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Speaker 1: Well, you got a drink more than it's uh, you know,

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it's the middle of the day. You can do that.

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Speaker 2: Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask

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what you can do for your country.

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Speaker 3: Mister grbachaw tear down this wall.

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Speaker 4: It's the Ricochet Podcast with Chernald C. W. Cook and

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Stephen Hayward, James Lylyx and today we Doctor Charles and

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Macawee about Pennsylvania politics and tedby Troy about money and power.

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So let's episodes a podcast.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I just think people should put this in perspective.

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They try to take different things that happen with tropical

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weather and act like it's something.

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Speaker 1: There's nothing new under the sun.

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Speaker 3: Assertions have been made that property is being confiscated. That's

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simply not true. They're saying people impacted by these terms

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were received seven hundred and fifty dollars in cash and

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no more. That's simply you're not true.

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Speaker 4: Welcome everybody. This is the Ricochet Podcast number seven hundred

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and twelve. I'm James Lylyx here in y Appolis, Minnesota. Beautiful,

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absolutely beautiful autumn day and not very many Halloween decorations

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up yet, which is great because it grows and detestable

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and disgusting, the more lurid they get. Whatever whatever happened to,

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just put a little pump out on your front step.

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I'd like that. That one joined by Charles C. W.

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Cook and Stephen Hayward Today, gentlemen, how are you good?

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Speaker 6: Good?

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Speaker 1: I am great, James.

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Speaker 2: And the weather is probably better there than in coastal California,

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believe it or not.

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Speaker 4: Yes, well, we've had no rain unlike parts of the South,

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and what we see in the news is horrific, horrific,

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horrific devastation. However, Governor DeSantis came out the other day

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when the reporter asked him about the meteorological conditions and

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whether or not they were pertaining to global warming. I mean,

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we all know that there are more hurricanes now because

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somebody in North Dakota refuses to switch to an EV

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and he very deftly sort of cited the statistics in

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what they had done to plan for it. Charles, you

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are in Florida, and I know you're not affected by this,

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at least as far as I know. But is there

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just a general sense in Florida that this is in

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hand bad as it has been? Should the nation be

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fretting over this, or should be worrying more about what

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doesn't seem to be done in the places affected by Helene.

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Speaker 7: You should be more worried about Helene. I think Florida

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is a well oiled machine when it comes to hurricanes.

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It was a well oiled machine before Ron DeSantis ran

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for governor, but he has managed to make it even

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more well oiled and even more machine like by pre

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staging linemen. So Florida was always very good at dealing

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with hurricanes. Now it's really good at dealing with hurricanes

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and getting the power back on. So I think the

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challenges in places that are not used to this sort

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of thing in the way Floridians unfortunately are well.

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Speaker 4: Steve, let me ask you. Let me ask you this.

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I mean, the idea of prepositioning of supplies, equipment, linemen,

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and the rest of it seems like a no brainer.

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It seems like a core competency for any sort of

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government agency and in anything that they do. We used

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to believe and assume sort of that that's the way

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things worked. If you look at all the old movies.

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Whenever there's the disaster, government swings into action. The authorities

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are called plans are executed, Jeep's race out of garages, sirens,

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whaling and things. They're done. Now, we believe that when

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something happens, generally the government is going to be flat footed,

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stammering and unable to really deal with the first thing

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they need to do. It may not be accurate, but

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that seems to be the general thought abroad in the land.

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You're old enough to remember when we had the crisis

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of confidence in the seventies, where we seem to believe

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that the government was incapable of doing anything and it

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was just nothing but managed decline from here on in

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changed in the eighties. But do you feel that same

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sort of malaise when it comes to our government?

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, what's the old joke or the old line

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that history doesn't repeat itself but at rhymes that apparently

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Mark Twain never said. But look, there's two things here

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going on. One is, uh, you know, FEMA takes five

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days to get anywhere, and they get and then they

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bigfoot everybody like the FBI does with local crime investigations.

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And in Florida's case, I think the subtext here is please, femous,

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stay away, don't come here. We've got this. And you

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know you mentioned the hyper confidence of Governor DeSantis. I'll

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share with you that I did get have one conversation

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with him about this subject a couple of years ago,

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and I brought up the fact that, you know, Miami

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was essentially leveled by a huge hurricane around nineteen thirty five,

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but nobody lived there then. And I said, so, you

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know what if you have a Cat five hurricane it

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hits Miami or Palm Beach. And he says, I don't

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really worry about that because the building code since then

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have been very robust and they're organized for it. Says,

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what keeps me awake at night for hurricanes is Tampa

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Bay and he said, it's the geography of it. The

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storm surger would be much larger and there's nothing we

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can do about that, and that would present a much

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bigger challenge. So you would you heard that Milton was

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heading straight for Tampa Bay. I thought, well, here we go.

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This is going to be the big challenge. Now it

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veered off a bit to what Sarasota, I guess, and

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so Tampa Bay was spared a direct hit.

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Speaker 1: So we're lucky here.

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Speaker 2: But then, of course, the other thing I think you

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mentioned is you know, gee, Governor, isn't this more proof

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of climate change? Well, you know, if you look at

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the data, Milton ranks eighteenth in the level of intensity

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of Florida hurricanes for which we have records going back

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over one hundred years eighteenth. Most of those hurricanes that

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ranking ahead of Milton happened before nineteen sixty, before we

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started having so you know, the whole climate change the

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story really starts around nineteen So the point is that

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the data doesn't back up.

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Speaker 1: The panicky narrative, but that won't stop them, of course.

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Speaker 4: No, No, and Charles, the panicking narrative has a variety

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of solutions which can be seamlessly and easily implemented to

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stop this from ever happening again, I guess. And it's

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just our mutation is to refuse to accept what we

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must do tomorrow. But if we have Kamala Harrison the

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White House, is there going to be a push for

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more green nude eels as they used to say, or

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is it just or is it just going to be

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part of the usual atmosphere and chattering lip service.

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Speaker 7: No, the hurricanes will immediately stop if she wins. That's

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it was it January twentieth and augreat the new president.

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That's it gone, which is just as.

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Speaker 2: The sea level stopped rising when Obama became president, Right,

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we remember that.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, The Inflation Reduction Act, which despite its title, was

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actually a way of funneling trillion dollars to green Democratic groups,

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doesn't seem to have stopped hurricanes either. James May I

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make a broader political point about Florida that I think

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might be interesting to people who don't live here. There

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are two things about Florida politics that I've noticed in

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the last seven years since I lived here that I

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think haven't necessarily escaped the state's borders.

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Speaker 6: One is that Rondo Santas is not.

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Speaker 7: Regarded in Florida as this great controversial figure in the

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way he is nationally. And it's very amusing to hear

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him discussed as such outside of Florida, because in Florida

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he just seems like a normal, competent governor. The second thing,

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and the more important thing, I think is to most

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voters in Florida, I think I'm right in saying hurricane

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response is why the government exists, and if you do

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it well, you are rewarded for it. Everything else is

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either on autopilot or is regarded as a luxury. The

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autopilot part of the equation just cannot be overstated. Jeb

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Bush was a terrific governor, turned Florida around and made

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modern Florida essentially what it is, and constitutionalized a lot

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of things people now associate with the state. No income

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tax and so on was already there, but he extended

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that to all forms of income. We now have a

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constitutional amendment that prevents the state from raising any form

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of tax or fee without two thirds majority in both

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houses of the legislature.

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Speaker 6: That's in the constitution.

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Speaker 7: There's a bunch of things like that, which means if

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you're a governor, yes, you have to do things, and

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it's very important that you have the right governor, as

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we saw during COVID. But the thing that you are

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judged on more than anything else, is not whether you're

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low or raise taxes because you can't, but whether you

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deal with the hurricanes. Probably rohonder Sands won by twenty

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points in twenty twenty two. I think he'd have won

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by ten if it weren't for his response to the

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hurricane that happened just before, but the fact that he

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did so well with that hurricane is why he won

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by another ten points, because independence just said, oh great.

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And I think that this is going to happen again

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this year. I think that Republicans were going to win

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the state legislature in Florida again, and I think Trump

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was going to win, and I think Rick Scott was

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going to win. But I really would not be surprised

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now if you could tackle another five, six, seven points

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to how Republicans do in the state, purely because two

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hurricanes in a row, the party in power has shown

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that it did what it was there for. And I

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think this is just underestimated when people outside talk about

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Florida politics, or well, how will the state vote, what

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do people carry out? What about this issue or that issue.

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It's all valid, but the hurricane response question is really

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what matter is more than anything else, and it's going

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to have a big effect in November.

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Speaker 4: Well, you've just described a nightmare for most people, people

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on the left at least, who look at Florida and say,

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without the taxation system, how do you properly adjudicate what

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people should possess? How do you get the income from

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these people and get it to these people who need it?

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That's nightmare number one and two. If you want to

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take Florida a success story, I say I'm having with

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scare quotes here, then you're transporting a culture that bans

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books and infuses to allow people to say the word

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gay in any school situation. I mean that that is

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a you speak as though you don't live in one

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of the most oppressive, fascistic or nascently fascistic states in

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the kinds of stunning, stunning, stunning. Stephen, your your response

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before we go to our guest.

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Speaker 1: Ah, I don't really have one.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I mean the only you left out, James

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was we're only you know, ten thousand votes in a

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close election away from the Handmaid's Tale in Florida everywhere else, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Well, we do have an election going on, and when

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people think about it, oh what people think about it

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is well, they may want to reach for the top

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shelf where they got the brown stuff in the bottles,

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or the clear stuff, or for that matter of sparkling,

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00:10:40,480 --> 00:10:44,639
you know, infused famine or something like that. Times like

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these make you want to maybe relax with your favorite beverage.

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00:10:48,279 --> 00:10:52,320
The problem is is that tomorrow, m well, there's a

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sure way to make sure you wake up feeling fresh

210
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after a night of drinking. It's with pre alcohol, pre alcohol.

