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Speaker 1: Also media, Hello, and welcome to Better Offline.

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Speaker 2: I am, of course your host ed Zittron and know

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Speaker 2: a lot of people have been asking, hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 2: of people. In fact, I will be submitting myself at

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Speaker 2: the next d NC is the left is Joe Rogan.

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Speaker 2: I am two or three inches taller as well. But

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Speaker 2: today I'm joined by Professor William Lazonek. He's a professor

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Speaker 2: emeritus of Economics ever at University of Massachusetts and the

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Speaker 2: co founder of the Academic Industry Research Network. William, thank

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Speaker 2: you so much for coming.

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Speaker 3: Pleasure to be here.

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Speaker 2: All right, So, if you look at the tech industry

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Speaker 2: right now, it's probably the most it's definitely the most

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Speaker 2: profitable it's ever been, and probably the worst. It feels

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Speaker 2: like the furthest it's been from really innovating, and it's

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Speaker 2: moved to value extraction, I think, and you know, you

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Speaker 2: know a great deal about that.

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Speaker 4: How did we get here? And I mean historically, how

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Speaker 4: did we get here?

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Speaker 5: Well, first of all, you have to understand that the

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Speaker 5: United States as the most formidable developmental state in history.

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Speaker 5: A lot of people think that Japan in the eighties

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Speaker 5: invented the developmental state, but actually the United States was

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Speaker 5: japan developmental state from the point of view of technology.

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Speaker 3: So I won't go into.

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Speaker 5: The whole history of that, but it goes back to

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Speaker 5: the nineteenth century building of Langrand colleges, railroads, and going

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Speaker 5: into aviation, the computer.

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Speaker 3: Industry, etc.

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Speaker 5: So tech was provided with all kinds of resources.

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Speaker 3: Those resources were.

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Speaker 5: Originally used by large corporations that actually gave people lifetime employment.

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Speaker 5: So that's something else. When people discovered Japanese competition in

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Speaker 5: the nineteen eighties, he said, oh, a secret to Japan's

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Speaker 5: success is they give people permanent employment, life time employment.

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Speaker 5: US companies were doing that, particularly post World War Two.

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Speaker 5: Iconic company that did that, which became a totally shareholder

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Speaker 5: value company, and that's where I'm going was IBM. You

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Speaker 5: had a job for life, so you had a defined

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Speaker 5: benefit pension, you had all your medical compenses paid, et cetera.

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Speaker 5: Those companies were highly innovative, A lot of them connected

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Speaker 5: to what was called the military industrial complex, and in

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Speaker 5: the early late fifties early sixties, some companies started setting off,

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Speaker 5: spinning off of that, companies that would have been like

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Speaker 5: companies here today that that were, and they went on,

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Speaker 5: they went public and they were called glamorous stocks, but

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Speaker 5: they were thinly traded. So the Security and Exchange Commission,

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Speaker 5: which was set up in the mid thirties to get

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Speaker 5: rid of manipulation and fraud on markets, they had what

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Speaker 5: was called a Special Study that created Nasdaq, which you

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Speaker 5: all know about, but you probably don't know the origins

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Speaker 5: of it. So Nasdaq was really backed by the US

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Speaker 5: government to create a liquid market in a spec highly

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Speaker 5: speculative stocks. And so the National Association Dealer's Automated Quotation

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Speaker 5: system came online in April nineteen seventy one, and it

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Speaker 5: wasn't actually a trading market, it was just a quotation system.

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Speaker 5: So the security dealers who were all working on their

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Speaker 5: phones and rollodexes in isolation and never knowing what the

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Speaker 5: price of a stock would be, all of a sudden.

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Speaker 5: This is really the first use of internetworking, right, because

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Speaker 5: computers mainframes had just come in in the sixties, So

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Speaker 5: you now have NASDAK. One of the first companies that

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Speaker 5: listened on Nasdaq was Intel, three years after was founded.

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Speaker 5: That would never have been possible with the New York

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Speaker 5: Stock Exchange. They could have gone the over counter market

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Speaker 5: because the New York Stock exchange had listen requirements in

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Speaker 5: terms of capitalization profitability that would require ten to fifteen

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Speaker 5: years at least, right, Okay, but now you could get

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Speaker 5: companies going pro public.

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Speaker 3: They didn't even have a product.

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Speaker 5: That really was the thing that brought venture capital into

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Speaker 5: the picture. There was no well defined venture capital industry

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Speaker 5: until nineteen seventy two, a year after Nasdaq was created,

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Speaker 5: and it came out of Silicon Valley, which by the way,

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Speaker 5: was dubbed Silicon Valley in nineteen seventy one by a

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Speaker 5: journalist because there were so many startups producing silicon ship.

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Speaker 4: Fill this point.

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Speaker 2: Going public required you to be a good company.

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Speaker 5: You had to, yeah, so often you went over the

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Speaker 5: counter and then graduated to what they called the Big

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Speaker 5: Board the New York Stockution be Yeah, and you had

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Speaker 5: to have a lot of different shareholders, cetera. Yeah, so

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Speaker 5: rid of that, and well, those companies tended to pay dividends,

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Speaker 5: but they didn't do something which I'm going to talk

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Speaker 5: about today, which is the way the datory value extraction

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Speaker 5: is working in the US economy, particularly in the tech sector,

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Speaker 5: and that's the phenomenon of companies buying back their stock.

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Speaker 3: Okay, but before we get to that.

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Speaker 5: We basically have to see that in the nineteen seventies

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Speaker 5: there was a change in the institutions of the stock market,

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Speaker 5: particularly around Nasdaq and venture capital, that made it possible

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Speaker 5: all of a sudden to get funding from for startups

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Speaker 5: that couldn't get funding before.

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Speaker 6: Now.

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Speaker 5: A big change was and it was really under the radar,

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Speaker 5: was in nineteen seventy nine July of nineteen seventy nine

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Speaker 5: when the Department of Labor in the US said that

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Speaker 5: pension funds could put some of their money into risky assets.

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Speaker 5: There had been some legislation earlier in the decade which

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Speaker 5: said that if pension fund managers put their money into

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Speaker 5: companies like the companies on show here they're trying to

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Speaker 5: go public, that they could get into.

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Speaker 3: Trouble or company, it's a company.

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Speaker 5: Immediately, from that point in time on, there was no

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Speaker 5: shortage of money in the US economy for venture.

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Speaker 3: Capital, for new firms.

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Speaker 5: There was really always Since then, it's been a shortage

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Speaker 5: of good firms and a lot of money chasing.

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Speaker 2: Well. Pushing back on that way, yeah, agreeing, But isn't

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Speaker 2: the problem more so that venture capital no longer really works.

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Speaker 2: It isn't really taking risks, it's just okay doing more

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Speaker 2: value extraction.

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Speaker 5: Now, venture capital at that point where it was really

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Speaker 5: dominated by people who came out of the industries in

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Speaker 5: which they were investing. Right, So there were individuals who

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Speaker 5: decided to be a like Don Valentine who backed Cisco

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Speaker 5: and other companies. He came out of National Semiconductor, had

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Speaker 5: been in the semiconductor industry. They were in a whole

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Speaker 5: number of them, and so they understood the industries in

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Speaker 5: which they were investing.

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Speaker 3: Some of them were better, some of the worst.

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Speaker 5: Right, But really what put it venture capital made it

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Speaker 5: something that people would now say, hey, let's go after

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Speaker 5: this stuff. We're two IPOs in nineteen eighty one was

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Speaker 5: Apple and the other was Genentech. One attack and one

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Speaker 5: on biotech. And from then on there was well, in

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Speaker 5: the early eighties, there was a whole bunch of investing

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Speaker 5: in venture capital. Here's your point comes up. There was

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Speaker 5: a very good book written in nineteen eighty five by

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Speaker 5: BusinessWeek journalist your named John Wilson, called The New Ventures.

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Speaker 3: It was the first real good book.

