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. Number what podcast is this for? Uh? Moira,
Speaker 1: That's a perfect way to open this episode because it's
Speaker 1: it could happen here, the podcast about things falling apart
Speaker 1: um and putting them back together. Sometimes not often enough
Speaker 1: because I'm a hack and a fraud. Um. But um,
Speaker 1: this is Robert Evans and my guest today is Moira
Speaker 1: Meltzer Cohen. Moira, you are my lawyer and you are
Speaker 1: my editor. You edited after the Revolution book in stores now,
Speaker 1: so you're you're you're many many things to me, um,
Speaker 1: and today you're gonna help me understand the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Well that's let me be a little more specific about
Speaker 1: why we're chatting today on for the internet sake. Um.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court last week issued a ruling and there
Speaker 1: may have been another ruling by the time you hear this,
Speaker 1: but this specific ruling was about a case that had
Speaker 1: to do with what's called a Bivens action. Um. If
Speaker 1: you have seen people talking about this Supreme Court ruling online,
Speaker 1: it has probably been with them sharing an image of
Speaker 1: the United States that shows the hundred mile zone where
Speaker 1: border patrol is able to operate. UM, and being like, now,
Speaker 1: because of this ruling, border patrol can come into your
Speaker 1: house with impunity and do whatever they want to you. Um.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of like stuff said about this ruling,
Speaker 1: and as is often the case when people are getting
Speaker 1: really up in arms about the niche aspects of a
Speaker 1: court ruling, they're not entirely correct about what the ruling does. Um.
Speaker 1: The hundred mile zone is absolutely a real thing, and
Speaker 1: the Feds can do all sorts of funked up shipped
Speaker 1: to you in your house. But that is UM, let's
Speaker 1: talk about this, yeah, UM sure, So. I think the
Speaker 1: first place to start is people are always asking me,
Speaker 1: when can the Feds kick in my door? My girlfriend
Speaker 1: always says when it's closed, But I say is whenever
Speaker 1: they want to? Uh, what might change from case to cases.
Speaker 1: They rationalize it in court later. Um. And so this
Speaker 1: is this is really a case that further reinforces the
Speaker 1: fact that for many, many years, UM, federal agents h
Speaker 1: in particular border control have been able, have had a
Speaker 1: lot of power to conduct searches if they rationalize those
Speaker 1: searches with respect to immigration or in this case the
Speaker 1: even more hype term national security. So, um, this is
Speaker 1: not new. The federal statute outlining the powers and duties
Speaker 1: of border officers was past I think in ninety two,
Speaker 1: and I believe always said that border agents can conduct
Speaker 1: searches within quote a reasonable distance of the border. I
Speaker 1: think case law has determined that that reasonable distance is
Speaker 1: a hundred miles. Yeah, we're not really looking at anything
Speaker 1: particularly new here. Um. So that one of the things
Speaker 1: about this hundred miles, As people keep saying, oh, the
Speaker 1: Fourth Amendment doesn't exist within a hundred miles of the border, Um,
Speaker 1: it does. This is not considered to be a violation
Speaker 1: of the Fourth Amendment because a search within a reasonable
Speaker 1: distance of the border is considered a reasonable search right.
Speaker 1: The Fourth Amendment protects you from unreasonable searching, and this
Speaker 1: is statutorily considered a reasonable search right. So I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of the media around this particular case
Speaker 1: is kind of an exercise and extreme point missing. It's
Speaker 1: both an overreaction to some things that are outrageous but
Speaker 1: are in no way new. Um, everyone's sharing these maps,
Speaker 1: like you said, Um, and again it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where it's like we're not saying there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of that, this is not a problem. That there
Speaker 1: aren't problems with the there's that the hundred mile zone
Speaker 1: isn't a problem the border patrol. There's not a lot
Speaker 1: of messed up stuff that they do. It's it's the
Speaker 1: idea that like this ruling came out and suddenly there's
Speaker 1: no more Fourth Amendment, right like, which is how some
Speaker 1: people have interpreted it. Because the Internet is a machine
Speaker 1: that devours context, that's right, social media, I should say, Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: So so this case is is called Egbert v. Bull,
Speaker 1: which I just think it's a marvelous case name, and
Speaker 1: these are all incredible. The original Bivens case is Bivens
Speaker 1: versus six unknown named agents, which I also elect a
Speaker 1: lot six unknown narcotics agents. Yeah. Well, I mean there's
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of wonderful case names. Um. My favorite,
Speaker 1: of course is Alien v. Predator. Um, Yeah, you see
Speaker 1: what I did there? I did, I did. I just
Speaker 1: showed Garrison Aliens last weekend, so I was, oh, for
Speaker 1: the first time, Yes, marvelous. Uh. So, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think what's happening here is that even among people
Speaker 1: who kind of have a sense of history or an analysis,
Speaker 1: there's maybe this lingering belief that the legal system is
Speaker 1: supposed to protect us, or that maybe at some time
Speaker 1: it did protect us, and it just like persists like
Speaker 1: a vestigial tale of of like hope. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: kind of love this case. I did read this case
Speaker 1: and um, at least as Clarence Thomas describes him. The
Speaker 1: plaintiff in this case whose bool is basically the viewpoint
Speaker 1: character from a Steely Dance song like he like appears
Speaker 1: to have sort of spring fully for him from the
Speaker 1: head of Donald Fagan, and he drove off with his
Speaker 1: vanity plate that says smuggler. Honestly, I'm sure going to
Speaker 1: tell me it was something problematic, but sounds like a
Speaker 1: cool dude to me. He spent years playing both sides
Speaker 1: of this game. He would get paid by people to
Speaker 1: smuggle them across the Canadian border and he'd make them,
Speaker 1: he'd like extort money from them. He'd make them buy
Speaker 1: a room at his hotel, even if they weren't going
Speaker 1: to stay at his hotel, and then he'd charge them
Speaker 1: money for every hour that he spent driving to pick
Speaker 1: them up and take them across to Canada. And then
Speaker 1: he would turn around and get paid by the Feds
Speaker 1: to snitch on the people who had just paid him
Speaker 1: to smuggle them across the border. Cheez, yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: now I don't think this guy's cool. Yeah, So he
Speaker 1: basically ends up getting in an altercation with a federal
Speaker 1: agent and he's back to being cool, okay, And then
Speaker 1: when he makes an administrative complaint to the agency, the
Speaker 1: agent six the i R S on him. This is,
Speaker 1: I mean, alright, not good behavior, right right. But now,
Speaker 1: after years of doing dirty work for the Feds, Bool
Speaker 1: is outraged because he never thought tigers would eat his face.
Speaker 1: So he assues the agent under Bivens, which is a
Speaker 1: case that sort of a little bit maybe sometimes gives
Speaker 1: individuals a very narrowly tenuous, circumscribed opportunity to sue federal
Speaker 1: agents for certain civil rights violations. And um, it's not
Speaker 1: a very strong right and it has been getting ever
Speaker 1: more eviscerated since. Yeah. Um, And really, what Bivens does
Speaker 1: is it gives you, uh, you know, in the very
Speaker 1: unlikely event that you win a Bivens claim, it gives
Speaker 1: you money, damages. It doesn't give you a better a law.
Speaker 1: It doesn't give you better police practices, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: you safer. It's not nothing. But it's not like it's
Speaker 1: it's money justically what the law can give you. Right, So,
Speaker 1: unless you're harboring the delusion that there is a sort
Speaker 1: of direct connection between being allowed to try, usually unsuccessfully,
Speaker 1: to recover money from the federal government and the self
Speaker 1: control or good behavior of federal agents, Vivons is not
Speaker 1: actually a particularly useful mechanism for pursuing anything that resembles
Speaker 1: like a well developed vision of justice. Right, It's not nothing.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to dismiss the utility of
Speaker 1: Vivian's but it's you know, it's not like it's not
Speaker 1: a strong right. It's not a reliable right you know,
Speaker 1: to sue. Um, it's not very effective. One of my
Speaker 1: loved colleagues uh described it. He said, Bivens is such
Speaker 1: a bad doctrine that it's taking other doctrines down with it. Right,
Speaker 1: It's just it's um, it's just such a weak case
Speaker 1: at this point that it trying to trying to use
Speaker 1: it and trying to invoke it can actually end up
Speaker 1: just being counterproductive, as it is in this case. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a very unsympathetic plaintiff and we have a
Speaker 1: really weak doctrine, so he sues under Bivens. It goes
Speaker 1: up and down the chords. It winds up in the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, which issues a sort of a bunch of
Speaker 1: sort of fragmented opinions, but ultimately all the justices mostly
Speaker 1: agree this is not a super controversial um question, at
Speaker 1: least within the context of the court itself. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the first thing is they all say, you don't there's
Speaker 1: no right to sue for money damages under the theory
Speaker 1: of First Amendment retaliation. Meaning um wool had sued the
Speaker 1: agent for basically for punishing him for making a complaint.
Speaker 1: He's saying, I exercise my First Amendment right to make
Speaker 1: a complaint to the agency you work for, and then
Speaker 1: you punished me by sicking the I R S on me. Right,
Speaker 1: I see why that's questionable in the actual like legal documentation. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the justice to say no, that that's not
Speaker 1: a right that exists. And then they have some different
Speaker 1: thoughts on whether or not you can sue for excessive force. Um.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, the big decision that is made here isn't
Speaker 1: about the border. It's not about the relative impunity of
Speaker 1: order Patrol, which has long operated with relative impunity, just
Speaker 1: like the rest of the federal government. Yes, I remember
Speaker 1: that impunity when they were firing tear gas at us.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know. Uh, they decide you can't sue them, um,
Speaker 1: which if you, if you ever could have sued them,
Speaker 1: I guess in a successful or effective way, and if
Speaker 1: suing them had ever had a meaningful impact on their behavior,
Speaker 1: I guess this opinion would be a real loss. But
Speaker 1: all this o Hinian really does as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, And I've spoken with my colleagues and we
Speaker 1: all agreed that the sort of uproar over this particular
Speaker 1: case is a little baffling because all it really does
Speaker 1: is further remove what was already a really inaccessible and
Speaker 1: pretty weak remedy. And yeah, sorry sir, well you know,
Speaker 1: and then everyone lost their minds and started sharing the
Speaker 1: a c L S a c L used map of
Speaker 1: the hundred miles of border looks like and getting really
Speaker 1: mad on Twitter. Yeah, and again the hundred mile border zone.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say that that's a problem.
Speaker 1: I don't like that's that's a bad way for things
Speaker 1: to work. The border patrol, as we talked about in
Speaker 1: our two part are on the border patrol, is a
Speaker 1: lot of massive issues with it. But um, I feel
Speaker 1: like kind of what's happening here is some of this
Speaker 1: is like a little bit of collective PTSD because of
Speaker 1: the shock of the imminent kind of demise of Row.
Speaker 1: And so I think maybe there's this kind of expectation
Speaker 1: that every ruling issued by the Supreme Court because Funckett
Speaker 1: is going to be UM this kind of like earth
Speaker 1: shattering like end of a fundamental right. And in this
Speaker 1: case it's really just like, no, this is more or
Speaker 1: less like this is not a massive see change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like to say about this kind of thing. It's appalling,
Speaker 1: but it's not surprising. I do want to note, just
Speaker 1: for your listeners, this case does not in any way
Speaker 1: touch our right to sue state level police um because
Speaker 1: there is federal legislation called sec that gives us permission
Speaker 1: to sue the police, and UM, for some strange reason,
Speaker 1: the federal government has not passed similar legislation allowing us
Speaker 1: to sue them. That's really surprising. I wonder why. So
Speaker 1: In any case, one of the things the Court says
Speaker 1: in the Bool opinion is that if the Feds wanted
Speaker 1: to be constrained by the citizen, RECongress would have given
Speaker 1: us the right to constrain them. So so I think
Speaker 1: this particular case that people have been doing out about
Speaker 1: is a great sort of example of the way that UM,
Speaker 1: the sort of the zeitgeist moves inexplicably to make much
Speaker 1: of things that are maybe not all that much, and
Speaker 1: will also kind of failing to notice things that are
Speaker 1: really significant. And so I'd like to sort of highlight
Speaker 1: some of those things. UM. I think there actually are
Speaker 1: real reasons to breathe and prepare and gather our courage, UM,
Speaker 1: based on what the Supreme Court has done this term, UH,
Speaker 1: and I love to talk to you about some of
Speaker 1: those things. So I do think there are real reasons
Speaker 1: like that to breathe and prepare, and some of the
Speaker 1: always about getting too in the weed. UM. I guess
Speaker 1: I want to talk both about the shadow adopt it
Speaker 1: which sat adopt it is a is a kind of
Speaker 1: a more recently point term. Um. What it means is
Speaker 1: what it's referring to are the cases that are often heard,
Speaker 1: they're not heard. They're decided by the Supreme Court on
Speaker 1: the basis of the record below, often without oral argument,
Speaker 1: and they're often issued as holding decisions without written opinions,
Speaker 1: so they're often not justified or rationalized or you know,
Speaker 1: the reasoning for the decisions that are made is often
Speaker 1: not made transparent to the public. Okay. Yeah, And these
Speaker 1: are cases that are sort of highly procedural or there
Speaker 1: not super complicated questions, or they're questions of law where
Speaker 1: there's maybe a circuit what it um, and they just
Speaker 1: need to resolve you know, what might otherwise be repugnant
Speaker 1: views of the law. Yeah. And the shadow docket has
Speaker 1: refinently include a jet pinaltycation. Yeah, the decided something of
Speaker 1: such grave import with decisions that are not explained by
Speaker 1: an opinion where the justice is not makes clear the reasoning. Um,
Speaker 1: this is I mean, in my opinion, MH problematic. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's you know, to the amount of power that
Speaker 1: can be exercised by the superin court. To me, I
Speaker 1: think requires a really intense degree of transparency. If you're
Speaker 1: I think that like the amount of transparency that is
Speaker 1: it's incumbent upon you to have is sort of inversely
Speaker 1: proportionate to the amount of power you exercise. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes sense, um, And so the Supreme Court has just
Speaker 1: I mean literally life with it powers here, and so
Speaker 1: for them to be making decisions on the shadow dotet
Speaker 1: about death penalty cases and death penalty juristic um is
Speaker 1: just wild. Um, It's troubling, it's frightening. You know, I
Speaker 1: think I can't remember if I talked to you before
Speaker 1: about how about the injuries? Yeah, maybe the show about it,
Speaker 1: but I certainly talked to you about it. We might
Speaker 1: need to do it. It's probably a good idea at
Speaker 1: some point to do a show about it. But yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes br injuries so anomalous
Speaker 1: is that they aren't public, right, and that to me,
Speaker 1: like this is a mathema. Well not to me, it
Speaker 1: is in terms of the sort of um received wisdom
Speaker 1: about the American legal system. To have secret proceedings is
Speaker 1: a mathema. Who you are their own principles of due process,
Speaker 1: which you know, which involves uh well noticed and adhering.
Speaker 1: But really there's um a commitment to publicity right in
Speaker 1: the American legal system that is undermined and trampled upon
Speaker 1: by federal granturity, and that there is a similar thing
Speaker 1: happening here with the shadow docket. We know at least
Speaker 1: what the cases are, we know what these opinions are,
Speaker 1: what the holdings end up being, UM. But to have
Speaker 1: these kinds of cases being decided without oral argument, to
Speaker 1: have these cases being decided UM without written opinions, is troubling.
Speaker 1: So that's a move toward an exercise of power that
Speaker 1: I need characterize as a politarian, and that I find
Speaker 1: days concerning UM. One of the things that we're seeing,
Speaker 1: and I think it's sort of not unrelated to that,
Speaker 1: is that they're they seem to be dispensing the bat
Speaker 1: when it is very decisive, which is precedent right that
Speaker 1: the idea that previously decided cases are binding, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you overturn one, you really have to be very
Speaker 1: clear that that's what you're doing, and you have to
Speaker 1: explain why. And we see that with the leaf Rose Grasp,
Speaker 1: where they they have, you know, if indeed they issue it.
Speaker 1: Sure because and this is like an originalism thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like you can throw out precedent if you're saying all
Speaker 1: that matters is this interpretation. You're saying that's based on
Speaker 1: the original intent of like some dead dudes. Is that
Speaker 1: more or less an accurate way to say it? Or
Speaker 1: you can overturn DESI UM, you know, or turned precedent.
Speaker 1: We would have that. I think the just outcome or
Speaker 1: whatever is UM. Yeah, but I think there there's many
Speaker 1: reasons that he can overturn President UM. But they seem
Speaker 1: to be doing it for subsilential right. They're not. They're
Speaker 1: not always the leak road rap didn't was pretty clear
Speaker 1: and parent about it. But I think there are some
Speaker 1: other things that are going on. Um. There was a
Speaker 1: sixth Amendment case where UM they just just sort of
Speaker 1: didn't mention all of the countervailing precedents. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: they there's some stuff happening. There is UM a case
Speaker 1: in Texas. There was a fishermendent case work the courts.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court sent it back down to UM either
Speaker 1: the district as the Court of Appeals. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't remember UM or either the district or the circuit uh,
Speaker 1: and said, look at the side is on death road
Speaker 1: did absolutely with thee in effective asistence of council whether
Speaker 1: the as prejudice and the technic court just ignored them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's one of those ones that people freaked out about.
Speaker 1: That was like, yeah, I think folks should be very
Speaker 1: unsettled by this right. And then the court was like,
Speaker 1: m they didn't the court. There's Supreme Court that didn't.
