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Everything's there. Want to welcome everyone back to the p
kan Yona show. Thomas is here and uh it's gonna
talk a little more about the work of Werner Sombart.
How are you doing, Thomas, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for hosting me. I realized it kind of
looked like a hobo, like I didn't do anything crazy yesterday,
but it was my birthday, so I had a couple
of dram buoies. Then I ate a bunch of ice
cream and I was on like a coma. So my
birthday present of myself as I I just like chilled
the last forty hours and caught up on correspondence. I
didn't really put anything in on the manuscript, so I mean,
I I've just been being kind of a schlub.
Speaker 1: So well, I wish you happy birthday privately, but happy birthday.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no thanks? I yeah no, I was. I
wasn't fishing for praise or well wished. But I, like
I said, I I tried not to be a freaking
hobo like when I do these things, because I not
out of vanity. I just think it's a bad look.
So forgive me for this, But I did want to.
I don't want to derail our discussion from the dedicated topic.
But you know, obviously this has been a kind of
a rough week for the country, you know, owing to
the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and there's a lot of
disinformation as well as just ignorance around the man himself,
but also around the political climate. That is what I
believe facilitated is murder. You know, I don't believe it's
some specific event conspiracy of discreet actors in the Deep
State or Israel or something to whack Charlie Kirk, but
a psychological environment where this sort of thing is common,
it has been purposefully curated. And there's all these pundits
popping off as well as just internet guys and kind
of careers saying stuff like, oh, these this trans movement
is Marxist or you know, these people ascribed to this
blah blah blah ideology. They really don't. You know. The
whole thing is that there's there's a bit of a
deliberately cultivated moronism to this. I don't even mean that pejoratively,
I mean literally. You know that Tyler Robinson kid, you know,
what he supposedly was scrawling on his shelves was stuff
like take the fascist ilo will you're gay that's the
level these people are on. It's it's almost they're almost
barely sentient, you know. And when it derives from the
reason why there was such this huge emphasis on sexual
identity and sexuality is supposedly this essential moodicatharsists that have
sublimated leaves all these social pathologies. That was basically the
that was basically the primary thesis of MARCUSA okay, and
that's not accidental. Don't get me wrong. I think Marcus
actually believe that, you know, he Freud and Marx very
much informed his ideological paradigm. But the reason why sex
and this sort of pre rational instinct and the alleged
relationship of that to the essential dignity and core the
person looms so large is because that's the whole point.
The whole point is that there's this sort of pre
rational rage that can be accessed whereby for reasons and
egotism that have no rational relationship that we think of
as you know, ideological imperatives or higher reason. You know,
this is what animates these people. And that's important to
keep in mind, you know, not just for the sake
of clarity, but this isn't something it's not like we
do have some dialogue to neutralize this radicalization tendency or something.
It's sort of the it's sort of the opposite of
a substanti ideology, you know. And that's important to consider,
I think, because this is something that contributes to rendering
the conceptual landscape PEG when people refuse to accept that,
does that make any sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, and uh I suppose to Like
some people might respond to that and say, well, why
should I give a shit? These people are scum? Yeah
they are, okay, But correctly identifying the nature and character
the threat is important, you know. And like I said
before too, I know, I know some people have been
saying too that people like Sam Hyde are being disingenuous
when they claim have been like moved by the murder
of Kirk. Like, look, I was not a Charlie Kirk guy.
I think people know, they read my content, you know,
but the guy was a white man. He was a
white Christian. He was a Calvinist, you know, from right here,
like a little bit west to me. And he was
the kind of guy you wants a neighbor, you know.
Whatever his flaws and his shortcomings and his conceptual blind spots.
The guy wasn't not only was he not an enemy,
but you know, the he for better or words, he
was a symbol for white America and that kind of normalcy. Okay,
And it's really really bad that just happened, you know,
and I think people need to acknowledge that.
Speaker 1: You know, I was saying, I was saying today to
some of to some of our comrades that privately that
Charlie Kirk was like on the path, like headed towards
where we are. And the scary thing is he's thirty
one years old. A lot of people, I know, you
you bought you didn't buy into this. You discovered it
and you realize what it was at a much younger age.
But he was thirty one years old, had come a
long way in ten years, come a long way definitely
in the last two years, and there was potential in
the future that he could be the kind of leader
that would we would hang out with.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also too, I think a lot of people
don't fully realize. You know, Kirk, when he started turning
point for a practical purposes, he was a kid, he
was like nineteen years old. So Kirk gets and recently
he turned down some big donation from APAC. You know,
basically he's like, I don't want your money. And I mean,
obviously that's fed speculation by people that they said to
do is new with his murder. I don't believe that.
But the point being, he's some teenage kid, you know,
he's uh, all these important and powerful people say hey,
we like what you're doing. We want to fund your pack,
you know, I mean, what's he gonna say, like, you know, oh,
you know, go after yourself because you're a Jew, and
you know, I've got to take a stand agains Zionism. Like,
don't get me wrong, Like I am not being flippant,
but most teenage kids in that position, they're not gonna
be thinking that way, especially not some guy who grew
up in Allington Heights, you know, goes to church, goes
in a two parent home. You know, he knows something's wrong,
but he's not exactly immersing himself on esotery political theory,
and he's not an outlaw. Like this isn't a flex
but I've always been an outlaw. Okay, I don't need to.
