WEBVTT - Neoliberalism Part 4: This is What Democracy Looks Like 0:00:04.800 --> 0:00:08.160 Welcome to It could happen here a show about things 0:00:08.200 --> 0:00:12.719 falling apart, and is for one final time this week 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:16.680 about why and how things have fallen apart in this 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.800 specific way. Um, I'm I'm I'm your host Christopher, and 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:25.840 today with me I have Garrison. Well, Garrison, Hello, how 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.760 you doing. I'm doing fine. We're gonna talk about something 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:31.800 that's not fine. It's not fine at all, is in 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:35.280 fact extremely grim and bad, which is part four of 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:38.879 our series of deal Liberalism, i e. All of the 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:42.479 bad things happened at once so in in in in 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:45.599 a last episode, we talked about how throughout throughout most 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:48.279 of the Third World or you know what was at 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.760 the time known as the Third World, new liberalism is 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:54.880 not really imposed by people voting for it. It's mostly 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:59.360 imposed by either external forces via coup or by just 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.720 the I M going okay, just we're running the country now. Um, 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:06.440 but this this, yeah, We're we're gonna shift our focus 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:10.560 a bit this episode with the people who were I 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:15.120 don't know, unfortunate enough, misguided enough, decided that they hated 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:19.720 each other enough to actually choose neoliberalism for themselves. Now, 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:22.320 one of the sort of stories we've been tracing here 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:25.679 on sort of a very broad arc is the reaction 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:27.920 by Neil Bulls to kind of kind of compromise it 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:30.040 have been worked out between labor and capital, particularly the 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:33.120 US after sort of the open class warfare in the 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:36.920 reteen thirties, and you know, they're essentially there's there's a 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:41.040 kind of deal that's set up informally, which is so 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:45.560 the we're working class will stop literally constantly going on 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.280 strike and showing up the strikes with like enormous numbers 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:51.040 of guns and shooting at people, and they will you know, 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:53.440 stop trying to overshow the government in exchange, the state 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:55.880 gives you welfare programs, the state will give you a house. 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:57.680 And this is this is particularly after what we're too 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.280 the Americans say, just you know, does this matter homeownership campaign? 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:02.880 And you know, if if you're if you're, if you're 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:05.880 you know, a union worker, particularly if you're a white 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:08.760 man like this, this, you know, working working, working one 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:10.440 of these union jobs will put you into the middle class. 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:12.880 You can take vacations, you can have a house, um, 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:15.519 you can get pensions. Your unions are legal now, which 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:17.400 is the thing that like you know, hadn't happened before. 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:21.840 And this is essentially, you know, this is essentially a 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:25.600 kind of insurgency tool. Um. The goal of this is 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:28.840 to stop people from you know, doing the kinds of 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:31.840 revolts that were happening in at the dirties. But by 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:34.760 the nineteen seventies it's becoming very clear that this sort 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:37.960 of the like can't it can't really be maintained because 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:40.560 it's too expensive for sort of the capital states to 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:44.120 maintain and trying to maintain both well. And you know, 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.480 the secondary thing here is is, you know, okay, so 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:50.079 this deal specifically goes out to white men right now, 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:52.720 throughout the sixties and seventies, you get a bunch of 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:55.760 other people who are not white men attempting to enter 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:58.800 the workplace, attempting you get the same bargain, and you know, 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:01.480 they're in a lot of way significantly one militants. And 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:06.080 this causes en normal sponsetermentional strife. You get you know, 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:08.919 the US is murdering the black panthers. You get similar 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:16.799 stuff in the UK and the neoliberals basically are the 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.320 people who just fully called this to tants off and 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:21.280 are you know, essentially going to return to full scale 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.200 class war. And so now now we are we are 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:26.640 finally getting to Reagan and Thatcher, and one day we 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.120 will do a full episode about how Ronald Reagan, in 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:32.519 a weird, shadowy cabal of Italian intelligence services rigged the 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:35.440 nineteen eighty election by planting fake stories about Jimmy Carter's 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:41.280 brother and the press, which is if you hear the story, Garrison, No, 