Speaker 1: They just let them get away with it. Um. And
Speaker 1: so there's just sort of weird um push and full
Speaker 1: happening not only between this court interpreting the last court
Speaker 1: opinions and deciding basically not to enforce them, but but
Speaker 1: there's a interesting power struggle where the opinion Court seems
Speaker 1: to be strategically feeding power to certain uh certain lower
Speaker 1: courts in a way that unusual. You know. So you know,
Speaker 1: they're not they're not being transparent, they are not following precedence,
Speaker 1: they are not um enforcing the hierarchy of the courts,
Speaker 1: which it does sound like an odd thing. I can
Speaker 1: put you need to complain about um. But one of
Speaker 1: one of the things that we want to know is
Speaker 1: that you know, One of the ways that we can
Speaker 1: anticipate what the law is or make reliable legal arguments
Speaker 1: is that the law has to be consistent with you know,
Speaker 1: the law and the lower court that's to be consistent
Speaker 1: with what the Supreme Court has said. And if we
Speaker 1: can no longer rely on that, UM, it's um, you know, chaotic. Potentially,
Speaker 1: it's really bad. It's really bad for our clients, apparently,
Speaker 1: particularly clients who are facing the death penalty, which is
Speaker 1: a particular concerns. UM. This court does seems pretty intent
Speaker 1: on knocking over the Empire sist Amendment. UM. And then
Speaker 1: I think yesterday or the day before, they issued a
Speaker 1: really important immigration case on the class actions that were
Speaker 1: brought UM by around behalf of people who were detained
Speaker 1: an immigration detention for like months and months and months
Speaker 1: without hearing, without vant hearing. And essentially what the court
Speaker 1: held was UM that lower courts don't have any authority
Speaker 1: to UM lower coach stuff. So many authorities to UM
Speaker 1: demand that the federal government do or not do certain
Speaker 1: things because they're they're playing as as the Immigration Naturalization
Speaker 1: Act does not give them that authority UM. And so
Speaker 1: it's there there's a lot I think the big trend
Speaker 1: there is there's a lot of protecting the federals of
Speaker 1: this from any kind of accountability. Um, accountability that's being
Speaker 1: imposed by lower general courts who are concerned the States, right.
Speaker 1: They have a cool way of showing it. I don't
Speaker 1: know what else to say about it, because it is
Speaker 1: one of those things where when we talk about, or
Speaker 1: when I talk about, like the frustration at people kind
Speaker 1: of sharing information about stuff the Court is doing, or
Speaker 1: about changes to how our rights are being interpreted by
Speaker 1: courts that are incorrect. It's not because like there's not
Speaker 1: a problem. It's because it's really important to be aware
Speaker 1: of like the it's really important to like see the
Speaker 1: problem accurately, um, and to see it like it's this
Speaker 1: it's this broad assault. Like like you said, the fact
Speaker 1: that the fact that you have this kind of high
Speaker 1: level attack on the Fifth Amendment is really frightening because
Speaker 1: that's one of like theoretically our primary protections. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: also I think there's going to be a mirandic case.
Speaker 1: Okay already, Oh boy, I'm not looking forward to that.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit anxious about that. Um, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean I think that the general thing. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the thing that I would like
Speaker 1: to highlight your paying attention to what writes just the
Speaker 1: Freme Court is trampling on It's obviously pretty important, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty likely to be kind of more of the same,
Speaker 1: particularly for quality targeted groups of people. I like the
Speaker 1: lot is in certain respects fictional, right, Like the lies
Speaker 1: an abstract concept. Sure, absolutely, yes, your real impact it's
Speaker 1: not you know, like I don't want to get all
Speaker 1: post modern here. It's not like a lot of fictional
Speaker 1: things have have real impacts, um exactly, Like, uh, it
Speaker 1: has real impact obviously, but I think that the impact
Speaker 1: of the import ruling, you know, it's very serious, it's
Speaker 1: very important. Um, but it's also sort of immediately transformed
Speaker 1: the world. I think it just sort of changes what
Speaker 1: kinds of solutions we look to, right, And like, I'm
Speaker 1: not particularly inclined to look to the court to protect
Speaker 1: me for anyone, um and not particularly I don't trust
Speaker 1: the law or spurts enough to really want them to
Speaker 1: be the arbiter of things place free, siege or Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. I mean, obviously I want very council, but um,
Speaker 1: you know, my hope is that we can take carib
Speaker 1: ease whether or not to make the course they're relevant
Speaker 1: will realize the dead type dream. But um, I guess
Speaker 1: this thing, you know, especially with roads, and I was
Speaker 1: I was talking to Margaret, a mutual friend, about this.
Speaker 1: The thing that's going to change if we're always overturned. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's really going to be what delusions are available to
Speaker 1: us and how much courage will it take to pursue
Speaker 1: them and what are the potential consequencely right, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: kind of resources it do you need? Um? I think
Speaker 1: in the space of these Supreme Court decisions, some of
Speaker 1: which are genuinely terrible, um, and some of which are
Speaker 1: just reinforcing things that have belonged in the two Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, our grief and our outraged and are bitter
Speaker 1: popes are not practiced. Um, they're not necessarily useful, right,
Speaker 1: and and even getting super in the leaves of you know,
Speaker 1: what does this opinion actually say? I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's an interesting but it's and it's good to know
Speaker 1: and to at least have somebody around you know. Um.
Speaker 1: But instead of spending so much time focusing on the
Speaker 1: real knit, picky language was being used by the unelected
Speaker 1: God things of the United States. Maybe we start thinking
Speaker 1: a little bit more about what are the material impacts
Speaker 1: that might have and what are ways, what are tools
Speaker 1: that maybe aren't legal tools or at least that are
Speaker 1: only legal tools, UM, that might be useful in UM
Speaker 1: picturing the things that we value. And I think that's
Speaker 1: both an important note and a good one to end on.
Speaker 1: Moira Um, I will run one thing by you real quick.
Speaker 1: So I have a plan and I want to I
Speaker 1: want your advice in the constitutionality of this. I would
Speaker 1: like to acquire Fort Bragg. So I'm thinking what I
Speaker 1: do is I go in a Third Amendment case right
Speaker 1: and say that, well, I mean if look, you can't
Speaker 1: what if we just extended the Quartering Act right like
Speaker 1: in the you know, could we could we push it
Speaker 1: even further so that nobody can host soldiers and then
Speaker 1: all those military bases are gonna be there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a fire sale. You can't keep soldiers on them, Government's
Speaker 1: not going to keep running them. And then I get
Speaker 1: to own Fort Bragg. How are we doing? Is that
Speaker 1: is that legal? It's the whole end popole that you
Speaker 1: own Fort Bragg. That is one of the end goals.
Speaker 1: I think you should probably cost context that rating. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: because yeah, you're right, they're probably gonna outbid me anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: But constitutionally, I'm on solid grounds with the third Right.
Speaker 1: That's bulletproof, you know. Like like many of the questions
Speaker 1: you asked me, the legal questions you asked me, I
Speaker 1: think the answers. Nobody knows, nobody knows. Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do what the n r A did with
Speaker 1: the second but with the Third Amendment. It's going to
Speaker 1: take a couple of decades, but I feel I feel
Speaker 1: good about this course of action. Thank you for putting
Speaker 1: up with me. More you had some stuff you wanted
Speaker 1: to plug at the end of this episode, Here I do.
Speaker 1: I would like us the rep Legal Defense Fund of
Speaker 1: if when how because if we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: row at all, the oh boy, yeah, a fund fund
Speaker 1: which can be found at repro Legal Defense Fund dot org.
Speaker 1: They have a donate page. They're doing amazing work. I'm
Speaker 1: um just incredibly impressed with um. They are also at
Speaker 1: RECRO Legal Defense Funds on Instagram and probably also on Twitter. UM,
Speaker 1: but I don't really understand Twitter, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to swear to it. That's for the best. We'll check
Speaker 1: that out dot com retro legal fund, So please donate
Speaker 1: to the Reproductive Legal Fund Twitter dot com repro legal Fund.
Speaker 1: By the time this episode drops, we may have the
Speaker 1: row thing. So I know everybody's gearing up, but you
Speaker 1: know this is definitely uh, it's it's it's good to
Speaker 1: help out. We all need to be like Poland because
Speaker 1: we're not going to yank this back on course through
Speaker 1: just hoping that eventually Supreme Court gets better. Well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna wish really hard. It would be nice, it would
Speaker 1: be nice, but I think organizing is probably a more
Speaker 1: effective thing to do in the immediate term. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I thank you, Moira, and um that's the episode. Oh
Speaker 1: it could happen here? Which is the podcast that can say?
Speaker 1: Is I'm Robert Evans with me? Are other people hello?
Speaker 1: Other people? Hi? Hello? Uh so this podcast? Thanks falling
Speaker 1: about part putting back together? YadA, YadA, YadA. Today our guest,
Speaker 1: well not our guest. Our host is uh the inimitable
Speaker 1: Andrew Andrew. Hey, Hey, how's it going? What are we
Speaker 1: talking about today? What are we learning? I'm good? I'm good?
Speaker 1: Um today open to tackle another book kind of Um,
Speaker 1: this one's not fictional like the past two. UM. So
Speaker 1: I do hope to like explore some of those in
Speaker 1: the future because I think some good conversations come out
Speaker 1: to those. This week, we're gonna be talking about Paulo
Speaker 1: Freire and the pedagogy of the oppressed. Oh yes, for
Speaker 1: those who don't know, Paulo Freire is Brazilian educator and
Speaker 1: one of the leading advocates of Well was Brazilian educator
Speaker 1: and leading advocates of critical pedagogy. Pedagogy is basically like
Speaker 1: the study of education, philosophy of education UM. He was
Speaker 1: born in nine and his experiences kind of led him
Speaker 1: to that path because during his childhood and ad lessons,
Speaker 1: he was falling behind in school because he was poor.
Speaker 1: His poverty and his hunger affected his ability to learn.
Speaker 1: And so as he got older and he got opportunities
Speaker 1: and he was able to study and so on, and
Speaker 1: he basically realized he needs to do more to uplift
Speaker 1: the lives of the poor, improved lives of the poor, UM,
Speaker 1: in order to facilitate better educational outcomes. As he says,
Speaker 1: and were cold, I didn't understand anything because of my hunger.
Speaker 1: I wasn't dumb, it wasn't a lack of interest. My
Speaker 1: social condition just didn't allow me to have an education.
Speaker 1: Experience showed me once again the relationship between social class
Speaker 1: us and knowledge. So as he progressed in his studies
Speaker 1: and his writing and stuff, he eventually contributed to a
Speaker 1: philosophy of education which blended classical approaches coming from Plato
Speaker 1: and modern Marxist and post Marxist and anti clonial thinkers.
Speaker 1: When I was reading the book, it really sort of
Speaker 1: struck me. I've got a lot of UM and a
Speaker 1: lot of France found on vibes from his work. He
Speaker 1: died in um r I p um. But his greatest
Speaker 1: contribution UM to me at least and to most people,
Speaker 1: is his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In the book,
Speaker 1: he sort of explores a detailed Marxist class analysis UM
Speaker 1: in the relationship between like the colonize and colonize, the
Speaker 1: oppressed and the oppressed, And he talks about the banking
Speaker 1: model of education that traditional pedagogy spouses because it treats
Speaker 1: the students as like this bank, this empty vessel to
Speaker 1: be filled with knowledge. Instead, he argues for a form
Speaker 1: of education, of pedagogy that treats the lunar as a
Speaker 1: co creator in knowledge as far as I'm aware, um,
Speaker 1: and I guess it's kind of is illustrated in the
Speaker 1: book itself. But as far as I know, there wasn't
Speaker 1: an anarchist or libertarian socialist of any variety, but he
Speaker 1: still ended up coming to some anarchic conclusions with regard
Speaker 1: to the education system and learning and stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: anarchists have been writing about, you know, like youth liberation
Speaker 1: and the school system and even experimenting with new models
Speaker 1: of schooling for a long time. Um. The Forever Movement,
Speaker 1: for example, experimented with implementing modern schools in UM in
Speaker 1: the US and Spain, and a Goldman was very much
Speaker 1: involved in that process. And UM, I don't think that
Speaker 1: the experiments were necessarily free of error, but I think
Speaker 1: they did a good job of trying something new, trying
Speaker 1: something with more liberatory in the spare of education, because
Speaker 1: I mean, for the past several hundred years now, UM,
Speaker 1: we've kind of been going with this sort of um.
Speaker 1: Prussian model of education is very strict, very regimented, very
Speaker 1: divided model of education. The rules UM to sort of ferment,
Speaker 1: nationalism and division, class divisions and stuff within the populace.
Speaker 1: So I think that any experimentation in mo libitary and
Speaker 1: direction is a positive. In the preface, um Fair sort
Speaker 1: of goes into why this book came about. He's talking
Speaker 1: about his experience as a teacher in Brazil, the times,
Speaker 1: the observations he made well in political exile, and so
Speaker 1: what he realized as a teacher when he was teaching
Speaker 1: students is that they had a sort of a fair
Speaker 1: of freedom. It's not like a real fair of freedom.
Speaker 1: It's more of a fair of the risks associated with
Speaker 1: freedom because of the experiences and stuff that they've had.
Speaker 1: Um What he considers the most vital, however, to the
Speaker 1: education system, it's sort of just establishing conscientious out or
Speaker 1: critical consciousness within students, a consciousness that commits to social
Speaker 1: change and human liberation. According to for, the educational model
Speaker 1: can only really be successful if people are radicalized through it,
Speaker 1: if people are able to see the issues in their
Speaker 1: current society, think about them, stew upon them, criticize them,
Speaker 1: compare them, and look at ways to solve them. And
Speaker 1: if they don't about with that sort of critical consciousness,
Speaker 1: then as well, for not. Basically, the education system is
Speaker 1: kind of spinning on top in mud. I find it
Speaker 1: especially interesting that I ended up reading this when I did, because,
Speaker 1: as we've seen in the US, a lot of conversations
Speaker 1: are now attacking anything even approaching critical consciousness. But this,
Speaker 1: you know, who all debate going on about critical race
Speaker 1: theory and this sort of even though critical race theories
Speaker 1: are being taught in primary or secondary education, this attack,
Speaker 1: this full front of attack on anything that resembles critical
Speaker 1: thinking and critical study of history and of the present.
Speaker 1: So in chapter one for makes a case for why
Speaker 1: the pedagogy the press is necessary. He says, a human
Speaker 1: kind central problem is how we a fir more identity
Speaker 1: as human beings. Everyone is trying to reach that sort
Speaker 1: of affirmation, that sort of human identity, that sort of
Speaker 1: human nous um. But oppression and systems of oppression interrupt
Speaker 1: that process. They prevent people from expressing and establishing their
Speaker 1: full humanity. Where they're talking about racism keeping people from
Speaker 1: reaching their full potential, or sexism preventing people or you know,
Speaker 1: sa patriarchy with the whole limitations and such puts upon
Speaker 1: people's sexuality and gender expression and gender identification. One of
Speaker 1: these systems of oppression are put in place to restrict
Speaker 1: and confine and bound us below you know, our full potential,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of that and a lot of
Speaker 1: the you know, cultivation and forging of one's awareness of
Speaker 1: you know, the systems around them and how to operate
Speaker 1: within them. To explain in the education system, and so
Speaker 1: the education system is should be one of the critical
Speaker 1: junctures in which we which our fight for oppressed people.
Speaker 1: There's a sort of dehumanization that it could as a
Speaker 1: result of oppression, whether it be in the form of
Speaker 1: comparing people to animals, as racists offten do, whether it
Speaker 1: be in the form of decreating people to this sort
Speaker 1: of childlike status, which itself is a is a form
Speaker 1: of oppression because the fact that you know, childlikeness and
Speaker 1: youth is considered to be something less than It's just
Speaker 1: another way they where people are oppressed and another way
Speaker 1: in which people are prevented from as certain they're tatomy
Speaker 1: and their humanity oppressors. They tend to treat people as
Speaker 1: objects to be possessed, see freedom as threatening, and in turn,
Speaker 1: oppressed people end up becoming alienated from each other through
Speaker 1: oppressure and begin to see their oppressors as something to
Speaker 1: strive towards for It talks about how they oppressed. The
Speaker 1: whole vision and the whole understanding of what being human
Speaker 1: is is being like oppressors, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: people and you see that even today. You know, um,
Speaker 1: when they strive for freedom, they strive to become entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: You know, they strive to become business owners. They strive
Speaker 1: to become billionaires and CEOs and all these sort of
Speaker 1: images of what, you know, what being human looks like.
Speaker 1: Because people are striving to be free, and if the
Speaker 1: only way you can get a measure of freedom is
Speaker 1: by becoming an oppress yourself, and it makes sense a
Speaker 1: lot of oppressive looking to try to do that. Of course,
Speaker 1: as Fair himself says, and the oppresses themselves are not
Speaker 1: fully free either, because by denying the oppressed people their humanity,
Speaker 1: they robbed themselves of humanity. The fight for liberation, as
Speaker 1: Fair argues, must consist of two stages. Reflection on the
Speaker 1: nature of oppression and the concrete action needed to change it,
Speaker 1: and that sort of reading that that that line are paraphrasing,
Speaker 1: but it it reminds me of the process of prefigurative politics,
Speaker 1: where not only are you bringing about the consciousness of
Speaker 1: people to recognize these systems of oppression and understand how
Speaker 1: they operate, but the concrete action to change it is
Speaker 1: one that is intended to liked the society that we
Speaker 1: wish to establish in the future. Fare does one um that,
Speaker 1: you know, leaders and stuff must engage in dialogue with
Speaker 1: oppressed people rather than becoming like oppressors. But as the
Speaker 1: book goes on, I think he relies a bit too
Speaker 1: much on this concept of leaders as well. He wants
Speaker 1: against them existing above the people, but he's still sort
Speaker 1: of upholds that distinction between the leaders and the people.
Speaker 1: As the book progresses, um he begins to compare the
Speaker 1: concept of the banking model to the concept of the
Speaker 1: problem posing model of education, as he calls it. In
Speaker 1: the banking model um quote, he the teacher talks about
Speaker 1: reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable.
