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I am going to vich somebody until
they bleed three to one. Ask not

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what your country can do for you, Ask what you can do for your

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country. Mister Garbuchow, tear down
this law. It's the Ricochet Podcast with

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Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm
James Lylyx. Today we talked to David

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Bonson about his new book, Full
Time Work at the Meaning of Life.

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So let's work ourselves a podcast.
I'm well meaning and I'm an elderly man,

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and I know what the hell I'm
doing. I'm in president, and

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I put this country back on his
sheet. I don't need his recommendation it

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totally. My memory is fine.
As you know, Initially the President of

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Mexico CC did not want to open
up the gate to allow humanitarian material to

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get in. I talked to him, I convinced open the gate. Welcome

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everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast.
I'm James. Oh you're wondering what number

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it is. It's number six hundred
and seventy eight. And we got that

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far. I know got that far
thanks to listeners like you, as they

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say in National Public Radio, or
members like you wh've gone to ricochet dot

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com and discovered that whoa, Please
do what I've been looking for all my

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life. Here it is there,
it is Go there, you'll love it.

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But in the meantime, I'm here
with Rob Long and Hey Ron,

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how's New York? Hey James good, how are you well? I'm I'm

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disconcerted because it's snowing and it's been
fifty degrees here for a fortnight or so.

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It's been very warm, which of
course people ascribed to the end of

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the world. And now it's snowing, and you know, the old historical

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cultural i mean, climate norms are
reasserting themselves, almost as though these things

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are cyclical and work themselves out.
Yeah, almost, as if we have

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seasons. Yeah, seasons. That's
a great idea. Well, tis the

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season to complain about a lot of
things. And everybody's mad about the border

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dealer and the lack thereof. And
I mean, having watched these things come

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and go over and over and over
and over again, I don't put any

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stock in anything that they passed whatsoever, because it seems to me that there's

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this weird feeling that unless we get
a particularly tailored bill exactly to these minute

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specifications, we just got to let
everybody in in the absence of a bill,

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we can't actually send anybody down there
to say no, you can't come

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in. We got a lot of
you guys now, and we're gonna we're

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gonna stop for a while, maybe
a year. Sorry, But we are

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under no obligation whatsoever to let you
in and then drive you to Montana and

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give you a phone and a gift
card. We're just under no obligation to

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that. So or are you of
a different mind, Rob, Do you

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think that? Actually? Well,
I mean all of this was very very

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important to tell about seven pm last
night when it the entire political conversation became

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about something else, which isn't whether
the president is doing any the right thing

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on the border board. The president
is there inside the president I mean,

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I mean, just to finish the
border thing. The argument for the border

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bill is that, no, of
course the current president is going to do

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anything. And yes, of course
the number five thousand is very high,

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but it might help set up the
next president or the future presidents who may

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be a little bit more inclined to
protect the border to do so. Yeah,

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that's a perfectly good argument. It
ended up being about presidential politics.

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And then I just don't think the
presidential politics right now are going to be

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about the border. They're going to
be about what we You know, one

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candidate is borderline, has a borderline
personality disorder, and the other candidate is

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Scott scrambled eggs up there probably,
so you know. The best line I

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heard about last night was from Paul
Begala or begel or whatever you on CNN.

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He said, he said, look, I'm a Biden supporter, and

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last night I slept like a baby, meaning I woke up every two hours

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and wet the bed. He said, it is terrible, you know anyone

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paying attention to politics. And I
was, this is a huge, huge

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disaster. I heard about it.
I was like, I was out and

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then you know this, like Twitter
was going crazy and some I got some

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text people saying are you watching this? And then as I was going home,

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I was going to turn it on
and watch it, and I all

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the tweets are saying, oh man, it's so great. Watch people and

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CNN they're they're, they're, they're
they're falling apart, they're stunned. They

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don't have to say. But by
the time I got home and turned on

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the TV and watched was watching CNN. They had already collected themselves. I

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missed the part where they were uh
stunned and didn't know what to say.

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It had already gotten whatever the marching
orders were, and they were saying no.

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He looked fine, he looked,
what are you trying about? It

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was? I mean, usually there's
one president, there's one candidate in every

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president on selection for whom. This
is a high wire act. Right,

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We're watching a guy and we're like, I don't know this is going to

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be I don't know, let's hope. This just feels like elder abuse.

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Now we have these two guys running
and I, you know, I just

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don't understand how anybody the Democratic Party
could see what happened last night and say

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we'll turn this around between now and
Labor Day, because it's going to get

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better. I just don't think all
together, only so many be twelve shots

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to the shanks. Iired a little
throaty chuckle under there, a little gentle

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throaty chuckle, which means Peter's with
us. Peter Robinson, thank you,

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gentlemen, could do What is this? You're talking about politics? What could

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this possibly be? You know,
we have we have we had a compare

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and contrast between Putin and Biden.
Putin, who is obviously all there that

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there happens to be on the throne
of Hail in the lake of fire,

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but he's all there. And then
then you have Biden who was ranting and

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shouting and saying things and stumbling in
the rest of it last night, which

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some people are saying. And again
I don't subscribe to the conspiratorial models that

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to have great machiavellian machinations here because
I don't think they're that smarter, that

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good. But some people are saying, well, this is how they're clearing

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the deck for Newsom. They're just
putting them out there and show they're intentionally

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showing that their major character, their
main character, is not all air,

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so that there will be setting the
stage for getting them off the stage.

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Do you think that's true. I
have no idea what they're up to.

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What's surprising to me is that anybody, let's see how to put this.

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I was surprised, and I wasn't
surprised. Here's what surprised me that after

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all that we've been through with the
James Comy machinations during the election of let's

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put it this way. I tend
to agree with Holman Jenkins of The Wall

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Street Journal that James Comy, director
of the FBI, saying of Hillary Clinton,

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We're not going to bring charges,
but she did something really, really,

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really bad. May have elected Donald
Trump and represented a grotesque violation of

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the ordinary prosecuateur prosecutorial standard, which
is either you bring charges or you fall

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silent. And if I were the
Biden campaign, I would be few.

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Excuse me. I'm not the Biden
campaign. I'm whatever is the opposite of

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the Biden campaign. I'm still furious
with her. Hu R I believe is

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the way the name is spelled.
Doing this. Either you bring charges or

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your shut up. You don't say, well, actually we should bring charges.

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If you were younger and more vigorous, we'd bring charges, he willfully,

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But we're not going to bring charges, but we're going to drop a

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political bomb in the middle of the
American system months before. That is outrageous.

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That shocked me. What didn't shock
me was a straightforward accounting of the

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president's state of mind, so to
speak, which anyone, any ordinary person

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looking at him on television in the
last six months, could see for himself.

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What's amazing is that. As Rob
said, there seems to have been

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a moment when MSNBC and CNN and
a lot of professional Democrats actually were surprised.

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They seem to have talked themselves into
supposing that the President of the United

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States is a well man. He's
not. I just don't understand. I

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don't see. Honestly, I don't
see how the Biden campaign recovers from this,

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because we now have footage for these
Republican ads. Donald Trump, even

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his own DOJ says he's a doddering
old fool. And Furthermore, bb Netnaho

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said yesterday or the day before,
I've been traveling a little bit, so

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I've lost track of sequence this past
week that he expected the war in Gaza

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to last several more months. That
means it's likely that the Democratic Party will

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be ripping itself apart pro Palestinian pro
Israel. We already have a permanent encampment

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outside the Secretary of State's House in
Northern Virginia, a protest encampment. We

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have Heckler shouting genocide, Joe.
I just can't we get this unwell old

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man at a convention in Chicago,
where the Democratic Party is likely to be

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ripping itself up. None of this
is an argument for Donald Trump. It's

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not even an argument that he would
necessarily win. What am I saying saying?

