Speaker 1: Coolz Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to take it after Here a podcast where I
Speaker 2: try to explain economics to you and Molly. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: bia Wung, and thank you Molly for agreeing to do this,
Speaker 2: especially on extremely short notice, so.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: I am so excited to struggle to learn.
Speaker 3: So, okay, there's good news and bad news.
Speaker 2: The good news is that the central thing that this
Speaker 2: episode is about, nominally is a concept called monopsony.
Speaker 3: And it's actually really easy.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: See you said that, you said that in the word
Speaker 4: chat earlier, you said monopsy and I was like, oh man,
Speaker 4: she's so tired.
Speaker 5: That's not even a word.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, this actually gets into the thing because this
Speaker 2: is a word that was made up specifically for this concept.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, I do also have.
Speaker 2: To do the bad news, which is that to actually
Speaker 2: understand the history of this, we do have to explain
Speaker 2: stuff that's legitimately very complicated. So I'm locked in. Yay,
Speaker 2: but okay, okay, monopsony. The hook of this, this is
Speaker 2: part of the reason why you get paid like shit
Speaker 2: is because of monopsony. So I first was interested in
Speaker 2: writing about this specifically for this show because Weirdly, NPR's
Speaker 2: Planet Money Like discovered the concept of monopsony and did
Speaker 2: it a couple of pretty interesting pieces on the history
Speaker 2: of the concept and the place that they go with
Speaker 2: it is they start talking about one of my favorite economists,
Speaker 2: Joan Robinson, who is really good and we're gonna spend
Speaker 2: most of this episode talking about her. But one of
Speaker 2: the stories that they tell this is a very famous
Speaker 2: story in the circles of economists that I'm around, I guess,
Speaker 2: is about her sitting down with like a British classicist
Speaker 2: and inventing the term monopsony. So, okay, what is what
Speaker 2: is monopsony?
Speaker 5: It's one something mono.
Speaker 2: You know what a monopoly is. So monopoly is when
Speaker 2: one seller, right, So okay, it's like, yeah, you have
Speaker 2: I don't know, you have like Google, which is a
Speaker 2: monopoly on like search engines, right, And you know, monopoly
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily and what we'll be getting into this more
Speaker 2: in a second, it doesn't necessarily have to mean that
Speaker 2: there's literally only one right. But you know, like the US,
Speaker 2: like every market you are dealing with in the United
Speaker 2: States is some kind of monopoly where you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: there's like a big three, or sometimes there's like two,
Speaker 2: or sometimes there's maybe five, or sometimes it's.
Speaker 4: Quite literal, like we only have one power company in Virginia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: And sometimes monopolies are deliberately set up by the state,
Speaker 2: right where sometimes you know, the state, a state would
Speaker 2: just be like, yeah, fuck it, there's only one power
Speaker 2: company here.
Speaker 5: Oh no, it's a private company. It's a private company.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, but sometimes private companies will be hand
Speaker 2: at monopolies like this, right. Utility companies are a thing
Speaker 2: where it does kind of make sense because having two
Speaker 2: companies setting up rival ele grids is like a nightmare.
Speaker 5: But well, that's why the state should do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well it's like it's like, yeah, this is the issue though, right,
Speaker 2: And this is why monopoly in theory is like a
Speaker 2: thing that economists are not supposed to like, because monopoly
Speaker 2: screws up the sort of like perfect competition between all
Speaker 2: of these one million different companies that's supposed to like
Speaker 2: make your life good because they're all forced to sell
Speaker 2: everything at like the lowest possible price because they have
Speaker 2: to outcompete everyone else. And it's like all of this stuff.
Speaker 2: But then if you if you have one monopoly. They
Speaker 2: can charge you whatever the fuck price they want because
Speaker 2: there's only one of them, and the alternatives are to
Speaker 2: you eat shit.
Speaker 4: Or like like Amazon choking out. It was one hundred diapers, right,
Speaker 4: It was a diaper company that offered like affordable order diapers,
Speaker 4: I mean undercut them really hard, concentrated period of time.
Speaker 4: So they went out of business and they jacked with
Speaker 4: the prices on dipers.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep.
Speaker 2: This is basically just what the modern tech economy is
Speaker 2: is that some company will come in with like one
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollar there's worth of tech money. There were
Speaker 2: a bunch of ride share wars in India over this,
Speaker 2: where like all these rideshare companies were basically giving people
Speaker 2: for like really really low cost rides. I mean they're
Speaker 2: obviously still screwing the drivers, but like.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, naturally, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And so they were just trying to like edge of
Speaker 2: when I was out of the market so that they
Speaker 2: could take control of it and raise the prices and
Speaker 2: stuff eventually.
Speaker 5: Because it's like, you know, the capitalism enthusiast likes to
Speaker 5: imagine that the economy is like you know, Darwinian evolution,
Speaker 5: survival of the fittest, right, we evolve and compete and
Speaker 5: the best man wins. But actually it's more like intentionally
Speaker 5: introducing mongooses to the islands of Hawaii. Yeah, that's yeah,
Speaker 5: this is an evolution. You just introduce a giant weasel
Speaker 5: that aid all the bird eggs.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's like, you know, if you look at
Speaker 2: how capitalism spreads historically, it's it's not even like capitalism
Speaker 2: doesn't outproduce other like economic systems. Usually what it does
Speaker 2: is like, you know, there's there's this line in the
Speaker 2: Communist Manifesto that I think Marx was extremely wrong about.
Speaker 2: We're just talking of like like trade is the cannon
Speaker 2: that will bring down Chinese walls. And he's talking about
Speaker 2: like free trade will like destroyed China's trade bearers. It's like, well, no,
Speaker 2: like China's trade barriers were brought down by the Opium Wars,
Speaker 2: like the British Navy like sailed in and like besieged
Speaker 2: the capital, like you know, but when people talk about monopolies,
Speaker 2: they're talking about selling goods right, right. And what Chillan
Speaker 2: Robinson realizes very quickly is that hold on, this is
Speaker 2: also true for employers, right. If you are trying to
Speaker 2: find a fucking job right under sort of like the
Speaker 2: models of perfect competition that like neoclassical economics, the economics
Speaker 2: that like you learned in school, they just normally assume that, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can just switch jobs really easily.
Speaker 3: So obviously companies have to pay.