Speaker 1: Where Else he expands upon a topic completely aliens existential
Speaker 1: experience to the students. His task is to fill the
Speaker 1: students with the contents of his narration, contents which are
Speaker 1: detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them,
Speaker 1: I could give them significance. Words are emptied of their
Speaker 1: concreteness and become a hollow, alienated and alienating verbocity areny
Speaker 1: being that sentence is quite proposed. But on the contrary,
Speaker 1: banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction to the
Speaker 1: following attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole.
Speaker 1: The teacher teachers, and the students are taught. The teacher
Speaker 1: knows everything and the student knows nothing. Teacher thinks and
Speaker 1: the students are thought about. Teacher talks and the students
Speaker 1: listen meekly. The teacher disciplines, and the students are disciplined.
Speaker 1: Teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply.
Speaker 1: The teacher acts, and the students have the illusion of
Speaker 1: acting through the action of the teacher. Teacher chooses the
Speaker 1: program content and the students, who were not consulted, adapt
Speaker 1: to it. The teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with
Speaker 1: his or her own professional authority, which they set in
Speaker 1: opposition to the freedom of the students. The teachers the
Speaker 1: subjective the learning process, while the pupils on their objects.
Speaker 1: I think um Flaire needed to incorporate some more gender
Speaker 1: neutral language and that so I had to kind of
Speaker 1: correct him there. Um. But that quote, that that quote
Speaker 1: in full, it really reminds me, um of my schooling experience. Um.
Speaker 1: As some people may knew, I was actually home schooled
Speaker 1: for the majority of my learning experience, I actually didn't
Speaker 1: know that. Oh well, now you know, Yeah, so I was.
Speaker 1: I was home schooled, um for I would say, the
Speaker 1: majority of my education experience. And then after I went
Speaker 1: into college and stuff. But before then, I did, um
Speaker 1: make it through the school system. And even though it
Speaker 1: was a really long time ago, my memories are still
Speaker 1: crystal clear of that process. You know. Um, I remember
Speaker 1: seeing students being disciplined. Um. I myself was kind of
Speaker 1: a teacher's pet. But that doesn't surprise me. And the
Speaker 1: best possible way, I'm not sure I to take it,
Speaker 1: but I'll take it in a good way because Andrew
Speaker 1: not me. That doesn't surprise me. Teachers or cops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is my pre anarchist days. I wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I wasn't jumping out the booth canal with
Speaker 1: a black flag, you know. Unfortunately, a cab includes the
Speaker 1: person who tried to get me to read Catcher in
Speaker 1: the Rye. The Rye was a book and it was
Speaker 1: perfectly fine book. I'm just being an asshole. But but like, Andrew,
Speaker 1: what are you alluding here? Is that, like stoicism is
Speaker 1: something that is weaponized in the education system. Stoicism, stoicism
Speaker 1: being like no emotion delivering like right right, right, because
Speaker 1: I was thinking the philosophy, but because yeah, you're like
Speaker 1: a vessel for quote unquote facts and knowledge to be
Speaker 1: like injected into you for you to like hold as
Speaker 1: as Yeah, it's we're seeing a resurgence in this type
Speaker 1: of saying all the albeit probably a little bit less
Speaker 1: eloquently stated in some of the anti schooling anarchist literature
Speaker 1: that's been coming out in the past few years, or
Speaker 1: at least has been gaining more traction the past few years.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because this and that's kind
Speaker 1: of that's kind of the funny thing about it, because
Speaker 1: most people in their school and experience can recall it
Speaker 1: being in some ways negative, even if they look at
Speaker 1: it in a positive light, we can at least even
Speaker 1: if they don't go in that fully radical direction. Most
Speaker 1: people can look at some of the elements to their schooling,
Speaker 1: of their education, and so that that wasn't right. You know,
Speaker 1: there's something messed up about that. Even something as simple
Speaker 1: as having to like ask, you know, the teacher to
Speaker 1: go on and use the toilet. It's just this is
Speaker 1: those sorts of little ways of control. So, like as
Speaker 1: I was saying, in my school and experience back when
Speaker 1: I was in primary school, I was very adorable. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I could guess, but I remember seeing these students
Speaker 1: being disciplined. They had the bell had wrung for you know,
Speaker 1: the end of break, and he's supposed to, you know,
Speaker 1: fire back into class. But I think there was a
Speaker 1: school next door that was having some kind of event
Speaker 1: and they're playing like music, and so a bunch of
Speaker 1: students in my class, not me, but a bunch of
Speaker 1: students in my class were you know, um, dancing at
Speaker 1: the side of the school, enjoying the music, having a
Speaker 1: good time or whatever. Um they heard the bell and
Speaker 1: they didn't go because they were, you know, they were
Speaker 1: having a good time. They were like six seven eight um.
Speaker 1: But then afterwards the teacher, after you know, I sit
Speaker 1: down and stuff, leacher goes and finds them and brings
Speaker 1: them in and this is prior to, at least of
Speaker 1: my knowledge, prior to the corporal punishment being phased out
Speaker 1: of school. So I just remember seeing them having to,
Speaker 1: you know, like lay out their hands and receive punishment
Speaker 1: for daring to have joy after hours, you know, daring
Speaker 1: to enjoy themselves. Um what it was supposed to be
Speaker 1: class time and they're supposed to be in class. I'm
Speaker 1: sure people have similar experiences, at least of a kind
Speaker 1: of punishment uncontroul I mean, this is not the same
Speaker 1: kind of punishment, but I think to your point of
Speaker 1: being controlled, like even just like not even being aware
Speaker 1: of it, just like being forced to stand up and
Speaker 1: say the pledge of allegiance. In America, for example, it
Speaker 1: becomes this like repetitive culty thing every morning that you're
Speaker 1: expected to do, and if you don't do it, um
Speaker 1: personal experience, if you refuse to do that, you have
Speaker 1: to go to the principal's office and explain why. And
Speaker 1: it happens over and over again. And I think it's
Speaker 1: like you're you're questioned and you're punished even for like thinking,
Speaker 1: not like differently, or questioning not even thinking, just questioning reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And in Syria when I was
Speaker 1: I went to school in Syria when I was really small,
Speaker 1: and me and my sister ate really slow and we
Speaker 1: would get hit with a ruler on our hands because
Speaker 1: we didn't we didn't finish lunch fast enough. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: mine isn't that intense. But the school I went to
Speaker 1: when I was a little kid in Oklahoma, number one
Speaker 1: day paddled us. That was legal as a public school.
Speaker 1: But my first grade teacher was obsessed with the fact
Speaker 1: that like it was bad to be left handed, and
Speaker 1: you know, she couldn't. She couldn't do the ship that
Speaker 1: they used to do right. They used to like funk
Speaker 1: kids up for using their left hands. But she would
Speaker 1: every single day like chide me and tell me that
Speaker 1: I should use my right hand to write and stuff,
Speaker 1: that it wasn't like proper, that it was like bad
Speaker 1: that I could if you if you if you're not aware,
Speaker 1: if you're not left handed, when you're like do stuff
Speaker 1: with a pencil and you're left handed, you get a
Speaker 1: bunch of like pencil stuff on your on the side
Speaker 1: of your hand. Right. It's just like because of the
Speaker 1: way that unless you're using like those weird left handed
Speaker 1: notebooks and ship, which no one ever has UM and
Speaker 1: she would like she gave me so much ship for
Speaker 1: being dirty because like I would get stuff on my hand.
Speaker 1: It was just like when I tell people that, it's
Speaker 1: like really, this was like the nineties. Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: a few of those folks left. I think she was
Speaker 1: extremely Catholic um and I know none seems to go
Speaker 1: on that stuff. I didn't know that Catholic people cared
Speaker 1: about the left handed thing. Catholic Catholic schools. You yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that, like it's I don't think there's anything.
Speaker 1: And like the Catechism about not being left handed right right,
Speaker 1: I mean like in some very strict Muslim culture, a
Speaker 1: lot of it is like phased out. But for example,
Speaker 1: your left hand isn't meant to be used as the
Speaker 1: primary hand because it's like a dirty hand, like the
Speaker 1: one you wipe yourself with. Yea, yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 1: But like I know you were left handed though, yikes.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah, yikes, thank you, thank you. You should
Speaker 1: be concerned. I have to makes a number of things frustrating,
Speaker 1: like shearing sheep anyway, whatever, M well, everything is designed
Speaker 1: for right handed people, for sure like it has everything
Speaker 1: it is you try to but you are the master, right, Okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: speaking of hands just how the curiosity? Did you all
Speaker 1: have the hand up hand out experience? Hand out? What's
Speaker 1: hand out? Basically? Um, it's just sort of a tool
Speaker 1: you su just sort of a sort of repetitive kind
Speaker 1: of follow instructions kind of thing. So like if the
Speaker 1: class getting too rowdies, like hands up, hands out, hands up,
Speaker 1: hands out, and the teacher does not stop saying it
Speaker 1: until everyone is quiet down, and it's just like like
Speaker 1: a robot. Just reason and where I don't think I've
Speaker 1: experienced that. I mean you did, Um, I wasn't an
Speaker 1: assistant teacher at one point, and for very very young children.
Speaker 1: I'm talking like four to five year olds, And I
Speaker 1: understand the frustration of like you're just trying to get
Speaker 1: something done and everyone's going a while now. They just
Speaker 1: had snacks or whatever, and everyone's kind of while now.
Speaker 1: But I think that says about like the methods we're
Speaker 1: using than about the showering themselves. You know, it's all
Speaker 1: about like you have to you should adjust more to
Speaker 1: like their cycles and their needs, their stage, rather than
Speaker 1: trying to force and shove them into this sort of
Speaker 1: like robotic Yeah, yeah, totally. It's yeah, they're allowed to
Speaker 1: actually develop naturally or like be themselves in a setting
Speaker 1: like that exactly. I think what happens that kind of
Speaker 1: throws me is that h people have these experiences, you know,
Speaker 1: traumatic and not as traumatic in the education system a
Speaker 1: lot of people, but some people they come out radicalized
Speaker 1: by it, and other people end up being the like
Speaker 1: most stringe and most passionate advocates of it. Like even
Speaker 1: like this Catholic school teacher you're talking about, Robert, Like,
Speaker 1: at some point she was also in the education system,
Speaker 1: and it really makes me wonder, like what she went
Speaker 1: through to have to come up with that kind of mindset. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think she'd grown up in Oklahoma too,
Speaker 1: so it must have been a nightmare like everything in
Speaker 1: that state. Yeah, Like why does it have a panhandle anyway? Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, the there is a reason for that, and
Speaker 1: it's not fun, but okay, I'm assuming it's slavery, any
Speaker 1: fucked up geographic thing going on in the South. The
Speaker 1: reason is generally slavery. Yeah, right, right, right right, And
Speaker 1: so she spends a lot of time talking about this
Speaker 1: banking model and we could go on and on about it.
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time just talking about the
Speaker 1: education system and all my problems with it, and at
Speaker 1: some point I would like to do an episode about
Speaker 1: differ rare schools and out of how those sort of transpired.
Speaker 1: But what FIR proposes um as an alternative is the
Speaker 1: problem posing model, which is basically, through dialogue, the teacher
Speaker 1: and the students ceased to exist. The teacher of the
Speaker 1: students and the students of the teachers ceased to exist.
Speaker 1: So instead of there being these two separate categories, they
Speaker 1: are teacher, students and student teachers. There's no separation anymore
Speaker 1: between the one who teaches and the one who has taught. Rather,
Speaker 1: there's a dialogue between the two as they become part
Speaker 1: of this process where all of them can grow. You know,
Speaker 1: you let go of this sort of authoritarian arrangements and
Speaker 1: allow people to teach and be taught, two learn and
Speaker 1: be learned to a really draw out what it is
Speaker 1: that we have to gain from each other. Rather than
Speaker 1: being sort of docile listeners, the students and the teachers,
Speaker 1: the student teachers teacher students, they become co investigators in dialogue.
Speaker 1: They become critics. They become radicals who are able to
Speaker 1: open up and depathologize the way that reality works with
Speaker 1: human beings exist in the world. Banking education tends to
Speaker 1: inhibit creativity and try to domesticate our consciousness through after
Speaker 1: when I was talking about human investigation the other day, um,
Speaker 1: But in contrast, in the problem posing model tries to
Speaker 1: it really bases itself on creativity and stimulates, rather than domestication,
Speaker 1: a sort of a full flourishing of what someone could
Speaker 1: be unbound and unshackled. So, in summary, banking theory is immobilizing.
Speaker 1: It's it's fixating. It doesn't acknowledge people as people but
Speaker 1: rather objects, whereas the problem posing model it takes people's historicity,
Speaker 1: it takes people's humanity as their starting point upon which
Speaker 1: they can grow and learn from each other. I think
Speaker 1: that's what frustrated me the most about the education system
Speaker 1: in the time that I was in it, and even
Speaker 1: when I got back in it in college, even though
Speaker 1: it's not as bad in some ways, because you know,
Speaker 1: in college they tend to emphasize dialogue a bit more
Speaker 1: on certain classes. But I find the issue is that
Speaker 1: there's this assumption in you know, the earlier sections of school,
Speaker 1: in the secondary school and primary school and even preschool
Speaker 1: that the children, the youth, you know, they're not there
Speaker 1: to have anything to add. They're just there to regurgitate,
Speaker 1: to to study and to repeat what they've studied for approval,
Speaker 1: not just something I definitely did back in the day.
Speaker 1: If what's lacking is dialogue, a dialogue that requires you know,
Speaker 1: hoop and trust and critical thinking, then liberation, you would
Speaker 1: also be lacking. They can't be dialogue without love for
Speaker 1: the world and for people, and for knowledge and for
Speaker 1: bring that knowledge out to people. So as for our says,
Speaker 1: you know, love is at the same time the foundation
Speaker 1: of dialogue and dialogue itself. On the other hand, that
Speaker 1: kind of exists without humility. The naming of the world
Speaker 1: through which people constantly recreate that world cannot be an
Speaker 1: act of arrogance. I remember incountering a lot of arrogance
Speaker 1: teachers and lecturers and stuff in my time. To the
Speaker 1: education system, um are being condescended to multiple occasions, and
Speaker 1: that's the thing nobody likes being condescended to. But condescension
Speaker 1: is kind of the default way in which we engage
Speaker 1: with young people. Just sort of there's this projected ignorance
Speaker 1: upon them, is that they have nothing of value to
Speaker 1: add or to share. Another contrary, you know, we all
Speaker 1: have something to contribute. If we all closed off, and
Speaker 1: if we are closed off to the contributions of others,
Speaker 1: we can't engage in dialogue with them. If we are fearful,
Speaker 1: if we are um considering people to be like inferior
Speaker 1: in some ways, if we cannot embrace people as equals,
Speaker 1: and how can we engage in dialogue with them? I
Speaker 1: think there's a beauty in the way that he reflects
Speaker 1: on dialogue, and he goes on and on about it
Speaker 1: for quite a while. At one point, he says that
Speaker 1: dialogue requires an intense faith in humankind, faith in their
Speaker 1: power to make and remake, to create and recreate, faith
Speaker 1: in their vocation to be more fully human, which is
Speaker 1: not the privilege of an elite, but the birth right
Speaker 1: of all. And so, finally, when he's talking about action
Speaker 1: and how um this sort of change is brought about,
Speaker 1: he divides cultural action into two kinds, dialogical action and
Speaker 1: anti dieological action. While the pressers use antideological action to
Speaker 1: protect their power and to separate people, radicals can use
Speaker 1: dialogical action to bring people together in the struggle for
Speaker 1: freedom as a different methods of anticheological action. Through conquest,
Speaker 1: through divide and rule, through manipulation, through cultural invasion, oppressors
Speaker 1: were able to put the oppressed in the predicament of
Speaker 1: there in. You know, the oppressed wouldn't be the oppressed
Speaker 1: if not for the oppressors oppressing them. That's kind of
Speaker 1: self explanatory. Um. But in contrast, radicals from among the oppressed,
Speaker 1: using biological action, using cooperation, unity, organization, and cultural synthesis
Speaker 1: are able to rise above and push back against this
Speaker 1: oppression and to allow education to flourish among all as.
Speaker 1: I think that's the beauty of the text, um the
Speaker 1: who that it did abuse in people to really bring
Speaker 1: about these changes. And I think it was a good read,
Speaker 1: five outs of five excellent. And it's not very long, right,
Speaker 1: it's like under two from what I yes, yes, it's
Speaker 1: like four short chapters. Rely sure. I know back when
Speaker 1: you were talking about how um people are sectors of
Speaker 1: the right specifically are so set on attacking like anything
Speaker 1: related to like critical theory or critical race theory. Um. I.
Speaker 1: The the book was was banned like like a decade
Speaker 1: and like over a decade ago from the Arizona Schools
Speaker 1: for teaching students that they are oppressed. Uh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's how you know, that's to be expected. It's a
Speaker 1: good book. Yeah yeah, so that's anyway, just just a
Speaker 1: fun fun fact there. We can't we can't have kids
Speaker 1: knowing that, uh, they have shared interests as a group, um,
Speaker 1: and that adults are mistreating them comprehensively. That's good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: God just reminded me of so many just moments that
Speaker 1: mean teachers like really got into it or like your
Speaker 1: teachers that were condescending that I hated. I have to
Speaker 1: really go through the role decks and try to vent
Speaker 1: this out. Now after we finished recording, Well, listen, if
Speaker 1: you're a child, why are you listening to this? Rise
Speaker 1: up in rebellion? Uh? Destroy the adults. Their joints are terrible.
