Speaker 1: So we're getting good.
Speaker 2: We gotta tell our audience we're actually this recording that
Speaker 2: you're hearing was recorded seven days in your past. So
Speaker 2: for us, about an hour ago the Pope got announced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and American.
Speaker 2: I think they probably just picked an American so that
Speaker 2: GD wouldn't kill him.
Speaker 3: I also read a tweet online that it's the Vatican
Speaker 3: strategy to avoid tariffs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, first American, first American Pope.
Speaker 3: I did like maybe two weeks ago, reading an article
Speaker 3: about the front runners, and I think the article that
Speaker 3: I read didn't even mention this guy. It might have
Speaker 3: mentioned him as like an honorable mention at the end,
Speaker 3: but like all the front runners, it seemed to be
Speaker 3: between like the really progressive pick was this Filipino that
Speaker 3: was kind of like seen as it would have been
Speaker 3: a direct continuation and even more progressive than Francis. And
Speaker 3: then there was like actually another American guy as well
Speaker 3: as maybe an Italian who uh and like an African
Speaker 3: that we're considered kind of like the very very conservative
Speaker 3: front runners. And this guy, from what I've read, seems
Speaker 3: to be like pretty middle of the road centrist, So
Speaker 3: I feel like he's probably a compromise in the in
Speaker 3: the conclave between like the progressives and like the one
Speaker 3: piece of analysis that make kind of makes sense if
Speaker 3: you're just thinking the Catholic Church is like a business,
Speaker 3: it's like, well, where are we growing, right? We're growing
Speaker 3: in all the most conservative places, right, And where's all
Speaker 3: the pressure to be more progressive coming from the secular
Speaker 3: world where people are stopping being Catholics. So it's like,
Speaker 3: why would we pick a super progressive guy when like,
Speaker 3: if we were, you know, in the global North becoming
Speaker 3: like pushing for a Catholic, a progressive Catholic church, and
Speaker 3: we were all becoming Catholic, Well, yeah, sure that that
Speaker 3: would make sense. But we're not right, we're all fucking
Speaker 3: getting we're all turning our backs on the shirt. So
Speaker 3: I understand from the perspective of the church that they're like, well,
Speaker 3: we can't really pick a super progressive guy because that's
Speaker 3: just going to alienate everyone in Africa and Asia who
Speaker 3: like is Catholic.
Speaker 2: We again, we haven't heard him speak yet, we haven't
Speaker 2: heard his whatever address from the bound.
Speaker 3: Yeah he did, he spoke, Oh did you Okay, he
Speaker 3: spoke right afterwards, he just spoke in Latin. And then
Speaker 3: I think he spoke in Spanish a little bit and
Speaker 3: just said a bunch of nonsense shit that you would
Speaker 3: expect someone to say, like, h.
Speaker 2: Didn't he get announced like two hours.
Speaker 3: Ago though, Yeah, but when he gets announced he comes
Speaker 3: out right away.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 3: For me, it's just always funny to watch like all
Speaker 3: these adults like wearing these costumes and I'm like, holy shit,
Speaker 3: they're taking this shit so seriously, Like it's just look
Speaker 3: at these fucking LARPers like it's this is crazy, Like
Speaker 3: look how serious they're taking it.
Speaker 1: If you look at look at other institutions that have
Speaker 1: roots in the Middle Ages, and you see the same
Speaker 1: sorts of things. What do you see a graduation ceremonies,
Speaker 1: for example, You see a.
Speaker 4: Lot of pomp and splendor.
Speaker 1: And gowns and outfits and ceremony.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It just just shows you that the ruins of the
Speaker 1: feudal world were used to construct the capitalist world.
Speaker 4: That's how it worked.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, why don't we transfer trans transfer.
Speaker 3: To other stuff that's going on the news.
Speaker 2: We'll move over to our topic du joure because there's
Speaker 2: a lot to cover.
Speaker 3: Which is related to a timely news event in Canada.
Speaker 3: What is that getting a new prime minister.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, hey, everyone, a new leader.
Speaker 2: We asked Diego to bow out for this episode because
Speaker 2: we didn't want any foreign influence. Yeah, discussion, this is,
Speaker 2: this is in Canada. Business. Episodes about Canadian politics don't
Speaker 2: do very well.
Speaker 3: I actually do kind of. I do kind of wish
Speaker 3: Diego was here so that he could talk about the
Speaker 3: lack of a material analysis in this book over and
Speaker 3: over again.
Speaker 2: M M, well he's here in spirit, now I can
Speaker 2: do that. We got a new prime minister, never never
Speaker 2: been in politics before. He was the head of the
Speaker 2: European or the UK, Bank of England, the.
Speaker 3: Bank of England, the Bank of Canada before.
Speaker 1: That, and he just jumped in here and uh beaten
Speaker 1: some sacks Wall Street experience or something too.
Speaker 2: Yeah Goldman Sachs, Yeah, Brookfield Capital. So we read his book,
Speaker 2: it's six hundred.
Speaker 1: Pages, cheerfully every word.
Speaker 2: It's six hundred pages long. We read part We've jumped
Speaker 2: around in his book and sent clips to each other
Speaker 2: and kind of got the vibes. But the reason that
Speaker 2: we find Canadian politics so boring because they are just
Speaker 2: objectively boring. Relatively speaking, it's like watching American politics, but
Speaker 2: with the mute button on. So we have we have Poliev.
Speaker 2: Polliev is just in likeness and speech, a copy of
Speaker 2: Ron Decientists, but with the with the volume turned all
Speaker 2: the way down.
Speaker 3: That's good. I like that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's good.
Speaker 3: Some people try to say Polyev is like Trump. He's not.
Speaker 3: I think a much more apt comparison. I think you're
Speaker 3: exactly right. He is like a Ronda scientist. That's that's
Speaker 3: exactly right.
Speaker 2: Or like Himmler, you know, just like a dorky, evil
Speaker 2: little nerd. But he got beaten by this piece of
Speaker 2: white bread. You guys heard him talk yet?
Speaker 3: Who mar Kearney?
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: I watched him. I watched his visit, he visited the
Speaker 3: White House?
Speaker 2: And what did Trump think of him?
Speaker 3: Trump seems to really like him, and I think, which
Speaker 3: is funny. And I think it's just because of his
Speaker 3: finance bonafides, Like it's just the fact that this guy's
Speaker 3: like been a banker that Trump seems to respect him.
Speaker 3: And I will say, when they were having their little
Speaker 3: press event sitting beside each other, I think Carney did
Speaker 3: a really good job, like as good of a job
Speaker 3: as you can do, considering the circumstances like he he
Speaker 3: kind of he kind of like threw in little praises
Speaker 3: that were actually kind of like backhanded compliments. Like I
Speaker 3: think he said something like, oh, Trump, look, you've you've
Speaker 3: totally reinvigorated the like the like global defense initue.
Speaker 1: Importance of like national security all over the world.
Speaker 3: Trump like it's true, it's true.
Speaker 4: Oh and starts with like a praise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And he got asked about like fifty first state thing,
Speaker 3: and Trump like obviously went on to talk about why well,
Speaker 3: He's like it's not really up to me. It takes
Speaker 3: two to tango, but like it would beautiful, you know,
Speaker 3: like seeing that one piece of land and it's got
Speaker 3: a race that that line that's some guy with a
Speaker 3: ruler just just cut across it. And then like Carney,
Speaker 3: I think he had he had like lines ready, right,
Speaker 3: and he said he's like yeah, He's like if I may,
Speaker 3: you know, He's like, Trump, you're in real estate, like you,
Speaker 3: so you understand that there are some things that are
Speaker 3: not for sale. And Trump was like it's true. And
Speaker 3: he's like we're sitting in one right now, the White House,
Speaker 3: right can't be for sale. And he's like yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: That's true. And he's like, and I've talked to I've
Speaker 3: talked to the owners of Canada when I was campaigning,
Speaker 3: and you know, they made it very clear to me
Speaker 3: that Canada is not for sale and it's not going
Speaker 3: to be for sale ever.
Speaker 1: It's such a funny I noticed, that's such a funny
Speaker 1: way to put it to I talked to the owners
Speaker 1: in Canada. He's like, love, let me just put this
Speaker 1: in another way you'll understand.
Speaker 4: Be a little little child.
Speaker 3: Well that's you could tell that was deliberate, Like for
Speaker 3: sure he thought of that. He's like, let me, let
Speaker 3: me put it in those terms that he'll understand.
Speaker 2: He means the electorate presumably.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Think it was just like the owners.
Speaker 1: I'm talking to a real estate guy, so there's like
Speaker 1: owners and tenants and that's all. Those are two types
Speaker 1: of people. But yeah, you know, he I saw the
Speaker 1: analysis like he stroked Trump's ego before he laid down
Speaker 1: some idea that he wanted to put forward.
Speaker 4: He was well prepared.
Speaker 1: So the very few times he was allowed to speak,
Speaker 1: he just said exactly what he wanted, which was to
Speaker 1: push back on the fifty first state thing. And to
Speaker 1: talk about Canada and the States coming to some kind
Speaker 1: of agreement around the tariff situation.
Speaker 2: It's good. It shouldn't be that hard to handle Trump
Speaker 2: because psychologically he's like nine years old, like he wants
Speaker 2: Canada and America to be the same country just because
Speaker 2: look look at how big.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly, that's what you know.