Speaker 4: You, right, But in most towns there's one major employer
Speaker 4: who kind of sets the bar.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like here at TVA.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it'ss or like Walmart, and like, if you
Speaker 2: ever had to find a job, like you understand how
Speaker 2: this works.
Speaker 5: I actually have it, but I understand in the theory.
Speaker 3: To the listener, you've you've had to find a job.
Speaker 4: Here you're speaking to you're speaking to the only person
Speaker 4: who's never applied for a job.
Speaker 3: Literally never applied for a job.
Speaker 5: It's a complicated situation. Yeah, I've never Like, oh wow,
Speaker 5: good for you.
Speaker 3: I love this for you. This rules for everyone else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it's really obvious that you know, there exists
Speaker 2: conditions where you have monopolies, but for like hiring people,
Speaker 2: So Joan Robinson like at this meeting with this classes
Speaker 2: coins the term monopsony to be like okay, there's one seller, Okay, I'm.
Speaker 4: Usually against a neologism, but I understand the need for
Speaker 4: this word.
Speaker 5: I'm on board. Yeah, I'm on board with Joanne.
Speaker 3: It's a good word. She she's really cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I spread mentioned the caveat here, which is she does
Speaker 2: do the like classic n eighteen fifties communist thing of
Speaker 2: like going to China and then getting led around on
Speaker 2: like state sponsored tours and then coming back and assuming
Speaker 2: you understand what's happening in communist China, And that didn't
Speaker 2: go great, but you know, a lot the rest of
Speaker 2: her work is really good. And this is kind of
Speaker 2: where Planet Money does a really interesting history skip where
Speaker 2: in their version of the story they go oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and then everyone just kind of ignored it until recently
Speaker 2: it got picked back up by these economists who were like, wow,
Speaker 2: we did peer reviewed research and we found out that, like,
Speaker 2: it turns out that yeah, actually there isn't perfect competition
Speaker 2: in the labor market and that yeah, labor markets are
Speaker 2: controlled by these like monopolies.
Speaker 4: And I guess you have to do studies to prove things.
Speaker 4: You can't just vibe it out. But I would say
Speaker 4: just the general vibe, like I could have told you
Speaker 4: that I told you that.
Speaker 2: Mollie, Okay, I have such bad news for you, which
Speaker 2: is we are going to it's the person in this
Speaker 2: story whose idea it was to be like, hey, we
Speaker 2: should like figure out how the economy works using data.
Speaker 5: That was a new concept for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, was was invented by a guy. We're good to
Speaker 2: get to the story of the invention.
Speaker 5: Of and it was in like nineteen seven.
Speaker 3: This is a sign I got.
Speaker 2: It was like the thirties, nineteen thirties when we invented this.
Speaker 5: It was in two thousand and four. They brought math
Speaker 5: into it.
Speaker 3: Oh god.
Speaker 2: One of my absolute favorite stories of all time is, like,
Speaker 2: you know, in like the nineties, there was like the
Speaker 2: craze over chaos theory, which I think the only artifact
Speaker 2: of that is like the chaos theory guy in Jurassic Park,
Speaker 2: Mate of my Flashes, wings and all these things happened.
Speaker 2: Like a chaos theory is. It's a it's a like
Speaker 2: a genuinely very interesting math concept. But the thing about
Speaker 2: chaos theory is that it only applies to things that
Speaker 2: are third order equations.
Speaker 5: A thing I definitely know what that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we could go off in a tangent on this
Speaker 2: but I'm just I'm just gonna tell the econ joke.
Speaker 3: So everyone economics to me was like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: there's this hot topic.
Speaker 2: But the problem is it doesn't apply to the economic
Speaker 2: stuff people are doing in the nineties because they don't
Speaker 2: use third order equations. They only use second order ones
Speaker 2: because they're dumbasses. This is like one of the trends
Speaker 2: of the show is that the people who do mainstream
Speaker 2: economics are extremely dumb.
Speaker 4: And I've always had that feeling, but because I don't
Speaker 4: understand the economy, it's hard for me to be sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's it's because it's ideologically motivated, right, you
Speaker 2: know the reason that you study economics in high school?
Speaker 5: Who studies economics in high school?
Speaker 2: I didn't know there are like economics classes in high school, right,
Speaker 2: like that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Sorry when I say studies, like yeah, like you had
Speaker 2: to take an economy greade school. Yeah. The reason there
Speaker 2: are economics classes in high schools is not to teach
Speaker 2: people economics.
Speaker 3: It's specific it was specifically.
Speaker 2: Designed as an anti communist thing, to like teach kids
Speaker 2: how capitalism really works through like again a model where
Speaker 2: they don't teach you that monopolies exist. And you know, obviously,
Speaker 2: like some of this has been incorporated into more modern stuff,
Speaker 2: like the couset of a monopol seed like kind of
Speaker 2: has entered into the lexicon of like the economics you
Speaker 2: get taught as like a little tiny baby child, which
Speaker 2: is not actually economics. It's literally propaganda. That's what it
Speaker 2: was designed to be.
Speaker 4: I mean, how fun to get to pretend to be
Speaker 4: a scientist when you don't do real math and really
Speaker 4: you're just a propagandist.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's so fun. It's so fun.
Speaker 2: One of the other things, like if if you're ever
Speaker 2: like in university settings and you want to just like
Speaker 2: listen to someone complain about shit for a while, go
Speaker 2: talk to the math people about the ship people get
Speaker 2: Nobel prizes for in economics, where it's like this is
Speaker 2: like shit that like a child who studies mathematics could do.
Speaker 2: The math doesn't even have a Nobel prize, right if
Speaker 2: you want to get like a Fields Medal, there's not.
Speaker 5: Nope, that's so sad for the math guys.
Speaker 3: Matho doesn't have one. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and the other thing is econsolable price is fake too.
Speaker 2: This is this is another thing that's important. It's not
Speaker 2: one of the prizes that was set down by by Nobel,
Speaker 2: which I like the Nobel prices.
Speaker 3: They created their own.
Speaker 5: And the dynamite guy knew what he was doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's like literally like the Central Bank of
Speaker 2: Sweden made their own and called it a Nobel and
Speaker 2: it's not a real one.
Speaker 3: It's a fake one.
Speaker 5: Wait, so you're saying that if we are confident enough.
