DOGE, Political Realignment, and the End of 'Groups'
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Welcome to econ one o two, where economist noise Smith and I makes sense of what's happening in the news, technology, business and beyond through the lens of economics. Let's jump .

in that hello is gone.

Hey, no, it's going great. Are you doing?

Don't all right, I did, uh, a three hour debate yesterday at the zero hedge and the cato institute about whether we should abolish the income tax. What what was your take? No, you know I mean you you can text people however you want different taxes at different levels of distortion that they introduced in the economy.

The income tax is not that bad. It's it's Better than most. There's a few that are Better if you want.

You could abolish that in favor other things. But the problem is we already have this machinery for doing income tax, including conditional amendment that allows IT. So it's going IT would be a very just of switch for almost no economic game.

And what was their argument? Why do they think it's .

a good idea or so the basic argument of the guy was that it's politically easy to raise income taxes. And so if you switched income taxes for other taxes, they would be more visible and that and thus would be politically hard to raise. And so you could start the beast basically and reduce government spending by having people get too mad about tax so they refuse to fund the government spending.

So we get lower, a smaller government. That was the basic idea. I think that's wrong. I mean, you know, we've we've cut taxes a lot, you know, and then and then we never started the beast, right? We just kept doing deficits.

And so there appears to be some level of government spending are some things that we spend money on that people just demand and and politically, we can't really get rid of those things. So the questions how to fund those things and the income act is probably Better than those. Yeah that is is a good same way I .

was thinking about doing a male back episode time we have some some questions have piled ed up on some of your writings unless there is excelled.

But first let me ask and that's a segway from from this in terms of the size of the government, any immediate reactions to to the department of government efficiency so far? You know elon wakes sort of plans or sort of you know sort of how things have been going? Or maybe put differently, if you are also on the council alongside them, where would you where do you think the opportunity is? Would your advice to be to them?

Well, I I think there's lots of room for there's lots of opportunities here. Some government agencies are really, really well run and some are badly run. We saw this in in the pandemic.

We saw the cdc performed very badly. The fda performed pretty well, decently well. And bara, the vaccine development agency to worked extremely well. And government, you know, we've decided we as americans, we we collect vely, decided that government was a dumping ground for, you know, people who aren't the most component people.

That didn't mean everyone in governments in component, there's tons of component people, but they tend to be the kind of mission driven idealists or people already made a bunch of money, then went in the government just for fun. But the problem is that we also have a lot of people in government are not very compete, because we IT was sort of this devils bargain between the right and the left and the seventies. And I talk about this in terms of outsourcing things to ng as well.

But I think that government are attitude, or the civil service was part of this. You know republicans, conservatives thought private sector is Better than public. We want we don't want our talent going into the the public sector.

So so we're not going to fund high salaries. So I think singapore, you get the best in the right, because you pay them a lot of money. If you worked for the singapore portion, economic development, bord, whoever you would get paid tom money, but you don't in america.

And that was partly because republicans, right, lets pay the civil service less. But democrats were like, okay, so we want a little bunch of jobs, basically like a big jobs program for for left leaning people. And so then they use the civil service that but those people, you are not necessarily the the most competent, dynamic people in the world.

And so I think that you have and of course, you you weakened the criteria for hiring people. So you know, when I was trying to do a little, you know what would you call like like a public health you know interest group in during the pandemic know trying to get Better contact in. We did this for about six months and and we we are making lots of progress.

But we ever we had to interact with anyone from the federal government is a giant disaster. They had no idea was something they didn't know. Other systems worked. All they just seemed like they were they were eager to meet us, but they had they did not know how their own systems worked and they did not you know, they seemed very uninterested in changing anything in the typical way they did.

I don't want to say, you know, obviously, there's room in an economy for people like that or you know we have to find jobs for people like that in our economy. They're not just consider around the home and watch enough like but like but certainly, we got to allocate we have to prioritize and allocate talents. Words needed most.

And if you believe that the civil service is important, which I do, then you should actually allocate Better talent to IT. And so the question is whether elon and and vivid or you know whether they take the attitude of let's have a super competent civil service like singapore or whether they take the attitude of let's just draw the civil service in about that, because the private sector is great. We don't need no government and narco capitalism.

Blob, blob. And so you could go either way because i'm with Tyler cowen in type cow's state capacity, libertarians. M, I think title is absolutely right.

And I hope that those people are reading that instead of, you know, just listening to leagues and eighties you to talk about stuff, because the idea of what we've seen again, again, is that weakening the civil service leads to groups like the groups, not these toxic non profits filling that gap, right? And then if republicans don't make the civil service try to hire component people, democrats are probably going to use IT as a sort of a jobs provision program for each the masses. And if you believe that the civil service is really important, that's that's kind of not a great idea.

And so I don't think drowning in the government of bathtub doesn't work. Have to make a component like in singapore. So I hope those guys are looking at singapore as a model, you know.

instead of argentina.

Argentina, well, yeah oh, you know, I can't say that because I haven't actually taken a close look at what malaya with the civil service. And I think malay's done a lot of positive things in other areas. And so I think that no malay's not stupid.

He just silly hair and and you know so I I don't know that argenton is a bad example here. By the way, if you want to get something from argentina, I have a possible argentino guest, the Martina. So is a argentina politician.

Oh yeah, be call. yeah. I mean, there are case study, and I yeah yeah .

I become much more libertarian over the past four years and state.

I spent so many years .

criticising the problems with with libertarianism at leased of the classic like one thousand nine eighteen venture diversion, which I encountered a lot in the field of economics. But in the past four years, what i've realized is that I ve realized a couple of things in the cultural social front.

I realized that freedom is not gona guard itself, right? And that, you know, there's there's basically a big movement against freedom all over the world. I think it's basically coming from two things, china and technology. And I I wrote a post about this recently about liberalism, you know, which overall says like freedom, dignity, those are important values. I don't think it's possible to have a much more interesting definition of liberalism than that is just freedom and dignity.

And I think that be a skinner, the psychologist of the famous like baldheaded guy, who do the crazy experiments on rats and said, you know, and say, like we use these reinforces to make his rat to do all these things. That guy wrote a book called beyond freedom and dignity and you know, we can reengineering human race with like behavioral response things and just treat people like grads and amazes. And I was really disobeying, you know, and I don't like that guy, although he is an iconic guy who did interesting experience, but I don't like his ideas.

And I think that china has basically embraced the skin arian beyond freedom, dignity, idea of reinforcing you, like, like train humans, like grass and mazes. And I think that through new technologies such as universal surveilLance, especially that has the idea of that has become feasible in a way that I wasn't. So we're looking at a new era where of curbing human freedom.

I think in the twenty century we brought that they rejected the idea of curbing human freedom by turning every single human being into like a spy that rats on their neighbors. But what if you could turn every web camp in every smart fridge into a spy that rats on its neighbours and then have like A I algorithms, you know, panel lizer and and have your social credit, depending what you do? I think that's the direction which are moving and shut out to the the social types to worry about surveilLance. italy. M, it's not the state that can do this, corporations too.

But that's sort of I think in aside, I think the point is that there is this idea that if you no boy's articulating this yet, except for a few, you know, really right wing legal scholars that nobody pays attention to, but nobodies articulating the idea that the twenty ten sort of tested the limits of how much we want embrace human free, and that a lot of people came away from the twenty tens of the idea that freedom means freedom, to commit crimes, to lose stores, to burn things and IT just be a complete asset. Hold online all the time to dogs people to, you know, form random mobs and their careers, to basically behave very badly. And you screaming homeless people on the street and 3 fortis o final dealer is running。 While the idea this this is the fruits of freedom, that's what you get.

