WEBVTT - Zephyr Teachout On Corruption 0:00:02.440 --> 0:00:07.360 All Zoe Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline. We 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:09.520 are live in beautiful New York City. I am your 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:23.400 host ed Zitron, of course, and I'm joined today by 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.000 Zevity Challenge. She's a professor of law at Fordham Law 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:28.840 School and the author of Break Them Up, Recovering Our 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:32.200 Freedom from Big Ang, Big Tech, and Big Money. Zephyr, 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:32.880 thank you so much. 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:34.519 For being here, Thanks for having me on ed. 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:37.519 So let's stalk corruption. So you've talked a great deal 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.720 about corruption. But what does it mean in the business 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:41.760 and economic sense? 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:46.720 Yeah, I mean corruption is it's this idea that comes 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:51.240 from the Latin, you know, the rupt rupture break apart, 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:56.520 and a corruption is breaking apart from within. So it's 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:57.880 internal disintegration. 0:00:58.080 --> 0:00:58.400 That's this. 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:03.040 I mentioned that because and the deep roots of the language, 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:08.960 because questions of corruption have been central to economic and 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:12.399 political thinking for thousands of years. So one way to 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.679 start thinking about corruption, if you don't mind, is to 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:19.040 think about Aristotle. 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:20.800 Okay, okay, right. 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:26.520 Because I actually am quite drawn to Aristotle's understanding of corruption, 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:28.280 and I think it's a kind of man on the 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:30.280 street understanding of corruption as well. 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:30.760 What is it? 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:35.920 Yeah, it's the idea that those with governing power use 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:39.440 that governing power to serve themselves instead of the public. 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:44.120 So in Aristotle's classic formulation, he talked about the difference 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:47.840 between a monarch and a tyrant, you know, is both 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:52.760 are rule by a single entity. The difference is the 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:57.000 monarch serves the public and the tyrant serves himself. Aristotle's 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:02.920 other two formulations were then the rule by an elite few, right, 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:08.440 So a rule by an elite few is either an aristocracy, right, 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:11.799 an elite few governing for the public, or an oligarchy 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:19.119 elite few governing for themselves. And then finally, the mass 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:24.600 version of this, a little more controversial, especially in modern translation, 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:30.440 was you know, the idea of a polity or mass rule, 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:32.920 and often it was described as democracy, in other words, 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:36.720 people using the public power for themselves. But the key 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:42.400 there is that he saw the corrupted version as being 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.040 about how you use your power, right right, a sort 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:47.800 of core internal motivation frankly. 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.520 And so I'm going to guess that that's how you're 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:53.680 looking at tech at the moment, because and to be clear, 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:56.880 I fully agree it feels like and it's talking Matt 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.839 Stola a few episodes back and he kind of said 0:02:59.880 --> 0:03:03.480 the thing around authoritarianism and new authoritarianism, And you've made 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:05.680 this point too, so do you. 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:07.600 Think and I think it just before we get into this, 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.320 it's important to just then, in very you know shakespeare 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:15.200 thirty seconds way to say, this fight about what is 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:17.600 corruption and what isn't then has become a two thousand 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:18.040 year fight. 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:18.640 Right. 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:22.800 So Hobbes, for instance, thought that Aristotle was crazy on this. 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:25.440 He's like, yeah, people are always going to be selfish, right, 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:30.160 And that a flat version of Hobbes. But there's it's 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:32.400 actually a fight about human nature and what's possible with 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.000 human nature on the one hand, but it is also 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:39.480 a fight about where public power is versus your private life. 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:43.600 Because Aristotle is not saying, in that formulation or understanding 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:45.760 of corruption that in your private life you can't seek 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:50.040 out yourself. He's saying there's something uniquely dangerous and destructive 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:55.160 to a public when the governing power is self serving. 0:03:55.680 --> 0:04:02.000 So when this as applied to the modern the modern 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:07.920 big tech, big ag questions that the underlying philosophical question 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:11.560 then is is this a governing power? And if it's governing, 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:14.720 that's really problematic because it's set up to be selfish, right, 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:18.599 That's that's you know, that's the nature of modern business. 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:21.120 So the selfishness isn't the problem. The governingness is. 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.760 So makes sense, yes, because and that's kind of and 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:26.800 that's kind of the bothersome thing about this because you've 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.279 got so many monopolies orligopolies whatever. So one I like 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:32.600 to choose the most people are not. People are kind 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.040 of dancing around this one is the cloud empires. You've 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:39.839 got Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle to an extent, though for 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:42.479 different reasons, and they are the ones that set the 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.160 terms of how the Internet is built out. Ack am 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.839 I in CDNs to an extent, but you can't what 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:51.560 can you even do about something like that? Is that 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:55.240 cloud empire bad or good? It's kind of hard to tell. 