting in n a lot of the people from
Speaker 1: the Littman Colloquium are there, but unfortunately some of the
Speaker 1: French members of the Colloquium and some of the people
Speaker 1: from Germany had collaborated with the Nazis, so they were out.
Speaker 1: And this meant that High I get defined new people
Speaker 1: to bring in. And the mont Peleion Society's first meeting
Speaker 1: is the first time you actually have all three major
Speaker 1: schools of neoliberal thought in the same place at the
Speaker 1: same time, arguing with each other. And they can't agree
Speaker 1: on shit. The only thing they can actually agree on
Speaker 1: is to look into more stuff and to get a
Speaker 1: sense of how far away from moderate neoliberalism. The arguments
Speaker 1: that are being had at the Montpellion Society are The
Speaker 1: Montpellion Society has only ever once actually released a single
Speaker 1: statement stating its principles. And this statement was the only
Speaker 1: thing that could be agreed on at the first meeting
Speaker 1: of the Montpellion Society. And I'm just gonna read it.
Speaker 1: This is what they agreed to research. One the analysis
Speaker 1: and explanation of the present crisis so as to reflect
Speaker 1: its essential moral and economic origins. Two the redefinition of
Speaker 1: the state's functions so as to distinguish more clearly between
Speaker 1: the totalitarian and liberal order. Three methods of re establishing
Speaker 1: the rule of law and assuring its developments that individuals
Speaker 1: and groups are not in a position to encroach upon
Speaker 1: the freedom of others and private property rights are not
Speaker 1: allowed to become a basis of predatory power. Four the
Speaker 1: possibility of establishing minimum standards by means not inimical to
Speaker 1: initiative and the functioning of the market. Five Methods of
Speaker 1: combating the misuse of history for the furtherance of creeds,
Speaker 1: hostiles liberty. Six The problem of creating an international order
Speaker 1: conductive to safeguarding of peace and liberty and permitting the
Speaker 1: establishment of harmonious international economic relations. You know, just by
Speaker 1: looking at this you can immediately see signs of how
Speaker 1: far things are going to move. I mean, you know what,
Speaker 1: one of one of the things that they're talking about
Speaker 1: is again they're trying to research whether or not it's
Speaker 1: possible to just give people things without the markets. And
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not just the sort of left quote
Speaker 1: unquote wing of the neoliberals who are arguing about this.
Speaker 1: Hyek in In will be his most famous book, The
Speaker 1: Road to Serve Them, I mean explicitly says, yeah, you
Speaker 1: should just give people food and housing and stuff outside
Speaker 1: of the market. And you know, like today, if literally
Speaker 1: anyone who says this will be accused of socialism. This
Speaker 1: is the neoliberal This is, you know, a large part
Speaker 1: of the neoliberal position in now. I've mentioned briefly that
Speaker 1: there are three schools of neoliberalism, and we're going to
Speaker 1: spend some time looking at them because people have a
Speaker 1: tendency to look at neoliberalism and assume that, oh, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's just the Chicago School of Economics, you know,
Speaker 1: which is the the neo classical schools most famous members
Speaker 1: Melton Friedman and It's true that that's Chicago School are neoliberals,
Speaker 1: but and and this is critical, there's other intellectual schools
Speaker 1: involved in here. And it's not just it's not just economists.
Speaker 1: Neoliberalism from the beginning is a multi disciplinary international project.
Speaker 1: You have lawyers, you have political scientists, you have journalists,
Speaker 1: you have philosophers, you have anthropologists. And the product of
Speaker 1: this is something is an ideology and a philosophy that
Speaker 1: is much deeper, much richer, and much more dangerous than
Speaker 1: just Chicago School alone. The second of the major schools
Speaker 1: is the Austrian School, which is led by Ludokfung Mesas
Speaker 1: and Hyak and maybe most importantly but least well known,
Speaker 1: the third school that we're actually going to be talking
Speaker 1: about today is the German Ordo Liberals, led by Alexander Rousteau,
Speaker 1: who again invented determina liberalism, and Wilheim Ropek, who almost
Speaker 1: no one has ever heard of, but are incredibly important.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna I'm gonna insert a disclaimer here before
Speaker 1: I get yelled at by by nerds. Yes, I'm aware
Speaker 1: of the public choice theories at the Virginia School. I
Speaker 1: am also aware of at a group of the deal
Speaker 1: lierbals is called the Geneva School, even though they're just
Speaker 1: regular or the liberals. And there's also the rump of
Speaker 1: the neo institutionalists. Um, I don't care about them because
Speaker 1: they're not irrelevant to this story. Please do not you
Speaker 1: yell at me on Twitter. Now, these people have wildly
Speaker 1: divergent beliefs, and so I'm gonna do my best to
Speaker 1: do once sentence summaries of what these people believe. So
Speaker 1: the Chicago School of Neoclassical economics, humans are all knowing,
Speaker 1: calculating gods, rationally optimizing their behavior to get the most
Speaker 1: out of every single human interaction they engage in to
Speaker 1: maximize the utility the product of this infinite freedom to
Speaker 1: choose economic equilibrium. The Austrian school, humans are pig ignorant foxx,
Speaker 1: you know literally nothing and therefore mostly made to bow
Speaker 1: down to the ever changing disequilibrium of the market, which
Speaker 1: is the only thing that can actually process information order liberalism.
Speaker 1: The markets won't create or balance itself because these uncultured
Speaker 1: proletarian swine keep asking for raises instead of focusing on
Speaker 1: the magic of the families. So we have to use
Speaker 1: the state and laws to force people and companies to
Speaker 1: do competition. And these are obviously some what comical summaries
Speaker 1: of it, but these are very very different conceptions of
Speaker 1: what it is to be a human, of whether the
Speaker 1: market occurs naturally or not, of what the market actually is.
Speaker 1: Is it a product, is it an object in and
Speaker 1: of itself? Is it a product? Is it just an
Speaker 1: inevitable product of humans doing whatever humans do? And this
Speaker 1: is part of the reason why it's always almost impossible
Speaker 1: to get the original neal liberal sugree into anything. But
Speaker 1: this is actually one of the strength of the neo
Speaker 1: libal project. The project only works because it uses the
Speaker 1: products of all three branches. You have neo classical attacks
Speaker 1: on the welfare state, Austrian attacks in sexual planning and order,
Speaker 1: liberal theories of the state, and sort of cultural on
Speaker 1: the non economic nature of markets. And you know, when
Speaker 1: one school essentially fails as an explanation for something, they
Speaker 1: can show to another school, and this gives them a
Speaker 1: very wide range of ability to move between crises and
Speaker 1: move between people attacking any of the individual schools because
Speaker 1: they can simply pull out another set of theories. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk a little bit more about each
Speaker 1: of the schools, and we're gonna start with the Chicago
Speaker 1: School because is against the most famous, and because I
Speaker 1: think there's a there's another very interesting story here into
Speaker 1: how the Chicago School change from which origins. So one
Speaker 1: of the people who are supposed to be a founding
Speaker 1: member of the Chicago School was a manner in Henry Simmons,
Speaker 1: and Simmons is unlike the rest of the Chicago School
Speaker 1: because he actually believes in things. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: read a couple of quotes from him. Thus, the great
Speaker 1: enemy of democracy is monopoly in all its forms, gigantic
Speaker 1: corporate trade associations and other agencies of price control, trade unions,
Speaker 1: or in general organization and concentration of power within functional classes.