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I am saying what Rob said with
bells on. This is just it's

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a mess. It's a mess,
and I don't see quite how we get

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out of it, except so Gavin
Newsom, excuse me to answer your question,

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James, after a long round about
venting the question. The President is

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unwell. We know that he got
angry during this thing got released. He

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called a press conference to prove that
he's compass. Meant each I mean,

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it was just a catastrophe. He's
not there. Who's making the decisions?

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That's the question. That's what I
don't know. And I also don't know

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how you get rid of him.
I have assumed that it's doctor Jill,

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that if they can persuade doctor Jill
that it's for his best that he stepped

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down, then it'll happen. But
I just don't know. We're in this

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weird position where the most reported on
man in the world, the president of

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the United States, actually isn't where
the action is no the country's being run

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by a seance that channels the ghost
of Liberal Wilson's wife, only James.

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In fact, I'm going to just
shut up and listen to James, because

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James, your interstitial comments are the
most powerful thing anybody said. Ah,

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no, you're right, it's just
it's absolutely because somebody is running it.

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Somebody's running show, and we really
don't believe at the strategic level that it's

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going to be Joe. Now on
Twitter, Rob is right. By the

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time that they composed themselves, they
were able to make a wide variety of

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arguments. And there was somebody on
Twitter who is saying, oh, you

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know, a little bit shaky at
the margins. Okay, do you know

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where your left ear pod is?
Have you ever your car keys in the

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last week? And everybody's you know, there's like four hundred responses a good

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point. The left air pod is
in the case. It's in the case.

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It's in the case, because everybody
knew it's in the case. We

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are not really and some people would
point out that well, actually, not

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only do I know where my AirPod
is, but I am not in charge

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of the nuclear control in the nuclear
codes, which which makes you want to

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ask, is job do they actually
actually entrust him with anything of importance these

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days, which seems to be like
the worst thing you want to ask yourself

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about the country, and it's leadership. Who's got who has the football?

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Well? The guy who is well, but I mean who who has the

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authority? We don't know, we
don't who has the authority? And why

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isn't the press asking where is is
he? Just too? Maybe he's two

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well, but it's where three years
almost three years into this administration, so

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it's about time for the Bob Woodward
inside the Bride Biden White House book came

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out explaining all this to us.
Somebody should have been interviewing these people.

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They should have been leaking to Bob
Woodward or whoever Bob would There's no curiosity

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and part of the press about who's
running the country, especially a a A

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an administration that's been so weirdly incompetent
in so many ways. I mean,

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it does seem like you're I'd be
interested, you know, I was surprised

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at how I've said this before in
this podcast, how just how like Keystone

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Cops it is over there, like
these are people you know, you'd think

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it would just be if anything could
be bland and boring and exactly what you

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expect, but it seems like it's
a little bit. It's just it's kind

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of good. Like the d team
is in. The strange thing for them

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is going to be I think to
the exactly one is that they're going to

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try this. I think they're going
to try this business of oh, well,

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you know, it's gonna it's gonna
go like in the Kubler Ross.

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Like first it's gonna be like,
well, so what Trump thought that Dicky

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Haley was Nancy Pelosi. This's gonna
be that for a while, and then

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it's gonna be the way there's a
little something to that. There's definitely seventy

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seven years old exactly. And then
it's gonna be uh, well, yeah

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are you, Oh you're so smart, and a bunch of people saying,

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oh, he's a whip smart the
guy. And then it's gonna be some

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silence, and then they're gonna have
to figure out. They're gonna look at

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some numbers and they're gonna say,
Okay, what do we do? And

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it may be too late, but
it's also you're talking about a distributed party

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control system now for both parties,
So there's nobody nobody's gonna make the call

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like there's nobody gonna go sit in
the office and say, hey, no

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one's gonna do that unless it's doctor
Jill. Maybe I'll give you a contrast.

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In nineteen nineteen forty nineteen forty four, FDR is running for president again.

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He's been through already. He's been
through, as I recall, two

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vice presidents. We now know that
he wasn't well. Insiders knew that he

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wasn't well. He's waging the war. He's absorbed with the details of the

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war, and his view is that
he should either run that his vice president

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should remain Henry Wallace, who was
very far to the left and a Soviet

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sympathizer and known as that at the
time, or he would drop Wallace and

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take on William O. Douglas,
who was another figure of the left.

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Four as I recall, it was
four. It may have been five,

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but as I recall, it was
four Democratic Party bosses, guys who ran

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the party machine in four urban centers
sent a delegation to FDR and said,

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no, this is just not going
to flow. It's not going to work

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with our people. You need Harry
Truman. And that is how Harry Truman

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was chose as vice president. Now, am I defending party bosses? You

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know what I sort of am.
What I am defending is coherent parties with

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decision making capacity, with decision makers
who were in touch with ordinary Americans.

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And those days it would have been
largely union workers, labor, the guys

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who actually ran a big democratic cities. And that is gone that Harry Truman

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was a great president and they were
right about it. Henry Wallace would have

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been a catastrophe. William O.
Douglass was a figure of the left until

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he died in the FDR put him
on the Supreme Court. They got it

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00:15:30,679 --> 00:15:35,480
right. There is no decision making
apparatus left. Well, A lot of

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it has to do with this weird
attitude people have towards the political leader of

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the moment, which is sort of
a post I don't know, maybe kind

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of a post jfk ish kind of
thing maybe or biggest FDR the idea that

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this guy, this chief executive of
the administrative branch of government, frankly,

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is you know, the father of
the country. You know, he's there

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and we must love him and we
must support him. And you I used

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00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:07,799
to think it was exclusively liberals,
right because that, you know, they

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00:16:07,799 --> 00:16:14,399
had that horribly weird slavish attitude towards
Obama that you could never ever criticize the

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00:16:14,399 --> 00:16:18,240
precious president. And the same thing
now with the Trump supporters, which is

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00:16:18,559 --> 00:16:22,080
he's the Jesus. You know,
it's all Kim Jong un stuff like uh

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00:16:22,799 --> 00:16:27,399
seventeen holand ones for the Great President. And it's just bizarre to me.

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And I think that there were people
in the party systems back then who felt

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like, no, no, I
worked for a bigger organization than the president.

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I worked for the party. The
president's come and go, the party's

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got a last. But you know, every senator looks at every president thinks

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this guy he's going to be gone, and I'm still going to be here.

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And I think we I think we
missed that the Senate was an alternative

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source of power in those days too. I mean, yeah, when an

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00:17:00,960 --> 00:17:07,000
LPGA is majority leader, he's in
some ways as powerful with regard to domestic

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00:17:07,039 --> 00:17:11,079
politics. Of course, not a
president is also commander in chief. The

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00:17:11,160 --> 00:17:15,680
idea that Chuck Schumer is in any
way kind of offset to whatever is happening

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00:17:15,680 --> 00:17:17,920
down at the White House is,
as far as I can tell, it's

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just visible. Well, they'll be
happy to get rid of Biden and swap

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00:17:21,319 --> 00:17:25,720
in newsom. I'm saying this forever
because now it's apparent to them that they're

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00:17:25,759 --> 00:17:29,759
dealing with a guy who is going
to get up and say I just spoke

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00:17:29,799 --> 00:17:33,599
the other day with Grover Coolidge and
he reminded me that the business of America

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00:17:33,799 --> 00:17:37,039
is damage or something like that,
and everybody will let go back and explain

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00:17:37,079 --> 00:17:38,720
that what your business is, I
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And now we welcome to the podcast David

259
00:19:17,599 --> 00:19:22,680
Boson, Managing partner and chief investment
officer of the Bonson Group and a contributor

260
00:19:22,720 --> 00:19:25,519
to Forbes and that National review that
we all love so much. David,

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00:19:25,559 --> 00:19:29,039
Welcome, well, what wonderful to
be with you. Thank you for having

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00:19:29,079 --> 00:19:33,200
me. I'm at the office right
now in Minneapolis, where not too many

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00:19:33,240 --> 00:19:37,240
people are, and I'm here because
I love my work. And sometimes you

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00:19:37,279 --> 00:19:41,319
go ask me if I'm ever going
to retire, and I cannot possibly see

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why. As long as I'm be
able to hold a panter type at a

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keyboard. I can't imagine not working. My work, I dare say,

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defines me, and I would be
bereefed if I laid down my tools.