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:58.440 But the thing they definitely have is power unchecked. 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.400 Yeah, yeah, I love your language of term setting. And 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:06.040 it's not always obvious, right, but that if you think 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:11.120 of a government, you know what a governing entity does. 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:13.600 If you think of governing not in a flat formal 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.279 sense like are you elected or not? But who actually 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:19.839 has the question for whether something is governing? I think 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:21.560 one way to ask that question is does it have 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.360 the power to set terms right, right, yeah. 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:27.360 And which is effectively a tech industry now right, every 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:31.520 big player Airbnb sets the terms for vacations, the cloud 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:34.400 empire set the terms for how cloud storage is monetized 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.680 and indeed sold, and how indeed our electric grid is 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:40.839 built out or not as the case maybe, I mean 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:44.960 even Musk with Tesla, and I have many thoughts about 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:47.560 that man kind of sets the terms of how charging 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.200 works now, like they have the standard now, even though 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:52.360 he's a mess, And even then when he fired most 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:54.680 of the supercharger team, it's like, oh, this isn't just 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.240 about Tesla, this is now the entirety of America is 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.120 being let down, right, But what do you do about that? 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:01.320 Like? 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:04.080 How you what can I mean, what you and I 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:06.680 can do might be someone limited, But what can society 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:07.600 do with this kind of thing? 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:11.080 Well, you know, let's start with where we did start 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.839 on corruption. Language of corruption. If we think about term 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:18.640 setting by selfish actors as a problem in the political 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:21.039 realm before we then apply it to the realm. We 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.520 may not think of as political, but it's clearly political too. 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:32.279 There's a series of strategies for either removing that term 0:06:32.320 --> 0:06:37.760 setting power, right or having public regulations, so even if 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:42.760 they're term setting, the terms are fundamentally set by the public. 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:43.200 Right. 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:49.359 And so the classic American strategy was to have diverse 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:53.560 sources of competing power in a presidency, right, Senate. 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:55.920 And ecogress. Right. 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:58.160 Yeah, so that's a break come up model. And you know, 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:00.919 if you would, it's not just elections, but it's actually 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:05.960 about providing different sources of competitive power at the local 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:07.920 and federal level, local, state. 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.080 And when you say maybe I miss when you say 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:15.320 competitive power, is that so local and federal government stuff? 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:17.760 Is that just? Is that is elections? Part of this? 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:20.200 Are these like what are the different mechanisms there that 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:22.560 help break them up in a governmental sense? 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:25.440 Yeah, it's all of the above. So right, so if 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:28.360 you have you know, we can be a little glib 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:34.400 about just comparing you know, presidential systems to parliamentary that's 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:37.040 that's one source of difference, but it's not the only 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:40.320 source of difference. It's cantons versus not cantons. 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:40.640 Right. 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:43.160 So, so what it is to say is not that 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:47.240 there's an ideal vision I don't think there is, but 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:52.480 that genuinely separating sources of power. So there's some public contestation. 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:55.200 I think of it both as a federal state and 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:59.440 across federal and across state branches as being important. That's 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:01.040 one mechan it's not the only mechanism. 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:03.560 There are at least options and means in which people 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:05.880 will be cycled out and ideas will be cycled in. 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:08.800 Right. And then in the election sphere, we're very worried, 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:14.960 as we should be about arenas where there's no competitive elections. 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:16.880 Right, somewhat scary, Yeah, this is very scary. 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:21.760 And the lockout of the opportunity for new ideas or 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.280 for leverage on a grassroots level, you know. I think 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:26.440 of it often if if there's nobody you could turn to, 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:31.040 if the water smells bad in the morning and your 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:33.360 elected officials aren't doing anything, there's a problem, Like you 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:34.920 want to you know, it doesn't mean you're gonna win, 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:35.480 but at least. 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:37.600 You have some access to dig right, yeah. 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:42.120 Right, So then when you apply that that breakup or 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:48.320 divestiture model to companies, you can see similar visions. Right. 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:51.480 So what I mean to say is that there's plural 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:54.200 ways to do breakups, right, And that's one of the 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:58.280 things that the electoral or political world can inform how 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.600 that can inform thinking about breakups, but it's not the 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:02.600 only way to break up power. 