If you let humans do what they want to do and you try to give dignity to drug deal, is by letting them deal drugs downtowns. That's where freedom and dignity takes you. Instead, we need, you know, control.

We need the control of of a state and a large. Corporations to to control you saying what we do. And or you know the giant wave of protest in twenty twenty people have member hold this.

Now I I need to right yet another post about this. But you know, in in two and eighteen people went into the streets for various reasons. People went the streets in catalonia for Caroline independence.

They went into the streets and chill to change the constitution, which they then went back on and decided not to. They went in the streets in iraq and iran to protest those regimes. They went in the streets in hong kong, of course, which was the biggest protest of all, to protest chinese domination of hung hung.

And all the other protests. Two, that I won't list the names of that. I was all around the world. We had ours in twenty twenty was one year later. But history, I think, if IT remembers this at all, remember those as being of a peace, you know, being part of the same ending enon, the same two years of of protests and just treat unrest. But that was all for different reasons, right?

IT was like, they were protesting different things, know, american vial emperor chasers didn't give a rats ass about cattle independence or Frankly, china and so, you know, so but IT was technology. IT was social media that that, you know, people realized you could organize, process over twitter and over some other, thinks telegram was a big one, that social media like you to organize, protest, and then sort of transmit your protest ideology, and then transmitted pictures and videos, the protest to jazz body up, to get everybody very excited about the protests. I think that there is been a reaction against them.

I think that a lot some of the authority m you see is reaction in that. And it's this idea that that's what people do with freedom. When you give them freedom, they run right in the street and they turn cities into, you know, jungles.

And so we need, we need less freedom than less dignity, because some people who deserve dignity, because there, you know, like bad people who will push old ladies on the subway tracks or whatever. So those people don't deserve any dignity. And so I think that, that notion has not been articulated very well by people on new right.

But people are thinking IT, you know and I think some people we know in intact of thinking IT. And so i've become more liberal in because as a reaction to that, I think that, yes, like obviously, it's bad when people ride and deal fentener and you actually Marks online. But fundamentally, we, you know, freedom and dignity are so important that those are, those are small, you know, those are things we can control and we can get rid of, not get rid of entirely.

But we we can temp down quite a lot. But then but freedom, dignity themselves are so fundamental to our way of life that we won. There is a worry that we might not miss them until are gone. And so there's that know. So social in the cultural, we've become much more libertarian in that sense.

no. Can you fish out what you would look like if if what you're calling for me to come back a little bit like imagine we become a more liberal or fear place in the way that you you're describing, what could that look like?

What could look like. So one thing is that we could allow small business in america. We could allow people to have their own business.

Right now, we threw up huge amounts of pe. We make IT very hard to get like a liquor zese. We make IT very hard to get permanent. We make basically, it's a year long process to set up a small business.

What instead we were like japan and that we simply said everyone who wants who to start a restaurant, a store, local restaurant store gets massive support, you know? And like we will cut all the red tape and just let you do in tomorrow, you know, here will simplify this permitting. Here's your liquor license, bobo.

And and what if we just do that for small businesses and we created a broad ownership class of people who have their own businesses in cities like sam for disco, who have an interest in public order and you know, cleanliness, and but also have an city interest in density and food traffic and walkability, but also fundamentally, people who are able to support themselves with their business and and you know, independently, these self employ. You know your average person isn't going to be able to have like like a successful software business that they make you know five million dollars from, right, which is that's how your average rich person in amErica just as like their own little software business or e commerce business. And that's fine there.

There's a lot of people like that. But you know there's room for people to just run a restaurant and make an income of three hundred k year, which is rich to most that's rich to most americans. It's not rich buyer standards.

But then but imagine the the freedom from being able to like on your own little piece of capital in amErica without regulators crushing you. That's economic libertarianism, but it's also social libertarianism because IT creates abroad glass of people with an interest in an orderly society, but also an interesting a free society. So there's there's one very positive step is to encourage small business everywhere.

Yeah so so that's that's one idea. Our society, american society, preserve freedom, dignity, much more than like china, or you know a lot of these other places. For china, of course, I want social freedom. I want freedom of speech and freedom of religion and all these things that we already enjoy america. I want those things for china.

But for america, I think it's economic libertarianism where we really need to to, i've you know, libertinism in twenty eleven, and I felt libertinism just meant cut taxes the irregularly the finance industry them like cause butch crises and blow stuff up. And it's like, do we really want more of that? But now i'm like we need libertinism at the ground level for for small businesses, for people who want to build housing.

The amy movement is is fundamentally libertarian an I mean that of course they wanted do public housing too. They are not they're not ideological in that way. But they they certainly to to regulate how of and just you know the nip of staff and a lot of the other regulations at the federal level and at state levels, I think, you know, should should go away.

I think an era of deregulation of of land use, of of small business, of local stuff of is upon us and should be upon us. And that so i've become more, much more libertarian. Watching the by administration struggled to get its own policies through its own regulations and contract requirements was a big, I guess, what they say, black.

Well, for me, you know, watching them failed at, like any EV charges or a rural broadband built. Watching high speed rail failed to get built. You know that stuff is is holding back the the government efforts, but it's also holding back the private sector.

And for for so many years, we were told that he was just a matter of funding. If we just had the will we tax the billion airs, then we'd fund high speed rail, fund charges, and we fund rob, and we fund all these things, and then we d ever paradise. But IT didn't happen.

The the by administration's great excesses have been crowding in private capital, throw a little bit of chips, act money, and then a little bunch of private companies decide to build A A bunch of fabs in america. That sort of industrial policy where the government only puts up a little bit of money, and then sort of regulatory cleared the way for the private sector because, you know, chip tech doesn't use need a right nipper clearance that doesn't have to go through that. But then that stuff is very effective.

But then the stuff where the government actually comes in and does IT itself has proven not to be effective. And so we need that doesn't mean that, that doesn't mean the government will never do anything effective because obviously, the chips act is working really well. But then but what IT doesn't an is that there's a whole lot of regulations out there that are really that really are stopping stuff.

And instead of just looking at page of regulation, the federal register, instead of just looking at some sort of bulk measure of regulation, which is what the old cato style liberator's doing, which is, Frankly, very lazy, what we need to do is what the people, the institute for progress are now doing, which is identify the specific regulations that need to come away and and have target efforts at that. So they are been looking at land use and permit, but that's not going to the only one there is going to be other regulations do. And then the image of contract and requirements know so. So going liberator into that stuff, I think IT will be very useful. I think state local places, there's a lot of effort to be done of the state .

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right? So first of all, the the fact is wrong, military is not a second biggest areas spending. It's I think it's medicare, social security and medicate and interest on the debt or then you pretty even with the military.

So military, is that the reason people think it's the the biggest because it's IT looms large and discretion expanding, whether we've just decided to label social insurance in the welfare state, Mandatory spending, not all of that medicated still, I think medical was medicated math, I I don't remember. But the point is that the military is that actually isn't that big. So we need to get a lot more bank for the back and military spending, and we also need to spend more.

And those are two things that people need to understand side by side. The reason we need to spend more is because doing things like shifting our military from a counter insurgency focus, which we were for the whole war, to one terror, to a focus of deterring, defending against china, that requires money. Someone has to be paid to do that.

