Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Jill Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: Tracy, something I've thought for a long time. I think
Speaker 2: you might feel the same way. I'm glad we're not
Speaker 2: like politics reporters.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I cannot imagine what.
Speaker 4: That job is.
Speaker 2: I sometimes look at some of the stuff that are
Speaker 2: colleagues in the political media have to report on and like,
Speaker 2: look like a lot of it does touch what we do,
Speaker 2: and they're obviously like there's no way to avoid it
Speaker 2: all together. And obviously some of the stuff is big implications.
Speaker 2: But by and large, you know, getting to look at
Speaker 2: the numbers on the chart, or learning how you know
Speaker 2: debt structures work, or learning how cardboard boxes work is
Speaker 2: just much more, or is very satisfying to be relative too.
Speaker 3: You prefer the lines over the lines coming from the
Speaker 3: mouths of politicians, the lines over lines.
Speaker 1: That's a good one, thank you.
Speaker 2: But it's gonna fall apart, I think because I think
Speaker 2: this AI story is such high stakes and there's so
Speaker 2: many different policy questions, et cetera, whether it's related to
Speaker 2: electricity prices or the possibility for labor to play displacement.
Speaker 2: I think there's basically no way at this point that
Speaker 2: twenty twenty eight, maybe even twenty twenty six AI somehow
Speaker 2: is going to be a big political story in a
Speaker 2: way that it was not really in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you're already seeing it in twenty twenty five, right,
Speaker 3: So we had Sarah Fryar came out and said she
Speaker 3: was talking about maybe getting a government backstop for AI
Speaker 3: kapec spend this is.
Speaker 1: The open AICFI yes.
Speaker 3: And of course she rolled it back a little bit,
Speaker 3: but it got up really but not really, and it
Speaker 3: got everyone talking about, you know, what is the government's
Speaker 3: involvement or obligations here. We know that jd Vance of
Speaker 3: course has been supported by Peter Teel, who has very
Speaker 3: strong and possibly idiosyncratic opinions when it comes to AI,
Speaker 3: and of course there's the labor market aspect. There's also
Speaker 3: electricity prices. Inflation is still a big political challenge for
Speaker 3: the administration, and having all these data centers consume energy
Speaker 3: is pushing prices up. And so I expect you'll hear
Speaker 3: a lot about AI.
Speaker 2: I don't think you know, we're recording this November thirteen.
Speaker 2: I don't think we're probably not currently in a recession,
Speaker 2: that the economy is not booming, but who knows exactly.
Speaker 2: But you know, if you imagine a recession is going on,
Speaker 2: and here's this technology where many of its biggest backers
Speaker 2: talk about the ability to replace a lot of labor,
Speaker 2: and you know, there's some debate, but and there's this
Speaker 2: talk about place in greater strand on electricity, and as
Speaker 2: you mentioned, there's the possibility that oh and maybe the
Speaker 2: government should back I mean, this is a lot, this
Speaker 2: is a powder keg.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: We have to learn more though about the different factions,
Speaker 2: how it's going to play out politically, will AI have
Speaker 2: any friends in Washington, DC? Whatsoever? How the different candidates
Speaker 2: are positioning themselves Visa Vivas. So I wanted to talk
Speaker 2: to one of the most plugged in guys I know
Speaker 2: in DC, someone I've talked to for a very long time,
Speaker 2: who's been talking about the politics of AI on his
Speaker 2: own show for a long time. Literally the perfect guest
Speaker 2: we're going to be speaking with Sager and Jetti. He
Speaker 2: is the co host of Breaking Points, massive popular podcast,
Speaker 2: knows a lot more about all the political dimensions than
Speaker 2: we do so Sager, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 2: on Odd Loaves.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me guys, longtime listener, and congratulations
Speaker 1: on your ten year anniversary. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: You've been doing these segments on AI and they're blowing
Speaker 2: up on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, yeah, I mean, purely analytics wise, I have
Speaker 1: a little bit of a test here for how the
Speaker 1: people are feeling. And I think you summed it up
Speaker 1: actually really well. Joe is in a time of economic procarity,
Speaker 1: a very low consumer sentiment. When Dario and Elon and
Speaker 1: Sam Altman just routinely go on podcasts in twenty twenty five, right,
Speaker 1: and they're just like, yeah, we are going to replace you.
Speaker 1: You don't have to work anymore. It's basically the embodiment
Speaker 1: of that World Economic Forum meme about you will own
Speaker 1: nothing and be happy. And so, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think that they really understand the implications that a lot
Speaker 1: of us are actually taking their words very seriously, and
Speaker 1: I'm increasingly tapped into both, not only the data center backlash,
Speaker 1: which is real. By the way, heat Map just did
Speaker 1: a fantastic piece about the data center backlash, how it's
Speaker 1: swallowing American politics. Georgia's power races very recently were massively
Speaker 1: influenced by AI and data centers specifically. And I'm watching
Speaker 1: this like fascinating. Horseshoe is really not the right word,
Speaker 1: because horseshoe implies, you know, far right and far left.
Speaker 1: I sent you a tweet earlier today, Joe, which kind
Speaker 1: of brings it together, and it was like, if Tim
Speaker 1: Miller of The Bulwark and Ryan Grimm, co host of Mine,
Speaker 1: Far lefty, and then Matt Walsh are all agreeing on
Speaker 1: attacking AI, with Jon Favreau of Pod Save America coming in,
Speaker 1: We're not really a horseshoe, are we? Like we're the
Speaker 1: entire spectrum of American politics all agreeing to stand in opposition.
Speaker 1: I think to what fundamentally is about an issue where
Speaker 1: we do not feel that we are in control of
Speaker 1: this technology. We are not sold yet on the benefits.
Speaker 1: And you guys talked about that recently in one of
Speaker 1: your latest episodes about how AI is not even going
Speaker 1: to make you rich, which is what was also one
Speaker 1: of the promises that's kind of behind the entire pitch.
Speaker 3: All right, So AI truly a bipartisan issue or bipartisan gripe.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, we hear a lot of
Speaker 3: politicians talk about the tech competition with China in particular, right,
Speaker 3: And we have an episode that came out recently where
Speaker 3: we talk about the existentialism around AI, this idea that
Speaker 3: you have to win otherwise you're basically going to die
Speaker 3: or fall into some sort of like modern dystopian poverty
Speaker 3: forever and ever. Why is that rhetoric still out there
Speaker 3: if at a local level everyone kind of agrees, like,
Speaker 3: you know, this is bad for electricity prices, it's potentially
Speaker 3: bad for the labor market.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great question, And I think actually that might be
Speaker 1: the politicians not really getting to the heart of the issue.