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:44.920 but it sounds like regular media manipulation that happens all 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:48.000 the time. Now, Yeah, yeah, it's it's yeah, there, there's, 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:51.640 there's there's there's there's a whole three line there because 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:54.920 you know a lot of those like same kind of 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:57.000 intelligence tactics are gonna be used South the Iraq War, 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:58.560 and there's there's this whole sort of thing. Then you 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.440 know that there's also the specific Italian angle of uh yeah, 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:05.200 the Italian States being run by this rogue Masonic lodge 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.360 led by a fascist and it's it's a time this 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:11.360 is all going on there. But that's you know, I'm 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:14.360 just I'm just thinking like Hunter Biden laptop and all 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.719 of that. Yeah, yeah stuff. It's like, oh so that's 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:20.520 just the same playbook. Yeah, it's it's the same thing, 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:23.560 except like they were like actual intelligence people running it 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:28.680 instead of just sort of like whatever, Tucker carloson Tucker Carlson, 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:32.720 Glenn Greenwaal, trying to get people to care about this 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:36.200 thing that just nobody gives a single ship about. Yeah, 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.159 you know, it was, it was, but the the Ages 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:40.800 version of it was significantly more effective. And you know, 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:45.560 the product of this is that Reagan sort of Reagan 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.600 finds like the secret sauce for right wing politics, which 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:51.840 is kind of you know, in in in some ways, 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:54.880 and Nixon had been trying to develop it hadn't quite 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.440 gotten right, which is no, yeah, yeah, yeah. He he 0:04:58.480 --> 0:04:59.800 figures out that, you know, if you want to do 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:01.440 new liberalism, if you want to destroy the unions, you 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:03.000 want to show the welfare state, the way you do 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:06.200 it is basically a combination of racist tax and welfare 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.760 recipients and you mobilize new religious right. And this is 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:13.280 extremely effective and it's but I think it's also interesting 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.240 and worth noting that, you know, if if you got 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:18.440 all the back to episode one, like this is this 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:22.159 is rope keys like white nationalism, like short German white nationalism. 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:24.480 Thing is this is explicitly a ropeky sort of strategy 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:26.839 for implenting the liberalism was the problem is he was 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:29.320 German and Catholic, which meant that like it could never 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.840 work in the US. But you know, you get Reagan, 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:35.159 suddenly you get the American version of it, that is, 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:39.920 you know, white but American, and then also works off 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:41.440 the sort of of off of the sort of mass 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:47.719 Protestantism in the US, and this becomes a force study 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:52.680 is responsible for like almost every bad thing that exists 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:57.000 today in some form or another lot of them. Yeah, 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:58.719 I mean not not often, but you know, I the thing, 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:04.720 things go extremely badly. And so Reagan wins this election 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:08.159 and then almost exactly the same time, Margaret Thatcher wins 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:11.279 the wins her election in in the UK, and that 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.400 the combination of those two things, and also, as we 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:19.039 talked about last episode, the Vulcar shock, where Volca raises 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:24.600 the interest rates raised, defendation become so Vulcar is installed weirdly, 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:27.919 not by Ronald Reagan but by Jimmy Carter, but is 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:30.320 given this sort of mandate to just do whatever, literally 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:32.479 do whatever you have to to to get inflation under control. 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:34.440 The thing that he decides to do is just literally 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:37.440 nuke the entire world economy. You know, when we talked 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:39.640 about the effects of this hat ont of the world 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.960 and the last episode. But in the US this sets 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:45.960 off a recession at last, basically from like nineteen seventy 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.279 nine to Night two. At the height of it, it's 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:52.560 like it's I think we finally got more people unemployed 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:57.560 during the pandemic, but I'm like sure that between World 0:06:57.600 --> 0:06:59.719 War Two and the pandemic, that was the single largest 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:02.599 number pop who have been unemployed in the US, which 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:05.640 just yeah, it was just apocle, just apocle devastation. And 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:07.679 you know, there's there's there's a whole thing here where 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:09.360 the head of the a f l C. I OH 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.000 is literally begging Vulcar like, please don't do this, like 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:14.280 we can get inflation