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And we thank the Biotics responsing this the Ricochet Podcast.

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And now we go to Charles Mclawee. Do I have

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that pronounce correctly? I'm sure that I don't. He's the

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founding editor of Real Clear Pennsylvania. We're happy that is here.

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And Charles tell me how badly I mangled your last name.

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Speaker 6: You got my name just right.

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Speaker 8: It is macawee.

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Speaker 4: Oh oh good for me, you know, well as somebody

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who goes around hearing lilix all the time instead of Lilacs,

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I'm keen to be good here, all right, Real Clear Politics, Pennsylvania. Well,

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you had a piece a couple of weeks ago titled

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Kamala Harris's Pennsylvania Problem. What is her problem?

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Speaker 9: She has a problem among that vast expanse of working

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class regions in Pennsylvania. And of course we know this

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region as it was described inaccurately by Democrats strategists Jim

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Carter Alabama in the middle. But this region has changed

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dramatically since he first employed that term in eighty six

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And really it's Northeastern Pennsylvania was a Democratic bastion, one

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that was indistinguishable when it came to once association of

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the Catholic Democrats that would put Democrats over the top

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in elections. This is a region that is trending red.

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Luzern County, for example, just this past month, has a

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Republican voter registration majority, and that was an Obama to

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Trump county in twenty sixteen at Lakawana County, Biden's home

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turf where.

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Speaker 8: He grew up.

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Speaker 9: Even precincts there and Scranton are shifting red. So while

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there are still plenty of ancestral Democrats there who will

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vote Democrat in this election as well, in this critical

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margins fight, it's a place like northeastern Pennsylvania that will

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determine the electoral outcome in the state.

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Speaker 2: Charles, it's Steve Hayward out in god forsake in California.

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And we keep hearing that Pennsylvania is not just the

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Keystone state, but the Keystone are the entire election.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know.

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Speaker 2: You can see lots of possible combinations of states where

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Pennsylvania could be lost by Trump or by Harris and

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still win.

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Speaker 1: But it is true.

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Speaker 2: I guess that Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan tend to

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vote together. In other words, they're three dominoes that lean

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on each other. And so you mentioned north, they just

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say north eastern Pennsylvan northwestern Pennsylvania. I'm thinking you up

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around Erie and all the rest. And I don't know

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the geography all that well. But the first question is,

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you know, I know Eerie by the Lake and all that,

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and other parts of Pennsylvania still strongly unionized. And yet

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we've seen the data and the fact that the United

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Auto Workers and the Teamsters declined to endorse Harris, and

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their internal polls showing majority of their members favoring Trump.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know what's your sense of all that.

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Do you think that while the polls show a dead ea.

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Speaker 2: Do you think the polls are underestimating as they have

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in the past, Trump's strength, especially with those kind of voters.

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Speaker 9: So I think when it comes to Pennsylvania, of that

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traditional blue wall when you think Wisconsin Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania is

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the hardest to discern because it's a state of complex

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demography that has been fueled by post twenty sixteen changes.

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The map of Pennsylvania just in the past eight years

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is far different now than it was when Trump narrowly

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won the state in sixteen. When you think of that

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union vote in a place like Eerie, for example, Yes,

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there are still plenty of traditional Democrats who have that

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allegiance to church, party and Union who may still vote

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deed no matter what, but they're diminishing, diminishing in numbers.

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And really when you look at the state wide map,

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it's a non unionized sector, the warehousing and logistics sector

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that is booming across the state, especially on the eastern half,

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and Latinos are increasingly comprising the majority of that workforce.

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And in so many cities east of the Soft Squarehanna River,

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in places like Allentown, Hazelsen, Lebanon, Lancaster. They comprise the

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majority plurality of the population, and they're working in warehousing logistics,

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and they, as twenty twenty has shown, are shifting red.

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So if voting blocked six hundred thousand eligible voters, if

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they're activated in the state to vote, they could play

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a real pivotal role in this outcome.

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Speaker 2: So and the other thing I'm sure you can tell

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us about is apparently Republican registration in the state of

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Pennsylvania has been surging. So talk about that a little

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bit because that seems certainly favorable for Trump.

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Speaker 9: It's a fascinating dynamic because when you look at voter

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registration statistics going back to nineteen ninety eight, which is

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the first time that the state has them on record,

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it's the narrownessive advantage that.

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Speaker 8: The Democrats have since that time.

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Speaker 9: For perspective, and two thousand and eight, when Obama won,

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there was a one point two million advantage for Dems

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and it is diminished now. And that is driven in

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part by those ancestral Democrats and working class regions who

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they have been revoting Republican, let's say, in the past

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twenty years, and they're just catching up with their voting patterns.

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But there are also plenty of people who are just

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disaffected with the Democrat Party. They no longer view them

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as defenders of their economic self interests. And these voters

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aren't just in those blue collar areas of the state

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beyond let's say Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. They're around Philadelphia too.

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Pockets of Delaware County Bucks County, for example, they flip

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to red recently, and that's driven a large part by

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blue collar Catholic Democrats who have gone red in the

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lower half of the county.

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Speaker 2: So one more question before I hand over to Charlie Trump. Parisays,

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of course, is not the only thing to watch in

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the state. There's a very hot Senate race between what's

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his name Casey and McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And lately, by the way.

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Speaker 2: The last several election cycles presidential cycles, the Senate racers

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have tend to go with the top of the ticket.

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In fact, there's only one exception, I think, and that

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was the Susan Collins in twenty twenty in Maine. Maine

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went for Biden and Collins kept her seat comfortably.

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Speaker 1: But what can you tell us about that race?

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Speaker 2: Is it also as close as the presidential race, and

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what are your expectations.

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Speaker 9: When you look at the real clear politics polling average,

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I mean the advantage that Casey has now it's about

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three point nine percent. That's narvous at this point and

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memory since he was first elected at six and really

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the last time that let's say, the tickets split in

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Pennsylvania between the Senate race and the presidential election was

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in two thousand and four when Carrie won the state

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by ar On inspector of the Republican carried.

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Speaker 8: It out with the power of fancy.

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Speaker 9: But this is extremely close, really the most competitive race

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that Casey has faced since he was first elected statewide

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in nineteen ninety six as art or general. So that's

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driven again by that complex changing demography and then unforeseen circumstances.

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For example, I am talking to many Jewish voters across

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the state, plenty outside Phildelphia and Pittsburgh who polled no

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love for the Republican Party. They are quite liberal in

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their positions, but they don't view Casey as represented. But

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the party's left war turn on the issue of Israel

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and the antend of only from McCormick.

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Speaker 7: That's actually a good segue to my question. It's pretty

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much uniformly assumed on the right that Harris should have

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chosen Josh Shapiro because he's in the governor's mansion. But

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and it's also assumed that she didn't because he's Jewish,

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and that there is a constituency within the Democratic Party

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that would have had a problem with that given its

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problems with Israel.

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Speaker 6: How true is that?

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Speaker 7: Is that something that people on the right say because

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they don't like Harris or is there some substance to it.

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Speaker 9: I think the decision that was made is more complex

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in that single issue alone. I think there's also the

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factor that Shapiro, in terms of his raw political talents,

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whether it's oratory or just campaigning, outshine Harris.

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Speaker 8: And that was a factor that was taken into serious consideration.

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Speaker 9: It will be fascinating to find out what we do

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learn in the history books about that decision, because it

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may prove to be quite a consequential one, because I

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do think that.

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Speaker 8: Had Shapiro been chosen.

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Speaker 9: While I think it's also over stated that if he

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had been chosen, Pennsylvania would have been assured for Harris,

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it certainly would have helped her cause in the state

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when considering his work in regions that have been less

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targeted by Democrats and recent cycles.

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Speaker 7: And my second question, you just described the way the

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state has changed and is changing. I have a friend

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who said something really provocative a couple of days ago

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to me. He said, you know, Pennsylvania's becoming Ohio. It's

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moving towards where Ohio is going to become a Republican state.

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And I instinctively just don't believe this because I always

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think Republicans are going to lose.

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Speaker 6: How true is that? Is there anything to that?

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Speaker 9: That's flat raw because far that change is driven by

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there are booming suburban areas of the state.

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Speaker 8: So we associate suburbia, which is greater.

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Speaker 9: Philadelphia, but in reality, the fastest growing area of the

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state is south central Pennsylvania, the Harrisburg, Lancaster Carlisle corridor

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Cumberland County. The western suburb of Harrisburg is the fastest

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growing area of Pennsylvania, and all those west shore suburbs

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are going blue.

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Speaker 8: And it's driven by the healthcare boom of the state.

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Speaker 9: Healthcare is really the primary employer so many suburbs across Pennsylvania,

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and physicians once a reliable geob constituency, they have been

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going d.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, so it's going to stay at swing state.

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Speaker 8: It will stay a swing state.

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Speaker 9: And part of the reason we'll stay a Swain state

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is because of those vastly growing suburban areas.

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Speaker 4: You say physicians are going blue, but most of the

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physicians I've met my lifetime trend to go the other

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direction for a variety of reasons. Is it just that

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there's an installed bureaucracy. The more when you have a

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big healthcare bureaucracy and a lot of nurses and such

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that they tend to be read. I mean, if you

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lose the doctors, you're not going to lose a lot.

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Speaker 8: But well, the sector itself has transformed.

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Speaker 9: So physicians trended Republican back when they were small business

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owners running their own practices, but they're now employees of

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these massive systems, which is exactly the case of Pennsylvania.

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So for example, Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown recently

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merged with Jefferson Healthcare System in Philadelphia that is, together

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with that merger, the largest employer in Greater Philadelphia this fall,

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and so many of those nurses and physics. Really this

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healthcare workforce that is just exploding through alph the estate

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and exploding apart because people are getting sicker. Is that

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these are workers who have been voting Democrat. As one

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elected Republican in the Harrisburg area recently described it to me.

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He was talking about a townlike development's going up outside Harrisburg.