Speaker 1: A lot of it comes back to different ways of
Speaker 1: viewing Trump, like either as a child or as like
Speaker 1: dangerous and at least least surrounded by people who know
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Maybe if he just kind of has
Speaker 1: a vague direction he goes in and then there's the
Speaker 1: people around him who sort of know how to get
Speaker 1: him there. And I saw that in the coverage. Again,
Speaker 1: Oh look how Mark Karney like handles Trump. He's so
Speaker 1: good at handling Trump. Stroke his ego first, and then
Speaker 1: you know, deliver a blow.
Speaker 2: Tell him he's a big boy. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think you kind of have to do that.
Speaker 3: And I think he he towed the line well in
Speaker 3: It was somewhere between Zelenski, which was a disaster, and
Speaker 3: then and then here Starmer. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: guys ever saw clips of when the British Prime minister visited,
Speaker 3: but it was hilarious. He was like, he was like, Trump,
Speaker 3: I have for you like an envelope. It's never been
Speaker 3: done before. It's an invitation from the king. And he's
Speaker 3: like this is unprecedented, and like he loves using all
Speaker 3: his language and it was like really funny and he
Speaker 3: was like oh wow, and like just yeah.
Speaker 1: Then Trump like congratulates Carney and like acts like he
Speaker 1: gave him the election, which he kind of did, but
Speaker 1: they did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he said, he was like he was like I
Speaker 3: think he said in the meeting. He was like he
Speaker 3: was like, you know, some people might say I'm the
Speaker 3: best thing that's ever happened to this guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't care that the Conservatives lost. He just
Speaker 1: cares that it was he was the cause of it.
Speaker 1: That's all he wants. So yeah, I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: the funny thing. That's the funny way to talk about Trump. Anyway.
Speaker 1: So speaking of what he's dangerous.
Speaker 2: Canada and big, big Canada, it's very big folks. Did
Speaker 2: you know that this guy was born in the Northwest territories.
Speaker 3: I did know that.
Speaker 2: Have you ever met someone from the any of the territories?
Speaker 3: Yes, I have. I used to have a teacher who
Speaker 3: is from the Yukon.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, back when we were kids, there was
Speaker 2: only two territories and now there are three. But how
Speaker 2: do we how do we explain this to the international audience,
Speaker 2: because they're the territories are like by land mass, like
Speaker 2: half or a third of Canada, probably half, But they
Speaker 2: have like the population of a suburb, like less than
Speaker 2: less than two hundred thousand people. Because it's oh yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's cool.
Speaker 3: I think I think each one has less than one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand, and I think like only a couple tens
Speaker 3: of thousands each. I don't know. They're just like territories.
Speaker 3: They're very it's like mostly it's like a couple of small,
Speaker 3: very very small cities of like ten to fifteen thousand people.
Speaker 3: I think maybe like Yellowknife or white Horse, which are
Speaker 3: the capitals of the Northwest Territories and Yukon respectively, have
Speaker 3: like twenty or thirty thousand each, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 2: Do we know why Mark Carney was up or his
Speaker 2: parents were there where they are they.
Speaker 3: Well, he ended up being raised in Alberta, though.
Speaker 2: Of course it's one degree right now in a white
Speaker 2: Horse and here it's like nine, so it's it's not
Speaker 2: that cold.
Speaker 3: Well, it's the springtime.
Speaker 2: In the winter, it's probably like forty forty boys.
Speaker 3: White Horse has thirty five thousand people, so that's like
Speaker 3: the biggest city.
Speaker 1: Well, I think if you wanted to find a topic
Speaker 1: more boring than Canadian politics, I think Canadian geography and
Speaker 1: population distributions is so congratulations if that was your goal.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I just.
Speaker 2: I just think that people would think that we would
Speaker 2: like know or I don't know that we would know
Speaker 2: more about this, but this is it might as well
Speaker 2: be a different country.
Speaker 4: It's boring to us too.
Speaker 1: I mean, people who were raised in Ontario don't learn
Speaker 1: French because we just don't have our pride until somebody
Speaker 1: threatens to annex us and then we all get our
Speaker 1: find our national pride once again and vote Liberal once again,
Speaker 1: which is Canada's natural ruling party according to Wikipedia or
Speaker 1: somewhere I read.
Speaker 2: That that truly is. We read his book, This is
Speaker 2: a guy. This is a guy, Harvard educated, Oxford educated.
Speaker 2: His book is very interesting title for fans of our
Speaker 2: podcast because it's value bracket s bracket, so value and
Speaker 2: values in one six hundred page book written by a banker.
Speaker 2: But I thought, you know, values, values and value. I
Speaker 2: think of Nietzsche for the first and Marx as a
Speaker 2: as the value theorist par excellence. And Marx actually gets
Speaker 2: a lengthy section in this in this book that I read,
Speaker 2: it's kind of he finishes with the mark section and
Speaker 2: then doesn't ever reference it again.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't call it lengthy.
Speaker 2: What is it? Uh?
Speaker 4: I would tell you, like, very obligatory.
Speaker 1: And dismissive is what it was. But you know, what
Speaker 1: would you expect?
Speaker 2: It's about ten pages. He goes through Adam Smith, Daniel
Speaker 2: Ricardo and then Marx and and basically just says, this
Speaker 2: is what value you was in neoclassical thinking, and yeah,
Speaker 2: doesn't doesn't ever mention it again. But uh, the book was.
Speaker 2: It was much better than I expected. I have to
Speaker 2: admit it's it's it's wrong in a kind of shocking
Speaker 2: way that you that someone who's this well educated, who
Speaker 2: is this important in the world, could be so naive,
Speaker 2: Like how did how does someone this smart be this dumb?
Speaker 2: And that's my view, So maybe I'm maybe I'm the
Speaker 2: idiot here, but I would expect I would expect some
Speaker 2: some better insights from the manager of a of a
Speaker 2: national bank.
Speaker 3: If it were, this is exactly what I was expecting.
Speaker 3: I mean, I like, with that pedigree, right, he was
Speaker 3: at Oxford Harvard educated, he's he's center right or sorry,
Speaker 3: center left. I you know, he was actually even more
Speaker 3: like at least virtue signaling towards like left wing concerns
Speaker 3: than I expected. So it's like, like, maybe that's what
Speaker 3: you meant by it was like better than you expected.
Speaker 2: No, I just meant. I just meant the writing, like
Speaker 2: the anecdotes were apt.
Speaker 3: That shouldn't be a surprise. With that education Oxford and Harvard,
Speaker 3: I'm sure it would be well written. I mean, but
Speaker 3: but I mean I think it's Yeah, but in terms
Speaker 3: of its philosophical sophistication or like or just conceptual nuance,
Speaker 3: it's yeah, it's pretty bad. It's just kind of hopeful,
Speaker 3: hopeful nonsense that we can have capitalism with a more
Speaker 3: friendly face, effectively putting it super simply, that's basically the
Speaker 3: idea we can make capitalism nicer.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you. I'm glad you say that because I
Speaker 2: wrote I wrote in my summary here, this is just
Speaker 2: normal neoliberalism, but with a happy face drawn over.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2: And this is like he's I.
Speaker 4: Have to disagree with that assessment.
Speaker 2: He's naive in the way that like greenwashing campaigns would
Speaker 2: work on this guy, Like he's a he's a kool
Speaker 2: aid capitalist.
Speaker 3: Oh, Eric disagrees with us.
Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, just just because for me, neoliberalism is
Speaker 1: like unready related capitalism, and to me, it seems like
Speaker 1: Mark Carney's going back towards a more Chiusian kind of
Speaker 1: semi regulatory model, right, like he believes like, well, we'll
Speaker 1: get into the nuts and bolts of it, I guess
Speaker 1: a little bit, but you know that there's value on
Speaker 1: the one side, right, like market value what he manages
Speaker 1: as a banker. And then there are values plural like
Speaker 1: social subjective values, right, like the reason you enjoy wine
Speaker 1: and what you like to do with wine versus like
Speaker 1: what the actual economic value of wine is. That's like
Speaker 1: more or less his distinction is drawn on that line, right,
Speaker 1: And yeah, so you know, I it's maybe it's just
Speaker 1: the definition of the term neoliberal, right he seems like yeah,
Speaker 1: like Victor said too, right, Yeah, he's going to go
Speaker 1: towards a more regulatory framework, so I don't know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call it neoliberalism. You know, the article The Canadian
Speaker 1: Dimension agrees with you, though, because it's titled you know,
Speaker 1: I read Mark Carney's book, so you don't have to,
Speaker 1: and then subtitled Carney's commitment to shoring up the neoliberal
Speaker 1: status quo will only undermine Canada in the long term.
Speaker 3: So you know, no, Eric, you're right. I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 3: impressed with your analysis, Eric, because I think that there
Speaker 3: is what I think you're putting your thumb on is
Speaker 3: that there is like a bit of a leftist tendency
Speaker 3: or whatever to just like call anything that's defending capitalism
Speaker 3: just neoliberalism. And I think that, like, you're right, that
Speaker 3: there's actually a nuance there that like you know, you
Speaker 3: can still you can be there's such a thing as
Speaker 3: other forms of capitalism, and neoliberalism means something more specific.