And we need to stop by our missiles and drones, stock pile a bunch of stuff and reset the defense in the base. That's going money. So we're going to need the increase spending. At the same time, there's a lot of inefficient stuff that we're spending money on most of the efficiency, by the way, there there's two big sources of inefficiency.

The first is when everyone knows about, which is us building these big expensive platforms that we don't really need like replacing our old aircraft is with like the new ford class cost a huge money of money, but the improvement is actually margin. Everybody knows about this and everybody talks about this. It's it's a horo talking point.

And yes, we need to get that under control and we need to go for a cheap stuff that can be mass produced drones and mussels. And we need change in thinking. That's what everyone in the pentagon is not talking about, right? IT goes along with the change in what the goals of war are.

We're not going to like, you know, hunt the taliban, iraq insurgents or ISIS or whatever. We're now going to go in to like defend islands against chinese attack with, like I should, the muscles. That's our new mission, basically. And so that requires a big pivot, and I don't want to get in the way of that by talking about other things and saying, well, no, actually it's the other thing because, yes, that's very important. But there there is the other thing, this big other thing, which is an even bigger source of waste in our defense budget.

Diplomat, we are spending obvious money on having our navy sail around the world constantly and showed flag everywhere, and having our army go in and and, and the marines and god air force going to do little targeted interventions for some african Alicia or whatever. World police. We are spending a huge amount on world policing functions, and china is not spending anything on that or at least very, very little now.

And so we need to stop that. That's a terrifying thing to say, because we've done that for so long that everyone's a sort of gotten used to america, team america, world police, deploying everywhere all the time, and a lot of little conflicts will break out of america, doesn't work, police. And so, but we can no longer for this.

We need to stop deploying our military around the world. We need to start, you know, our navy ships are being run death because they're just sAiling around all the time. No, keep them import, keep them speed, step and ready to go.

You know, don't sell them around constantly. You we basically were involved in a million little counter insurgency Operations. We still think it's warm everytime, even the radical as is lost.

L and you know like you just don't see a lot of people russian to join I S and OK. It's not that big thread, obviously will have security services continued to go hunt down terrorism and cut off their financing and arrest them and kill them or whatever, right? Like we'll have a little bit of that.

But then the idea that we just have to have our whole global military deployed all the time, everywhere has to go away. And that's something people don't talk about. But I I planned to start talking about that more. I think there is a chance that the trump t. Administration is receptive to this because that's where the biggest source of waste .

military spending is the that that makes sense. The do you think trump is likely to run a budget deficit just like the last president?

Yeah, yes. And it's not great. I mean, apparently elan doesn't want to but I think the limits of the powers of shadow president elon, a real like I know I think that it's a little bit wishful thinking to think that elan is just like pulling the puppy strings of trump.

I don't think he really is the onion rona story that says the trump locks the bathroom door to stop line from following him in I mean, i'm sure elan as influence, but there's limits to his influence and he wants to elon wants to cut, you know, wasteful spending. Vivid probably would. I'm not sure how much anyone really listed, but anyway, but I think that trump is a pupil.

He wants to hand out good. He he loves people to love them. Ultimately, that's why he won the presidency because he really loves people to love.

He loves aggression in a way similar to billing and and a little bit barac obama. I think that when we talk about carma for candidates, what we're really talking about is the burning desire to be loved by the masses. And trump has that, and we can call IT populism.

But I think that IT IT goes deeper than that. Trump wants, trump wants, everybody love him. He wants to be sanok laws. And in american government, sa class means deficits.

So IT was basically what you make a burner's take on the election. IT should come as no great surprise. The democratic party, which abandon work in class, people would find that work in class abandon them while democrat leadership defends the status.

Quote, the american people are angry, I want change. Democrats loss this election because they ignored justified anger. Work in class amErica became defenders, were rig economy and political system. And the user is talking about how bernie had this election take take was wrong basically.

Yeah I mean because you know you're respective of the sort of fake economic facts city sites. It's amErica doesn't have a road working class. We use the word working class to describe lower income people, wise to describe people didn't go to college.

Sometimes we use to describe people with like blue color manual jobs. But there's really no sort of unified class conscious ness across the working class, across the all these various working classes in america. They don't have class and and so they're not onna join together in resentment of other classes.

And so you know really try to play this game where basically the ideas to stir you know class resentment of everybody against the class just wove them. So it's like, you know the berny people are always like, you know we've got to turn billionaire into millionaire. They're trying to stir resenting of the billionaire ass among the millionaire ass.

But then they're also spring resentment of Normal people, you know average people uh, against millionaire and then it's just a fractured al resentment and and thing is amErica is actually a pretty rich country with a tradition of free enterprise and the tradition of some people getting rich and whatever. And like yes, some people get mad and some people don't like rich people. But overall, I think that is not nearly as effective in amErica that would be in some other countries, maybe where you had more of a sort of thing where no one supposed to right look like they rose above anyone else.

And so, you know, just trying to constantly stir class resentments among anyone and everyone against the people just above them. Like, a, it's obviously a bad idea of nation to do that. But B, I just don't think it's going to work. There is no, in my recent posts about the working class, I told in humans anago, where in four and seventeen, right after hilly lost tromp, I was in at a house party in berkeley and and there was a woman who is this law student at berkeley, and he said this something very similar.

He said, you know, Hillary loss because democrats have a ban in the working class, I said, describes someone who's in the working class I expect to heard that, you know, describe like some midwestern guy in a heart, head of the construction worker blob a know their typical thousand nine hundred fifties person instead he said, okay, suppose there was woman and she's a sex worker and he has all these student loans and SHE doesn't know what to do with her humanity degree. That was a description. Someone in the working class does that work in class? I mean, i'm not going to say it's not because i'll just say that if if the students from america, I can get up there and say that's working class, we don't have a working class.

There IT means nothing in america. If in fact, if you do polls, you see that most republicans say they're in class even if they're upper income people with college degrees. Republicans love to say they work in class.

Everybody republican body thinks they're in ass. So like even the people the body would be storing resented again. So so there is no real working class. We don't have class conscious ness in this country. And so burn's approach is gonna il.

The idea that you can just sort of like open head take out identity politics slot in the know class, resented politics here and then just close IT be like, great no, it's not going to happen. It's just know it's you're still gonna be out of time. You're still gonna be a law student at a party who has no idea what anyone's real problems are.

And so IT is interesting, by the way, just use their factions on, on the, on the left, right, like, you know what example, a small, but maybe is like A O, C taking, pronounce out of bio, right? That's kind of symbolic where she's exciting with sort of the feminist instead of the you in their conflicts with sort of the pro trains of right and IT feels like after the election all these factions are getting kind of almost reliable, gated to see which one has more, more popular appeal.

And one of the action seems more like you old school economic arguments, like berny verse, like more new you newer, newer style progressives and will be interest to see. Which factions win? Like I A friend will tell me today that rob man, you was trying to make up, get power, push in the dnc and help china to move the party to the center and they'll be know a lot of knives out and activist try to prevent him. But they will be interesting to see the various different function in how they play out as as an action closure.

right? That's right. I think essentially in the democrat party, you have you have it's factionalized in a way that the republican party is not, although maybe, I don't know, maybe, but the democratic party factionalized.