Speaker 1: And we have to separate the AI technology and the
Speaker 1: promises that were originally there, which we could probably strategically
Speaker 1: agree like we need to maintain technological advancement, and then
Speaker 1: the current way that it's structured, where it's basically in
Speaker 1: the hands of three or four like super CEOs, and
Speaker 1: everything's kind of seems rolled up fundamentally that you guys
Speaker 1: are no going a lot more than I do. But
Speaker 1: because of the cost of compute of data centers, specifically
Speaker 1: like the Big tech companies are the ones that are
Speaker 1: in control. So I think we should disaggregate like the
Speaker 1: idea of AI itself as a technology potential, open source
Speaker 1: and its usefulness from the way that it's actually being structured,
Speaker 1: used and controlled. And I think that's really where a
Speaker 1: lot of the pushback is. And also, though I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, politicians, this may seem counterintuitive, but are often
Speaker 1: the last people to know whenever something organically is pushing up.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I guess on the forefront of a
Speaker 1: YouTube show. I mean in ways like I have real
Speaker 1: time analytics day to day about how people are feeling.
Speaker 1: You only get a democratic kind of feel about this
Speaker 1: once every two to four years, so it can take
Speaker 1: a long time for this to bubble up through the
Speaker 1: halls of Washington and kind of get rid of some
Speaker 1: of the twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, you know more think
Speaker 1: tank talking points that I think that you're describing their Tracy.
Speaker 2: David Sachs, the co host of the All In podcast
Speaker 2: and the White House's AI and cryptos are He says,
Speaker 2: all the negativity is because of effective altruists and this
Speaker 2: sort of movement in San Francisco that's pushing these doom scenarios.
Speaker 2: Are all these people that you follow and talk to
Speaker 2: or that follow you, are they all like reading EA substacks?
Speaker 1: Is that where they're getting they have they have no
Speaker 1: idea what EA even is. I've actually had to do
Speaker 1: a few explainers on the show about effective altruism, you know,
Speaker 1: and again the vast majority of my audience. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are you know, Uber drivers and hotel these are
Speaker 1: just normal people who are kind of like going about
Speaker 1: their day to day life. David is absolutely wrong on
Speaker 1: this issue. I mean, he may be structurally correct in
Speaker 1: terms of the way that the rhetoric around AI that
Speaker 1: causes a Dario and an Elon and others to like
Speaker 1: go on shows and talk specifically about how you're not
Speaker 1: gonna work, but you're gonna be okay, and this whole
Speaker 1: idea that kind of backstops EA. But this is really
Speaker 1: just like small d democratic like pushback, I really think,
Speaker 1: and I also think an idea of really been rolling
Speaker 1: around in my head. I'm curious for what you guys think.
Speaker 1: Is that at the heart of the social media revolution,
Speaker 1: we're some newer upstarts. You know, we never heard of
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg. We never heard of. You know, even if
Speaker 1: we push back to Google's you know, these guys were
Speaker 1: revolutionary entrepreneurs this time around. You know, they sold us
Speaker 1: the promise of social media, and regardless of whether you
Speaker 1: think it's good or not, we don't really have a
Speaker 1: high level of societal trust in you know, the Arab
Speaker 1: Spring and all that, And these are the very same
Speaker 1: people now making these multi billion dollars in some cases
Speaker 1: trillion dollar bets on AI and telling us to trust them.
Speaker 1: So that's something that really belies that, you know, the
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg's of the AI space. Let's I don't know
Speaker 1: Alexander Wang like he now works for Zuckerberg. Right, It's
Speaker 1: just it's just fundamentally like a little bit different in
Speaker 1: terms of who the key players are who are trying
Speaker 1: to tell us about the beneficiary of the technology. And
Speaker 1: I also think you know, they're no longer talking about
Speaker 1: the things that they originally did, Like they were like,
Speaker 1: we're going to cure cancer, and it's like, well, Sam,
Speaker 1: why are you talking about erotica porn man, Because that's
Speaker 1: that's a little bit different. It's like maybe the Internet
Speaker 1: in chat ept is just going to be the exact
Speaker 1: same as the Internet as it always has been, which
Speaker 1: is basically increasing you know, user time in chat EPT.
Speaker 1: Putting some ads in there just an a miserating experience,
Speaker 1: which of course also has high levels of efficiency for
Speaker 1: business use.
Speaker 3: I was going to say exactly that. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: it's that people don't trust the promise. It's that the
Speaker 3: promise itself doesn't seem that enticing at the moment you
Speaker 3: know you're going to lose your job and AI is
Speaker 3: going to get to do all the fun stuff in
Speaker 3: human life, like make pictures and movies.
Speaker 2: And getting married to an AI model.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, I
Speaker 1: thought the erotica thing from Sam was just the biggest tell.
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, man, like, we're not talking about biomedical,
Speaker 1: We're not talking about chat GPT curing cancer and all
Speaker 1: of this. I mean, to be fair to him, he
Speaker 1: has talked about the Open Eye Foundation, how they're going
Speaker 1: to try and move things in that direction, but all
Speaker 1: of the public consumption and everything being you know, Geared,
Speaker 1: I don't know if either of you are NFL fans.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed the number of chat GPT ads during
Speaker 1: NFL game? Now, Oh, it's every game, and it's like
Speaker 1: here chat gepts designing my workout, Chat gpt is designing
Speaker 1: my vacation. Listen, no hate, but it's basically an extpedia ad. Right,
Speaker 1: this is not cancer curing, it's Instagram for teens. It's
Speaker 1: chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot. I believe ran an ad about
Speaker 1: image generation. You know, the studio Ghibli thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's not enterprise groundbreaking technology like this is
Speaker 1: like you're burning data center or like you're increasing my
Speaker 1: power bills so that people can do studio Ghibli recreates.
Speaker 1: Like I'm out on this, you know, you know that
Speaker 1: that's how I feel.