Speaker 3: So I applaud you for your nuance.
Speaker 1: I say, yeah, let's go for the precision here at
Speaker 1: least right now. And I don't deny that like regulation
Speaker 1: and deregulation kind of go hand in hand, and there's
Speaker 1: like a bit of a blurry, there's a bit of
Speaker 1: a blurriness there, but you can see the way he
Speaker 1: writes is he's he's like celebrating the marginalist revolution and
Speaker 1: economics and yeah, kind of reviving Keynesianism, but adding this
Speaker 1: idea of like corporate responsibility and social.
Speaker 4: Values, which is all voting vague.
Speaker 1: It's what what's that word? It's like patristic or whatever
Speaker 1: that word. I keep forgetting that frickin' word. But it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the benevolent overseers to make sure that our
Speaker 1: markets are actually working towards the long term social good
Speaker 1: by these benevolent overseers who are like semi government, semi
Speaker 1: not because they're kind of central banks, so they have
Speaker 1: their independence from the government as well. But you know,
Speaker 1: they're not just aiming to maximize, you know, the markets,
Speaker 1: whatever stock market value. They're trying to make it work
Speaker 1: for society. So we got to have corporate responsibility and
Speaker 1: the idea that we're all stakeholders, you know, like like
Speaker 1: the song all the celebrities sent to us so kindly
Speaker 1: during COVID, we're all in this together, right, and it
Speaker 1: really that message really worked and brought us all together,
Speaker 1: didn't it.
Speaker 2: Well, this is not a huge disagreement, but I still
Speaker 2: think it's neoliberal, Like, especially around chapter six, he's talked,
Speaker 2: he praises Thatcher and Reagan and a lot of what
Speaker 2: he thinks is gonna are he hopes happens is public
Speaker 2: private partnerships. I would say so he wants. But again,
Speaker 2: you're you're right that he says we need to rein
Speaker 2: in the bad things, and then the bad things are
Speaker 2: like he describes these in moral terms, which is kind
Speaker 2: of weird for a banker, But he never says like
Speaker 2: we're actually going to pass laws like closing tax loopholes
Speaker 2: or anything. It's more, it's more, we're gonna if we
Speaker 2: if we get our values correct.
Speaker 3: That's the thing that's the biggest flaw with this book.
Speaker 3: It's nonsense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then Volkswagen and gold min Sacks, they're all gonna
Speaker 2: fall in line because they're gonna see that this is
Speaker 2: the better way. So if you were to to regulate
Speaker 2: with a heavy hand, then I would that would be impressive.
Speaker 2: But let's get back to we want to summarize the
Speaker 2: title of this book, the layout, what's he hoping for?
Speaker 2: It starts off with just philosophically, a massive mistake in
Speaker 2: my view, which is to say that value there's something
Speaker 2: called objective value and then subjective values. So values these
Speaker 2: are just things that are randomly chosen apparently, and they
Speaker 2: include here's his list, solidarity, fairness, responsibility, resilience, sustainability, dynamism,
Speaker 2: and humility. So just the whole bunch of bullshit buzzwords basically.
Speaker 2: But we need to bring these values back solidarity, fairness,
Speaker 2: responsibility into value, and value is just you know, the
Speaker 2: market doing mar get shit. Anything else you want guys
Speaker 2: to add to that? Is that close enough to the split?
Speaker 3: I think that's that's that. I think that summarizes this
Speaker 3: values distinction pretty well.
Speaker 1: Because he kind of says yeah, and like we need
Speaker 1: to bring back values and what did he say, like
Speaker 1: and the and there are nine of them or something,
Speaker 1: and he just then he lists all the values. It's like,
Speaker 1: don't worry, we already know what the values are. They
Speaker 1: just haven't been given enough attention yet. It's like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, he's already he already knows the values.
Speaker 3: That's the part that I found. But it's true, like,
Speaker 3: so he has these values and it is very much
Speaker 3: one of these uh like vibes shifts books. It's like
Speaker 3: we just got to shift the vibes or like the
Speaker 3: values of people and then everything will be solved. Which
Speaker 3: is so, which is like the most frustrating kind of
Speaker 3: I mean I feel the same way about some of
Speaker 3: like the more radical democratic theory that I read from
Speaker 3: my dissertation that it's like, oh, like people will see
Speaker 3: that they like actually want to be democratic and go
Speaker 3: to meetings all the time. It's like a vibe shift.
Speaker 3: And it's like, no, like that's not the way it works.
Speaker 3: Like you're not just gonna get a vibe shift, and
Speaker 3: just like you're not gonna get a vibe shift in
Speaker 3: ordinary citizens where they're going to want to go and
Speaker 3: like be anarchists all the time. You're not going to
Speaker 3: get a vibe shift in corporations where they're gonna like
Speaker 3: want to start you know, being nicer on their own.
Speaker 3: You need some fucking you need some authority, You need
Speaker 3: some coercive power to force people to do those things.
Speaker 3: You can't you can't just like have vibes do it.
Speaker 3: This is more just like we need to like rediscover
Speaker 3: what matters to us and what markets are supposed to be.
Speaker 2: For you can have capitalism and some sort of progressive
Speaker 2: politics and they can go together because the firms will
Speaker 2: realize that this is the best way because they will
Speaker 2: read his book and then they'll all just fall in line.
Speaker 2: This is exactly, this.
Speaker 3: Is exactly what like I feel like I kept thinking
Speaker 3: about Jijak's cultural capitalism, like from the back in the earth,
Speaker 3: like late too, twenty tens or like yeah, or late
Speaker 3: aughts where he was talking about uh oh, like capitalism
Speaker 3: with a human face, you know, oh, you know, when
Speaker 3: you buy this and it'll be real. And that's why,
Speaker 3: like I think Carney talks about those kinds of corporate
Speaker 3: corporations that have like a separate mission to them, right,
Speaker 3: and like, yeah, that could be like yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's an instinct. I think your instinct here
Speaker 1: is right too, because when actually around when this book
Speaker 1: came out, the Jacobin did a review of it and
Speaker 1: the title of it is Capitalists Can't Become Nicer, which
Speaker 1: is like what you're saying, you know, putting just like
Speaker 1: capitalism with a smile kind of thing, and then that
Speaker 1: the sort of headline is Mark Carney ex government of
Speaker 1: the Central Banks in Canada and Britain has written a
Speaker 1: much hyped book about the problems with modern capitalism. But
Speaker 1: this consummate insider can't trace the roots of those problems
Speaker 1: back to their fundamental sources, which which of course is
Speaker 1: pointing out something similar like oh yeah, we can just
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, paper over these issues. There's no
Speaker 1: fundamental nothing fundamentally wrong with capitalism. It just needs an
Speaker 1: injection of those values we were talking about.
Speaker 2: I have a couple of short quotes from the intro
Speaker 2: that just like encapsulate this whole thing. Quote, to build
Speaker 2: a better tomorrow, we need companies imbued with purpose and
Speaker 2: motivated by profit unquote. So they already are obviously motivated
Speaker 2: by profit, but imbued with purpose. Is this kind of like,
Speaker 2: so is this a policy here, Mark, Are you gonna
Speaker 2: are you gonna force them to have purpose?
Speaker 3: Well, that's what I'm wondering.
Speaker 2: Probably not, you know, I guess not.
Speaker 1: But so he insens behavior, Yeah, who knows.
Speaker 2: He says so much of this should and should, and
Speaker 2: he speaks fondly of like, well he's not just like
Speaker 2: he thinks he's he thinks he's doing the progressive thing here,
Speaker 2: Like he praises the Canadian child benefit program or whatever,
Speaker 2: which is just like if you have kids, the government
Speaker 2: will give you money. He praises carbon tac I think
Speaker 2: the car and he reversed that since writing this book.
Speaker 2: But also these these incentive programs that may that give
Speaker 2: companies a reason to do the right thing. That seems
Speaker 2: to be like what his favorite his favorite arrangement between
Speaker 2: politics and and companies is. But here's the real tell.
Speaker 2: So he says that he worked at the Bank of
Speaker 2: England and this is the second quote to heal quote
Speaker 2: heal the malignant culture at the heart of finance capitalism unquote.
Speaker 2: So I don't I don't know what normal people think
Speaker 2: when they hear that, like we should, we should maybe
Speaker 2: like call up our dads or something. What do you
Speaker 2: what does this what does this phrase mean to you,
Speaker 2: to heal the heart of financial capitalism because to us
Speaker 2: and to me, like, there's no malignant culture at the
Speaker 2: heart of finance capitalism. Finance capitalism is the malignance and
Speaker 2: the only way that it's not malignant is when it's
Speaker 2: heavily regulated.
Speaker 3: But he wants to well, that's the thing. You need
Speaker 3: coercive force to channel those energies because right now the
Speaker 3: incentive structure is just incentivizes those and like just having
Speaker 3: like you're not going to solve that with vibes. You
Speaker 3: need to bring in some policy to do something concrete
Speaker 3: and I and you know, maybe there's parts of the
Speaker 3: book that we didn't read or that I didn't read
Speaker 3: where he gets a bit more concrete about But as
Speaker 3: far as I could tell, his proposal really is focused
Speaker 3: on changing these values and not on like what do
Speaker 3: you want to bring in, Like do you want to
Speaker 3: bring in laws that prevent billionaires from creating like taking
Speaker 3: advantage of tax loopholes? Like do you want to bring
Speaker 3: in like some kind of wealth taxes, Like that's what
Speaker 3: you need if you want to like you need some
Speaker 3: some actual uh, you know you need to stick here.