One of the factions is the left is faction, which is the the bernie and establishment faction. Those people, their ideology feels very plastic. Yes, they there's about social graduate, but ultimately what they care about is just power.

They want party power, the democratic party. They want to stir basically and to establish resentment. I think those people not win. They will not win.

They're occasionally, when off city White officers and some disco, they they'll not win anything significant, but they'll be loud in the thorn. And everybody said, and now there's talking about palti in the whole time and but it'll get back to talking about economic stuff eventually. And so you know how I guess, once once trump destroyed past time.

Congratulations guys. You got we wanted anyway. But then, yes, so so there those guys, and then there's the groups we been talking about, the groups based just a bunch of interest test groups. And they these votes have treated national politics very much like urban politics. And urban politics is very cinta.

You know who votes for? You know who votes street, you know, door to door and organizers, right? So you can reward those groups with money for vote, actually, for voting for you to pay off your voters.

And so democrats were trying to do something like this at the national level. And IT wasn't really working. They were trying to do policies to pay off.

Every coalition member also did, predicated on the idea that the groups that we're coming to democratic staffers and saying, hey, we represent the latino community really represented anybody like, you know, or the the environmental climate groups are a famous a example of the groups. These people are all funded by, by rich people left in rich people like that who funds the groups. And there's this whole culture of like non profit activity, you know, internal cancellation, wars and stuff.

And a lot of these groups is funding is giving cut off right now because they all cancelled each other and they were all very effective and ever and hate them. If you want to improve the democrat party, get rich liberals in, especially in tech, but rich liberals everywhere, to stop funding these groups because the democratic party, like republican party, is superannuated. Everyone is really old, that your average democratic politician is like a seventy something fundraiser who just glad hands their traditional constituent and raises money all year, you know, because members of congress were reelected every two years.

And senators to, to a lesser degree, senators to, but especially congress people you are, are elderly fundraisers who's actually run in country. Twenty eight year old staffers who command, you know, armies of twenty two year old junior staff s like twenty year old staffers are running the country because you they're running the democratic party, they, you know and so so the groups are not going to democratic representatives. They're not calling up their congress person.

They are calling up the congress person's staff. You know, these staffer class who don't understand that someone who comes and claims to be like from the lateness community doesn't actually represent his panic voters. And so this urban politics model is very seductive for these these staffers because all the actual people are nominating charger like seventy old fundraisers, professional fundraisers.

That's what's happened. I am not to change that, but I think that this is going to be very difficult to cut through that jacket of groups. And essentially, only once rich liberals realize that funding these groups is kind of productive for the democratic party will have tap cut off and you know and and some of these damage will start to be reversed, I think.

And so that's that's going happen and then you're going have centrists, you know who are like the tech craft, I like gramm manual type of people, right? Your and yeah and so those people take the the you a role of the old blue dog democrats on whatever and and you know that faction occasionally does we? And you have the democratic leadership council or whatever, in the late eighties and early nineties, which was basically to center dms, get together the club and that police.

Bill clinton. So they did win. And then we got deficit reduction. And then we got, you know, bill clinton saying he ended welfare and increasing I T. C.

So much that they actually cancelled out the and welfare and he was actually much more rational way of of getting money about people. But you know, and social hate that to this day. But yes, good.

And so you got you got clinton as as you know. And honestly, obama was more from that tradition that people think like obama empowered the groups, but he was not of the groups. I would say he routinely stood up to them and just said no to the groups.

And so I think that obama and hilary clinton and bill clinton and all the politics of the day were still largely influenced by that centrist block that arose in ease as a reaction to the continued dominance of region. And you know, in a way, resist liberalism delays the move to the center because if you're like, we're just going to march in the streets and resist, resist, resist, you know, everyone becomes an ally and all the groups become indispensable alias. And that's what happened in the late twenty ten.

In trumps first term, the democrats pivoted hard towards the groups because the groups we're going to resist, they're going to get out in the street. They were going to fight this. Now I think the fact that trump on the popular vote and the fact he won twice despite january six males, other bullshit did this tells this tells democrats that like, resistance is futile.

Like in the long term. It's not because in the long term, trumper, fuck up and i'll make people, man, i'll do dum shit. And then he will. His people, often bad things will happen and and the country will be right to throw the bombs out yet again, because that always happens in american politics and in politics every in the world. And so accept pan and simple.

But we are so then, not even in japan, that occasionally, once in a great while, through the ruling party out for like two years, and they will be back. I think one time they put them out for nine months and then they were back. But but japan is a viBrant democracy.

Now japan is in some ways more democratic than we are theyve higher. Turned out they have more strict campaign finance laws. They have know people, politicians connect with average people more in japan than they do here because they have to, because they can just bomb A, T, V.

And and also, groups are not tax advantaged, like there, here, released charities are not tax advantaged. And then, yes, so so there are and the auntie, many rich people who have do the funding other groups. So japan's, in many ways, the healthier democracy and we are they don't know much money in politics.

They don't as much like active group shit they have, just like mafias and construction worker is coming in buying boats but are like, you know getting boats boat but like, yeah so so anyway, people throw the bombs out. But the point is that I remember in in the like the day after the election in twenty sixteen, some left the sky that my friend knew got on facebook walk because everyone was still arguing about politics on like, facebook walls. Just like, I want this guy out tomorrow.

I don't want to wait for years. I want him about tomorrow right now. I need him out of there, you know and I like, well, what are you going to do? And he just buttered.

He had no idea. He was like this idea that if you just got angry enough, you could make trump go away. And honestly, that attitude was reflected in january six.

I said, if you will get angry, if you could have made trump have one twenty election but you couldn't. He lost. And so anyway bit but democrats were like this for long time. Progressives were like this for long time.

If we just get angry, there was the women's march, you know, today, pushy grabs back and everyone wore a plushy hat, you know, marched in the street and just people thought that if they got, I think they are just massive, massive, rampant like, you know, accusations of these things, like I used attempt to get people out of their sooner. It's like you could reverse the verdict of two thousand sixteen if you just got mad enough. And I just didn't work.

Didn't IT didn't work in twenty twenty like people ran through dc burning stuff and then I didn't get from bottom office drug didn't like fleet or russia, whatever. You know, like yana covet did in ukraine. I think if trumpet had lost this election, there was a chancy might to fend rush and and with with reason, I don't know.

There was never any like, yes. So so you never work. And the point is that democrats are going to do this this time around.

They've realized that just like they get get pera mad doesn't actually make trump go away. And people exhausted, like, you know there. There are some story in new york times.

Many black women know, instead of politics, are choosing to rest. Rest is a revolutionary act to just says a black woman leeming anything. Well, 我在 that's called having a life。

That's called not spending for yet for more years of your life being mad every day. You know, like that run. IT runs out of juice.

IT runs out of money. IT runs out of time. IT runs out of effort. That that kind of culture, and am I just ranting.

is a good thing though I attempted to say, oh, they ran out of jews, but i'll take apart of the park of juice.

Well, do you thank juice republican there. there. No, not an appreciable jew's shift. Oh, well, there wasn't appreciable shift of of asian people despite having high education levels.

But there I think there is not an appreciable during shift despite the israel pali thing because you know anti semitism is now exist on the left, on the right like, you know, the left. People left like coziest and like, you know, the face is a cinnabar or ever. And then people you know on the right, or like, slapped the edge of your head on columbia campus or something right.