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It has gone up similar to what you see like

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around Metro GC of those townhouses, and the developers told

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him that the development itself is comprised mostly of young nurses,

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and we know exactly how those young nurses will defall

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in their voting patterns.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, James, if I can stick in here and then

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pivot to my last question for Charles. You know, there's

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a big story about why the healthcare industry is trending

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blue as a whole. It's and that's a subject take

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up some other day perhaps, but it's now in my

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mind the parallel to the K twelve education system, which

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we've seen over the decades, how that has gone it's

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because the government now dominates the sector, by the way,

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so much of the growth and healthcare is administrators, just

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like public education, and a lot of doctors I talked to,

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by the way, James, they hate all this, but they

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may know where their bread is buttered, would say, long story.

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The other side of the street, of course, in Pennsylvania

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is the fracking story, which Harris has done a one

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to eighty one, and there's a case of where the

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people who used to work as all the pump jacks

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and all the other people in the industry unionize for

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the most part, probably habitual Democratic voters, but now they

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see the bureaucracy and the Democrats as their enemy. And

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so my last question, Charles, is you know, again from afar,

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it seems like this fracking reversal by Harris is a

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really big story. Are we right in concluding that? Is

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that a big story in Pennsylvania.

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Speaker 9: It's a big story in a certain part of Pennsylvania,

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but from the state wide residents, it's more complicated. The

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issue of fuel costs attendant with inflation.

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Speaker 8: Yeah, that matters.

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Speaker 9: Living in these struggling communities where you're living in the

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have double.

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Speaker 8: Home built before World War One and supporter community.

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Speaker 9: You rely on natural gas for fuel and it's going

475
00:25:06,559 --> 00:25:10,680
up and up whatever. But in southwest part of southwestern Pennsylvania,

476
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:14,640
where fracking has been an employer, that is a concern.

477
00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:19,680
But it's also an issue of pricing the industry itself.

478
00:25:19,759 --> 00:25:24,640
It's in flux because lost in the story, this region

479
00:25:24,720 --> 00:25:28,720
needs the infrastructure to transport the natural gas that has

480
00:25:28,759 --> 00:25:31,079
to other parts of the country, like New England's, and

481
00:25:31,160 --> 00:25:33,960
that infrastructure isn't there due to red.

482
00:25:33,839 --> 00:25:36,559
Speaker 8: Tape issues that go to the local level. So that's

483
00:25:36,599 --> 00:25:37,839
where it has sailings.

484
00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:43,799
Speaker 7: Charles, in your view, is Trump better placed or worse

485
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:49,319
place than say, your generic Republican presidential candidate to win

486
00:25:49,559 --> 00:25:52,759
a state like Pennsylvania. I mean, I understand each candidate

487
00:25:52,799 --> 00:25:55,359
is different, but one of the arguments for him is

488
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:59,240
he'll do better in Pennsylvania. Would he have done better

489
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:01,799
in Pennsylvania than the Santis or a Nicky Haley or

490
00:26:01,839 --> 00:26:04,480
a Tim Scott do you think when.

491
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:07,480
Speaker 9: You consider the type of Trump voter in Pennsylvania? Yes,

492
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:11,400
because this is the land of Obama to Trump voters.

493
00:26:12,039 --> 00:26:16,519
So really, all those registration gains that the Republican Party

494
00:26:16,559 --> 00:26:22,359
has been enjoined, they're among people who persistently voted Democrat

495
00:26:22,559 --> 00:26:25,839
up until twenty sixteen. They harbored no love for the

496
00:26:25,839 --> 00:26:31,319
Republican Party. So really the Republican Party. Trump's presidency was

497
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:34,960
somewhat of a blood transfusion when it came to certain

498
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:38,279
parts of the state in driving up those numbers. But nevertheless,

499
00:26:38,599 --> 00:26:41,839
the challenge for Republicans and one that will be testing

500
00:26:41,839 --> 00:26:45,839
this McCormick Casey race. McCormick's going after those suburban nites.

501
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:49,079
And if McCormick pulls an upset and actually defeats Casey,

502
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:52,359
it will be in part because he brought back some

503
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:56,359
of those suburban voters who may have sat out twenty

504
00:26:56,440 --> 00:26:58,640
twenty or voted against Trump that year.

505
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:02,480
Speaker 7: Do you think Republicans can keep those voters in Pennsylvania

506
00:27:02,559 --> 00:27:03,200
post Trump.

507
00:27:03,759 --> 00:27:07,240
Speaker 9: I think McCormick himself is showing a model for how

508
00:27:07,279 --> 00:27:10,200
it can be done. It's a robust campaign. He's taking

509
00:27:10,240 --> 00:27:16,799
trumping in positions while making inroads with the traditional Republican Party.

510
00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:20,680
So he has proven palatable to the emerging working class

511
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:26,079
space has emerged post Trump while trying to make gains

512
00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:29,799
or regain the people who had voted for let's say

513
00:27:29,839 --> 00:27:31,960
Pat Toomey in twenty sixteen.

514
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:41,359
Speaker 4: Well, we will see. Thank you so much, Charles for

515
00:27:41,559 --> 00:27:48,599
giving us the load in Pennsylvania. I'm still just wrapping

516
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:53,319
my head around the dudes for Kamala people from Pennsylvania

517
00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:57,160
who I guess are taking the state by storm and

518
00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:01,160
redefining its culture and upbanding expectations. But we'll see how

519
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:05,319
that plays on an election night anyway, Real clear, Pennsylvania.

520
00:28:05,519 --> 00:28:07,880
The link will be on ricochet dot com. We thank

521
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:10,279
you for joining us today, great being here. Thanks a lot,

522
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:15,480
and now we welcome back to the podcast. Tevi Troy,

523
00:28:15,599 --> 00:28:17,799
Senior fellow of the White Partisan Policy Center. He's the

524
00:28:17,839 --> 00:28:20,599
best selling presidential historian whose latest entry on that front

525
00:28:20,759 --> 00:28:23,440
is The Power and the Money, The epic clashes between

526
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:27,720
Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry. Welcome Tevy, Hey James,

527
00:28:27,759 --> 00:28:30,359
thanks for having me so. Most of us are familiar

528
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:32,480
with the you know, the left right split that has

529
00:28:32,519 --> 00:28:35,440
the Democratic administration's reigning in big business, you know, like

530
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:39,359
the statues in front of the Federal Traders Association, and

531
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:41,759
then Republicans come and loosen the reins and let the

532
00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:45,759
entrepreneurs flourish in the thousand flowers, et cetera. What can

533
00:28:45,839 --> 00:28:48,559
pre coolist history tell us about how to view that

534
00:28:48,599 --> 00:28:51,240
particular relationship. Is it just the usual yin and yang?

535
00:28:51,319 --> 00:28:54,359
Is it the plebeians and the optimates? Is this a

536
00:28:54,559 --> 00:28:58,559
timeless tale that we cycle we simply cannot break out

537
00:28:58,559 --> 00:29:00,720
of well, it would be.

538
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:02,319
Speaker 5: Great if it actually did work like that. You could

539
00:29:02,319 --> 00:29:04,440
always count on the Republicans to loosen the reins, but

540
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:06,440
they don't always do it. In my book and the

541
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:07,799
Power of the Money, I go back one hundred and

542
00:29:07,799 --> 00:29:10,920
fifty years, and you have Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt who

543
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:14,920
went hard after the corporations, including him going after John D.

544
00:29:15,039 --> 00:29:19,400
Rockefeller and Standard Oil, and he was looking to break

545
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:21,279
up a lot of them, what he called the trusts.

546
00:29:21,599 --> 00:29:23,440
He was also there at the cusp of when you

547
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:28,200
started to have this development of regulatory APPARATUSUS and new

548
00:29:28,279 --> 00:29:31,720
legislation and new regulatory bodies. And so it's been a

549
00:29:31,799 --> 00:29:35,160
complicated one hundred and fifty years in which Republicans sometimes

550
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:37,240
are on the side of big business, but sometimes they don't.

551
00:29:38,759 --> 00:29:40,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, hey, Tevy, it's Steve Hayward out here in god

552
00:29:40,839 --> 00:29:43,720
forsake in California. And just to guild your point, I mean,

553
00:29:43,759 --> 00:29:46,960
I think you know this that the largest regulatory expansion

554
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,960
over business in modern times occurred under Richard Nixon right

555
00:29:51,079 --> 00:29:53,400
in the late sixties and early seventies, from which we've

556
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:54,160
never recovered.

557
00:29:54,599 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 1: And then you probably, I mean, I love these trivia points.

558
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:01,680
Speaker 2: You know, President Taft t our successor actually had more

559
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:05,799
antitrust prosecutions than Roosevelt did in just his four years

560
00:30:05,799 --> 00:30:09,160
in office, whereas Roosevelt had what seven years. But you know,

561
00:30:09,359 --> 00:30:12,599
tr reminds me most of Trump in this way. I

562
00:30:12,599 --> 00:30:15,720
think you know that, you know, tr strategy was, look,

563
00:30:15,839 --> 00:30:17,960
you guys in big business, I'll kind of let you

564
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:19,880
do what you want as long as you take orders

565
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:23,400
from me. That's a slightly crude summary, but only slightly,

566
00:30:23,440 --> 00:30:25,839
I think, and you know Trump's pretty much that way right,

567
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:27,000
It's all transactional.

568
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:30,759
Speaker 1: But how do you I mean, I think it's a

569
00:30:30,759 --> 00:30:31,599
good important point.

570
00:30:31,599 --> 00:30:34,039
Speaker 2: The Republicans are not always pro business or pro big

571
00:30:34,079 --> 00:30:38,000
business anyway. But right now it seems the Democrats that

572
00:30:38,039 --> 00:30:40,839
the last two Democratic administrations have been trying to.

573
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:44,720
Speaker 1: Revive that the old simple narrative, haven't they.

574
00:30:44,759 --> 00:30:48,599
Speaker 2: I mean, the current administration certainly is very aggressive, you know,

575
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:50,279
this week proposing to break up Google.