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You've written a book about the necessity
of work, and we've been told and

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over again that we work too much
here in the West. We put too

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much stuck in it. We identify
with our jobs. We should have four

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day work weeks, we should be
like the French. We should be more

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spiritual. In the rest of it, you make a philosophical and spiritual argument

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for the necessity of work, and
lots of it. Tell us about your

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00:20:15,759 --> 00:20:19,279
book. Yeah, it's interesting when
people say we should be more spiritual and

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work less, because the fact of
the matter is that the country used to

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be a lot more spiritual, and
it used to work a lot more.

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00:20:26,359 --> 00:20:33,000
The spirituality of America was where the
work ethic came from. It's also the

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work ethic that we're still living off
of. We live from a DNA that

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our forefathers had that has created some
of the greatest prosperity and quality of living

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the world's ever seen. I do
agree with what you said that living and

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00:20:51,839 --> 00:20:56,240
working are one and the same.
And the notion of retiring being defined as

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the removal of oneself from reductive activity
is a travesty and it's doing great damage

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to a lot of elements in society. It's doing a lot of damage to

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retirees. Their lack of self worth
and engagement, I think is a really

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tragic byproduct. But it's doing a
lot of damage to the economy. It's

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doing a lot of damage to businesses. Gen Xer is like myself. I'll

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00:21:23,119 --> 00:21:29,079
turn fifty this year. I love
my twenty six year olds, but I

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don't really need them to give me
a whole lot of advice and wisdom and

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00:21:33,599 --> 00:21:37,079
experience. But they're going to do
it anyway. Yeah, you know,

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it's funny, actually, Rob,
the twenty six year olds are a lot

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better than the thirty six year olds. The gen Z's in a different place

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than the gen y. But I
wish I had sixty six year olds and

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00:21:47,359 --> 00:21:52,440
seventy one year olds to give me
more counsel. They're not going to work

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the same hours, They're not gonna
have the same pressure. There's going to

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be different physical and mental and agent
stage dimensions that change one productive activity.

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But total removal from the marketplace to
do nothing but golf and drink I find

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to be very depressing. So yeah, I mean I've heard the same thing,

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David. By the way, this
is Rob in New York. Thank

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you for joining us. The book
is called Full Time Work in the Meaning

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00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:19,480
of Life, and we'll have that
in the show notes too. For listening,

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00:22:19,519 --> 00:22:25,640
and you just go to Ricochet.
People I know who are approaching retirement

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or retired or thinking about it,
they almost always say the same thing,

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which is like, what happens then
I got to do something? What am

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I going to do? And I
think people who are entering the workforce have

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been told something about how, you
know, you have to find your passion

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and this and that, and we
have all these little ways to do it.

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We have all these quizzes and tests
and stuff and counselors and HR.

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The HR business has become I mean, you know, the human resources is

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now a department that ten even ten
years ago, no corporate executive today would

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really recognize. It just was a
different world. So how come is this

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disconnect between people enthusiastically finding their passion
and going to work. We're spending a

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00:23:12,599 --> 00:23:18,359
lot of time trying to fit people
into the right pegs. Why and how

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are we failing? I think one
of the problems has been a generation in

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the making, which is the notion
that the Boomers had, which was a

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very hard working generation, a very
productive and a very successful one. It's

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quite materially prosperous, but it was
the first generation that had this idea of

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retirement that first of all, just
because of mortality. Post World War Two,

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mortality went up about ten years,
and then since then it's gone up

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another ten so people are living about
twenty years longer than they were at the

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time the Baby Boomers were born.
And that's coincident with the time period in

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which the material prosperity of the society
exploded. Real GDP growth for seventy years

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00:24:06,079 --> 00:24:11,279
was over three percent per year net
of inflation, so resulted in a tripling

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of the economy in that time period. So you had this potion available to

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boomers of living long enough to have
a twenty or twenty five year retirement and

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having enough money to do so.
That's all well and good, except for

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this. I think it messaged to
the younger people you're asking about this notion

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that plenty of boomers were more than
willing to communicate and almost explicitly state that

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the purpose of work was to not
do it anymore. People were working for

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the purpose of exiting the workforce,
getting the RV, getting the golf club,

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getting the various essentially a sort of
twenty five year vacation. I don't

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know why a twenty six year old
enters the workforce with the right passion and

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diligence if the message they had is
that the only reason they're doing it is

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to not do it anymore. I
mean, I went to a I did

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this executive health thing years ago about
you know, I don't know, five

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00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:15,640
years ago. I was Sony made
me do it, and I went and

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00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:17,839
he spent a whole day. And
the first thing the doctor said to me,

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after the whole day of tests and
all this stuff to me, he

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said, look, you're in pretty
good health. Your real problem is going

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to be you're going to live a
long time, you probably need more money.

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We're talking about every time people talk
about raising the retirement age or any

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00:25:37,759 --> 00:25:44,599
of those things, there's this giant
reaction about how terrible that is. But

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you're arguing that work in general is
something that is important not for yourself,

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but also for your society and for
your spiritual life, for your soul,

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for your sense of purpose and belonging
in the world. How do you convince

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people of that. You know there's
going to be some you don't convince.

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I think part of the issue with
the book, Rob is I'm trying to

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give a permission structure a lot.
There's a big target market for the book

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amongst people of faith, and I
think that Evangelicals, Catholics, and Jewish

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people are all going to have a
certain common ground in one of the premises

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of the book, which is this
sort of creational account of how God made

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us. He made us to work, he made us to be productive,

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and he said so, and that
it's modeled in sort of this creator creature

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design. Not everyone's going to buy
into that, and there are people.

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00:26:49,279 --> 00:26:55,759
We may have different faith traditions,
but it doesn't change the fact whether people

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00:26:55,799 --> 00:27:00,640
believe me about the reason or not
that this is inerrant with nature. And

356
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:07,279
so this view that has become really
an economic problem, that part of the

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00:27:07,319 --> 00:27:11,480
society is meant to be productive and
part is meant to be consumptive, is

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00:27:11,559 --> 00:27:17,359
creating the income inequality and wealth inequality
that the left says they're very upset about.

359
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:21,440
I no longer believe them that they're
upset about it, because the cultural

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00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:25,839
prescriptions are the very things they are
exacerbating it. The view we have a

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00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:29,000
work right now, Here's the thing
I'll say about gen Z whatever's going to

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00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:32,359
happen. You can do whatever you
want with a thirty two hour work week,

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00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:34,880
a four day work week, twelve
weeks of siesta, or whatever the

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00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:40,119
hell they call it, quitting do
all of it. The top twenty percent,

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00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:44,279
the next Elon Musk, the next
Mark Zuckerberg's, the next junior level

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00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:49,519
programmers in Silicon Valley, they're not
going to cooperate. The next investment bankers

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00:27:49,559 --> 00:27:55,200
down here Park Avenue, private equity
guys, they're not going to play along.