Speaker 3: In our assertion, oh, yeah, we could just make a Nobel.
Speaker 5: We could tell people that we are Nobel laureates in podcasting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean as a huge thing.
Speaker 2: You also have to have an extraordinarily large amount of
Speaker 2: money to do to do propaganda.
Speaker 3: For this, because the reason this works.
Speaker 2: Is that the Nobel Prize in economics is also a
Speaker 2: propaganda effort, right, And one of the ways you can
Speaker 2: tell us a propaganda effort is that they didn't give
Speaker 2: what a Joanne Robinson, who was one of the most
Speaker 2: influential economists who has ever lived. Justice for Joanne genuinely
Speaker 2: like it's it's outrageous. It's just like one of the
Speaker 2: few things even to the people who hate her are like, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: she should have gotten one, because she's one of the
Speaker 2: people who invents the idea that competition isn't perfect, like
Speaker 2: she invents imperfect competition where there's like monopolies and shit,
Speaker 2: say this is all like there's something that's like foundational
Speaker 2: to like everyone's to some extent understanding of economics, but
Speaker 2: most of our ideas are completely ignored and saying like
Speaker 2: monopsony is like a thing that you put in textbooks.
Speaker 2: But then when you're trying to like you know, you're
Speaker 2: you're an economist that like not even like the fucking
Speaker 2: Heritage Institute or Hairriage Foundation or whatever, you're at like
Speaker 2: a just like a random economics think tank, right, like
Speaker 2: you don't take Knopsony into account when you're like, hey,
Speaker 2: we can't raise the minimum wage because if you raise
Speaker 2: the minimum wage, then everyone's going to get fired. And
Speaker 2: it turns out to like, well, no, that's not true.
Speaker 2: And the reason that's not true is because if you
Speaker 2: assume that neoclassical economics is real, is that companies aren't
Speaker 2: hiring people at like the lowest possible wage that like
Speaker 2: that they could do without someone going to somewhere else.
Speaker 3: They're hiring them even.
Speaker 2: Lower than that because they can suppress the wages because
Speaker 2: where the fuck else are you going to work right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: But also like people like human behavior is not subject
Speaker 4: to the rules of mathematics in that straightforward kind of
Speaker 4: way either.
Speaker 2: No, it's very dumb and like, because this goes back
Speaker 2: to something that's important to all of this, which is
Speaker 2: that like, economics as a field is not it's not
Speaker 2: a science. It doesn't come from science. It comes from
Speaker 2: moral philosophy. The economy guys, they're always saying stuff. They're
Speaker 2: just like confidently asserting something and showing me a graph
Speaker 2: that's just like does not reflect my lived reality at all,
Speaker 2: But they're very confident about the graph.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's the thing because because because it's originally philosophy.
Speaker 5: It's like, no, the economy is going great.
Speaker 3: It's like not, we're right, not.
Speaker 5: From not in my house.
Speaker 3: No, it's like it's fucking bullshit.
Speaker 2: That's a reflection of the fact that economics as a
Speaker 2: discipline works backwards from the way that a science works,
Speaker 2: which is economics starts out with assumptions about how humans work. Right,
Speaker 2: It starts out with the assumption that like everyone's like
Speaker 2: a rationally calculating actor who's like seeking to maximize their
Speaker 2: own utility.
Speaker 4: And I've never met that person. Yeah, it's philosophy. I
Speaker 4: actually no, I love maximizing utility. Don't get me started
Speaker 4: on maximizing my economic utility.
Speaker 2: It's literally utilitarianism, right, It's not something that's derived from
Speaker 2: from empirical data. It starts with an assumption about how
Speaker 2: things work and then projects that assumption onto the world.
Speaker 4: I don't want to be melodramatic, but I'm having a
Speaker 4: breakthrough here in my understanding of what economics is. I
Speaker 4: thought they were just being dumb before suddenly I see
Speaker 4: it completely differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ideologically motivated reasons. They have a philosophy. They
Speaker 2: were attempting to mathematically define, like project their philosophy onto
Speaker 2: the world, and it doesn't work very well because it's philosophy.
Speaker 2: It's not right.
Speaker 4: They're trying to prove a conclusion rather than map reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're going backwards. Yeah, and this is something that
Speaker 2: we're going to get into in a second. But first
Speaker 2: we're going to get into are the products and services
Speaker 2: that support this podcast?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 5: Speaking of the economy.
Speaker 6: Woo, we are back.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that's actually interesting about the
Speaker 2: story of Joan Robinson.
Speaker 3: Is that there's a reason why almost no one.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know that people people listening to
Speaker 2: this podcast have a higher likelihood of knowing who Joan
Speaker 2: Robinson is than like almost any other group of people
Speaker 2: on Earth. But like, there's a reason why she's not
Speaker 2: extremely well known by normal people.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna be so honest with emia.
Speaker 4: The only economists I know are the ones that Jabier
Speaker 4: and Malay named his clone dogs after.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. Well, like people like you've heard of you,
Speaker 3: like you've heard of like Adam Smith. Right, that's true.
Speaker 5: That's not one of the clone dogs.
Speaker 2: John Robinson is an economist who is important enough that
Speaker 2: like you should know who she is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but he would not have named one of the
Speaker 4: clone dogs after her. I think they're I think they're
Speaker 4: all boys. No, absolutely not. He probably like he would
Speaker 4: chainsaw her.
Speaker 3: It's bad.
Speaker 2: But the reason that you don't know who she is,
Speaker 2: and the reason that Monopsony kind of like sat in
Speaker 2: the closet of Mainshon economics until people started digging it
Speaker 2: out recently, is because John Robinson is part of a
Speaker 2: tradition of heterodox economics, which is it's you know, the
Speaker 2: economics that's not the mainstream ones and all of those
Speaker 2: people who got systematically purged from every academic institution over
Speaker 2: the span of about thirty years by the neoclassical economists because.
Speaker 5: The government doesn't want you to know their ideas.
Speaker 2: I mean, like well, like like genuinely, what happened was
Speaker 2: it was like it was, it was a bunch of
Speaker 2: these people like hired by capitalists in order to do
Speaker 2: propaganda for them, and they went through and systematically took
Speaker 2: over and purged all of the country's economics departments.