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Speaker 5: Out there on venture capital, and the last chapter was

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Speaker 5: vulture Capital. So it was basically the bad venture capitalists

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Speaker 5: coming in and just hyping companies and the whole thing

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Speaker 5: falling apart. And then so you always you have these

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Speaker 5: cycles of good venture capital, and then you know, in

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Speaker 5: the dot com period you have the boom and bust,

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Speaker 5: et cetera.

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Speaker 2: I think, I think what I'm thinking is the way

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Speaker 2: venture capital is today is strange because after twenty twenty one,

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Speaker 2: the collapse of the zero interest free era, you're kind

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Speaker 2: of seeing that a lot of venture capitalists did not

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Speaker 2: exactly know how to invest in companies at all.

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Speaker 4: They knew how to invest in concepts, in.

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Speaker 2: Things that they could take public or things that they

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Speaker 2: could flog to another company. And that's venture capital is

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Speaker 2: falling off quite a lot.

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Speaker 4: Now.

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Speaker 2: Is that something that reflects the larger market conditions of

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Speaker 2: the tech industry, because it feels like the same problem

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Speaker 2: in that meta makes their Facebook sucks. Now, if I'm

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Speaker 2: sure you all use Instagram and Facebook, if you don't

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Speaker 2: think it's bad, please go on the app take a look.

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Speaker 4: It feels like they're.

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Speaker 2: All following the same thing of they have all fallen

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Speaker 2: into Jack Welch's shareholder value system of bigger, more money

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Speaker 2: as much as we can squeeze my users as possible,

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Speaker 2: which only appears to work in the public market.

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Speaker 4: So how did how did we we really get here? Though? Like,

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Speaker 4: how do how do we get to the sho Okay?

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Speaker 5: So, now what you had with venture capital, with Nasdak

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Speaker 5: being part part of it, with a shift actually of

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Speaker 5: Wall Street self from investing in these older companies and

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Speaker 5: doing their bond issues to trading in stocks that also

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Speaker 5: occurred in the nineteen seventy you when the stock market

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Speaker 5: actually was.

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Speaker 3: Not doing very well.

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Speaker 5: But you then had a whole situation where you had,

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Speaker 5: I mean, this really did unleash innovation. The older economy companies,

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Speaker 5: they were good at doing some things, but a lot

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Speaker 5: of them became conglomertized, became sclorotic, et cetera. There was

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Speaker 5: a demand coming out of basically conservative economics, led by

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Speaker 5: a guy named Michael Jensen, to discourage the free cash flow,

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Speaker 5: as they called it. It actually invented the term free

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Speaker 5: cash flow, which every company used. A free cash flow,

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Speaker 5: by the way, means that if you got to lay

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Speaker 5: off five thousand and workers to create free cash flow,

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Speaker 5: well that's fine, you know, as long as anything that

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Speaker 5: isn't nailed down is free cash flow. And this prioritized

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Speaker 5: shareholder value ideology that I witnessed firsthand when I was

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Speaker 5: at Harvard Business School in the mid nineteen eighties, and

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Speaker 5: they hired this guy, Michael Jensen. I'm not sure if

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Speaker 5: you've heard of him, but he died recently, the guru

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Speaker 5: of a maximizing shareholder value.

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Speaker 3: And once he did that, you start.

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Speaker 5: Getting hits in the Wall Street Journal of Financial Time

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Speaker 5: Center shareholder value. Okay, then they start with executive pay,

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Speaker 5: stock based pay. That was already the longer history of that,

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Speaker 5: but that comes in in the nineteen eighties. That's aligning

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Speaker 5: the top executives with shareholder value.

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Speaker 3: And then how do you.

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Speaker 5: Create and I use creative quotes value for shareholders. Not

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Speaker 5: only do you pay dividends, but you buy back the

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Speaker 5: company's stock the stock buy back. You tell your broker

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Speaker 5: go into the market, buy back our stock. You're giving

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Speaker 5: their money away to get the stock price up, and

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Speaker 5: you're nactually not benefiting shareholders who get dividends. You're benefiting

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Speaker 5: share sellers who are using the opportunity to sell their shares,

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Speaker 5: including the top executives who pay is stock based stock options.

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Speaker 5: Now it's more stock awards, but also corporate raiders who

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Speaker 5: want to come in and say, get the stock price up,

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Speaker 5: do the buybacks, then we'll sell the shares. So this

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Speaker 5: becomes a massive phenomenon. Now, this was enabled by in

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Speaker 5: nineteen eighty two again the Security Exchange Commission, which has

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Speaker 5: said was set up to get rid of manipulation and

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Speaker 5: fraud in the market. It went from being a regulator

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Speaker 5: of the stock market to being a promoter of the

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Speaker 5: stock market. And to this day that's what the Security

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Speaker 5: Exchange Commission is. It is not a regulator of the

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Speaker 5: stock market, it's a promoter of the stock market.

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Speaker 3: And what they did it was really under the radar.

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Speaker 5: Usually in the US you have public comment on these issues.

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Speaker 5: They said, any company on any single trading day can

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Speaker 5: buy back twenty five percent of their average daily trading

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Speaker 5: volume over the previous four weeks without being charged with manipulation.

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Speaker 3: It was a safe harbor.

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Speaker 5: So didn't say if you went over that you would

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Speaker 5: be charged. It just said if you want to be

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Speaker 5: sure that you won't be charged manipulation, that's how much

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Speaker 5: you can you can do and buy backs.

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Speaker 2: Now, so how does this lead to where we are today,

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Speaker 2: which is a death of innovation?

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Speaker 5: Okay, So What that means is that a company like Apple.

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Speaker 5: I looked at the figures, they change a bit from

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Speaker 5: year to year, or sometimes quite a bit. They could

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Speaker 5: do about four billion a day day in buybacks, day.

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Speaker 3: After day after day. They Apple just.

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Speaker 5: Came out with his twenty twenty four annual report. They

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Speaker 5: did ninety five billion in buybacks. They had ninety four

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Speaker 5: billion of profits. Hugely profitable, but ninety five billion in buybacks.

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Speaker 5: Apple has done seven hundred and twenty six billion dollars

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Speaker 5: in stock buybacks over the previous twelve years, plus about

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Speaker 5: one about two hundred billion in dividends. The buybacks are

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Speaker 5: about ninety three percent of its profits. Now Apples hugely profitable,

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Speaker 5: but there are costs to doing that now. By the way,

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Speaker 5: when if you look on Apple's website, they call this

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Speaker 5: program of paying out dividends and doing buybacks, which really

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Speaker 5: only got going.

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Speaker 3: Is a longer history to this.

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Speaker 5: When Steve Jobs left in nineteen eighty five or was

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Speaker 5: pushed out of Apple, the executives there start paying doing

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Speaker 5: giving in the buyback almost drove the company into bankruptcy.

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Speaker 5: Jobs came back in nineteen ninety seven said we're not

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Speaker 5: doing that. We're doing what I call retaining and reinvesting.

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Speaker 5: And we know the history of that. They have the iPod, iPhone, iPad,

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Speaker 5: et cetera. Steve Jobs died in twenty eleven. Shortly before

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Speaker 5: he did that, he died, he gave the CEO position

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Speaker 5: to Tim Cook, who was claimed to fame. There was

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Speaker 5: outsourcing their manufacturing to China and.

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Speaker 3: Courtually everything that operations guy, yeah, operation guy.

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Speaker 5: And he got pressured by the hedge fund activists starting

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Speaker 5: in twenty twelve twenty thirteen, including Carl Icon, and they

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Speaker 5: started doing the buybacks. And once they started doing them,

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Speaker 5: they just kept doing more and more of them, as

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Speaker 5: I say, an average of sixty billion a year over

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Speaker 5: the last twelve years. Now they call it their capital

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Speaker 5: return program. But the only time Apple ever got money

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Speaker 5: from the stock market was in nineteen eighty and it's ibo,

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Speaker 5: so who is it returning capital too?