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00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:59,240
They're going to be working eighty hours. So what are you going to

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00:27:59,279 --> 00:28:04,599
do? You cannot hold back the
engine of productivity that's embedded in the human

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00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:10,319
spirit. What you can do is
make it more contagious. I can't catch

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00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:15,119
the bug of laziness, but other
people can catch the bug of hard work

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00:28:15,599 --> 00:28:19,960
and productivity and success. What Arthur
Brooks refers to his earned success the greatest

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00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:23,799
feeling in the world of knowing that
you did something and you can now get

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00:28:23,839 --> 00:28:29,160
to enjoy the rewards and you earned
it. It's it's really I think about

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00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:34,680
reframing the conversation onto logically that this
is the very being of humanity to be

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00:28:34,839 --> 00:28:38,799
productive and capable and self sufficient.
Is it hard to catch the bug?

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00:28:38,839 --> 00:28:44,279
Though? I mean, I'm talking
about gen Z when you're working from home

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00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:48,440
talking to a zoom. Let's let's
just you got to tell you. You'll

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00:28:48,519 --> 00:28:53,079
have to understand Rob has never really
worked hard. Yeah, Like he's sort

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00:28:53,079 --> 00:28:59,200
of like dancing around good jobs.
What should I do at this stage in

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00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:02,160
my life? And all those of
us who've known him in other stages in

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00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:04,440
his lifes, what what? What
You're going to start working now? Well?

383
00:29:04,519 --> 00:29:07,079
No, obviously not. I'm really
more of a thinker, as you

384
00:29:07,119 --> 00:29:11,599
know, Peter. I git out
an idea every day, That's what I

385
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:15,079
do. But okay, my young
cousin your second because I guess she is

386
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:17,839
my cousin's daughter. She gets a
good job, she's working here in New

387
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:19,000
York. She gets a great,
great job, new job at a big,

388
00:29:19,079 --> 00:29:25,200
you know, new cool finance company, and they tell her, uh,

389
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:26,240
you come in. You know,
you got to come in the office

390
00:29:26,359 --> 00:29:30,000
just to you know, two days
a week. She's like, okay,

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00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:32,200
great, yeah, and we'll always
have dinner. I'm talking to her.

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00:29:32,240 --> 00:29:33,599
She's chuck her her job because the
good thing is I only have to come

393
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:36,720
in two days a week. And
I said, well, what do you

394
00:29:36,759 --> 00:29:40,359
mean, said, well, that's
what they you know, my my,

395
00:29:40,359 --> 00:29:44,000
my boss wants me in two days
a week. And I said, why

396
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:48,279
don't you go in five days a
week? And why? She's young enough,

397
00:29:48,319 --> 00:29:51,599
so this is all new to her. Why they want me two days

398
00:29:51,599 --> 00:29:52,839
a week. So, well,
my guess is that your boss is there

399
00:29:53,599 --> 00:29:56,920
three days a week or something.
And what she doesn't want is you do

400
00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:00,880
there five days a week when she's
not there. You know, no boss

401
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:06,839
wants the bright underling to be walking
around the office solving problems and doing stuff.

402
00:30:07,759 --> 00:30:21,160
But how do you catch that virus
of exciting competitive employee if you're at

403
00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:27,079
home? And how do you put
the if I made Rob's question what I've

404
00:30:27,079 --> 00:30:32,319
observed with my own kids who are
at the age of the young woman Rob

405
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:37,079
is describing, how do you put
the pieces of the working world back together

406
00:30:37,359 --> 00:30:45,680
for kids who just went through COVID
where working at home was enforced. Well,

407
00:30:45,799 --> 00:30:52,319
the entire appendix of this book is
my critique of the work from home

408
00:30:52,519 --> 00:30:57,839
movement as itself an anti work movement, and having been here in the city

409
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:04,559
entire time, five days a week
required. We have seven offices around the

410
00:31:04,599 --> 00:31:10,000
country, sixty three employees. There
was that brief period in spring of twenty

411
00:31:10,039 --> 00:31:14,279
twenty where you couldn't go into the
offices, but at the point starting around

412
00:31:14,359 --> 00:31:18,559
May of twenty twenty when we could
get stuff reopened, everybody had to go

413
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:22,480
back. Did go back. I've
never had a single complaint, And I

414
00:31:22,559 --> 00:31:26,839
think Rob's right that there are some
of the companies. It's less so in

415
00:31:26,960 --> 00:31:32,720
finance than some of the tech cool
type companies, but almost every one of

416
00:31:32,759 --> 00:31:37,000
them is throwing in the towel,
Netflix, Facebook, Google, Amazon,

417
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:41,680
growing in that home towel. Yeah, they've all said, okay, this

418
00:31:41,759 --> 00:31:44,039
whole thing, and we're going to
let you work in your pajamas forever.

419
00:31:44,119 --> 00:31:45,920
Well, now we need you in
three now, we need you in four

420
00:31:47,559 --> 00:31:51,240
now. A lot have gone to
Oh, we realized by saying three days

421
00:31:51,279 --> 00:31:55,680
a week that we just created a
four day weekend. Every single person is

422
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:59,680
taking Monday and Friday off. So
we're going to now require you to be

423
00:31:59,799 --> 00:32:01,519
in the office three days a week, but Monday is going to be one

424
00:32:01,559 --> 00:32:07,720
of the required ones. I'm sitting
here looking outside Park Avenue Jamie Diamond,

425
00:32:07,799 --> 00:32:10,559
JP Morgan. You know he's an
old school boomer, David Solomon who runs

426
00:32:10,559 --> 00:32:16,640
Goldman Sachs Downtown. They got everybody
back. I didn't understand some of the

427
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:21,920
companies Google and Facebook. Facebook over
by Penn Station, Google down, I

428
00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:25,359
think it's near Chelsea signed the biggest
leases in the history of New York City

429
00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:30,079
for office in the middle of COVID, and then they're telling people are oh,

430
00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:31,720
yeah, we're going to do work
from home forever, and then they're

431
00:32:31,759 --> 00:32:37,359
signing billion dollar leases. Salesforce built
a billion dollar tower in downtown Chicago in

432
00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:40,759
the middle of COVID. All of
these people were full of it, and

433
00:32:40,839 --> 00:32:45,279
they know human nature, you're not
going to get maximum productivity. But what

434
00:32:45,359 --> 00:32:50,839
they did is create the perfectly self
centered trap. Where As much as they

435
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,720
want to not go to work,
they can have a permission structure and flexibility

436
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:57,599
for their younger people to not come. But to Rob's point, which I

437
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:00,680
agree one hundred percent, the answer, unfortunately, even if he meant the

438
00:33:00,759 --> 00:33:05,880
question rhetorically, is you're not going
to get people to embrace the full orb

439
00:33:06,359 --> 00:33:09,119
of work of office work, in
particular, what we're talking about here if

440
00:33:09,119 --> 00:33:15,200
you're not in the office, the
culture, the brand, the collaboration,

441
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:20,880
the real time interaction that can only
take place at the water cooler, in

442
00:33:20,920 --> 00:33:23,440
the kitchen, walking down the hallway, popping your head in someone's door.

443
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:29,599
Our ability to manage money. Do
research have traders talking to advisors, talking

444
00:33:29,599 --> 00:33:34,279
to investors clients. This is that
you have to be in office. And

445
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:39,359
I'm a conservative, largely because I
believe in conserving norms and traditions. I'm

446
00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:45,519
biased towards that we act as if
this office thing came out of nowhere,

447
00:33:45,559 --> 00:33:50,440
like someone just made it up.
And then twenty twenty virus told us,

448
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:52,960
well, the office thing sure was
a bad idea. It came about for

449
00:33:53,079 --> 00:33:58,880
a reason, and unfortunately we went
on a two or three year temper tantrum,

450
00:33:59,319 --> 00:34:02,359
and it was childish and it needs
to stop. You mentioned JP Morgan.