I'm not saying that people should emulate that or that
makes me better, smarter, like more cunning than anybody. But
when you've always been on the outside, it's easier to
accept some of these realities. Okay, so you got to
consider that too. But point being, Yeah, as Kirk was maturing,
as his brand developed its own kind of momentum, it
was clear that he was discriminating in who he was
willing to take money from, you know, because obviously that
money comes with a price when you're expected to be
a mouthpiece. And you know, so, yeah, I I I mean,
people can, people can think whatever they want on this.
I'm not saying you've got it. I'm not saying that
if you didn't care about Charlie Kirk, or if you
found his viewpoints to be trivial or or or corrosive
to you know that the advancement of a revolutionary perative,
saying you gotta pretend to like him or something. I'm
I'm saying I don't think Hyde was lying or do
what we're saying this for clout and in my own case,
I mean, I'm a nobody, but I I'm not. This
is why I made the statement I did about his murder.
There there's nothing cool about it. And I mean it's
not cool if anybody's murdered and it's got to be done,
it's got to be done, and you should be a
man about it. But that still doesn't make it cool.
But in this case, not only is it not cool,
it was a very tragic thing and a very horrible thing.
But I just wanted to get that out there. And yeah,
the but the main thrust is, like I said, the
sociological phenomenon and of these these to disturb people like
this Robinson guy. It's not it's not a traditional process
of radicalization. You know, don't compare these people to the
kinds of guys who join ISIS and become mujha heat.
They're not anything like that. It's way more banal. It's
way more like literally moronic. It's way more infantile. And
that's the whole point, you know. It's a detonation strategy.
It's not the regime saying we've got to curate cadres
of people who have this deep ideological vision of how
things should develop. It's saying, let's how do we make
human torpedoes? That's it, you know, And this kind of
I mean, you see this too, and I promise I'll
get into the substance of what of the of the top?
Speaker 1: And I want to hit you at a question before
before Okay, well, I guess what what I would ask
is what someone would ask is when you see, you know,
forty thousand people that they've taken information on that they're
targeting for some kind of retribution. About celebrating his death.
I mean, look, literally millions of people celebrated his death,
and not only millions of people, but like people on
the news, talking heads, people who have audiences that are
hundreds of thousands of people and millions of people. Even
what does that say about where we are? What does
that say about what we should be doing? You know,
considering that you know the odds that this you know,
this government, this this regime is going to do something
about cracking down on these people, what should we be doing.
Speaker 2: The same thing we've been doing. I mean, these people
expose themselves and they do this kind of stuff, and
there regimes weird reaction to it. Like on the one hand,
you got guys like pritzkerr and like Bill Mocker who
are obviously happy that Kirk is dead, but they're over
selling this kind of pretend somberness. Okay, that's them playing
their hand. And these talking heads too, they don't even
really know who Chilly Kirk is. They just think he's
something like Donald Trump too or something like you can
tell by the way they talk about him. They've never
watched his content, you know, because again he was a
very mainstream guy. But he I've heard some somewhat these
fools are saying is obvious. They've never listened to his
debates or listened to his talks. They got just because
it's conceptually off base, like what they claim he thought
or said. You know, they're saying somebody was saying he's
like a white nationalist. Other people are claiming he's some
like trad Catholic type guy like it's obvious they don't
or just some like super Trump mega supporter, and like,
don't get me wrong, he very much was a Trump shill.
But you know, he also was talking about the Epstein
thing and saying that you know, the like literally saying
the d L is anti white. Okay, So it's it's
more nuanced than that. And that's also why, uh, you know,
the regime and its adjacent elements curating these kinds of
this kind of political homicide. And then like I said,
it's uh, the actors within the regime pretending this to
some somber moments. That's part of the whole point. So
like these fools like Seal clapping, like they're they don't
get it. They're they're they're selling the regime narrative wrong,
and that's one of the reasons they're being punished because
it's like, what are you doing, fucking idiots? You know,
like that's not there's like a tone definis there. But
that's part of the thing. That's that's part of the whole
narrative too, because I've made this point again and again
and recently, uh i I I dressed down somebody for it.
And like in real life, there's this Greek chorus of
like self styled intellectuals and academic types and they love
to they love this cliche saying, well, everybody knows fascists
are anti intellectual. No, the cliche, even among the ops
of the right, is you're a bunch of disturbed freaks
who spend all your time with esoteric ideologies and artistic
movements that nobody cares about because you know, you think
that ideology Trump's human dignity. Hitler was literally an artist. Okay,
the NFDAP was populated by guys who sat around reading
Dietrich Eckart. Like in contrast, the left are people like,
my body, my choice, what do I do with my
penis is the most important thing in the world. You know,
you're a racist. It's it's literally dumb, dumb, moron bumper
sticker stuff, you know, hedonic narcissism passed off as some
kind of ideology. It is literally the definition of anti intellectualism,
you know, and that's being exposed, like people are realizing,
among other things, there's like nothing to this. It's Charlie
Kirk made me mad because I like this kind of
pornography and he said that's bad. Or I don't go
to church. I have no ethnic background, I have no culture.
You know. To me, life is sex and buying stuff.
And he said women should get pregnant. It's my body.
Fuck him. It's literally on that level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when they find one of these people, when they
finally find wherever they've been nesting, they don't find Graham
she they don't.