Speaker 2: There are obviously a number of different concerns that people have,
Speaker 2: electricity prices, labor, and we'll get into that. But you
Speaker 2: said something interesting, which is that even you know, prior
Speaker 2: to AI having come out, prior to late twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two and chat shept burst on the scene, people were
Speaker 2: already souring on these big techmo goals, you know, on
Speaker 2: the right specifically, but also but really across you know,
Speaker 2: there's concerned about the algorithm, what's it doing? Shadow banning?
Speaker 2: Are certain things being labeled as fake news that aren't
Speaker 2: fake news. You know, there was all the backlashing guys
Speaker 2: YouTube for what videos they allowed during the pandemic, et cetera.
Speaker 2: It feels like, just intuitively, there's no reason that all
Speaker 2: of these concerns don't quickly map onto very cleanly, onto
Speaker 2: AI concerns.
Speaker 1: You're exactly right. I mean, it already has right and
Speaker 1: in some of the early cases. You guys we've all
Speaker 1: been around, We remember the early content about Facebook moderation,
Speaker 1: remember all of that. I mean, look at what's happening
Speaker 1: with chat, GPT, story after story about these suicides and
Speaker 1: now erotica, and you know, they're saying the same level
Speaker 1: of stuff that Facebook used to say, like oh, we have,
Speaker 1: you know, controls in place. And look, I mean, at
Speaker 1: some level, I do sympathize, like when a billion people
Speaker 1: use your product, you know one percent of them might
Speaker 1: be crazy and that's actually a really, really tough problem.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, when your technology is being implicated
Speaker 1: in all of these insane lawsuits and you have screenshots
Speaker 1: and stuff that come out that make people go, WHOA,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I want my nineteen or
Speaker 1: twenty year old like anywhere close to this. That really
Speaker 1: because of the way that we all lived through those
Speaker 1: past conversations show they track exactly onto Sam Altman and
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, look at the stuff he's had
Speaker 1: to deal with with the meta AI Instagram chatbots, you know,
Speaker 1: for teenagers, and it's funny because they're trying to get
Speaker 1: ahead of it to the NFL thing. I watch these
Speaker 1: ads closely. Like one of the big ads right now
Speaker 1: ad campaigns is Instagram for teens, which they're like, we
Speaker 1: have safety stuff, you know, like that's kind of baked in,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to get ahead of it because you know,
Speaker 1: you don't run that ad if you don't have The
Speaker 1: Anxious Generation as one of the top best selling books
Speaker 1: in the United States, Like it's an upper middle class
Speaker 1: like revolution now about people who are like against iPad
Speaker 1: kiss right, And I think that's going to track very
Speaker 1: very cleanly onto AI. There's no reason that I shouldn't.
Speaker 3: How would you describe the relationship between you know, the
Speaker 3: people running some of the biggest tech companies now versus
Speaker 3: years past, because I remember, you know, we're talking a
Speaker 3: little bit about some of the scandals and discussions about
Speaker 3: political influence and what is actually shown on Facebook, and
Speaker 3: I get the sense that once upon a time in
Speaker 3: d C, people did kind of feel like big tech
Speaker 3: was in control. Right, it was d C coming to big.
Speaker 1: Tech for help.
Speaker 3: And now I'm thinking back to the inauguration when we
Speaker 3: had you know, people like Bezos and I think Zuckerberg
Speaker 3: was there as well, Yes he was, and they're sort
Speaker 3: of you know, I don't know how I saw one person.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to describe it this way myself, but
Speaker 3: I did see one person describe it as a hostage
Speaker 3: situation where the big tech CEOs, you know, they're all
Speaker 3: gathered in front of Trump and they seem kind of scared.
Speaker 3: They're smiling, they're smiling, but not with their eyes. How
Speaker 3: would you describe the relationship now between the administration and
Speaker 3: you know, the big wigs of big tech.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question, because you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about a small d democratic politics. Now you're just
Speaker 1: asking about power politics. Our politics here is very different.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, David Sachs has navigated his position incredibly. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Joe, there was a funny incident I think
Speaker 1: I talked to you about this where I found a
Speaker 1: snippet I think was a Financial Times piece and it
Speaker 1: was just about it was like AI accounts for eighty
Speaker 1: percent of stock gains and x percent of GDP in
Speaker 1: terms of CAPEX, and David Sachs like retweeted it and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, so you think that's a good thing,
Speaker 1: you know. I was like, I was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, but you know that's actually if you're
Speaker 1: in the Trump White House right now, you need this.
Speaker 1: You know, you need the rally, you need the GDP
Speaker 1: and the data center spend because that's what's propping up again.
Speaker 1: You're the economist. Just from my listening to you and
Speaker 1: reading Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Financial Times and others like,
Speaker 1: that's a main reason why Joe you were like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't think we're in a recession. Derek Thompson has
Speaker 1: written very eloquently about this as well. Is just how
Speaker 1: much of that spend currently accounts for why things seem okay.
Speaker 1: So there is like a real alliance I think right
Speaker 1: now between the Jensen's, David and even Sam Altman and others,
Speaker 1: like they all come to the White House and announce
Speaker 1: their crazy deals. For a reason, they get these awesome
Speaker 1: press conferences from Trump. I mean there's the famous moment
Speaker 1: where Zuck what he leads over to Trump, He's like,
Speaker 1: I didn't know how much you wanted me to say.
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, okay, So you know you could I mean,
Speaker 1: you could describe that as at heel. You could also
Speaker 1: say he's got to bend over and kiss the ring
Speaker 1: while also being able to basically just do whatever he wants.
Speaker 1: So there is I think a very you know, alliance
Speaker 1: of convenience right now, where the amount of money they're
Speaker 1: pumping into the economy, the amount of stock value that
Speaker 1: they're creating, is extremely beneficial to the Scott Bessens and
Speaker 1: others of the world. Talking about MAGA economics.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit more about electoral politics specifically.
Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis actually seems to be trying to make a
Speaker 2: carveline for himself early on, even before the Sarah Friar comments,
Speaker 2: actually saying no bailouts for AI companies, Like, what do
Speaker 2: you see right now in terms of candidate positioning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it's all very early signaling. And that's actually
Speaker 1: you know, I love this because usually one of the
Speaker 1: things I hate most about politics recently it's all top down.
Speaker 1: Do you have guys who are running for city council
Speaker 1: talking about impeachment or something. It's like, dude, tell me
Speaker 1: about the roads, you know, but actually this one is
Speaker 1: really bottom up, you know, the data center stuff. It's Tucson.