451
00:34:02,359 --> 00:34:05,200
I don't know if you can see
it from there, but they're building

452
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:09,159
their gargantuan, into my eyes,
ugly structure on Park Avenue. There's no

453
00:34:09,199 --> 00:34:14,119
way they're spending that much money and
building that much space without requiring everybody to

454
00:34:14,159 --> 00:34:16,440
come in. I'm looking right now
across at a building here which was largely

455
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:20,920
empty after COVID until the major tenant
said to all of his employees, all

456
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:25,760
right, here's the thing. Your
presence is necessary for your continued employment by

457
00:34:25,760 --> 00:34:29,000
this firm. I'm going to pay
for your parking. I'm going to give

458
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:30,599
you a ten dollars lunch voucher every
day. But you got to be here.

459
00:34:30,639 --> 00:34:34,599
And you know what, They all
came in our building, which is

460
00:34:34,639 --> 00:34:37,880
a newsroom. It's largely empty every
day except for Tuesday, when everybody shows

461
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:42,000
up and pretends. There's a picture
on the wall of if the staff of

462
00:34:42,039 --> 00:34:45,960
the newspaper outside our old building before
it was demolished. Big group of people,

463
00:34:45,079 --> 00:34:50,039
big wonderful group of people who all
worked together, knew each other,

464
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:53,199
had that sort of cainetic little synthesis
that you get of ideas and the rest

465
00:34:53,199 --> 00:34:59,519
of it. It's a wonderful image
of the community that you can build when

466
00:34:59,559 --> 00:35:04,119
you are all together in the same
place. I'm not there because I was

467
00:35:04,159 --> 00:35:07,280
working from a moment that day,
as it turned out, and actually about

468
00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:12,039
that, I've been hybrid all my
bat I've been hybrid all my life,

469
00:35:12,039 --> 00:35:15,159
and I see the advantages of both. But that said, when you talk

470
00:35:15,199 --> 00:35:19,440
to kids today and you tell them
this, and I see this over I

471
00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:23,199
was just reading this on the subredit
for Minneapolis because once again one of the

472
00:35:23,199 --> 00:35:25,920
major employers is said, we want
you back, and everybody riles up.

473
00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:29,920
Why should I have to drive?
Why should I have to sit in traffic

474
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:32,920
or on a bus? Why why
should I Why should I have to do

475
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:37,199
anything connected physically in meat space with
other people? And these are the people

476
00:35:37,199 --> 00:35:43,639
who were born and raised on glass
screens, on glowing glass screens, that

477
00:35:43,639 --> 00:35:47,360
they've been looking down their entire life
at this narcissistic pool in their hand.

478
00:35:49,199 --> 00:35:53,039
And I don't know if they're temperamentally
or intellectually capable of catching that virus.

479
00:35:53,079 --> 00:35:59,079
They may just have so many antibodies
that they're never going to understand the virtue

480
00:35:59,159 --> 00:36:04,639
of shared physicality in a basic location
unless they're Unless they're forced to. So

481
00:36:04,679 --> 00:36:07,599
what do you do I mean,
is it going to get to the point

482
00:36:07,599 --> 00:36:10,480
where the economy contracts so much that
people will take every you know, will

483
00:36:10,519 --> 00:36:15,400
actually take a job that requires them
to be in for five days a week,

484
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:17,800
he said, ending his long speech
with what sounds like a question but

485
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:22,199
probably isn't. Well, but see, it doesn't have to be the macro

486
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:25,559
economy shrinking that much. It has
to be the microeconomy. IBM announcing last

487
00:36:25,599 --> 00:36:30,679
week people need to move closer to
work. They didn't say you got to

488
00:36:30,679 --> 00:36:32,679
come to work, they said you
got to move closer to work. Ups

489
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:36,760
said we're laying off ten thousand people, and we're starting with the folks that

490
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:39,000
haven't been coming to the office.
That these weren't drivers, obviously, they're

491
00:36:39,079 --> 00:36:43,639
about corporate jobs. And they're just
announcing that we're going down the list,

492
00:36:43,679 --> 00:36:47,039
and it's we're looking at key cards
of who's coming and who's not. Well,

493
00:36:47,039 --> 00:36:51,079
what is the answers to how you
give people come back to the office.

494
00:36:51,119 --> 00:36:52,920
What is the reason that most people
who have worked in office their whole

495
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:59,199
career used to go because there was
table stakes for the paycheck. I'm not

496
00:36:59,239 --> 00:37:00,880
a real big fan of the deal
of people even saying we're going to give

497
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:04,639
you a lunch voucher. We're gonna, you know, put an arcade in

498
00:37:04,679 --> 00:37:07,960
the break room, We're gonna have
a yoga class two days a week.

499
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:12,079
I don't think you have to bribe
people to come to work, but maybe

500
00:37:12,119 --> 00:37:15,159
some do. I don't like treating
adults like children, but I do know

501
00:37:15,239 --> 00:37:20,480
this. It's not the kid's fault
that when they when COVID happened, their

502
00:37:20,519 --> 00:37:23,400
boss is quit going to work.
I mean the portion where my office is

503
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:28,519
moving to in the fifties on Sixth
Avenue, all of those skyscrapers there mostly

504
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:31,519
filled with law firms, and the
reason why they weren't open is because the

505
00:37:31,599 --> 00:37:37,800
senior partners were not there. And
now they've gone back and look. I

506
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:43,159
think that there is a certain kind
of organic solution to this. Over time.

507
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:46,480
You won't personally Rob's niece. You're
in your twenties, your talent,

508
00:37:46,559 --> 00:37:51,239
and you're working hard. If no
one's there to see it, it doesn't

509
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:54,679
matter. You have to be seen. And so I believe a lot of

510
00:37:54,679 --> 00:38:00,639
this will correct itself. But you
made a comment about for years you'd already

511
00:38:00,679 --> 00:38:04,440
been doing a kind of hybrid deal. See that's not what we're talking about.

512
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:08,679
I'm referring to jobs that were forever
time, eternal places that people went

513
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:14,360
and worked together, and that allegedly
something changed at the point of the pandemic.

514
00:38:14,599 --> 00:38:17,079
There was always a certain work from
home component. There were always people

515
00:38:17,079 --> 00:38:21,000
that would grab a laptop and go
into Starbucks and that kind of stuff.

516
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:23,079
Well, I'm not talking about everybody
needs to go for the sake of it

517
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:29,119
into some bureacrack environment. But there
are companies that we know operate more efficientcy

518
00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:32,199
And you know, the thing that
has never come up in this conversation is

519
00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:36,000
when the young people say what's best
for me, when the bosses say what's

520
00:38:36,079 --> 00:38:39,159
best for me? Does anybody care
anymore what's best for the customer of the

521
00:38:39,199 --> 00:38:45,199
business. It's just surreal to me
how self centered it is. Well,

522
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:52,239
I kintd a question. So the
strangest thing is that for just before we'll

523
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:57,000
say March twenty twenty, right the
high water mark of COVID, where everybody

524
00:38:57,039 --> 00:39:04,320
went home and never came back,
the workplace had gotten really nice. I

525
00:39:04,360 --> 00:39:07,079
mean, there were these famous stories
about the Silicon Valley. You gonna go

526
00:39:07,119 --> 00:39:09,440
like I give you a pizza and
I'll do your dry cleaning for you and

527
00:39:09,679 --> 00:39:15,920
drive you around, and even like
down here with these hard nose spots that

528
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:17,800
are traditionals, seem kind of nice. You know, if you walk downtown

529
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:22,440
on Broadway and great by Zaccati Park, you look up at the Brown Brothers

530
00:39:22,559 --> 00:39:27,679
Harriman building has got to be like, what could be more austere than that?