Speaker 1: Here's another one. A monopolist is an implicit thief because
Speaker 1: this possession of market power leads the exchange of commodities
Speaker 1: at prices that do not reflect underlying social scarcities. And
Speaker 1: you know, you can see this sort of one of
Speaker 1: one of the classic neliberal arguments, which is that okay,
Speaker 1: so you have you have, you have the market. The
Speaker 1: market is efficient, and trade unions get in the way
Speaker 1: of the market because their monopoly. But Simmons has what
Speaker 1: kind of looks like from from our prospective of left
Speaker 1: wink critique of monopolies, which is, yeah, okay, giant corps
Speaker 1: monopolies are thieves because they use their market power to
Speaker 1: rob people by charging higher prices, and it's it's I
Speaker 1: genuinely can't say how differently things would have gone if
Speaker 1: Simmons had actually been around to see the Chicago's go through,
Speaker 1: because he commits suicide in neteen forty six, and unlike
Speaker 1: every single other person who was going to be involved
Speaker 1: with the Chicago School from the beginning until now, Simmons
Speaker 1: had a genuine and commitment to democracy and anti monopoly principles.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately he's he dies in nete forty six, and
Speaker 1: by the by, the Chago School is really up and
Speaker 1: running in the fifties, almost everyone involved in it is
Speaker 1: overtly pro monopoly pro cooperation, and are you know that
Speaker 1: they set up an anti trust school. But the thing
Speaker 1: that the anti trust School is arguing is that monopolies
Speaker 1: are actually essentially impossible because competition will just take care
Speaker 1: of everything, and if you try to stop monopolies from happening,
Speaker 1: that will interfere in the economy. Now, this is this
Speaker 1: is the line that Milton Friedman takes, and it's also
Speaker 1: the line of the Vulcar Fund, who are a sort
Speaker 1: of I guess you could call them a charitable organization,
Speaker 1: but it's basically a billionaire slush funds that funds the school.
Speaker 1: And they've had real fights with Simmons Becauseimmons is like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: monopolies are bad. At Vulcars like, well, we're a monopoly,
Speaker 1: so you guys need to actually work for us. And
Speaker 1: by the time Freedman essentially takes over the Chicago School
Speaker 1: and uh night take it over. They're not just intellectual mercenaries.
Speaker 1: They're extremely proud of the fact that they are, in fact,
Speaker 1: pure intellectual mercenary hacks with absolutely dogshit economics. If you've
Speaker 1: ever read just a or you know, if you've ever
Speaker 1: been forced to take an economics class, you took microeconomics.
Speaker 1: That's basically just what Chicago School believes. It's everyone's a
Speaker 1: rational actor. Every every human being spends all of their
Speaker 1: time trying to calculate the maximum utility of anything that
Speaker 1: they do. Everything is a market. Everything functions by supply
Speaker 1: and demand. Markets are perfectly efficient if you just let
Speaker 1: them alone and don't interfere with them. Everything the state
Speaker 1: does interfered with the markets, et cetera, excepted. This is
Speaker 1: this is the thing that is sort of classically understood
Speaker 1: to be neoliberalisms core content. But it's extremely important to
Speaker 1: understand that these are not the only neoliberals, and in fact,
Speaker 1: not only are these not the only neoliberals, this set
Speaker 1: of political principles, to a large extent, is not what
Speaker 1: the neoliberals actually believe. This kind of stuff is essentially
Speaker 1: what they feed the roots. Small states, tax is bad,
Speaker 1: regulation bad. Everything is a market and has always been
Speaker 1: a market, and all human interactions will nevitably produce markets.
Speaker 1: But to understand what neo liberals actually believe, we need
Speaker 1: to talk about the order liberals. Now, the two most
Speaker 1: important order liberals are Wilheim rope K and W. W. Roustau,
Speaker 1: who were both exilis during the Nazi regime. Now, a
Speaker 1: lot of the other order liberals who stay in Nazi
Speaker 1: Germany collaborated with the Nazi regime, which is something that's
Speaker 1: kind of just overlooked and brush to the side when
Speaker 1: people are right about them. But grope Key and Rousseau's
Speaker 1: status as people who you know, fled the Nazis gives
Speaker 1: them a kind of social cache that their colleagues don't have,
Speaker 1: and they become extremely important. Now. In some ways, the
Speaker 1: Order Liberals could be considered the left wing of of
Speaker 1: the neoliberals. They are significantly less harsh on the welfare
Speaker 1: state than other forms of neoliberalism, and this is in
Speaker 1: large part because the Order Liberals are the first new
Speaker 1: liberals to ever actually hold any power, and I think
Speaker 1: people most people tend to think that the first time
Speaker 1: the liberalism was ever implemented was Chile, but that's not
Speaker 1: really true. The Order Liberals are actually very powerful in
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifties Germany. Now, the problem they face is
Speaker 1: that the left is powerful enough in Germany that they
Speaker 1: cannot actually just completely eliminate the welfare state. So their
Speaker 1: solution is to create this thing called the social markets.
Speaker 1: And the Order Liberals get accused of like being crypto
Speaker 1: socialists by a lot of the other Neil liberals, but
Speaker 1: that's not really what's going on. The very important thing
Speaker 1: about the Order Liberals is that, unlike the Chicago School,
Speaker 1: they're not economists. Both Rockey and Rousto or social scientists.
Speaker 1: Russo's a sociologist, and they argue that the state and
Speaker 1: the market alone cannot maintain market society because market society
Speaker 1: produces dislocation, you know, produces atomization, It destroys social cohesion.
Speaker 1: And this means that you need a social, political, and
Speaker 1: sort of cultural framework to maintain it. And their major
Speaker 1: focus is on providing stability and security for the working
Speaker 1: class and a new sense of sort of identity and
Speaker 1: cultural caohiation, because I think if the working class is
Speaker 1: essentially left to itself, it will create massification, cultural decay,
Speaker 1: and eventually the working class return into the proletariat, and
Speaker 1: that will give these either communism or fascism. The order
Speaker 1: liberals believe that there's the there's a kind of natural
Speaker 1: hierarchical order that they're trying to preserve. That this is
Speaker 1: essentially what order means. It means literally order which accords
Speaker 1: with the essence of humans. This means an order in
Speaker 1: which proportioned measure and balance exists. Now they have a
Speaker 1: few ways that they're going to do this rope case
Speaker 1: obsessed with something called structural policy. And structural policy is
Speaker 1: basically the argument that the conditions from markets have to
Speaker 1: be specifically created, and again they're not just economic positions
Speaker 1: of social conditions. And this is fused with Risteau's vital politique,
Speaker 1: which is essentially about that the power of anthropological and
Speaker 1: human aspects of culture and politics beyond the forces of
Speaker 1: production that they think are vital sort of the functioning
Speaker 1: of society. And part of what they're doing here is
Speaker 1: that they want to give something people a cultural thing
Speaker 1: to focus on, so they stop talking about like wages
Speaker 1: and welfare and who owns production. But the combination of
Speaker 1: vital politic and structural policy gets you order liberalism. So
Speaker 1: nominally they focus on individuals, but really what they're focusing
Speaker 1: on as the family, as this quote unquote decentralized engine
Speaker 1: of economic capitalism with small businesses and hopefully small family
Speaker 1: farms as a sort of a political social support base
Speaker 1: for capitalism, which they're they're they're going to promote and
Speaker 1: set against the radicalism of the sort of industrial proletariat.
Speaker 1: And this this sort of middle class that they're aspiring
Speaker 1: to build is extremely important for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: Partially is a way to diffuse working class tension. Partially
Speaker 1: as a way to sort of offers work or something
Speaker 1: to inspired to, and partly as a way to fuse
Speaker 1: the sort of traditional natural hierarchy with conceptions and britocracy. Now,
Speaker 1: Roka in particular also begins to look for systems outside
Speaker 1: of just the democratic state to sort of create this
Speaker 1: legal apparatus that the neoliberals want to use to impose markets.
Speaker 1: And this is extremely important because a lot of where
Speaker 1: neo liberalism winds are coming from is not from national governments.