Speaker 2: Find Harry Potter in pornography.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there. It's so funny that people think that
they're like, oh, they were they went to college, and
they wouldn't you know. I saw a leftist saying, oh
that he went to college, he wouldn't you know in
college he would have learned I'm like, what what would
he have learned in college?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Reading reading some book by some lady from North
Africa who's a self identified radical lesbian talking about the
Taliban is mean, so like that that means that he's
he's educated. But I mean it's like the I mean
it's also too I mean, I'm old enough, you know,
I'm almost fifty years old. I spent my youth debating
guy who were like actual maoists, you know, who like
threw Molotov cocktails in the sixties because they were insane.
But they also were very smart people, and being in
Chicago that was a ground zero for that kind of stuff.
So I'd run into these guys, you know, like when
Loyola would have some symposium for political theory students and
there'd be some crazy Jewish guy University of Chicago, you know,
trying to dress down me and the other guys he
identified as right wing. All right, these guys were incredibly
bad people, but they were also very smart, and all
they did was sit around when they weren't raising hell,
they were sitting around reading hagel And and reading you know,
Dusk Capitol, and they had this whole They had a
very nuanced worldview which was premised completely onfallacious epistemic priors.
But they weren't morons whose life evolved around their keenness,
who had the mentality of a retarded baby and saying
you should die because you said bad word. I mean
that that's the difference. You know. It's like where where
is this left wing intellectualism? Like some white trash girl
who was like in college learned that men are trying
to make her get pregnant so she's outraged. Or some guy,
some guy who decided he's like a sports team mascot,
transsexual who hates conservatives and who oho, well you're gay. Yeah, okay, real, real, real,
real weighty stuff there.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean yeah. It was one of those
things that I didn't think it would, you know, affect
me something like that. And I was actually had just
finished recording with doctor Matthew Raphael Johnson, and we had
just cut the recording and his wife jumped in the
room and was like Charlie Kirk got shot and we're
both like what, wow.
Speaker 2: I thought this a friend of mine. He was on
the road like one of the fellas, you know, he
was passed with the Chicago So I told him at dinner.
We hung out and then like I bad him farewell
like that Tuesday, and then uh, on Wednesday, he texted
me and he's like, Charlie Kirk got shot. Like I
thought he was talking about some guy. I'm like, who's
Charlie Kirk. I mean, I knew about themous Charlie Kirk.
I thought I thought he meant like some dude we know,
and I'm like who He's like, no, you know, Charlie Kirk.
Turning point. I'm like I'm like, no, way, like why
and why did somebody shoot him? And then like I'm
like wow, that's yeah. It was surreal, man, you know.
Speaker 1: Like you know, it really points to the fact that,
I mean, this is this is what they think is radical.
They think what Charlie was out there to. I mean,
Charlie was willing to have conversations with anybody, well even
the people were not willing to have conversations with everybody.
Speaker 2: No, No, that's why. I mean, obviously he was looking
ahead dude, I think I think, hey, he continued on
this trajectory. I think he viru well could have become president.
And media is where you come up through these days. Okay,
and he yeah, but the but I don't know, Like
I said, these people are who are seal clapping over
his murder that I don't even think they ever consumed
his content. I mean, even like the Trump arrangement syndrome,
people they say really weird things that it tells me
like the it's just it's just like a it's like
an our. I mean, I realize in metaphor is overstated,
but it's like in the movie version where Goldstein's on
the screen and these peoples go berserk, like this one
will leaves like throwing your shoes. This one guy is
like shaking because he's like flying into the house title rage,
Like you can't even hear what Goldstein's saying. It's just
like there's Goldstein's like he's responsible for, you know, the
reason why you can't afford a gain on of milk,
Like he's he's why you know you've gotta take cover
from missile attacks in the city. He's why you know
you're you don't have good healthcare or whatever like it
or whatever these people prioritize, like TDR TDS is the
same thing. It has nothing to do with Trump himself.
Maybe maybe Trump's a piece of shit. Maybe he's not.
I don't think a highly Donald Trump, but it's some
he's some stand in for that, the that the curated
rage objects within these people's pre rational mind, you know,
And I mean, frankly, no American president is really that
important these days. You've got something wrong with you if
you're becoming literally enraged at a political figure, especially Trump.
He's the guys. The guy's a game show host, you know,
quite literally, you know, Like I his campaign was significant
for what it represented. And I'm not saying he's a trivial
figure in the historical process because he's not. Okay, And
a lot of time guys aren't particularly good people or
or deep thinkers or people who exhibit great moral fortitude
do play significant role in this orgal process. He's one
of those people. I'm not saying he's not. But if he's,
if he's literally triggering rage within you, you've got something wrong
with you. It has nothing to do with him. It
has to do with a curated response and a psychological
environment where people have this abject need to externalize this
negative emotional energy almost almost like expelling body fluids, like
I'm not kidding, And that's cultivated this kind of pressure
cooker emotional uh and psychic violence that that people are
subjected to day and day out, and that they that
that has a poisoning effect on their sensibilities and emotional intelligence.
But also this this this, this this psychotic rage that's curated.
You know, it's all part of the same process. And
it makes no rational sense to respond that way to
some political figure. I remember, it's probably way inn in
Yahoo and without without saying dumb things, they're gonna get
me a it from the police or something. I don't
think highly of mister net and Yahoo and I I
wouldn't be sad if something bad happened to him, Okay,
but when I see his face on TV, I don't
go berserk. Okay, I don't. I don't. I don't find
a rageous at the mention of his name. You know. Uh,
So there's we're talking about something that really has nothing
to do with with with with ideological commitments or political
sympities as we know it. But yeah, we get into
the subject matter in a minute. I just want to go.