Speaker 3: You know, you need some some coercive force. I don't understand,
Speaker 3: like why anyone would think that that just just trying
Speaker 3: to convince them that to be nice would do that.
Speaker 1: And maybe yeah, like his last chapters and I mean,
Speaker 1: in part three look like he starts to get into
Speaker 1: more of this territory. Like one's called values based leadership,
Speaker 1: how purposeful companies create value? Next one investing for value
Speaker 1: s and the asses and brackets his title thing again
Speaker 1: and then the last one is how Canada can build
Speaker 1: value for all. And you know some of the ways
Speaker 1: he talks about this is like to rebalance value and values,
Speaker 1: we must develop and embed comprehensive and transparent approaches to
Speaker 1: measuring stakeholder value creation by companies. Right, So he wants
Speaker 1: companies to see themselves as value as stakeholders, and yeah,
Speaker 1: investors in companies to see themselves as stakeholders as well.
Speaker 1: So that's that stakeholder capitalism thing, which, yeah, mostly a
Speaker 1: rhetorical product project, like convince the companies first of all,
Speaker 1: try to convince the companies that they have social responsibility.
Speaker 1: If they will not listen to you, which many of
Speaker 1: them won't, then you can start trying to financially incentivize
Speaker 1: them to make better choices, which seems like what we
Speaker 1: already do, right, like public private partnerships, right, private investments
Speaker 1: backed by public dollars, because then the government can attach
Speaker 1: strings to it and say, well, it needs to be
Speaker 1: invested in this way and have these sorts of checks.
Speaker 1: Like I can't see Carne doing anything fundamentally different. I
Speaker 1: could see him doing the same things differently since he
Speaker 1: has this experience, maybe he'll come up with innovative ways
Speaker 1: to incentivize companies to do this or that, whatever issue
Speaker 1: he decides to tackle first, probably not climate change, but
Speaker 1: he's talked about that a lot before. He's probably going
Speaker 1: to start looking at Canada's mineral wealth in the northern areas,
Speaker 1: which are disputed. That seems like he's he's seems like
Speaker 1: he's a natural resource focused guy as well on top
Speaker 1: of all of this. Is so channeling those investments in
Speaker 1: some kind of innovative way. That's the best I can get. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see how it's just neoliberalism wrapped up in
Speaker 1: some nice rhetoric and maybe with some more interventional style ideas.
Speaker 2: We're going to see, right, we're going to see exactly
Speaker 2: in the next two years, which is probably how long
Speaker 2: this government will last. But we're going to see in
Speaker 2: the next two years how this actually cashes out and
Speaker 2: what he does with it. So I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker 2: But again, his understanding of causality, I mean, he doesn't
Speaker 2: understand causality frankly, because he says, like, Okay, it's proven,
Speaker 2: we can prove the companies have to have to acknowledge this.
Speaker 2: We can prove that well, equality or more equal wealth
Speaker 2: equality is better for society, and then just moves on
Speaker 2: from that, but he's like, the companies should realize this,
Speaker 2: and they should thus take an interest in uh within
Speaker 2: within their structures, have have good, solid paying jobs for
Speaker 2: the workers, not give too many bonuses to the the CEOs,
Speaker 2: and the companies should just realize this because the evidence
Speaker 2: is there. But then the causality thing comes in, like,
Speaker 2: if it's so good, Mark, why are they not doing
Speaker 2: that already? Why is there this wealth inequality? And again
Speaker 2: he says to other things like well, companies should be
Speaker 2: invested in the lifelong education of their employees, make sure
Speaker 2: that they have transferable skills. Should, should, should, he keep
Speaker 2: saying over and over again.
Speaker 1: But then you ask them anything better?
Speaker 2: So the revolution Now they've been asked. Now they're going
Speaker 2: to realize this is good for Canada or something, and
Speaker 2: now they're going to change. But he never explains why
Speaker 2: they haven't done these things already, and I think the
Speaker 2: reasons for that are are obvious. And then again, as
Speaker 2: we've been saying, he also doesn't explain the stick that
Speaker 2: he's going to use to change exactly. The carrot is, Hey, companies,
Speaker 2: this is going to be good for all you guys,
Speaker 2: if you help, if you pay your employees more, and
Speaker 2: then never addresses they why they haven't been doing.
Speaker 3: That exactly exactly, I think. In the Canadian Dimensions review
Speaker 3: of the book, the author James Hardwick says near the end,
Speaker 3: he's quoting from the book, and it's like, to build
Speaker 3: a better tomorrow, we need companies imbued with purpose and
Speaker 3: motivated by profit. Their activities will produce a shared value
Speaker 3: that accrues to the shareholders as well as to employees, customers, suppliers,
Speaker 3: and the wider community unquote. And then the author of
Speaker 3: the review goes on right after to say this is
Speaker 3: both inadequate and impossible, which I found kind of funny
Speaker 3: because then he goes on to list a bunch of
Speaker 3: stuff that should be done, and some of them, I guess,
Speaker 3: seems like similarly high falutint for example, and the ownership
Speaker 3: of our media by hedge funds and billionaires, nationalized corporate wrongdoers,
Speaker 3: insist on the public ownership of key industries and resources.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, those things seem like. I think
Speaker 3: the issue with the Carne quote, though, is that he's
Speaker 3: not specific about like what the outcome is, so like, Okay,
Speaker 3: you want companies to be imbued with purpose, and like
Speaker 3: you could. I mean, I guess in my mind, it's
Speaker 3: not necessarily impossible if you make a policy that says
Speaker 3: that if companies don't, you know, spend a certain amount
Speaker 3: of their money towards X thing, or like, you could
Speaker 3: make a law to do that, just like you can
Speaker 3: make a law to nationalize corporate wrongdoers, right, Like, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just the question is what are you
Speaker 3: going to do to actually achieve that? Right? And I
Speaker 3: guess maybe you know, I mean, I think that's a
Speaker 3: problem with both what the author suggests and what Carne
Speaker 3: is suggesting. Is like okay, like I mean you could,
Speaker 3: you could, but you have to be specific about how
Speaker 3: you're going to do it.
Speaker 2: Wait, did you just say that Carney is pushing for
Speaker 2: state ownership of industries.
Speaker 3: No, No, that's what the reviewer of the book says.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was like, if I miss that, I missed.
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm just highlighting it because the reviewer like
Speaker 3: quotes Carney and then says that is both inadequate and impossible, right,
Speaker 3: and then right after that he literally says Canada needs
Speaker 3: a prime minister capable of doing, and then he goes
Speaker 3: through a bunch of lists, and I guess in my
Speaker 3: mind I was kind of like, well, those things seem
Speaker 3: similarly implausible to me. Also, like I don't know why
Speaker 3: you're just saying that's impossible. Like, I agree, it's all
Speaker 3: pretty hard. Uh, they're all you need. You need difficult
Speaker 3: policies with trade ops that are going to piss people
Speaker 3: off to achieve any of those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and it seems to rely on this really
Speaker 1: tiresome assumption, you know, like arising tied you know, floats
Speaker 1: all ships or trickle down economics. Right, you know, wealth
Speaker 1: wealth produced for the country is wealth for all kind
Speaker 1: of shit, right, which we know isn't a thing you
Speaker 1: know that's that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: We know.
Speaker 1: The problem is, you know, the markets are doing fine,
Speaker 1: the markets are growing, and yet the average share of
Speaker 1: wealth is going to fewer and fewer people. So as
Speaker 1: the market does well, people do worse. How do you
Speaker 1: fix that fucking problem? Right, you don't do that. The
Speaker 1: whole neoliberal solution was to that kind of issue right
Speaker 1: as it develops in the eighties, But the strategy was
Speaker 1: completely deregulate. So we're gonna go back to a you know,
Speaker 1: a Kinesian economics that thrived probably mostly in like mid
Speaker 1: century Golden Age conditions, in today's conditions where where the
Speaker 1: market value and people's well being are just completely at
Speaker 1: opposite ends of the spectrum. And he thinks he's just
Speaker 1: going to go back to this old system that worked
Speaker 1: under completely different conditions, except not like pure government intervention
Speaker 1: and demand side economics like in Keensian economy. But he's
Speaker 1: also has this sort of social values argument, which is
Speaker 1: basically like, you know what I'm gonna do Keynesian, but
Speaker 1: I'm also going to ask them nicely to do better.
Speaker 1: Has anyone thought of doing that yet? If we just
Speaker 1: asked that, hey, guys, do better, Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: wish we thought of that sooner. But no, Like, how
Speaker 1: many companies are going to be incentivized to care about
Speaker 1: long term social values when the investors and owners don't
Speaker 1: even know if that company is going to be around
Speaker 1: for another one to five ten years, right, how many
Speaker 1: companies survive that long? They get bought out, they get
Speaker 1: the ownership changes, mergers happen, splits happen. Yet he thinks
Speaker 1: it's like, there's just this stable basis that's going to
Speaker 1: be there, and all he has to do is just
Speaker 1: is just like convince the companies that this is in
Speaker 1: their best interest, which is not. Why would it be,
Speaker 1: So he's going to incentivize it. Okay, well that's going
Speaker 1: to good luck with those.