531
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:30,320
And you're like, you can look
in the window there and it's it's

532
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:31,840
kind of nice, and there's like
easy chairs, people sitting around. It's

533
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:36,320
kind of like a really high end
Starbucks. Right. So, and at

534
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:42,320
the same time, the sort of
HR machine and HR philosophy took over everything

535
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:45,960
so that you could you knew you
were going to have certain kinds of understandings.

536
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:52,039
Your main, uh, your main
relationship in the company was your HR

537
00:39:52,159 --> 00:39:58,880
person, who would be the inter
loper between you and your supervisor, would

538
00:39:59,159 --> 00:40:04,320
guide all the the reviews that you
had to have. Right, so,

539
00:40:04,519 --> 00:40:08,760
it seemed like we were in a
direction of making work more fun and more

540
00:40:08,840 --> 00:40:14,880
human and more all sorts of more
good stuff. But did we end up

541
00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:20,119
doing the opposite? Was that a
mistake? Yeah, that's a good question.

542
00:40:20,199 --> 00:40:23,039
I mean, obviously it was a
mistake. Economically for the good people

543
00:40:23,199 --> 00:40:28,239
we work. You know, they
added the kegs and the lobbies and the

544
00:40:28,280 --> 00:40:30,199
lounges. And then I was at
a WE work once for like for a

545
00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:34,159
month, and let me tell you, there was a lot of jewelry making

546
00:40:34,239 --> 00:40:37,480
and beer tasting, and there was
nobody was working at the we work.

547
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:40,679
It's very ironic, and I do
think and I you know what, I

548
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:45,159
know, I sound so old saying
all this. I just don't care because

549
00:40:45,159 --> 00:40:49,719
there's a big Silicon Valley thing.
Google would brag about how you can skateboard

550
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:52,920
around the office and there's no dress
code, and they had the full cafeteria.

551
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:55,960
You know. Musk went into Twitter
and just said, to hell with

552
00:40:57,000 --> 00:41:00,800
all this stuff. He fired seventy
percent of the people. We're doing breakfast,

553
00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:04,440
lunch, and dinner. I mean
a ten dollars voucher, like these

554
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:07,559
guys were probably getting a hundred bucks
of food a day. You know.

555
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:14,400
I mean, it's just I think
it's infantilizing. And it's not because I

556
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:19,079
want everyone walking in the snow two
miles of back and forth every It's not

557
00:41:19,119 --> 00:41:22,440
that kind of thing. It's that
work is supposed to be something in which

558
00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:28,559
you go with a collective purpose to
produce goods and services profitably that meet the

559
00:41:28,599 --> 00:41:31,480
needs of humanity, and the idea
that we have to pamper everyone with these

560
00:41:31,519 --> 00:41:37,039
things. And apparently in pampering them, we don't even get a payoff.

561
00:41:37,119 --> 00:41:44,559
We don't even get a built a
loyalty, you know. So I think

562
00:41:44,639 --> 00:41:49,840
societally that this will adjust because it
was a failed experiment. You just mentioned

563
00:41:51,199 --> 00:41:53,280
no dress code out here in Silicon
Valley, and that is true. Of

564
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:58,440
course, in California. Nobody ever
dresses what our viewers can't see. We're

565
00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:01,840
looking at you on zoom, and
you are dressed in a suit and tie.

566
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:07,840
There you sit in the middle of
Manhattan Island. I am told that

567
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:13,800
even at Goldman these days, Rob
and I I disclose a little more about

568
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:15,760
Robin me than anybody cares to hear. Rob and I both had the same

569
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:21,440
dream as juveniles coming out of our
college that we too wanted to go work

570
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:23,239
on Wall Street. Of course,
we had no idea what they really did

571
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:29,199
on Wall Street for the American economy. We didn't. But they ate at

572
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:32,239
nice restaurants and they dressed well,
and that appealed to both of us.

573
00:42:32,559 --> 00:42:38,199
I'm told that even at Goldman.
Nobody wears a tie anymore. What's going

574
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:42,400
on here? I think it is
the end of the world, although it

575
00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:47,039
isn't true. It isn't true of
all of Wall Street. Goldman is struggling

576
00:42:47,119 --> 00:42:54,199
with this complex of being so austere
and so traditional. Now they feel like,

577
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:58,159
oh, we can be the cool
kids by saying you don't have to

578
00:42:58,199 --> 00:43:01,280
wear a tie. So they do
way Friday business casual, which most of

579
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:05,079
Wall Street does. But then they
do a Monday through Thursday where you're not

580
00:43:05,119 --> 00:43:07,960
even wearing a tie, but it's
still a suit with just open collar.

581
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:12,039
But JP Morgan doesn't do that.
Morgan Stanley doesn't do that, and then

582
00:43:12,159 --> 00:43:15,599
a lot of private equity doesn't.
When you are on Manhattan, California,

583
00:43:15,639 --> 00:43:22,239
you're right Silicon Valley, so it's
different everywhere. Most of the law firms

584
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:24,719
aren't requiring it. So some day, wait a minute, you mean you

585
00:43:25,119 --> 00:43:32,079
can go to Sullivan Cromwell as a
junior associate without a tie. I would

586
00:43:32,079 --> 00:43:37,280
imagine it would be a very bad
idea for a junior associate to do it.

587
00:43:37,480 --> 00:43:39,800
And I would imagine anyone in the
legal world is going to court or

588
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:44,719
deposition it was still tie in front
of a judge. Okay, yeah,

589
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:46,400
because you're a grown up and you're
in front of a grown up and you

590
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:50,400
have to act like it. But
then I think in the offices it's a

591
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:54,159
much more casual culture. So yeah, I'm a god. How am I

592
00:43:54,199 --> 00:43:58,519
doing it? Not sounding old?
No, you're not doing great, You're

593
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:04,920
uh okay, now I'm gonna sound
really young. There. There past week,

594
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:09,559
two weeks, two viral videos I
saw as I'm a dedicated, devoted

595
00:44:10,119 --> 00:44:19,119
TikTok you know. Consumer one was
a woman. It was on Twitter show.

596
00:44:19,119 --> 00:44:25,119
She she recorded, she videotaped or
videoed or whatever we say now her

597
00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:30,719
firing. She knew she was getting
called onto zoom call with somebody. It

598
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:32,960
was less, you know, it's
like, please be on the zoom call

599
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:37,920
at to twelve oh seven pm.
That was three weeks ago, your virality,

600
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:42,119
Yeah exactly. So uh so she
did it. She she recorded the

601
00:44:42,159 --> 00:44:45,599
whole thing, and she keeps saying, hey, listen, I I this

602
00:44:45,639 --> 00:44:50,639
is unfair. I did my I
just I did I met all my requirements.