576
00:30:50,319 --> 00:30:50,839
Speaker 1: I suppose.

577
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:52,039
Speaker 4: Yeah.

578
00:30:52,039 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 5: Well, what I would say is that maybe there's four quadrants,

579
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:57,200
and you've got pro business and pro market and then

580
00:30:57,319 --> 00:31:01,559
anti business, anti market, and the Republican are often pro

581
00:31:01,599 --> 00:31:05,160
market and often pro business. The Democrats are always anti

582
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:08,839
market and often anti business, and so you have this

583
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:12,720
kind of weird mixing of the different perspectives. And what

584
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:15,119
we've seen in recent years is a split within the

585
00:31:15,119 --> 00:31:17,440
pro market and the pro business Republicans, and then you

586
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:20,119
also have a second split with the more anti business

587
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:24,119
Republicans that JD. Vance is more apt to criticize corporations

588
00:31:24,119 --> 00:31:27,799
than some Democrats these days. So it's a complicated story

589
00:31:27,839 --> 00:31:28,640
and has long been.

590
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:30,480
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

591
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:31,960
Speaker 2: One other thing I haven't had a chance to get

592
00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:33,759
in your book yet, Tevy, but I wonder if you

593
00:31:33,799 --> 00:31:35,960
talk a little bit about Coolidge, who maybe is a

594
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:38,359
hand's figure in some ways. You know, the old myth

595
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:41,759
was always Coolidge said the business of America's business.

596
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:44,440
Speaker 1: He didn't actually say that. He said the chief.

597
00:31:44,440 --> 00:31:47,519
Speaker 2: Business of America is business, and then went on for

598
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:51,720
paragraph about how America's commercial character is always subordinate to

599
00:31:51,759 --> 00:31:55,200
its democratic character. All that gets left out. Do you

600
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:57,440
dwell on this at all about Coolidge and maybe even

601
00:31:57,480 --> 00:31:58,359
Harding in your book?

602
00:31:59,559 --> 00:32:01,880
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely have Coolidge and Harding in there, and some

603
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:05,720
of their relationships with CEOs, including Henry Ford, and I

604
00:32:05,759 --> 00:32:09,319
do have the quote correct in my book, which I

605
00:32:09,319 --> 00:32:10,160
think is important.

606
00:32:11,039 --> 00:32:11,960
Speaker 1: But there's another thing.

607
00:32:11,960 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 5: You were talking about in terms of Nixon and his

608
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:18,599
expansion of the regulatory state with the EPA and the

609
00:32:18,599 --> 00:32:22,319
Philadelphia Plan. And I have a great story in the

610
00:32:22,359 --> 00:32:25,640
book about a young Leiah Coca, who's a Ford executive

611
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:28,079
at the time, going to the Nixon White House and

612
00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:31,039
trying to convince them to overturn what the Department of

613
00:32:31,079 --> 00:32:35,119
Transportation is trying to do in imposing Natorite type regulations

614
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:37,279
on the auto industry. And I thought it was really

615
00:32:37,279 --> 00:32:41,359
interesting that Leiohcoca starts in the book as a pro

616
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:45,640
free market, pro business guy, and he morphs into less

617
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,400
pro free market and just pro business because in the

618
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:50,960
Carter years he's looking for subsidies and then in the

619
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:53,720
Reagan years he's looking for tariffs. So interesting transition there.

620
00:32:54,319 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 10: Yeah, that's right, Yeah, Tevy, Which of the two cars

621
00:33:00,079 --> 00:33:04,720
and presidential candidates Trump and Harris do you think is

622
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:11,039
most likely to be pro business as opposed to pro market?

623
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:15,319
Speaker 7: And I think we're in an interesting moment because Republicans

624
00:33:15,319 --> 00:33:17,599
have soured a little bit, certainly on big business, in

625
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:22,279
part because big business has taken a side culturally, and

626
00:33:23,519 --> 00:33:27,000
the Democrats, although they like to talk about sticking.

627
00:33:26,759 --> 00:33:30,839
Speaker 6: It to the man. I'm quite happy.

628
00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:35,160
Speaker 7: It seems to me to recruit big business to their

629
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:38,000
side when they need to. For example, Harris is all

630
00:33:38,039 --> 00:33:43,240
over Twitter and the stump citing the number of CEOs

631
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:45,759
she says to have endorsed her. She sees this as

632
00:33:45,759 --> 00:33:48,720
a sign that she's a sensible one economically, for example,

633
00:33:48,759 --> 00:33:53,880
whereas Trump is more likely to shout at those people.

634
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:56,599
So how do you see these two candidates right now

635
00:33:56,640 --> 00:33:59,440
with their relationship to business as opposed to markets.

636
00:34:00,039 --> 00:34:02,480
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I would say that Harris overstates it a

637
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:04,880
little bit. There as that letter of eighty eight business

638
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:09,440
leaders that signed endorsing her, But if you really look

639
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:12,119
at the letter, half of them are formers, showing that

640
00:34:12,159 --> 00:34:15,800
they're often reluctant to make a partisan point while they're

641
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:19,039
in power. Half of them are from Silicon Valley or

642
00:34:19,079 --> 00:34:21,559
from Hollywood, which are traditionally liberal. And then you have

643
00:34:21,599 --> 00:34:23,679
people like Larry Summers in there, who's a smart guy

644
00:34:23,679 --> 00:34:25,760
and an economists and everything, but he's not a business leader.

645
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:28,679
So she is trying to make it seem like she

646
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:30,800
is going to be pro business. She also has her

647
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:33,480
brother in law, Tony West, who's a senior executive at

648
00:34:33,559 --> 00:34:36,719
Uber advising her. So I think there will be favors

649
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:40,480
to businesses that play along, But I wouldn't call her

650
00:34:40,639 --> 00:34:44,199
pro business, and I certainly wouldn't call her pro market. Trump. Look,

651
00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:47,719
there's always a question of who is going to win

652
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:51,000
out in all the various battles inside Trump world, but

653
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:55,639
there are usually pro market people within them, and so

654
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:58,000
maybe there's a chance or a hope that you will

655
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:00,880
have the anti regulatory push that you saw in the

656
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:04,320
last Sump administration that did help goost the economy.

657
00:35:04,599 --> 00:35:07,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tebby, you know, I get to see a scenario.

658
00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:08,960
Let me run a scenario by you. This is what

659
00:35:09,119 --> 00:35:12,079
Peter Robinson likes to do, and see what you think

660
00:35:12,119 --> 00:35:16,119
of it. I think you know the history of or

661
00:35:16,159 --> 00:35:18,960
the cliches again about the New Deal. In World War

662
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:22,480
Two ended the Great Depression, we pivoted away from the

663
00:35:22,519 --> 00:35:24,679
New Deal. And of course the real story, as our

664
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:27,679
mutual friend Arthur Hermann wrote so well about a decade ago,

665
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:31,000
is that when World War two came, the government realized,

666
00:35:31,039 --> 00:35:34,320
the Democratic administration of Franklin Roosevelt realized they had to

667
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:36,719
take their boot off the neck of business. So they

668
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:39,960
ended up being by circumstance pro business and pro market,

669
00:35:40,519 --> 00:35:43,360
and that's what ends the depression and sets up the

670
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:46,000
prosperity of the post World War II era. So I

671
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:48,599
could see a situation in which we have a president

672
00:35:48,599 --> 00:35:51,639
Harris saih I hope not. But we have a president

673
00:35:51,639 --> 00:35:55,000
Harris and you run into a serious economic problem here,

674
00:35:55,239 --> 00:35:58,000
you know, a year, eighteen months, two years out because

675
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:01,079
of our deficits and other problems, and they decide, like

676
00:36:01,199 --> 00:36:04,559
Roosevelt did in nineteen forty forty one, that in fact,

677
00:36:04,599 --> 00:36:05,960
if we're going to get out of this, we're going

678
00:36:06,039 --> 00:36:08,719
to have to let business rip. By the way, the

679
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:10,599
fact that the brother in law is a big executive

680
00:36:10,639 --> 00:36:13,679
with Uber. What's Uber's business model been. It's been to

681
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:18,039
charge ahead and open new markets quicker than the interest

682
00:36:18,039 --> 00:36:22,039
groups can organize against them. And that has succeeded most places,

683
00:36:22,039 --> 00:36:24,880
but not everywhere. And so even the liberals who run

684
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:28,559
Uber understand the government regulation and interest groups are their enemy.

685
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:31,239
And maybe Harris and the people around her might figure

686
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:34,320
that out. Am I being just completely ridiculously optimistic? Or

687
00:36:34,559 --> 00:36:36,880
is that a scenario that you Tevy Troy think might

688
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:37,519
be possible?

689
00:36:38,679 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 5: Well, Steve, as you know, I cut my teeth working

690
00:36:40,519 --> 00:36:43,039
for Ben Wannberg, who is the greatest optimist in political

691
00:36:43,079 --> 00:36:45,239
life of all time, and even I think that's a

692
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:46,159
little optimistic.

693
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:48,679
Speaker 1: Oh me too, but I want to throw it out there.

694
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:52,199
Speaker 5: Right, But it is funny. It does race some interesting issues,

695
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:55,360
including something that Bill Gates dead, which is he said

696
00:36:55,519 --> 00:36:57,719
back in the day when he was running Microsoft that

697
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:00,400
the high tech industry is three times fast than the

698
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:02,360
private sector, and the private sector is three times faster

699
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:04,400
than government, which means that the high tech industry is

700
00:37:04,519 --> 00:37:07,280
nine times faster than government. And that's true, and that's

701
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:10,639
kind of the uber approach. However, the government is big,

702
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:13,199
and if they grab their hold onto your ankle, they're

703
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:15,440
not letting go. And Bill Gates found that out to

704
00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:16,400
his misfortune.

705
00:37:16,639 --> 00:37:18,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I sure did.