Speaker 2: Good luck with that.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's the first one to think of that.
Speaker 3: I didn't disagree that it would be good if companies
Speaker 3: did these things, right, Like, I mean, that would be
Speaker 3: better than what we have now. It's just but the
Speaker 3: solution to just like show them that they should just
Speaker 3: be nicer is just kind of laughable. We need something,
Speaker 3: like you need to be concrete and specific about like
Speaker 3: how you're going to redistribute power, right, Like, don't just
Speaker 3: tell them to be nicer, Like, how are you actually
Speaker 3: going to make them be nicer?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: You can't just expect them to be You have to
Speaker 3: make them do it?
Speaker 1: Is I think the problem, Yeah, because I think modern
Speaker 1: mainstream economics, which is what he is mostly just rehashing
Speaker 1: in the first half of this book, is basically designed
Speaker 1: to I mean, one of its effects is to completely
Speaker 1: absolve the capitalist of any social responsibility whatsoever. That's the
Speaker 1: whole point he quotes the invisible hand thing a couple times.
Speaker 1: But look what Adam Smith says. You know, he is
Speaker 1: in this, as in many other cases, led by an
Speaker 1: invisible hand to promote an end which was no part
Speaker 1: of his intention. If we all operate with you know,
Speaker 1: self interest in the marketplace, the invisible hand will guide
Speaker 1: the outcomes of our behavior towards with socially goods, because
Speaker 1: Adam Smith says, you know, people who actually like make
Speaker 1: changes and intend to do things that are in the
Speaker 1: social good actually usually fuck things up. It's when you
Speaker 1: operate with self interest in the marketplace that's when the
Speaker 1: invisible hand works its best. But Carney kind of interprets
Speaker 1: this in a modern economic way to say, like the
Speaker 1: optimal functioning under competitive conditions of the market, which is
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing. Okay, optimal competitive conditions with
Speaker 1: no monopolies or oligopolies versus everyone acting in self interest. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're kind of the same. But the problem is we
Speaker 1: do have those olagopolies and monopolies and enormous concentrations of ownership.
Speaker 2: So what the fuck is he.
Speaker 1: Talking about with this invisible hands stuff. It doesn't I
Speaker 1: don't want to do the mark the Marx hater thing
Speaker 1: to Adam Smith and say it doesn't apply anymore, but
Speaker 1: you know conditions have changed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh. I mean, let's we've we've we've completed
Speaker 2: this critique, I think, which is, what are you actually
Speaker 2: going to do about it? Maybe maybe he wrote this
Speaker 2: book so that he could get elected, so that he could,
Speaker 2: you know, bring a heavy hand to market regulation. I
Speaker 2: doubt it, but it could be true.
Speaker 3: That's a good point, though, Pills. That's a good point
Speaker 3: because I actually think like that might explain some of it.
Speaker 3: That's because imagine he had been really concrete and he's like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to bring in a wealth tax, I'm going
Speaker 3: to bring in no So I'm not saying that he's
Speaker 3: going to do those things. But I do think that
Speaker 3: there's a chance that he knew that he couldn't write
Speaker 3: a book that was too concrete because it could damage
Speaker 3: his chances, right if he says that, if he's actually
Speaker 3: says admits that he's going to have a super heavy hand.
Speaker 1: I noticed that this book was like, yeah, this it
Speaker 1: already looks like he's thinking of running for office.
Speaker 3: In this it does it does exactly, And he was
Speaker 3: he's been so when when Justin Trudeau was first running
Speaker 3: for like the liberal leadership back in I guess it
Speaker 3: was twenty twenty fourteen or something twenty fifteen, there was
Speaker 3: talk about Carnie like he didn't actually enter the race,
Speaker 3: but it had been like taught, like he'd been raised
Speaker 3: as a possibility for a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: That's interesting because that would make sense of how this
Speaker 2: book is so stupid. On that front, it seems like smart, smart, smart,
Speaker 2: except you missed the elephant that you're sitting on with
Speaker 2: your laptop typing out this book because it makes no
Speaker 2: sense otherwise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But if we can turn maybe exactly to I want
Speaker 2: to do a philosophical analysis, and that's of this distinction
Speaker 2: between value and values. Now value I think he understands
Speaker 2: quite well. He goes through labor theory of value, he
Speaker 2: goes through marks. He explains that money is like a
Speaker 2: measure of value, but not value itself, so he doesn't
Speaker 2: make any of those like basic errors. But with values,
Speaker 2: I don't know where he's just getting this from except
Speaker 2: his own his own brain, because values are random, arbitrary, subjective.
Speaker 2: Beauty is in the eye of beholder. That's how he
Speaker 2: explains what subjective is as opposed to objective, Whereas we've
Speaker 2: been talking for like months here about the objectivity of
Speaker 2: those the things that he's calling values, which are like fairness,
Speaker 2: personal responsibility, how you act out the ideology of personal
Speaker 2: responsibility in public. So I just wanted to draw attention
Speaker 2: to that and get your your takes on it, because, yeah,
Speaker 2: from my perspective, at least the plastic pills theory of value,
Speaker 2: I place a similar amount of importance onto value as
Speaker 2: he does. But I think that values are also value,
Speaker 2: Like belief in society is a sort of valuing, and
Speaker 2: that's the thing that keeps societies together. You your belief
Speaker 2: in the society as a social project dries up, then
Speaker 2: you see society turn in on itself or factions or collapse.
Speaker 2: But if you if you read this guy, you'd think
Speaker 2: that fairness was like just something arbitrarily decided. Beauty is
Speaker 2: in the eye of the beholder. So people said, hey,
Speaker 2: fairness looks good, let's let's do that because it looks good.
Speaker 2: Instead of we chose fairness as a as a social
Speaker 2: value because that makes societies stable, and the ones that
Speaker 2: weren't stable didn't last that long, you know. And he
Speaker 2: doesn't make any connection between values disappearing and capitalism. That's
Speaker 2: another huge frustration of this book because if you read
Speaker 2: someone not even a pro capitalist, but like uh, Max Weber,
Speaker 2: this this the drawing up of different forms of social cohesion, religion,
Speaker 2: church unions, all of that stuff is dried up because
Speaker 2: of the market, not not not just one is chosen
Speaker 2: and concrete and objective and one is uh subjective and
Speaker 2: just arbitrary. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Speaker 2: So anyway, sorry, that's my take on this split between
Speaker 2: objective value and subjective values. What did you guys think
Speaker 2: of that theme? Okay?
Speaker 1: Values with an S these are the principles or standards
Speaker 1: of behavior, judgments of what is important in life. That's
Speaker 1: values with an S. You without an S is the
Speaker 1: regard that someone is that something is held to deserve,
Speaker 1: the importance, worth, or usefulness of something. So values decides
Speaker 1: whether or not something is important, and value is like
Speaker 1: the regard that something is held to deserve. I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that even means. Really, it deserves
Speaker 1: some level of regard or some level of importance. It
Speaker 1: seems like He's trying to say magnitude of value here,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't want to it just like values and
Speaker 1: then quantitatively regarded values are a magnitude and that's the value.
Speaker 3: Of a thing. Yeah, that's what I thought value is
Speaker 3: is like is like a measure, Right, it's kind of
Speaker 3: like a like a.
Speaker 2: It is, it's it's something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The second chapter subjective value, right, that's what he's talking
Speaker 1: about there. Subjective value is marginalist value. Right, like that
Speaker 1: question he keeps asking, why is water so abundant but
Speaker 1: it's so well, No, that gives it away. Why is
Speaker 1: water so useful but so cheap? And diamonds are so
Speaker 1: useless but so expensive?
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 1: Only marginalism can tell us why. It's because we always
Speaker 1: think on the margins. It's that you buy a bottle
Speaker 1: of water because you're only willing to pay for it
Speaker 1: a certain amount. You subjectively determine the value of a thing.
Speaker 1: When you look at a diamond, you think, oh, it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's scarcity is part of the answer
Speaker 1: to It's kind of weird, but yeah, this is that
Speaker 1: subjective values is what I was saying. It's demand side economics.
Speaker 1: Kinsy and economics. It's to say what you will pay
Speaker 1: for that thing is what its value is, and what
Speaker 1: you actually pay for that thing is what you actually
Speaker 1: pay for that thing, and the gap between what you
Speaker 1: actually pay and what you're willing to pay, Like if
Speaker 1: you're willing to pay it gives the example of shoes.
Speaker 1: If you're willing to pay one hundred dollars for these
Speaker 1: shoes with the price is in fact sixty dollars, it's
Speaker 1: like you've saved forty dollars. Oh my god, that's the
Speaker 1: consumer surplus. It's like, oh great, yeah, I go into
Speaker 1: a grocery store. This piece of meat is ten million dollars,
Speaker 1: but today it's on sale for one dollar. We're saving
Speaker 1: you nine hundred and nine to nine, Like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: get give me a fucking break with that. That that's
Speaker 1: mainstream eponomics. I can't understand it.
Speaker 2: Where does that come from? Like what economists devised this
Speaker 2: as the measure of value?
Speaker 1: William Stanley Jevins is one of the classic names in that,
Speaker 1: like they're the they're postmark, like they're after marks.