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Speaker 2: But what I understand this is bad because it makes

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Speaker 2: it's basically just money going into the corporation's mouth from.

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Speaker 4: It hand its hands. But how does this fuck up

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Speaker 4: the innovation economy?

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Speaker 2: How does this stop people actually building more cool stuff,

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Speaker 2: all right, or useful things I guess, or at least,

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Speaker 2: how does it enable the bad habits.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, so first of all, again, sticking with a

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Speaker 5: company like Apple, they could be paying people in the

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Speaker 5: Apple stores maybe twenty percent more, maybe twenty five percent more,

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Speaker 5: making those even though they can might be able to

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Speaker 5: substitute a lot of those people fairly easily. But they

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Speaker 5: could have made those the best jobs that anybody could

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Speaker 5: have in the economy. It wouldn't just be in the

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Speaker 5: US all over the place, and that would have pulled

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Speaker 5: up wages for the kinds of people who work in

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Speaker 5: the Apple stores by other competitors, right, you know, and

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Speaker 5: this is not just Apple, there's a whole all the

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Speaker 5: big companies.

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Speaker 3: Are doing this stuff. Okay.

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Speaker 5: They could have invested in innovation that was not immediately

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Speaker 5: profitable or commercially profitable, but for public good like for

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Speaker 5: disabilities things like this. They did hardly any of that.

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Speaker 4: Okay, they sornety billion.

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Speaker 5: Year when they did try to move into new technology.

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Speaker 5: And I use all the Apple products you know out there,

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Speaker 5: but the ones they didn't produce, the you know, AI,

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Speaker 5: self driving cars, et cetera. They spent billions and failed.

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Speaker 5: But it's worse than that. The US is now engaged

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Speaker 5: in what some people call the chipwar with Samsung and TSMC.

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Speaker 5: Intel turned down the contract for Apple processors after the

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Speaker 5: iPhone was launched in two thousand and seven. That's because

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Speaker 5: Intel was doing massive buybacks at the time and they

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Speaker 5: had a financial guy running the company. But then they

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Speaker 5: gave the contract to Samsum. Sansum became a high end

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Speaker 5: producer fabricator of chips, the highest end by doing the

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Speaker 5: products for.

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Speaker 3: Apple.

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Speaker 5: Then they became a competitor, so they switched to TSMC.

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Speaker 5: And so basically the US is from a US point

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Speaker 5: of view, does not have a leading edge producer of

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Speaker 5: fabricator of chips now because in fact it was outsourced

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Speaker 5: by one of the leading companies that could have actually

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Speaker 5: sixty billion dollars away would build a state of the

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Speaker 5: art plant. That's that's that's what TSMC is spending in

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Speaker 5: Arizona now, and that's just the one year with Apple's

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Speaker 5: is spent on average.

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Speaker 2: Maybe I want to take a step further out because

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Speaker 2: whiles stock buybacks are a major problem, there is a

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Speaker 2: much larger one as well, with the growth of all

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Speaker 2: coast row economy. As I call it, the idea that

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Speaker 2: every single company I mentioned matter earlier The reason my

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Speaker 2: bag on matter is because the average Instagram Facebook experience

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Speaker 2: is horrible, interfered with, it's full of aislop. In fact,

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Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerbot literally just said he wants to have a

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Speaker 2: channel just for AI. Slop makes you want a channel

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Speaker 2: a gun in my mouth. And the thing is, we

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Speaker 2: are seeing tech getting worse. And it's not just these buybacks.

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Speaker 2: It's if they had that money to spend, they probably

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Speaker 2: wouldn't spend it on an innovation. If we're honest, they're

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Speaker 2: not incentivized to innovate. So how do we change this?

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Speaker 2: How do we actually unfucked this system? Because right now,

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Speaker 2: if you look at Google, you look at Microsoft, these

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Speaker 2: products are getting worse as they get more profitable.

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Speaker 4: How do you write this and what can be done

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Speaker 4: to them to change them?

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Speaker 5: Okay, well yeah, so first, companies that prioritize getting this

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Speaker 5: stuff price up over investing in innovation and that, by

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Speaker 5: the way, that doesn't mean just spending money on our ID.

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Speaker 5: It means employing people, integrating them, getting the learning going,

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Speaker 5: and actually maintaining a stable labor force so that you

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Speaker 5: can actually produce those products serve as those products once

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Speaker 5: in the market. But companies that prioritize shareholder value get

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Speaker 5: involved in other kinds of all kinds of mysfils like

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Speaker 5: they price gouge, they tax avoid taxes, they layoff lots

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Speaker 5: of workers. When they're profitable, they'll basically shareholder value takes

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Speaker 5: over everything. Okay, so how do you deal with that? Yes, okay,

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Speaker 5: here's part of the problem that the people, a lot

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Speaker 5: of people understand that this is a problem, at least

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Speaker 5: the work I've done on this. On stock buybacks, I

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Speaker 5: had an article in Harvard Business Review ten years ago,

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Speaker 5: which was just an article I wrote, but because where

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Speaker 5: it appeared and because it had it was called profits

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Speaker 5: without Prosperity. The subtitle was the best part, how stock

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Speaker 5: buybacks manipulate the market at least most Americans worse off.

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Speaker 5: It shocked me that Harvard Business Review actually published that article.

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Speaker 5: Usually yeah, yeah, okay, so but the fact is that

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Speaker 5: it did get a lot of attention.

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Speaker 4: Right, But.

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Speaker 3: If you are in power.

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Speaker 5: As the Democrats were for the last four years, they

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Speaker 5: gave it a lot of attention when Trump was in power.

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Speaker 4: But I got to push back on that. I'm sorry,

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Speaker 4: did they because.

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Speaker 5: Oh no, yeah, they did? Pal okay around the Trump

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Speaker 5: tax cuts. They had what it was called hashtag GOP

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Speaker 5: tax scam. It was all about stock buybacks.

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Speaker 2: I know he's the thing, okay, the larger economic conditions

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Speaker 2: of the problem here. The tax thinks, sure, it's a

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Speaker 2: part of it. But the problem is that the incentive

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Speaker 2: is the dual company grows and continues for writing shareholder value, which,

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Speaker 2: as my listeners will know, into the audience here literally

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Speaker 2: just means what will increase stock price and increased dividends.

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Speaker 2: Very basic, Jack Welsh, bullshit. How do you change those incentives?

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Speaker 2: Because I don't think that true, and this is not

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Speaker 2: even a political statement. I don't think there's any movement

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Speaker 2: to stop that other than maybe Lena Khan and rip

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Speaker 2: very soon, probably sadly, an attempt to move away from

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Speaker 2: the monopolies. How do you actually breach this machine, because

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Speaker 2: the machine is breaking everything else.

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Speaker 5: There is actually legislation, okay, influenced by the work first

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Speaker 5: introduced by Senator Tammy Baldwin, who won by a whisker

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Speaker 5: in Wisconsin, was reelected, called the Reward Work.

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Speaker 3: Act, and it would ban buy backs.

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Speaker 5: It would get rid of this rule from nineteen eighty

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Speaker 5: two that allows companies to do and without being charged

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Speaker 5: with manipulation, and so in effect, it would say that

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Speaker 5: if you do buybacks on the scale that you're doing

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Speaker 5: them now would man it also the other side of it,

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Speaker 5: which is that you would put worker representatives on boards.

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Speaker 5: I think you have to put representatives on boards. I

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Speaker 5: think they actually I want to be as a taxpayer

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Speaker 5: represented on boards if they're using my money, if Elon

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Speaker 5: Musk is using my money of apples, yeah, I mean.

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Speaker 3: The boards boards, boards are a joke.

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Speaker 5: I mean the notion of independent board members and given

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Speaker 5: given the money that board members are making went from

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Speaker 5: shareholder value.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 5: We just wrote an article on Elon musk twenty eighteen

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Speaker 5: pay package.