Speaker 1: Actually here in northern Virginia where I live, there's a
Speaker 1: big comment and there's a lot of public controversy about
Speaker 1: data centers. My state, Virginia, forty percent of our power
Speaker 1: is consumed actually by data. Oregon is like thirty three percent,
Speaker 1: I believe of power. There's been a lot of local
Speaker 1: stuff and it hasn't really bubbled to the national level.
Speaker 1: And I would say people here they care about money,
Speaker 1: but they also care about electability. So there's an ocean
Speaker 1: of money to be had if you're quote pro AI
Speaker 1: or pro tech, but they'll always choose their own careers.
Speaker 1: It went, and if you know, it does come down
Speaker 1: to that, I haven't seen it bubble up yet. I
Speaker 1: did see I'm not sure if you guys did that.
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders and a few of other progressives signed a
Speaker 1: letter against data centers specifically, and that was the first
Speaker 1: indication that I'm like, Ah, the staffers, they're paying attention, right,
Speaker 1: they're listening to the pods. They're reading David Weigel's piece
Speaker 1: about data center politics, and they're trying to operationalize that
Speaker 1: into something at the national level. You're exactly right in
Speaker 1: terms of dron desantists tried to pick that lane about bailout,
Speaker 1: and that actually gets to something very recently where you
Speaker 1: talked about Sarah's comments. I mean, we did a segment
Speaker 1: about that, and it was huge about the open AI
Speaker 1: bail out because people can feel it. They're like, I've
Speaker 1: seen this movie before. They're you know, you know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they make twenty billion, but they've got seventy five billion
Speaker 1: in projected losses to twenty twenty eight. They've got a
Speaker 1: trillion dollar in committed spend. You know, the pe ratios
Speaker 1: and all this are so crazy, and if it doesn't
Speaker 1: work out, they're going to say, oh, well, we need
Speaker 1: you to bail us out, or we need you to
Speaker 1: build the data centers for us and take all the
Speaker 1: most expensive part of our business out. They are inherently
Speaker 1: distrustful already of the numbers, and I think this is
Speaker 1: very American, like you don't want to be controlled. And
Speaker 1: the AI people tell us about how this is the
Speaker 1: second Industrial Revolution and it's like, well, you know, then
Speaker 1: we should probably look to the politics of the previous
Speaker 1: industrial revolutions. You know, the railroad obviously, like had a
Speaker 1: tremendous benefit. It doesn't take a week or it took
Speaker 1: a week to go to California instead of three months.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. But you know, very quickly in the eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties and eighteen nineties Titanic, you know, uprisings in the
Speaker 1: Midwest of farmers feeling like they're being controlled and anti
Speaker 1: railroad politicians were some of the original like anti industrial
Speaker 1: populace in Washington, even though originally everybody he was really sold.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that the politicians.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, there definitely were. They were all throughout
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties, some of the original populist party. And
Speaker 1: you look at what that all was. A lot of
Speaker 1: it was about the railroad. And you know, I mean
Speaker 1: there's legendary stories Texas where you and I are from,
Speaker 1: Joe White, Patman, I'd have to write right back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There were like people like Sam Rayburn actually famously the
Speaker 1: very anti railroad. He wouldn't take the free railroad passes.
Speaker 1: These were like big, big stories all the way up
Speaker 1: until the nineteen twenties, and so and so I see
Speaker 1: a very similar kind of track, except though that I'm
Speaker 1: not so sure that the socialized benefits will be as
Speaker 1: good as the railroad, because the railroad, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it was awesome. I could go to
Speaker 1: California in a week. I don't have to take the
Speaker 1: stagecoach or the Oregon Trail or whatever. This time around,
Speaker 1: I'm like, listen, I don't know if you guys have
Speaker 1: used Sora. Sorry, Like, it's not worth the power bills.
Speaker 1: It's not worth it.
Speaker 2: Tracy's insisting that I correct that I'm not really a
Speaker 2: real Texan. I only went to college there.
Speaker 1: He's a photo true. Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 3: This is important to me as someone with a dad
Speaker 3: who was raised in Dallas and Lancaster. Anyway, I was
Speaker 3: just thinking, you know, we were talking about populism in
Speaker 3: the eighteen hundreds, and did you ever see the interpretations
Speaker 3: of the Wizard of oz as.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was farmers who's like wanted
Speaker 4: to move a silver backed currency, and a lot of
Speaker 4: it supposedly was tied to populism.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I wanted to go back to power politics for
Speaker 3: one second, and ask what the heck JD. Evans is
Speaker 3: going to do here, because it's not impossible that he
Speaker 3: is the chosen successor to Trump in whatever timeframe, and
Speaker 3: in that case, he's sort of stuck between I guess
Speaker 3: two peas here, populism and Peter Teel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, it's a lot more peas than
Speaker 1: that actually, because it's popularism, it's Trump, it's Tea. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the Teal thing. I've always thought it was
Speaker 1: frankly a little bit overstated terms of influence. But regardless,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say more like Teal sphere or Teal thought
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. Like, as you guys know, probably
Speaker 1: most of the people listening to this, like there's an
Speaker 1: entire like ecosystem around like zero you know, zero to
Speaker 1: one posting and all of that within tech anyway, So
Speaker 1: that sphere, let's call it, right tech, I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: to be extremely reductive, that sphere is really the one
Speaker 1: which currently embodies, you know, really a lot of this
Speaker 1: more pro AI direction. Let's say, Palenteer, Alex KRP and others.
Speaker 1: But even he is fascinating, right because he's pro AI,
Speaker 1: but only for Palenteer, and he thinks the rest of
Speaker 1: this up. So like these things do break down. But Jad,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, he's gonna be in a tough position
Speaker 1: as well because he also it's not exactly like in
Speaker 1: repudiate the Trump administration. I actually think it's one of
Speaker 1: his biggest weaknesses going into twenty twenty eight. I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys will remember they savaged Kamala for the what
Speaker 1: would you do different conversation from Biden? I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you answer that when Donald Trump is still alive
Speaker 1: and you about to run. You know you're gonna get
Speaker 1: destroyed if you say the truth. And I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I don't know where things are gonna end up. Trump
Speaker 1: is basically trending in Biden territory right now in terms
Speaker 1: of his approval ratings. And so look, you know, we
Speaker 1: saw that movie, and in my opinion, when you start
Speaker 1: chart posting about how the economy is actually good, you're cooked.