603
00:44:50,679 --> 00:44:53,079
My KPIs right, I met him. I just started in August and

604
00:44:53,119 --> 00:44:57,440
she had all these and it's a
very awkward, weird call. The HR

605
00:44:57,480 --> 00:45:01,000
people with their weasel word hr weel
wor And the response was really interesting from

606
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:06,320
some people. It was half people
said, you know, I will never

607
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:10,719
hire this woman for like recording this
interview, and the other half said,

608
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:19,480
you go, you fight. And
then the second viral video somebody I don't

609
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:24,000
know what his mom or what it
was, some young kid young I mean

610
00:45:24,519 --> 00:45:30,360
maybe early teens, maybe right early
teens at a fast food restaurant. I

611
00:45:30,360 --> 00:45:36,119
couldn't tell. Eich On. It
was smiling, happily going through with the

612
00:45:36,159 --> 00:45:40,559
customer all the different choices and then
kind of robotically staying what he's supposed to

613
00:45:40,559 --> 00:45:46,599
say and recalling it back and asking
for Earth. And the comment was how

614
00:45:46,639 --> 00:45:54,800
depressing more McJobs, And half of
the people on Twitter, I mean you

615
00:45:54,880 --> 00:46:00,920
may have seen it who saw that
proudly talked about their first job and how

616
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:07,519
much they admire this kid. So
I guess my question is how do we

617
00:46:07,559 --> 00:46:16,239
get how do we keep that kid
from turning into that woman, and how

618
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:22,880
do we do it and still be
America with where we reward risk taking and

619
00:46:22,199 --> 00:46:29,440
you know, swashbuckling pirate capitalists doing
crazy stuff with their money that's going to

620
00:46:29,519 --> 00:46:31,679
either work or like you know,
how do we get how do we how

621
00:46:31,679 --> 00:46:37,239
do we get more elon musks.
What a great way to start is the

622
00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:39,719
sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen
year old at the fast food restaurant that

623
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:45,840
first job. There's a war in
our country on teenage employment. There's a

624
00:46:45,880 --> 00:46:49,719
lot of parents don't like it anymore, a lot of schools don't like it,

625
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:54,519
and then most of the laws don't
like it, regulatory minimum wage.

626
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:58,599
You know. I did a panel
the other day at my book release with

627
00:46:58,679 --> 00:47:02,480
a National Review event League Club,
and Andy Pusner was the CEO of Carl's

628
00:47:02,559 --> 00:47:07,039
Junior, and Hardy's was on the
panel, And Brawley's a PhD economist at

629
00:47:07,039 --> 00:47:12,320
George Mason, And there was another
guy who was a Treasury Department economist in

630
00:47:12,360 --> 00:47:16,760
two different presidential administrations. All three
of them their first job in high school

631
00:47:17,559 --> 00:47:22,159
was an hourly wage job at Baskin
Robbins. Just a coincidence. All three

632
00:47:22,239 --> 00:47:25,960
actually started not only in an ice
cream fast food kind of environment, but

633
00:47:27,039 --> 00:47:30,639
the same one. Andy became the
CEO of one of the largest fast food

634
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:37,280
companies in the world. The sub
one of the reasons in my book that

635
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:40,119
we were talking about earlier, full
time that just came out every chapter.

636
00:47:40,199 --> 00:47:45,320
I started with a little cute thing
at the beginning of my first jobs in

637
00:47:45,519 --> 00:47:47,119
order, and so there's, you
know, twelve chapters, and I go

638
00:47:47,199 --> 00:47:52,119
through the various jobs I had in
those teenage years. That kid, you're

639
00:47:52,159 --> 00:47:55,360
talking about, how's the ability to
serve a customer? And they think it's

640
00:47:55,360 --> 00:48:00,159
a McJob. I think it's demeaning. No, it is the ability to

641
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:07,199
interact with human beings, to meet
a need, to formulate adult conversation skills,

642
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:09,800
to have a boss you don't like
and you have to get along with

643
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:16,360
them, to navigate being on a
team. These are life skills that will

644
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:23,679
parlay into all sorts of other creative
and productive endeavors. Taking away the minor

645
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:30,480
league system, if careers and vocations
are major leagues, taking away teenage employment

646
00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:36,480
is like taking away Triple A minor
league baseball. Okay, it's an absolute

647
00:48:36,599 --> 00:48:40,519
disaster. Culturally, I think we
have to facilitate more teenage employment. I

648
00:48:40,519 --> 00:48:44,480
think we have to get rid of
the entitlement that has a college Why did

649
00:48:44,519 --> 00:48:47,280
college people stop working when they're in
school or why has it gone down so

650
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:52,199
much? The student loans were never
meant to pay for your room board,

651
00:48:52,239 --> 00:48:59,599
tuition and your beer money. You
were supposed to have to go work for

652
00:48:59,719 --> 00:49:05,360
that stuff. Right now they've supplemented
in the student loans. People are living

653
00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:09,159
off of it. And I think
a part time job for college students is

654
00:49:09,519 --> 00:49:14,400
a very good thing as well.
Some since scenarios and situations are going to

655
00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:17,400
be a bit different. But I'm
more speaking macro and culture. So I

656
00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:20,519
know we got got to let you
go. But so you're not just talking

657
00:49:20,559 --> 00:49:29,599
about work being a good a foundational
piece of a working, flourishing capitalist economy.

658
00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:36,159
You're talking about it being a foundational
piece for a flourishing human spirit.

659
00:49:36,599 --> 00:49:40,760
Yes, that is right, and
the reason being that we are made innately

660
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:47,000
to work. We are not made
to merely be passive and recipients of other

661
00:49:47,079 --> 00:49:52,199
people's work. That what we are
made to do involves proactivity, It involves

662
00:49:52,239 --> 00:49:57,480
agency. And I think the words, and again I share this as a

663
00:49:57,519 --> 00:50:01,400
result of my own Christian faith.
There are different analogies people can find.

664
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:07,559
I think we share with our creator
his attribute. So being productive, creative

665
00:50:07,559 --> 00:50:13,920
and innovative work provides the avenue for
production, innovation, and creation. You

666
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:19,960
take away those things, you end
up getting people that it becomes dehumanizing,

667
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:25,480
it becomes alienating, and it leads
to this crisis of despair oftentimes drug and

668
00:50:25,480 --> 00:50:30,880
alcohol abuse, depression, mental health. But let's say some of those more

669
00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:34,559
severe things are not there. Take
opioids out, suicide, all of this

670
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:38,920
unimaginably depressing stuff. And you just
have someone who's not hyper depressed, but

671
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:44,079
they sleep into eleven, they get
up, play video games, smoke pot

672
00:50:44,199 --> 00:50:51,239
and rinse and repeat every day Robins
in other words, exactly, you know

673
00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:55,840
what the tragedy there is a wasted
life. Yes, and all I'm trying

674
00:50:55,840 --> 00:51:00,920
to do is get people to not
waste their lives. Yes, David.

675
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:04,159
My father went into the office every
day of the business that he started and

676
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:07,480
founded until he was ninety three and
died. And it was only later we

677
00:51:07,519 --> 00:51:10,280
found that he was taking money out
of the till, but still it kept

678
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:14,639
him going every day to have a
reason to go. Thank you for joining

679
00:51:14,719 --> 00:51:16,599
us. The book, the book
that you got to go to Amazon and

680
00:51:16,599 --> 00:51:22,159
get is Full Time Work and the
Meaning of Life because they're connected, David

681
00:51:22,199 --> 00:51:25,920
Monson, thank you for joining us
on the podcast today. And you know,

682
00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:29,079
if you ever change your mind and
write a book about the necessity of

683
00:51:29,119 --> 00:51:30,920
part time or something like that.
Come by and we'll talk about last and

684
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:35,239
the interview will be half as short. Though. There we go, Thanks

685
00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:37,880
for David, Thank you. The
thing you might want to do those you

686
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:42,719
know you don't want to do the
Japanese salaryman thing though, where you just

687
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:46,840
work and grind and die and the
only possible joy you have in life is

688
00:51:47,039 --> 00:51:52,239
going out somewhere and getting absolutely hammered. No, especially if you're older,

689
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:55,719
I mean, oh man, after
a night with friends and in bibing,

690
00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:59,320
you know, you don't bounce back
the next day like he used to,

691
00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:01,000
right because he so you have to
make a choice. You can either have

692
00:52:01,039 --> 00:52:07,119
a great night or a great next
day. That is until we all discovered

693
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:12,320
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probiotic. Never heard of that. Yeah,

694
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:14,440
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695
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696
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697
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698
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700
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701
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702
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710
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you. Zbiotics are sponsoring this the
Ricochet podcast. Well tell them before we

711
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:25,840
go, you know. I was
informed of this on the rundown that's passed

712
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:29,920
along to us Things we might want
to discuss. It is the most exciting

713
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:35,360
news of the year period, and
that is the Vesuvius challenge. Have you

714
00:53:35,360 --> 00:53:42,519
guys been following this? No,
Well what it is is they got these

715
00:53:43,199 --> 00:53:50,599
carbonized scrolls from the Vesuvian explosions.
Oh yes, yes, that's a go

716
00:53:50,599 --> 00:53:52,760
ahead, explain that. That's fascinating. Yes, right, So they found

717
00:53:52,800 --> 00:53:58,320
this vast library and I don't know
if it's whose it was, I mean,

718
00:53:58,320 --> 00:54:00,760
who did it belong to? Do
we find out? Was it Pliny?