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Speaker 3: The so called independent.

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Speaker 5: Directors have made hundreds of millions of dollars on giving

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Speaker 5: him that PayPal being around giving that and staying on

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Speaker 5: the board. Interestingly enough, there was one board member, her

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Speaker 5: name was Linda Johnson Rice, who actually made one hundred

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Speaker 5: and thirty five dollars from her stock based pay because

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Speaker 5: they didn't renew her her board seat after twenty nineteen

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Speaker 5: and she left. We calculate one hundred and seventy three

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Speaker 5: million dollars of options on the table, So that's what happened.

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Speaker 5: Then it came out that she had spoken out against

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Speaker 5: Musk Anyway, that's part of the problem is you have

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Speaker 5: a totally corrupt governance system.

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Speaker 2: It's that, but it's also bigger. The market is incentivized

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Speaker 2: for growth. You can these are pieces of the puzzle.

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Speaker 2: But how do I realize that what I'm suggesting destroy

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Speaker 2: the markets, which is the markets are focused on growth.

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Speaker 2: They are five actually just one part of this machine.

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Speaker 2: And as long as that happens, innovation is going to

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Speaker 2: be stemy because if you're just trying to make more

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Speaker 2: money and not even more profit, just trying to grow

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Speaker 2: the stock value, you're not trying to make yeah, lots

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Speaker 2: of things.

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Speaker 5: A company it's successful by producing a higher quality, lower

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Speaker 5: cost product.

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Speaker 2: Then I'm sorry, look at me. I have to hate

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Speaker 2: to disagree that. Look at Meta, Look at Microsoft. The

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Speaker 2: Microsoft three sixty five is a product of realign't going

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Speaker 2: to little NSA.

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Speaker 4: It's become a worse product.

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Speaker 5: Oh no, I'm not saying that. I said it becomes

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Speaker 5: it gets into that position. Now what you call a

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Speaker 5: higher quality product, you know different people can have.

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Speaker 2: Oh do you mean this in a higher quality selling

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Speaker 2: product that makes more money.

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Speaker 5: It's one that can get customers. Okay, all right, and

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Speaker 5: now there is a problem I call it. Okay, companies

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Speaker 5: retain and reinvest when they when they are doing this,

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Speaker 5: they retain their money, they reinvest in the company. The

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Speaker 5: other side of that is they do what I call

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Speaker 5: downsize and distribute. They downsize the labor force and distribute

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Speaker 5: cast channel. There's most tech that are doing the big

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Speaker 5: bypass are in between. I call them dominate and distribute.

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Speaker 5: That's where Microsoft comes in. Yes, so they have a

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Speaker 5: dominant product. No one can get in there. Now, that's

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Speaker 5: where there's an element of monopoly there.

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Speaker 3: Uh.

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Speaker 5: And but but basically they they're they're pulling in the

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Speaker 5: cash from from that product, from their their their their

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Speaker 5: software suite, and uh they're using it to pump up

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Speaker 5: their stock.

441
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:11,440
Speaker 4: Price right and crushing crushing gold competition.

442
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 5: Yeah and so, and not investing in things like Apple,

443
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:20,000
Speaker 5: not investing in a fab Apple outsourced dolls, it's rechargeable

444
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:23,200
Speaker 5: batteries to China and running.

445
00:25:23,240 --> 00:25:25,479
Speaker 2: Because Apple, one of the best moves was when they

446
00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:26,720
Speaker 2: invested in their own silicon.

447
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:29,200
Speaker 4: It's probably been one of the best softest moves.

448
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 5: Well, of course they put Tim Cook that was the

449
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:33,879
Speaker 5: guy they put in charge there with you know, he

450
00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:38,359
Speaker 5: outsourced the Fox con et cetera. And okay, now, but

451
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:41,040
Speaker 5: I think the bigger issue maybe that you're getting at,

452
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:47,399
Speaker 5: is where did this whole idea of shareholder value come from? Right?

453
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:53,440
Speaker 5: And you know, people often cite an article by Milton Friedman,

454
00:25:54,560 --> 00:26:00,119
Speaker 5: Chicago economists, who in nineteen seventy wrote an article in

455
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:03,680
Speaker 5: The New York Times called the only responsibility or social

456
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 5: responsibility of a company is to increase its profits.

457
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 2: This man is one of the most evil people alone.

458
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:12,520
Speaker 2: Well he's dead now, he's bounding in hell. But he

459
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 2: just to be clear, he is.

460
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:19,080
Speaker 5: Like, yeah, now, okay, what's interesting about that? And off

461
00:26:19,119 --> 00:26:21,440
Speaker 5: and overlooked when people read the articles.

462
00:26:22,400 --> 00:26:22,920
Speaker 3: Two things.

463
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:27,080
Speaker 5: One is he wrote that, in the context of a

464
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 5: what was called campaign GM against general motors to put

465
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:37,880
Speaker 5: three public interests people on the board, right, Okay, they

466
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 5: wanted one person to be They wanted to deal with pollution,

467
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:45,880
Speaker 5: they wanted to deal with safety, and they wanted an.

468
00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 3: African American on the board. They okay, okay.

469
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:52,679
Speaker 5: That came out of the consumer movement that was launched

470
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:55,920
Speaker 5: in nineteen sixty five by Ralph Nator's book unsafe at

471
00:26:55,920 --> 00:27:00,160
Speaker 5: any speed. Al Ralph Nator's still around with his podcast

472
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:08,520
Speaker 5: The Government. Yeah, okay that Actually many corporate executives, top level,

473
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:12,080
Speaker 5: they wanted to do some of those things, but people

474
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:15,119
Speaker 5: like Milton Friedman came along and said, this is what

475
00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:19,399
Speaker 5: he called it is pure unadulterated socialism. Okay, to put

476
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:23,280
Speaker 5: those people on the board. Now we know the history

477
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 5: of what's happened in the auto industry since then. Okay,

478
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:28,960
Speaker 5: if you didn't produce safer cars, you lost market share.

479
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 5: If you didn't produce more fuel efficient cars, you lost

480
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:34,440
Speaker 5: my market share. Actually, what happened in the US automobile

481
00:27:34,480 --> 00:27:39,639
Speaker 5: industry that African Americans became a very important source of

482
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,680
Speaker 5: semi skilled and skilled blue collar workers during the sixties

483
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:46,680
Speaker 5: and seventies when immigration was low, So that was important

484
00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 5: for them in terms of being competitive, having a blue.

485
00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:51,680
Speaker 3: Collar day perforce.

486
00:27:52,119 --> 00:27:54,440
Speaker 5: They should have put those people on the board, absolutely,

487
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 5: and they might have done better. So you get back

488
00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:03,000
Speaker 5: to this notion that it sharedholders who basically owned the company.

489
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 5: All those profits belonged to them, and that was what

490
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:10,160
Speaker 5: shareholder value kind of legitimized. And it came out of academia.

491
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 5: I mean it's Milton Friedman won so called Nobel Prize

492
00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:18,680
Speaker 5: in economics. It's really a Swedish Central Bank Prize in economics.

493
00:28:18,800 --> 00:28:25,840
Speaker 5: But basically, and it was also in many ways that

494
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:32,000
Speaker 5: whole movement was racist, sexist, et cetera. Why because the

495
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:37,679
Speaker 5: world that I described of secure employment that existed up

496
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 5: to that time, and I think this had a lot

497
00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:43,080
Speaker 5: to do with it, was a white man's world. And

498
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 5: what happened is the labor force was changing. Women were

499
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 5: getting into the l African Americans both because of demand

500
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 5: and equal opportunity. Okay, And this was a backlash against it.