Speaker 1: You know, to borrow a phrase from the youth about politics,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you're the power politics of it are really
Speaker 1: I think trepidacious. So I think for a lot of
Speaker 1: the right because they don't want to get away from
Speaker 1: Elon and from his money. Right, Elon is very very
Speaker 1: powerful center. I think in Republican politics. XAI. He's got
Speaker 1: this huge new data center project. I'm sure you guys
Speaker 1: have read or seen something about that. He's probably going
Speaker 1: to demand, you know, certain things. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: you're i mean a huge amount of the right wing
Speaker 1: commentariot who would probably be more jd vance ideologically position
Speaker 1: let's say, like the Matt Walsh's of the world, that
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson's of the world. These were were straight up
Speaker 1: on record as this is, you know, demonic. We need
Speaker 1: to stand for humanity, and it's going to be very tough.
Speaker 1: I actually think it might be the single toughest position
Speaker 1: that you'll have to navigate in the campaign. And I
Speaker 1: think that the left, the political left in particular, they
Speaker 1: are looking at this data center stuff. They are all
Speaker 1: over it. More Perfect Union, which is one of those
Speaker 1: it's like a Bernie aligned institution. They have been all
Speaker 1: over this issue. So I'm watching the populace left really
Speaker 1: really grab onto it. And I think a democratic position
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty eight is going to come down hard
Speaker 1: in terms of either regulation or protecting Americans, you know,
Speaker 1: reforming power. However, it's going to be there. They are
Speaker 1: going to be there and the right is going to
Speaker 1: have a very tough time.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because, like even ten years ago, we thought
Speaker 2: of Silicon Valley as like basically being democratic aligned, right
Speaker 2: like most big tech executives. And I still think, you know,
Speaker 2: most people in San Francisco obviously vote Democrat, including a
Speaker 2: lot of high people at these tech companies. But there's
Speaker 2: this well known shift that everyone talks about and they've
Speaker 2: got much more comfortable. But it feels like to me
Speaker 2: they could you know, they've moved, they've switched asides to
Speaker 2: like they could.
Speaker 1: Kind of end up friendless and all this. Oh, I
Speaker 1: mean I already I think that they massively overplayed their
Speaker 1: hand with DOGE. And I mean, you know, look, I
Speaker 1: for being honest, just look at the stats. Like it's
Speaker 1: a total failure in terms of its stated project. You
Speaker 1: could debate whether USA I D or whatever is bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, Treasury data is public, guys, you can go
Speaker 1: read it for yourself in terms of spending. So that's
Speaker 1: one thing. But two, you're exactly right, Joe in terms
Speaker 1: of the fair weather friend nature of all of this
Speaker 1: is that you know, a in terms of the way
Speaker 1: that a lot of the democratic base has been radicalized
Speaker 1: at this point, they're never going back. And then in
Speaker 1: the right wing coalition, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: go too deep in the weeds here, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the tech the tech right. Let's take this
Speaker 1: H one B thing for example. This is like a huge,
Speaker 1: huge split right now in the political right because a
Speaker 1: lot of these tech guys are very pro H one B.
Speaker 1: You know, Elon famously said he would fight to the
Speaker 1: death over the issue of H one B. This was
Speaker 1: during the whole fight, you know, in December before Trump
Speaker 1: took office, and Trump ultimately he just did an interview
Speaker 1: a few days ago where he embraced H one B,
Speaker 1: say actually, we need more talent. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of the activist political right which is vary against that
Speaker 1: and increasingly are blaming a lot of these tech right
Speaker 1: politicians for hijacking the administration. So that's why, you know,
Speaker 1: for them, I would be very careful as to how
Speaker 1: exactly you know they're going to navigate. There's also I mean,
Speaker 1: this breaks on foreign policy lines as well, because a
Speaker 1: subset of the tech right is also very pro Israel,
Speaker 1: which is also a very divisive issue. I don't want
Speaker 1: to drag that into this, but only to say, like
Speaker 1: Joe Lonsdale, Sean Maguire, these are you know, very very
Speaker 1: rich people, very activated in the current you know, cohort
Speaker 1: of MAGA, but not exactly like beloved. Let's say amongst
Speaker 1: a different segment you know, of the American right. And
Speaker 1: so I could see a huge clash coming to the
Speaker 1: front with that. And that's another issue I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, for a JD. Vance is like, I'm sure
Speaker 1: he's friendly with them, and that's easy when Trump is
Speaker 1: papering over all these coalitional politics. But that's going to
Speaker 1: break out into the open like nobody's business in a primary,
Speaker 1: and I could see it. I could see them becoming
Speaker 1: friendless quickly because again, I mean, look, I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's where the base is. I
Speaker 1: really don't, just because if we look at the math
Speaker 1: of who are the people increasingly identifying as MAGA or
Speaker 1: Republican Like, people making less than one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year are not going to be cheering on, you know,
Speaker 1: multi billionaires telling them that they don't have to work,
Speaker 1: that they're not gonna work anymore, not that they don't
Speaker 1: have to work anymore. They're not going to work anymore more,
Speaker 1: blue collar types. I mean, you know the driverless you know,
Speaker 1: the driverless trucks issue. Like the Teamsters president, I had
Speaker 1: him on my show, just going hard, Sean O'Brien, famously
Speaker 1: the only union president to not endorse in the election.
Speaker 1: Much more Trump friendly, So that part of the coalition
Speaker 1: is gonna have something to say, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I feel like we saw some of the sensitivity burst
Speaker 3: into the open with the h one B Visa comments
Speaker 3: when Trump was like, we don't have enough talent in America. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean Twitter slash x just exploded.
Speaker 2: I ask you to take all the jobs and the
Speaker 2: jobs that will be left. We're also going to Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's right. Whatever jobs are left, they'll be in India.
Speaker 2: So you're like, I don't know about that.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I feel like I know the answer to
Speaker 3: this question. But if a lot of people are going
Speaker 3: to be unable to work, is there anyone in DC
Speaker 3: or elsewhere who is talking about universal basic income?