Speaker 5: If what she's saying is the entire framework of your
Speaker 5: worldview just like functionally doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 5: not a good vibe for them.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about.
Speaker 2: The kind of tradition that John Robinson operates in, because
Speaker 2: this is actually a story that really really tangentially the
Speaker 2: planet money people kind of allude to and then never
Speaker 2: talk about again, even though it's fascinating. So John Robinson
Speaker 2: is I guess you could call her one of the
Speaker 2: sort of first people in what you would call the
Speaker 2: post Kinesian tradition.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I'm always saying that, do you know who Canes
Speaker 5: is an economist? Was his name Maynard?
Speaker 3: Yeah? John Maynard Kinesa.
Speaker 2: He's like, like, if you remember one thing about Canes,
Speaker 2: like if you need to just be like you have
Speaker 2: a flash card, you need to be like someone says,
Speaker 2: Canes he's the I guess like decidagal terms like countercyclical spending.
Speaker 3: But he's he's the.
Speaker 2: Guy who's like, when economy bad, government should spend money
Speaker 2: in order to make economy not bad. Again, that's like
Speaker 2: the most basic part of Kanesianism.
Speaker 5: And that's all I need.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But like to think about.
Speaker 2: Canes is that like he wants like a nicer version
Speaker 2: of capitalism, but he is like a capitalist, and so
Speaker 2: there's a sort of milieu around him that John Robinson
Speaker 2: is kind of part of. But there's a lot of
Speaker 2: elements of it, and people who Canes like take stuff
Speaker 2: from who are extremely obscure now because you know, kines
Speaker 2: did a version of it that like took the radicalism out.
Speaker 2: I promised earlier you were going to get to the
Speaker 2: guy who like invented the concept of actually doing scientific
Speaker 2: studies for macroeconomics.
Speaker 3: That reach that makes me.
Speaker 4: So mad that the answer to that question isn't the first.
Speaker 5: Guy who put math in who just had that we
Speaker 5: should do math and economics.
Speaker 4: Oh, the first guy that did it, the first economists, right,
Speaker 4: the guy even been in economics.
Speaker 2: Right, economists do a bunch of math. It's just not math, that's.
Speaker 4: But like, we should study the currently existing reality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the world first.
Speaker 5: Right, it's just like trying to force reality into this
Speaker 5: chart that I made. That's awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so the guy who was like, hey, what if
Speaker 2: we observed reality? His name is Michael Kleecki.
Speaker 5: Good for him, great job. Michael rocks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has a long and convoluted history of stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna go ahead and say I don't indorse everything
Speaker 5: he did. I don't know anything about him. Honestly, he
Speaker 5: kind of rocks.
Speaker 2: He's so he COLLECKI like foundationally is a Marxist, right,
Speaker 2: It's not sure that he's from this school, but he's
Speaker 2: the guy from which one of the major schools of
Speaker 2: Marxist economics is born, which is called the Monopoly capital school,
Speaker 2: who are kind of the Marxist version of the people
Speaker 2: who were like, oh my god, hold on, monopoly has
Speaker 2: gotten so out of hand. We have to change how
Speaker 2: our economics work. Robinson kind of discovers Kaleki a little
Speaker 2: bit later in her career. It's sort of like a
Speaker 2: forties thing, right, She's originally writing about emperor competition and
Speaker 2: like monopsony in like the thirties, But Colleki's one of
Speaker 2: the people who is responsible for a bunch of these
Speaker 2: ideas around, like him and Robinson are responsible for a
Speaker 2: bunch of these ideas around. Like okay, yeah, Actually it
Speaker 2: turns out that everything we've been talking, like the world
Speaker 2: is composed of monopolies and monoposes and everything exists at
Speaker 2: best in the state of hypercompetition. And this this becomes
Speaker 2: kind of its own school, and like you know, it
Speaker 2: branches out in a bunch of different ways through the
Speaker 2: work of some other people who who start to look
Speaker 2: at like how is price set? And this is something
Speaker 2: that we've talked about on this show before. So so like, okay,
Speaker 2: if you've ever seen the graph that like all of
Speaker 2: the econ people use where it's like prices, supply and demand, right,
Speaker 2: what is it?
Speaker 3: Well, okay, so at a certain.
Speaker 2: Point, and we've talked about this on the show before,
Speaker 2: our friends as Strange Matters, the magazine Strange Matters, I have written.
Speaker 3: About this a lot. If you like, ask a person.
Speaker 3: It's funny.
Speaker 2: I actually did this by accident with a fringe who
Speaker 2: runs like a very very small business. Well it's not
Speaker 2: that small, but like run runs runs like a very
Speaker 2: very small business. And I asked her like she was
Speaker 2: talking about, like, okay, how do we figure out how
Speaker 2: to like price something? And I talked to her about
Speaker 2: it and she goes, yeah, it's cost plus markup, right.
Speaker 2: And the thing about price, right is price is not
Speaker 2: set by a graph like prices are set by a
Speaker 2: person in an office who figures out what the price
Speaker 2: is going to be right, And the way that they
Speaker 2: do that is cost plus markup. It's like, how expensive
Speaker 2: was the item for us to obtain, and then what's
Speaker 2: the like additional price that we need to sell it
Speaker 2: for in order to both make profit and pay everyone.
Speaker 2: And this is really obvious to like anyone who's done
Speaker 2: a job, but like, well, yeah, no, shit, of course
Speaker 2: it's costless markup. In economics, this is considered an extremely
Speaker 2: radical idea.
Speaker 5: Oh I guess you know this.
Speaker 4: In the supply and demand model, it's just like whatever
Speaker 4: people are willing to pay, you just keep increasing the
Speaker 4: price until demand drops off, and then you back off
Speaker 4: a little.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In economics, that's called like companies being like price takers.
Speaker 2: The theory and like normal economics quote unquote is that
Speaker 2: companies they don't set prices. They take the price from
Speaker 2: like what people are willing to pay. And that's objectively
Speaker 2: not true.
Speaker 5: They're just constantly standing there tweaking the dial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like no, no, no, no no no, like like
Speaker 2: just just on an objective level, what's happening is is
Speaker 2: you know this, this is what's called like administrative prices, right,
Speaker 2: and this is this is like the basic like one
Speaker 2: of the basic revelations of like post Kanes and economics.