Speaker 1: It's from the sort of international bureaucracy. It's from the
Speaker 1: I m F. It's from the World Bank, it's from
Speaker 1: the World Trade Organization, and those groups are controlled by
Speaker 1: by neoliberal lawyers. And Rock is the person who essentially
Speaker 1: first has this idea. Now, the goal of using these
Speaker 1: international legal institutions as a way of creating law, the
Speaker 1: laws to sort of enforce new liberalism is using it
Speaker 1: as a way to sort of get around democracy. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to read this quote from Roque because oh boy,
Speaker 1: does he absolutely not believe in freedom and democracy in
Speaker 1: the way that he and everyone else talks about publicly.
Speaker 1: It is possible that in my opinion of the strong state,
Speaker 1: I am even more fascist, fascististure than you yourself, because
Speaker 1: I would indeed like to see all economic policy decisions
Speaker 1: concentrated in the hand of a fully independent and vigorous state,
Speaker 1: weakened by no pluralist authorities of a corporative kind. I
Speaker 1: see the strength of the state in the intensity, not extensiveness,
Speaker 1: of its economic policies. How the constitutional legal structure of
Speaker 1: such a state should be designed as a question in
Speaker 1: and of itself, for which I have no patent receipt
Speaker 1: to offer. I share your opinion that the old formulas
Speaker 1: of parliamentary democracy have proven themselves useless. People must get
Speaker 1: used to the fact that there is also a presidential
Speaker 1: authoritarian even yes, horrible thing to say, dictatorial democracy. So
Speaker 1: what he's saying there is that's he's he's he's he's
Speaker 1: sending a letter to one of you his friends, and
Speaker 1: he's going, yeah, I'm I'm even more fascist than you are.
Speaker 1: I think that democracy is actually a threat to the market,
Speaker 1: and that in order to avoid authoritarian democracy, we should,
Speaker 1: in fact concentrate all economic decision making power in a
Speaker 1: in the hands of a narrow elite in a strong state,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the opposite of everything that near
Speaker 1: liberals opened the claim to be supporting, but behind closed doors.
Speaker 1: And we will get into more of this in a second.
Speaker 1: This is what they actually believe. Now. Rok is somewhat
Speaker 1: unique among Neni liberals in that he is racist by
Speaker 1: neoliberal standards. He's just enormously incredibly racist. So for example,
Speaker 1: he he's a massive apartheid dude. And again I want
Speaker 1: I need to point this out. Roku is one of
Speaker 1: the things, is one of the most important neoliberals. He's
Speaker 1: one of the founding members of the Montpellion Society, although
Speaker 1: he gets kicked out for well, he eventually leaves because
Speaker 1: of some disputes he as with Hyak. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read some of the things that he says
Speaker 1: about South Africa because they're horrible. Quote, the South African
Speaker 1: negro is not only a man of an utterly different race,
Speaker 1: but at the same time stems from a completely different
Speaker 1: type and level of civilization. He also calls ending apartheid
Speaker 1: quote national suicide. And you know, so she starts saying
Speaker 1: this stuff and the other neoliberals are like, dude, what
Speaker 1: the fuck? So that the oliberal he needs newspaper like
Speaker 1: he wrote for for thirty years, which is like what's
Speaker 1: and published a bunch of students going stop this. This
Speaker 1: is you cannot seriously be supporting a part tied like this.
Speaker 1: And his response in the newspaper is called the n
Speaker 1: z Z and his response is quote these n z
Speaker 1: Z near intellectuals will not be satisfied until they let
Speaker 1: a real cannibals speak now. Rope is one of his friends,
Speaker 1: another MPs member named Hundled. So Hyak looks at ropek
Speaker 1: support for apartheid and is like what the fuck? Like no,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, Like this is horrible. Why why are you
Speaker 1: doing this? You know? To too high X credit that
Speaker 1: this This is the extent of the credit I will
Speaker 1: give Hik in this episode is that he looks at
Speaker 1: just the open overt racism of rocaine is like no.
Speaker 1: And when when he does this Ropek's friends, Hundled says
Speaker 1: that Hyatt quote now advocates one man, one vote in
Speaker 1: race mixing. Now, you can see a lot of things
Speaker 1: here about Okay that are extremely scary. And one of
Speaker 1: those things is that the language that she's speaking this uh,
Speaker 1: the West is committing national suicide. UH, clash of civilizations,
Speaker 1: race war stuff. You know, this is this is Essentially
Speaker 1: the the I mean literally, the national suicide thing is
Speaker 1: what white nationalists say today. And Ropek is in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways of right nationalist. He's just sort of
Speaker 1: a German one. But what's what's really scary about rope
Speaker 1: K is that he's not sort of bound by by
Speaker 1: the sort of strictures of of of a neo class
Speaker 1: cogo new classical economists. For example, he won't propose that
Speaker 1: like the dating market, like like dating should be a market,
Speaker 1: and that rich like men should be able to like
Speaker 1: I go on an app and like like every every
Speaker 1: every single time a person gets into a relationship, it
Speaker 1: should just be entirely based on market exchange and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, because you know, he doesn't think like an economist.
Speaker 1: He thinks about cultural factors, he thinks about sort of
Speaker 1: social factors. But he also he's cracked the code for
Speaker 1: how new liberalism is going to be implemented the way
Speaker 1: you do neoliberalism is near liberalism plus racism, and he
Speaker 1: realizes that you need you know, neoliberalisms actual sort of
Speaker 1: policies right will cause atomization. What causuals with dislocation will
Speaker 1: cause that the existing social structures to society sort of implode.
Speaker 1: And he realizes that in order to get this to work,
Speaker 1: you need you need a spiritual base, You need some
Speaker 1: kind of new thing that you can use to to
Speaker 1: to sort of bring all these people together. And he
Speaker 1: ficks Catholicism, which doesn't work because I mean, there's never
Speaker 1: reason for this. But you know, partially it's too early.
Speaker 1: Partially it's because he picks a Catholicism, not evangelicalism. But
Speaker 1: this is how the neoliberals are eventually going to take
Speaker 1: power by you know, aligning themselves with the evangelicals who
Speaker 1: promised to solve the atomization. They're creating with you know,
Speaker 1: religion and family and the patriarchy. And he figures this
Speaker 1: out in like the sixties, but it's just you know,
Speaker 1: like twenty years before the rest of the levels figured out.
Speaker 1: Now there's you know, he also, Okay, has like a
Speaker 1: bunch of very similar stuff that he thinks about this
Speaker 1: about Rhodesia. But interestingly, he has more support for his
Speaker 1: positions on Rhodesia than he does for his positions in
Speaker 1: South Africa. And now I'm gonna we're gonna jump back
Speaker 1: to Chicago School. We're gonna read some Milton Friedman stuff
Speaker 1: about Rhodesia because dear God, quote, majority rule for Rhodesia
Speaker 1: today is a euphemism for a black minority government, which
Speaker 1: would almost surely mean both the eviction or exodus of
Speaker 1: most of the whites and also a drastically lower living
Speaker 1: level and opportunity for the black masses of Rhodesia. Here's
Speaker 1: another one where he's describing the system of one person,
Speaker 1: one vote, quote, a system of highly weighted voting in
Speaker 1: which special interests of far greater role to play than
Speaker 1: does the general interest. You know. So that's the decryption
Speaker 1: of what democracy is. In contrast, he thinks the market
Speaker 1: economy is quote a system of effective proportional representation. Now
Speaker 1: Friedman also thinks that, you know, so, so there's there's
Speaker 1: a blockade, like an economic blockade of Rhodesia going on
Speaker 1: because their Rhodesia and they are maybe the worst people ever.
Speaker 1: That's only only in by ald exaggeration. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: you know, absolutely fanatical, like what was you promises government.