And people on the right or there like, you know saying like hitler was a good guy like tucker carlson and had like a hitler defender on his podcast and you know people on the right to say anti semitic c shit all the time. It's like. Who do vote for, you know, like the anthy's metics on the left gave permission to the anthy's matis m on the right to come out of its hiding.

Hiding who? right? Because like if you said hiller was a good guy in two thousand eight, you get fuck in mob like that would be the end of your career, right? You couldn't say that.

But now with palin being the omi caused the consumer, the entire left, like you can say here, there was right. And people like, maybe people think you're bad because they don't you know, hitler was a man of the right. We like our tyrants of the love resembles IT like they think they don't think hitler's good got the palestine protesters.

But at the same time, are they really onna go to bed to defend juice as a class? No, no, they're not. So juice now or not are unprotected by the they're unprotected by like the the people who voluntarily stand up to protect every minority. They've been kicked. You've been kicked out of the minority club baskets protected right .

are on the progressive stack.

They're on the progression stack on esty and inspects and and and asians are going to kick themselves on the progressive stack too. Probably gaze anyway the s like they're not the progress of sex, so there's no way to defend them.

So then all the people who sort of like SAT around in their house and said, like quietly there was a bird guy back in like two thousand and eight or or you know one hundred and ninety two or whenever, right, you have those guys they were around. You see them on storm front at all, right? You could occasionally they would call IT like Michael savages show like, I think he's jewish but he was like, right in je here you will be like like it's just the juice isn't IT and they be like.

I hold up your side anyway that opened yeah because .

he is like a super righting when do you know you'll be calling for a military school and all the super right wing stuff in like early two thousands and then I I would listen this show, you know, driving down the road back when people listen to radio shows and then some guy called, he was like, it's actually just the juice, right? You like, wow, actually I never thought the left adds with my fit. He exit.

That's the thing. Like juicer now you know, juicer are homeless in terms of of extremes. There's no extreme that will accept you.

You kicked off the left. You are also kick off the extreme right. So what do you do? You you have to be a moderate.

Will continue your interview in a moment .

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Sigal, you mentioned, you know japan free from corporate interest. So how should we look at the legacy of citizens united? Did you have a massive impact on on politics? Is you know is just something to podcast with the Young turk sky and and you know talking about the bigger problem, people are not talking about this corporate influence in politics.

Is that is that massively overstated? Was that kind of I remember when this you came out, people really scared about the the impact that the corporations were going to have. How was I played up and what what is made of? This is a major problem.

Yes, honestly, this is one that I don't really know that well, because do you think that money in politics is much less important, the national level, than we would be legibility? I think, you know, hair salt spent and the the bigger money candidate often loses berny, outspent all arrivals by a huge amount and and yet got crashed. And so I think at the local level, money matters, especially money matters to these groups, right?

I think and I don't actually know, I don't understand the legality house citizen united, I like affected like political act communities who don't officially support a candidate but actually, you know like actually they do I don't really know how to affect of that. And I think the influence of money in politics is is considerable, but much less than people talk about, right? So if that's a new on stupid on.

it's not like axon is choosing, you know trump by dinner or ever you mata tesla or that's .

right now a few. I guess if you own a social net k like on must, then you get a little more influence yeah ah the by the way.

you read about the someone your presses you looted to the the was called the emerging my majority what's the book that right to zero wrote to emerging .

democratic is ready by john juice and roy texter yeah you sort of .

twenty years ago saying that know the future was bright for for democrat if they could do harness this this multi racial democratic that the demographics were serving their interest as that theory turned out to be false or or how do we look at the legacy that there?

absolutely. So in fact, that what my latest guess post was about by doing something who you should meet by the way, she's fun. But anyway, it's basically the idea that his panic and asians were part of a you know B I poc coalition byo c coalition against wise.

So there's this idea that the future of the electorate and and this was not judged this oral series theory. Those guys just looked at cross tabs. Those guys just said, oh, espana s are voting fifty eight percent, sixty percent democrat.

Get more splendid. S and your win, just like in california. Well, guess what? The nation isn't quite like california. News flash.

And then, and you know, asians, of course people are like, well, maybe they'll be White addition because they make more money and White people, who maybe they will just want to be, do you do public? But a no. Like, if you ask your average ation person, america, would you like to be White? love? Like, no, try this.

But but at the same time, you know, they concede that White people voted, voted fifty five percent republican, whatever, fifty eight percent republican, primarily because of White supremacy. That was always broken, that was always wrong in a lot of issues. You know that people care about, the why people care about.

And you know, I think the last democrats win White voters was L, B, J. So I don't think this whole story of like White people of republican got a White supremacy. So or of course, the other races are going to vote democrats so they can oppose White to premises in a abb IT was never real.

That was fake. I mean, there are obviously there are few voters who are thinking like that. There's a few voters who think like anything.

You know, some people do think in turns of this racial coalition, but not many certain ly, not enough, you know, to make a big difference in in these national elections. And so now you've got, I think, fifty four percent of of isban ics voting for Harris as a much smaller margin. And oh i'm sorry, yeah, fifty five percent.

And then around the same percent of espenak men actually vote of the trump. So isbn ic men vote broke for trump, right? So now to get your little story about your racial regnant, you've got got a dive into the cross ABS and say, well spanning women will vote, but actually spending women song harder tord trump.

Then they spend mended. They just started farther to the list, and then they swung more for trump than is an mended. So guess what? That's not part of your your, you know racial byo c coalition either like they're just Normal american people who just want molines lation opportunity, maybe low regulation, the harsh policies against crime that would like burn their businesses in igbo hoods like and and you know they just want what Normal americans want.

The Normal americans they're not they do not see their electoral political life as a race war. They do not vote based on the idea that like they, you know like we, the bypass alike, will take power from the Whites. And then that's not what's going on.

I mean, like you do get politics like that in in some very poor countries, you get tribal politics where it's like I vote for the Q Q U party. In kenya you'll report give money to the kiku and you know in america, they just want to kick you you out. Sorry, that had happened.

Sorry, kenyons. But then, no, that, I mean, like americans are, is much more instructive to look at americans as as just americans than to look at them as part of these imagined the racial blocks that you define. Because you look at A D at at a cross tab and say, oh, you know, fifty five percent of this racial group voted democratic in the last three election.

Therefore, there this race must be part of our race war coalition to overthrow the blue. Shut up. No, that's not what most people are thinking about. That's what you know. Maybe that's like you ve got this city from your area studies class or from like chilling with your radical codes in the dorms at.

But like that's not how most americans think of their life and especially like most americans over the age of like forty, you know, but a time you're over forty, you like, I do not want to race war. I have a business. I have a job.

I would not like a race war. I would like slower inflation, please. And some police that's so like the the notion and and this is this is a silly or more range version of of what the oni wrote and in a gas post my blog today related .

the euro a few weeks ago that the the gender divide is a bit overstated IT in terms of the democrat republican coalition. Is is that still true? Or how do you think about .

the women move to our trump in this election? White men move toward erris, you know. So like all the all the narves are just are just pretty broken and you're gonna have to appeal to people based on IT. It's time for democrats to embrace broad appeals.

You've got to ditch this idea that I A nation is just like a larger version of the city, and that you can have these local activist groups who represent various communities in the city come to you and basically after few votes and exchange for. That's not how national politics works. You've got to do broad appeals.