Speaker 3: Is that price is set by a person who sets
Speaker 3: it by cost plus markup.
Speaker 4: And why there's the precog who floats at a pool
Speaker 4: of goo and just into it's the prices.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they like see the data.
Speaker 2: It's like no, no, no, no, no, it's literally just a
Speaker 2: person they set the price. It's costlus markup. There's some
Speaker 2: like psychology stuff there about like what kinds of prices
Speaker 2: will break a consumer's loyalty to like a store, right,
Speaker 2: because if you like raise the price at a store
Speaker 2: too much, people will stop shopping at the store. But
Speaker 2: like that's like the way this stuff actually works. And
Speaker 2: this is one of the big post knesy and innovations
Speaker 2: is like, Hi, we're trying to figure out how price works.
Speaker 2: So we went and we asked a bunch of people
Speaker 2: how it works.
Speaker 5: A remarkable choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, ah God, But this is an issue for
Speaker 2: neoclassical economics because the whole like supply and demand setting price,
Speaker 2: is like the basis of their whole thing, and it's
Speaker 2: the basis of all of their politics. Now, at this point,
Speaker 2: we need to talk about the thing that's legitimately complicated.
Speaker 2: Before we get into that, We're going to talk to
Speaker 2: something that's not complicated, which is how to use these
Speaker 2: products and services.
Speaker 5: Wow, we're actually doing the economy right now.
Speaker 3: We are. We are back.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're gonna stop doing the economy. And the
Speaker 2: reason we're going to stop doing the economy is that,
Speaker 2: you know, when I talked about there being an ideological purge,
Speaker 2: right people, A Strange Matters wrote about this economist named
Speaker 2: Frederick Lee who was an IWW member and who was
Speaker 2: one of the sort of I don't know, like the
Speaker 2: guy trying to pull the five thousand different strands of
Speaker 2: heterodox economics together, and he writes a really really detailed,
Speaker 2: in depth analysis of at each individual school, how did
Speaker 2: the neoclassical people come in and purge everyone and then
Speaker 2: maintain control of it. And one of the ways you
Speaker 2: can tell that this isn't about who is correct, it
Speaker 2: is about who has power is something called the Cambridge
Speaker 2: capital controversy, which I'm going to assume Mali, you haven't
Speaker 2: heard of this.
Speaker 4: No, I was just really sort of marveling and turning
Speaker 4: that phrase over in my mind. It's not about who
Speaker 4: is correct, it's about who has power. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: store that one away. That's a good turn of phrase.
Speaker 2: It's a good way of understanding this, and it's a
Speaker 2: good way of understanding the central thing of like, hey,
Speaker 2: why did everyone kind of ignore monopsony for eighty years?
Speaker 2: And it turns out that the answer is that being
Speaker 2: right doesn't do anything in economics.
Speaker 5: That's heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's bleak. And some of these people are people
Speaker 2: who have institutional power. So one of the things that
Speaker 2: Joan Robinson is most famous for doing is her and
Speaker 2: her collaborator Piero Saraffa, who's another whole story, who's an
Speaker 2: extremely wild guy. Saraffa is the other person who a
Speaker 2: bunch of this, like heterodox economics is based off of.
Speaker 2: There's a large extent to which heterodox economics means that,
Speaker 2: like you think Saraffa was right instead of the Chicago
Speaker 2: School people and like the neoclassical people or Marx or
Speaker 2: you're sort.
Speaker 3: Of like fusing the two of them.
Speaker 2: And she and Joe and Robinson are writing out of Cambridge,
Speaker 2: the one in England. But then there's also a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of neoclassical economists are at Cambridge, the one in Massachusetts.
Speaker 4: They really can't be doing that. Yeah, well, we got
Speaker 4: to rename at least one of them.
Speaker 2: And they fight it out. That's why it's called the
Speaker 2: Cambridge Capital Controversy.
Speaker 3: They go to more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, okay, the thing that they're fighting about is
Speaker 2: extremely convoluted. At some point, Mollie, I'm gonna drag you
Speaker 2: on here and we're gonna do the actual full version
Speaker 2: of it. But the short version of it is really funny.
Speaker 2: And the short version of it is that this is
Speaker 2: a fight about Okay, so you have like two different
Speaker 2: kinds of what are called capital goods. So you have
Speaker 2: like I don't know. I think the capital's power one.
Speaker 2: It's like tools that make ice cream and tools that
Speaker 2: make airplane, and the question is, how do you figure
Speaker 2: out how much those tools are worth together?
Speaker 5: Well, are you selling ice cream on the airplanes?
Speaker 2: You know they where you're selling them doesn't taste really,
Speaker 2: I'm just.
Speaker 5: Thinking, is there synergy a play here? Like, well, I'm actually.
Speaker 2: One of the Legitimately, the idea that you could use
Speaker 2: the same equipment to do multiple things is like a
Speaker 2: really serious problem for an enormous number of economic schools.
Speaker 3: Like it's like real bad.
Speaker 2: It's like kind of it's kind of even bad for
Speaker 2: like the mathematics behind like classical Marxist political economy. It's
Speaker 2: it's it's really bad for like the neo classical people,
Speaker 2: it's not great.
Speaker 4: So my new airline where everyone gets a free ice
Speaker 4: cream is really throwing a wrench into this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, as long as long as as long as
Speaker 2: the same machines can either be making ice cream or
Speaker 2: you can be making airplane and you can't tell which one.
Speaker 5: What are they teaching at economy school?
Speaker 3: What is even happening?
Speaker 5: So we were arguing about ice cream machines, Well so.
Speaker 2: So what what What they're what they're arguing about, right,
Speaker 2: is if you are doing like normal neoclassical economics, can
Speaker 2: you point at like factories and go how much is
Speaker 2: this worth? And this is a real problem because it
Speaker 2: turns out that the way the neoclassical economists do this
Speaker 2: is circular. So, okay, you're trying to figure out how
Speaker 2: much money a factory is worth. I'm going to quote
Speaker 2: here from the book Capital is Power, which has a
Speaker 2: very good explanation of what's happening here. The money value
Speaker 2: of any capital good, that is, the amount investors are
Speaker 2: willing to pay for it, is the present value of
Speaker 2: its expected future profits, computed by discounting this profit by
Speaker 2: the prevailing rate of interest. So value equals expected profit
Speaker 2: divided by rate of interest. So basically what they're saying
Speaker 2: here is that, like, okay, you're trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how much money is the factory worth. The amount of
Speaker 2: money that the factory is worth depends on how much
Speaker 2: money you make from using the factory to make plane
Speaker 2: or make ice cream. That's like basically what that's saying.