Speaker 1: Hit him in the knees. They won't recover. My joints
Speaker 1: are terrible. Exactly, some fucking nine year old whack you
Speaker 1: in the knee with like down, You're out of the game. No,
Speaker 1: I know my kids, my kne would break. Yeah, embrace
Speaker 1: the ancient traditions, make les, and go for the fucking joints. Yeah,
Speaker 1: children of the world, you have nothing to lose, which
Speaker 1: your bed times. That's that's the episode. Andrew, should we
Speaker 1: record this episode? Sure, let's start. I'm sure. I'm sure
Speaker 1: we can use some of that is the opening. Hi,
Speaker 1: welcome to It could happen here the podcast that is
Speaker 1: about medical ethics in the eighteen sixties, not today but
Speaker 1: fair Yeah, no to today today. It's it's me because
Speaker 1: we're long and we're doing an episode about inflation and
Speaker 1: speaking of medical ethics while speaking of kinks. Actually, the
Speaker 1: moment I said that, I was like, I have opened
Speaker 1: myself up for that was some of the phil outside
Speaker 1: That was from some of the first weird interport Internet
Speaker 1: point I came apart. It was specifically the cast of
Speaker 1: duck Tails being like, okay, let's get to the topic
Speaker 1: of the episode. That is, this episode is now about
Speaker 1: duck Tails, inflation, fetish pornography. That is enough, pre rebel Christopher,
Speaker 1: what do you have for us today? Yeah, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about inflation. Um, we're talking about economic inflation. To
Speaker 1: be fair, this is somebody was making money off of
Speaker 1: that inflation. I'll tell you that much. God, I mean
Speaker 1: the one thing duct Tails actually does crossover because of
Speaker 1: Scrooge McDuck and his giant and his giant and that
Speaker 1: actually it does. That's right, I can tell you right
Speaker 1: now that's not the only thing about him that was inflated.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, talking about is dick. Okay, let's let's keep it,
Speaker 1: keep it on tracked. Okay, So all right, all right,
Speaker 1: if people are inflation, it's not good. It's pretty high.
Speaker 1: It's I probably should have looked up the inflation rate,
Speaker 1: isn't it, Like, yeah, I think it's it keeps point six. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But every time someone says it's this or it's that,
Speaker 1: people are like, well no, but they also changed these
Speaker 1: these and these indicators five years ago and these other
Speaker 1: ones ten years ago, so really it would be this,
Speaker 1: and there's judging who's securate about that? This? This is
Speaker 1: the thing. I didn't put this in the episode, but
Speaker 1: there's a thing that if you study economics you will
Speaker 1: realize pretty quickly is that all of the like basically
Speaker 1: all of the aconstancy. So we have our fucking bullshit
Speaker 1: and they're like are basically they're they're they're really really fake,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, like we we don't like what one of
Speaker 1: one of the big ones that you know. Is like
Speaker 1: one of the underlying things that makes all economics fake
Speaker 1: is that no one knows how to actually calculate the
Speaker 1: value of of just like a factory. Like like if
Speaker 1: if you have like a bundle of goods, right, and
Speaker 1: they're not the same thing, so I don't know, you
Speaker 1: have two factories they make different things. Actually figuring out
Speaker 1: what the value of that is is like fucking impossible,
Speaker 1: and the like the way that it's done in like
Speaker 1: if if you look at like like there are these
Speaker 1: like the um producer statistical animals, right, and the values
Speaker 1: that are in the like the un statistical animals are
Speaker 1: literally them guessing because because the thing is like the
Speaker 1: value depending on like the actual value of the thing
Speaker 1: changes right depending on where it is, unlike a supply demanker,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. And so they literally just tell
Speaker 1: the people who are doing the econometrics, you just like
Speaker 1: pick a pick a random like price that they that
Speaker 1: that that they think is equilibrium. So it's it's completely bullshit.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's bullshit like literally all the way down.
Speaker 1: It's nonsense. All of the indexes are wrong. Uh yeah, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the field of economics doesn't really care about this that much,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna have to sort of take them seriously.
Speaker 1: And the thing I specifically want to talk about today
Speaker 1: was that there was a really interesting paper that was
Speaker 1: produced by two economists at the DC Federal Reserve UM,
Speaker 1: David Rattner and j sim about why inflation happens, which
Speaker 1: is called Who Killed the Phillips Curve and Murder Mystery,
Speaker 1: and which we're talking about this for two reasons. One
Speaker 1: one because it's funny, because I what is going to
Speaker 1: happen over the course of this paper is that the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve has combat Federal Reserve has discovered Marxism, and
Speaker 1: they are going to attempt to solve mystery of inflation
Speaker 1: by by applying by by by applying marks. And the
Speaker 1: second thing, the second meason I want to talk about
Speaker 1: this is that it reveals something that's very very important
Speaker 1: about the current political situation, which is that both economists
Speaker 1: and like the rest of the ruling class in general,
Speaker 1: do not understand what inflation is or what they sort
Speaker 1: of under kind of understand what it is, they don't
Speaker 1: know what causes it. UM. And before we go on here,
Speaker 1: I should like explain what inflation is because most people
Speaker 1: I don't know the the way I gott talked about
Speaker 1: I talked about about this with Garrison like a few
Speaker 1: days ago about like like the way people get taught
Speaker 1: about inflation is that inflation is when like your money
Speaker 1: is worth less. Yeah, when when the government prints more
Speaker 1: money so to each individual dollar is worth less because
Speaker 1: it's more of them circulating. Yeah. Yeah, and and this
Speaker 1: is like this is this is propaganda. Um, that is
Speaker 1: not what inflation is. Inflation is literally just when prices
Speaker 1: go up. And if you think about it, like, okay,
Speaker 1: that that's kind of the same thing sort of because
Speaker 1: if prices go up, like your your you know, your
Speaker 1: your dollars are worth less money, right, But mostly inflation
Speaker 1: isn't about the amount of money becoming less. Mostly it's
Speaker 1: about something happens that makes things cost more. Um, and
Speaker 1: you know and and likely yeah, like the it is
Speaker 1: possible for you to get inflation because the government printing
Speaker 1: too much money, but like mostly are like symbiotic, right,
Speaker 1: government with more money because prices are going up so
Speaker 1: that people need more money in circulation to buy things. Um,
Speaker 1: you saw this happen a lot with the COVID pandemic. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's that both these things kind of feed
Speaker 1: off each other and contributes of But but I think
Speaker 1: something that's important to understand about this is that if
Speaker 1: if you look into the actual econ stuff, like the
Speaker 1: supply of money, like how much money there is in
Speaker 1: the world, has very very little to do with inflation.
Speaker 1: It only really has effects inflation when you're doing with
Speaker 1: like I don't like nineteen thirties twenties Germany or like
Speaker 1: China after World War Two, where just there's literally just
Speaker 1: like you know, the government prints so much money that
Speaker 1: like like my my I have my family has a
Speaker 1: bunch of stories about like literally carrying out baskets full
Speaker 1: of money in China to like buy a train ticket
Speaker 1: because but like everybody knows about buy maur Germany too
Speaker 1: is like the weird arrows full of cash and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this stuff that's actually it's really rare, and it's
Speaker 1: like the reason everyone knows. But when it happens is
Speaker 1: that it's only happened. It's happened like four or five times,
Speaker 1: and mostly that's not that's not what why inflation happens.
Speaker 1: And if you look at inflation right now. For example,
Speaker 1: there's the prices of like a whole bunch of stuff,
Speaker 1: from like food to like microprocessors are going up because
Speaker 1: a it's harder to produce things because of COVID b
Speaker 1: our Supply chains are collapsing, and see because Russian invaded
Speaker 1: Ukraine and like absolutely annihilated an enormous portion of the
Speaker 1: global food supply. And this that stuff causes prices to
Speaker 1: go up, right because now it's harder to make a thing,
Speaker 1: And because it's harder to make the thing, that thing
Speaker 1: costs more. And this has you know, this has literally
Speaker 1: nothing to do with with the money supply, right, Like
Speaker 1: it doesn't have anything to do with how much money
Speaker 1: there is in a circulation. UM. And there's another reason
Speaker 1: that that that will get into kind of at the
Speaker 1: end that inflation happens that is not also has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with money, which is that corporations just do
Speaker 1: price markups because they know people will pay for it.
Speaker 1: And that's that's happening to UM. But having an explanation
Speaker 1: of like why inflation is happening is really really politically important,
Speaker 1: even even if the explanation that you have is completely wrong,
Speaker 1: it it allows you you do really powerful things politically.
Speaker 1: On Like, one of the ways that neoliberalism sort of
Speaker 1: took power is that in in in the in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, especially in sort of sort of the
Speaker 1: the seventies in particular, both both in academia and a
Speaker 1: sort of politics written large. There's this problem where you
Speaker 1: have a bunch of these old Keynesian economists who are
Speaker 1: like Kensians are like they're big on like using government
Speaker 1: spending to keep the economy running, and like you get
Speaker 1: a lot of welfare programs. But yeah, it was like, okay,
Speaker 1: you can avoid crises by having the government spending. But
Speaker 1: the problem is that like they couldn't explain why inflation
Speaker 1: was happening in the seventies. Um, And this was because
Speaker 1: the Kenyans working the Kensians are working out something called
Speaker 1: the Phillips curve. And we have to do a little
Speaker 1: bit of econ bullshit. But it's not that complicated. I
Speaker 1: promise I survived it, so it'll be fine. So the
Speaker 1: Phillips curve says that like the closer you get to
Speaker 1: full employment, and like the lower the unemployment rate gets,
Speaker 1: the higher inflation rigettes. And this this sort of really
Speaker 1: starts to kick in around from like five percent unemployment
Speaker 1: to like four percent to three percent unemployment. Uh, the
Speaker 1: the inflation rate like spikes. And you know that the
Speaker 1: reason this is supposed to happen is because the lower
Speaker 1: the lower the unemployment rate is, Uh, wages start to
Speaker 1: rise because as there's lots of people who' unemployed, you
Speaker 1: have to pay them more money to get them to work.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so this is and and the theory behind this,
Speaker 1: right is that like what wages increasing is what is
Speaker 1: what causes inflation happened because it makes everything costs more.
Speaker 1: Now there's a simple and obvious this is like, this
Speaker 1: is a very simple and obvious solutions. So the problem
Speaker 1: of why like inflation happens and like all simple and
Speaker 1: obvious solutions, it is also wrong. The Philips curve does
Speaker 1: not explain inflation. I'm gonna I'm gonna refer everyone in
Speaker 1: the chat to this tweet that I made, and I
Speaker 1: want you to look at exhibit A, which is the
Speaker 1: Phillips curve, And then I want you to look at
Speaker 1: Exhibit B, which is I actually plotted unemployment versus inflation
Speaker 1: in the US from like now seen, and I want
Speaker 1: to get a description of what the second graph looks like,
Speaker 1: because it's supposed to look like a curve. Well, so
Speaker 1: the first, the first graph we have we have an
Speaker 1: excite an X Y graph of the Phillips curve starting
Speaker 1: at eight percent closer to the y axis and then
Speaker 1: swooping down and then flattening out at on the X
Speaker 1: axis for the unemployment rate versus the inflation right. And
Speaker 1: then for the next graph, we have, Um, what's not
Speaker 1: a curve? What is instead inflation and unemployment graphed um,
Speaker 1: except it's zig zagging everywhere like dark sides omega beams. Um,
Speaker 1: it is not, in fact doing a curve. My my,
Speaker 1: my favorite thing about this is that um, like multiple
Speaker 1: multiple like, and this us with both unemployment and inflation. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are multiple unemployment rates that are associated with different
Speaker 1: inflation rates and multiple inflation rates that that are all
Speaker 1: that that generate two different rates of unemployment. It's it's incredible.
Speaker 1: It is it is, it is it is a it
Speaker 1: is an is an absolute sort of monument to how
Speaker 1: much this stuff doesn't work. And there's a really good
Speaker 1: reply to your graft tweet that says economists of the
Speaker 1: modern day court astrologers, it's basically true, like, which is
Speaker 1: funny astrologers, though we're probably right more often that's true. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean they're simply guessing, is it a good idea
Speaker 1: to invade this country or not? Fifty fifty odds it
Speaker 1: works out for you, right if you're if you're trying
Speaker 1: to predict, like I don't know the SMP five D,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more variables. Yeah, and and this is
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that like, okay, if
Speaker 1: if you can be the person who like walks into
Speaker 1: a lecture and goes the emperor has no clothes, you
Speaker 1: can like attain immediate ultimate power because again this stuff
Speaker 1: is like so it's so it's so trivially and easily
Speaker 1: like falsifiable that like I you know, like built in
Speaker 1: Friedman is able to do this, and you know, okay,
Speaker 1: so I actually about false curve, the Phillips curve that
Speaker 1: like I showed you that it's like a curve. It's
Speaker 1: like a very simple one. There's all of these really
Speaker 1: convoluted like modifications to it. Um there's you know, if
Speaker 1: you look like the new the new kynesi En Phillips
Speaker 1: curve or whatever they they've done, they've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of math to it to try to like make it
Speaker 1: kind of work. Um, the problem is that it doesn't work. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's there there's a there's another Phillips curve that's been
Speaker 1: that was like modified, but the NEI by the new
Speaker 1: classical economists and the new classical economists were like, this
Speaker 1: thing doesn't work. Okay, here's some modifications you have to
Speaker 1: put in, but that curve also doesn't work. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know, and this is a real problem, right because Okay,
Speaker 1: so if if if this inflation explanation of why inflation
Speaker 1: happens doesn't work, like what is actually happening. Um. Milton Friedman,
Speaker 1: who sort of like takes the the economic scene by
Speaker 1: storm by like predicting a lot of the inflation in
Speaker 1: the seventies and like sort of having an answer to it.
Speaker 1: Is his his argument is that inflation is they print
Speaker 1: too much money in there's inflation. And this is kind
Speaker 1: of a gross oversimplification of of what his actual point is.
Speaker 1: But it's it's it's it's more true than any of
Speaker 1: like Freedman's over simplifications. So I'm just I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: believe it at that And this is what the federal
Speaker 1: reserve and like pull Fulker used to try to try
Speaker 1: to fight inflation nineteen seventy nine. Uh. He Volker does
Speaker 1: is he just tries to massively reduce the money supply.
Speaker 1: The problem is that this didn't work like inflation in
Speaker 1: like inflation is still like above temper time. I think
Speaker 1: it's bikes to like like fift percent or something like
Speaker 1: into like nineteen four so and and just based on
Speaker 1: how much larger Huey, Dewey and Louis got sometimes two
Speaker 1: or three. Do you know who else wants? Oh boy,
Speaker 1: that's right, Garrison. All of our sponsors are into duck
Speaker 1: Tales inflation fetish pornography. This is it could happen here
Speaker 1: a podcast sponsored by the concept of masturbating to the
Speaker 1: cast of duck tails getting inflated by bicycle pumps. Oh
Speaker 1: we're back. Well I've done my part. Yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: So so we're left off right. There's there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of inflation happening. Some of it is happening to DuckTales characters,
Speaker 1: most of it is happening to the economy. Uh. Paul
Speaker 1: Volker has tried to stop the inflation by like making
Speaker 1: there be less money and this has done nothing other
Speaker 1: than like dramatically increasing unemployment rate. Now, the problem with
Speaker 1: again freeman sort of explanation of of inflation is that
Speaker 1: inflation assistance to the eighties and it only stops after
Speaker 1: insert foreshadowing noise here. Uh, Reagan crushes the unions and
Speaker 1: were is to solve inflation, we should stop all unions.
Speaker 1: That is your official position. No wow, okay, but this,
Speaker 1: this is this is part of the position of the
Speaker 1: Federal of the Marxist Federal Reserve. So well, we will
Speaker 1: get there a second. So alright, alright. So, so the
Speaker 1: thing I've been describing that that Freeman is pushing about
Speaker 1: the money's way. This is called monitorism, and monitorism is
Speaker 1: like the fakest theory of inflation, like it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a theory of inflation so fake that like even
Speaker 1: other like even other like neo classical economists don't accept it,
Speaker 1: like none of the other different neoliberal schools of economics,
Speaker 1: like every single one of them look at this and
Speaker 1: was like this is nonsense, Like what what are you doing?