706
00:37:20,519 --> 00:37:23,480
Speaker 4: Charles mentioned something earlier that just in passing that one

707
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:25,119
of the reasons that people on the right have fallen

708
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:28,519
out with big business is because they've taken aside in

709
00:37:28,519 --> 00:37:33,920
cultural issues culture wars. Now, let's say again, as Stephen

710
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:37,239
just did we have a Kondell Harris administration. Do you

711
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:41,880
think that that is going to signal to the Democratic

712
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:44,840
Party and of the Harris administration that America is in

713
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:49,320
love again with all of the progressive movements that want

714
00:37:49,360 --> 00:37:52,079
to use to reshape various institutions in ways of thought, etc.

715
00:37:53,079 --> 00:37:56,320
Or are they going to realize that there actually is

716
00:37:56,440 --> 00:38:00,360
a backlash. There is a pushback that the companies that

717
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:02,239
have been putting their thumb on the scale, the companies

718
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:05,039
that have been endorsing DEI procedures and all of a

719
00:38:05,079 --> 00:38:08,679
sudden find themselves in the crosshairs of various internet activists

720
00:38:08,679 --> 00:38:10,840
and have to backtrack and cancel and the rest of it.

721
00:38:11,239 --> 00:38:15,400
How do you think that business embrace of progressive social

722
00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:18,280
agendas would unfold during the Harris administration.

723
00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 5: Well, I think they would feel a little more protected

724
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:23,760
from the government side. But you have to remember, no

725
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:25,360
matter who went this election, it's going to be a

726
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:28,840
closely divided government and continue to be closely divided for

727
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:32,039
the foreseeable future. And a lot of Republicans were alienated

728
00:38:32,360 --> 00:38:36,039
by the corporate embrace of DEI and EESG, and a

729
00:38:36,039 --> 00:38:39,880
lot of Republicans rightly in my mind, feel, hey, we've

730
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:42,199
been tearing your water. We've been getting hit for being

731
00:38:42,199 --> 00:38:44,679
pro corporate for all these years, and you take on

732
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:47,679
this DEI stuff and Thiseschief stuff. What are you doing

733
00:38:47,679 --> 00:38:50,159
to us? And so that's one of the reasons why

734
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:52,840
Republican lawmakers have soured on big business.

735
00:38:55,239 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 6: I mean, I have a question. How corrupt.

736
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:02,360
Speaker 5: A great start?

737
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 7: Yeah, how corrupt was American politics one hundred and fifty

738
00:39:07,519 --> 00:39:10,360
years ago? I just watched this documentary on Netflix about

739
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:15,639
whyatt Up, and the argument in it was the JP Morgan.

740
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:18,800
I won't go into all the details because it's quite complicated,

741
00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:21,039
but JP Morgan in the end of the nineteenth century,

742
00:39:21,079 --> 00:39:25,119
in the early eighteen eighties, sort of rote checks to politicians.

743
00:39:25,199 --> 00:39:28,119
He was a backer of the Republicans. Then he moved

744
00:39:28,159 --> 00:39:31,880
to Grover Cleveland and got what he wanted because he

745
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:33,920
just gave them money and there weren't even any campaign

746
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:35,559
finance laws or rules at the time.

747
00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 6: How true is that? How true is.

748
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:42,320
Speaker 7: The story that we're told about Teddy Roosevelt realizing that

749
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:46,159
the monopolies were corrupt and a danger to democracy?

750
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:47,320
Speaker 6: How true is all that?

751
00:39:48,239 --> 00:39:48,480
Speaker 1: Well?

752
00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 5: I think that you wonder if if it is corruption,

753
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:53,960
if you do something then there's no laws against it.

754
00:39:55,039 --> 00:39:58,039
So when John d Ruckkeller is building his empire, he

755
00:39:58,159 --> 00:40:01,639
uses a lot of sharp elbow belum monopolistic techniques that

756
00:40:01,679 --> 00:40:04,079
I wouldn't say were nice, but they weren't against the

757
00:40:04,159 --> 00:40:07,159
law at the time, and you didn't have these regulatory

758
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:09,960
bodies that could enforce against it. So I'm not willing

759
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:11,960
to say that everything was corrupt, and in fact, in

760
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:13,920
my book At the Power of the Money, I specifically

761
00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:17,519
tried not to choose out and out bad guy people.

762
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:21,239
These all the people, all the CEOSI profile are complicated.

763
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:24,599
None of them went to jail or arrested or did

764
00:40:25,039 --> 00:40:28,280
actually criminal things for the most part, So they were

765
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:31,360
just trying to live in a complicated environment that gets

766
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:34,320
more complicated when you have this government regulation in there.

767
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:36,159
So I don't think it was all just a whole

768
00:40:36,159 --> 00:40:39,199
bunch of corruption, but they did use their influence, specifically

769
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:43,840
Rockefeller and more more importantly Morgan because he engaged in

770
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:46,320
politics sooner, in order to try and get what they wanted.

771
00:40:46,519 --> 00:40:48,599
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm on the side of the revisionists, like,

772
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:51,719
oh gosh, the conoms of the Hillsdale College's name is

773
00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:54,360
blanking on me right now about the oh Burton folsome

774
00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:57,760
the myth of the robber barons, right So you know,

775
00:40:57,760 --> 00:40:59,920
it turns out that just to pick on Rockefeller, who

776
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:03,280
everyone liked to pick on while he was consolidating the

777
00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:07,840
refining industry. The consumer price of petroleum refined products fell

778
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:11,440
by what ninety percent? I mean, where was the whole

779
00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:14,159
revolution anti trust in modern times? Was what's the harm

780
00:41:14,159 --> 00:41:14,840
of the consumer?

781
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:16,199
Speaker 6: You know?

782
00:41:16,559 --> 00:41:17,880
Speaker 2: And then the other one is is I don't know

783
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:20,719
if you know the famous article by the economist John McGee,

784
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:22,320
but he went through the trial record.

785
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:23,719
Speaker 1: So the breakup of.

786
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:27,320
Speaker 2: Standard oil was what I think nineteen oh nine under

787
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:29,440
taft or nineteen eleven, sometimes.

788
00:41:29,159 --> 00:41:31,719
Speaker 5: Run nineteen eleven when the case comes down, that's.

789
00:41:31,559 --> 00:41:31,960
Speaker 1: In the key.

790
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, going through the trial record, what you find

791
00:41:34,519 --> 00:41:37,760
is all these people that rose that Rockefeller was buying out,

792
00:41:38,119 --> 00:41:40,119
they all said, we all thought we got a fair price,

793
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:43,199
none of them on the stand, and the trial said,

794
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:46,000
you know, we were strong armed. It was a mafia

795
00:41:46,119 --> 00:41:49,519
or you know, sort of illegal or you know, unethical practices.

796
00:41:50,079 --> 00:41:51,639
Speaker 1: And you know, his conclusion out all of this was,

797
00:41:51,679 --> 00:41:52,440
if you look at this.

798
00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:54,920
Speaker 2: You go, where was the legal violation even under the

799
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:57,159
sort of very Okay, I can get off in the

800
00:41:57,199 --> 00:41:59,639
weeds here and I already have done too many already.

801
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:03,239
But in other words, this is more political than it

802
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:04,480
is substantely economic.

803
00:42:04,559 --> 00:42:06,519
Speaker 1: That's my point. It was then. It looks to me

804
00:42:06,679 --> 00:42:08,199
like we're returning to that today.

805
00:42:09,360 --> 00:42:13,239
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I also friend, disabuse the notion of

806
00:42:14,199 --> 00:42:16,800
the robber barons. If you look at some of the

807
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:20,800
great philanthropic and educational institutions of this country, they were

808
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:22,639
funded by the robber rounds. Now, some of them, like

809
00:42:22,679 --> 00:42:24,760
the Rockefeller Foundation of the Fork Foundation, I think the

810
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:27,559
founders would be rolling in their graves at the ridiculous

811
00:42:27,559 --> 00:42:31,840
things that those foundations pursue. But the truth is that

812
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:34,679
they were very philanthropic. Part of it had to do

813
00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:37,599
with shaving income taxes, but you know that's still the

814
00:42:37,639 --> 00:42:39,559
case today. The part of it was also the great

815
00:42:39,559 --> 00:42:42,679
philanthropic impulse that they wanted to give back. Rockefeller, as

816
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:45,000
I show in the book, in the thirty years after

817
00:42:45,039 --> 00:42:47,480
he retires, he's still in public life. He's trying to

818
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:51,719
help the economy during the Great Depression, he helps out

819
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:53,599
in World War One, and gets a street name for

820
00:42:53,679 --> 00:42:56,920
him in France. So again, people weren't all bad guys.

821
00:42:56,920 --> 00:42:59,679
I think the robber baron myth is a little overstated.

822
00:43:00,119 --> 00:43:01,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a lot of us.

823
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:03,800
Speaker 2: Can I shift gears forbid and ask you to talk

824
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:06,400
about some general politics, because, after all, you did work

825
00:43:06,440 --> 00:43:10,280
in the Bush administration. You're also a fellow at the

826
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:13,400
Bipartisan Policy Center. I've spent some time with BPC folks,

827
00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:16,079
and you know, interesting and enterprise that tries to bring

828
00:43:16,119 --> 00:43:20,320
people together from across the political spectrum. Maybe you don't

829
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:22,480
want to comment on the election season we're looking at,

830
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:26,280
but do you have any particular observations or particular things

831
00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:29,280
you're looking at that maybe the rest of us are missing.

832
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:31,400
Speaker 1: Do you have a hunch who's going to win? How

833
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:33,280
do you size up the scene in front of us?

834
00:43:34,679 --> 00:43:37,079
Speaker 5: So I think that no matter what, as I said earlier,

835
00:43:37,079 --> 00:43:39,599
it's going to be very close in terms of the

836
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:43,000
split between Democrats and Republicans. Nobody wins knockout punches in

837
00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:45,880
today's politics, and I think that's an important point to

838
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:49,440
be aware of. The Second thing is that I think

839
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:53,679
there are some things that could have bipartisan buy in

840
00:43:53,679 --> 00:43:55,440
in the future. What are we going to do about Ai?