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:15.000 So what are some ones we're not doing yet then, 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.480 because it feels at times like the only thing there 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.400 is is just anti trust. And thanks to Ronald B. Reagan, 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:23.160 that's not being awake for a while. Yeah, it's kind 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.600 of waking up. Yeah, it's making noises. What are the 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:29.040 other mechanisms I mean that we could even create? 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:34.200 Right, Well, so there when I sort of think about 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:36.800 anti monopoly, and I know you've talked to Matt before, 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:41.600 but you think of anti monopoly as anti concentrated private 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.800 governing power, you know, the tyranny of private governing power, 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:49.320 and anti trust is one part of that. In the 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:58.120 United States, the first real nineteenth century anti monopoly movement 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:06.880 was actually around on discrimination principles. Okay, so the Interstate 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:12.400 Commerce Act, which came out of farmers coming together saying 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:16.800 down with monopolies. The first thing they asked for was 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:20.360 open access. Basically what we might think of his open access. 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:25.040 You know, on the same terms non discrimination right. You 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:29.880 have the access to whether it's a grain elevator or 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:34.280 a train, to not have differential treatment. And so it 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:36.559 is a key way to break up power. We may 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:40.120 not think non discrimination equals breaking up power, but. 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:43.520 That would makes sense. Yeah, because I was just talking 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:46.800 with Corey doctor Rowe about this, yes, and he had 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:49.120 suggested that one of the main things is the government 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:53.800 forcing interoperability between platforms. Everyone has to have the same standard. 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:56.840 So you can look at posts from Twitter x threats 0:10:56.840 --> 0:10:59.160 and I'm not even talking about the feediverse necessarily just 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.800 open stand Why do you well? I mean, is there 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.640 a reason why these things just don't happen? Is it 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:07.720 that they're not being pushed through? Is that the lobbying 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:09.640 is powerful? Like? Is it all of the above? I 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:12.200 guess right, right? 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:19.320 Is it? The ability to discriminate between counterparties is extremely. 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.400 Valuable, right as you know, right, yes. 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.960 Right, and especially true if you have anopoly power, right right, right. 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:30.600 So I'm I'm laughing because I'm just trying to think 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:35.120 of the right point of intervention. So maybe going to 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.679 history again is useful. So we see the eighteen nineties 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:44.680 and this first the first effort is and always claiming 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:46.719 first is difficult. It's all jumbled. 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:48.120 Together, right, History is a mess. 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:52.719 History is a mess. There's because there's I'm going to 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:56.000 do my own little segue. Even within corporate charters, there 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:59.360 were anti monopoly provisions in the nineteenth century, really, but 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:04.200 basic rules that said, you can only engage in this 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:07.960 certain line of business. Right, the government will only grant 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:12.160 you a corporate charter and all the privileges that accompany 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:15.720 that in the event in so long as you stay 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:17.880 within the line of business for which you applied to 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:18.360 the charter. 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.040 Does that make sense? Why don't they do that anymore? 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:24.840 Well, in I'm going to get my dates wrong, but 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:30.920 the gesture right late nineteenth early twentieth century. Actually it 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:35.400 was a little earlier. There was a real effort to 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:36.680 engage in. 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:39.839 Appreciate the question. 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:44.679 And I'm being the academic worried about sloppiness, so worry people. 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:47.800 Get things right, so don't worry about Yeah. 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:49.920 No, I I want to put the asterisks there for 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:55.720 the corporate law historians who are listening. But there were 0:12:56.120 --> 0:12:59.520 you know, there's really interesting. There was a move towards 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:04.240 free corporation anybody should be able to incorporate as an 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:05.479 anti corruption. 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:08.240 Move, which kind of makes sense a lot. I can 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:10.439 understand the logic, right. 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.080 And then there's a because the idea is, oh, if 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:16.080 you can only get a corporate charter if you're friends 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:18.520 with somebody. That's a pretty corrupt system. 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:21.320 Right, that makes sense. Well, but now they've moved on 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:23.160 to other ways of doing exactly. 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:26.680 And then the other part was an effort to expand 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:30.600 what all corporate charters have since become, which is you 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:34.160 get a charter to do whatever is legal in the state. Right, 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:37.320 that's now what a corporate charter is. This a long 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:42.200 digression to say that anti monopoly impulses have showed up 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:44.440 in a lot of different areas of law, right, not 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:47.680 just in federal anti trust and railroad law. 