Speaker 1: But you know, so okay. So though it's like it's
Speaker 1: like the TikTok astrology compared to the neoliberal court astrology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's all. It's like, it's it's it's somehow
Speaker 1: an even faker x when they of this. But you
Speaker 1: know this, this brings us back to like where we started,
Speaker 1: which is that like, okay, so if the monitorist stuff
Speaker 1: doesn't work, and the Phillips curve also doesn't work, Uh,
Speaker 1: what is causing inflation? And the answer from inside of
Speaker 1: the like the actual field of economics is that nobody knows. Um,
Speaker 1: here's Daniel k Rollo, who was the former Federal was
Speaker 1: a former Federal Reserve Bank governor, and was a member
Speaker 1: of the Federal Reserve Board. So he's a he's a
Speaker 1: very very high ranking like guy inside the sphere of
Speaker 1: people who try to apply econ ship and uh, here's
Speaker 1: here's the quote that he gave about it. In quote,
Speaker 1: the substantive point is that we do not at present
Speaker 1: have a theory of inflation dynamics that works sufficiently well
Speaker 1: to be of use for the business of real time
Speaker 1: monetary policy making. So what are you saying there is
Speaker 1: like if you translate that out of econs beak, and
Speaker 1: you don't even really have to translate that out of
Speaker 1: econs much what he's saying is that he no one
Speaker 1: has any idea why inflation works, and none on the
Speaker 1: models work well enough to let you like try to
Speaker 1: deal with inflation if you're you know, the people who
Speaker 1: control the money supply, like the Fed. Now economists like
Speaker 1: we we we've seen in the past, if you've been
Speaker 1: following this off in the past like ten years issue,
Speaker 1: especially in the last five, economists have been getting like
Speaker 1: increasingly desperate to explain what the fund is happening, and
Speaker 1: they're getting increasingly increasingly desperate right now because you know, hey,
Speaker 1: inflation is back, and that that brings us to the
Speaker 1: paper I mentioned at the top of the episode, which
Speaker 1: who who killed the Phillips Curve and Murder Mystery, which
Speaker 1: opens talking about two sort of massive recent failures of
Speaker 1: the like new Kensie and we fixed we we we
Speaker 1: added variables to the Phillips curve until like sort of
Speaker 1: kind of works ish maybe, but you know, the only
Speaker 1: thing they're talking about two of its sort of like
Speaker 1: incredibly massive failures. The first is in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: where there's you know, there's a recession. Oh really what
Speaker 1: happened economically? A re session? But what's interesting about this right,
Speaker 1: is that? Okay? So if you think about this, there's
Speaker 1: an inflation, is there's there's a recession, unemployment skyrockets, this
Speaker 1: should cause deflation. Well, you know, because you know what
Speaker 1: else happened to us in night the official Duct Hills
Speaker 1: video game came out. So I think we are through
Speaker 1: the looking glass people, you know, I mean this, this
Speaker 1: this is not any more bullshit than any of the
Speaker 1: other stuff they're doing. So like, but you know, okay,
Speaker 1: but there's there's this there's this thing that happens. We're like, okay,
Speaker 1: the like the inflation that the inflation rate should have
Speaker 1: been decreasing and it just stays the same. And economist
Speaker 1: are like what and this is this is called the
Speaker 1: missing deflation ary period. There's there's a second thing where
Speaker 1: dream this sort of like quote unquote economic recovery and
Speaker 1: the last like ten years ish until basically until before
Speaker 1: the pandemic, employment rates dropped really really low, and this
Speaker 1: should have started this year of triggered inflation, but it doesn't.
Speaker 1: And you know, okay, And so the people who run
Speaker 1: the Philip Philips group, like the economist are looking at
Speaker 1: this and they're like, okay, what do we do? And
Speaker 1: the Fed economists. Solution is again and I share you,
Speaker 1: not Marxism, and more specifically, the solution is neo Marxism.
Speaker 1: M Mary. Yeah, yeah, this is this is this is
Speaker 1: this is something else I'm sort of excited about, which
Speaker 1: is that I finally get to tell the world what
Speaker 1: a neo Marxist is, because this is technically a thing.
Speaker 1: It's just that none of the people who talked about
Speaker 1: neo Marxists have any idea what it is. The most
Speaker 1: modern neo marx Actually really well, I mean I guess
Speaker 1: you could have okay, what what once we explain it,
Speaker 1: I will, I will talk about how you could theoretically
Speaker 1: have a post modern neo Marxist. But I don't think
Speaker 1: I ever met whoa how welcome Welltory terms. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I'm excited to hear this. Yeah yeah, all right. So
Speaker 1: what what is happening here is that there's an old
Speaker 1: joke in Marxist circles that like, the most advanced Pushei
Speaker 1: economists is fifty years behind the most vulgar Marxist. And
Speaker 1: this is this coming true. The Federal Reserve economists are developing,
Speaker 1: They're trying to make a new Phillips curve and the
Speaker 1: new Phillips curve is what they call a colleci In
Speaker 1: Phillips curve because it's based for the guys. New curve
Speaker 1: just drops. Yeah, it literally is except this this this
Speaker 1: is this is this is the neo Marxist curve. And
Speaker 1: it's based on the works it's kind of loosely based
Speaker 1: on him, but it's just based on the work of
Speaker 1: a Polish Marxist economist named Mikhail Collecki. And Clucky is
Speaker 1: a he's a very very weird Marxist, like by Marxist standards,
Speaker 1: is extremely weird. And to explain why this is were
Speaker 1: we have to we have to speed We're gonna have
Speaker 1: to speed run Marxism one oh one. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to attempt to explain Marxism in one page. All right,
Speaker 1: let's okay, okay, mark mark markism one oh one. Right.
Speaker 1: You have a worker, she has to go find a
Speaker 1: job and sell her labor to like get food to eat,
Speaker 1: because otherwise you can't support herself. Um, so she goes
Speaker 1: to work at a factory that makes like hospital stretchers.
Speaker 1: Now under capitalism, and this is this is this is
Speaker 1: this is one thing I'm explaining this is this is
Speaker 1: like the this is the orthodox Marxist interpretation. So the
Speaker 1: people who are about to scream at me for a
Speaker 1: million years about how this is wrong, I'm explaining the
Speaker 1: orthodox position. Damnit uh Marxism here? Yeah no, okay, yeah, Chris,
Speaker 1: quick question what what what? What? What was Marx? So
Speaker 1: Marx was a experiment is psychological experiment run by the
Speaker 1: by Harvard University that was concluded in but he wrote,
Speaker 1: he wrote a bunch of books, and one of those
Speaker 1: books is Capital and and in Capital. So okay, so
Speaker 1: you have you have your worker, right, and she she
Speaker 1: she works to make hospel stretchers. And the thing that
Speaker 1: makes the hospital stretcher have value is the amount of
Speaker 1: time that it takes a worker to make it. So
Speaker 1: under under this this sort of understanding of what Marxism is,
Speaker 1: value is just labor time. Right, The value of an
Speaker 1: object is how many hours of work it takes to
Speaker 1: make a thing. Now this labor time or you know,
Speaker 1: like like and like how how long it takes to
Speaker 1: make the thing? Uh, the value of it it isn't
Speaker 1: measured by like how long it takes them like like
Speaker 1: an individual cot, Right, It's measured by like how long
Speaker 1: on average it takes society to make so for you know,
Speaker 1: for example, like you said, this is in Finland, right,
Speaker 1: it's based on how long, on average it takes to
Speaker 1: make a hospital stretcher in Finland, not like you know,
Speaker 1: how long it takes to make him like Olivia or something.
Speaker 1: Um and this is the technical term for the for like,
Speaker 1: this thing is socially necessary labor time. UM. So, our
Speaker 1: worker like works for through her day and after six hours,
Speaker 1: she's produced enough value to support herself. She can buy food,
Speaker 1: she can pay her rent, she can like I don't
Speaker 1: know if you buy a car or something. But she
Speaker 1: still also worked two more hours of the day and
Speaker 1: during that time, the labor that she's doing just goes
Speaker 1: to the boss. And this is called this is called
Speaker 1: surplus value, like the amount of time that you're working
Speaker 1: where you're working for the boss and not to like
Speaker 1: support yourself. Uh. This this, this is called surplus value.
Speaker 1: It is the objective route of exploitation and Marxism. I yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's it's the value that goes directly
Speaker 1: to your boss. That and the reason that like your
Speaker 1: boss can just steal this from muse because they have
Speaker 1: the factor and don't. So if you want to produce
Speaker 1: something for them to survive, you have to go to him.
Speaker 1: And this is this is called the ownership of the
Speaker 1: means of production. Now, the price in theory of of
Speaker 1: this hospital structure, right is based on value on its
Speaker 1: value or how many hours it takes to produce it
Speaker 1: um and how precisely you get from dollars as a
Speaker 1: unit of measurement from two dollars from time is a
Speaker 1: subject of an absolutely interminable debate called transformation problem. If
Speaker 1: you want to go read more about it. I have
Speaker 1: wasted probably four years of my life reading about it.
Speaker 1: I don't recommend it. But the answer is you can
Speaker 1: sort of kind of get it to work if you
Speaker 1: funk with the numbers a lot. Uh. But it's if
Speaker 1: you do what's unclear if they mean anything. You can
Speaker 1: also bypass it entirely by arguing that only works in
Speaker 1: the level of the entire world economy. Blah blah, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. I don't care. If you do care about this,
Speaker 1: don't yell at me. Go read chapter six of Pickler
Speaker 1: and Needson's Capitalist power Palmatics. Theory is critique Fred Moseley's
Speaker 1: Money in Totality and kill Mini mcglare is a temporal
Speaker 1: those system interpretation of Marx's theory of value of Marxist
Speaker 1: value theory. And then google ducktails, go big jennu Wine
Speaker 1: and then send all of that, all of your notes
Speaker 1: on both the texts and the duck tails, send all
Speaker 1: that to I write okay on Twitter, um and they
Speaker 1: get back to please you. You will probably come out
Speaker 1: of like you will come out of the duck yell
Speaker 1: stuff like more saying than you wire doing the Marxism stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but I've I've now covered my basis. This
Speaker 1: is this is this is orthodox Marxism, which is the
Speaker 1: stuff we've been talking about is based on another There's
Speaker 1: another assumption here that's important kind of technically, which is that,
Speaker 1: like so orthodox marks assumed that, like, so you have
Speaker 1: a bunch of sectors of the economy, right, there are
Speaker 1: people who like make different stuff, and the assumption to
Speaker 1: do who make hospital guarantees, people who do more important
Speaker 1: work like make podcasts, yeah, yeah, and and everything in between.
Speaker 1: And the assumption is that, Okay, so you have a
Speaker 1: person who makes like podcasts, right, and then and the
Speaker 1: other people who make costel structures figured out that making
Speaker 1: podcast is more profitable than making hospital stretchers, so they
Speaker 1: start moving all their capital into making podcasts. But then
Speaker 1: because there's too many podcasts, the rate of profit goes down,
Speaker 1: and eventually, like eventually the rate of profit across all
Speaker 1: sectors is supposed to equalize. Yes, yeah, so and and
Speaker 1: this means that, like in the combination of this and
Speaker 1: competition means that prices is supposed to tend towards value
Speaker 1: or like the how much something cost in money is
Speaker 1: supposed to tend towards the labor time socially necessary to
Speaker 1: produce a commodity in a given place. Um, this is
Speaker 1: like the basic thesis of like what you call orthodox
Speaker 1: Marxist like orthodox Marxist political economy, you would probably the
Speaker 1: Marksian political economy, whatever the fun you want to call it. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: in in starting in about the ninet inwenties, there was
Speaker 1: a new Marxism, and this is called neo Marxism. Neo
Speaker 1: Marxism is basic Like I heard about that from Dr
Speaker 1: Jordan B. Peters. Yeah yeah, right now. Now, now we're
Speaker 1: gonna get the inside scoop on on neo mark Exism.
Speaker 1: So Neo Marxism. Their basic thesis is like, what if
Speaker 1: profit rates don't equalize across like betwetween different parts of
Speaker 1: the economy that make things, and you know, and because
Speaker 1: they don't do that, what what if what if you
Speaker 1: don't get competition? Because instead of people being able to
Speaker 1: just freely move capital between like sectors, what if you
Speaker 1: have monopolies? And if you have monopolies, instead of sort
Speaker 1: of price being like a price is just value blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, because theyone can keep moving their money around,
Speaker 1: price is now a price. Price is now derived from
Speaker 1: the power of a corporation because if you know, if
Speaker 1: if if you if you're a powerful enough corporation to
Speaker 1: like have a monopoly and stop anyone else in producing
Speaker 1: the thing that you do. Now you can now you
Speaker 1: can charge word called markups. And this is where Michail
Speaker 1: Collecky like enters from stage left um Collecy like he
Speaker 1: probably should have been the father father of like modern
Speaker 1: macroeconomics in the sense that like he invents a bunch
Speaker 1: of the ship that like Caynes does before Kanes did.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that he's writing a lot of
Speaker 1: this Polish and so the sort of like anglophone like
Speaker 1: economists are not reading it because he's in Poland and
Speaker 1: he's a Marxist and he's writing in polo circles. But
Speaker 1: he invents a bunch of the stuff that like Canes
Speaker 1: invents slightly earlier, and he starts like looking at like
Speaker 1: monopoly and oligarchy theory and he starts trying to apply
Speaker 1: it to Marxism, and it's what you know, his inclusion
Speaker 1: is that monopolies are powerful enough that they can charge
Speaker 1: these markups, which is just like additional price increase over
Speaker 1: like what the like value determined price is supposed to be,
Speaker 1: because they can prevent anyone else from selling a thing.
Speaker 1: And then you know, one what what once you have
Speaker 1: a monopoly in the market, you can force people to
Speaker 1: just like fucking suck it up and pay it because
Speaker 1: they can't get it from anywhere else. And this is
Speaker 1: actually this is like pretty similar in some ways to
Speaker 1: like a bourgeois economic like theory of how this stuff works,
Speaker 1: which is like, oh yeah, in in bourgeois economics, like
Speaker 1: monopolies can increase the price over We're they're supposed to
Speaker 1: be in a perfectly competitive market because they have power
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. But there's something very different
Speaker 1: in Coluckties work that is not in the normal Bushwa stuff,
Speaker 1: which is that what what he argues is that trade unions, Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have a trade union, right, they represented the
Speaker 1: workers who work at a company, and these that these
Speaker 1: trade unions are fighting over the over the product of
Speaker 1: the markup and this keeps the size of markups. Are
Speaker 1: these sort of like these price increases that monopolies are
Speaker 1: doing down because the larger the markup these companies apply,
Speaker 1: the more incentive there are there is for unions to
Speaker 1: sort of like fight for pay increases, right, because okay, well,
Speaker 1: the more expective the goods are, the more money they're
Speaker 1: like very clearly is on hand. And so the larger
Speaker 1: the demands you get from organized labor. And this is
Speaker 1: the insight that who killed the Phillips curve the paper
Speaker 1: I was talking about jumps on that unions fight over
Speaker 1: markups and thus that the strength of unions is part
Speaker 1: of what helps determine inflation. And they point out that
Speaker 1: you know, unions want lower prices and for for goods,
Speaker 1: and the reason they want lower prices for goods is
Speaker 1: that the higher the price is of something, right, the
Speaker 1: less people buy of it, and the less people like
Speaker 1: buy of the thing, the less has to be produced.
Speaker 1: And that means that there's less people being employed. And
Speaker 1: so if you're a union, you want like the most
Speaker 1: number of people being employed as you can. And so
Speaker 1: that means that means that you want you want prices
Speaker 1: to be low, because yeah, that because because lower prices
Speaker 1: means more of the more of the good being produced,
Speaker 1: and more the good being produced means more jobs. And
Speaker 1: this is where we get to sort of the fundamental
Speaker 1: assumption behind the regular Philips drip. And this is also
Speaker 1: true for this sort of like new like pseudo neo
Speaker 1: Marxist one, right, Um, their assumption is that inflation is
Speaker 1: driven by rising wages. And you know, even though the
Speaker 1: unions are trying to sort of like reduce the markup
Speaker 1: and like and reduce markups, reduce prices to increase the
Speaker 1: number of workers, firms are trying to increase prices so
Speaker 1: they can make back the money they're paying out in widges.
Speaker 1: Now when when unemployment is like high, this doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because wages don't rise very fast because there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's this gnormous pool of people who are incredibly desert
Speaker 1: for job, and you can pay them sort of like nothing,
Speaker 1: and they'll they'll come work for you because the al
Speaker 1: turnative is you know, starving or getting evicted. But when
Speaker 1: when unemployment is low, the bargaining power of workers increases,
Speaker 1: and that's that that's that's where the class war starts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this. You see this in ninety one with
Speaker 1: the screen Cartoonists strike that Scrooge McDuck brutally cracked down
Speaker 1: on um and eventually had to seed seed ground to
Speaker 1: the guild. But Scrooge, Scrooge McDuck was was brutal during
Speaker 1: during this time period post the thirties rise of unions.
Speaker 1: That's right, Garrison, and that's a big part of why Huey,
Speaker 1: Dewey and Louie had to track him down in his
Speaker 1: money room and stick a bicycle pump into his mouth
Speaker 1: while he was sleeping and begin to inflate him largely
Speaker 1: while touching themselves critical support. Louis my boy. So as
Speaker 1: as as as with I don't, I can't. I don't
Speaker 1: even know how to transition that I can't do it,
Speaker 1: but nobody does. I mean, really, the main thing is
Speaker 1: that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a
Speaker 1: small number of individuals will inevitably lead to inflation. Which
Speaker 1: is true. And and this is one of the things
Speaker 1: that um that that that the economist are sort of
Speaker 1: talking about here, which is that like, okay, so once
Speaker 1: once you get an actual sort of once you once
Speaker 1: you get like a real class work going on right
Speaker 1: where you're you're you're getting a class work to the
Speaker 1: extent that like the bargaining power of workers into bargaining
Speaker 1: power of of like capitalist firms are essentially like very
Speaker 1: close to being equal. Um, you get inflation. Now, what's
Speaker 1: interesting about this is that when you have strong unions,
Speaker 1: like when you have strong unions, you get high rates
Speaker 1: of inflation during periods of sort of inflation shocks, right,
Speaker 1: because the unions are sort of like propping up wages
Speaker 1: in this theory. But and this is the interesting part, right,
Speaker 1: you get way lower rates of unemployment. And so it's okay,
Speaker 1: it's just step back for a second. So what's happening
Speaker 1: here is, right, if you have if you have strong
Speaker 1: unions and there's something else in the supply chain that
Speaker 1: increases costs, say to to to to pick a completely
Speaker 1: random example that never happened. Uh, say, for example, you're
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and the price of oil is
Speaker 1: quadrupled in one year, and that increases the price of everything.
Speaker 1: Now when when when you have a strong but but
Speaker 1: this never happens, don't google the oil shocks. Actually, literally
Speaker 1: don't google the oil shocks because almost everything written online
Speaker 1: about the oil shocks is a lie. I yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I've talked about that before on the the other bills.
Speaker 1: Never so, but yeah, it's it's all lie. But but basically,
Speaker 1: like one of the what you know, okay, what what
Speaker 1: What happens here is if you if you have strong unions,
Speaker 1: you get a bunch of inflation, but people don't get fired.