Speaker 2: I mean they're not.
Speaker 1: Post Marxists, they're after marks, and Marx didn't address them.
Speaker 1: But they came around in like the eighteen seventies or eighties,
Speaker 1: and that's when the marginalist revolution happened, which thinks of
Speaker 1: things like this.
Speaker 2: I found this so strange because he goes through Adam Smith,
Speaker 2: Ricardo and Marx, explains that they're they're all Smith and
Speaker 2: Ricardo labor theory of value. Marx who also has a
Speaker 2: labor theory of value but not.
Speaker 1: Vaguely lumped in there with the classics.
Speaker 2: But not the labor theory of value. But he's they
Speaker 2: say that, you know, in some way value arises from
Speaker 2: the labor that is in the commodity and.
Speaker 1: The objective, because there's a there's a correct price for something,
Speaker 1: there's a fair price, and it's the cost of the
Speaker 1: inputs that's called that's called supply side, and that's not
Speaker 1: what's important anymore according to him.
Speaker 2: But what's weird is that he goes through this, presents
Speaker 2: it like more or less accurately, not not the Marx bit,
Speaker 2: but Ricardo and Smith more or less accurately, and then
Speaker 2: just moves on to this other thing that is about
Speaker 2: paying for stuff. He never like defeats the argument. He
Speaker 2: never says that the labor theory of value is wrong.
Speaker 2: He just presents the labor theory of value and then
Speaker 2: presents this other theory of value, which is about you know,
Speaker 2: paying for things that or you you make money when
Speaker 2: things are cheaper than you expect.
Speaker 1: You have identified exactly what every economics textbook and course
Speaker 1: us they just it's like psychology too. They'll they'll give
Speaker 1: you a chapter on Freud and then they'll just stop
Speaker 1: talking about it and move on to the real stuff.
Speaker 1: Basically is the is the implication there. It's like this
Speaker 1: these cute, quaint guys like got Us started on the
Speaker 1: path of like talking about value and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and it was so cute and like these guys were
Speaker 1: so brilliant and oh my god, I just love these guys.
Speaker 1: But but they were all wrong obviously, completely fucking wrong
Speaker 1: and backwards.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They treat like Marx, Ricardo and Smith like they
Speaker 2: are doing Aristotelian physics and then we discovered Newtonian physics
Speaker 2: like you can, we can, we can say everything that
Speaker 2: they said, but we know that it's wrong just because
Speaker 2: it's old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like Marx is like tall of me here and
Speaker 1: doing some kind of geocentric economics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know. For I mean, I agree with
Speaker 3: everything you guys were saying. I think it's it might
Speaker 3: be worth also clarifying, uh, like where like kind of
Speaker 3: the core thesis and like why the book is called
Speaker 3: values and where his kind of argument for this change
Speaker 3: in vibes come from comes from. And I guess I
Speaker 3: did see it as being like it seems like his
Speaker 3: main argument is, you know, we have this quantitative account
Speaker 3: of value of things and like what they're worth, and
Speaker 3: then that's been conflated with like values like moral value,
Speaker 3: meaning that like our society, like the way in which
Speaker 3: it's been corrupted is that people are like, oh if
Speaker 3: the market it says it's good, like it is good
Speaker 3: in like the moral sense and like the value sense,
Speaker 3: and he's like, we need to it seems like, you know,
Speaker 3: separate those things apart. And I guess, like the one
Speaker 3: way in which I found that, like I found that
Speaker 3: kind of I don't want to quite say like convincing
Speaker 3: or like, I mean, in a way it's obvious. It's
Speaker 3: just like an obvious point, like yes, that happens, but
Speaker 3: it like reminds me of something that I notice a
Speaker 3: lot in some of the trash debates that I consume
Speaker 3: online about like Trump trump stuff is like the way
Speaker 3: that people conflate legal rightness with moral rightness, and I
Speaker 3: feel like maybe in this book he's pointing to something
Speaker 3: similar where people will say, well, the market dictated it,
Speaker 3: and like if that's what the market wants, and then
Speaker 3: kind of sidestepping that question of like, well, what actually
Speaker 3: like matters. I guess I don't know if that analogy
Speaker 3: exactly works, but I just thought it was like worth
Speaker 3: meant like kind of flagging that that was kind of
Speaker 3: what I saw as the sort of central kind of
Speaker 3: philosophical insight that he's trying to advance in the book.
Speaker 3: And with the as it relates to the title, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was thinking along the same lines, thinking that it's
Speaker 1: almost like value and values is almost like what like
Speaker 1: justice in law, like that kind of distinction like what
Speaker 1: is just versus what is legal? And you exflate the
Speaker 1: two often, and we want to conflate the two because
Speaker 1: it's easier, right, Like, well, if the law was also
Speaker 1: just automatically just in all situations, then oh my god,
Speaker 1: what a burden that would fucking take off. And the
Speaker 1: same thing with the market, right, if everything was valued correctly,
Speaker 1: what does that mean, that's a distributional thing, right, Values,
Speaker 1: like the market is what distributes and allocates resources. Right,
Speaker 1: So if if we didn't have to worry about that,
Speaker 1: if it's value was always its value, like as if
Speaker 1: laws were always just, then we wouldn't have anything to
Speaker 1: worry about. So he's like kind of saying, like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not the case. So let's make this distinction between
Speaker 1: like values and value, and they're kind of different in
Speaker 1: the same way that justice and law is different, Like
Speaker 1: law is created by humans, but but value is created
Speaker 1: by the gods of the marketplace that we're not supposed
Speaker 1: to tamper with, right, because if you intervene, like too deeply,
Speaker 1: you'll fuck up the market's ability to do what it does,
Speaker 1: which is allocate resources and come to the perfect price.
Speaker 3: And you will have people say things that are analogous
Speaker 3: to the legal analogy. Because I remember a long time
Speaker 3: ago I had a conversation with some girl at a party,
Speaker 3: and she was a lawyer, and she was like a
Speaker 3: corporate lawyer, and I kind of just like asked her
Speaker 3: what I thought was like just kind of an innocent question,
Speaker 3: which was like, oh, like do you ever feel like
Speaker 3: because I feel like the kind of work she was doing.
Speaker 3: She was defending corporations that like have a lot of power,
Speaker 3: and I was kind of like, oh, do you ever
Speaker 3: like feel a little bit like weird about helping these
Speaker 3: And she's like, well, I never do anything illegal. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, obviously you don't do anything illegal. And I'm
Speaker 3: like that's not what I'm asking you. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 3: just curious, like, do you ever feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: a little bit like of moral And she's like, no,
Speaker 3: I would obviously never do anything illegal. And she got
Speaker 3: really defensive and mad at me, and she's just like
Speaker 3: didn't understand that there was a difference between And I
Speaker 3: feel like in some sometimes CEOs sort of do the
Speaker 3: same thing where they'll be like, well, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: just doing what the market. I'm just I'm just selling
Speaker 3: people what they want, like this is what the market dictates,
Speaker 3: like you know. And it's like, but do you ever
Speaker 3: feel like you're maybe influencing And they'll be like, you know, no,
Speaker 3: but like this is what people want, this is the market,
Speaker 3: you know. And it's like, well, though, well.
Speaker 2: Do you guys like if that's if that's the thesis
Speaker 2: that law is to justice. What what is it? The
Speaker 2: market is to value, value is to values. Yeah, that's stupid,
Speaker 2: Like that's not even correct. Like if if, if, just
Speaker 2: if laws were just, you wouldn't need judges or lawyers.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't you wouldn't need law, You wouldn't need any
Speaker 2: legal system at all, because those are the those are
Speaker 2: the those decisions made by judges in particular, are the
Speaker 2: things that make the law the law, which is the
Speaker 2: entire legal system, which is decisions, net decision my ney decisions.
Speaker 2: You don't need justice at all to even be a concept.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I think I think what we're saying is is, yeah,
Speaker 1: those two often get conflated, and I say, it'd be
Speaker 1: nice if they were the same thing. But we don't
Speaker 1: think Mark Carney isn't making that conflation. He's making a
Speaker 1: point of distinguishing between those two things, right, right, saying
Speaker 1: you know, we haven't balanced, we haven't balanced these two things. Right,
Speaker 1: value is heavier, so better values is like down here
Speaker 1: and whatever the better one is. Yeah, they're out of balance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if I can, if I can finish my point.
Speaker 2: It's just this is an illusion, right, It's an illusion
Speaker 2: to say that. Uh, well, he's he's quite certain that
Speaker 2: value is like concrete value doesn't have to do with
Speaker 2: people's personal decisions except in the in fact, like they
Speaker 2: were willing to buy buy things. But value itself has
Speaker 2: this concrete, almost sacredness that's determined by the market, and
Speaker 2: there's nothing, like nothing can touch it. So the thing
Speaker 2: that we have to do is also give values. Some
Speaker 2: do because they've been drowned out by the market and
Speaker 2: they don't have necessarily any place in the market. But
Speaker 2: these are not real things, Like he can't make a
Speaker 2: compelling argument for subjective values because he's already said that
Speaker 2: they don't matter, Like we have to brute force values
Speaker 2: back into the market because it's not going to operate
Speaker 2: based on them. And those values again are solidarity, fairness, responsibility, resilience, sustainability,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. These things are obviously not within the
Speaker 2: purview of self interest. But he also doesn't think that
Speaker 2: they're real, Like they don't they don't have value. I
Speaker 2: was gonna say value, which would screw up the whole thing.