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.439 So interesting because it it almost feels like, because I 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:54.080 mean fairly blaming Ronald Reagan, I feel like we can 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:55.960 all do it every day, but it feels as if 0:13:56.000 --> 0:14:00.000 it's just been a slow bleed for like hundreds of years, 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.600 where we just the ramifications of decisions at the time 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:04.560 that probably made perfect sense because at the time of 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:07.720 corporate charters were very limited. There wasn't much commerce. There was, 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:10.480 or at least more limited commerce. It almost feels like 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:14.040 we need to bring that back because an episode I 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:18.040 think I just wrote recently, even I was thinking about Salesforce. 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:21.480 Salesforce one of my least favorite companies. And if you 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:24.320 ask what Salesforce does, that is a very long answer 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:28.080 because they do CRM, they do data lakes, they do AI, 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:30.320 they do chatbots, they do different kinds of chat. But 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:31.800 they have all of these things and they do it 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:35.320 by vacuuming up these companies. They eat them alive and 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:38.360 then and now they do it much like Microsoft, as 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:40.440 a means of making sure you don't buy another product, 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:44.720 because we've got everything here like a buffet. Can we 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.640 stop that? How do we stop these acquisites? It almost 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:52.000 it feels as if acquisitions are the first place to start. Yeah, yeah, 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:53.520 to make it much harder. 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:57.000 Well, so stopping We were talking about different elements of 0:14:57.000 --> 0:15:02.640 anti trust or vanta monopoly. So one element is non 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:05.240 discrimination rules. And that doesn't mean that every industry should 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:08.800 be subject to radical non discrimination rules in all cases, 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:14.720 but that if there are industries that the ability to 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:19.880 discriminate between counterparties is going to allow for exploitation and 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:23.720 extraction and shutting down of new entrants, then non discrimination 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:24.680 is really important. 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:25.200 Yes, right. 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.720 Anti trust then also very important, And the first step 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:33.920 in antitrust is not allowing bad as the American system 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:38.720 has it set up, is not allowing is not allowing mergers. Now, 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:43.520 I'm not as familiar with the Salesforce corporate structure, but 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:46.280 I gather that one of the things you're talking about 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:49.720 is the way in which one we've been quite lax 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:53.960 until recently on merger policy. Yes, but we also haven't 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:58.520 until very recently, until Canter and CON's recent merger proposals, 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:04.560 we've had this highly formal understanding of where threats lie. 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:09.880 Before we see threats primarily with horizontal acquisitions. I'm a 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:16.320 shoe company buying another shoe company, right. Secondarily between vertical integration, 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:18.600 I'm a shoe company buying a shoelace. 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:20.720 Choice, right. 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:28.280 But the conglomerate merger, the merger in adjacent agency, adjacent institutions, 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:30.200 has sort of been assumed to be, well, that's not 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:35.840 a threat because it's not about dominating that dominating either 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:40.120 that vertical or that horizontal. And one of the interesting 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:42.720 buried parts of the merger guidelines, which I think is 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:47.440 really important, is a recognition that I forget the exact language, 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.160 maybe Canter just said this in a speech, but these 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:55.239 these don't fit anymore. Yeah, right, Like when when Amazon's 0:16:55.280 --> 0:17:00.840 buying Whole Foods. Well maybe they're using the data of 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:04.639 the Whole Food's customers to create a moat somewhere else. 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:08.600 Well, it's just it almost feels like we need to 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:10.760 start asking them why do you need this so bad? 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:14.040 And make them justify it and not be totally open 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:16.280 to it because I don't even know why they bought 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.119 it other than the data, for sure, because whatever. But 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:22.040 also it's another way of conquering another commerce vertical. 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:25.560 Now, I think there's so much. I mean, I think 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:31.080 there is so much that we miss psychologically as well 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:35.320 as economically when we think about mergers as if everybody's 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:37.600 just rational, like yeah, yeah, there's also a lot of 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:38.520 boys playing risk. 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.119 I'm not I fully agree, because there's a lot of 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:44.119 One of my prevailing theories with tech right now is 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:47.080 that everyone says, well, open AI, for example, well they're 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:49.560 going to work it out because he's really smart. It's like, 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:52.720 what if he isn't what if they don't have any idea? 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.679 What if they're just doing this salesforce great example, they 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:59.560 just bought a digital storage company and it's not really 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:02.440 obvious why, but you know they're going to work it out. 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:04.480 I guess I saw a piece of the information saying, oh, 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:06.920 Benningoff's got it back. It's like, what is he? God? 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:07.840 What is going on? 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:10.879 And it almost with the more capitalists lashing around, actually, 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:12.840 the less likely that we should think that all these 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:14.320 decisions are rationals. 