under control after, you know, after 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:27.040 the economy recovers, and vocals just like no. The consequence 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:29.280 of this is that you have you have an economy 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.040 in which is no more sumber of people unemployed, and 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:38.400 the unions are weak, and both Reagan and Thatcher sort 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:41.320 of see this. Now the unions in the UK are 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:46.440 in a sniffulty better position the American unions. Reagan is 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:48.760 able to sort of smash the American unions very quickly 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:51.200 there's there's the you know, the famous air traffic control 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:53.880 strike where a bunch of American air traffic controllers go 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:58.160 on strike technically illegally, and Reagan just has literally every 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:00.440 single one of them fired and replaces them with just 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:05.040 like like people from flight school, like people who just 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:07.240 just like apt literally anyone he can just like pull 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:09.240 off the street who sort of kind of knows how 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:11.320 to how to land an aircraft, like they put on 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:14.160 people from the military. It's it's just like this absolutely 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:18.280 wild sort of feet of strike breaking. And then you know, 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:21.520 and when when when that falls and that that strike fails, 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.040 you know, the air traffic controllers well, okay, funnily so, 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:27.040 the air traff controllers had actually backed Reagan. They were 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:29.280 like the only union that backed Reagan in the election, 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.440 and they immediately just get you know, they get gutted 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:38.880 for it, which, like I have mixed feelings about because like, 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:40.920 on the one hand, like, yeah, that's that's, that's what 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:42.720 you get. But on the other hand, this is basically 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.920 what the stories this, This is the consequences that this 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:48.240 is basically what the stories like trade unions in the 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.160 US because at this at this point, everyone realizes that 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:53.160 the unions are weak and they just start you know, 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:55.240 there's you get to the point where employers are deliberately 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:57.880 provoking strikes so that they can just fire all the 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:02.040 unionized employees. And it's extra to be effective. In in Britain, 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:06.480 the fight is a lot more intense um in in 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:10.520 in Entity. For Thatcher cuts cold, like basically Thatchery wants 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.600 to provoke a fight with with the coal unions and 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:16.280 so she basically wants to shut down a whole bunch 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:20.400 of coal production and fire like twenty miners, and the 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:22.120 miners go on strike, and they go on strike for 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:25.520 over a year. But Thatcher had basically stockpiled enough cold 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:27.240 to stave off the worst effects of the strike. And 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:30.520 then she makes these incredibly elaborate network of deals with 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:34.840 like She's like this this whole scab driver like union, 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.440 like basically this whole network of scab drivers, like make 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:40.200 sure you can move the coal around while the strike's 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:45.320 going on. There there's all of this stuff, and you know, 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:47.760 and and she eventually is able to crush the coal strike. 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:51.480 And this also just just completely annihilates like the British 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.520 trade union movement, I mean union participation. I think dreaming 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:58.680 Thatcher's term alone falls and it's gotten way worse since then. 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.160 So so with those two incidents, the air traffic control 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:05.960 and the coal did did those just kind of make 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:09.320 people be disillusioned or did that just like pave the 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:13.480 way for similar tactics to be acceptable for every other 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:16.000 union that tried to do the same thing both And 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.320 then the everthing was fear because you know, so with 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:21.800 the air traffic controllers, right, the air traffic controllers are 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:25.760 you know, these are the most highly skilled like people 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:27.480 people in there there, These are a bunch of people 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:29.120 who are incredibly have the skilled and they're in there, 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.000 in there in a logistic industry, right, so you know, 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:32.520 in theory, these are the people who have like the 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:35.880 maximum amount of impact if they would go on strike. 