841
00:43:55,519 --> 00:43:57,400
What are we going to do about China? So I

842
00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:01,559
think after the election, maybe when rhetoric tones down a

843
00:44:01,559 --> 00:44:04,159
little bit, we could actually see an environment where you

844
00:44:04,199 --> 00:44:06,880
get some things done and things that we as conservatives

845
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:10,920
may not, may not completely abhore. Now that said, if

846
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,639
Harris wins, I won't like her policies at at though

847
00:44:13,639 --> 00:44:15,639
I'm not sure what they'll be because she's playing hide

848
00:44:15,679 --> 00:44:18,719
the ball in her campaign. And with Trump, you also

849
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:23,400
don't know because there's constant wars within the Trump team

850
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:25,239
about which team is going to win out. And that

851
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:27,239
was my last book, Flight House. I Know you like Steve,

852
00:44:27,639 --> 00:44:30,000
and it talked about the reason there were so much

853
00:44:30,039 --> 00:44:32,079
infighting in the Trump White House is because there were

854
00:44:32,119 --> 00:44:36,159
three teams that could credibly claim that they represented true

855
00:44:36,199 --> 00:44:39,920
Trump so called globalists with Jared Kushner, the maggotypes of

856
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:43,480
Steve Van and the traditional Republicans with Ryan's previous All

857
00:44:43,519 --> 00:44:46,280
of them could say Trump has set things that indicate

858
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:48,639
he agrees with our perspective. And so I think we

859
00:44:48,679 --> 00:44:50,199
may see more of that in your head.

860
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:53,519
Speaker 4: I think after Trump was liked it, I remember there

861
00:44:53,519 --> 00:44:55,480
are a couple of tweets from prominent people who said, well,

862
00:44:55,519 --> 00:44:57,719
that's it for the stock market, I'm selling everything because

863
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:00,840
nothing's good. And then of course there's the famous cartoon

864
00:45:01,079 --> 00:45:03,800
of the dinosaurs who are watching a meteor streak across

865
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:06,239
the sky and one of them says it's priced in.

866
00:45:06,559 --> 00:45:08,159
And I think about that when we think about people

867
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:11,960
saying that that the Harris administration would not be bad

868
00:45:12,039 --> 00:45:14,079
for the stock administer with the stock market either because

869
00:45:14,119 --> 00:45:16,360
it's priced in, because they're going to continue the policies,

870
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:20,440
et cetera, et cetera. Who knows. I absolutely don't, But

871
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:24,559
it does raise the question what do you think might

872
00:45:24,679 --> 00:45:28,719
be the impact of either administration on the finances of

873
00:45:29,119 --> 00:45:32,840
ordinary folk? Inflation is what matters the most, is what

874
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:36,079
the issue that Bedevil's minds on people because they encounter

875
00:45:36,159 --> 00:45:38,079
it on a daily basis. We can talk about China,

876
00:45:38,119 --> 00:45:40,239
we can talk about AI, but people are even sensed

877
00:45:40,239 --> 00:45:44,280
at the price of X not Twitter. But you know,

878
00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:49,280
is this too micro to be concerned about? It would

879
00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:51,360
seem not, It would seem particularly pertinent to this.

880
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:55,599
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, James, first of all, I would want to

881
00:45:55,639 --> 00:45:57,320
make sure that I had the list of all those

882
00:45:57,320 --> 00:45:59,519
people who said the stock market's going to collapse, and

883
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:01,559
never rely on them for financial advice.

884
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:02,760
Speaker 1: That's the first thing.

885
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:08,800
Speaker 4: By his crew. Paul Goldberger was the art the architecture

886
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:11,199
critic architecture critic for The New York Times. I've just

887
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:13,280
written about him that's why I think his name came

888
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:13,599
to mind.

889
00:46:13,679 --> 00:46:16,280
Speaker 5: Well, I already don't rely on Frigmant for political or

890
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:20,039
economic advice, so that's fine. I think you can't predict

891
00:46:20,079 --> 00:46:24,039
these things necessarily. You don't always know which administration is

892
00:46:24,039 --> 00:46:25,440
going to be good for the economy, because I don't

893
00:46:25,480 --> 00:46:30,480
think that there is a specific correlation a certain type

894
00:46:30,519 --> 00:46:32,639
of politician is good for the economy, because there's all

895
00:46:32,719 --> 00:46:35,159
kinds of macro effects that you don't know about them.

896
00:46:35,199 --> 00:46:37,599
And we had a huge boom in the nineteen nineties,

897
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:41,960
not necessarily because of Bill Clinton, although he I did

898
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:43,840
like some of the things that he did in conjunction

899
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:47,199
with the Republican Congress, but because we had this massive

900
00:46:47,199 --> 00:46:50,760
tech revolution and that helped increasing efficiency in the economy.

901
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:53,559
So there are other factors at play. And it's not

902
00:46:53,639 --> 00:46:56,679
just as simple as Republican pushes a ghost switch for

903
00:46:56,719 --> 00:46:58,559
the economy and Democrats push a stop switch.

904
00:46:59,079 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 4: That's true, but you can say this the more you

905
00:47:02,519 --> 00:47:04,760
have if you have a candidate who is more who

906
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:07,960
is interested in less regulation, less government, powerless government expansion,

907
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:09,920
et cetera, which seems to generally be on the right

908
00:47:09,960 --> 00:47:12,960
side of where if we're lucky then you have down

909
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:15,679
the road less of an installed base, of a bureaucracy

910
00:47:15,719 --> 00:47:18,039
that will thwart, that will suck up resources, that will

911
00:47:18,119 --> 00:47:21,719
vote in a certain way in order to perpetuate their physicians.

912
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:25,320
So I mean yes on an immediate effect. No, it's

913
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:26,760
not like Trump gets in and all of a sudden

914
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:28,760
the price of eggs goes down to a dollar ninety nine.

915
00:47:29,239 --> 00:47:34,480
But a general idea pervading the way the administration behaves

916
00:47:34,559 --> 00:47:42,320
and the loosening of things, the disinclination to create something

917
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:46,800
that will be sclerotic and intrusive in the future, that matters.

918
00:47:47,079 --> 00:47:48,519
And I'm just stating the obvious.

919
00:47:48,519 --> 00:47:51,599
Speaker 5: I'm so yah of course. Look, less regulation is better

920
00:47:51,639 --> 00:47:54,880
for the economy, and we all know that as conservatives

921
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:57,280
on this podcast. So that is what I would like

922
00:47:57,320 --> 00:48:01,320
to see. But the effects of whatever one administration does

923
00:48:01,639 --> 00:48:05,320
are not necessarily seen immediately in that time. So yes,

924
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:09,079
less regulation is better. Less government spending, and certainly government

925
00:48:09,119 --> 00:48:12,199
debt is a good thing. And I think the overspending

926
00:48:12,199 --> 00:48:15,199
of the Bide administration contributed to this very problematic inflation

927
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:19,079
we're dealing with. But again there's a lot of factors involved.

928
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:25,159
Speaker 4: Indeed, power, money, there's a lot of factors, and it

929
00:48:25,199 --> 00:48:27,079
is what makes the world we're on, et cetera, et cetera,

930
00:48:27,119 --> 00:48:30,079
et cetera. Listen, folks, Power and the Money is the

931
00:48:30,119 --> 00:48:33,159
book that Debbie Troy wrote, the epic clashes between Commanders

932
00:48:33,159 --> 00:48:37,440
in Chief and titans of industry, relevance today and relevant

933
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:40,880
a year and ten from now. Whoever happens to get

934
00:48:40,920 --> 00:48:44,360
into the office. Debbie, thanks for joining us and doc

935
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:45,480
to you down the road.

936
00:48:45,840 --> 00:48:47,360
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me. I love the podcast.

937
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:50,920
Speaker 4: Oh what a pleasure. Well he's talking about Stephen and

938
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:54,079
Peter and and the rest of it. See you later

939
00:48:55,559 --> 00:48:58,639
before we go, gentlemen, A couple of things amazing here,

940
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:01,119
isn't it? We were going to up in under an

941
00:49:01,119 --> 00:49:04,199
hour with two guests, I mean, and I mean that's

942
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:08,719
that's a swift, brisk, efficient bit of podcasting. Why it's

943
00:49:08,719 --> 00:49:12,719
almost as if we're trying to keep ourselves and being

944
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:16,280
replaced by AI. There's a new there's a new program

945
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:18,599
out of which I haven't yet tried, and I'm terrified

946
00:49:18,599 --> 00:49:20,400
to do so, frankly, where you can take an article,

947
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:22,679
any article, and you can drop it into this AI

948
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:26,159
program and it will generate two hosts, male and female,

949
00:49:26,440 --> 00:49:29,079
who will discuss the article, tear it apart, tell a

950
00:49:29,119 --> 00:49:31,519
little anecdotes on and on, laugh and the rest of it,

951
00:49:31,559 --> 00:49:38,400
and apparently is it is frighteningly accurate to the subject material.

952
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:43,239
But more than that, it's actually enjoyable. So this is

953
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:45,400
the sort of thing that unless we can come up

954
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:48,920
with some quirks that cannot be predicted or replicated by AI,

955
00:49:49,679 --> 00:49:53,199
we are ours. Well. I was going to say, a

956
00:49:53,239 --> 00:49:57,000
you're from being rendered moot, but maybe by the time

957
00:49:57,039 --> 00:49:59,000
we finished the podcast, they already will have come up

958
00:49:59,039 --> 00:50:02,559
with Charlie Bottens even bought and and me and the

959
00:50:02,559 --> 00:50:05,079
rest of it. And why would people then say, oh,

960
00:50:05,159 --> 00:50:07,920
I have to sit through these people asking these questions

961
00:50:08,079 --> 00:50:10,960
aren't really questions and speeches and hum the humming in

962
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:12,719
the eye. Why would I do that when I can

963
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:16,440
just take the entire text of Chevy's book, dump it

964
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:20,320
into AI and get a five part series on exactly

965
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:21,280
what it's about.