Speaker 1: And when when corporations are strong and you don't have unions,
Speaker 1: you know, you get these shocks and the inflation rate
Speaker 1: is much lower, but everyone gets fired. Unemployment rate goes
Speaker 1: up to like ten percent. Uh. It's you know, it's
Speaker 1: an absolute disaster. So that's that's one thing to note
Speaker 1: about about the way the sort of the Philips curve,
Speaker 1: the sort of Marxian Phillips curve, like analyze the situation, right,
Speaker 1: But there's another consequence here, which comes back to like
Speaker 1: what inflation is under a Phillips curve, Right, Inflation in
Speaker 1: Phillips curve is literally just wage increases. Right, So when
Speaker 1: when union power is weak, inflation stuff. But like, what
Speaker 1: does this actually mean? What it means is that wages
Speaker 1: aren't growing, sure, aren't. Yeah, And and this brings us
Speaker 1: back to like the sort of weirdness we saw in
Speaker 1: the earlier part of the episode, right right after two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, right where there should have been deflation because
Speaker 1: the unemployment rate was really high, and also like junior
Speaker 1: recovery period where ninflation rate is unemployment rate is super low.
Speaker 1: But and there should have been inflation, but there wasn't.
Speaker 1: And the answer is why why wasn't their inflation? It's well, okay,
Speaker 1: because no one had a union and so everyone's wages
Speaker 1: just stayed the same the whole time. I have another
Speaker 1: explanation for this. And when I previously when I previously
Speaker 1: said the Ducktails game came out into that to night,
Speaker 1: I was actually incorrect. Uh. Two thousand and eight was
Speaker 1: when Nintendo Power listed the Duck Tails game as the
Speaker 1: thirteenth best Nintendo Entertainment System game. Um, there was it
Speaker 1: was voted that into thousand night. Now it's important that
Speaker 1: thirteen is very unlucky number. So by voting the duck
Speaker 1: Tails game best game from the NS into thousand eight,
Speaker 1: and they could have basically caused a psychic rift in
Speaker 1: the fabric of the universe, creating the financial crash. That's
Speaker 1: fascinating Garrison, because I was thirteen in two thousand one
Speaker 1: when I came across that angel Fire website with home
Speaker 1: drawn Ducktails inflation pornography. Wait, so this I think in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, that's all connected. You
Speaker 1: know who else may have been a contributing factor to
Speaker 1: nine eleven the products and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 1: I think that's right, that's right. We do not accept
Speaker 1: a sponsor unless it gets the explicit sign off of
Speaker 1: the King of Saudi Arabia. Um who, if you'll remember,
Speaker 1: did nine eleven and all right, yeah, I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: getting I'm i I am not getting paid tough to
Speaker 1: properly transition this, so I'm not going to. Uh So
Speaker 1: it turns out that, yeah, so the reason there hasn't
Speaker 1: been inflation is that there's no unions. Because we don't
Speaker 1: have unions. Are wages all suck and uh, this means
Speaker 1: that you know, wages, wages are stagnant low, and it
Speaker 1: means that they're not a drive. The unions aren't a
Speaker 1: driver of inflation. And also low wages are driver inflation
Speaker 1: because they you know, like unions aren't around to increase wages. Now. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the other thing that this suggests is that monetary policy
Speaker 1: and they okay, I think they're they're in exact analysis
Speaker 1: was like I think like eighty four percent of like
Speaker 1: inflation shocks can be explained by looking at like union density. Um.
Speaker 1: But this also means it means what like monetary policy,
Speaker 1: like how much money there is like in the economy
Speaker 1: has like basically no role inflation whatsoever. And and this
Speaker 1: is you know, okay, so like like this has all
Speaker 1: been sort of one perspective from some economists of the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve, And we can ask the question, like why
Speaker 1: does this matter? Right? Like why why why? Why does
Speaker 1: like sort of one like group of people on the
Speaker 1: Fed like their response this matters And partly it matters
Speaker 1: because it's again extremely funny to watch the Federal Reserve
Speaker 1: turning to neo Marxists too, like try to explain why
Speaker 1: inflation happens. But it also matters because theories of inflation
Speaker 1: dictate inflation policy. Um. Jerome Powell, who's the chairman the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve, has had a press conference on May fourth,
Speaker 1: and it's too long to play the whole thing, but
Speaker 1: he has the speech, and he lays out a few
Speaker 1: things that are interesting. So he talks about a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that's causing inflation, rights production bottlenecks, increasing crude
Speaker 1: oil prices, concreasing commodity prices from like Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Like he's lockdowns and shin another keeping factory like clothes,
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, okay, those are all like reasonable things
Speaker 1: that cause inflation. But then when you get to like
Speaker 1: what the Fed is actually going to do, he starts
Speaker 1: talking about how the job market is too good for
Speaker 1: workers right now and unemployment is too low and that's
Speaker 1: what driving wages up. So he's planning he's going to
Speaker 1: tinker around with monetary policy to reduce wages and decrease
Speaker 1: the demand for jobs. And this brings us back to
Speaker 1: like two things. The first part is just the class
Speaker 1: war part of inflation. Right, Prices are rising right now
Speaker 1: because someone inside, like prices are rising right now, and
Speaker 1: someone inside if if you want them to not to
Speaker 1: like cease to continue rising somewhat some part of like
Speaker 1: the company is going to have to take a hit
Speaker 1: to like the their percentage of like the sort of
Speaker 1: the markup, right, like their their percentage of like the
Speaker 1: price increase of the corporations do above like cost and okay,
Speaker 1: so someone has to do this, And the Federal Reserve
Speaker 1: like absolutely wants to make sure that the person paying
Speaker 1: for that is you, the worker. And the second part
Speaker 1: is something you might have picked up on if you're
Speaker 1: paying close attention. And this has been something that's been
Speaker 1: true of of both like the FED chairman and the
Speaker 1: FED economists do this too, which is they do this
Speaker 1: they talk about inflation. They do this kind of two steps, right.
Speaker 1: They talk about a shock or something that causes prices
Speaker 1: to increase, like you know, a bunch of Ukrainian wheat
Speaker 1: like suddenly being on harvest will because the Russian army
Speaker 1: is squatting on it, or like Chinese factory shutting down
Speaker 1: us the amount of weeder price electronics or sorry reduces
Speaker 1: the amount of wheat or the amount of electronics being
Speaker 1: produced that drives out prices. Right, they talk about like
Speaker 1: there's an inflationary shock, and then they start talking and
Speaker 1: instead of talking about that anymore, they start talking about
Speaker 1: unemployment levels and the job market and monetary policy being
Speaker 1: what drives inflation. And I think this is this is
Speaker 1: a very important piece of ideology because if you look
Speaker 1: at what's going on here, right if if you know,
Speaker 1: if you go back to the seventies, it's not like
Speaker 1: inflation in the seventies is not the Union's fault, like
Speaker 1: you know, the the the in the inflation in the
Speaker 1: seventies was like in large part the original price increases
Speaker 1: because the price of oil country country pulled in one year.
Speaker 1: But you know, but the Fed instead focuses on wage
Speaker 1: increases is what drives inflation, even even if they're sort
Speaker 1: of like using like Marxists to do it. And what
Speaker 1: they're doing here is shifting the focus from the actual
Speaker 1: shock that is like the thing, the immediate thing that
Speaker 1: is increasing prices, and they're shifting the focus from the
Speaker 1: shock to the people who are reacting to it. And
Speaker 1: from there the question stops being about like d link
Speaker 1: with the shock itself and starts being about who's going
Speaker 1: to pay for these price increases, and in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: like Reagan's Reagan solution, this iss well, okay, she's just
Speaker 1: gonna make organized labor pay for it. And so she
Speaker 1: just annihilates the annihilist the unions. He uses the state
Speaker 1: to do it, just crushes the unions completely. And price increases,
Speaker 1: you know, prices stop increasing, right, And they stop increasing
Speaker 1: because the production costs of all of these goods like
Speaker 1: decrease because workers are no longer getting paid and they
Speaker 1: lose all their benefits. But this is the thing they
Speaker 1: never dealt with the actual source of the problem, right,
Speaker 1: Oil prices are still really high to this day, and
Speaker 1: we've never transitioned off oil. And so to look at
Speaker 1: sort of that problem, I want to briefly look at
Speaker 1: another theory of inflation, which is one presented by Steve Mann,
Speaker 1: who I think I've actually had on the show before.
Speaker 1: He's one of the people at Strange Matters, and he
Speaker 1: wrote he wrote this article called Notes towards the Theory
Speaker 1: of Inflation, which is based on the work of a
Speaker 1: heterodox economist named Frederick Lee, who is he's a cool
Speaker 1: guy and all of his stuff is like completely out
Speaker 1: there from the compens from decomperspective of but it it
Speaker 1: makes more sense than most regularly kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: the sort of like founding observation of like that like
Speaker 1: project Lys basing his stuff on is that like, okay,
Speaker 1: prices are not set by like an abstract market. Right,
Speaker 1: the price of something in a grocery store is set
Speaker 1: by a guy like that there there there was a
Speaker 1: specific guy or they are like several specific guys whose
Speaker 1: job it is to set the prices for the firm. Um.
Speaker 1: This this this theory of like what it's not even
Speaker 1: a theory, like the fact that this is how prices
Speaker 1: are formed by just a guy who sits there with
Speaker 1: a notebook or like a computer. Is this is what
Speaker 1: the price is going to be. This is called administered prices.
Speaker 1: And Lee like very confestently argues that like this is
Speaker 1: how firm This is how both large and small firms
Speaker 1: actually set their prices. Right, a guy calculates his expenses,
Speaker 1: he adds a mark up, and he sets the price. Now,
Speaker 1: Steve Man argues that these prices don't generally tend to
Speaker 1: increase naturally because the price setters don't generally want to
Speaker 1: just increase the price randomly, because if you if you
Speaker 1: increase the price randomly, you will piss off your customers.
Speaker 1: And the customers, you know, okay, they'll they'll tolerate like
Speaker 1: some small increases, but if if you raise the price enough,
Speaker 1: they lose your goodwill towards your brand, and they'll like
Speaker 1: they'll go off and try to find another brand. And
Speaker 1: this is disastrous because even if you reduce the prices
Speaker 1: back down again, like the good will is lost. And
Speaker 1: that's sort of like you know, the sort of like
Speaker 1: happy association that like you have in your brain between
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like Nestly chocolate or something, or
Speaker 1: like whatever brand of things you're buying, like you get
Speaker 1: piste off of them because the price is now like
Speaker 1: way higher. So you know, you don't go back to
Speaker 1: the same like grocery store because that they've increased their prices.
Speaker 1: Now obviously this is like there's like this subject constraints, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if if you need insulin and the monopoly that controls
Speaker 1: insulin production, just jack's the price, You're screwed, right, there's
Speaker 1: no sort of like there's no other place you can
Speaker 1: get insulin unless you're gonna try to make it so
Speaker 1: your your your solutions are you either try to ration
Speaker 1: it and you die, or you pay for the price increases.
Speaker 1: And this this is bad and it does happen. But
Speaker 1: most goods aren't like this, and so price increases, when
Speaker 1: they happen, tend to be small and fairly infrequent, unless
Speaker 1: unless the person that the reason this doesn't this wouldn't
Speaker 1: happen is if the person setting the price has no choice.
Speaker 1: And the main reason that if you're a person setting
Speaker 1: a price, that you would have no choice but to
Speaker 1: increase like the price that that that that you're setting.
Speaker 1: The main reason you would do this because something happened
Speaker 1: to your supply chain. UM, I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: if you all see that. There was a TikTok going
Speaker 1: around from a farmer in Iowa who was talking about
Speaker 1: like why why food prices are gonna keep increasing? The woman, honestly,
Speaker 1: I bless her heart, honestly thinks that food prices are
Speaker 1: not going to go up. She thinks that this is
Speaker 1: the highest they're going to go. I tried to explain
Speaker 1: to her that that was not the case, that they're
Speaker 1: absolutely going to go up even more. Um, And I
Speaker 1: told her there are things that like we have to buy.
Speaker 1: There's something we had to buy that two years ago
Speaker 1: cost is four dollars. Last year was about forty six.
Speaker 1: This year it is costing US nineties six dollars. Okay,
Speaker 1: local farmer fifty had a cattle. It's costing him eight
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a month to feed them. Please understand, food
Speaker 1: prices are going to go, yeah, and so and so
Speaker 1: you can see here what's happening. Is it like at
Speaker 1: some point down the supply chain, prices are increasing either
Speaker 1: because of like climate change, because of the word Ukraine,
Speaker 1: because of COVID, because of like any thousands sort of
Speaker 1: other factors. And eventually the like the farmers who are
Speaker 1: setting the prices, right, they have to increase their prices
Speaker 1: because they don't they don't have a choice, right, because
Speaker 1: because the each person further back in the suppyline as
Speaker 1: a charity, right, like they have to be able to
Speaker 1: pay a bunch of ship builds. Yeah, and and this
Speaker 1: this sort you know that this is the Steve calls
Speaker 1: it like that. He calls it the supply chain theory
Speaker 1: of inflation. Right, and you know in this model, like
Speaker 1: this is what's causing inflation, right, Each person successively down
Speaker 1: the line has to eat has to increase their mark
Speaker 1: up because they have to cover them, They have to
Speaker 1: cover the new, newly increased production costs. And this is
Speaker 1: important because unlike most models of inflation, inflation isn't being
Speaker 1: caused by like some kind of like giant macroeconomic thing,
Speaker 1: like it's not being caused by like unemployment or like
Speaker 1: monetary policy, but it's being caused by very very specific
Speaker 1: micro recon like forces that you know, there are literally
Speaker 1: specific people who as a reaction to a specific thing
Speaker 1: happening that makes production harder or increasing their prices. And
Speaker 1: this is a very different sort of you know that
Speaker 1: this is a very very different theory of inflation than
Speaker 1: like any of the like seventeen mainstream ones, all of
Speaker 1: which are bad in various ways. And yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: there's one other thing I want to mention though that
Speaker 1: kind of isn't talked about in this model, that is
Speaker 1: absolutely happening right now, and that's um And then something
Speaker 1: that is really one of the drivers of inflation, which
Speaker 1: is that corporations are raising prices because they think they
Speaker 1: can get away with it, and they're just pocketing the
Speaker 1: costs and and this isn't So this isn't like a
Speaker 1: sort of speculative thing. Uh. Companies, when you ask them
Speaker 1: about it, are very very open about it. Here here's
Speaker 1: from a Business Insider article. What we are very good
Speaker 1: at is pricing. Colgate Palm of Oil CEO Noah Wallace said,
Speaker 1: whether it's foreign exchange inflation or raw unpacking material areo inflation,
Speaker 1: we have found ways over time to recover that in
Speaker 1: our margin line. We've been we've been very comfortable with
Speaker 1: our ability to pass on the increases that we've seen
Speaker 1: at this point, said Croker CFO Gary Miller Chip in October.
Speaker 1: And we would expect that to continue to be the case.
Speaker 1: And here here's from here's from the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: where more people talk about doing this. We have not
Speaker 1: seen any material reaction from consumers, Procter and Gamble finance
Speaker 1: chief Andre Sholton said last week, referring to a string
Speaker 1: of price increases that went into effect in September. So
Speaker 1: that makes us feel good about our relative position. Now,
Speaker 1: those two articles, like, just those two articles alone talk
Speaker 1: about prices raising, Like talk about companies that are just
Speaker 1: raising prices because they know consumers will pay for it.
Speaker 1: Because I think there's inflation happening. And those companies just
Speaker 1: from those two articles alone include Procter and Gamble, nest LEA, Verizon, Unilever, Colgate,
Speaker 1: Palm of Oil, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Gillette, Chipotle, A, T
Speaker 1: and T, Verizon, Kimberly, Clark Corp, Clarox, Reynolds, Kroeger's, and
Speaker 1: Albertson and like that. That's that's just like the corporations
Speaker 1: in the article that are like specifically named as talking
Speaker 1: about having done this right. And they can get away
Speaker 1: with this because normally, normally write price increases to piss
Speaker 1: people off, they go to go free for brands. But
Speaker 1: if if prices across the board are already increasing, you
Speaker 1: can you can just like do basically like a price
Speaker 1: gouge increase, and you can do and you can increase
Speaker 1: your markup and it doesn't it doesn't affect your goodwill
Speaker 1: because people just assume that inflation is already happening, and
Speaker 1: that inflation happens sort of naturally. Is either because the
Speaker 1: wage like wages are too high, there's too much money
Speaker 1: in circulation, so oh, there's just like inflation happening. Is
Speaker 1: this like abstract thing instead of what is actually happening,
Speaker 1: which there are very specific like they're individual people with
Speaker 1: with names and addresses who specifically increase the price in
Speaker 1: order to screw you. And that that that's that's what's
Speaker 1: actually at stake here, and having explanation for why inflation happens,
Speaker 1: it tells you who to blame for it. Like right now,
Speaker 1: Larry Summers, who was the former Treasury secretary who was
Speaker 1: responsible for arguably responsible for two thousand directly responsible for
Speaker 1: two thousand eight h one of people who completely annihilated
Speaker 1: the entire Russian economy in the nineties. Uh, he is
Speaker 1: has apparently been on the phone with Joe Biden, and
Speaker 1: he is going around saying that in order to solve inflation,
Speaker 1: we have to cut wages, in rage the unemployment rate
Speaker 1: to five percent, like for five years, like on average
Speaker 1: five percent for five years. And so this means either
Speaker 1: five percent of five percent, five years of five percent inflation,
Speaker 1: two years of inflation at seven point five percent, or
Speaker 1: like one year of teen percent unemployment. And again unemployment
Speaker 1: right now is it like three percent? So she's talking
Speaker 1: about millions, potentially tens of millions of people losing their
Speaker 1: jobs in in order to in order to solve inflation,
Speaker 1: because Summers, again, Summers is going back on the sort
Speaker 1: of Phillips model ship, right, where inflation is caused by
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't even matter what's actually causing the inflation,
Speaker 1: which is a bunch of a combination of price gouging
Speaker 1: and like, uh, supply chage distructions. Right, She's going, Okay,
Speaker 1: who His theory isn't about what is causing inflation. His
Speaker 1: theory is about who's way to pay for it. And
Speaker 1: his solution is, fuck you. You are going to pay
Speaker 1: for it. You're going to pay for both the price increases,
Speaker 1: which the prices won't fucking come back down. That's the
Speaker 1: other part of this, right, Once, once you get inflation,
Speaker 1: and once the prices rise, they're sticky, they don't fucking fall.