I thought that was important.
Speaker 1: The best people like yah who deserve an eye roll
just like uh again.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and it's and it's also I mean, uh, I mean,
don't get me wrong. I I I feel very strongly
about the fortunes of our people and those and our
political allies. And I know that some people don't understand that,
and that makes them mad. I mean, I don't care
about that. But you know, I'm not saying you should
be some totally dispassionate robot or something, but you know
the but but this kind of targeted rage at public
official dum is not rational. Now. Plus, these people don't
have skin in the game, man, I mean, that's the
whole point. It's it's pure ego. It's pure narcissism. You know,
you're you're in a rage at Donald Trump because you
feel he hasn't validated what you do with your penis enough.
You know, you're he said bad words. He's not uh,
he's not genuineflecting before you know that before the corpse
at George Floyd adequately, I mean, like he's not. Trump
didn't rape your mother, he didn't burn down your church.
He's not he's not. Uh, he's not commanding a battalion
of of uh of of of you know, volunteers were
ethnically cleansing your village. You know, you're literally enraged because
he transgressed some matter of ego oftener relating to sexuality
or or some parapheel you or something you identify as
like some core part of yourself, and that that enrages you.
I mean, it's like how I'm any normal adult would
be embarrassed at the prospect of appearing that way in
the eyes of others. You know. It's it's it's it's
quite literally a kind of mass mental illness, you know.
And that's that's important to keep in mind. And that's
also why it's important. Don't these people don't weren't engaging
with you know, they they don't have a position that
deserves a hearing or anything like that, you know. I mean,
in contrast some of our enemies, do you know, these
people do not. They're they're the scum of the earth.
And uh, like I said, they're they're literally functioning on
the level of monkeys if monkeys could talk, that's what
they'd be. Without the malice. I don't. I don't think.
I don't think monkeys are malicious like that. What you know?
Otherwise I stand by it all right when jumping, Yeah,
I think, uh, I think. Last time I was discussing, uh,
Wagner's law. Yeah, I realized, I realized the pronounced Wagner.
But you know, with an American academic nomenclature, it's it's
it's Wagner off Adolf Wagner, it off Wagner, you know,
and good stuff on smaller we're probably the most relevant
German economists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and
like Schumpeter, a lot of Sombart's work product was dedicated
to discussing the relationship between state activity, public expenditures, national
income and GDP. You know, increasing state activity and public
expenditure related to or facilitating that activity increases as national
income arises. That's Wagner's law. The shoppinger made the same
point in Capitalism, Socialism, and democracy, and this appears to
be the case. Like I said, if you read mainstream
economics textbooks, basically Milton Friedman adjacent stuff and most of
the what's considered the essential canon of neoliberal theory it'll
say that the jury is out in Wagner's law. There
is a lot of empirical data substantiated, particularly this one
broad based study I think I mentioned from eighteen ninety
one to nineteen fifty one approximately. The focus was on
the United Kingdom, but there was a lot of parallel
data curated about the United States from the Guildy John
Ward and this this seems to be the case, Okay,
But people can argue. If people in the comments want
to argue about that, that's fine, And I'd be willing
to engage anybody who wants to on a debate of
Wagner's law, but I don't want to get into that
right now. But there's a sociological aspect here that can't
be denied. Okay. The Wagoner's law, like all these principles
that are discussed in causative terms leading to socialism, and
it's closely tied to industrialization, the development of an industrial economy.
It's going to be accompanied by an increase here of
public expenditure and gross national product. There's never an instance
where that didn't happen. Okay. It changes people's conceptual horizon
of economics, as well as the role of the state. Okay,
And that's one of the reasons why, you know, people
make a lot of especially not just on Mesians. And
I know I bring up on Mesians a lot as
people representing a counterpoint. I don't want people to think
I'm strong manning them on Meesians or something, but it's
relevant to this discussion, especially a lot abou Mesians as
well as free market types like neoliberal free market advocates.
They like to claim that people like Schumpeter at Bernard
Sombart were social or people like Schumpeter and people like
James Burnham like, oh, they were these hardline socialists. You
can't invoke them in discussing capitalist economics because they've got
conceptual biases. They're not understanding everybody with some kind of
interventionist in this era, you know. And to be fair, Sombart,
like Schumpeter, he wasn't saying this is a good or
a bad thing, Don't get me wrong. He had a
Spanglarian view of the German model of socialism. That's why
he qualified it by talking about German socialism, which was
a stand in terminology really for what Spaniel called ethical
socialism or Prussian socialism. But this was a structural reality, okay.
And there were there were there were no parties in
Western Europe that didn't have some socialist aspect and structural
terms to their program, okay. And even in America, and
we'll get to this, a lot of the sources of
tension that Somber predicted in the American situation, and you know,
the first years of the twentieth century, these things were
very much taken up by the New Dealers, okay, and
by Huey Long and by others. And a lot of
the however, performative of a lot of the New Deal
program was and in macroroconomic terms, I think a lot
of these initiatives actually prolonged the depression. You know, I
agree with Murray Rothbart in that regard. But that didn't matter.
It was a matter of perception, okay. And the fact
of the matter is, even the doctrinally anti socialist America
in the era, you know, the first half of the
twentieth century, this was a defining characteristic of electoral politics, okay.