Speaker 1: And Freedman also calls the isolation of Rhodesia quote the
Speaker 1: suicide of the West. And you know he's doing this
Speaker 1: on racial lines, but he's also doing this along the
Speaker 1: lines of this argument that democracy itself is actually bad,
Speaker 1: and this is the place that he can express it
Speaker 1: because you know, he can leverage racism to get away
Speaker 1: with it. And I'm going to read another Freedman quote
Speaker 1: because I think it's it's important to understand what the
Speaker 1: neoliberals actually think about democracy. Quote. This was sometimes admitted
Speaker 1: by members of Mount Pelion in public, but only when
Speaker 1: they felt that their program was in the sense, let's
Speaker 1: be clear, I don't believe in democracy in one sense.
Speaker 1: You don't believe in democracy. Nobody believes in democracy. You
Speaker 1: will find it hard to find anybody who will say
Speaker 1: that if democracy is interpreted as a majority rule, you
Speaker 1: will find it hard to find anybody who will say
Speaker 1: that of the people believe the other percent of people
Speaker 1: should be shot, that's an appropriate exercise of democracy. But
Speaker 1: I believe is not a democracy but an individual freedom
Speaker 1: in a society in which individuals corroperate with one another.
Speaker 1: So he's he's making a sort of what's in some
Speaker 1: ways a kind of anarchist argument against democracy, which is
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, okay, so if if you interpret democracy
Speaker 1: as premajority rule, that a majority can just do a
Speaker 1: terrible thing the minority. But you know what the new
Speaker 1: lipperals actually mean by this is that of the population could,
Speaker 1: for example, I don't know, take money from the rich
Speaker 1: small part of the of the population and distributed around.
Speaker 1: And they think that is totalitarianism. And in order to
Speaker 1: stop that from happening, they are in fact, absolutely imperfectly
Speaker 1: willing to just back dictatorships. And you know that's in us.
Speaker 1: It's what they what they what they actually want is
Speaker 1: a state, the sole function of which essentially is to
Speaker 1: ensure that nobody ever does this. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you can do this is out of a democratic framework, fine,
Speaker 1: but if you can't, well, I don't know, it's time
Speaker 1: for a coup. We're gonna turn to the two Hyak
Speaker 1: in the Austrians, because Hyak also is known as this
Speaker 1: sort of like as a libertarian, as a person who
Speaker 1: sort of believes in spontaneous order and like thinks that
Speaker 1: I you should you should only have sort of small
Speaker 1: decentralized political institutions. Uh. And so we're gonna watch Hyak
Speaker 1: quote a bunch of stuff from and agree with a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff from Carl Schmidt, which is again incredible
Speaker 1: because Hyak elsewhere describes Schmidt as quote, uh, the Nazis
Speaker 1: chief jurist, which is true. But here here are some
Speaker 1: other things that Hiak has said about Karl Schmidt. Quote.
Speaker 1: The weakness of the governments of an omnipotent democracy was
Speaker 1: very clearly seen by the extraordinary German student of politics,
Speaker 1: Carl Schmidt, who in the nine twenties probably understood the
Speaker 1: character of the developing form of government better than most people.
Speaker 1: And you know, Hyak believes a lot of the same
Speaker 1: things that Schmick does. So you know, one of them
Speaker 1: things that Schmidt is like big on is that liberalism
Speaker 1: and democracy are opposite things. And Hyak also believes this.
Speaker 1: And okay, so so I'm gonna read I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: some Schmitt, and then we're gonna read some Hyak, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna be saying the same thing. So here, Schmidt,
Speaker 1: only a strong state can preserve and enhance a free markets.
Speaker 1: Only a strong state can generate, generate genuine decentralization and
Speaker 1: bring about free and autonomous domains. Here's Hyak. If we
Speaker 1: proceed on the assumption that only the exercise this is
Speaker 1: of freedom that the majority will are important, we would
Speaker 1: be certain to create a stadiant society with all the
Speaker 1: characteristics of one freedom. So what hi Yak, Yeah, Schmidt
Speaker 1: is saying that only a strong state can support a
Speaker 1: free market and the decentralization. Hyak is saying, if you
Speaker 1: let a democracy exist that has majority rule, it will
Speaker 1: create un freedom. Now we will get into this more
Speaker 1: when we talk about like Chile, because oh boy, is
Speaker 1: there some other ship that Hia cassidy with that. But
Speaker 1: most neoliberals hate democracy, know about it what they say
Speaker 1: in public, and and this is the other important thing here.
Speaker 1: Neo liberals lie, they like constantly. They lie to the
Speaker 1: point where sorting out their actual beliefs becomes almost impossible,
Speaker 1: and even their intellectual enemies believe the lies that they tell. Well,
Speaker 1: most people think the neoliberals believe is that, you know,
Speaker 1: they want a small government and liberty and an unregulated
Speaker 1: market that will occur to actually through spontaneous order, because
Speaker 1: it's human nature to want the truck and barter and
Speaker 1: rationally calculate things. And the neoliberals don't believe any of this.
Speaker 1: This is just what they tell to the roots. What
Speaker 1: they actually want is a large and powerful surveillance in
Speaker 1: legal state in a massive bureaucracy to enforce essentially pro
Speaker 1: corporate policies at gunpoints. Um, I'm I'm gonna read close
Speaker 1: up this episode by by reading a list of things
Speaker 1: that Philip Morowski is an economical story you studies neliberalism.
Speaker 1: His work I've used a lot for for these episodes.
Speaker 1: Wrote about the the sort of, the the sort of
Speaker 1: eleven principles of what newliberals actually believe. One. Free markets
Speaker 1: do not occur naturally. They must be actively constructed through
Speaker 1: political organizing. To the market is an information processor and
Speaker 1: the most efficient one possible, more efficient than any government
Speaker 1: or any single human being could be. Truth can only
Speaker 1: be validated by the market. Three. Market society is, and
Speaker 1: therefore should be, the natural and inexorable state of human kind.
Speaker 1: The political goal of neoliberals is not to destroy this day,
Speaker 1: but to take control of it and to redefine its
Speaker 1: structure and function in order to create and maintain the
Speaker 1: market friendly culture. Five. There is no contradiction between public
Speaker 1: politics citizen and private market entrepreneur consumer, because the latter
Speaker 1: does and should eclipse the former. Six. The most important virtue,
Speaker 1: more important then justice or anything else, is freedom defined
Speaker 1: negatively as freedom to choose, most importantly defined as the
Speaker 1: freedom to acquiesce to the imperatives of the market. Seven.
Speaker 1: Capital has a natural right to flow freely across national borders. Eight.
Speaker 1: Inequality of resources, income, wealth, and even political rights is
Speaker 1: a good thing. It promotes productivity because people envy the
Speaker 1: rich and emulate them. People who complain about inequality are
Speaker 1: either sore looters or old foggies. You need to get
Speaker 1: hip to the way things work nowadays. Nine. Corporations could
Speaker 1: do no wrong. By definition, competition will take care of
Speaker 1: all problems, including any tendency monopoly. Ten. The markets engineered
Speaker 1: and promoted by neoliberal experts can always provide a solution
Speaker 1: to the problems seemingly endlessly caused by the market in
Speaker 1: the first place. There's always an app for that. Eleven
Speaker 1: there's no difference between is and should be free markets.