Speaker 1: And what he's saying is, yeah, fuck you, you are
Speaker 1: going to pay for it. You're going to continue to
Speaker 1: pay these prices. You're also going to pay for it
Speaker 1: by reducing your wages. You're going to pay for it
Speaker 1: by getting fired. And you know, and this is this
Speaker 1: is the sort of the choice that we have, right.
Speaker 1: It's either we let the ruling class tell exactly the
Speaker 1: same stories about why inflation happens. They've been telling fifty
Speaker 1: years that they know we're wrong, that they that they
Speaker 1: know are so wrong they are desperate enough to turn
Speaker 1: to fucking Marxism to try to find explanations for it.
Speaker 1: Or we find it, we find a new like explanation
Speaker 1: of why fucking inflation happens, and we go back, we
Speaker 1: take the stuff that they've stolen from us, and then
Speaker 1: we appropriate the bastards so they don't do it again.
Speaker 1: And that is that that that that is what I
Speaker 1: have to say about inflation. Yeah, I mean again, what
Speaker 1: what we need to do is if we organize as
Speaker 1: a people and as the people become the vacuum tube
Speaker 1: that we need to shove down the esophagus of Summers
Speaker 1: and other members of the ruling class in order to
Speaker 1: inflate their organs so that their asshole widens and we
Speaker 1: can collectively fuck them until they deflate. Is that more
Speaker 1: or less accurate? Chris? Would you say? Economically? Sure? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know this is honestly okay, I would say, like
Speaker 1: this is the thing that this is the thing about
Speaker 1: having an explation for wine inflation happens. Right, It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if it's true or not. You can. As long
Speaker 1: as long as you have a compelling enough explanation for
Speaker 1: inflation to cause people to do something, you can, you can.
Speaker 1: I mean, and this this is one of the things,
Speaker 1: for example, like this is one of the things that
Speaker 1: caused tenement to happen, is that there was skywalketing inflation
Speaker 1: and the like workers had an explanation of inflation. It
Speaker 1: wasn't right, like yeah, I mean that their explation for
Speaker 1: inflation had to do with like the like China was
Speaker 1: taking in a bunch of owns and the CCP was
Speaker 1: spending all their money on sports cars and it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of marginal whether it was like true
Speaker 1: or not, but it doesn't matter, right infla inflation could
Speaker 1: be caused by the fact that we haven't fucking inflated
Speaker 1: right on that point. And this is this is this
Speaker 1: is true. You can look this up online. Um So,
Speaker 1: the original Ducktails game from nine was remastered in two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, and it was real. It was released on
Speaker 1: August thirteen, two thousand thirteen. The remaster of the Duct
Speaker 1: Tails game thirteen thirteen, both on Lucky Never. I think
Speaker 1: that could have just just as much to do with
Speaker 1: our current economic problem around inflation as basically anything else
Speaker 1: Chris has said here um because August two thousand thirteen
Speaker 1: Ducktails getting released Scrooge McDuck main character. That is too
Speaker 1: much to be a coincidence. Yeah, we are through the
Speaker 1: looking glass. I can see the nords like there's there's
Speaker 1: there's no getting away from this one. Look you all
Speaker 1: you have to do is you just gotta go. You
Speaker 1: gotta show up to the room with the fucking money
Speaker 1: is and you gotta take it from them. Do you
Speaker 1: guys shop up to you kind of show up to
Speaker 1: the factories and inflate your bosses and you will inflation
Speaker 1: will come down. Yeah, it would work. Everybody, welcome to
Speaker 1: it could happen here the podcast about stuff falling apart
Speaker 1: and perhaps how we could begin to put them back together. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Garrison Davis. We've had a lot of
Speaker 1: doom and gloom the past few weeks here on the pod,
Speaker 1: so this episode we more folks used on the putting
Speaker 1: stuff back together side of the spectrum. We'll be talking
Speaker 1: with Elizabeth Blackburn of the First Collective, a group of volunteers, organizers,
Speaker 1: and activists in Columbus, Ohio focused on direct grassroots action
Speaker 1: and mutual aid, but we'll be specifically talking about a
Speaker 1: volunteer run homeless encampment that's currently serving around people in
Speaker 1: the near east side of Columbus. Here's some of the
Speaker 1: history from Elizabeth. The project started as a warming station
Speaker 1: at the end of January UM and has morphed into
Speaker 1: a autonomous encampment that's largely self governed and managed by
Speaker 1: a loose network of mutual aid organizations that came together
Speaker 1: during the risings. This is this is as flatting organization
Speaker 1: as we can make it, and we're you know, we're
Speaker 1: trying to make it flatter, and I just think it's
Speaker 1: important that the people recognize, you know, going out with
Speaker 1: resources is great, but going out and finding out what
Speaker 1: resources people need is better. There are so many groups
Speaker 1: in our city that are supposed to be doing this
Speaker 1: work that are not, and they're being paid to do
Speaker 1: this work, and it's ineffective. And all I want is
Speaker 1: for for more people to try and do it their
Speaker 1: own way, to try and do what their community wants,
Speaker 1: you know, to the best of their abilities. We've seen
Speaker 1: lots of projects grow out of the mutual a networks
Speaker 1: that were established. It's been interesting to see how people
Speaker 1: in the wake of the George Floyd uprising have built
Speaker 1: off things that started two years ago, what's changed in
Speaker 1: their practice, and how it's evolved since then. This past
Speaker 1: winter in this area of Columbus, Ohio, there was community
Speaker 1: needs not being at people having to be out in
Speaker 1: the cold and not having a place to stay. This
Speaker 1: problem was recognized by people, but unfortunately, far too many
Speaker 1: people just look at problems and just be like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: here's the thing that sucks. Well, that's too bad. But
Speaker 1: today we'll be talking about how a collective of people
Speaker 1: didn't simply acknowledge a problem, but actually went past that
Speaker 1: point and decided that even with limited resources, they have
Speaker 1: the capacity to actually figure out how to solve this
Speaker 1: themselves and provide a solution for the community. I think
Speaker 1: the first time I really tried something like that was
Speaker 1: in December. A friend of mine had reached out about
Speaker 1: a camp on the south side of Columbus that was
Speaker 1: being swept by the city and they had needs. They
Speaker 1: needed new tents so they could set up elsewhere, They
Speaker 1: needed food and water like they always did, and they
Speaker 1: needed people to be there. Um to keep, you know,
Speaker 1: to prevent violence from occurring as much as possible. UM. So,
Speaker 1: hearing about that, I started a I set up on
Speaker 1: my street in a bougie part of Columbus um with
Speaker 1: a little sign and collected goods whatever people dropped off.
Speaker 1: I collected money. Um. I raised about two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and uh, I think we ended up buying around twenty
Speaker 1: two tenths. UM got other people there as well, and
Speaker 1: tried to make sure everybody had what they needed so
Speaker 1: they could get set up elsewhere. But that was my first,
Speaker 1: like my first experience with that, doing it hands on
Speaker 1: and seeing that that worked, that encouraged me to do more.
Speaker 1: So that. How has it grown and changed since then?
Speaker 1: There's still a need for people to stay. Um it
Speaker 1: still gets pretty cold at night. Um So how throughout
Speaker 1: throughout winter? How did the project kind of morphin change?
Speaker 1: How do you go about finding like places to actually
Speaker 1: like set up the physical spot, right, Like, that's that's
Speaker 1: a whole it's a whole other problem. Um is all
Speaker 1: like the is all like the logistical side of things, Yeah, exactly. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: we happened to have a space late last fall. I
Speaker 1: was invited to join a collective at first, collective that
Speaker 1: was operating out of a church that largely um falling
Speaker 1: into disrepair, but still operating as a church, and because
Speaker 1: we had that space, a couple of members of the
Speaker 1: collective encountered some folks in the neighborhood who needed a
Speaker 1: place to sleep. They were sleeping in a bus stop
Speaker 1: on a snowy night, and we just decided to start
Speaker 1: giving them a place to stay because we had a place.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a super popular decision, but um, we had
Speaker 1: community back in. Conflicts from some people in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: who were more nimby minded did obviously come up, along
Speaker 1: with the complaints from the church that the first collective
Speaker 1: was operating out of. For the community's part, when we
Speaker 1: were at the church, we were in a part of
Speaker 1: the neighborhood that had largely been gentrified, and so there
Speaker 1: was some some resistance, some concern about the changing face
Speaker 1: of the community and about the safety of kids and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. But we didn't have any
Speaker 1: real safety concerns, not not in our not inside beyond
Speaker 1: a couple encounters that we had to deescalate um and
Speaker 1: a few people that we had to remove for based
Speaker 1: on their behavior UM, but from inside the church, from
Speaker 1: the church organization UM. The conflict started pretty early on.
Speaker 1: They didn't really like how we operated, and we got
Speaker 1: a reputation as a warming space with no rules, and
Speaker 1: so they felt like because couples could sleep next to
Speaker 1: each other, UM, because people could go outside for a
Speaker 1: cigarette at night, because they weren't locked in the building,
Speaker 1: that we were running a space that was out of control.
Speaker 1: Well until we were kicked out of the church on
Speaker 1: March twenty nine. I think it was the physical infrastructure
Speaker 1: was there. It was just a matter of getting caughts
Speaker 1: and blankets and making sure that people had food. Most
Speaker 1: of that was either through just one off donations to
Speaker 1: my cash app or I bought it with my own
Speaker 1: funds UM. Once we were forced to move outside, it
Speaker 1: got a lot more complicated UM because at that point
Speaker 1: we didn't have any tents UM. We had to go
Speaker 1: out that night and purchase. The day that we were removed,
Speaker 1: we had to go out and purchase I believed ten
Speaker 1: tents to start and then had a couple dropped off UM.
Speaker 1: We now held around twenty tents UM. A lot of
Speaker 1: those were purchased by by me or by donations that
Speaker 1: we received UM or had been dropped off by by
Speaker 1: friends or people in the neighborhood. UM that has been
Speaker 1: you know, the physical infrastructure is mostly tents and canopies,
Speaker 1: and most of them are being held up by pieces
Speaker 1: of old tents or large tree limbs or whatever we
Speaker 1: can to survive the wind, because it's been nothing but
Speaker 1: windstorms for the past well since we got here. Our
Speaker 1: first camp site was set up on a lot that
Speaker 1: was connected to the farm four Seasons City Farm UM.
Speaker 1: Several of the members of the collective are former paid
Speaker 1: employees of the farm or multi year volunteers. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a large organization on this part in this part
Speaker 1: of the town UM Old Town East UM, with about
Speaker 1: fifteen I believe years of history and goodwill UM. So
Speaker 1: we set up next to their lot. But because they're
Speaker 1: on land bank land, we we didn't want to interfere
Speaker 1: with their lease with the city. So rather than risk
Speaker 1: the farm getting fined or UM having having their least broken,
Speaker 1: we we look next door to a lot on the
Speaker 1: other side of a chain length fence m two lots actually,
Speaker 1: one is owned by the city. That's the one where
Speaker 1: most of our tents are and then one is owned
Speaker 1: by a private owner who's a rather wealthy person in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. UM. We've done our best to stay on
Speaker 1: the city lot and that has been good for us.
Speaker 1: But we're also maintaining both lots and doing our best
Speaker 1: to keep the trash to a minimum UM to make
Speaker 1: sure that we're not tearying up the ground as much
Speaker 1: as we can, though it's hard with all this rain,
Speaker 1: h and and just do our best to be good
Speaker 1: neighbors UM and I think that has helped us a lot.
Speaker 1: In recent years, lower class Columbus area residents lost twenty
Speaker 1: thousand units of housing due to unaffordable spiking rent prices
Speaker 1: and annual point in time tally this year organized by
Speaker 1: the Community Shelter Board on the number of homeless people
Speaker 1: in official Columbus and Franklin County emergency shelters increased by
Speaker 1: more than two hundred people since one and online data
Speaker 1: from the Shelter Board of a nonprofit organization that receives
Speaker 1: funding from the City of Columbus and other organizations, indicates
Speaker 1: that as of March, there was a seven percent drop
Speaker 1: in the rate of people exiting their program and moving
Speaker 1: into stable housing as compared to last year, going from
Speaker 1: thirty three percent to twenty six A lot of times
Speaker 1: more formalized shelters are not ideal for people to stay in.
Speaker 1: There's many issues with the formalized shelters regarding the specific
Speaker 1: rules of when you can get inside, how long you
Speaker 1: can be inside, whether you're locked inside the building, what
Speaker 1: stuff you can bring with you. At best, they are
Speaker 1: challenging to navigate. At worst, they're simply hostile to people
Speaker 1: looking for shelter. I asked Elizabeth what her take on
Speaker 1: the homeless shelter situation is like in Columbus and the
Speaker 1: ways their encampment is different from the more official shelters.
Speaker 1: We have limited beds, and then the beds that are
Speaker 1: available are mostly under the governance of the Shelter Board,
Speaker 1: and the shelter Board wasn't too fond of us either
Speaker 1: because we weren't following all their rules. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of concerns about the way the shelters run.
Speaker 1: The people that stay with us, the people that come through,
Speaker 1: they feel safer here. Um there's considerably less drug use.
Speaker 1: There's basically no distribution. We try to keep a handle
Speaker 1: on that because it you know, would bring problems to
Speaker 1: the camp should it happen there. Um, we are a
Speaker 1: safe use space. We do have harm reduction materials and
Speaker 1: they know that, UM, and we we do our best
Speaker 1: to you know, just make sure that people have the
Speaker 1: care and the safety that they need. And that is
Speaker 1: kind of a dirty word. While all of those are
Speaker 1: kind of dirty words. And the shelter organizing community, I guess,
Speaker 1: UM care and and you know, making people comfortable, it's
Speaker 1: just not really the goal. Next I asked about what
Speaker 1: types of connections the encampment and First Collective have been
Speaker 1: making with various organizations for infrastructural support or daily needs,
Speaker 1: as well as inquiring about the relations the camp has
Speaker 1: with the city government. Here is Elizabeth's response. Really reached
Speaker 1: out to the different you know, harm reduction groups, the
Speaker 1: different houselessness groups that the emergency action groups, UH, different
Speaker 1: serve groups, and we just asked them to bring what
Speaker 1: they could or to send people if they could, just
Speaker 1: you know, whatever they could spare. And and it's worked. UM.
Speaker 1: People show up with whatever they have to offer. UM
Speaker 1: from all over the city and and just from around
Speaker 1: the corner, which has been wonderful that the grassroots community
Speaker 1: support is just blowing my mind. I thought they were
Speaker 1: going to hate us, and here we are like making
Speaker 1: friends with everybody. Our first goal is to make sure
Speaker 1: that we've met people's needs as best we can. Um.
Speaker 1: You know that that involves right now, UM, keeping propane
Speaker 1: on site so that they can cook some of the
Speaker 1: food that's brought. Um. We get a lot of prepared meals,
Speaker 1: but we also get a lot of ingredients, and there
Speaker 1: are quite a few people here that cook and have
Speaker 1: done pretty miraculous things with a couple of propane girls. Um.
Speaker 1: We try and have meals prepared every day, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't always work out, and sometimes we fill the
Speaker 1: gaps with little Caesar's or or something else, um whatever
Speaker 1: whatever it can be scraunged up at the last minute.
Speaker 1: Some of our biggest allies so far have been and um,
Speaker 1: the local food not bombs. Uh, they've been wonderful, as
Speaker 1: well as some different church groups that that run nonprofits
Speaker 1: like Community Kitchen. We got our meals provided six days
Speaker 1: a week by church that's basically down the street and
Speaker 1: around the corner. But as far as the city goes.
Speaker 1: For the first couple of days, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of roll bys um, a lot of city officials taking pictures,
Speaker 1: no one really talking to us, but you know, there
Speaker 1: was clearly concern. It wasn't until a man who works
Speaker 1: for the city and outreach under the Safety and Security Department,
Speaker 1: Sean Stevenson, came out and talked to us. Uh that
Speaker 1: we really started to see the possibilities of working with
Speaker 1: the city and in so much as they let us.
Speaker 1: He brought a city attorney, Steve Dunbar, and a gentleman
Speaker 1: from the mayor's office, UM, Jason jim Ends by Q
Speaker 1: talk to our folks, and they listened. They listened to
Speaker 1: the people at the camp, who explained to them why
Speaker 1: they were here, explained to them why the resources that
Speaker 1: are available didn't work for them. You know, it was
Speaker 1: a it was a tearful conversation and since then they've
Speaker 1: largely left us alone. UM. We wish that they would
Speaker 1: provide some of the resources that they talked about, like
Speaker 1: a couple of porta potties and a dumpster, but you know,
Speaker 1: we we do our best or their composting toilet and
Speaker 1: the good grace of some very kind neighbors. Police raids
Speaker 1: and sweeps are always an existential fear for those living
Speaker 1: in diway encampments. Here's what Elizabeth had to say about
Speaker 1: sweeps and police interactions. What we've been told is that
Speaker 1: they are They've been told to leave us alone. We've
Speaker 1: heard this from the cops themselves. We heard this from
Speaker 1: people who have talked to them. UM. But the precinct
Speaker 1: that is in this area has been told not to
Speaker 1: mess with us unless there is a violent conflict. The
Speaker 1: thing to do prop stuff at. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of sweeps that have been threatened around the city of
Speaker 1: different camps. UM. They've received notice or notice of notice,
Speaker 1: so they don't know exactly when, but it's supposed to
Speaker 1: happen sometime. UM. But as far as we're concerned, we
Speaker 1: haven't really had that problem. UM crops have come through.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of times when they've been called
Speaker 1: by by people disgruntled residents or um by neighbors, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, they talked to us and then
Speaker 1: they leave. We we do our best as volunteers to
Speaker 1: get between the police and other other groups that come
Speaker 1: out UM, even even the outreach groups that we know
Speaker 1: are are here to help, just because those interactions can
Speaker 1: can quickly get volatile. If you know if people aren't
Speaker 1: sure about other people's intentions. So I would say that
Speaker 1: one of the best interactions I've had with the cops
Speaker 1: is they did come through here once and talk to
Speaker 1: a few folks, and a sergeant from the police department said, um,
Speaker 1: roughly that they couldn't make us leave because this was
Speaker 1: city land and they didn't have anywhere else to send us.