501
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:57,360
Speaker 5: It was a backlash against Nator and a backlash against

502
00:28:57,400 --> 00:29:00,480
Speaker 5: the civil rights movement. So it has to be seen

503
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:05,440
Speaker 5: in that context, although it was often disguised as you know,

504
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:11,720
Speaker 5: mainstream economics, legitimate economic yes, yes. And by the way,

505
00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 5: you know, of course it's called liberal and conservative in

506
00:29:14,120 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 5: the US. You know, the liberal counterpart of that was

507
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:20,280
Speaker 5: a guy named Paul Samuelson. There was no difference really

508
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 5: ultimately between Paul Samuelson and Milton Freeman in terms of

509
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:26,480
Speaker 5: their fundamental economics. They thought, just let the market work

510
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 5: and everything will be fine if it fails. In Paul

511
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 5: Samuels said, Okay, the government should intervene a little bit,

512
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 5: but basically what they missed was the role of the corporation,

513
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 5: for better or worse in the economy. I mean basically,

514
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:45,920
Speaker 5: right now, there's about two thousand companies in the US

515
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,440
Speaker 5: that employ five thousand or more people to average about

516
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:53,400
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two thousand. That account for about thirty five

517
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 5: percent of total business sector employment in the US. And

518
00:29:56,600 --> 00:29:59,400
Speaker 5: those are the most profitable companies. They pay higher wages.

519
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 5: The investment decisions that they may drive the economy. They

520
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 5: determine what kind of jobs are availed in the economy.

521
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 5: They determine what kind of education we get, They determine

522
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 5: what kind of resources go.

523
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 4: So if they if they decided.

524
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:18,960
Speaker 5: And so, yeah, and so, once those companies changed their

525
00:30:19,040 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 5: their their purpose, they they they they became a big problem.

526
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:29,120
Speaker 4: And so Friedman was successful in influencing.

527
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 5: Yeah, it took time, but he was successful and he

528
00:30:32,360 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 5: was successful. Now here's where the tech industry comes in,

529
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:42,880
Speaker 5: because the tech industry was much more dependent on the

530
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 5: stock market than those old economy companies. Okay, the old

531
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 5: economy companies. There's five functions of the stock market for

532
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 5: a company what they called creation, which is inducing venture

533
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 5: capital to come in. You create companies because you can exit.

534
00:30:57,600 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 3: On the stock market.

535
00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 5: There's control that is separating ownership and control, which a

536
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 5: lot of the shareholder value people see as the original

537
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:10,280
Speaker 5: sin of American industry. But it's actually necessary because once

538
00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 5: you have owner entrepreneurs who want to pass on the company,

539
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:15,719
Speaker 5: what they did in the United States, they passed on

540
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 5: on to professional managers. Yes, and this actually opened up

541
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:21,760
Speaker 5: the growth of the company. When did that still happening, Well,

542
00:31:21,800 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 5: that was already come in, That was already by the

543
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 5: nineteen twenties.

544
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 4: And how do we get rid of them?

545
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 2: Is the thing because if you look at most major

546
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:32,479
Speaker 2: tech companies, Apple included, MBAs, these people are right now.

547
00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, but that's the problem, that's the way nbas are educated.

548
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:36,320
Speaker 3: Now.

549
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:39,720
Speaker 5: Basically, the people who are running companies in the twenties

550
00:31:39,720 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 5: and thirties were basic engineers. The thirties, even though the

551
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:50,120
Speaker 5: Great Depression that was incredibly important.

552
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:52,080
Speaker 4: But the value multiplieres was so much smaller of us.

553
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 3: Yeah.

554
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 5: Yeah, but these companies for the US, and this is

555
00:31:55,720 --> 00:32:00,480
Speaker 5: true globally, these large companies and critical industries dominated and

556
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 5: you had to be they had to be run professionally,

557
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:08,640
Speaker 5: and yeah, basically you got this separation, so that that's

558
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 5: the second thing control. The third is what it called combination.

559
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 5: You can use your stock to acquire other companies, right.

560
00:32:15,280 --> 00:32:17,760
Speaker 5: The fourth is compensation, you can use your stock to

561
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 5: pay people, and the fifth is cash. Most people think

562
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:23,160
Speaker 5: that the role of the stock market is raised cash

563
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,719
Speaker 5: for companies. That is not necessarily true, and it certainly

564
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 5: wasn't true historically. Okay, Now, what happened with the rise

565
00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 5: of the what I call these new economy companies coming

566
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:37,640
Speaker 5: up basically out of Silicon Valley is they started using

567
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:42,360
Speaker 5: cash the stock market to induce venture capital, They started

568
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,800
Speaker 5: using it to acquire other companies. They started using it

569
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 5: to compensate people deep down in terms of stock options,

570
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 5: and particularly in the biotech industry where companies go public

571
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:57,760
Speaker 5: without a product, they raised tons of money on the.

572
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:01,240
Speaker 4: Side they effectively to so, so yeah, they pay.

573
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 5: So once they start within that model, you basically are

574
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:09,480
Speaker 5: looking at your stock price all the time, and so

575
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:15,680
Speaker 5: it's hard to resist the shareholder value arguments, particularly when

576
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:20,680
Speaker 5: they're self serving. Now, and once those companies became big,

577
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:23,719
Speaker 5: they all started saying, oh, we got to keep our

578
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:28,040
Speaker 5: stock price up, so I can trace when companies like Intel, Apple, Microsoft,

579
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:31,280
Speaker 5: et cetera started going from just saying all that money

580
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:33,000
Speaker 5: we're bringing in, we got to just put it back

581
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 5: in the company, to oh, no, that company that money

582
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:39,560
Speaker 5: can go out and just boost our stock price. And

583
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:46,120
Speaker 5: then you get a whole system of what called results

584
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 5: in predatory value extraction, which have to do with corporate raiders,

585
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:53,520
Speaker 5: institutional shareholders, pension funds, everybody is trying to get their

586
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:58,719
Speaker 5: yields out of companies and basically support this. And this

587
00:33:59,080 --> 00:34:03,920
Speaker 5: is based for the economy as a whole. This means

588
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 5: a huge increase in income inequality driven by the stock market,

589
00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 5: making money in the stock market and then looking for

590
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:14,080
Speaker 5: other ways to make that money through private equity, et cetera.

591
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 5: One figure, the top one tenth of one percent of

592
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:22,320
Speaker 5: households in terms of net worth in the United States

593
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:25,799
Speaker 5: about fifteen percent of their assets we're in the stock market.

594
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety.

595
00:34:26,719 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 5: Now it's about forty five percent of their assets. So

596
00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:32,480
Speaker 5: their wealth is very much tied up with the stock market.

597
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 5: The stock market is very hard to crash now because

598
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:39,480
Speaker 5: there's so many people are making so much money out

599
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 5: of money that they have to put it somewhere. And

600
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:46,200
Speaker 5: actually this number of listed stock the companies are shrinking

601
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 5: and through buybacks the shares out there.

602
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:51,720
Speaker 2: At some point this has to fall apart though, because

603
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:54,880
Speaker 2: surely if everything is based on the value of the stock,

604
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 2: every single large company is effectively at the will of

605
00:34:58,000 --> 00:34:59,879
Speaker 2: the stock market, which will mean that the companies will

606
00:34:59,880 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 2: have eventually stop making things with the purpose of doing

607
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 2: anything of them. Than racing shareholder value does not lead Okay,

608
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:06,040
Speaker 2: death of innovation.

609
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:09,760
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, yes it does, but it doesn't happen overnight.

610
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:11,640
Speaker 4: We're watching it happen now.

611
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:15,319
Speaker 5: And and so, uh, you start seeing China has a

612
00:35:15,320 --> 00:35:17,920
Speaker 5: different model. They start out competing the United States, and

613
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:20,239
Speaker 5: you try to block China. Right, this is a big

614
00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 5: problem for the United States because tech companies are so

615
00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:29,240
Speaker 5: they're so integrally related with trade with China and manufacturing

616
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:30,360
Speaker 5: and imparting from China.

617
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 3: This is a total disaster.