Speaker 2: And then there's a discounting rate because you're making that
Speaker 2: money in the future.
Speaker 4: The problem with all of these principles is it's a
Speaker 4: perfect blend of stuff that's like completely fucking obvious, like
Speaker 4: statements of observed reality. Yeah, and then also stuff that
Speaker 4: somebody just made up based on a feeling that they had,
Speaker 4: and you can never tell which one you're doing, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean? Like, yeah, like what the factory
Speaker 4: is worth is based on how much money it can make, obviously.
Speaker 3: But here's the problem.
Speaker 2: This is one of those you know, you know the
Speaker 2: calendar at Hawes Meme where it's like you can divide
Speaker 2: everything into two categories. This one surprisingly seems like it
Speaker 2: observed reality is actually bullshit because because the problem is
Speaker 2: all right, so okay, so in order to find out
Speaker 2: the value of the factory, you need to know what
Speaker 2: the profits are going to be.
Speaker 5: Well, I thought the value of things.
Speaker 4: I thought the price of things was set by supply
Speaker 4: and demands, the value of the factories whatever, someone's willing
Speaker 4: to pay for it.
Speaker 2: Right, But here's the issue though, Like that's like sort
Speaker 2: of true.
Speaker 5: No, I'm just making a jug that, like prices and
Speaker 5: values appear to be disconnected.
Speaker 2: Legitimately, that is drilling into the problem with what's happening here.
Speaker 2: Which is that okay, but how do you know how
Speaker 2: much money the factory is going to be worth.
Speaker 4: So we're saying like the factory has an inherent value
Speaker 4: versus the factory has a price.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so our price is not reflect an inherent value.
Speaker 3: So this is also kind of the core of this issue, right,
Speaker 3: which is like.
Speaker 5: That money isn't even real.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but it's like, okay, if if you want
Speaker 2: to compare how much two different types of machinery are worth,
Speaker 2: you need to compare them in terms of money because
Speaker 2: they're making two different things.
Speaker 3: You have to be able to compare them.
Speaker 2: But the problem is the moment you start doing that,
Speaker 2: you then have to go, Okay, how much is it worth?
Speaker 3: And how much is it worth?
Speaker 2: In theory is like it's it's like marginal utility, right,
Speaker 2: So in order to know how much the machine is worth,
Speaker 2: you have to know how much money it can make.
Speaker 2: But in order to know how much money it can make,
Speaker 2: you need to know how much the machine is worth.
Speaker 2: The issue here, right, is that you're trying to find
Speaker 2: one price for how much the factory is worth, but
Speaker 2: you can't find that one price without knowing how much
Speaker 2: profit you're getting from using the factory to make the thing,
Speaker 2: but you could have multiple different levels of profit from
Speaker 2: that same factory. The problem is, how do you determine.
Speaker 2: You know, you could make ten dollars in the factory,
Speaker 2: but the factory could also make twenty dollars. How do
Speaker 2: you figure out which one of those it is? Because
Speaker 2: that's what determines the value of the factory is how
Speaker 2: much money it makes. So, okay, you turn around to
Speaker 2: the neoclassical theory of of how you figure out what
Speaker 2: the profit is. But that theorem requires you to know
Speaker 2: the marginal utility of the factory. So it requires you
Speaker 2: to know how much profit you're going to get from
Speaker 2: using the tool. Right, you have to know how much
Speaker 2: the tool is worth in order to figure out how
Speaker 2: much a profit is.
Speaker 3: But then you have to figure out in order to
Speaker 3: figure out.
Speaker 5: So this is why they just make stuff up, because
Speaker 5: otherwise they get trapped in the infinite loose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's worse than that because the value of the
Speaker 2: factory depends on how much money you're going to make
Speaker 2: from the ice But how much money you make from
Speaker 2: the ice cream depends on how expensive it is to
Speaker 2: have the ice cream machine.
Speaker 3: Right, So they're both set by each other.
Speaker 2: Right, if you only have one of them, you can't
Speaker 2: calculate the other one.
Speaker 3: They're both like X and y.
Speaker 2: And in order to figure out what one of them
Speaker 2: is worth, you already have to know the other.
Speaker 5: One, right, you need a constant at some point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and legitimately, and this is a shit show because
Speaker 2: it means that you actually can't figure out how much
Speaker 2: the capital goods are worth in order to move on
Speaker 2: to stage two of the process, where you figure out
Speaker 2: the profit, because you already need to have the answer
Speaker 2: to the question you are asking. And so like, this
Speaker 2: is an issue bad enough that the IMF publishes these
Speaker 2: or I think it's maybe it's the World Bank publishes
Speaker 2: these like giant tables of like the value of capital
Speaker 2: stocks right in a country.
Speaker 3: Well, they'll go through there.
Speaker 2: They're trying to produce economic data about like a country,
Speaker 2: and they're like, okay, like how much are.
Speaker 3: The factories worth?
Speaker 2: And the people who are trained to produce these books,
Speaker 2: there's multiple different values that these factories could have depending
Speaker 2: on how much money they make, and they're literally just
Speaker 2: chose to choose one of them, like at random.
Speaker 3: They're like, fuck it, pick one this is.
Speaker 5: Not making me more confident about the economy.
Speaker 2: No, Well, but this is a shit show because because
Speaker 2: this is what this fight is about. It's about like
Speaker 2: the whole Cambiseh capital controversy is is like Joan Robinson
Speaker 2: going hold on. In order in order to like figure
Speaker 2: out your equation for how price works, you need to
Speaker 2: know something that you can only figure out by knowing
Speaker 2: the price already.
Speaker 5: Well, that's why you just feel the price in your heart.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but this causes, this causes like a decade
Speaker 2: of like fighting about this, all of the like famous
Speaker 2: neoclassical economists actually had.
Speaker 3: Can you list a Xavier's dogs?