Speaker 1: So okay, I'll take it. I've got it. I've got
Speaker 1: the dr assaultation. Elizabeth does hope that one day the
Speaker 1: relations between the church that first Collective was previously operating
Speaker 1: out of could be mended and once again work to
Speaker 1: utilize the space to serve the Wedder community. She also
Speaker 1: discussed the possibility of moving into vacant buildings and hoping
Speaker 1: to restore them while also having a place to provide
Speaker 1: more stable housing. So where the church is concerned, UM,
Speaker 1: I haven't given apprope. We we aren't in the building now.
Speaker 1: I don't have a key, but I got a church
Speaker 1: every Sunday. Um I'm not I'm not a Christian. I
Speaker 1: don't believe in God, but I do like the messages
Speaker 1: that I get there, and I I want to continue
Speaker 1: to use this really wonderful building as a part of
Speaker 1: the community, you know it's there. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of goals that that we as a camp have and
Speaker 1: some of them include the church and we we'd love
Speaker 1: to get back into that space and fix the two
Speaker 1: bathrooms in the basement that are just sitting there, build
Speaker 1: some showers, laundry facilities, a free store, kitchen. There's there's
Speaker 1: so much that we could do if we could utilize
Speaker 1: that building in addition to the the infrastructure that we
Speaker 1: have here um. But when it comes to two buildings
Speaker 1: something more. We're currently working on a proposal for the
Speaker 1: city for some of the relief funds that have been
Speaker 1: received but not dispersed with the goals of ideally building
Speaker 1: little cabins on platforms on the lot that we're on now,
Speaker 1: just to start to get people out of tents, to
Speaker 1: start meeting some of the code requirements to improve the
Speaker 1: sanitary and living conditions, and then from there we'll ask
Speaker 1: them to give us a building to restore. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of really skilled people out here and they want
Speaker 1: to work, and they want to work on all of
Speaker 1: these old buildings that have been allowed to fall apart
Speaker 1: all over the city. There are so many rooms available.
Speaker 1: There's so many units that they could work on that
Speaker 1: they could live in, and I think that's what they
Speaker 1: want to do, So that's what we're going to try
Speaker 1: and help them do. The camp functions under a sort
Speaker 1: of direct democracy with residents and first collective volunteers, some
Speaker 1: of whom are all residents, hold regular community meetings where
Speaker 1: camp occupants vote to make decisions about camp guidelines. There
Speaker 1: has been a couple instances of violence, UM, a couple
Speaker 1: particularly scary moments that we had to try and de escalate.
Speaker 1: And there's sometimes that we didn't handle things as best
Speaker 1: we could UM, but we we try, and we tried
Speaker 1: to talk through the way that the way that it
Speaker 1: goes down with the residents, among the volunteers. UM. We
Speaker 1: try to be transparent about you know, why why we
Speaker 1: make some of the decisions that we do, and for
Speaker 1: the most part, we leave it to the community. UM.
Speaker 1: There have been some really great community meetings go so long, UM,
Speaker 1: but they talk about everything they talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: shared concerns about safety, concerns about how they want to
Speaker 1: live together and what would make and feel safer, and
Speaker 1: established guidelines and occasionally vote to remove people. So UM,
Speaker 1: we've managed to resolve some of those conflicts before they
Speaker 1: went that far. I initially talked with Elizabeth in May two,
Speaker 1: but I was able to catch up with her a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago to hear about what's been going on
Speaker 1: the past month. UM. I just wanted to kind of
Speaker 1: fill you in on what we've been up to UM
Speaker 1: over the past month or so. It's it's been busy. UM.
Speaker 1: We've been to a lot of Area Commission meetings for
Speaker 1: the different areas of the city to try and make
Speaker 1: some allies and talk to people about what we think
Speaker 1: is a solution to a problem they don't know how
Speaker 1: to solve, but to get some unwanted attention. A local station,
Speaker 1: Tim TB came through with a bit of an agenda.
Speaker 1: Right now, the city of Columbus has a problem and
Speaker 1: it has to do with homelessness. I can't set up
Speaker 1: on city property along East Mound Street in the middle
Speaker 1: of the Near East Side neighborhood, is raising questions tonight
Speaker 1: about whether the twenty people who live there should be
Speaker 1: allowed to stay are forced to go to Kevin Landers
Speaker 1: has been working the story all day. Today. He went
Speaker 1: to the camp and spoke to those who lived there
Speaker 1: and got answers from city leaders about addressing concerns from
Speaker 1: neighbors who say that camp it's got to go. This
Speaker 1: on Housing community is located on East Mound Street. The
Speaker 1: people who live here, the city says, are technically trespassing.
Speaker 1: The city says they're going to let them stay here
Speaker 1: until they can find housing, but not everybody wants them here.
Speaker 1: They wanted to talk specifically about our sanitation situation and
Speaker 1: nothing else. Um. I told them we've been waiting on
Speaker 1: the city since abol fifteen for the dumpster the Port
Speaker 1: of John's if they'd offered, but um, they were still
Speaker 1: looking into it. So we took it into our own hands.
Speaker 1: All that attention, we needed to do something, So we
Speaker 1: contracted a porta john company who is currently donating to
Speaker 1: porta John's and servicing it once a week. Um, which
Speaker 1: is great. Uh. We had a compost toilet before and
Speaker 1: this is so much better. Um. And we went out
Speaker 1: of pocket to pay for the trash service. So we're
Speaker 1: getting our own trash service. Trash service now once a week. Um.
Speaker 1: It's not quite enough, but it certainly helps you see
Speaker 1: code enforcement go by all the time. Um, they've been
Speaker 1: driving by. I've seen them at least five or six times.
Speaker 1: Today people are waiting for something that they can latch onto,
Speaker 1: But so far, so good. With Columbus facing one hundred
Speaker 1: degree heat waves, what started as a warming station in
Speaker 1: winter now serves as a cooling station this summer for
Speaker 1: its few dozen residents, as gears shift and new seasonal
Speaker 1: materials are required. The camp has been exploring alternative methods
Speaker 1: of funding to sustain the level of resources and services
Speaker 1: they've been able to provide the past few months. We
Speaker 1: did launch a go fund me and we've had pretty
Speaker 1: good luks so far. We've raised seven thousand, five UM.
Speaker 1: This is just for operating funds um. There's a lot
Speaker 1: that we would like to do here. It's a lot
Speaker 1: we'd like to do with the land, but for now
Speaker 1: we just need We're just fundraising to keep going. The
Speaker 1: camp still serves around twenty five people, so resources end
Speaker 1: up getting distributed across a large collection of individuals. All
Speaker 1: the donations received have been used to provide necessities to survive,
Speaker 1: including but not limited to, shelters like tents, food, water,
Speaker 1: medical supplies, bedding, clothes, bus passes, medical services and prescriptions,
Speaker 1: hard production supplies, Funds for individuals immediate needs, and assistance
Speaker 1: to pay with residents phone bills. Sometimes funds are also
Speaker 1: used to compensate residents for extra labor put towards maintaining
Speaker 1: the camp, like cleaning up the campsite, cutting up firewood,
Speaker 1: and providing extra services like haircuts. The response has been
Speaker 1: really good. I think people understand what we're trying to
Speaker 1: do and are are being really receptive to it. UM.
Speaker 1: I can't say the same about the city though. We UH.
Speaker 1: We met with Councilwoman shale A Favor from the city
Speaker 1: on Monday and presented a proposal. We asked for eighty
Speaker 1: five dollars over the next six months to continue operation,
Speaker 1: to pay a small salary to the three volunteers that
Speaker 1: are here all the time, UM for healthcare, for a
Speaker 1: small stipend to give to each resident of the camp
Speaker 1: every every week, UM additional operating funds. Just we came
Speaker 1: to them with this ask and they didn't really seem
Speaker 1: to get it UM, so we're gonna keep trying. They
Speaker 1: they felt like they can't really support a tent city
Speaker 1: in their minds, like they couldn't give money to support
Speaker 1: people who were residing in tents because tents are inadequate shelter.
Speaker 1: But I mean I can test that not having a
Speaker 1: tent is also an adequate shelter. The City of Columbus
Speaker 1: relies almost completely on the Community Shelter Board to manage
Speaker 1: its problem with homelessness. Community Shelter Board has a revenue
Speaker 1: of around forty four million dollars a year. They pay
Speaker 1: their director half a million dollars just under UM and
Speaker 1: a few other executives received ample compensation. But their success
Speaker 1: rate for the entire county is label at you go
Speaker 1: through their data. They have managed to get pent of
Speaker 1: the people who come through their shelter into some sort
Speaker 1: of housing. For the zip code that we're serving at seven,
Speaker 1: which equates to eight people over the past year. So
Speaker 1: what they're doing is not working at all, and they
Speaker 1: know it, but they don't know what else to do.
Speaker 1: Whenever we talk to the city, someone tells us to
Speaker 1: talk to this one particular person. Her name has Emerald
Speaker 1: her nand as Para. She is the assistant director of
Speaker 1: Special Projects for the Department of Development. If you have
Speaker 1: a problem with a homeless camp in the city, she
Speaker 1: is the person that the city wants you to talk to,
Speaker 1: no matter what UM if if you're homeless, that's who
Speaker 1: that's who they want you to talk to. She's under
Speaker 1: the Department of Development. Her her main focus is economic development.
Speaker 1: She's just special projects, which means she helps clear the
Speaker 1: way by getting camps out of the way for development projects.
Speaker 1: That's that's her role, and she is the city's liaison.
Speaker 1: No matter who we talked to, she's the one that
Speaker 1: we keep coming back to. So I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: um cynical and upsetting that this isn't under the purview
Speaker 1: of the Department of Health, you know, and any any
Speaker 1: other department would be a little bit better than the
Speaker 1: Department of Development to show so much we care. We're
Speaker 1: planning to go back to the city, uh, regardless of
Speaker 1: what they say about this initial proposal, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot that we'd like to build here and and we
Speaker 1: think they'd be amenable if they understood. We're drafting a
Speaker 1: second round proposal taking inspiration from Dignity Village in Portland.
Speaker 1: It's an autonomous village of fun housed people that's existed
Speaker 1: since two thousand and I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: we can learn from them for modeling this in a
Speaker 1: way that the city might better understand. We believe that
Speaker 1: what we're doing here is transitional housing, and the people
Speaker 1: who are here want to be involved in building that
Speaker 1: transitional housing for themselves and then for the people to
Speaker 1: come after. So that's that's what we're hoping to get
Speaker 1: the city to sign off on. Whom we met with.
Speaker 1: We met with the councilwoman. One of the things that
Speaker 1: she said was they at the city they don't have
Speaker 1: a model for serving the population that we're serving. Um,
Speaker 1: they don't. They don't know how to handle people who
Speaker 1: don't want to move inside, who don't want to move
Speaker 1: into the shelter system for whatever reason, and so all
Speaker 1: they can really do is move them around. Um, we're
Speaker 1: trying to tell them that we do have a model
Speaker 1: and we think we think that we can help the
Speaker 1: city as long as they stay pretty hands off and
Speaker 1: give us money for it. So fingers crossed. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to hold my breath, but fingers crossed. The city
Speaker 1: of Columbus has been much more openly hostile to some
Speaker 1: other encampments providing cooling and shelter in parts of the city.
Speaker 1: We're not the only on house encampment in Columbus. Um.
Speaker 1: There there are a lot more, and there's one that
Speaker 1: is at it's called Here Park on the south side.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of friends there. UM. Our organization
Speaker 1: works with their organization. UH. They were served a fourteen
Speaker 1: day eviction notice UM on the first and they have
Speaker 1: until to move out. UM. So we're doing whatever we
Speaker 1: can to support them. But UM, it very much feels
Speaker 1: like we're being treated like the good camp and they're
Speaker 1: the bad camp right now. So we're trying our best
Speaker 1: to make sure that the city knows that we're with them.
Speaker 1: You know, I I'm whatever they think about us. We
Speaker 1: we support those people no matter what, and we'll see
Speaker 1: whatever we can to help. UM. We're trying to give
Speaker 1: them advice about the things that have worked for us
Speaker 1: to keep the city away and hopefully if they do
Speaker 1: have to move on the fourteenth, they'll be able to
Speaker 1: set up somewhere over the city or give them a break.
Speaker 1: Here is some audio of a press conference given at
Speaker 1: the Here Park camp just last week. The city is
Speaker 1: not out here giving out water. The city is not
Speaker 1: out here making sure that UH people don't get heat
Speaker 1: exhaustion or heat stroke. Right, They're nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1: So we are here to remind them they have a
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five million dollars in American Rescue Plan funds.
Speaker 1: Where is this money going? Why do we not have housing?
Speaker 1: This weather is just a little taste for many of
Speaker 1: us of the conditions that our unhoused neighbors out here
Speaker 1: can look forward to enduring for the entire summer. The
Speaker 1: City of Columbus was planning on evicting our people today
Speaker 1: June fourteenth. They delayed that eviction. It is a human right,
Speaker 1: so we are here to assert our human rights. Two housing.
Speaker 1: They're hoping that we're going to get hot and tired
Speaker 1: and we're out. Are we gonna let up? The Here
Speaker 1: Park Camp eviction was pushed back to June twenty one
Speaker 1: due to a massive heat wave, and by June one,
Speaker 1: the temperature was still in the upper nineties, but the
Speaker 1: city followed through on their threat and swept the camp.
Speaker 1: At least twenty Columbus police cruisers, city attorneys, people from
Speaker 1: the Department of Development, and other city employees were on
Speaker 1: site for the eviction. Bulldozers and massive machinery crushed people's
Speaker 1: tents and personal belongings. Some folks, forcibly displaced have lived
Speaker 1: in the here Park for nearly a decade. For wrapping
Speaker 1: up this episode, I had just one more question for
Speaker 1: Elizabeth for people who would be interested in trying to
Speaker 1: create similar projects or hopeful smilar similar projects in their area,
Speaker 1: how will it would be some advice to give to
Speaker 1: people who who are want to try something similar. What's
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that you've learned the past few
Speaker 1: months that you were kind of surprised by UM and
Speaker 1: and you know, if if you could do anything different,
Speaker 1: what's what's like what's the kind of stuff that you
Speaker 1: would uh that you would approach UM to make the
Speaker 1: processes like smoother or slightly more improved. Well, I would
Speaker 1: have looked for more funders first. Um. The one of
Speaker 1: the most painful parts for me has, like just personally
Speaker 1: has been holding the purse UM, being the person that
Speaker 1: everyone knows to ask for for cash if they needed
Speaker 1: for something UM It. It is a it is a
Speaker 1: real strain on compassion sometimes, you know, on compassion fatigue
Speaker 1: is real, and it can be really hard day and
Speaker 1: day out having to field requests from people who you
Speaker 1: know need these resources, but you can't always give everything.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to say no. Learning to say no
Speaker 1: has um has helped, but ah, diversifying our funding sources
Speaker 1: is also helping a lot. Um. I've learned that I
Speaker 1: can't do at all and that I need to take breaks,
Speaker 1: and that being here is is what I want to do.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean I need to always always do it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you've got to step away. UM. I I wish
Speaker 1: that I had spent a little more time with my family, um,
Speaker 1: rather than you know, throwing myself completely into this U.
Speaker 1: But two months ago my fiance, my ex fiance, asked
Speaker 1: me to leave. So I have been living at the
Speaker 1: camp too. UM. So I it's it's been a pretty
Speaker 1: stark jump to go from having a big house and
Speaker 1: some retirement funds to living in a tent and having none.
Speaker 1: But I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't change it, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep doing it. It's because I can,
Speaker 1: because I could, And that's that's really what I want
Speaker 1: people to see is that if they can do something,
Speaker 1: they should. Um. It's the best job I've ever had. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, nothing is more rewarding than going to work
Speaker 1: and hanging out with your friends all day, like helping
Speaker 1: them get jobs and find apartments and meet friends like,
Speaker 1: all right, there's so many wonderful people here, and like
Speaker 1: me and the other volunteers, we love all of them
Speaker 1: and you want nothing more than to see them succeed.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I just I just advised people to do
Speaker 1: what they can, to ask for what they need and
Speaker 1: try and provide it. Anyone who wants to know more
Speaker 1: about the First Collective and what they're doing, you can
Speaker 1: go to First hyphen Collective dot org. You can find
Speaker 1: links on Elizabeth's Twitter account at an Optimist. And even
Speaker 1: if you disagree with some of the organizational or structural choices,
Speaker 1: I hope you at least learned something or got something
Speaker 1: productive out of this example of people putting in effort
Speaker 1: to fill in the gaps in their local community that
Speaker 1: isn't for us today. See you on the other side. Hey,
Speaker 1: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until we the death of the universe. It could
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.