It's too expensive to pay off everybody based on their demographic cross tabs. Actually, you know what? There's a really interesting theory about this, uh, called selector theory by a political scientists in Bruce bio demotic, to which if I, my spanish, me right means Bruce goodness of mosquito, but anyway, Bruce one on the mosquito that is one of the premier political scientists, our generation.

And also he's a really good forecasts who like contracted CIA and forecasts political events really well. But also he is the selector theory which basically says that in any country, whether a dictatorship or a one party state or sov union, or like amErica or democracy anywhere, has some group of people who selects the leader. The leader is not a superman.

He's not homeland er from the boys. He's not he doesn't rule through god like power, right? He rules through a coalition.

He has people who support them and that's the selector ate the group of people who have the potential who whose support matters. And in a military state, it's that's the military and in a one party state, it's the party. Maybe like the broad party, like chinese is part of million people.

I and so that's the selector. And then the winning coalition is a group of the selector ate, which is big enough to win within the selector. And the questions, how do you buy a winning coalition? And selector ate theory says that in a dictor ship, you buy people directly. You give money to your cro one's you.

If you have a small selector, if your selector or is just the army, then you do what iran and and like egypt and ban mar and used to be indonesia do, which is basically have the maybe a mafia, and basically the army gets to run all the business as you can buy off the army because no one else matters. You don't care about the people in the street that you just shoot them. You make your money from oil.

I don't know with a sus canal. And like you don't, indonesia had to stop this kind of pocket. But I think egyptian and still have this going strong. Pakistan to to some degree has IT going. We're just the army rule shit and know the mafia and you can pay them off.

But when you get to a democracy, where the selector is the voting public, right, with one hundred million people or whatever, when you get to the, when you get to that size of selection, you can't just buy them off and gets too. And to selector theory predicts that democracies will be Better because they will focus on providing public goods that benefit everyone, even the losers. So the idea that the public goods will be like infrastructure, rule of law, or you know, at sea, and so democracy s will provide public goods.

Well, everyone in an autocracy is focused on just paying a specific individual people, and and and not necessary providing public good. This is one of the theories that was made like, you know, in the nineties and early two thousands when everybody thought like democracy is the best thing ever and where we the end of history of moment. But I think there's something to IT.

I think democrats have been trying to buy people off to specifically. They've been saying, okay, here's this this group which this this community quality, which is represented by this activist group, that comes talks for staffers or more more accurately, about sixty different across groups, all funded by like left wing tech guys. And so then lets me know that.

Here's this community will buy them off by by doing these different programs. So like student loans, cancellation was insieme expensive, regressive? No, we really wanted to. But biden did IT because there were these groups who came in really fought for IT hard in order to buy off, to buy the Young people community. And guess what, they shifted trump anyways, but that that was an attempt to buy a, but he was in sely expensive.

So democrats, you know, they have this idea that you can buy off these, you know, the communities won by one by getting a group, capitale group, to tell you what the community wants, and then passing a giant budget item based on what the group tells you the community wants. And it's just not working. Age is too expensive, the selector theory, but you know, student and cancellation being the biggest danger, very health care of these a little kinds of things to and so then there there's that but then there's also the fact that like most american voters don't vote based you know, for a president based on the direct benefit that they get.

They vote based on self expression. Because if you think about IT, actually, that's almost all elections in the world based on self expression. Because if you think about IT, why would you ever got vote for president when the presidency will never, ever be won by a single vote? IT can't.

If I got to a single vote, the supreme court would effectively decided by deciding which votes are apple to be like bush core, right? So the supreme court will not decide this. What will decide? This one vote will never, ever, ever make a difference in the presidency.

So why does everyone go out and vote? why? Why do one hundred million people go out and vote? They vote to express themselves.

And if you express yourself, you're expressing principles and ideas. Those are like public goods in the selector theory. Those are broad things that appeal to everybody.

Democrat need to stop thinking. They can buy off specific groups of voters with, like, payola especially, and start doing broad appeals that help everybody, everybody in america. What are examples of that? So like, you know, making easy to build housing is an obvious one.

Know, just the component management, which democrat are not incredibly done recently, lately, but which will be a very attractive one's R, F, K is going right? Like, hey, and to me, your kid will not get measles, right? Appeals to our commonality.

Americans, that was what bill clinton always did. Bill clinton would always say, you know, like what unites us is more important than what divides us. Americans are united on our values.

That was, every speech you get were actually united. Did IT persuade republicans to support him? Hello, I didn't.

Did IT persuade a few swing voters, enough swing voters to support them? We consistently one elections early, as I did right. He just always said, what unites is more important than what divides us.

Just talk about basic universal values, freedom, you know, and freedom from fear, like like freedom from fear of crime and disorder is is a undammed tal human freedom. Talk about freedom of international context, like now you all the right emy a threshed china phone. And freedom even more. And and so to talk about freedom, bring that back. And in common, Harris did this, that the very naval campaign was way too late and wait too little onest ly like, but IT was just people had already associated with wooliness. And SHE didn't if SHE had been like, you know, miss freedom and like we're all americans and like like bill klin ton two from day one from twenty nineteen, when that was really harshly unpopular, had SHE done that, he would, he would have been a successful politician more than .

he was in your piece. You think of freedom and dignity. What is digging? You look like .

digging looks like what? First of all is not insulting hello of people. So like saying hates eat pets, right? Like you didn't actually do anything to patience, but you did take away their dignity because you call them much of peers.

So just not insulting the a lot of people all the time. Gives gives people individual rights create digg. They create freedom, but also dignity.

So like, you know, the idea that you have to have you read your rights when you get arrested, the actual reading of those rights is inconsequential, right? No one even knows what the phrase means. It's just a prior in tone.

You have the right to in island blog, what IT does is that IT IT gives you dignity by telling you, europe person, guess I arrested you for this crime, but I have to do this thing to you, tell you, give you this information as if you are person. I have to do a service for you. Well, i'm arresting that's A A small bit.

Yeah, that's like trump violates people's dignity in important ways. He unleashes, he says, nasty things about whole groups of people in ways that make people feel uncomfortable. That wasn't enough to sink him in the election, but IT is something people don't like.

And and americans don't talk about digit enough, but japanese people do. So americans talk about everything in two of freedom, the freedom to this, the right to that. Japanese people do not.

As as a rule, you know, you do see, you see rights. You do see like human rights to be discuss more often, you'll see dignity. Japanese people view job security as dignity, the dignity of work.

We could talk about that right now. That doesn't. I want to provide make word jobs to people. But you can say, like fighting for good working conditions is a form of dignity. And I think that that the labor movement presented itself as that in the past, back when democrats used to win union people, right?

Why talking about dignity is not like union people left the democrat, because the democrat ent sectaries, they cared more about like racial grievances than like, you know, the apply, the working people. That doesn't mean we're we need class solidarity and like we're going to make all the union people hate billionaire and vote like burnish is not on work like union people don't sit around thinking about how match they hate billionaire. They think they sit around thinking about like how do I get society to respect me despite the fact that I like most stuff around with my muscles instead of trading socks like that.

People want respect, dignity and respect for the service class is important. Like, you know all the labor stuff that brightened quietly, silently, you know, without much fanfare could be trumpeted. We could say, look, you know you do you really want your your jo B2Be abl e to jus t lik e say, okay, this week we're not giving you hours.

You don't have any like you can talk about that terms of security, but you can talk about that terms of dignity, like the basic dignity afforded to to people. yes. So like you can you can do appeals to dignity also.