So it can't be denied. And Wagner's law, which was
accepted essentially in totality by Sombart, was that there's there's
basically three causes of this phenomena and the trajectory of
political economy and industrialized states. There's sociopolitical causes, there's truly
economic causes, and there's there's physical causes. So what are
we talking about sociopolitical We're talking about as state social
functions expand over time, you know, whether we're talking about
old age pensions, a tax regime you know, that is
dedicated in comparatively disproportionate terms relative to previous epochs, towards
things like military readiness, you know, responses to natural disasters,
you know, be them of a fiscal in market nature
or of you know, like a literal natural disaster. You know,
that plays into the equation economic. We're talking about scientific
and technological advances that increasingly become incorporated into the repertoire
of you know, available resources at the state's disposal, which
then in turn can be said correctly or not, or
accurately or not to eliminate uncertainties and thus promote efficiency
in state intervention, rather than the contrary, which obviously you know,
efficient allocation at capital and the inability of the state
or any public actor to predict these things, you know,
which are spontaneously emergent variables at the macro level in economics,
you know, that's that's obviously an issue. And the physical
state of the government's ability to intervene, fund and otherwise
maintain this well for apparatus, you know, the sub totally
government debt, expenditures, interest rates, things like that, the fixed
capital and how these things can be utilized to realize
these things. All that plays that obviously to the physical aspect.
And like I said, the empirical evidence has been mixed.
You know, the most persuasive that study that I cited
it was I can't remember who commissioned it. I either
can't remember or I never conclusively identified what institution was
emergent from. But Alan T. Peacock and Jack Weisman were
credited with that with that project. The you know, and
there's also of major one of the reasons why that
aforementioned study was commissioned related to Wagner's law, is a
concept in political economy called the displacement effect, and it's
almost axiomatically related to warfare and national mobilization. The displacement
effect refers to when an earlier and lower tax and
expenditure levels are going to punctuate in a sudden way,
replaced by new and higher budgetary expenditures and allocations. You
know that those tend to remain owing to people becoming
sociologically habituated, but also outlays of a way of becoming permanent.
Because there's not at scale of a national government with
all these attendant sort of lesser bureaucracies serving it in
a top down way, there tends to not be an
expedited way to call these things. You know, that's obviously
that was I mean, Elon mustn't phrase it that way,
but that was the core theory behind something like Doge
wasn't misguided, how I mean, we can argue over whether
those kind of initiatives from the Reagan or Honor have
been correctly implemented or not, but it's inarguable the displacement
effected and arguable. Okay, I don't see how anybody could
say otherwise. But you know that's one example too, Frank,
we have Sombart and Wagner having it enduring relevance because
they were really the first to take on these issues
in a in a consistent way where you know, there
was a modeling methodology that would be accepted in the
present as as legitimate, you know, and and appropriately rigorous
and falsifiable. Interestingly, I mean in the anglosphere, not just
in America, but throughout the English speaking world. Sombart's book
on America, Why is there No Socialism in the United States?
That's his most famous tomay. But his magnum opus was
their modern capitalismuss modern capitalism and the term late capitalism.
It was I can't remember I mentioned this the other week,
but it was quite literally coined by Schombart because he
divided capitalist development within his conceptual paradigm into four discrete
stages or phases of development, you know, the early siteration
being feudalism, which develops into proto capitalism as productive means
become you know, applied to value added manufacturers rather than
agrarian products exclusively or near exclusively. Then too, you know,
early proto or early capitalism gives way to high capitalism,
what we think of as the today age here in America.
And then finally late capitalism, you know, and in the
post World War One era that many people identified nineteen
eighteen is the onset of late capitalism, you know, and
that that resonated with a lot of people. But I
find that very interesting. There's a lot of schan Bart concepts,
even people who identify as Marxists or I mean actual
Marxist I don't mean. I don't mean Berkeley goofs or
Internet people or something. I mean I mean guys like
Jackson Hinkel and some of these people who identify as
world systems theory proponents, you know, Emmanuel Valler skiing kind
of stuff. Late capitalism is not just a term, but
a concept that frames their conceptual paradigm. I mean, I
know a lot of them don't realize it's a Werner
Sombart concept. They think it's a they think it's a
Marxian concept. But that's that's significant, you know, And that's
also one of the reasons why congruous with Wagner's law,
the displacement effect, the sociological inputs that shape these proximate causes,
you know. We that's this is why a lot of
people don't understand that state intervention or this odd interdependence
between public officialdom and regulatory mechanisms and uh, you know,
private capital. The line has become totally blurred. It's not
just cronyism, it's not just state capitalism. It's not just
some variant of you know what they called in the
Japanese system, picking winners and losers. All those things are
part of it. But structurally, you know, if there's a
deliberate effort to maintain a discrete kind of barrier between
these two locale of power, that's not realistic, you know.
And this is why Burnham I mean, obviously Burnham was
a sociologist, not an economist, but modern political economy is
axiomatically sociological. And when Burnham was talking about the managerial state,
that's got implication. That's got profound implications for political economy, okay,
And so it's neither here nor there whether that's a
good or a bad thing. It's a I mean, yeah,
obviously it's well placed to talk about insidious aspects of
modern government. But this idea that there's some alternative mechanism
where the modern state would be structured differently, that's not realistic.
And it's it's also I mean, yeah, we'll all be
you and I and everybody watching this right now will
be dust by the time this comes to full fruition.