966
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:24,159
Speaker 2: You know, James, if I was a science fiction writer,

967
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:25,679
I may used to read a lot of science fiction

968
00:50:25,679 --> 00:50:27,559
when I was a teenager, and I don't much anymore.

969
00:50:27,599 --> 00:50:29,519
But if I were one today, I think I'd write

970
00:50:29,519 --> 00:50:34,239
a short story and it would be about the alien civilization,

971
00:50:34,639 --> 00:50:38,480
you know, two hundred light years from us, who discovers

972
00:50:38,559 --> 00:50:41,039
that we exist on Earth and they send an expedition

973
00:50:41,079 --> 00:50:44,880
out and they get here, and what they discover the punchline,

974
00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:46,719
the twist ending would be, you can see it coming,

975
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:50,159
is that the human species have long gone extinct, hundreds

976
00:50:50,199 --> 00:50:52,840
or thousands of years before, and what they're picking up

977
00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:55,360
and what exists on the planet are only robots and

978
00:50:55,440 --> 00:50:59,559
AI robots carrying on discussions, podcast news, elections even right.

979
00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:03,320
And that's the sort of the frightening sci fi take

980
00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:04,519
on where this might be going.

981
00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:07,239
Speaker 4: That's a Bradbury story, and it's interesting. We get skyne It,

982
00:51:07,320 --> 00:51:09,760
but instead of skyne It coming down and terminating everybody,

983
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:13,360
it's just it's skyne plus matrix with actual with with

984
00:51:13,559 --> 00:51:19,760
with no thought, with no consciousness, just absolute generated jabber

985
00:51:19,880 --> 00:51:20,840
forever and ever and ever.

986
00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:24,400
Speaker 6: You know, I'm not worried about it depressing.

987
00:51:24,599 --> 00:51:29,719
Speaker 7: Why because I think I would listen to this for

988
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:32,000
a little bit, and then, as I do when I

989
00:51:32,079 --> 00:51:36,280
listen to anything, because I'm argumentative, I would disagree with it.

990
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:37,480
I'd be annoyed by it.

991
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:39,800
Speaker 6: And so instead of saying, do you know, I just

992
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:41,840
read this thing in Slayton. It really annoyed me. And

993
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:43,639
here's why it's wrong, which is my job.

994
00:51:44,519 --> 00:51:46,800
Speaker 7: I would end up saying, I just heard this stupid

995
00:51:46,840 --> 00:51:52,239
AI chat bot and it's ridiculous interpretation of Tevy Troy's book.

996
00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:55,679
And here's why it's wrong, because it's just no way

997
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:59,159
that it could possibly with two people encompass every opinion

998
00:52:00,039 --> 00:52:03,079
on the spectrum. So I think it might lead to more,

999
00:52:03,400 --> 00:52:07,679
not replace James Lylax, but lead to more James Lylyax

1000
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:11,960
to argue with, will facilitate the different views that had

1001
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:12,639
been expressed.

1002
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:16,639
Speaker 4: Well, that's heartening, I'd like to think. But then again,

1003
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:18,840
it gets to the point where a large language model

1004
00:52:18,840 --> 00:52:22,320
can can assume and predict every objection that you might have,

1005
00:52:23,119 --> 00:52:27,679
and that Stephen's dystopian future comes true because not only

1006
00:52:27,679 --> 00:52:29,480
do we have the radio hosts jabbering, but we have

1007
00:52:29,519 --> 00:52:31,639
the call, We have the callers who are generated by

1008
00:52:31,679 --> 00:52:34,440
AI and the crazy call. The question is how much

1009
00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:37,920
imagination does it? Inevitably will it have and it will

1010
00:52:38,039 --> 00:52:41,320
have just enough simulacrum of intelligence and imagination that we

1011
00:52:41,360 --> 00:52:44,480
will accept it to be real. Mean, I work with

1012
00:52:44,519 --> 00:52:46,719
an awful lot right now, with an awful lot of

1013
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:50,199
AI generated art for a project that I'm doing, and

1014
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:52,800
I'm still it's still in this sort of charming phase

1015
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:56,119
where it just simply cannot generate text and as such

1016
00:52:56,559 --> 00:52:59,519
comes up with the most fascinating words. It's like having

1017
00:52:59,599 --> 00:53:01,760
a broke in Dutch. When I look at some of

1018
00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:04,760
this stuff, it's just great. I asked you to do

1019
00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:07,880
English ads for British ads for English muffins in the

1020
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:10,440
nineteen twenties, and it will come up with these these

1021
00:53:10,480 --> 00:53:14,239
ways that are almost right. It's it's an earnestness of

1022
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:16,199
saying do I have it yet? Have I got it?

1023
00:53:16,239 --> 00:53:18,400
And you say no, you don't. Really an ad would

1024
00:53:18,440 --> 00:53:22,880
not say English muffin? Are you lating muffin? It just wouldn't,

1025
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:25,519
And let me tell you why. So right now there

1026
00:53:25,559 --> 00:53:28,760
are enough tells, the fingers, the eyes, the rest of

1027
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:30,840
it there. But at the same time, you know this

1028
00:53:30,960 --> 00:53:33,440
is temporary and it's going to be fixed in a

1029
00:53:34,039 --> 00:53:36,519
trice flux one point one or at one point five,

1030
00:53:36,599 --> 00:53:39,360
whatever the latest is. Apparently it's really good at text,

1031
00:53:39,400 --> 00:53:40,840
so we're not going to have to worry about that.

1032
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:45,000
So it's improving at an extraordinary rate, and you know

1033
00:53:45,199 --> 00:53:47,480
we're going to look back, I think with little nostalgia

1034
00:53:47,599 --> 00:53:50,239
at the time when we could actually be reasonably certain

1035
00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:52,880
that something was a bot or something was AI generated.

1036
00:53:53,599 --> 00:53:58,440
Speaker 7: James, Oh God, I say, have you ever seen any

1037
00:53:58,519 --> 00:54:02,800
AI attempts to do four panel cartoons? Because it has

1038
00:54:02,920 --> 00:54:08,079
the tone and the setup, but it doesn't understand how

1039
00:54:08,079 --> 00:54:10,920
to write jokes. So it's always some guy at a desk,

1040
00:54:11,000 --> 00:54:14,079
and then in the second one he's like, Wow, a

1041
00:54:14,159 --> 00:54:16,800
coffee would be nice, And then on the fourth panel

1042
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:19,039
he's got his eyes wide open and it just says

1043
00:54:19,079 --> 00:54:19,639
something like.

1044
00:54:19,679 --> 00:54:20,599
Speaker 6: Are you suckling?

1045
00:54:21,280 --> 00:54:21,480
Speaker 4: Yah?

1046
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:26,000
Speaker 7: I know he's supposed to be emphatic and funny, but

1047
00:54:26,039 --> 00:54:26,400
it's not.

1048
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:31,440
Speaker 2: Can I ask a question or introduce a complication, because

1049
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:33,840
I'll bet I don't know the answer to this, James,

1050
00:54:33,840 --> 00:54:36,000
you use a key phrase, which is we call these

1051
00:54:36,119 --> 00:54:39,519
large language models, and I think they're mostly being done

1052
00:54:39,639 --> 00:54:42,639
in English because English is, by the way, a large language, right.

1053
00:54:42,679 --> 00:54:45,039
It has a much bigger vocabulary than most other languages.

1054
00:54:45,119 --> 00:54:47,679
I wonder there are other languages that are more complicated,

1055
00:54:47,679 --> 00:54:50,719
you know, French or regular verbs and Hungarian for goodness sake.

1056
00:54:51,199 --> 00:54:53,239
I wonder if it works as well with those languages,

1057
00:54:53,599 --> 00:54:56,239
or whether English is going to be going to dominate it.

1058
00:54:56,280 --> 00:54:59,559
And why this is a serious question is, let's see

1059
00:54:59,559 --> 00:55:01,679
if I can do this in twenty seconds. You know,

1060
00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:04,000
I do read about linguistics now and then, and you

1061
00:55:04,039 --> 00:55:06,639
know this is there's something serious about how you know,

1062
00:55:06,719 --> 00:55:08,880
human beings just start talking by age.

1063
00:55:08,639 --> 00:55:12,199
Speaker 1: Three without any special instruction. They just we just do it.

1064
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:15,760
Speaker 2: That's what makes us different from any other species. You know, monkeys,

1065
00:55:15,800 --> 00:55:18,159
we can teach them a vocabulary of fifty words, but

1066
00:55:18,239 --> 00:55:19,480
only with a lot of effort.

1067
00:55:19,719 --> 00:55:21,239
Speaker 1: And there's no deliberation there.

1068
00:55:21,320 --> 00:55:24,400
Speaker 2: You know, Bobo may say Bobo want banana, but Bobo

1069
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:28,519
never says Bobo wants justice. Right, So that's where I

1070
00:55:28,519 --> 00:55:31,280
think it starts to break down. And I wonder if

1071
00:55:32,840 --> 00:55:34,719
you know one war our point on this. You know,

1072
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:38,840
Norm Chomsky's most famous serious contribution to linguistics was there's

1073
00:55:38,840 --> 00:55:42,719
a universal grammar, And apparently that is very controversial among

1074
00:55:43,039 --> 00:55:45,440
the super linguistics and the semiodsis of the world. I

1075
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:47,760
don't know, it's all over my head, but I think

1076
00:55:47,800 --> 00:55:50,079
there's something to all that that probably bears on this

1077
00:55:50,119 --> 00:55:52,440
whole thing. And so I'm wondering, is this really going

1078
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:55,800
to be just an English language thing, which is not insignificant,

1079
00:55:55,800 --> 00:55:57,360
but it may also be its limitation.