Speaker 1: Both should be normatively and are positively the most efficient
Speaker 1: economic system and the most just way of doing politics,
Speaker 1: and the most sympirically true description of human beha off
Speaker 1: your and the most ethical and moral way to live,
Speaker 1: which in turn explains, justifies and justifies why there are
Speaker 1: versions of free markets. Should be and as neoliberals build
Speaker 1: more and more power increasingly are universal. Yeah, we we
Speaker 1: we We've read a long list of things. But essentially
Speaker 1: the point of this is that the liberals want to
Speaker 1: transform everything into the market because they think the market
Speaker 1: is a more efficient way of doing things, in a
Speaker 1: better and more moral and more just way of doing
Speaker 1: things than anything else you can possibly imagine, including you know,
Speaker 1: things like democracy and you know, and any problem the
Speaker 1: system like produces will be solved by the system. Now,
Speaker 1: this is this is an incredibly radical political program in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways in that it will you know,
Speaker 1: you can you can you can argue whether it's a
Speaker 1: radical or reactionary program. I mean I think I think
Speaker 1: it's a it's a deeply reactionary one in some ways,
Speaker 1: but it is a is a program that is vastly
Speaker 1: different than anything else that has come before it. Now,
Speaker 1: the challenge, of course, was getting anyone else to agree
Speaker 1: to this, and the answer is that it's really hard
Speaker 1: to It is extremely hard to convince people that, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone should bow down to the market, etcetera, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: so the only way they can actually do this is
Speaker 1: by lying. Now, as as Morowski describes, the neoliberals operate
Speaker 1: an incredibly sophisticated intellectual and political network that forms the
Speaker 1: sort of a choice Goodell with mort Peller own Siety
Speaker 1: at its center, and an ever expanding group of more
Speaker 1: and less specialized think tanks the shell layers. So it
Speaker 1: is where that they mirror the vanguard structure and sort
Speaker 1: of frink group networks of their communist opponents, but they
Speaker 1: have significantly better financial backing. And this means that you know,
Speaker 1: they can run the American Enterprise Institute and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: with with with copious amounts of coke money, they can
Speaker 1: run this entire enormous network of think tanks that allow
Speaker 1: them to sort of act as a government in waiting.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that they're going to attempt to
Speaker 1: do is take over the global regulatory bureaucracy, the I
Speaker 1: m F, the World Bank, eventually welk trade organizations and
Speaker 1: for people to do this at gunpoints by using those organizations. Now,
Speaker 1: all they needed was a crisis that they could use
Speaker 1: to implement their policies. And next week we're going to
Speaker 1: look at the crisis that gave them exactly what they wanted.
Speaker 1: This has been nick. It happen here find us on
Speaker 1: Instagram and on Twitter at Happened Here Pod. Find the
Speaker 1: rest of our stuff at cools Up and goodbye. M
Speaker 1: What's I mean? That's that's all I got today. Who's
Speaker 1: Who's taken over? Come on? It's me? I guess it's me?
Speaker 1: All right? Well then what what show is this? And
Speaker 1: what do we do? This is it could happen here?
Speaker 1: We talked about things being bad and also what you
Speaker 1: can do about them, but this is a this is
Speaker 1: a things are bad episode and not at what you
Speaker 1: can do about them episode? Specifically, this is part two
Speaker 1: of what I guess you could call our mini series
Speaker 1: on neoliberalism. And so you know, yesterday we talked a
Speaker 1: lot about who the originally liberals are. They have a
Speaker 1: bit of power in Germany in the fifties, but for
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties up to the seventies, they're kind
Speaker 1: of nobody's there. You know, they're they're there. They have
Speaker 1: a couple of think tanks, but they're kind of they're
Speaker 1: kind of just siloed off in the corner and they
Speaker 1: yell at people and people kind of ignore them. And
Speaker 1: what they're waiting for, essentially is the right crisis and
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, they finally find that crisis. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of hard to remember in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways because of how the eighties went, But
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies, things are not looking good
Speaker 1: for capitalism. I mean, you have so you know, I
Speaker 1: end I end A wins this election nineteen seventy. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about what happened there in another episode. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not just that in nineteen nineteen seventy four, well,
Speaker 1: so to the whole early nineteen seventies, ambl called Carbrial
Speaker 1: is just absolutely annihilating the Portuguese army. And he, you know,
Speaker 1: he he wins. He fights one of like one of
Speaker 1: history's greatest guerrilla wars, and this basically destroys the entire
Speaker 1: Portuguese state and causes the Carnathan Carnation Revolution. The Portuguese
Speaker 1: colonies get free, the Dirt takes part in Ethiopia and
Speaker 1: the net seventy five, the North Vietnam wins the like
Speaker 1: the war in Vietnam. And now you know the product
Speaker 1: of this is that Cambodia falls, Laos falls. There's now
Speaker 1: there's five social estates in Eastern East Asia, in Southeast
Speaker 1: Asia and ye also Mongolea, but nobody really cares about them.
Speaker 1: And as as all of this is happening, as these
Speaker 1: sort of as the anti colonial armies are sort of
Speaker 1: marching their way through the world, there's an enormous economic crisis.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean there's a lot of things happening
Speaker 1: at the same time. One of the ones I think
Speaker 1: is probably the thing, the thing that people remember the
Speaker 1: most is there's just unbelievable inflation, and you know, and
Speaker 1: and economic growth starts to slowed down. Although something I
Speaker 1: think that we do need to keep in mind is
Speaker 1: that when I say economic growth slows, so economic growth
Speaker 1: from like sixty seven nine is um from two thousand
Speaker 1: to two thousand and seven, it was two point three
Speaker 1: percent in the US, And so you know, when when
Speaker 1: when when I say there's an economic crisis going on here,
Speaker 1: like economic growth in the seventies is better than any
Speaker 1: decades since, but it's still considered the crisis decade because
Speaker 1: there's much of inflation. And you know, everyone has their
Speaker 1: own theory as to why this is happening. Because the
Speaker 1: sort of Keynesians who who have been in power, whose
Speaker 1: thing is, oh, well, we can you know, if if
Speaker 1: there's every economic crisis, we can sort of we can
Speaker 1: spend money in that field, then the government spending money
Speaker 1: will drag everyone out of the crisis. But in Keynsian theory,
Speaker 1: like there's not supposed to be inflation, if like if
Speaker 1: if unemployment is increasing and there's an economic crisis, there's
Speaker 1: not supposed to be inflation, and suddenly there's both. So
Speaker 1: the Cansians have nothing, and they're sort of running around
Speaker 1: like just with basically like chickens to their head cut
Speaker 1: off and going, oh god, we have no idea what's happening.
Speaker 1: We don't know what's happening. And so into this gap
Speaker 1: steps a bunch of weirdos. And so I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go through a few of the theories as
Speaker 1: to why this crisis happened, because I don't know, and
Speaker 1: I think there's elements of truth in most of the
Speaker 1: stories ish kind of, but you know, it's this is
Speaker 1: extremely complicated and there's still no consensus on it. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with the most crank, which is so
Speaker 1: so the Ron Paul people. The whole thing is, yeah,
Speaker 1: every everything went to ship has been shipped ever since
Speaker 1: because the usband and the gold standard and like they're
Speaker 1: right into the extent that this happens. So basically Nixon
Speaker 1: has been trying to pay for the Vietnam War and
Speaker 1: he can't. And you know, the the U. S Dollar
Speaker 1: has been pegged to a certain amount of gold, right,
Speaker 1: and you can do this thing where if you get it,
Speaker 1: you have an American dollar, you can exchange it for
Speaker 1: them out of gold, and so travels the goal just's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna we're gonna take all of this gold.