719
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:04,000
It was actually Pliny's library something?
Anyway, it's a huge collection of

720
00:54:04,039 --> 00:54:08,719
scrolls and they were just turned into
carbon by the by the pyroclastic flow or

721
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:13,559
whatever it was, the buried Pompey
and ericulaneum. But they're able now to

722
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:19,239
read them with this new technology,
the MRI somehow there's a laser imaging whatever.

723
00:54:19,239 --> 00:54:24,920
They're able to figure out what each
individual letter is on this packed you

724
00:54:24,960 --> 00:54:31,199
know, broad of coal practically,
and they're finding primary sources. They're going

725
00:54:31,239 --> 00:54:35,920
to find histories, they're going to
find novels. They're able to bring back

726
00:54:35,960 --> 00:54:38,679
this library from two thousand years ago, and it's I mean, it's the

727
00:54:38,719 --> 00:54:44,280
greatest stop it is. So what
do you think? What else is there

728
00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:45,960
to say exactly? But I mean, what are you hoping they find I

729
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:52,039
know what I'm hoping they find.
Rob is hoping to find some new recipe

730
00:54:52,039 --> 00:54:58,159
for a martini, would be my
guess. But don't we have my memory

731
00:54:58,159 --> 00:55:01,840
on this is shaky, But we
know that, don't We have only a

732
00:55:01,880 --> 00:55:06,360
third or a quarter of the plays
of Euripides. We know that two thirds

733
00:55:06,400 --> 00:55:10,559
of that work has been lost.
We know that much of Plato has been

734
00:55:10,599 --> 00:55:15,760
lost. We have there are references
in Plato to conversations to work. Well,

735
00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:19,840
there's a lot that we have references
to that have been lost or I

736
00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:24,079
was listening to BBC in our Time
podcast the other day on Tiberius and the

737
00:55:24,119 --> 00:55:28,599
sources that we have on the reign
of Tiberius. There are only four or

738
00:55:28,639 --> 00:55:32,079
five sources on a rain that lasted
for decades, and those sources refer to

739
00:55:35,280 --> 00:55:37,559
bits of writing that have been lost. Some of this has to exist in

740
00:55:37,599 --> 00:55:44,079
this vast library, absolutely so,
charcoal scrolls in Pompeii. If so much

741
00:55:44,119 --> 00:55:45,800
of the stuff that we know about
the emperors is secondhand coming from people,

742
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:49,559
I mean they weren't there at the
time. They're writing about what people supposedly

743
00:55:49,599 --> 00:55:52,760
wrote at the time. If we
find other primary sources about these things.

744
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:55,480
We may have our expectations, our
knowledge up ended, and that's fantastic,

745
00:55:57,039 --> 00:56:00,079
that's great. I also want to
see I also want popular literature. I

746
00:56:00,079 --> 00:56:04,280
also want to see what the you
know, what the romance novels were like?

747
00:56:04,480 --> 00:56:07,920
The what the I mean because guys
are kind of sort of writing science

748
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:09,440
fiction in their own way in those
times from some of the stuff that we've

749
00:56:09,480 --> 00:56:13,679
been able to get. They're speculating
on civilizations and the moon and the sun

750
00:56:13,760 --> 00:56:15,599
and the rest of it, and
having conversations about that. There was a

751
00:56:15,639 --> 00:56:20,840
thriving book industry enrolled. Just because
it was scrolls doesn't mean it was books.

752
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:22,880
So yes, this is very exciting. Rob's looking, of course,

753
00:56:22,920 --> 00:56:27,719
for some sitcoms. He wants more
comedy. He wants more of the comedies.

754
00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:31,199
Right, well, who knows what
is what is Latin for? Set

755
00:56:31,280 --> 00:56:36,599
up joke? Set up joke?
Well, there was a Menander, wasn't

756
00:56:36,599 --> 00:56:39,920
he? Was it Menander? I
don't know. One of those. Very

757
00:56:39,920 --> 00:56:44,039
bad. The Roman comedies are pretty
bad, the ones we have. Yeah,

758
00:56:44,119 --> 00:56:46,440
hey, boys, listen, I
just have to ask you because it

759
00:56:46,519 --> 00:56:51,840
totally eludes me. We have the
super Bowl coming up. I'm a forty

760
00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:53,159
nine Ers fan. I have to
root for the forty nine ers, although

761
00:56:53,159 --> 00:56:59,079
I'm extremely worry where our quarterback has
turned into a couple of shaky performances in

762
00:56:59,119 --> 00:57:01,719
the last couple of games, and
Mahomes is one of the greatest quarterbacks as

763
00:57:01,719 --> 00:57:06,840
far as I can tell, who's
ever lived. Set that aside Taylor Swift?

764
00:57:07,119 --> 00:57:13,960
Oh what what? Where do we
begin to in brief explain to me

765
00:57:14,079 --> 00:57:21,360
A why she's a national phenomenon and
b how she's gotten mixed up in the

766
00:57:21,400 --> 00:57:25,679
Super Bowl presidential I don't understand,
Robot, you want to take? Do

767
00:57:25,679 --> 00:57:29,679
you want to take the appeal of
Taylor Swift or the Siah? I feel

768
00:57:29,679 --> 00:57:32,280
like it's time to wrap. There's
no finish, there's no finish, there's

769
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:35,960
no way to make me understand.
Nope, all right, we'll take this

770
00:57:36,039 --> 00:57:37,320
talk, Mike. Then, basically, she's a thirty two year old woman

771
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:40,119
who acts like a sixteen year old
and appeals to all the other unmarried thirty

772
00:57:40,159 --> 00:57:44,440
two year old women who like to
be able to believe there's sixteen and the

773
00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:47,199
whole thing about this being a sy
op to like Joe Biden's absolute complete stalking

774
00:57:47,239 --> 00:57:51,480
nonsense. And you can read about
that and why it's nonsense at ricochet dot

775
00:57:51,480 --> 00:57:54,119
com, which one of our members
did a very nice job of phill ating

776
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:58,159
the other day. So that's that. Go to ricochet dot com and of

777
00:57:58,199 --> 00:58:00,360
course patronize our sponsors, which would
be z Biotics and Shopify, and give

778
00:58:00,440 --> 00:58:05,440
us that five star review at Apple
Podcasts just to make everybody happy, and

779
00:58:05,519 --> 00:58:08,280
stay tuned. Ricochet five point zero
is coming, but from the meantime,

780
00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:13,360
we'll see you all in the comments, said Ricochet four point zero. Co

781
00:58:13,559 --> 00:58:20,920
niners Next week, Boys. Next
week, fellow Kansas City, Kansas Ricochet

782
00:58:22,599 --> 00:58:23,559
join the conversation