You can even run against you know, x and in some of these platforms you can say, like this is this is accessible. Do you really want your your nation govern by accessors an appeal to dignity? I believe, access, just like you say, even the most reasonable milk, as saying, people just created at you.

And like, people don't like that. People don't enjoy that, but they also don't enjoy being told that their cultural appropriating White I premises for wearing a chinese dressed a prom. So that's the dignity issue as well. And so so you know like get via basically there there's all kinds of things that I would classify appeals to dignity that we don't Normally use that word for. But I think our product is a good.

good discussion. I will do maybe one, two more questions give you to a few minutes bit. This is from E N mofeed E N. Hi, I know he says, I like U M N B I. I have a program, gration bias. However, I find most people in me are not sympathetic embassies, since they don't like IT when their change quickly, and they want to maintain their neighbor's cultural character. Therefore, here is, if you think those a trade op between immigration and building more affordable housing, for instance, do you think reducing immigration when make voters more willing to build affordable housing?

Their comments, that's an question because I don't reducing immigration will make people wanna build more affordable housing. So so no, I I don't think so. Honestly, immigrants are all very upper to the mobile and that means that your average poor immigrants is poor because where they were born, not because you know there are drugs or or their family problems or or or they're unlucky, right?

Or they just whatever immigrants but that are poor are poor because they're hard working and they are going to be not poor soon. So you so having poor immigrants live near you is actually much safer than having poor native born americans living near you. I don't know people see that that way, but that's the truth.

And so I don't think that. But what I do think is that I don't see the connection between immigration, housing. I mean, like obviously, immigrants needs to be housed somewhere, right? But this is the idea that we're going to make housing affordable by kicking immigrants out.

And you may that the problem is, then you also reduce house crisis, which are the main source of wealth for middle class, right? Most america's wealth is in their owner occupied housing. And that owner occupied housing, the Price of that, your wealth, your nest g, your retirement plan depends on demand for that housing.

And if you kick out a bunch of immigrants just to lower rents, you've made life easier for renters. But you've also tanked the wealth of the american middle class. So think about that.

Anyway, they had. But then in terms of numbers, M, I agree that there's a great off that that people don't some people don't want the to change. Some people afraid that poor people will bring the way to solve that is hyper local. So houston, as this program were easily small, you know, a few block area can like vote to allow housing just in that tiny area.

And the arlington beginner has something somewhat, somewhat basically allow the nimbi blocks to be nym I E, but only by the block, or maybe like a collection six blocks, like a small area, allow the 硬币 areas to be in be， allow the in 币 areas to be in bed。 Because why are the ibi? Because their property values will go up from density.

Because, you know, they can like, like if you own land and stack more apartments, you can like make money, right? And so so you can make more money. And so they want to or they want you know, they have businesses nearby, they want traffic for or whatever they just want, you know.

And and then you can do some property tax sharing where you have micro property tax sharing. So like if you allow density in your little area, then we're going to get then some of the property taxes that go to the city from that area get rebated to you. So you basically get money.

From instance, we. Pay you to be dance right? Then if you want to be nmb I E, you can just be nibbed. Have your quiet streets, have you have your, you know, suburb in the city, and you can do that. So so micro neighbor od, I think are the way forward.

Yeah that sense. Ian has a related question. He says, I think your recent post about immigration failures of progressive over each habit, excEllent.

In regards the democratization of immigration, how far would you be willing to go, for instance, if most voters wanted to establish quotas from certain countries, should policymakers always be obliged to follow suit? As for Better, worse, these polices seem very popular among voters. We think.

yeah, of course we already did that. Nineteen and twenty four, we did that. If people want to do that, we can do that.

absolutely. IT is within our power in law. In fact, we already have soft costs because we have our our quotes novel by the size of country.

So we massively discriminated against india, china, another big countries in favor of like, you know, some tiny little countries like like hate or jamaica something or like or like anda get easily. There's no difficulty immigrating for there. But but a india forget IT like, you know, I was really hard because you're competing against like a billion and of other indian people.

So those function as country quoters, right? We have country quarters. They're just the same for every country which panellists big countries. We can change that.

So if people want to say like you know we don't want immigrants from you know like pakistan, like yeah you're going to elect people and they will make a losing no immigrants from pakistan, sorry and yes. And then we might be a trouble because pakistanis bring a lot of like high skilled immigration talent to america. I'm just saying, like you, you can do this if you want.

We did IT before and the supreme court never struck down. Can do country quoted, you can do what they did. One thousand and twenty four was actually country quoted based on updated. So they took a date before the big immigration boom from eastern south europe and said, you know, quotes are based on how many americans were living here before that big immigration boom began.

So is intentionally aimed at restoring the demographics of free boom amErica of like, you know, eighteen, seventy amErica or whatever and and so and also they they then you know banned immigration out right from from essentially country that that were none White, which didn't include mexico under that law. All mexicans are right. So because, because, you know, texans wanted mexicans to come into work, so texans got a cargo for mexicans.

So all even indigenous mexicans are White under under, along, but or were anyway, but then and and of course, arabs are right. Anyone feel like egyptian? You're right.

So you did are you could come in and then africans, we could have had massive, massive african immigration to that law. That was totally legal because of afro americans. And and a few africans even did come I like, i'd like five or six like like, but nobody knew.

You know, afghans didn't even have like TV at the time. You know, they didn't know that this was possible and they didn't have the money to move over here general meeting. And so we didn't get a giant way of africa migration.

But under that law, we could have the law was eventually struck down in sixty five because they thought and amended because thought I was racist, he was. And they're already been the racial parts of the ohoo d already actually been formally repealed by trump, but the but the ancestry parts which were defeated racist, were only appealed by jobs. And and so but we can go back if you want if you want that like we can do that. But you know I don't think we should do that, but it's it's well within its constitutional well, it's it's within the preview of .

stuff we've got. Yeah, maybe one last good question. This is from ryan cubine. He asks, no, are you from with neil house book? The fourth turning is here. What what do you think of this generational driver apology is as an explanation of certain aspects of historian society?

Well, I haven't read IT, so I can hold forth on things I haven't read because I asked GPT to summarize them and read a million commentaries about them. But you're going to get the second rate rate.

But okay, why not the idea that there is generations that tear down institutions, and generations that build institutions? And the bombers were the ultimate tear down generation, and the millennial would be the the generation that builds up institutions. Well, guess what they did? They were very work. The millennial s built a new series of institutions of woke stuff to replace the old stuff.

You know where where nature magazine is waiting in the political controversies and and you know like the the nsf is awarding science grants based on race and it's that things like that that and you know the the new online media of like teen vogue saying everything is about capitalism. Those were the institutions that the millennial were building, right? The groups, the groups were an institution in american life that we didn't even have a named for until recently. And so that was an institution that that millennial s were building a social media stuff now, where in the process of being a hold on, maybe that sucked. So the thing is that I don't see trumped est people building much in the way you, elan and vivid want to go.

And just like five, eight percent of the civil service ever, that's degrading, that's a tear down and their generation at anywhere at least elon is like that's tearing down institutions or you know r fk saying, okay, we're gonna ban vaccines and then allow this cactus like that's tearing down, that's not building up and the people who wanted to build up with the walks sters, who sort of built up over the twenty tens, built up things that in, Frankly, were a little disfunctional. And so I think if you wanted really take strong and house very seriously, you've got ta look at this idea of the wk. Revolution as the builder effort.