But as is the subject and part of my manuscript
I'm working on now, and as I'm always saying, and
I'm sure people are sick of it, the West failing state,
and maybe we're probably the post West Failian state. That
entire system is ceasing to exist. It will not exist
in two three hundred years. Okay, So the problem if
you're a Hegelian is at least or if you've got
a tolerance from on timelines that you will not live
to see, because I would hope everybody does. Who's you know,
engaging with this material? The problem is going to take
care of itself. You don't need some reform package to
dismantle the managerial state anymore. They need to plot to
murder a man who's dying of ternal cancer.
Speaker 1: You know, could it let me? I've always wanted to
ask you when you mentioned that, could technology hasten that end?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Technology is always the wild card input. You know,
future shocks a real thing, and I think, I mean
people don't realize it. I think because obviously the twentieth century,
the future shock was quite a bit more disruptive and punctuated.
I mean literally, in the twentieth century, you literally had
guys who spent their childhood, you know, growing up in
a house at off I didn't even have an indoor bathroom,
and people got by you know, you know, horse drawn carriages,
and by the time they were not even all that elderly,
there was jet airplanes that you know, was the preferred
mode of travel. That's totally insane. Nothing like that's happened
in the twenty first century. But the information revolution, and
it has changed everything. And that's having a massive psychological
impact at scale, and that's directing political economy in all
kinds of ways. And the most critical thing and not
I don't know if it's written about this, even among
guys who are way smarter than me and deal in
macroagonomic analysis for a living, even guys who are technology experts,
you know, who understand macrogonomics and also understand high finance,
the degree to which uncertainties can be eliminated in terms
of market events, and to the second informational awareness has
eliminated the potential for panics, you know, like in nineteen
eighty seven for example, that is huge. So you have
this market, you know, and for the record too, I
mean just as an a sud and this doesn't mean
shilling with Trump, but it's interesting how markets just like
continue to boom when suppose he terroriffs are gonna like
make us all poor and starving and having to eat
dirt or something. But you know, the degree to which
I mean, don't get me wrong, like the growth can't
go on forever. I'm not saying that, but the degree
to which uncertainties have been eliminated and which in turn
not only allow for efficient delocation a capital in a
way that's never before seen, which in turn obviously facilitates
profitability and plenty, but also it means, you know, panics
born of aggregate uncertainties. That's a thing of the past,
and that changes everything, and that continues to change everything,
you know. And I mean that's just one example. Okay,
So yeah, I don't claim to be an auger or anything,
but these sorts of historical features, the very bare bones
historical features of humans and how they behave politically, and
and you know, based on the precedent of the preceding
you know, ten centuries, if we want to use this
Spanglarian timeline of you know, the West is a coherent
culture for being emerging around one thousand AD. Based on
all of those things, based more approximately on the present
of the twentieth century globalism is replacing the post was
failing in order in a way that's comparatively rapid. And
this will be fully realized within a couple of centuries
in my opinion, maybe more like three centuries, but I
think it'll probably happen in about two. And yeah, obviously
there's some sort of punctuated event, whether it's like a
toue natural disaster or something, or whether it's some sort
of game changing technological innovation or neither, but something that
for whatever reason is the ability to impact you know,
either the availability of essential commodities that fuel the economy,
the number of which you are increasing too, I mean
things are Yeah, there's a great that that's that's the
part of the dichotomy of economic development. You know. Efficiency,
It's like you can make okay, you can get like
more power out of like a four cylinder engine now
than like you used to get out of like a
top of the line va. It's insane, you know, like
you want of horsepower you can squeez out of the
add only to more efficient engineering, you know. And obviously
you know the switch to electric and stuff is you know, sparing.
You know that the need for petroleum. But there's this
variacious need for other commodities and the need to exploit
resources and greater depth and at greater scale to facilitate
these things. That's just inevitable, you know. So it's uh.
But at the same time, you know, and I'm not
I'm not some I'm not some neoliberal economists, as I mean,
I think anybody knows that I'm I'm certainly not somebody
who has some abiding faith in the experts to model
solutions everything you know, in any endeavor or subject area.
But I do believe, and don't get me wrong, modeling
is not some end all be all in economics, but
there is a place for it in some in terms
of devising some predictive metrics, and I that makes it
easier to negotiate a true crisis than before, you know.
But again, I don't something like, uh, the Great Depression
isn't possible anymore. That doesn't mean there couldn't be some
utterly catastrophic event, you know. And I think a shortage economy,
especially in and some places on this planet where logistical
structures are tenuous at best and are susceptible to break down,
that's gonna become a reality in a way that people
aren't really used to in the developed world, you know,
but I there's not gonna be and there could be
some catastrophic political event, you know. Uh, I mean obviously
everything changes within the globalst paradigm because you're not talking
about states facing off at scale and all that entails.
But there could absolutely be some catastrophic political event of
a war and peace kind of nature that causes some
huge disaster, you know, like I don't know even if
I don't see this happening, but it's not impossible. Let's
say there was some sort of mass escalation in you know,
the and you know, in the border in the no
manage land between India and Pakistan or something, and there's
some sort of there's some sort of substantial nuclear exchange,
you know, and uh, like forty million people are wiped out,
and uh there's a big chunk of the subcommunity it's
now a radiated wasteland that would totally fuck everything up,
you know, like make a mistake. And again I don't
see that happening, and you can ember write something like
that off, but you know, there's not There's not gonna
be some catastrophic market event like the Great Depression and
where you know, in one day, all this uh, all
this fluid capital is just wiped out, and you know
there's uh, this kind of top down uncertainty as the
crisis is underway. I mean that that's not possible anymore.