Speaker 1: And so if he does in the US starts running
Speaker 1: out of gold and so bye bye by. In the
Speaker 1: early seventies, Nixon is like, fun, this you can't actually
Speaker 1: exchange dollars for gold anymore. And now every single libertarian
Speaker 1: starts every rant with fiat currency. But you know this,
Speaker 1: this this does have an effect on the economy, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about more in the bit um. There's you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's a lot of other explanations for this
Speaker 1: um the modern monetary three people if you listen to them,
Speaker 1: and also Peter Thiel. Weirdly, I will argue, oh, it's
Speaker 1: all because of the oil shock, because oil prices increased,
Speaker 1: neoliberals will spend Neo liberal Essentially, they blame too much
Speaker 1: government spending welfare programs and then wages being too high,
Speaker 1: and also bad monetary policy. There's like an entire there's
Speaker 1: there's like seventeen different Marxist explanations for it, some of
Speaker 1: which are I'll talk about like one and a half
Speaker 1: of them, um that are more plausible. One of the
Speaker 1: explanations has to do with how essentially, so the other
Speaker 1: thing that's happening in the sixty seventies is that minorities
Speaker 1: and women are entering the workplace and are you know,
Speaker 1: actually demanding to be paid the wages that white men
Speaker 1: have been being paid. And corporations essentially just can't afford this.
Speaker 1: And so you know that they have two choices. It's
Speaker 1: either we pay these people actual wages or we just
Speaker 1: murder everyone, and they took the second one. So it's
Speaker 1: something that that has also been happening through this whole
Speaker 1: period is that profit rates and manufacturing just keep collapsing.
Speaker 1: And there there's there's a whole thing here about some
Speaker 1: Marxist theory stuff, But the thing that's important is that
Speaker 1: that and this this has also happened in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Eventually you hit a point where manufacturing growth becomes zero sum.
Speaker 1: And you know, so you can have manufacturing growth in
Speaker 1: one country, but you can't have it in another because
Speaker 1: at a certain point you're producing too much stuff and
Speaker 1: people start getting kicked out of the labor process. And
Speaker 1: this has a bunch of effects. One is that it
Speaker 1: means you get a bunch of people who are employed
Speaker 1: and too. It means that there's just a bunch of
Speaker 1: money floating around that nobody can actually invest in places.
Speaker 1: And this is you know, like all of the weird
Speaker 1: stuff the Saudis do, it is just basically from this
Speaker 1: this money. There's a wholes these whole piles of oil
Speaker 1: money that are just sitting around that nobody convest in anything.
Speaker 1: And that's going to cause you know, that that that
Speaker 1: that that that that's going to cause a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff down the road. But for now, yeah, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about the dead crisis and causes sort of next episode.
Speaker 1: But for now, I'm going to try to pull all
Speaker 1: of these together and like have something, have a coherent
Speaker 1: thing that makes sense, which is essentially, by by the
Speaker 1: end of the seventies, profit rate or declining, and then
Speaker 1: Nixon pulls you know, Nick and pulls the dollar off
Speaker 1: the gold standard, and this causes the value the dollars
Speaker 1: is plunge. And this this is the thing that sets
Speaker 1: off the nine oil crisis. So the any thing the
Speaker 1: oil crisis is weird because it's not an oil crisis.
Speaker 1: Every everyone looks at the groil crisis and it goes, oh,
Speaker 1: it's an oil crisis. The crisis because there wasn't enough oil,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not it's nothing to do with that
Speaker 1: is literally nothing to do a supply of oil at all.
Speaker 1: What actually happens is that so you have OPEC, right.
Speaker 1: OPEC is this sort of is the Alliance of Oil
Speaker 1: Producing Cartels UM and they have this extremely complicated system
Speaker 1: where they they sell oil to oil companies and then
Speaker 1: the oil companies sell that oil, did they refine it
Speaker 1: and sell it to you, and they have this incredibly
Speaker 1: convoluted tax structured on it. And eventually, so the oil
Speaker 1: companies are having to, like the price of oil starts
Speaker 1: to rise, and the oil companies are basically just taking
Speaker 1: it all off the profit from this, and so OPEC goes, Okay,
Speaker 1: you guys are gon to pay taxes, and the oil
Speaker 1: companies just refuse, and so OPEC just unilaterally, just you know,
Speaker 1: OPEC just unilaterally is like, Okay, you guys are gonna
Speaker 1: pay taxes, and we're gonna make you pay taxes by
Speaker 1: by just increasing the price that we sell you oil at.
Speaker 1: And this gets remembered as like OPEC increasing the price
Speaker 1: of oil, even though it was literally just them saying
Speaker 1: you're gonna pay taxes. Now, this is the part that's
Speaker 1: very weird, which is that, Okay, so if you do heard,
Speaker 1: you too, heard of the oil crisis, like the story yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I are the way it's always gone in textbooks,
Speaker 1: as you talk about like the stagflation of the seventies
Speaker 1: and the fucking you know, lines of cars at gas
Speaker 1: stations going back blocks because OPEC factory. And yeah, that's
Speaker 1: how it's always framed, is that, like there's this big
Speaker 1: political crisis over OPEC that led the gas supply getting throttled,
Speaker 1: and it came at a time when the economy had
Speaker 1: already slowed down and everything got terrible. And then a
Speaker 1: few years later we got RoboCop. Yeah, well we did
Speaker 1: get a pop. But the important thing about the story
Speaker 1: is that every single thing about that story is wrong,
Speaker 1: every part of it. Well, I mean there were lines
Speaker 1: at gas station, Yeah, I mean there there are lines
Speaker 1: of gas stations, but the lines at the gas stations
Speaker 1: have literally nothing to do with OPEC. Wh's just nothing.
Speaker 1: So on October six, the Arab members of of OPEC
Speaker 1: are like, fuck it, We're gonna make the oil companies
Speaker 1: pay more for oil. And then the rest of the
Speaker 1: rest of OPE follows them. Now two days later, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: The next day there is a completely unrelated thing to
Speaker 1: all of this, which is that while while this is
Speaker 1: going on, the Yankapoor War starts, and so Egypt and
Speaker 1: Syria attack Israel um basical attack the Israel occupation forces
Speaker 1: in their country, and the war is going really badly
Speaker 1: for them there, I mean it's it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not going it's not going as badly as like the
Speaker 1: previous wars had gone for the air powers, but it's
Speaker 1: not going great. And so on October seven and teeth six,
Speaker 1: Arab oil producing countries declare if they're they're cutting the
Speaker 1: amount of oil they exported by five percent per month
Speaker 1: until Israel returns his territories it occupies St. Seven and
Speaker 1: they have an embargo on the US. But and this
Speaker 1: is the very important part. This has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with OPEC. This is not opaque at all. It's not this,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is just a couple of
Speaker 1: random Arab countries are like, we're going to do this.
Speaker 1: And you know, and I think when I think is
Speaker 1: interesting about Robert, what you're talking about is OPEC factory.
Speaker 1: You know, is how this gets remembered and this this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that neoliberals used to sort
Speaker 1: of push their model of the world, right, which is
Speaker 1: that everything functions off the supply and demands and oh look,
Speaker 1: hey the Arabs cut the supply of oil and that's
Speaker 1: why the prices rose. But it's just it's just wrong.
Speaker 1: It's empirically wrong. The price cut happens, I mean, the
Speaker 1: price increases happened the day before the oil the price
Speaker 1: increases the day before the embargo, and the embargo and
Speaker 1: the oil price. People are different groups, they have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with each other. But you know, this, this
Speaker 1: gets sort of systemed like this, this is this is
Speaker 1: how it's it's remembered and and you know, it's not
Speaker 1: even just how to remember like the Encyclopedia Britannica has
Speaker 1: the dates and which all of this stuff happens wrong,
Speaker 1: they have the sequence of events wrong, like all of
Speaker 1: the most of the people who write about this remember
Speaker 1: this whole thing wrong. And and this is this is
Speaker 1: part of the sort of an enormous propaganda effort death
Speaker 1: and Deal liberals are able to do at this moment,
Speaker 1: which is they convince everyone that, oh, yeah, the price
Speaker 1: increases and the gag. Typically the gas shortages are are
Speaker 1: are about opeque. But again also like the US only
Speaker 1: imports like seven percent of its oil from from the
Speaker 1: countries who are doing the embargo at this point. So
Speaker 1: the actual thing that's going on has to do with prices.