Speaker 1: Andrew Yang I just Adam on the show. He's doing
Speaker 1: the biggest victory lap over all of this. You know,
Speaker 1: I have not seen it. I know even Bernie famously,
Speaker 1: I think it's against UBI. I have to go back
Speaker 1: and check. He's more of a federal jobs guarantee guy,
Speaker 1: and that's the most most out there. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I mean to be honest covering politics now, I've only
Speaker 1: watched them play catch up. I mean famously, I've talked
Speaker 1: with Jack Dorsey and others about this. But like those
Speaker 1: famous hearings where they'd be like, so, how does Facebook,
Speaker 1: you know, make money? And you're like, oh my god, man,
Speaker 1: you know, in front of these hearings when the congressmen
Speaker 1: you know, don't even know the most basic facets, or
Speaker 1: they'll be asking stuff like why do my campaign emails
Speaker 1: get stuck in gmails? Filters? Like these are real questions
Speaker 1: that were asked in Friday, the United States senator in
Speaker 1: the Congress. So I don't have a lot of faith
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of very forward facing thinkers
Speaker 1: around this issue, and in particular, I mean I know
Speaker 1: that to be the case. It could change in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six. I think a dem you know, tea party
Speaker 1: type wave is coming. There might be some interesting candidates
Speaker 1: that start to say things like that, and maybe on
Speaker 1: the Republican side as well. I'd like to see it.
Speaker 2: We've been talking a lot about the right, the Republicans.
Speaker 2: I actually really like a lot of these guys. But
Speaker 2: when I think about the other side of the aisle
Speaker 2: and I think about some of these tensions, as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: more perfect union and some of the more you know,
Speaker 2: kind of populous left things, I'm not very bullish on
Speaker 2: the abundance Dems right now, and how that sort of
Speaker 2: faction that would like to sort of take the party
Speaker 2: in a sort of more you know, I guess, I
Speaker 2: don't know, centrist, but a centrist moderate liberal realm. Yeah,
Speaker 2: whatever it is. I don't know how you feel. Give
Speaker 2: us your sort of your view on the other side
Speaker 2: of the aisle, definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean the interesting thing about the whole abundance thing
Speaker 1: and all of that is, I think, you know what
Speaker 1: it misses is the theory of control. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's like more housing awesome, you know, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: get to ownership, I guess, and the feeling of like
Speaker 1: the ability to control your own destiny, which I think
Speaker 1: is really baked into the American spirit and the American project.
Speaker 1: And you know, you see stuff like this about debates
Speaker 1: around housing and you know, they'll kind of ridicule this
Speaker 1: idea about corporate ownership, and you know, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get into the weeds about whether that's even true
Speaker 1: or not. I know there's a lot of controversy, but
Speaker 1: the idea is definitely very popular, right, you know, for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And the reason why is fundamentally,
Speaker 1: they're like, I'm being priced out of my ability to
Speaker 1: buy a home. Like it really, what it is about
Speaker 1: is about you know, the individuality of reclaiming your own destiny.
Speaker 1: And that's why that's why those two things are very linked.
Speaker 1: You know, it's about power. You know, to kind of
Speaker 1: bring back to Tracy's question earlier about you know, beating China,
Speaker 1: et cetera, it's the technology is not the same as
Speaker 1: the companies that are in charge. And when you see
Speaker 1: these swelling valuations and talks of bailouts and the encroachment
Speaker 1: into your daily life or your office, and you see
Speaker 1: headlines about firing workers, you know, on the promise of AI.
Speaker 1: None of this goes to the heart about democratic input.
Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking about that in terms of
Speaker 1: the chatchypt suicide question, which I know is fringe from
Speaker 1: their point of view, but I think it's important if
Speaker 1: billions of people are going to use your technology. And
Speaker 1: Sam famously in a Tucker car else an interview, was like, well,
Speaker 1: in a country where assistant suicide is legal, like, would
Speaker 1: you direct people to those resources? He effectively said yes,
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god, I mean, then
Speaker 1: you know chat ept's mental health standards. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: like there needs to be some like there needs to
Speaker 1: be stuff hashed out in the US Congress and at
Speaker 1: the state and the local level where like we all
Speaker 1: agree on what so called guardrails and acceptable norms are.
Speaker 1: And I can't just be leaving it to Sam Altman.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I think you know, no offense to that guy.
Speaker 1: It's not even about him, it's about everybody. No, but
Speaker 1: no one person should have that immense amount of power
Speaker 1: which is going to affect millions and millions amow. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it just seems incredibly difficult to have any democratic
Speaker 3: input into what are effectively black boxes, right and have
Speaker 3: always been black boxes. I have a very basic question,
Speaker 3: but is anyone in DC using AI in an interesting way?
Speaker 3: I imagine you know, people are probably editing policy papers
Speaker 3: or whatever with it and doing some research, but is
Speaker 3: anyone I don't know creating lots of AI driven bots
Speaker 3: to sway conversations, or I don't know, come up with
Speaker 3: some new system of campaign finance. Who knows.
Speaker 1: I'm not privy to any of this secret stuff like you.
Speaker 1: I mean that kind of either, Just to be clear,
Speaker 1: I mean it kind of begs the question is is
Speaker 1: anything interesting being done with A right? You know what
Speaker 1: you just said of editing papers? Everybody's editing papers great,
Speaker 1: you know, awesome. A friend of mine, John Coogan, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you guys know, Yeah, yeah, I think John had
Speaker 1: a great analogy to AI. He was like, I kind
Speaker 1: of think it'll be like the credit card, you know,
Speaker 1: like frictionless payments. It enabled an entire new ecosystem. We
Speaker 1: could build wealth. It'll make your life like a little
Speaker 1: bit better, you know, and all that. I think that's
Speaker 1: basically the technology, right, you know, summarizing editing. It's a
Speaker 1: better Google. That's cool and all that. But I haven't
Speaker 1: yet seen like some mass sophisticated thing. I mean, to
Speaker 1: be honest, you know, most people in DC are probably
Speaker 1: using AI for editing purposes, research, to check things, what else?
Speaker 1: I mean, image generation to slander your political opponents. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty big one. We use it for thumbnails for
Speaker 1: our YouTube videos. You know, Like, I guess that's cool,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, yeah, it's nice. It's definitely nice.
Speaker 1: It's not that I don't have. I also have photoshop
Speaker 1: guys who worked for me, so you know, they use
Speaker 1: it a little bit every once in a while. But
Speaker 1: I haven't seen anything truly novel. I really have it.