Speaker 2: They don't have any weight value for him. Still he
Speaker 2: wants to put on this balancing act, as Eric said,
Speaker 2: but value is the only thing that's real. And if
Speaker 2: we go back to, you know, our theory of habit
Speaker 2: and our theory of what religion should actually look like,
Speaker 2: those things are objectively real, even for materialists, in a
Speaker 2: way that he hasn't acknowledged here. But I don't understand
Speaker 2: what he's trying to do. If this value values thing
Speaker 2: is like telling people you have to believe in this
Speaker 2: illusion that I just created for you, while admitting that
Speaker 2: it's an illusion, like there's no there's no moral demand
Speaker 2: or moral urgency because he said, I just made these
Speaker 2: things up, or they used to be real and they're
Speaker 2: no longer real. But we have to all believe in
Speaker 2: the illusion. Guys, let's all go into the cave again together.
Speaker 2: I don't know how that could be convincing. I don't
Speaker 2: know how he sits in his office writing this and goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have to I have to tell them that this
Speaker 2: is fake, or I have to tell them this is subjective,
Speaker 2: just decided in the eye of the beholder. But then
Speaker 2: we also all have to agree to do this together
Speaker 2: as Canadians.
Speaker 3: Well, he's trying to be Prime minister, bro, that's why.
Speaker 3: That's why he's keeping it.
Speaker 2: His card's close to his chest, but you can't say, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm loe, Hey, this is untrue, but you should believe
Speaker 2: it anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you pointed out earlier, and I think it's very
Speaker 1: telling that Mark Carney praised the carbon tax in this
Speaker 1: book but like immediately slashed it, like that's gone, because
Speaker 1: it presumably it's because of this confusion, right, because on
Speaker 1: the one end, like I'm seeing him here talking about
Speaker 1: the difference between subjective and intrinsic value. Now, so you
Speaker 1: can always just value as such a polysemic term. You
Speaker 1: can just take any two meanings of it and say
Speaker 1: these are opposed. Now to make this point, but whatever.
Speaker 1: So like carbon tax is like valuing something that has
Speaker 1: no market value, right, Like that's one of these sort
Speaker 1: of liberal environmentalist strategies. It's like, okay, well, what we
Speaker 1: need to do is just bring these things like forests
Speaker 1: and trees and oxygen capacities and carbon budgets whatever. We
Speaker 1: need to just bring these into the market, give them value,
Speaker 1: and then people will sort of trade them up and
Speaker 1: the market will like sort that out too, because that's
Speaker 1: what the market is best at doing, right, distributing resources
Speaker 1: in a condition of scarcity or limitedness, Right, that's like
Speaker 1: what the market is supposed to do according to mainstream economy.
Speaker 1: So that's the idea, right, But now that he's sort
Speaker 1: of so he seemed to be endorsing that by praising
Speaker 1: carbon tax, right, oh, by putting a price on carbon
Speaker 1: right now we're putting Now the invisible hand gets to
Speaker 1: play around with carbon too. But now he's rejected that.
Speaker 1: He's flipped around, he's seemed because I think the obvious
Speaker 1: answer to why is because it's very, very unpopular and
Speaker 1: very associated with the Trudeau previous government. So he gets
Speaker 1: rid of it. But then what does that say about.
Speaker 3: Well, we're worried about Alberta separation now too. If we
Speaker 3: take away their oil they're going to cry and leave
Speaker 3: Canada also. But that's a whole other story.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 4: But what does that say about his values?
Speaker 1: He can just change his perspective on something if this
Speaker 1: doesn't lay out like a view where oh, in this condition,
Speaker 1: carbon tax is bad, like when I'm trying to be
Speaker 1: prime minister, but under these other conditions, when I'm just
Speaker 1: an objective outside observer, they're good.
Speaker 4: Then oh, what other things is he going.
Speaker 1: To be able to look at from whichever's point of
Speaker 1: view serves him in the moment. I mean classic politician stuff,
Speaker 1: I guess, haha.
Speaker 2: But you know, can we explain real quick the carbon tax.
Speaker 2: It's a very hot button issue in Canada because conservatives
Speaker 2: it's their boogeyman. Their conservatives are obsessed with this thing.
Speaker 2: And it's basically just companies have to pay for carbon emissions,
Speaker 2: which is like taxing pollution. Basically.
Speaker 1: The States is familiar with it, isn't it called cap
Speaker 1: and trade everywhere and stuff too.
Speaker 3: But well there's different forms there, just cap and trade,
Speaker 3: and then there's also just like taxing it like regardless.
Speaker 1: But it's especially what I said is giving value on
Speaker 1: the market to things that don't have value. So trading
Speaker 1: your carbon budget, it's like offsetting your fucking carbon budget
Speaker 1: when you go on a plane and you pay that
Speaker 1: extra amount to offset your carbon and then you get
Speaker 1: to go around saying I produce zero carbon when I
Speaker 1: travel because apparently money cancels out carbon dioxide. The scientists
Speaker 1: found that out. Apparent Bill Gates is telling us all.
Speaker 2: But that's that's kind of signaling to the conservatives. Hey,
Speaker 2: the era, the woke Trudeau era is over.
Speaker 4: I often go over and.
Speaker 1: Look at you know, marginalism and try to like figure
Speaker 1: out I'm not good at it, but trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what mainstream economics is kind of all about since Marx,
Speaker 1: and just to at least just to read it so
Speaker 1: I know it, so I and it is and then
Speaker 1: I know, okay, this is very convincing stuff, Like you
Speaker 1: look at it like of course something is worth whatever,
Speaker 1: someone will pay for it. And like Marx actually addresses
Speaker 1: questions like that, and also the utility thing, right, like
Speaker 1: he's explains, you know, the marginalists go back not to
Speaker 1: a kind of John Stuart Mill welfare version of the economy,
Speaker 1: but like a Bentham utility version, right, So marginal utility,
Speaker 1: that's the utility part.
Speaker 4: Things are useful.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh yeah, there's this concept in Marx.
Speaker 4: What's it called?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, fucking use value. That's like very essentral to everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: isn't Marx going on all the time about people conflating
Speaker 1: use value in exchange value, use value in exchange value,
Speaker 1: always getting fucking conflated. And then when he passes over
Speaker 1: you know, objective value to get to subjective values where
Speaker 1: he wants to be, he says, ah, utility, such a
Speaker 1: revolutionary idea. Nobody's thought of this before. And he doesn't
Speaker 1: say that, but I'm being sarcastic. But anyway, Yeah, looking
Speaker 1: at this stuff alongside Marx is both interesting and very
Speaker 1: frustrating because they're different. But yeah, he brings it all
Speaker 1: up just to dismiss it. Marx is classical economists.
Speaker 3: We moved on.
Speaker 2: That's the thing. Though he doesn't. He doesn't dismiss Marx
Speaker 2: while he's explaining Marx, right, he just he just never
Speaker 2: talks about it again, like I control I just control ft.
Speaker 2: And it's like the section on Marx and he never
Speaker 2: brings it up again except for the Communist Manifesto.
Speaker 1: So I say it was perfunctory. It was an obligatory
Speaker 1: you know, nods to the classics and then you move on.
Speaker 1: That's like it's a it's just you know, omission by
Speaker 1: by by just mentioning it and then moving on.
Speaker 2: Now he does bring it up. This is this is
Speaker 2: like the funniest uh. It's in the end he's talking
Speaker 2: about how companies need to take interest in their employees' lives,
Speaker 2: you know, in a way to give them transferable skills,
Speaker 2: in a way to make them happy. With their jobs,
Speaker 2: because a happy workforce is a happy country. Blah blah
Speaker 2: blah ah this shit. And he says if education is
Speaker 2: unable to keep pace with the changing demand for skills,
Speaker 2: those who already have them will earn even higher premiums,
Speaker 2: and job polarization will increase the supply of labor competing
Speaker 2: for lower skilled jobs. Now, this is obviously what we see.
Speaker 2: And then he says, finally, greater global interconnectedness will reinforce
Speaker 2: these dynamics. Of course we see that too, And then
Speaker 2: he says, this is my favorite line of the book.
Speaker 2: If this he's he's a he's a secret maoist. By
Speaker 2: the way, if this world of surplus labor comes to pass,
Speaker 2: Marx and Angeles could again become relevant. Is he predicting revolution?
Speaker 2: There on the.
Speaker 1: Basis of like a misunderstanding of something, I think.
Speaker 4: Well, he's predicting revolution.
Speaker 2: But then he says there are policy choices we can
Speaker 2: make and actions we can take to help shape this future.
Speaker 3: So then doesn't tell us what those are.
Speaker 2: No, but you know, he could be he's a their TBD.
Speaker 2: He could be a secret revolutionary based on that line.
Speaker 1: Oh, we'll find out. It's always the answer there, I guess,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it will be interesting to see if he
Speaker 1: does anything different, which I have very little hope for
Speaker 1: because he's a banker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least it's not pure polyeff Yeah.