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, so Milton from Milton Friedman, Murray from Murray, Rothbard,
Speaker 4: and two dogs one Robert, one Lucas for Robert Lucas Junior.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: I think he actually dodged all of them. I think
Speaker 2: I think he meant by bye by not naming someone.
Speaker 2: Paul Samuel said, I think he actually dodged it.
Speaker 4: He considers these dogs to be Conan's offspring, so these
Speaker 4: are all clones of his dog Conan. He considers the
Speaker 4: dogs to be Conn's offspring and thus his own grandson's
Speaker 4: because he believes the dog is his son.
Speaker 3: He's fucking Christ anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's the only reason I know any of
Speaker 4: those people are.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, wait, hold on, hold on, I'm sure
Speaker 2: I'm not looking at which Robert is this named after.
Speaker 4: Robert Lucas Junior from the University of Chicago.
Speaker 2: Oh, he dodged it. It was It was mostly the
Speaker 2: other Robert Robert Slowell. Slowow, God damn. I think I
Speaker 2: think he actually dodged having any of his dogs be
Speaker 2: named after the people who got their asses kicked in this.
Speaker 3: I think he managed to do it.
Speaker 2: So Paul Samuelson is like after Milton Friedman and maybe Hyek.
Speaker 2: He's like probably the third most influential neoclassical economists, and
Speaker 2: he's like one of the people at the American Cambridge
Speaker 2: who are like arguing with like neoclassical people and they lose.
Speaker 2: They just straight up lose this fight because they're wrong.
Speaker 2: And the consequence of them being wrong is every single
Speaker 2: thing they've ever written is wrong. Because if you can't
Speaker 2: calculate how much a factory is worth, literally nothing you've
Speaker 2: ever written.
Speaker 5: Functions that's so funny.
Speaker 3: They can't do it.
Speaker 5: Didn't even kill themselves like you would.
Speaker 3: Think, but they were just like, oh, well, we'll.
Speaker 4: Just guess because I like a lot of people were
Speaker 4: like at the end of their careers. Right, you're like
Speaker 4: sixty seventy years old, you're like professor Emeridith of macroeconomics
Speaker 4: at Cambridge or we're Nora the fuck and do you
Speaker 4: find out that everything you've ever written was no longer
Speaker 4: like all we all agree.
Speaker 5: That everything you ever said was wrong?
Speaker 3: How do you do Here's the thing. They just kept
Speaker 3: writing as if they didn't lose. Okay, this is why
Speaker 3: I was saying, it doesn't matter because.
Speaker 4: Who can say who wins or loses because it's all fame,
Speaker 4: yeah and so and so.
Speaker 2: Like Literally what they did is is that this stuff,
Speaker 2: this fight never like broke out of like academic economist circles,
Speaker 2: and so no one today has any idea any of
Speaker 2: this shit happened.
Speaker 5: Good. No, because it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, idiot, it does in the sense
Speaker 2: that life, to me, you can demonstrably prove that, like
Speaker 2: these people can't tell you how much a factory is worth.
Speaker 5: I've read the Wall Street Journal. I know there's no
Speaker 5: such thing as an economist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, part of what's happening here is like the reason
Speaker 2: we all intuitively do that is because these people win.
Speaker 4: Right, So this entire like academic field just kind of
Speaker 4: shrugged and said, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 5: What we're saying doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were like a couple of people who tried
Speaker 2: to like actually work with it, and everyone eventually just
Speaker 2: stopped paying attention. Legitimately, the answer for like modern economics
Speaker 2: is just to pretend that it never happened and then
Speaker 2: go like, oh, well, these people never produced anything of
Speaker 2: note academically, and it's like, well, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: that's like not true, because the stuff that they did
Speaker 2: write is really good, but also their descendants, yeah, didn't
Speaker 2: get academic positions because you purged them all. And this
Speaker 2: is this is one of these things where like part
Speaker 2: of the reason that the new classical people took over
Speaker 2: in the first place was because they thought that they
Speaker 2: were right about this argument of like what caused the
Speaker 2: seventies economic collapse, which had like supposedly disproved Keanesianism. But
Speaker 2: then in this time period they got just obliterated, Like
Speaker 2: they have taken an l the size of which, genuinely
Speaker 2: I don't know if anyone in an academic field has
Speaker 2: ever taken a bigger l than these people did in
Speaker 2: this fight. They got just like beaten into pulp and
Speaker 2: it just didn't matter.
Speaker 4: Like Naiolmi Wolf finding out live on air that her
Speaker 4: entire book was based on misunderstanding of a term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's like that shit like except this. This
Speaker 2: is like every economist.
Speaker 4: Except this, except in this case, they went on to
Speaker 4: continue to produce work based on that premise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, but but the this is the part
Speaker 2: of the story that like isn't in the accounts, you know,
Speaker 2: when Planet Money has to explain, like why the work
Speaker 2: of Joan Robinson, like isn't something that mainstream economists pay
Speaker 2: attention to?
Speaker 5: Oh full circle, okay, yeah, that's where we were going.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's it's because like John Robinson had the temerity
Speaker 2: to ab a woman BB a leftist and seeing not
Speaker 2: be one of these like neoclassical freaks and and d
Speaker 2: she beat them. Like John Robinson is one of the
Speaker 2: major people in this fight.
Speaker 4: I should I should have had more faith that we
Speaker 4: were coming back around. I thought we were I thought
Speaker 4: we were lost. I was confused. No, I get it now.
Speaker 4: So when they're writing about, like it's so crazy that
Speaker 4: nobody uses this term anymore. The underlying truth there is
Speaker 4: that they are This is why lossing over the fact
Speaker 4: that the reason this term isn't better known is because
Speaker 4: the entire field of economics is based on suppressing challenging truths.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's one other aspect too, which is the
Speaker 2: economics is an example of how this works on like
Speaker 2: a small scale, right, But this this happens on a
Speaker 2: macro scale with just about everything that you consume, which
Speaker 2: is there are two models for sort of suppressing how
Speaker 2: information spreads and how like you know, how social group
Speaker 2: has developed, where one you just suppress them, or to
Speaker 2: you co opt them and you do what's called recuperation.