618
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 5: And but but basically what has happened is companies, and

619
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 5: I can have a whole bunch of them, have fallen

620
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:44,799
Speaker 5: behind global competitors in the US because they stuck with

621
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:46,560
Speaker 5: this shareholder value model.

622
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:47,680
Speaker 3: So the US is.

623
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 5: Falling behind in a whole range of critical technologies. So

624
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:55,200
Speaker 5: reasons there's no major EVY battery produced in the United States,

625
00:35:55,239 --> 00:35:59,280
Speaker 5: the problem of FABS, which I already mentioned. The problem

626
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 5: well Boeing they did forty three billion dollars in buybacks

627
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:09,080
Speaker 5: from twenty thirteen to the week before the second crash.

628
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 5: Jack Welch Boys then yeah, and they had Boeing's Boeing

629
00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:16,800
Speaker 5: stock price was at a record level in March March first,

630
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 5: twenty twenty nineteen, ten days before the second crash, and

631
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:23,200
Speaker 5: there was no doubt. I wrote an article on this

632
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:28,359
Speaker 5: in May of twenty nineteen that the.

633
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:32,080
Speaker 3: Boeing crashes were the result of top.

634
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:37,040
Speaker 5: Management ignoring issues of safety because it would.

635
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:52,520
Speaker 6: Hurt the stockprist Right, So I have a theory.

636
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 2: I'd love to run it by your school, the roll Coombubble.

637
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:58,400
Speaker 2: Right now, I think the tech industry is reckoning with

638
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:00,640
Speaker 2: the fact that they're all no big ideas. Sure the

639
00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:02,600
Speaker 2: audience will love this. I do not think general if

640
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 2: AI is the future. I think it is a ginied

641
00:37:05,560 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 2: up software product based on desperation. But what happens if

642
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:13,280
Speaker 2: the tech industry stops coming up with hypergrowth markets because

643
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:16,799
Speaker 2: they haven't had one for a while, what happens, like,

644
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:18,840
Speaker 2: what happens to these companies stop having new things?

645
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:25,320
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, were reliant on these things still, Yes,

646
00:37:25,680 --> 00:37:28,360
Speaker 5: so even though they're not new things, we're still using

647
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:30,080
Speaker 5: the whole ecosystem.

648
00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:30,400
Speaker 3: You know.

649
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:33,239
Speaker 5: Again, I use the Apple products, and to Apple is

650
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:36,120
Speaker 5: going to make money off of me because I'm.

651
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:37,240
Speaker 4: Standing by every iPhone.

652
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:39,800
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, what if this is I have the

653
00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 2: new iPhone with me because I'm a little pig and

654
00:37:41,640 --> 00:37:45,160
Speaker 2: I own for Apple every time. What happens if this

655
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 2: is about as good as it gets, if each version

656
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:50,799
Speaker 2: is more incremental, is just more and more incremental, If

657
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:53,560
Speaker 2: it's faster but not that faster, because we're hitting a

658
00:37:53,600 --> 00:37:56,480
Speaker 2: wall on CPUs as well, More's lawa is falling apart.

659
00:37:57,239 --> 00:37:59,359
Speaker 5: Well, we don't really have to. I mean it's easy

660
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:02,360
Speaker 5: to answer that question. We get Donald Trump.

661
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 4: I mean basically, well we have Donald Trump. What happens

662
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 4: off to that?

663
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 5: Okay, well that will find out because you know this,

664
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:10,920
Speaker 5: you know.

665
00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 2: Say sorry, but perhaps like me whil back, are you

666
00:38:13,920 --> 00:38:16,160
Speaker 2: saying that the death of innovation led to Trump?

667
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:19,319
Speaker 5: No, I'm saying the financialization of the economy. Oh yeah,

668
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:20,399
Speaker 5: so so oh yeah.

669
00:38:20,400 --> 00:38:21,600
Speaker 4: Also the corporate authoritisery.

670
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:24,480
Speaker 5: Say so, even here's the problem. Even when I put

671
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 5: more stress on, even when there is innovation, the wrong

672
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:31,960
Speaker 5: people are going to grab it. Okay, and the economy

673
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:37,160
Speaker 5: is going to become more financialized, you know, the people

674
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:40,800
Speaker 5: who actually should be sharing in in the first instance,

675
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:43,799
Speaker 5: employees of those companies. They can be laid off and

676
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:46,840
Speaker 5: in some elon musk one hundred and forty thousand people

677
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:51,920
Speaker 5: at Tesla the end of last year, just like that,

678
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:53,279
Speaker 5: laid off twenty thousand people.

679
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:55,920
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, But my point is if they have no

680
00:38:55,960 --> 00:38:59,120
Speaker 2: other vehicles for growth, because you look at Microsoft for example,

681
00:38:59,320 --> 00:39:01,719
Speaker 2: they are able to They've had I think a year

682
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:04,320
Speaker 2: of a year growth of over lower ten percents.

683
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 4: You these companies are slowing down.

684
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:06,879
Speaker 3: Yeah.

685
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, I don't think that the companies

686
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 5: themselves don't need to grow bigger and bigger. They could

687
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:17,279
Speaker 5: spin off other companies, okay, And I think that that's

688
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:20,200
Speaker 5: a model that works very well because you create incentives

689
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:23,080
Speaker 5: for people in those companies to become their own bosses,

690
00:39:23,120 --> 00:39:24,840
Speaker 5: to become the head of other.

691
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 4: If that's not their culture. Though, the reason I'm pushing isn't.

692
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, the reason I'm pushing on this is I'm thinking Microsoft,

693
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 2: I'm thinking Meta especially, I'm thinking I mean Cisco as well,

694
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:39,360
Speaker 2: and even Oracle. I mean these companies don't have new innovations.

695
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 2: Oracles doing a ripe smokes up, became the largest customer,

696
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:45,240
Speaker 2: they make data sentence, fine, but what if they stop

697
00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 2: being able to grow revenue every year? Like that is

698
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:48,520
Speaker 2: the real question.

699
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 5: What happens, Well, they'll lay off some of their workers,

700
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:57,760
Speaker 5: you know, that's that's the first thing that is not enough. Well,

701
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 5: then they might you know, they might go out of existence.

702
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:09,280
Speaker 5: I mean this has happened to some companies who Sun Microsystems. Yeah, okay,

703
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 5: so you know there are companies that that that just

704
00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:17,920
Speaker 5: don't make it. And you know, but once once you

705
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:21,439
Speaker 5: have made it, it's very hard to disappear in ten

706
00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 5: years or twenty years, of course, because you have that

707
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:29,359
Speaker 5: that that demand base, and you have the capabilities, you

708
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 5: have very very basically the barriers to entry. You have

709
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 5: a whole lot of advantages that allow you to dominate.

710
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:41,360
Speaker 5: And the question is, you know, and then if you

711
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:44,719
Speaker 5: take the global competitors and you try to just shut

712
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:46,760
Speaker 5: them out, then you have a problem.

713
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:50,239
Speaker 2: I mean, the I think my bigger point is that

714
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:54,840
Speaker 2: in the lost ten years, the tech industry has categorically

715
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 2: failed to find any hypergrowth movement that matches smartphones, that

716
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 2: matches clouds software. They've not had any of them to

717
00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:06,759
Speaker 2: create the level of value that those did. And they

718
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:11,960
Speaker 2: are squeezing everything. And my concern is what happens if

719
00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:15,400
Speaker 2: they don't have anything left to squeeze Because they're all Microsoft, METSA,

720
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:17,439
Speaker 2: all these companies. They've laid up tens of thousands of people,

721
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:19,480
Speaker 2: they've tried that, and they could lay off more. And

722
00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:23,160
Speaker 2: now they're putting billions into a two hundred billion into.

723
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:25,880
Speaker 4: Capex into that to lose money. I just feel like

724
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:27,800
Speaker 4: we're in a corporate psychosis.