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:39.480 And when Reagan shows that you can literally just fire 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:42.280 twenty four thousand people of like the most highly skilled 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:44.000 sort of workers in the in the US, you can 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:46.199 fire them and just break the strike and nothing will happen, 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:48.800 and you know the result is total defeat and none 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.080 of these people ever work again. That basically spreads this 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:56.000 massive wave of fear through the union movements because you know, 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:57.760 if they can fire those guys, they can fire anyone 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.080 and then you know, the the employers just start doing it. 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:04.120 And the other thing that's been happening here is that 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:09.440 for really since the end of the forties, the unions 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:13.880 have kind of So we'll we'll talk about this more 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:16.240 in in in an interview that's gonna come out probably 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:19.360 next week about sort of the history American union movements, 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:24.040 but American unions basically so American, like the union movement 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:30.160 was built by radical organizers and in the forties and 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.000 sort of moving on from there, all these people get 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:37.479 expelled from the labor movement and labor fights this basically 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:42.080 incredibly intense battle against its own left flank, and you 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:44.560 have you know, like for example, in in there's this 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:47.800 thing called the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, right, which is 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.240 a bunch of mostly black workers in Detroit, who are 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:54.040 you know, they're there there there forming unions, they're going 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:56.599 on a strike, but they're also fighting against the the 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.080 u a W because the U a W is cooperating 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:01.360 too closely. But the bosses etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And there's 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:03.800 there's there's these you know, there's there's basically this battle 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:08.040 between like not even just basically between the unions ranked 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:10.559 and file and the radicals and the sort of business 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:15.040 union management, and in fighting that battle, the unions had 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.000 basically like massively weakened themselves and then you know, and 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:20.520 bye bye bye. By the time you hit the eighties, 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:23.480 especially in the US, the unions are just sort of 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.120 a shell out their form ourselves, and and Reagan just 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.520 sort of like smashes them aside. And Thatcher the British 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:32.760 unions are much stronger, but you know, I mean that 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:35.520 Thatcher is preparing to like like there she she has 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:37.760 plans to like the army is going to come in 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:41.079 and suppress the strike. There's these and especially there's there's just, 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:44.559 i mean just an absolutely incredible amount of police violence. 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:46.760 Um that's you know, I mean, this is this is 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:49.360 something that had happened before during strikes, but the the 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:52.079 the the level of intensity of it is just like 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:59.600 massively increased. And there's also another thing that's happening basically 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:01.240 at the same time with this, which is squeezing the 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:07.400 units on the other side, which is there's this I 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:09.760 guess you could call it like an internal class war 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:13.400 inside the ruling class between well specifically inside inside of 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:17.120 the sort of corporate management between the sort of traditional 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:21.000 like manager CEO class and the sort of like I 0:13:21.200 --> 0:13:23.760 guess you could call them, I don't know, the sort 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:27.800 of Wall Street finance bank types and so so yeah, 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:30.400 so one of the other things that that happens at 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:33.240 the end of you know, basically after the war is 0:13:33.440 --> 0:13:35.319 the sort of class compromise was talking about like this, 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:38.120 this happens inside of the company too, and people start 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:40.839 to see the corporation as like a social institution. It 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:42.520 has you know, it's like, well, okay, so there's this 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:47.000 alliance between middle management and the workers, and you know, 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:48.679 it's like, okay, so we we both worked with each other, 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:51.679 and you know, the compromises that you guys got to 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:54.400 have unions, but the unions won't sort of disruptroduction. We'll 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:56.920 all work together and we'll just make like I don't know, 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:01.199 we'll we'll make really really good ballpoint pens together. And 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:02.839 so yeah, you have this in lince between sort of 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:06.040 middle managements and these unions, you know, and this this 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:08.160 is embedded into the structure of the corporation because you know, 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:09.599 you not you not only have the unions, but you 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:14.559 have corporations paying pensions. One of the things that that 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.760 Reagan does is