And unless somehow, you know, the temporary communication grid just
suddenly got wiped out. I mean, that's an interesting counterfactual too.
I promise, I'll I'll stop this derailment in a second.
But you know, in the late in the latest, in
the final phase of the Cold War, it was a
foregone conclusion of sec nor ed and and and the
Pentagon and and war planners or guys who would gain
scenarios like Thomas Schilling that if the Soviets launched a
bolt on the Blue AsSalt, the the first SELA would
be a submarine launched ballistic missile, a depressed depressed trajectory
which wouldn't trigger early warning, and it'd be air burst
and the e MP would basically blind the East coast
and knock out early warning and telecom, you know, and
then presumably you can saturate the target area with with
uh with nuclear strikes and you know, when one fell
swoop and and essentially knock out the kind of the
United States, the ability to blind the kind of global
communications grid you could, uh, you could really food bar
the world economy that way if days went by and
they couldn't get it back online. I'm sure there's backup systems.
I'm sure there's terrestrial backup systems that I don't understand
if I'm not an engineer or a tech guy, but
that that that wouldn't mitigate if you truly, if if
you truly sabotage the ability of you know, America to
communicate with Europe and Asia and the Near East and
vice versa for for say, like a week. You know,
you could like that and of itself would be bad,
but I mean, you know, it wouldn't be catastropic, but
within that operational environment, you could really mess a lot
of things up. And uh, that's something that's not often
talked about. I mean maybe in part because nobody wants
to give anybody ideas, but I you know, I don't,
I don't. That's that's definitely not impossible, man. You know,
it's definitely not just like info wars kind of stuff.
But but failing something like that, there's there's not gonna
be just some spontaneous market collapse, you know, and I stay,
I'll die in that hill. And I know some people
claim that that's you know, not thought out, but I'm
can assure you what it is thought out. But in
any event, you know, the uh And for context too,
Sono Art was viewed in his day and even a
bit beyond is being radically left wing, and he was
considered to be something of a social activist as regards
the fortunes of working people. You know that he that
that that, you know, and he made these things to priority,
you know, and he in his youth when he h
you know, he started out at the University of Bresla,
which at the time was considered somewhat of not so
much a lesser institution. It was kind of out of
the way. It didn't have the same kind of prestige
behind it. But he made a lot of waves with
even his early work products. And at that time he
couldn't be called an orthodox Marxist because he was too
committed to a true Hegelian perspective. But he did at
the very beginning of his career I identify as a
Marxian economist. You know. He quickly stepped back from that
and his more mature works, and then ultimately he broke
all together, saying, you know, Marx made fundamental errors on
critical points of importance, you know, but he getting into
the getting into the subject matter that I intended to
why there is no socialism in the United States. It's
really interesting because fairly early on in the book he
takes on Weber's theory head on, you know, and he says,
conventional wisdom is that the Anglo Saxon race is uniquely
averse to socialism, and even the proletariat within Anglophone societies,
and particularly ones founded by where the majority of the
founding stock was, you know, the center Protestant and culture.
That the the individualism of these people and their hostility
to central planning, you know, defeats any prospect of a
nascent socialism emerging. Sombart didn't accept that the first. He said,
you know, there's he said, if you look at the
history at England particularly, you know, in the eighteen thirties
and eighteen forties, there was a strongly socialist flavor and
everything that was happening there, and that continued to the
then present, you know, it was the early twentieth century,
you know, and by the late nineteenth century in America,
the urban proletariat was overwhelmingly German Irish in the big cities,
I mean, you know, Slavic Italian. I think the Dad
or that Sombart sites, you know. I think the the
urban American population of around the turn of the twentieth century,
I think only about seven percent of people were Anglophone.
You know. They were either Protestant English speakers of you know,
an Anglo or Anglo Irish or Anglo Scottish heritage, or
immigrants from England to Scotland and Northern Ireland. But they
couldn't be said to have the numbers on the ground
to be having this positive effect, you know, and especially
in places like Chicago or Philly or New York City.
It wasn't a melting pot at all. It was, you know,
communities and neighborhoods divided by eth those you know there
were It's not as if these people were somehow assimilated
into some Anglo Saxon the center Protestant mode of culture.
I mean, I don't think that. I don't think is
really possible anyway that that's a that that's a that
that's a twentieth century kind of mythos, specific mythos. But
you know, there's that there's complexities of a sociological nature
that Sombartam identified ass as the as the psychological basis
and resistance to socialism. And there's a huge structural factor
too that is interrelated to that. Some are made the
point that, uh, public life in America is extraordinarily complicated,
the size of the USA, the regularity of elections, the
way federalism operates with local political concerns. He said that
the reason why political machines emerged to advance policy initiatives
is because otherwise there's no reasonable way even front informed
citizen to you know, to participate in the process in
a way that advances a policy initiative. And even people
who organize into what could constan do to a political
action committee and have capital behind them, you know, you
essentially need a political machine to organize policy across dozens
of offices, you know, some of which are going to
be abjectly hostile to each other during election season, even
if they're on the same party ticket for you know,
budgetary reasons, or for reasons of you know, the duties
they owe to lobbyists or bankrolling the campaign so he
said that single member districts, coupled with complexity, coupled with
the regularity of elections, this essentially makes it inevitable that
political machines are going to develop, okay, and the probability
of some political machine taking on an overtly socialist platform
at odds with the interest of you know, the industrial
patrons that that are bank rolling the machine. There's no
chance of that happening, you know. But also he made
the point that in America, even even working people, you know,
true proletarians. He said that if you're paid living wage
in America, you can essentially partake of the same stuff
that a rich man does. I mean within reason, you know,
not somebody that are Andrew Carnegie. But you know, he's like,
there's not the same relationship between producers and employees in
America that there is in Europe, you know. And in Europe,
you know, he said, working people not only weren't respected,
but the familiar forms of feudalism were taken on really
by the new capitalist delete but it wasn't templed by
nove less oblige. But at the same time, one thing
that was retained was this frankly oppressive sensibility, whereby workers
were expected to maintain the distinctions between themselves and their
social betters. You know something that's really interesting to me,
and this might seem like a peculiar example, but it's illustrative.