725
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,720
Speaker 5: Well see the other Another way to answer this question

726
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 5: is is today, ultimately, what is the economy run for

727
00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 5: the economy? Actually?

728
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:40,760
Speaker 3: Is this a normative?

729
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 5: In my view, should be run to provide services to

730
00:41:44,239 --> 00:41:50,080
Speaker 5: people that are not profitable like healthcare, education, uh, you know,

731
00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:55,200
Speaker 5: care for all people whatever. That's what a prosperous economy

732
00:41:55,200 --> 00:42:01,000
Speaker 5: should do. Now, these goods producing companies, these innovative companies,

733
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 5: have a lot of capability produced through those markets. But

734
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:09,040
Speaker 5: that means the government becomes a big source or it's

735
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:13,280
Speaker 5: either governments or you're well paid employees, right become sources

736
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:19,839
Speaker 5: of demand for those products. And that's the opportunity that's

737
00:42:19,880 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 5: been missed. Yeah, yeah, And and what you have now

738
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 5: is with all this financialization of the whole economy, with

739
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 5: all this money being funneled out of these highly successful

740
00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:36,960
Speaker 5: goods producing companies successful in terms of profits, you have

741
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 5: money looking money looking to make more money. And you

742
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 5: have the whole which has been written about a lot recently,

743
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:47,160
Speaker 5: private equity moving into healthcare, for example, moving into areas

744
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:49,920
Speaker 5: which would not be for profit at all, buying up

745
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:56,040
Speaker 5: doctors office, thensince's office, you know, yeh, basically nursing, labor supply,

746
00:42:56,760 --> 00:42:58,839
Speaker 5: what have you. A lot of stuff being written about

747
00:42:58,880 --> 00:43:00,560
Speaker 5: that now, and a lot of it is kind of

748
00:43:00,640 --> 00:43:02,720
Speaker 5: under the radar because you don't even know who owns

749
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:06,520
Speaker 5: these various companies that the corporate structures are so paid.

750
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 5: But basically what should have been happening all along was

751
00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:16,120
Speaker 5: that when you became prosperous, this was really taking some

752
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:19,720
Speaker 5: of those profits, not just paying your workers better, creating

753
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:23,800
Speaker 5: more stable employment upwards socio economic ability. We have downwards

754
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 5: socio economic ability for a lot of a lot of

755
00:43:26,239 --> 00:43:31,319
Speaker 5: big proportion of the population, into more education, into more

756
00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:37,200
Speaker 5: producing things that people need but aren't necessarily the next

757
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 5: big profitable product. Actually, some of those would become profitable

758
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:45,400
Speaker 5: products if in fact you have enough government demand for

759
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:48,600
Speaker 5: them and you are the companies as as in the military.

760
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 5: So that's what that's what should have been happening. That's

761
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:52,560
Speaker 5: what's not been happening.

762
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 4: So how do we make it happen? How do we

763
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:55,120
Speaker 4: force them?

764
00:43:55,280 --> 00:43:57,399
Speaker 5: Well, okay, so you have to change the whole way

765
00:43:57,400 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 5: in which companies allocate resources.

766
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:00,319
Speaker 4: So how do you do that?

767
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:03,360
Speaker 3: Well, so'm I.

768
00:44:03,360 --> 00:44:06,200
Speaker 5: If you wanted to talk practically, you say, you cannot

769
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:07,200
Speaker 5: do buybacks anymore.

770
00:44:07,320 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 3: You're manipulating the market. There should be a need.

771
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:14,000
Speaker 5: This, this is a phenomenon. Buybacks are past dividends as

772
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:17,120
Speaker 5: distribut starts of distribution shareholders in nineteen ninety seven. They're

773
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:20,720
Speaker 5: much more volatile, but way bigger than dividends.

774
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:22,360
Speaker 4: But it's bigger than just by this.

775
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:25,400
Speaker 3: Well, okay, but that's the start. Okay.

776
00:44:26,160 --> 00:44:29,719
Speaker 5: You stop tying executive pay to the stock market. You

777
00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:32,680
Speaker 5: tie executive paid to the success of the company in

778
00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:37,920
Speaker 5: terms of employing people, keeping people employed, innovative products. You

779
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:44,360
Speaker 5: change corporate boards. Okay, you put people on corporate boards

780
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 5: who have a real interest in that company's position in

781
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:53,359
Speaker 5: the economy. Okay, you change the tax system. The tax

782
00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:58,319
Speaker 5: system rewards value extraction rather than value creation. Uh. And

783
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:01,960
Speaker 5: you basically, and this I think is the most important thing,

784
00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:08,840
Speaker 5: you figure out how to mobilize all the resources in

785
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:12,719
Speaker 5: the economy, the human resources in particular, or what I

786
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 5: call collective and cumulative learning. When you get down to it,

787
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 5: innovation is about people getting together collectively.

788
00:45:19,960 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 3: And learning cumulatively.

789
00:45:21,280 --> 00:45:24,440
Speaker 5: That is, what you learned yesterday determines what you can

790
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:33,160
Speaker 5: learn today. And what happens is when these companies stop

791
00:45:33,840 --> 00:45:38,560
Speaker 5: retaining and reinvesting, you just have all kinds of people

792
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 5: with capabilities who are not living up using those capabilities,

793
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:46,280
Speaker 5: or in the end never even get those capabilities because

794
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:49,319
Speaker 5: money doesn't go back through the education. I mean the

795
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 5: US at a point in time in the nineteen eighties

796
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:57,880
Speaker 5: when it was necessary to everybody knew you had to

797
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:03,000
Speaker 5: really up the educational system. And the US was absolutely

798
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 5: and still is ideally situated for that because of the

799
00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:10,920
Speaker 5: history of higher education in the United States, which goes

800
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:13,320
Speaker 5: back to something called the Lion Grand colleges, which really

801
00:46:13,640 --> 00:46:16,719
Speaker 5: came out in the late nineteenth century and were the

802
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:20,360
Speaker 5: bedrock of innovation in the US economy at that point

803
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 5: in time. The huge investments that should have been made

804
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:28,280
Speaker 5: were not made. Public education was virtually in every state

805
00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:32,479
Speaker 5: free before then became expensive student loans. The interest rates

806
00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:37,359
Speaker 5: that extortionate in the US from the government. Basically it

807
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 5: was white people not wanting to fund other people.

808
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:41,880
Speaker 3: For upward mobilities.

809
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 5: So that's definitely yeah, and that's when you now, how

810
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 5: was that resolved. It was resolved through the fact that Asia,

811
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:57,080
Speaker 5: in particular in the tech industry, was educating people and

812
00:46:57,280 --> 00:47:01,719
Speaker 5: those people were in the United States and I think

813
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:04,160
Speaker 5: to the benefit of them and benefit of the United States.

814
00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:07,600
Speaker 5: So I'm not saying that Asians in some case took

815
00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:12,120
Speaker 5: any jobs away from anybody they but they became an

816
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 5: available labor supply through what's called L one visas, H

817
00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:20,560
Speaker 5: one B VISUS permanent VISUS employee and preference visas. I've

818
00:47:20,600 --> 00:47:23,919
Speaker 5: got all the data on this. This is all encapsulated

819
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:27,200
Speaker 5: in the Immigration Act of nineteen ninety and for the

820
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:31,240
Speaker 5: tech industry, they were now off the hook in terms

821
00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:35,120
Speaker 5: of US economy for saying, oh, we have to ensure

822
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:42,280
Speaker 5: that higher education is available for African Americans, available for

823
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 5: white families who are coming out of low income that

824
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 5: we have to be sure that this system is available

825
00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 5: for upwer mobility. They took a walk on that, and

826
00:47:57,719 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 5: they were able to take a walk on that because

827
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:01,200
Speaker 5: they were part of the global system.

828
00:48:01,280 --> 00:48:01,839
Speaker 3: That's what I mean.