And unfortunately, I think that kind of face planted. So where does that leave us? Well, IT leaves me just believing in long gated generational cycle theory that are difficult to assess with data. But I don't know we should leave you maybe depressed .

and to how is part of a about a group people like peer churchy and and others we try to to do this sort of big history is kind of think right. I think church .

is actually more right. Churches actually is hit on something like we do have a sort of a fifty years cycle of unrest. And so so I think church is more right.

I called the peak of unrest in twenty, twenty. And I had, I, I actually maybe church, and I made a bed. But in twitter, we had exchange.

That was twitter we had exchanged where I, he said he did his little calculation. He said the peak could come anywhere between and twenty, twenty six. And I said, twenty, twenty, that was the peak.

They arent going to get crazy that in amErica now we can, I have a world war, but we're not going to have people like marching, the street burning, IT, whatever. And people will get exhausted. I see the exhaustion setting in.

And he's like, no, I think that the center of my point instruments is in twenty twenty four, as the peek of unrest was IT, though, was IT was twenty twenty four big winners we have like a few people slanging into other off on twitter before the election and overall, like, you know, yes, a couple crazy tried to shoot trump, just like a couple crazy tried to shoot four and seventy six, right? IT IT was almost exactly the same as as when a couple crazy, and then when crazy did shoot right in right? Yes, some crazy.

Just shoot taken. Poch, hot guy. And then where there was seventy five, they tried, they tried to shoot ford. So but the unrest, broader unrest in amErica was already falling by the time random were trying to shoot ford, right, and especially by the climb, and to shot reg.

And like, that guy was trying to prove his love to jodie Foster, like he wasn't even, that was his, that was his whole thing. And people were like, oh, unrest is over. It's just a few random crazies out there like, you know just creeping on.

Jodie Foster ultimate ony he was gig but anyway, so if he had only known if we had homophobia ended up getting ragon shot because of jody Foster have been able to come out of the closet, that guy wouldn't shot reg in any so that's my that's my historical take anyway. But I guess the point is that i'm right in churching. Churching was right in general and wrong about a specific call of the year, and i'm going to make fun of chronic and gua chrono. I using your theory, was right about when the unrest fell and IT was twenty twenty after all. And then like that's what i'm going to say.

Well, to that end. And you know, I just read the progress that peer or media is funding a new resistance effort against trump. This might this created, but I wonder what i'm about, say, which is I wonder if there is A A recessing or you serve you know reanalysis of sort of left wing billion aires on their political strategies in terms of you mention earlier that they've been funding a lot of these not profits are love these political efforts that are that are, you know some of them more far left efforts? And I wonder if there's sort of assisting say, hey, those either haven't been effective or they haven't been I even been effective functionality in terms of cities Operating well, but they also haven't worked electorally, at least not now.

And so maybe those organisms will get less support or maybe these billionaire are just hopelessly I D ological and going to keep playing good money after bad, so to speak. The the pal jobs of the world, you know not to actually I don't know if that if if that's like care, baby, I should take that that out. Yeah, who whoever love of billers are?

I meet these guys. I hang out these guys. I got a huat foundation stuff. They are so out of touch it's almost painful. The one half exception is nick hand hour, who is sort of an insane guy, but with actually very in touch on fight for fifteen like that was a thing.

A lot of people's service workers supportive, and the united, the service class, they want IT and IT made minimum wage, even output inflation for a few years. But although that's over, it's it's it's back to fight for you know ten sixty but anyway or something I don't know more than that that anyway hand did a prety good job, but he also spouts a lot of like absolute f about new liberalism. And then but then like all these guys like, you know, omega, whatever the the.

Facebook guys like not zaka because he's not very polite, but like a bit like no cause he is. I went to dinner with these guys. Don't have any idea what's going on with the average person.

Like they they barely have. They're so lofty, they barely have any idea what going on. The average rich person, like their circles are entirely self selected.

They get to pick yug out with them. And who is that with them are always, yes men asking for money, even if they're become very, very good at disguising. People obey incentives, and if you start handing out money, yuga rifles and those grifters defining social are going.

This gift is really interesting. This fellow isn't asking me for money. This fellow is simply having interesting intellectual discussion. That that fellows entire job is like structure their interesting intellectual discussion.

So you walk away feeling I could do that, I could be a grifter like that if I wanted, and I don't, because I just don't care, but I could. And these people are so dim, out of touch. And then like this is where a lot of the money for the groups is coming from.

And so I don't know to do about that other than to like make more things taxable cause like somehow even the richest person will get very annoyed if their charitable donations are not tax adaptable. So I say just make a lot more stuff taxied and see what that takes us. And then, you know, have some maybe have some common sense restrictions, unlike packs, advertising and that.

But until we somehow figure out how to reduce the power of the staffer class, the groups are gonna a year. So I don't know, maybe they all listen icon wanted to hey rich guys like you know don't give your money to like you know like leftist st advocacy groups. They're just going to waste IT and hurt the democratic c party style time. Stir in his stop he'll never listen me his son.

but he's he's interested in mother stuff. honestly.

What they really need do is just like divert the money to like yin bes and think takes and stuff like that not like that doesn't claim like represent a specific community that's more more generalized stuff. You you can still give your money to groups with the lower case. G does not groups with the capital.

And that's going to be A A big shift. actually. If you feel rich people like that, I can actually pitch this to, i'll say, like, look, give your money to someone effective and not me.

I'm not saying do not give your money to me. I'll just give you a rabbit like I do with my own money. Just no give IT give IT to like some some people are trying to figure out how to I grow and build and blower blog.

And ultimately, that's the way to win back america, to make appeals for things that benefit the whole country and and a wait for trump in and these guys describe because like if if musk us to the civil service, what he did to to the employees x like, yes, you will eliminate a lot of an efficiency, but you also them and make a lot of useful stuff. And then people will get mad because, like, you know, they like, my medicare didn't get processed hoops now I don't know medicare. My veterans benefits didn't get processed.

Oops, you betrayed the veterans. And so like cna speak, you know, you do this stuff, you mess around like this. I I hope it's just goff, right? I hope just like they don't end up cutting large, except I hope they do actually fire some you know, useless people and then but but leave enough.

You can't fire eighty percent of the server service, but maybe you could fire twenty percent. I don't know. I hope they do that. But I don't not optimistic because like I saw at x you know and I I don't have any trust in vic at all and I think that when people get mad and like there's a massive backlash against letting guys like this group stuff and everybody y's getting measles because I F case had not to give vaccines.

So all your kids are getting fucked in mezzo like it's the know nineteen century like maybe people will realize that elections have consequences, but I hope they don't do that. I hope they just talk a big game and talk a lot of guff and then don't actually do that. But if they do do IT, it's going to provoke a backless people. We're going to get mad like ultimately I do believe democracy.

Well, that's a good note to to end on some good advice for billionaire as well as some you know reaffirming in the belief democracy I know has been a great wide ranging discussion in a great mailbag. Thanks for everyone for summing your questions. Please continue your great questions. Will will make sure to get to them. Uh, I know is always until next time.

until next time.

Sir eon, one or two is a podcast from turpenay the network beying moment of then in the arena, the cogent revolution and more, if you like, what you here subscribe, believe as the review in the you can keep up with both of our sub stacks for rain. Nyse is of the topics we cover in the show and no opinion at substandard com. And eric tomer got subject outcome.

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