Speaker 1: Always always a bright side.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like you can just drop in out
Speaker 2: of nowhere and just get elected. You parachute in. You're
Speaker 2: not even in politics at your life. Yeah, the party
Speaker 2: I did. I don't have any idea how the leadership
Speaker 2: race went for this guy, but uh, oh it was.
Speaker 3: It was overwhelming for him, Like.
Speaker 2: Is he a compelling I haven't heard him speak, Is
Speaker 2: he compelling a speaker? Or do people just go, oh, holy,
Speaker 2: you're a banker, You're a genius.
Speaker 1: Everyone's Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Just that in comparison to Trump, he's just so normal
Speaker 3: in milk toast and like and like competent that people
Speaker 3: like competent seeming that people are just like, okay, like yes,
Speaker 3: this guy just feels like a politician from like the
Speaker 3: nineties and early two thousands, just like a normal, a
Speaker 3: normal elitist politician. And I guess there's maybe a hunger
Speaker 3: for that.
Speaker 4: And look like I think it's we're impressed with how
Speaker 4: he dealt with Trump.
Speaker 3: Him being a banker, like I like like like Eric,
Speaker 3: I was kind of like, ugh, like it's just going
Speaker 3: to be. But you know, in the very context we're
Speaker 3: in right now with Trump and watching them together, I
Speaker 3: kind of realized, I was like, God, it's good that
Speaker 3: he's a banker because Trump. It's like a class of
Speaker 3: person that Trump is going to like look up to
Speaker 3: and see as like as like as like legit.
Speaker 1: You know, you know that's interesting because I looked up
Speaker 1: some of that and I thought, okay, banker. He's the
Speaker 1: first prime minister ever in Canada to have a banking background.
Speaker 1: Nobody else has had that. And I even looked at Europe,
Speaker 1: how many prime ministers or presidents have had banking backgrounds?
Speaker 4: Very few. You never see them.
Speaker 1: The only times you see them are during crisis times
Speaker 1: like the Greek like the Greek financial crisis right then
Speaker 1: they had I think it was an EU banker and
Speaker 1: Vera Faucus was involved somehow in that. He has some stories.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you'd never see bankers in power until like
Speaker 1: these crisis points happen and everybody starts to then think,
Speaker 1: like Victor, like glad we have a banker in there.
Speaker 1: For various reasons not just impressed Trump, but that's one thing,
Speaker 1: but also, you know, he's going to know that all
Speaker 1: the levers that he can pull to navigate us out
Speaker 1: of this problem, right, and like all those things we
Speaker 1: were talking about, well, he's going to do at least
Speaker 1: if he's doing neoliberalism or some kind of modified Keenesianism,
Speaker 1: he's going to do the best fucking version of it possible.
Speaker 1: And if it still fails, then maybe we should finally
Speaker 1: give this shit up and go back and look at
Speaker 1: Marks again. No, I'm just kidding, but it'll be an
Speaker 1: experiment for him to see how a banker runs a country,
Speaker 1: and we haven't seen many of those.
Speaker 3: To be fair, I'm not happy that he's a banker
Speaker 3: for any reason other than the fact that I think
Speaker 3: Trump will just like be more cooperative with him. All
Speaker 3: the other stuff I'm not happy about.
Speaker 2: Well, the downside is if he fails utterly, which I
Speaker 2: think should be our expectation. But if he fails utterly
Speaker 2: to a reverse course, the next prime minister is going
Speaker 2: to be a Nazi.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll be hard to blame though, because you know,
Speaker 1: crisis prime ministers can always you know, the easiest thing
Speaker 1: to blame on someone else. It's like I took over
Speaker 1: during a crisis.
Speaker 3: Australia just had an election in the Labor Party one
Speaker 3: overwhelmingly because they're Conservative party. Leader was basically like a
Speaker 3: populist fascist, and even the previous prime minister, I think
Speaker 3: it was the previous for the one before who was
Speaker 3: a part of the Liberal Party, which there is their
Speaker 3: Conservative party. He like, he was interviewed recently and it
Speaker 3: was an amazing clip and he was like, what do
Speaker 3: you think about it? I think the guy's name is
Speaker 3: Tim Dutton or something, the kind of populist far right flavor,
Speaker 3: you know. And the former leader of the same party,
Speaker 3: the Liberal Party, was asked like, what do you think
Speaker 3: about this Dutton guy becoming prime minister and he said,
Speaker 3: I think it would be a catastrophe for a multicultural
Speaker 3: country like Australia to elect a guy like that guy
Speaker 3: from his own party.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And then he got trounced our Liberal Party.
Speaker 2: I mean, our Labor Party got absolutely eviscerated. So if
Speaker 2: he fails, maybe they.
Speaker 1: But their Labor Party is a different place on the spectrum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, their Labor Party is are Liberal Party.
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're pretty equivalent. But no, it's like a bit
Speaker 1: of a Trump wave, right, a Trump a Trump reaction.
Speaker 1: There's still a swing to the right happening. But then
Speaker 1: there's these little Canada, Australia, a little little reactions.
Speaker 3: Just once you see what it's like to have a
Speaker 3: clown like Trump, you're kind of like, shit, I don't
Speaker 3: want that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if he fails, right, if he fails with
Speaker 2: his like finger wagging at the corporations, and if they
Speaker 2: don't do it, inequality increases. Like you, you have to
Speaker 2: do something different, you have to. So I'm not sure
Speaker 2: it's going to be a Nazi, but it has to
Speaker 2: be something different.
Speaker 3: Well, we're gonna get hopefully we'll get a new leader
Speaker 3: of the NDP Our Liberal our Labor Party, and maybe
Speaker 3: that'll that'll be like an interesting you know. I look
Speaker 3: forward to seeing that. It was time for that Jag
Speaker 3: Meet Sing guy to go. I was sick of them. Somehow,
Speaker 3: I'm happy that they're they're going to get some new
Speaker 3: blood in there.
Speaker 2: It's uh, yeah, it could be, could be.
Speaker 1: I think this is the new political spectrum. Forget the
Speaker 1: left and right, It's going to be the clown the
Speaker 1: Nazi clowns. Versus the bankers. From here on, that's it.
Speaker 1: There's no more, no more of those fucking lawyer politicians,
Speaker 1: no more of those career politicians. Clowns and bankers.
Speaker 3: Clowns and bankers. That's that's good.
Speaker 2: Clowns and bankers, our new political spectrum. Stuck in the
Speaker 2: middle with you. I just I don't understand how smart
Speaker 2: people are also just so stupid. Maybe I'm like said,
Speaker 2: maybe I'm the stupid one, but like.
Speaker 3: I think I like your theory though, Pills. I think
Speaker 3: I think it might have been a self conscious choice
Speaker 3: to write something kind of milk toast because he wants
Speaker 3: to be prime minister one day.
Speaker 2: Well he he, He wants to avoid the revolution, and
Speaker 2: he thinks we can avoid the revolution with policy, which
Speaker 2: is true, you know, but it has to be some
Speaker 2: some pretty heavy handed policy. We'll see, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2: It's exciting times.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, don't violate market integrity, but do.
Speaker 3: Anything else quick aside. I'm enjoying on Twitter, like all
Speaker 3: the like far right reactionaries are like kind of being
Speaker 3: are a bit disappointed about the pope, like like I
Speaker 3: saw mill in like Michael Miller and for example, says
Speaker 3: he doesn't seem like much of a conservative or reactionary,
Speaker 3: which I suppose is a disappointment for many of you.
Speaker 3: But we'll see.
Speaker 1: Oh good, maybe that'll distract him from the clear gazzo references.
Speaker 3: In and or in this, and Alex Jones was just saying,
Speaker 3: was tweeting about how this pope is going to be
Speaker 3: like used by the deep state to undermine Trump.
Speaker 2: Oh well, they're gonna have to send JD to kill him.
Speaker 1: This in the bond market is the deep state anyway.
Speaker 3: So there are a lot of these tweets emerging of
Speaker 3: the actual the new pope when he was just whatever,
Speaker 3: a cardinal and his last retweet was actually like lambasting
Speaker 3: the Trump administration. And also he wrote a tweet like
Speaker 3: saying that j. D Man's is wrong about Jesus Christ,
Speaker 3: so oh perfect.
Speaker 2: The group of bishops or whomever said, like JD is
Speaker 2: is wrong about his interpretation of Catholicism. Isn't that a
Speaker 2: big deal for the Catholics, Like if the church denounces you,
Speaker 2: you have a problem. Yeah, I guess the far right
Speaker 2: wing of the Catholic Church didn't really recognize Francis as
Speaker 2: the true pope or whatever.
Speaker 3: We know, that's the thing.
Speaker 2: And I think thought this was really like a serious
Speaker 2: part of their religion is like to have the picture
Speaker 2: of the pope.
Speaker 3: Well, that's why they were hoping for someone like really
Speaker 3: like out there, like like a hardcore traditionalist, and I
Speaker 3: don't think they did. That guy came.
Speaker 2: Well, the option that they had was an African guy
Speaker 2: who is hardcore. But he's also African.
Speaker 3: So there's another American who's also pretty hard core. Who
Speaker 3: is who is who is being talked about? A different American? Right?
Speaker 2: Well, we live in fun times.
Speaker 3: We do live in fun times.
Speaker 2: Next week we will get back to Merlo Pontian Buddhism. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, take care of you guys, see ye till
Speaker 2: next time.