Speaker 1: It's a weird thing as do with price controls and
Speaker 1: gas companies are hoarding gas because they don't want to
Speaker 1: sell at price control levels and stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: you know, the oil price increases, you know, the yeah,
Speaker 1: like it it is bad, Like the price of oil
Speaker 1: does go up and there are shortages, but it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with like there's nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the embargo has nothing to do with you know, like
Speaker 1: the supply of oil going down. It's just companies didn't
Speaker 1: want to pay taxes, and so they started holding the
Speaker 1: oil instead of selling it, and they passed the price
Speaker 1: the tax increase onto the consumers instead of paying it.
Speaker 1: And as we talked about before, once this sort of
Speaker 1: like tax increase goes in that OPEC that well some
Speaker 1: of the open countries want to do goes into place,
Speaker 1: like the price of oil does increase, and this does
Speaker 1: fund the economy even more. But the economy and really
Speaker 1: even sort of a mess before this, and it has
Speaker 1: one other very important effect, and you know this is
Speaker 1: you know, I guess, I guess. The theme of this
Speaker 1: episode is that the oil embargo matters. But the oil
Speaker 1: embargo matters because people think it matters, not because they
Speaker 1: did anything and the other. So it matters in the
Speaker 1: US because everyone thinks that, oh, the scary Arab nations
Speaker 1: are coming for us, But it matters in the rest
Speaker 1: of the world because everyone else looks at this and goes, wait,
Speaker 1: hold on. You can actually use commodities, essincially use commodity
Speaker 1: prices are like countries that like have raw you know,
Speaker 1: commodities can use this control to actually go fight, you know,
Speaker 1: to like to go fight the West and go fight
Speaker 1: the capitalists and go like, you know, get money for themselves.
Speaker 1: And this leads us into something Robert Harrison to have
Speaker 1: you there, you ever heard of the G seventy seven.
Speaker 1: Uh that like the seventies seven countries that have the
Speaker 1: most money. Well that that's the that's the G seven.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but I was, I was seven might be
Speaker 1: just a longer list. So yeah. So so this is
Speaker 1: this is the other thing from this period that just
Speaker 1: is completely lost as almost completely lost to history. And
Speaker 1: the seventy seven is actually still around. But what what
Speaker 1: they are was so in the sixties, you know, you
Speaker 1: have all of these countries that have recently gained independence,
Speaker 1: and all these countries have gatting deependence um from their
Speaker 1: sort of colonial overlords, and they start to band together
Speaker 1: into basically a voting block in the u N. And
Speaker 1: also this is the other the other weird part about
Speaker 1: the story is that so in the seventies and sixties
Speaker 1: seventies particularly, the un actually matters like it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a thing that people. There was that
Speaker 1: like twenties years after World War Two, where people were
Speaker 1: maybe I mean a good example of the degree to
Speaker 1: which the u N actually used to be meaningful. Is
Speaker 1: watched the first Street Fighter movie. Um, because the good
Speaker 1: guys and that are clearly based off the u N
Speaker 1: and nobody thinks it's ridiculous that the United Nations are
Speaker 1: actually doing something. Um, it's fine to have Jean Claude
Speaker 1: van dam And be the leader of the United Nations
Speaker 1: fist fighting a guy that that makes total sense in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties and you know, and so in part
Speaker 1: of talk about this war next episode. But basically, so,
Speaker 1: the reason the UN is a joke right now is
Speaker 1: because of what the US was doing to stop the
Speaker 1: G seventy seven from doing anything. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: argue that massive failures in ruwan To and uh Bosnia
Speaker 1: had a huge impact on that too. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the genocides go down and people are like, well, what
Speaker 1: are these guys doing? But yeah, yeah, yeah, well this
Speaker 1: is this is this is how they got dysfunctional to
Speaker 1: the point where you can get that yeah, which is
Speaker 1: so so okay. So you have, you know, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of countries that call themselves, you know, the term
Speaker 1: they used for themselves is the Third World, and they
Speaker 1: come together the form this group and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a really weird ideological mixed bag. Like I mean, you
Speaker 1: have you know, you have you have like actual socialists
Speaker 1: like Tanzaniyears and Michael Boley and Jamaica. You've also got
Speaker 1: like Gadaffi and the Bathists and like both was a
Speaker 1: socialist come on Paradise, Kadafi Libya you know, okay, my, my, my, my,
Speaker 1: My most contrarian hot take is that Salat Jaded was
Speaker 1: like actually kind of an m l who was that
Speaker 1: he was He was briefly the Bathist in charge of
Speaker 1: Syria and then he got overthrown by Sad But both
Speaker 1: of them, there's there's definite like actual like Marxist, you know, Linen,
Speaker 1: there's something like especially in the old school Bathists, like
Speaker 1: there were aspects of that, there was socialism kind of
Speaker 1: within it. It just it would be nonsense like for example,
Speaker 1: called Saddam Hussein's boss. Yeah yeah, and you know, and
Speaker 1: you can already see like that this is this is
Speaker 1: this is this is a real grab back. And you
Speaker 1: have there's also just a bunch of random Latin American
Speaker 1: countries like none of whom you can call socialists. And
Speaker 1: then there's also Saudi Arabia and Thailand or in this group. Okay,
Speaker 1: to get a sense of how fractus this is, India
Speaker 1: and Pakistan are also both part of this and they
Speaker 1: fight too full scale wars while they're both in the
Speaker 1: G seventy seven. Actually that's not true. There's two full
Speaker 1: scale wars and then there's like another half war they
Speaker 1: fight in the nineties. This yeah, like all all the
Speaker 1: people in this thing are fighting, are literally fighting wars
Speaker 1: against each other. It's kind of a mess, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's fun. It's fun. In in in the mid sixties and
Speaker 1: until nineteen seventy four, it's kind of their Their whole
Speaker 1: thing is we have moral authority like where yeah, like
Speaker 1: where you know where we're like we we we we
Speaker 1: have the authority of all of these nations have colonizings
Speaker 1: for a long time, and we're going to use that.
Speaker 1: But in the seventies, you know that the oil embargo happens,
Speaker 1: and a lot like most I think all most of
Speaker 1: the OPEC states are are are are in um Are,
Speaker 1: are are in the G seventy seven, and they look
Speaker 1: at they look at the oil embargo and they look
Speaker 1: at OPEC raising prices and they go, wait, we can
Speaker 1: do this too. In the OPEC states are like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: we can use this to push the hood, you know,
Speaker 1: we can use to like push the whole power of
Speaker 1: like of the Third World. And they they they're planned
Speaker 1: to do this is something called the New International Economic Order,
Speaker 1: which is also something that no one has ever heard
Speaker 1: of that is extremely important. That has just the spoilerer
Speaker 1: is that this this movement gets crushed so thoroughly that
Speaker 1: nobody knows what the New Economic Order is and the
Speaker 1: Third World is now a slur. But you know, the
Speaker 1: thing that they're trying to do is create a it
Speaker 1: calls the New International Economic Order a trade union of
Speaker 1: the poor, and so it's it's this thing they're trying
Speaker 1: to get passed through the u N that would you know,
Speaker 1: just designed to sort of ensure the economic sovereignty of
Speaker 1: these developing nations. Um and I'm going to read a
Speaker 1: list of the stuff that's in here. Um So A
Speaker 1: an absolute right of states to control the extraction and
Speaker 1: marketing of their domestic natural resources be the establishment and
Speaker 1: recognition of state manage managed resource cartels to stabilize and
Speaker 1: raise commodity prices. See the Regulation of Transnational Corporations D
Speaker 1: no strings attached, technology transfers from north to south, e
Speaker 1: the granting of preferential trade preferences to countries in the south,
Speaker 1: and f forgiveness for for certain debts that states in
Speaker 1: the south ode to the north. So this is like
Speaker 1: at this thing, if the international economical Order had ever
Speaker 1: been implemented at all, it would have completely reversed the
Speaker 1: basically completely reverse the balance of economic power, shifting it
Speaker 1: basically from countries like the US, like you know, Western Europe,
Speaker 1: like Japan that are these giant manufacturing powerhouses, two countries
Speaker 1: that produce you know, raw materials, and there would have
Speaker 1: you know, and the everything that would have happened from
Speaker 1: this is you have these the no streams, you have
Speaker 1: a debt relief for the global South, and also these
Speaker 1: technology transfers. And the plan is basically to create a
Speaker 1: bunch of mini opex for just not even many opus.