Speaker 2: You know, in terms of elected officials who maybe a
Speaker 2: few years ago this would have been a surprise, but
Speaker 2: who seemed to have an very good intuitions about things mergery,
Speaker 2: Taylor Green, one of these names. Was like, Oh, I'm like,
Speaker 2: she seems savvy in a way that maybe people wouldn't
Speaker 2: have guessed. Has she been talking about AI at all?
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't looked. Definitely, I haven't seen anything
Speaker 1: in particular. I can almost guess where she would land them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially look, her own home state is now ground zero
Speaker 1: for a statewide referendum. Again, talk to us about that.
Speaker 1: We haven't actually told us. We haven't.
Speaker 2: This Georgia election, I know, it was like kind of powers,
Speaker 2: elect empowers and electricity stuff. It's kind of directly on
Speaker 2: the ballot.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, two races literally about power. Both made Democratic candidates,
Speaker 1: they made data centers power usage like a central part
Speaker 1: of their campaign, and they won a huge victory. I
Speaker 1: don't want to ascribe the entire thing. Let's be honest.
Speaker 1: In a national environment, a lot of people are decrets, right,
Speaker 1: but it was it was an awesome night for Democrats. Right.
Speaker 1: But look, I mean in a certain way, like those
Speaker 1: arguments still are really finding a lot of salience because
Speaker 1: you know these stories about power going up, and look,
Speaker 1: I mean everybody remembers, you know, the walmartization conversation, the
Speaker 1: Amazon warehouse conversation. Nobody loves this idea of these big
Speaker 1: companies coming in buying land, using a ton of resources,
Speaker 1: driving prices up. Nobody buys the BS anymore. About how
Speaker 1: this is going to create a ton of jobs. I mean,
Speaker 1: definitely some construction jobs. But nobody's really under the illusion.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows tech is a power law business. You know,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the wealth is going to flow
Speaker 1: up to the top of the CEO and the networks
Speaker 1: of Zuck and Elon and the rest of these people.
Speaker 1: So that's where politics of this really matter. And you know,
Speaker 1: heat map I shouted them out They wrote a great
Speaker 1: piece about the data center backlashes swallowing American politics, and
Speaker 1: you should go read it just to even look at polling,
Speaker 1: not just about Georgia. I mean, this is bipartisan at
Speaker 1: every level. And younger generations are the most anti data center,
Speaker 1: anti AI kind of politics. And I mean, look, they're suffering.
Speaker 1: I mean, they have a high unemployment rate right now.
Speaker 1: A lot of them either blame AI or look at
Speaker 1: AI is one of the reasons why they're having a
Speaker 1: tough time in the labor market. And you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't help. Whenever you see Wall Street Journal articles just
Speaker 1: about white collar companies increasingly bet on more productivity out
Speaker 1: of existing workforce, like this stuff confirmed. It both confirms
Speaker 1: biases and it's real, so it's not even particularly a bias.
Speaker 3: What is the state of antitrust at the moment, because
Speaker 3: I remember at the beginning of this year, it seemed
Speaker 3: like it was emerging as a possibly bipartisan issue or
Speaker 3: at least a direct link between the Biden administration and
Speaker 3: the Trump administration. Everyone wanted to go after the big
Speaker 3: tech companies, possibly for different reasons, but you know, the
Speaker 3: outcomes the same. Is that still a live issue?
Speaker 1: In DC. Yeah. I mean, look, speaking quite candidly, like
Speaker 1: the state of the government is like large portions of
Speaker 1: it for sale and for you know, large portions of
Speaker 1: it are basically you know, they are very beholden to
Speaker 1: financial interests. I'll put that very politely, shall I at
Speaker 1: least about who can get to Trump's ear, who can
Speaker 1: get and have some influence with the administration. I don't
Speaker 1: want to poop poo it entirely, you know, when big
Speaker 1: money or a donor or something like that is not involved.
Speaker 1: The FTC has done some good work and has been
Speaker 1: looking to try and confirmed, but they've also quite honestly,
Speaker 1: you know, moved bass some of the antitrust cases and
Speaker 1: others that Lena Khan put forward. So I would say
Speaker 1: it's mixed. I mean, I think that the look, this
Speaker 1: stuff is happening on in the open, so I don't
Speaker 1: even know, I'm afraid of saying it. Like he convenes
Speaker 1: the tech CEOs and they are like, how much money
Speaker 1: do you want me to announce? And they'll just do it,
Speaker 1: you know. I Mean, that's pretty much is the whole
Speaker 1: ball game. And I think that gets to the kind
Speaker 1: of power alliance I talked about earlier, like the Trump
Speaker 1: administration really needs these companies for headlines and because they're
Speaker 1: propping up the economy in their stock marketing.
Speaker 2: So so this is exactly where I wanted to ask
Speaker 2: you about next, which is if there's one tension here,
Speaker 2: which is the stock market itself has sort of become
Speaker 2: a populist issue. Right, This seem is very strange to
Speaker 2: talk about the stock market and populism in the same sentence,
Speaker 2: But you see all of the different people you know
Speaker 2: who will randomly pull up on their phone various stock positions.
Speaker 3: Well, Trump himself also benchmarks and Trump.
Speaker 2: Talks about the stock market, so you know, this whole
Speaker 2: time is like, oh, it's you know, it's main Street's turn,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But a lot of young people, people who
Speaker 2: are middle class or lower middle class feel either directly
Speaker 2: either very directly in the stock market where they feel
Speaker 2: like they have some very interest in it. How does
Speaker 2: that intersect with this? What do you see like among
Speaker 2: like the commenters on your show in terms of like
Speaker 2: how they think about you know, just the sort of
Speaker 2: betting and everything and investing in trading stuff.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I mean, I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: like a couple of different angles to it, right, because
Speaker 1: the Trump people ridiculed Biden for saying the economy was good,
Speaker 1: but now they're doing the exact same thing. You guys know,
Speaker 1: the S and P did pretty well under Biden. Right,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, start benchmarketing from the day took office
Speaker 1: to the day off. I forget the exact number, it's
Speaker 1: like sixty eighty percent. Like these are decent returns over
Speaker 1: the four year period. But it's not like anybody at
Speaker 1: home was like, oh, the economy is so much better.