1080
00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:01,199
Speaker 4: I think it will because the expandability adaptibil, the syncretic

1081
00:56:01,239 --> 00:56:03,559
nature of English. It just will. And as far as

1082
00:56:03,639 --> 00:56:06,159
Cholms get thing, you know, Leonar Bernstein picked this up

1083
00:56:06,159 --> 00:56:09,840
too and thought that there was an inherent musical templace

1084
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:12,280
that was shared by all humans, where children in every

1085
00:56:12,280 --> 00:56:15,239
culture or something like that. And he built this into

1086
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:17,280
ten episodes and in a book and the rest of it.

1087
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:19,239
It was impressive at the time, back when we had

1088
00:56:19,239 --> 00:56:23,920
public intellectuals. But mentioning, you know, Lenny, it reminds you

1089
00:56:24,000 --> 00:56:27,599
that there are already AI generators of music, and they

1090
00:56:27,639 --> 00:56:32,400
can range from the quite comic and hilarious to convincing

1091
00:56:32,800 --> 00:56:36,920
enough you know, slop that it'll do for a commercial

1092
00:56:37,119 --> 00:56:39,800
or a podcast bit or something like that. Why worry

1093
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:41,880
about copyright when you can just simply type in a

1094
00:56:41,880 --> 00:56:45,320
few things and have a have generated for you. Something

1095
00:56:45,639 --> 00:56:48,400
that's all yours is not going to get takedown notice

1096
00:56:48,440 --> 00:56:51,280
and the rest of it. So music then gets taken

1097
00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:53,639
out of the hands of the individuals. Again, we're going

1098
00:56:53,679 --> 00:56:56,360
to get to the point where the artisantal, the handmade,

1099
00:56:56,400 --> 00:56:59,119
the definably human, the stuff that actually has the stamp

1100
00:56:59,159 --> 00:57:01,559
of human is going to be the most prized thing.

1101
00:57:02,000 --> 00:57:05,880
And in a way that's great because we're going to

1102
00:57:05,920 --> 00:57:08,599
go from an era in which we have this explosion

1103
00:57:08,679 --> 00:57:11,679
of content generated by human beings, most of which is

1104
00:57:12,079 --> 00:57:15,400
dreadful and meritriitious, to actually sort of living in a

1105
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:20,800
warm bath a fairly competent, very good AI generated stuff.

1106
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:24,639
But the real real top of everything will be that

1107
00:57:24,840 --> 00:57:29,559
crafted by humans. What do you think, you know, James?

1108
00:57:29,639 --> 00:57:33,199
Speaker 7: I did a whole episode of my podcast, the Charles C. W.

1109
00:57:33,440 --> 00:57:41,079
Cook Podcast on an AI generated opera that I worked

1110
00:57:41,119 --> 00:57:45,159
on to annoy one of my trolls who lead comments

1111
00:57:45,880 --> 00:57:50,280
to listen to that live through comments under my episodes,

1112
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:53,480
and so I wrote a whole opera using AI about him,

1113
00:57:53,639 --> 00:57:58,599
called The Saga of Oiling Raga al Saga the tippetto Valente.

1114
00:57:59,400 --> 00:58:06,159
And it's really astonishingly accurate the way that the AI works.

1115
00:58:06,400 --> 00:58:09,760
But the only thing it can do, and it does

1116
00:58:09,800 --> 00:58:12,920
this in a way that I was absolutely blown away by,

1117
00:58:13,199 --> 00:58:17,880
is look at existing musical styles and hate them. And

1118
00:58:17,960 --> 00:58:22,760
so what the challenge was, ultimately it was to say no,

1119
00:58:23,079 --> 00:58:28,920
make it more like late Italian mozart or no please

1120
00:58:29,079 --> 00:58:34,840
add in an overture that is more like Verdi or no,

1121
00:58:35,039 --> 00:58:39,360
please put this in a minor key in the way

1122
00:58:40,639 --> 00:58:49,599
that Tchaikovsky would have. And the technology that resulted was incredible,

1123
00:58:49,639 --> 00:58:53,800
but it was entirely and necessarily derivative. And that's the

1124
00:58:53,840 --> 00:58:58,199
one thing that I think is often missed. What I

1125
00:58:58,239 --> 00:59:01,519
think is very likely to happen is obviously this won't

1126
00:59:01,519 --> 00:59:05,039
be sanctioned necessarily, but we are going to get new

1127
00:59:05,159 --> 00:59:09,519
Mozart operas. I mean, listening to this in its early stages,

1128
00:59:09,599 --> 00:59:12,599
you could see we are going to get another Don

1129
00:59:12,639 --> 00:59:16,280
Giovanni era Mozart opera, and we are going to get

1130
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:20,239
another late Beatles album. Yes, that's going to happen.

1131
00:59:20,599 --> 00:59:22,320
Speaker 4: Yeah, can you give me? Can you give me two

1132
00:59:22,360 --> 00:59:25,400
more Elvis Costello albums from the period of nineteen seventy

1133
00:59:25,480 --> 00:59:26,800
nine to nineteen ninety two.

1134
00:59:27,159 --> 00:59:28,440
Speaker 6: That's absolutely going to happen.

1135
00:59:28,480 --> 00:59:31,119
Speaker 7: And the disturbing and distressing part of it is that

1136
00:59:31,199 --> 00:59:33,119
some of them are actually going to be good. Because

1137
00:59:33,159 --> 00:59:36,519
this operas, the operas that the opera that I made

1138
00:59:36,599 --> 00:59:39,039
up with AI it was actually stuck in my head

1139
00:59:39,039 --> 00:59:41,480
for days. Some of these original melodies that it came

1140
00:59:41,559 --> 00:59:44,840
up with were really good. But what it can't do

1141
00:59:45,719 --> 00:59:47,440
I can't see it means by which it could do,

1142
00:59:47,480 --> 00:59:50,960
at least not yet. What it can't do is do

1143
00:59:51,559 --> 00:59:54,360
what Sergeant Pepper or the White Album did, which is

1144
00:59:54,679 --> 00:59:58,480
synthesized what came before and come up with something completely new.

1145
00:59:58,639 --> 01:00:01,000
What it can't do is what Beta Oven dated Beethaven's

1146
01:00:01,119 --> 01:00:05,119
fifth or ninth. And I think that that's going to

1147
01:00:05,199 --> 01:00:08,400
be the great challenge. If that rubicon has crossed, then

1148
01:00:08,400 --> 01:00:11,159
all bets off. But until then it is still ultimately

1149
01:00:11,199 --> 01:00:12,639
an impersonation machine.

1150
01:00:13,039 --> 01:00:14,599
Speaker 2: You know what I want to see just quickly, is

1151
01:00:14,679 --> 01:00:16,960
I want to see an AI version or update of

1152
01:00:17,039 --> 01:00:20,519
John Cage's five Minutes of Silence that might break the action.

1153
01:00:22,519 --> 01:00:24,239
Speaker 4: Well, just tell it to do it in another key.

1154
01:00:24,320 --> 01:00:28,920
That's all you have to do. I mean, I've heard

1155
01:00:28,920 --> 01:00:32,880
people fake that in a major key and it's just hilarious. No,

1156
01:00:32,920 --> 01:00:34,440
you're absolutely right. I mean you wouldn't be able to

1157
01:00:34,440 --> 01:00:36,760
walk up to the machine and say finish fon Schuber's

1158
01:00:36,760 --> 01:00:39,480
eight Symphony. And it will for us. But again, as

1159
01:00:39,559 --> 01:00:41,400
much as I love what Charles said, and as much

1160
01:00:41,400 --> 01:00:46,639
as I believe in the look, the indescribable essence, the

1161
01:00:46,880 --> 01:00:51,599
ineffable human quality that gives these things merit and meaning.

1162
01:00:52,199 --> 01:00:55,599
I am now one of those guys who says, you know,

1163
01:00:55,639 --> 01:01:00,400
it's a rubicon, it it won't be crossed. It's if

1164
01:01:00,440 --> 01:01:02,840
you look at the rubicon, it wasn't that wide, and

1165
01:01:02,880 --> 01:01:06,440
it wasn't that deep. It wasn't that deep at all. Gentlemen,

1166
01:01:06,559 --> 01:01:08,920
we have had fun and you know what we got to.

1167
01:01:09,159 --> 01:01:11,039
I would love to clear the decks and have an

1168
01:01:11,119 --> 01:01:13,679
all AI podcast with you guys and take it into

1169
01:01:13,679 --> 01:01:16,679
every single facet from writing to art to painting and

1170
01:01:16,719 --> 01:01:19,599
the rest of it, and do so without prejudice, and

1171
01:01:19,599 --> 01:01:22,880
do so without fear, because this is where the things

1172
01:01:23,039 --> 01:01:26,360
the art the world are going. You the listener in

1173
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:28,920
the meantime, are going to Apple Podcasts to give us

1174
01:01:28,920 --> 01:01:31,719
five stars. We really appreciated that. And you are going

1175
01:01:31,719 --> 01:01:34,280
to Zibiotics where with the coupon code Ricochet you can

1176
01:01:34,400 --> 01:01:37,320
enjoy the products at a discount. And you are also,

1177
01:01:37,360 --> 01:01:39,960
after all that, are going to ricochet dot com and

1178
01:01:40,039 --> 01:01:42,159
sign up if you haven't yet, because the member feed

1179
01:01:42,199 --> 01:01:43,840
is where you will find a community that you've been

1180
01:01:43,840 --> 01:01:46,519
looking for all your days on the internet. The same

1181
01:01:46,960 --> 01:01:51,400
civil mostly satur right conversation Charles it's been fun, Steven.

1182
01:01:51,599 --> 01:01:54,280
Good to have you with us, and we'll see all

1183
01:01:54,280 --> 01:01:58,440
of you in the comments, said Ricochet. Four point ricochets

1184
01:02:00,400 --> 01:02:01,440
join the conversation.