that Reagan starts, you know, Reagan does 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:22.720 this massive series of financial deregulations. And the other part 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:26.040 of this agreement basically had been that like the high 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:27.960 level of finance class has sort of stayed out of 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:30.680 the way of management, and so management kind of like 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.520 you know, the you get this like this independent sort 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:36.280 of CEO class that that's that's a distinct thing that 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:38.000 you know, that the people who come up through the 0:14:38.000 --> 0:14:39.840 company who managers and they worked away at the top, 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:41.800 and this is a distinct thing from sort of the 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:44.120 finance people who are like they're not supposed to be 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:46.760 allowed to like, you know, the touch production. But in 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:51.160 the nineteen eighties, the finance people start to look at 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.360 this and go, wait, hold on, why are we not 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:57.920 running things? And the finance people have because they have 0:14:57.920 --> 0:14:59.280 the two things on their side. One they have a 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:01.520 sort of neoliberal ideology, and the second thing they have 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:07.440 is so Michael Milken he figures out how to do 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:10.600 this thing called a leverage buyout option. It's it's it's 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.320 a it's a kind of complicated financial instrument. The short 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:16.000 and simple explanation of what it is is he figures 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:20.720 out a way too basically go into a bunch of debt, 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:23.240 and he he gets he gets people to give him 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:25.800 a bunch of money, like in the form of these bonds, 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:28.960 and then he uses it to just buy out entire companies. 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.400 He buys of the company. And if you own fit 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:33.720 of the company, now you control, you have controlling interest. 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.160 And so he goes in and she just he just 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:40.000 raises the stock prices of all these companies. And now 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:42.200 you know, but I mean, now he's gone into an 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:44.520 enormous amount of debts right in order to buy in 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:46.960 order to buy this company, and so you know, in 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:48.680 order to pay off that debt, he just starts strip 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:51.000 money in the company. And so he starts, you know, 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:53.600 anything that can be sold for money that he can 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:55.400 put in his pocket to pay off his debt starts 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.280 getting sold. And you know, every anything the corporate that 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:00.680 the company is doing, it doesn't immediate make money or 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.760 doesn't immediately raise the stock price gets cut. And so 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:07.000 you know, there there, there, there are there are two 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:11.000 major things that a company has that don't immediately make 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:13.280 money and don't raise the stock price, and that is 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:19.440 pensions and research and development. And this this has you know, this, this, this, this, 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:21.680 this becomes known as the sort of this is the 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:25.520 hustle takeover waves. It gets rebranded as mergers and acquisitions 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:28.600 in the nineties, but it's it's this huge sort of wave, 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:32.320 those these corporate scripts corporate America, and it turns the 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:35.600 corporation from this kind of social body where it's like, well, 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:39.760 everyone's cooperating and companies sort of have this responsibility to 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:42.880 like provide for their workers and provide sort of for 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:46.040 like the social good into literally the only like the 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.400 single entire purpose of any company is to raise the 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:55.840 stock price. And this, yeah, this is really bad. Yeah, 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:58.040 and and and you know the part about it that's 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.640 awful is that, you know, okay, so all all literally 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:05.119 all a corporate rad has to do in order to 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:08.359 buy out one of these companies is be able to 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:10.400 is be able to offer a price for the stock 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:13.360 that's higher from the stock price of the company now. 