Varn Vlog
Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
Varn Vlog
Decrypting the Global Economy: Tech Giants, NFTs, and Labor Changes with Rob Larson
What if we told you that the political economy of Silicon Valley, the European Union's impact on big tech platforms, and Apple's recent victory against Epic Games are just the tip of the iceberg of a rapidly changing global economy? Join us for a thought-provoking discussion with our guest, Rob Larson, professor of Economics and author of books such as "Capitalism vs. Freedom" and "Bit Tire and Subpolitical Economy of Silicon Valley." We dive into topics like crypto bubbles, NFTs, and unexpected tech layoffs, as well as the potential recession due to inflation and the Russo-Ukrainian war.
The conversation doesn't stop there; we also explore the complexities of the US debt ceiling and its possible implications for global leadership. Delve into the impact of a multipolar world, and the likelihood of the US dollar remaining the global reserve currency. Plus, we touch on the debt ceiling, bond market, and labor changes in the wake of COVID-19, and consider how automation and AI might replace entry-level white-collar work.
Finally, we address climate change and demographic shifts, examining the ongoing credential weakening and the potential for removing labor restrictions, such as child labor, in red states. We discuss automation's implications for the developing world and the West's refusal to admit people, as well as the justice aspect of liberalizing immigration systems. We critique Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its limitations in transforming our economic system, and consider the challenges of institution building and labor militancy. Don't miss this engaging conversation with Rob Larson!
Rob Larson is a professor of economics at Tacoma Community College and author of Bit Tyrants: The Political Economy of Silicon Valley, out now from Haymarket Books. He is the house economist at Current Affairs magazine.
Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Audio Producer: Paul Channel Strip ( @aufhebenkultur )
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn
Links and Social Media:
twitter: @skepoet
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You can find the additional streams on Youtube
Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn
Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube
Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf
Hello and welcome to VARM blog, And today I'm here with Rob Larson, professor of Economics usually a bad word at Tacoma Community College and authors of such books as Capitalism vs Freedom and Bit Tire and Subpolitical Economy of Silicon Valley, which I was going to ask you. a whole lot has changed in the political economy of Silicon Valley in the last I don't know seven months. What do you think is the biggest shift that you might not have been able to look at in your book from three years ago?
Rob Larson:Yeah, well, of course. Yeah, man, anytime you lock the manuscript on a book you know the clock's ticking. But most of the book is on the big five companies, you know just the giant tech platforms, and their dominance isn't really going anywhere, at least so far. The European Union is the only thing like really going after them with deep And so far making some modest changes. You know, time will tell, we can look at the details. But you know Apple just won Epic's appeal over its control of the app store And Google's going strong. So far It's court cases.
Rob Larson:So time will tell on how much like the core thesis of the book about the power of those platforms because of the economic phenomenon of net effects, like, we'll see how long that thesis lasts. But there's been a bunch of crazy stuff, you know. I mean the crypto bubble crashed, nfts came and then crashed And of course the big regional slash tech bank panic of last month was, you know that one's juicy. But the basic political economy landscape of big tech hasn't changed. It finally got big enough to do a retrenching with like real layoffs Like that is the first for the industry other than Microsoft, of course.
Rob Larson:So it's an interesting story, but the fundamentals are still in place.
C. Derick Varn:Do you foresee seeing that, where it looks like we're going to lose a whole lot of tests to other parts of the economy And right now they are being absorbed back in? It's not like we've had the tech layoffs have not led to like large scale general unemployment, although I will say I think every economist I know, left, right and center, seems to think that conditions are going to get real weird. When you have a no growth time period of the economy, that might technically be a recession, but there's just so few people in the labor market to where you might not see, at least at first, super high unemployment corresponding with that. What do you make of that scenario Like? that's also something we haven't really seen before historically.
Rob Larson:Indeed, and you know, it's true, like you were seeing tech layoffs, and they're big by historical standards for entities like Google, which just grew straight through the last big recession and had been pretty unstoppable in its growth trajectory prior to all this, but they're pretty modest. The rest of the job market is really tight. Like, as you say, these tech layoffs are gonna immediately get snatched up by the rest of the economy where people are desperate for tech and IT security and all kinds of stuff related to that. So, yeah, the cloud ad spend is coming down. You know advertising tracks the GDP pretty closely. As far as what that GDP is gonna do Like, are we gonna have a recession or just a stagnation period? That's what we like to call it. When the economy doesn't grow for a period of time, tough call. I'm out of the forecasting business these days. It's unusually complex headwinds right now between the cut down but still going strong, and inflation way.
Rob Larson:We experienced all the other COVID after effects, the biggest one being every time society goes through a big plague wave, it kills a bunch of the workforce or drives them out of the workforce, like into the pandemic retirements or all the women who are still out of the workforce to take care of kids because there's no daycare or they're learning remotely at school or whatever.