You ever wondered why the Swiss guards, you know, guard
the Pope, they wear these really wild harlequin outfits. Do
you know why that is? I don't, okay. Traditionally in Europe,
during throughout the feudal era, there was what's called sumptuary laws.
If you were a peasant, you could only dressed a
certain kind of way, you can only wear certain colors,
you couldn't bear arms, you couldn't like carry a sword
or a blade on you, and there were certain articles
of clothing that marked out, you know, lesser nobility, greater nobility,
you know, knights, what have you. The people who eventually
these laws just kind of faded, you know, as as
the modern age set in in earnest But during the
Thirty Years War and the Swiss Guards, they traced their
heritage of the Thirty Years War because the Swiss produced
the best mercenaries. If you were a man under our
arms in the Thirty Years War, it was almost certain
you were going to die. And also there had to
be incentives to join up and basically serve as a
mercenary because privateers were the core of infantry in the
Thirty Years War. You know, like some duke or some
barren raising a battalion or whatever, you were exempt from
the sumptuary laws. So thirty Years wore mercenaries. They basically
were like they dressed like mob guys, you know, like
y Accusa for the day. They were like really wild
loud clothes basically to mark themselves out and because they could,
you know, so the Swiss guards took to wear in
these crazy harlequin outfits and that kind of became their trademark.
You know. So the guys guarding the pope they still
like wear those kinds of clothes. Like those guys are badasses.
They'll like tear you apart if you like make you
don't make fun of them and be like you're just
I hope nobody would do it anyway, because that kind
of you know, guys in that role as their respect.
Speaker 1: But you know that I like that they carry MP five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, they're they're just cool. I think I
read this whole I read this whole thing on them
because they became I think it was when Ram Singer
became the pope. He was an interesting guy, you know,
and uh I started reading about the Swiss Guards and
like it's its whole interesting thing. But uh, like the
Vatican City is interesting, like what goes on in there,
Like I just think it's cool. There's because like it's
healing to me because I'm I'm I'm this you know,
kind of anglophone, Midwestern frod type the like. And any event,
that's just one example whereby these distinctions of a hedonic
and very very personal nature were maintained to distinguish between
class and in Europe this created real dysfunction as people
tried to sustain that system for among other reasons, as
a control mechanism to mitigate the potential for a radical
consciousness emerging the proletariat. But this led to really bad outcomes.
But the you know, in America, obviously that wasn't an issue.
So and people wouldn't begrudge you having money like they
view had it. I mean, frankly, like the in america's
good to have money, you know. Yeah, there's like nby
and stuff and some ugly sociological tendencies that were kind
of ingrain in America, but that I was gonna look
at a working guy who's doing well, who's like getting
paid and being smart with his money, who buys nice stuff,
and it's gonna be like, you know that that's out
of order, Like you shouldn't be doing that, you know, obviously,
you know, but that's yeah, I guess we're coming up
in the hour. I'll uh three, what's that? Do it?
Speaker 1: Part three?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I And I promise, well, well, I didn't mean
to take up so much time on that sort of
ancillery stuff, and I thought it was important. But we'll
we'll wrap up somber in the next episode and we'll
get into the Frankfurt School and some of these things
that Graham's and a Dorno who you know. I think
a lot of people read stuff like Buchanan's Death of
the West It was Time Me Wrong. That's a good book,
but they develop kind of an oversimplified view of the
Frankfurt School and a lot of these post Marxist radicallydeologies,
and they paid all sorts of tendencies with the broad
brush of cultural Marxism, and that's not conceptually accurate. So
we'll get into that and again I I I apologize
if I took too much time on discussing the you know,
the the tragedy of last week and stuff. I just thought, uh,
it should be acknowledged.
Speaker 1: No, I think people, uh, people want to hear exactly
what you have to say about it, because yeah, I
mean it affected it affected me differently and I thought
it would so yeah. But anyway, give your substack and
your your website will get out of here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I Uh, the best place to find my content's
on substick. It's real Thomas seven seven seven dot substick
dot com. My website's number seven each one me as
seven seven seven dot com. And on social media for
the time being, We'll see how long that lasts because
they love the censor me. But you know, you can
you can find my you can find my Twitter, my
ex from substack, on my Instagram. I mean, I'm a
lot of places, but the best place to find, you know,
my dedicated content like my long form stuff and the
podcast and other things is on substack. So please visit
there and engage, you know, we gotta. We've also got
a pretty active check community there too, you know, and
if you're if you're one of us. You're mother, welcome,
thank you.
Speaker 1: Tom said that next time.
Speaker 2: H m hm