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