829
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:05,880
Speaker 5: It's very ironic now that United States is in this

830
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:06,839
Speaker 5: conflict with things.

831
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:09,960
Speaker 4: It feels like we've gone yeah, socially regressive.

832
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 5: Absolutely absolutely, And what you see is concentration on the

833
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:19,799
Speaker 5: top downwards socioeconomic mobility for people particularly who have no

834
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:22,879
Speaker 5: more than high school educations. And that's why I say,

835
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:26,400
Speaker 5: that's why it leads to Trump. Basically, it's no big mystery.

836
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:30,480
Speaker 5: Once you understand the concentration on the top, the money

837
00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:31,960
Speaker 5: that will go, and.

838
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:34,400
Speaker 2: I imagine to some extent, even if you don't understand it,

839
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:37,040
Speaker 2: you look at the system, you look at the current

840
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:41,280
Speaker 2: political apparatus. Why would you trust authority even if Trump

841
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 2: is a he's obviously not going to do a whole

842
00:48:44,040 --> 00:48:45,800
Speaker 2: bunch of stuff, and he's going to do much worse.

843
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 2: It's almost like you, I feel like people need to

844
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:53,640
Speaker 2: realize everything you've discussed today, is just describing how the

845
00:48:53,680 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 2: system fucks regular people, how the system has somehow we

846
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:01,720
Speaker 2: were more progressive in America in the seventy's corporate why

847
00:49:01,760 --> 00:49:05,000
Speaker 2: it's just it's very worrying. So I'm gonna end on

848
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:07,440
Speaker 2: a nice note. What actually should give people hope?

849
00:49:07,680 --> 00:49:09,720
Speaker 4: Where can people find it right now? In your opinion?

850
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 3: Ah?

851
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:15,760
Speaker 5: Well, that's hard to say right now, I mean because

852
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:21,160
Speaker 5: because I mean the you know, there was a notion

853
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 5: that with all the opposition before the election and before

854
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:32,000
Speaker 5: before Biden had that disasters debate. Okay, you know, he

855
00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:34,719
Speaker 5: had tried to push policies in a much more progressive way,

856
00:49:34,719 --> 00:49:35,560
Speaker 5: and I think it's true.

857
00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were trying.

858
00:49:36,680 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 5: They couldn't get any of the family stuff passed, but

859
00:49:39,160 --> 00:49:41,920
Speaker 5: they were trying to do it. They got the infrastructure

860
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:47,920
Speaker 5: infrastructure Builds pass, et cetera, Inflation Reduction Act, starting finally

861
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:52,520
Speaker 5: to to try to negotiate health care prices. Basically, they

862
00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:56,239
Speaker 5: were trying to do some things that got a resounding

863
00:49:56,360 --> 00:49:59,360
Speaker 5: no from the electorate. And in fact, that part of

864
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:03,759
Speaker 5: the regressive policy was not part of the campaign. And

865
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:09,440
Speaker 5: certainly Joe Biden was a big fan of this stuff

866
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:13,719
Speaker 5: on binding buybacks back when he was vice president. I'll

867
00:50:13,719 --> 00:50:15,319
Speaker 5: tell you a little story about that. We can end

868
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:20,760
Speaker 5: on this, which is not that. Basically, in twenty sixteen,

869
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:22,839
Speaker 5: when he was still vice president, he wrote an op

870
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 5: ed in the New York Times in the Wall Street

871
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:27,960
Speaker 5: Journal about stock buybacks executive pay and said, we have

872
00:50:28,040 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 5: to rain all this stuff in. This is really screwing

873
00:50:30,640 --> 00:50:33,759
Speaker 5: up the economy. The future of the economy depends on it.

874
00:50:35,120 --> 00:50:38,960
Speaker 5: In that article he named one person that was me.

875
00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:42,720
Speaker 5: It said, according to economist, William was on at Comma,

876
00:50:42,920 --> 00:50:44,959
Speaker 5: and then he had data from the article I mentioned

877
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 5: in twenty fourteen. I looked at it a couple of

878
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:51,000
Speaker 5: years ago when a journalist contacted me and I said, oh, Biden,

879
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:54,840
Speaker 5: when he was vice president was I really thought this

880
00:50:54,960 --> 00:50:57,640
Speaker 5: was a problem. Now he's not saying anything about it.

881
00:50:57,680 --> 00:50:59,279
Speaker 5: And I said, look at the article. I looked at

882
00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:03,880
Speaker 5: the article and it said, according to economists, blank space Comma,

883
00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:05,839
Speaker 5: someone had actually hacked out my name.

884
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:10,880
Speaker 2: Yes, it feels like it. We need a populist movement,

885
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:12,279
Speaker 2: then straight up pro no.

886
00:51:12,719 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 5: Basically, Basically, the when the Democrats got into power, and

887
00:51:19,640 --> 00:51:21,440
Speaker 5: this happened under Obama, It's happened.

888
00:51:22,120 --> 00:51:23,440
Speaker 3: It was happened under Clinton.

889
00:51:24,160 --> 00:51:27,680
Speaker 5: Uh, they have just cosied up to Wall Street, cosied

890
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:31,840
Speaker 5: up to rich people. Basically, they do not have a

891
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 5: critique of shareholder value. There is nothing coming out of

892
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:38,920
Speaker 5: the of from the Democrats when they are in power

893
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 5: in particular. Uh, and that that is that it's confronting

894
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:47,880
Speaker 5: this and I think it's now basically comfortull circle in

895
00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:51,319
Speaker 5: terms of the people being affected by the lack of

896
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:55,719
Speaker 5: upward mobility, the lack of job security, living people living

897
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:59,439
Speaker 5: paycheck to paycheck while other people are getting richer and richer.

898
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 5: Finding Okay, we'll just take someone who you know with

899
00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:06,640
Speaker 5: a hope that they're going to do something different. Of

900
00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:09,880
Speaker 5: course they're not. So yeah, So what's what's the where's

901
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:12,760
Speaker 5: the optimism of courts? We need, we need a progressive movement.

902
00:52:13,600 --> 00:52:15,719
Speaker 3: But but it is, Yeah.

903
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:17,359
Speaker 2: I feel like you can find hope in the fact

904
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 2: that these ideas will become more prevalent because at some point,

905
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:23,239
Speaker 2: we mean, we need to review these systems. We need

906
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:26,640
Speaker 2: to also realize that worker power will make cooler shit,

907
00:52:26,719 --> 00:52:29,799
Speaker 2: it will make more innovation. William, thank you so much

908
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:31,440
Speaker 2: for joining me, and everyone, thank you so much for

909
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:34,440
Speaker 2: joining us today for the first live episode of Better Offline.

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00:52:34,440 --> 00:52:37,640
Speaker 4: From the beautiful country of Portugal. Websummit.

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00:52:37,680 --> 00:52:49,040
Speaker 1: Thank you everyone, Thanks, thank you for listening to Better Offline.

912
00:52:49,160 --> 00:52:51,600
Speaker 2: The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song

913
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:54,320
Speaker 2: is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music

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00:52:54,320 --> 00:52:57,960
Speaker 2: and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, m A T

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00:52:57,960 --> 00:52:58,560
Speaker 2: T O.

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00:52:58,800 --> 00:53:02,320
Speaker 1: S O W s ki dot com.

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00:53:02,360 --> 00:53:04,680
Speaker 2: You can email me at easy at Better offline dot

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00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:06,920
Speaker 2: com or visit Better Offline dot com to find more

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00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:10,359
Speaker 2: podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really

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00:53:10,360 --> 00:53:12,560
Speaker 2: recommend you go to chat dot where's youreaed dot at

921
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:15,160
Speaker 2: to visit the discord, and go to our slash.

922
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:16,720
Speaker 1: Better Offline to check out I'll Reddit.

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00:53:17,520 --> 00:53:18,880
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for listening.

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00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 1: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media.

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00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:25,160
Speaker 3: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

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00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 3: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:31,320
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.