Speaker 1: Create opex basically for every commodity. So you know, you
Speaker 1: have like an opaque, but it's for like box site
Speaker 1: or like copper, and you know they would use they
Speaker 1: would you know, you have all these opex and each
Speaker 1: one of them uses their power and they all cooperate
Speaker 1: to to to make sure that there's a stable price
Speaker 1: for for all these commodities. And another part of this
Speaker 1: is that it's supposed to basically enshrine the right of
Speaker 1: countries to be able to just like nationalized resource companies.
Speaker 1: So you know, you have like a British oil company.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, we just take it out now
Speaker 1: it's ours. And the threat of this is great enough
Speaker 1: that if you read conservatives in the era, they will
Speaker 1: say things like the Soviet Union is no longer a threat.
Speaker 1: The greatest danger to the West today is the Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this, Yeah, it's it's these these people are enormal. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no one even rivers this anymore. And and it's it's
Speaker 1: because largely it's because of how just unbelievably badly these
Speaker 1: guys got stopped. Um, you know. And one of the
Speaker 1: other things that happens out the product of this is
Speaker 1: this is where the G seven comes from. And it's
Speaker 1: originally and I think there's another thing, Yeah, the other
Speaker 1: fun part about this, So the G seven is originally
Speaker 1: a secret alliance, Like through this whole through the whole seventies,
Speaker 1: nobody knows G seven exists. It's basically it starts as
Speaker 1: this like secret meeting of a bunch of finance ministers.
Speaker 1: Eventually they add UH, Canada and I think Japan too,
Speaker 1: and it goes up to seven members. And you know,
Speaker 1: they have a couple of things they're trying to deal with.
Speaker 1: They're trying to deal with the economic collapse. But one
Speaker 1: of the big things, like one of the biggest things
Speaker 1: they're dealing with, is the G seventy seven and OPEQ
Speaker 1: And this this the result of this is this, these
Speaker 1: enormous series of fights in UH implausibly the United Nations
Speaker 1: Conference on Trade and Development, which is I think this
Speaker 1: this is this is the last time ever that the
Speaker 1: fate of the entire world would be decided in a
Speaker 1: battle in like a subcommittee of the U N And
Speaker 1: there's there's years and years and years of negotiations between well,
Speaker 1: the G seven hasn't like openly declared itself to G
Speaker 1: seven is sort of just it's basically the rich European countries.
Speaker 1: So it's Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the US
Speaker 1: and Japan like for form this alliance and are like
Speaker 1: locked in together in order to stop the G seven
Speaker 1: from seventy seven from doing anything. And this is this
Speaker 1: is the This is the other the other crisis that
Speaker 1: the neoliberals are responding to is it's it's not just
Speaker 1: and in many ways, this is the one that scares
Speaker 1: them more because you know, it's not just that there's
Speaker 1: an economic crisis. It's not just that like capitalists are
Speaker 1: afraid because of losing money. It's if this stuff goes through,
Speaker 1: the entire balance of power in the entire global economy
Speaker 1: is going to change, and it's going to swing into
Speaker 1: the favor of a bunch of non Western countries and
Speaker 1: probably more most importantly, from the new Liberals. They're going
Speaker 1: to enshrine the right of states to take things away
Speaker 1: from corporations and regulate them. And this is just absolutely
Speaker 1: completely unacceptable to both the neoliberals and just every single
Speaker 1: other organization that's even tangentially involved with sort of the
Speaker 1: Western nations. So the neoliberals, I talked about this a
Speaker 1: bit in in the last episode, which is that they've
Speaker 1: been working on a strategy in order to take power
Speaker 1: that doesn't rely on states. And so what they've been
Speaker 1: doing for about twenty years is essentially infiltrating and working
Speaker 1: their way up through it like takes basically basically taking over, uh,
Speaker 1: the International Monetary Fund in the World Bank who in
Speaker 1: this period and this is everything I think is very
Speaker 1: weird and hard to remember, which is that the i
Speaker 1: m F and the World Bank, like there was a
Speaker 1: time when they weren't completely evil, Like like the i
Speaker 1: m F was basically set up to make sure that
Speaker 1: countries wouldn't just run out of money, right, I was
Speaker 1: supposed to give people like yeah, and the World Bank
Speaker 1: and it's it's turned into sort of this like international
Speaker 1: debt system for moorer countries where they're always and being
Speaker 1: forced into austerity measures in the like yeah, yeah, and that.
Speaker 1: But that that didn't used to be true. It used
Speaker 1: to be you know, the the i m F had
Speaker 1: a bunch of Kandians in it and sit same with
Speaker 1: the World Bank, and both both the i m F
Speaker 1: and the World Bank's leadership for a lot of this
Speaker 1: period wanted to negotiate and you and I think this
Speaker 1: is this, this is this is this is where We're
Speaker 1: gonna leave it here with basically, the the the entire
Speaker 1: world is an imp apocal crisis. There is the all
Speaker 1: the economies are collapsing, the the the armies of of
Speaker 1: the anti colonial like world or are moving and the
Speaker 1: G seventy seven looks like it's it's literally on the
Speaker 1: verge of of you know, completely restructuring the economic system
Speaker 1: in a way that actually would have been slightly more
Speaker 1: fair and justest than but the system that existed then,
Speaker 1: which was also infinitely more just and fair and the
Speaker 1: system that exist now. And next episode we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about how this all fell apart and how there
Speaker 1: was a choice in the seventies between either corporations can
Speaker 1: make money or people can have things. And the product
Speaker 1: of what the new Liberals are going to do in
Speaker 1: the next episode is that they're going to their solution
Speaker 1: to this problem is to tell the entire retched of
Speaker 1: the earth to each it and die. And yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's the episode. It's yeah, yeah, history. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a fine. Um okay, uh, well we got any
Speaker 1: we got any any plugables? What do we what do
Speaker 1: we do at the end of episodes? Sophie, where are we?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Are we? Thank you for listening. We'll be
Speaker 1: back on a day at a time. Maybe we're not
Speaker 1: hearing you, Sophie, I think you're muted. I'm not muted.
Speaker 1: I'm not muted. Oh, there we go. I'm not muted.
Speaker 1: I haven't remuted the whole time. We didn't hear you.
Speaker 1: That's so weird. I said, we'll be back on a
Speaker 1: day or a time, and yeah, at some point we'll
Speaker 1: be back. Find us then, uh, and find us tomorrow
Speaker 1: unless this comes out on Friday, in which case is
Speaker 1: Friday with your family the ones this is dropping on.
Speaker 1: Adopt a cat, Adopt two cats, maybe four cats. Adopt
Speaker 1: four cats. Yeah, get a number of cats greater than
Speaker 1: the number you have and put them in your house.
Speaker 1: We'll see you one Monday. Hey, We'll be back Monday,
Speaker 1: with more episodes every week from now until the heat
Speaker 1: death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone Media dot com, slash sources. Thanks for listening.