Speaker 1: But of course politicians do that, you know, whenever they
Speaker 1: come into office. But Joe, I mean, you're not wrong,
Speaker 1: And I guess this is a much more meta conversation
Speaker 1: where I mean you and you and I have talked
Speaker 1: about this privately. The numbers got to go up, right,
Speaker 1: because all of our futures are in the number. Like,
Speaker 1: we don't have pensions in this country, We don't have
Speaker 1: a robust social safety net until we turn sixty five,
Speaker 1: So in the interim robust, Yeah, and then it gets
Speaker 1: very robust. And that's a separate combo. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean in the interim, like you know, your hopes of
Speaker 1: retirement your hopes of buying something or asset appreciation, like
Speaker 1: that's all we got. And I think that the increasing
Speaker 1: financialization hope is exactly behind crypto sports betting issue and
Speaker 1: very passionately against this is exactly why is I think,
Speaker 1: you know, it removed a lot of the hope kind
Speaker 1: of undergirding the stability of the American foundation, and within
Speaker 1: that speculation and fast riches and plus, I mean, the
Speaker 1: tech is so good. I mean, have you guys placed
Speaker 1: trades on robin Hood, you know, with the and everything,
Speaker 1: you gotta go do it. You know, you got to
Speaker 1: feel it, put a little bit, put a position behind it,
Speaker 1: and you'll see exactly that's the responsible thing to do.
Speaker 1: Go put a couple of hundred into the spy and
Speaker 1: but you'll just.
Speaker 3: See like like celebratory Oh yeah, animations when you place
Speaker 3: the trade.
Speaker 1: It's happened to me recently, Yeah exactly. But I mean
Speaker 1: I can see how you know, addictive that this can
Speaker 1: all be. And they send you a million push notifications
Speaker 1: a day, you know, the opposite of what a good
Speaker 1: investor should do, Like, oh, stock is down five percent,
Speaker 1: stock is up two percent. You know, they want you
Speaker 1: click and staying in the app and the charts, everything
Speaker 1: is designed for you to kind of be in there.
Speaker 1: So these are big tech companies which they make a
Speaker 1: lot of money doing this stuff. And you can see
Speaker 1: why societally, structurally and technologically why that this became kind
Speaker 1: of like a democratic issue.
Speaker 2: By the way, while we're recording this, just breaking the
Speaker 2: breaking news from Bloomberg Thinking Machines Lab and artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: startup funded by former Open ai executive Mirror Murati early
Speaker 2: talks to raise a new round of funding a roughly
Speaker 2: fifty billion dollars valuation.
Speaker 3: So every time we record an episode about AI, a
Speaker 3: headline comes out recording.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it helps us benchmark where we are. That is
Speaker 1: so crazy, It's so didn't core there was something I
Speaker 1: saw research every day every day every day was one
Speaker 1: yesterday and a new one hundred billion anthropic anthrop data
Speaker 1: center exactly. It's just I mean, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: really That's why I love your show. Thank you. Just
Speaker 1: thinking about you know, I've been doing a lot of
Speaker 1: John Cassidy dot com dot com reading, you know, back
Speaker 1: from two thousand and vendor finance and just thinking really
Speaker 1: deeply about it because I do think, you know, if
Speaker 1: that look, you know, I don't know today, tomorrow, a
Speaker 1: few years, who knows, you know, where exactly it comes.
Speaker 1: But some sort of downturn is probably inevitable, and the
Speaker 1: political ramifications of that are just so immense, you guys, know,
Speaker 1: with the downturn in the stock market, interest rates, reduction
Speaker 1: in workforce. I'm really afraid.
Speaker 2: This is the thing, which is that there's already this
Speaker 2: backlash and the stock market is in your record highs
Speaker 2: and unemployment is near fifty year lows or whatever, so
Speaker 2: we haven't actually seen any of like really bad stuff.
Speaker 2: Soccer and Jetty, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 2: to oddlogs.
Speaker 1: That was a love for you guys for having me.
Speaker 2: I love it, Tracy. I thought that was a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. You know, this idea that like there's already
Speaker 2: this backlash that brewing, and we actually don't have widespread
Speaker 2: unemployment yet. We haven't had a stock market crash yet
Speaker 2: or anything like that. You know, three years of a
Speaker 2: long time. We have no idea what the economy is
Speaker 2: going to look like in twenty twenty eight or really
Speaker 2: even twenty twenty six. But if there's so much negativity
Speaker 2: already building, right, that sort of tells you tells you
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 3: Right, If people are angry with the SMP at like
Speaker 3: six thousand, seven hundred, how are they going to feel
Speaker 3: when it's like below six thousand. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 3: think everyone is agreed at this point that this is
Speaker 3: going to become a political issue, right, and the only
Speaker 3: question is how big and then what the response actually
Speaker 3: is to it. The other thing I'm thinking is because
Speaker 3: relationships both within the government and between the government and
Speaker 3: private entities seem so I'm just going to say, complicated
Speaker 3: and fluid at the moment, it seems really hard to
Speaker 3: guess like which direction this is going to go in.
Speaker 2: Totally, it seems really hard to guess. I thought your
Speaker 2: question about is anyone talking about you ubi?
Speaker 1: And this is really interesting.
Speaker 2: It's grim like how there seems to be almost no
Speaker 2: truly forward thinking politics. I mean, really, this conversation should
Speaker 2: have been happening throughout the twenty twenty four election, right,
Speaker 2: like this was like obviously going to be a massive
Speaker 2: thing and the stakes would be incredibly high. It was
Speaker 2: virtually non existent.
Speaker 1: That was just a year ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think that really tells you something. And
Speaker 2: the fact that by and large, you know there's a
Speaker 2: couple of people tweeting about it here and there, like
Speaker 2: maybe Aron DeSantis, but by and large, this still doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be something that any elected official like wants
Speaker 2: to sort of carve their land out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's probably not until unemployment actually picks up
Speaker 3: that you're going to see like people actually start to
Speaker 3: talk about some possible solutions, but again it's hard to
Speaker 3: see what those are.
Speaker 2: We're just like, yeah, thinking and advance any of this stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 2: Sure, let's leave it there.
Speaker 3: This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 2: Follow our guests Sager and Jetty. He's at e Sager.
Speaker 2: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Kerman Armann, dash Ol
Speaker 2: Bennett at dashbod at Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. For more Odd
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