Speaker 2: And you know, it is interesting, Like the concept monopsony
Speaker 2: will appear sometimes, like in like textbooks, but they'll just
Speaker 2: be like, oh, yeah, this is an everything that can exist,
Speaker 2: and like monopolies can also exist. Let's go back to
Speaker 2: spending all of our time dealing with like a bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff that's incredibly fake. And they will strategically like
Speaker 2: misuse the concept of monopsony in order to deal with it,
Speaker 2: like as a critique they'll recuperate like the word, but
Speaker 2: then they won't use any of the political conclusions of it.
Speaker 5: That's clever of them.
Speaker 4: That's clever of them, so that you don't go looking
Speaker 4: for more about the term because you have it and
Speaker 4: it's defanged and you don't need to worry about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the thing is that the political consequences of it
Speaker 2: is this is the thing I talked about at the beginning,
Speaker 2: which is like, yeah, I menopstinally as a concept is
Speaker 2: why you get paid.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons you get paid like shit.
Speaker 2: And Joan Robinson's inclusion is like, yeah, capitalism is an
Speaker 2: inherently exploitive economic system.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the logical.
Speaker 4: Conclusion there, right, Yeah, but that's not allowed, no.
Speaker 2: And so you know, like Robinson's legacy is that part
Speaker 2: of her work is co opted and recuperated in a
Speaker 2: way where they teach the tiniest part of it that
Speaker 2: can't be used challenge a system, and the part of
Speaker 2: it where she deals a kind of intellectual death blow
Speaker 2: to an entire field of economics that in like the
Speaker 2: history of academia. I don't know if anyone has ever
Speaker 2: been so decisive.
Speaker 4: We defeated intellectually, and yet they just sort of brashed
Speaker 4: it off and moved on. Yeah, which I feel like
Speaker 4: that is so damning right that you're just I mean,
Speaker 4: you've just admitted that everything you've ever said is based
Speaker 4: on nothing.
Speaker 5: If you can just disregard this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God, I can't find the exact quote, but Samielson
Speaker 2: has this line about how like they need to just
Speaker 2: treat it as an article of faith that this can
Speaker 2: be done, and they just kept going, and it.
Speaker 4: Is just so you can't tell me this is a
Speaker 4: science if you're like, well, it's just based on you
Speaker 4: just have to have faith.
Speaker 5: You just have to believe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the economy has always put on tinker
Speaker 4: Bell rules, right, like you have to believe or it
Speaker 4: won't work.
Speaker 5: You have to clap for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in order for the entire system that these people
Speaker 2: are paid to propagate, because this entire school of economics
Speaker 2: is created by a bunch of right wing billionaires to
Speaker 2: get them together in order to push against like both
Speaker 2: communism and like the Kynesian idea they should pay taxes.
Speaker 2: This is something also, I guess I kind of want
Speaker 2: to conclude about this. It's like there are a lot
Speaker 2: of times where you see like like a newspaper columnists
Speaker 2: they're saying the most unhinged thing you've ever seen, or like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm gonna take I take a very incendiary
Speaker 2: example and you look at like Ezra Kleine, and Ezra
Speaker 2: Kleine is like being like, oh, you have to like
Speaker 2: take the ideas of like some random fucking nazi seriously,
Speaker 2: and so I don't, No, you don't. But the reason
Speaker 2: he's saying this, it does it's not even about what
Speaker 2: he believes.
Speaker 5: Oh, these people believe nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is what they're being paid to say, because
Speaker 2: Klein's job is to is to act as a way
Speaker 2: to sell like fascist tech oligarchy to liberals, like and
Speaker 2: this is the same thing with like you get these
Speaker 2: newspaper columnists who will like say, like the most unhinged
Speaker 2: shit you've ever seen. And yeah, they're saying that because
Speaker 2: it's their job to produce this, right, Like they're not
Speaker 2: acting as individual people. They're acting as it cutouts and
Speaker 2: projections of like the people who they've been hired by.
Speaker 5: And those people have a monopsony on opinion.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well every opinion, every opinion writer is saying the
Speaker 4: dumbest shit you've ever heard because of monopsis.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I mean but like literally it's because they
Speaker 2: can they can choose who the fuck to hire, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's the actual reason. And you know, and like
Speaker 2: journalism is one of these things where it's like, you see,
Speaker 2: newspapers have an incredible amount of power because there's like
Speaker 2: seven fucking newspapers left. And if you want to do journalism,
Speaker 2: like you're fucked. You either like fall in line and
Speaker 2: accept them paying you like absolute dogshit, or you go unemployed,
Speaker 2: or you're like one of the very few people who
Speaker 2: was able to like make a living doing this independently,
Speaker 2: but like.
Speaker 5: Or you're us, we found a way, yeah, or.
Speaker 2: Like a rich and successful podcaster picks you out and goes, hey,
Speaker 2: we're gonna pay you to do this, right.
Speaker 4: Like no, But I think I think about it all
Speaker 4: the time that it really this is such a unicorn
Speaker 4: job because almost every job in media you do, you
Speaker 4: you have to you have to suck it up and
Speaker 4: eat the shit, and you have to say the dumbest
Speaker 4: thing anyone's ever heard, because that's how you keep your job.
Speaker 5: And that's not our reality. And I'm so grateful for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think that's a good place to end.
Speaker 3: I guess, I don't know.
Speaker 2: We're gonna end on a hopeful note, which is we
Speaker 2: got well, okay, We're gonna end on the cynical note,
Speaker 2: which is, like, the only way to have an even
Speaker 2: sort of good job in this economy where employment is
Speaker 2: controlled by employers is to get.
Speaker 3: Incrediblyned luck like be the most lucky person in the
Speaker 3: entire world. Yeah, uh so.
Speaker 2: I don't know if, if, if you want to live
Speaker 2: in a world where you don't have to win the
Speaker 2: lottery in order to have like a pretty well paid
Speaker 2: in order to I am so close to hitting the
Speaker 2: median salary of assists white dude in the US.
Speaker 3: I'm so close. I can see, I can taste it.
Speaker 3: If you want that.
Speaker 5: I love my union podcasting jobs.
Speaker 2: Gotta you gotta win the lottery, or you got to
Speaker 2: build a world where that's not how any of the
Speaker 2: shit works, which is what.
Speaker 3: John Robinson would have wanted.
Speaker 6: Sorry, Joanne, it could happen.
Speaker 1: Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: podcas cass Froom cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonmedia
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
Speaker 1: now find sources for it could happen here, listed directly
Speaker 1: in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.