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:15.840 And this means even so they're they're they're there's a 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:20.280 very famous series of battles they buy out. An enormous 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:22.440 number of companies get bought out into strip minds like this, 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:24.919 and you know, and the over and again these are 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:27.359 these are very very profitable companies, right, These are companies 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:29.359 with large research and development budgets. These are companies that 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:32.640 are making enormous amounts of money and they're just completely 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:35.840 destroyed in order to sort of just like satiate these 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:40.240 just like absolute Google corporate, like vulture raider people. This 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:42.280 is you know, if you remember, might be too young 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:46.520 for this, but Romney's campaign for so yeah, one one 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:49.159 of the reasons why Mitt Romney loses is that like 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.320 he's one of these guys like he's he's like he's 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.080 the big bang capital guy, and everyone's kind of looks 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:57.639 at him and goes like, you're the reason we'd like 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:01.200 guide to this mess in the first place. But the problem, 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:02.960 the problem is that these people who have enough money 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:04.359 and they have enough power, they're able to do this 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:08.000 and in order to stop them, so either there there 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:10.480 there's a massive there's a massive fight. A bunch of 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:13.399 people try to take over good Year, who you know, 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:16.600 they make the tires, they have the blimps, and Goodyear 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:21.560 CEO is like fanatically opposed to all of this because 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:23.920 you know, she she's she's from the old ceo crop 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:26.440 who's like, well, okay, we're here to like make things 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:29.800 instead of you know, increased stock prices. But the problem 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:31.520 is the only way he can save off the raiders 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:34.080 is by increasing a stock price. And the only way 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:36.119 to increase stock prices is by doing the things the 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:38.200 corporate raiders are already doing. So she starts slashing contentions, 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.320 he starts flashing with your development budgets. Yeah, and this 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:43.000 and this. This sort of cycles because now you have 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:45.760 you know, there's there, there's it's it's it's you're not 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:48.560 only having pressure from you know, like the government, that's 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:52.280 that's anti union. The corporations themselves are being forced to 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:54.919 become more anti union because they're you know, they now 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:57.359 have this pressure on them from the top down, from 0:18:57.440 --> 0:18:59.760 from these sort of these sort of finance schools, and 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:03.280 the finance schools in a lot of ways just the 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:06.480 perfect nilable subjects, right because they only see the world 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:08.240 in money. They see everything as a market that they 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:10.920 literally think that like they they are like these like 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:13.600 shamans if if if there's a really good ethnography that 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:18.480 I've plugged before on here called liquidated and an ethnography 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.080 and void yet liquidated and ethnography of Wall Street, where 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:24.359 an anthropologist goes onto Wall Street and works there for 0:19:24.440 --> 0:19:26.840 a while, and then you cannot much of interviews, doesn't 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:29.040 it doesn't athethpological stuff. And the way they talk about 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:31.160 the market, they literally talk about it as if they're 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.080 channeling it, right, like it's like something and they're like, 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.920 these are yea, these are these are that's that's one 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:41.960 of the new gods of of our world. That yeah, 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:45.080 that's I mean, that's that. That's not an uncommon term 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:47.600 of phrase to describe stuff like this. Yeah, and and 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:49.080 what what what what I think is they just think 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:52.159 about it though, is that you know that conception of 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.080 the market of like every person is just like a 0:19:54.240 --> 0:20:00.119 peer like completely socially unbounds like thing of capital all 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:01.879 that you Oh, well, okay, if you lose your job here, 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.440 you can just move to another firm, right, So this 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:06.840 makes sense inside of the context of Wall Street because 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:08.960 these people like like these Wall Street firms they have 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:11.840 they have like like thirty turned over a year, and 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:14.080 so all these people are constantly being fired and shuffle 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:15.920 on to the next job, and fired and shuffle onto 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:19.239 the next job, and so you know, they so they 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:22.080 they do they do this very common sort of fallacy 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:23.800 thing where they assume that because this is the way 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:25.120 that it works for them, but this is the way 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:27.879 it's gonna work for everyone else. And then they genuine 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:30.320 and a lot of these people genuinely believe this. They're like, well, okay, 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:31.880 so the things we're gonna with things that we're about 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:33.560 to do, like, you know, when we destroy these workers 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:35.119 entire lives when we should be you know, when we 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:37.240 close their factories, when we take their pensions, when we 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:41.640 literally destroyed like every community and every like thing that's 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:43.119