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:17.480 And on top of that we've got there's a very 0:18:17.520 --> 0:18:20.480 irrational feeling to the economy. I've said a lot about this. Yeah, 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.560 that's really interesting. Well, because a lot of these companies 0:18:22.600 --> 0:18:26.680 will spend like thirty billion dollars Okay, I'm being a 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:28.920 little like ten billion dollars to make three hundred million, 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:31.520 and I guess that you can't really stop Like, maybe 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:33.760 you don't stop that, but at some point you have 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:37.679 to wonder if that's a symptom of these big, ungainly 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.320 monstrous companies that they just had the companies that do 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:41.520 everything and thus do nothing. 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:44.240 Well, there's this interesting reminds me of this research. I 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:46.320 wish I could find it around the urge to merge? 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:47.040 Have you heard about that? 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.240 No? No, no, I think this is older research. 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:53.400 But somebody put together a bunch of grad students and 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:57.320 compared them to CEOs, like would you do this merger? 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.880 And those who already had power to get really. 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:01.960 They just get grabby. 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:06.239 They get grabby, right, and and denying that there's a 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:11.639 power hungriness, yes, is just denying, like do we not 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:15.520 learn anything from thousands of years of literature and history? 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:18.080 They want to own more, and I think that like 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:20.280 Elon Musk, is want to choose as well. Because as 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:23.920 we speak, we just on the day after the Robotaxi event. 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.159 What I thought it was illegal to make stuff up 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:29.120 when you're a public company, but I guess Elon Musk 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:32.159 has special rules. But that actually kind of brings me 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.159 to a point. What do you do with people like 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:39.320 Musk who they're evil and they're very clearly corrupt in 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:41.199 some way, but they're not really breaking a law. How 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.520 do you moderate the power of someone like Elon Musk? 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:46.240 Outside of anti trust? Anti trust has done nothing like 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:48.879 SEC could barely touch him. What how do we start 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:51.160 bringing these people back down to earth? 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.640 Wow? Well, anti trust is part of it, campaign finance 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:04.040 is part of it. U and there are maybe I'm 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:07.879 answering to glibly, but there there isn't a single answer 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:08.800 I do There isn't. 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.080 Yeah, I know that there isn't one. If there was, 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:14.159 I assume someone would have done it. I mean there is, 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:15.000 but that's not legal. 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:20.280 And and then there are industry specific abuses and challenges 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:24.080 that it's not. You know, just just because you and 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:27.520 I are interested in anti monopoly law or you know 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:30.880 what the FTC could do tomorrow doesn't mean that there 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:36.240 aren't real challenges with specific industries that are unique, unique 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:43.840 foreign policy challenges with starlink right right, unique policy levers 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:47.600 too that could be used with some areas of maybe you. 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:51.320 Shouldn't have national security clearance. That's a good start, right, 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:53.760 But it's I think it comes back to that thing 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:56.560 he was saying, though. It's the It almost as feels 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.720 as if the media kind of definitely the government doesn't 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:02.720 look these things and say, oh, they're accumulating power. They're like, oh, 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:06.040 they're just accumulating markets, and you know that's okay, it's 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:09.000 still bad, but like they're fine with it. And it 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.879 feels like we actually really have to stop getting like 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:15.840 there must be new legislation to stop that, or maybe 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:18.440 just it's as simple as what if we stopped companies 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:21.840 getting so big? Yeah, what if we just started pinning 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:26.480 them down a bit and disincentivizing that specifically. 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:31.879 Well, there there is clearly a problem of gross power, yes, right, 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:35.680 And there have been various efforts in the past to say, well, 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.680 we should just limit gross power, not simply I think 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:43.600 this is what you're getting at, abuse of such gross power, right. 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:43.960 Yeah. 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:49.200 And the senator who has a famous Senate office building 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:54.720 is a heart named after him, was actually an advocate 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:57.359 of this in the seventies, you know, really concerned about 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:02.080 mere accumulation of power. I don't want to poo poo that, 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:04.960 but I also don't want to suggest that we've reached 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:06.879 the limit of what we can do with existing tools. 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:10.240 I mean, we still have an underfunded FTC, that's an 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:14.120 underfunded DOJ, and we have a whole series of other 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:16.440 agencies that just start using their power right now. 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:33.399 Actually that's a good Like the EPA and the FDA. 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:36.159 I'm not an expert in either, but it feels like 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:39.439 they are a They are potentially avenues in which we 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:41.880 could start going off to data. We could start making 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:45.119 standards of consumer data or I don't know, standards of 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:49.679 care for the cloud companies. But also I think that 0:22:49.760 --> 0:22:53.560 we have when you talk about the governing systems, we 0:22:53.640 --> 0:22:55.960 have a real problem with Silicon Valley, for example, there 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:59.120 isn't discussed much, and it's the old boys network. It's 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:01.080 the fact that if you are to grow beyond a 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:05.639