Rob Larson:Like whenever that takes place, it always puts bargaining power in the hands of the workforce, like this is considered to be like.
Rob Larson:One of the things that led to the end of feudalism was that big black death which killed about a third of the European countryside and put for the first time, like, bargaining power in the hands of the peasantry and they could be more mobile and you start getting things like labor markets that lead to capitalism and stuff. So these things, always these big events like COVID, always have these big year long wet lashes and the data that you see over time. But between that and inflation and the Russo-Ukrainian war and the bank panics, like it is anybody's guess whether we avoid a recession or you'll have a soft landing where we just bring unemployment back up, which is the openly stated goal, without causing a whole recession, which Wall Street doesn't want. The Fed doesn't want a recession, but they'd rather have that than high inflation. That's like the bane of Wall Street, you know. But man, time will tell. I don't have, you know, even my the economic prognosticators, whose work I like is, you know, inconsistent these days just because there's so many imponderables, more than normal evens.
C. Derick Varn:I think that's been a key thing for me is we've seen a whole lot of uncertainty with these imponderables, particularly with like left economists playing in geopolitics, sometimes, i think, irresponsibly, predicting this or that like decline of the dollar, which I do think de-dollarization is probably on the long-term horizon, but short-term horizon I don't know.
Rob Larson:Yeah, that's a really interesting one, especially because, of course, yeah, the dollar, the US dollar, for all these years since the Bretton Wood Conference following World War II, like the dollar, has been like the currency for global commodities trade and like sovereign debt payments and all these other crucial things.
Rob Larson:So, even though we run like gigantic economic deficits in the United States and our trade and current account for decades- on end it doesn't matter, because the dollar is a World Reserve currency, like everyone always wants to hold a corporate entity and national bank overseas wants to be able to hold those dollars for those important transactions. So just lately, we're seeing real moves away from the dollar. So China is doing more commerce with Russia in New An, of course, and Brazil even has been signing contracts now for deliverables that won't be denominated in the dollar. Like Lula said publicly, he wonders. At night he said why so much of commerce is denominated in dollars. It's because of the Bretton Wood Conference.
Rob Larson:But that reflects, of course, like America's gradually declining global status as just the sole superpower. In China's rising position, which everyone is aware of, and every Westerner is reacting by pulling their hair out and screaming no, we're going to remain the number one power, which just lets you know like we're going to do it the worst way. We're going to manage our decline in the most self-destructive manner. Decline powers always do that, you know. They always do things that they think are going to reverse their decline, like they invade Ukraine or they vote for Brexit, or they get Donald Trump in, like all these things just hasten the decline of these countries.
Rob Larson:So we are seeing moves away from the dollar and that would be incredible, like, if anything would put America in its place for the first time since, like the 20th century, like it would be. That would be the loss of our world reserve status and actually forcing us to, like have balance of payments that are, you know, anywhere near being in the black. So, again, so many unpredictable factors play into that, including, like the big geopolitical stuff, like the Russian, chinese. You know US relationship But like you are seeing moves in that direction, we should realize, like the dollar has been so dominant, like we're seeing moves, but it's starting from a position of just complete dominance of the dollar and the US systems for financial payments and clearance of those payments and so on.
Rob Larson:So long road to go. I guess long silk road to go.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, and one hand has happened really fast I mean, two years is a pretty fast time And on the other hand, however, left economies have been. Left economists in particular, have been big on predicting the imminent collapse of the dollar, while the dollar is getting stronger and stronger. In fact, the irony of right now is as much as geopolitics is driving this de-dollarization. That's happening because the dollar is just getting too expensive.
Rob Larson:And it's also seemed to be like more. It seemed to be less reliable And man on top of everything else, we should throw in there like the biggest, even more than like the war and inflation in COVID. The biggest question mark in the Federal Reserve, like the biggest question in front of our faces right now, is the debt ceiling which, could you know, we may go hurdling through that limit like in the next several weeks, or not, till the end of the summer. It's completely up in the air. Tax collections are coming in a little week, but not disastrous.
Rob Larson:So today's Republican House caucus is such a complete mess of media posers and right wing influencers. There's not even an agenda that, like you know, john Boehner, in the past might have been able to wrangle a Republican caucus into agreeing to. I my guess is gonna be that we default on the debt, which is just an incredible. You know who can say it And everyone always backs down once Wall Street freaks out, because they are, like the course, the great power behind the government and certainly you know the legislature, so maybe they'll get them to, you know, shut up and accept a compromise at the last minute again, but last time this happened in 2011,. For God's sake.
Rob Larson:You know, standard importers and the credit rating agencies downgraded US debt. For no reason we can easily pay our bills. We just have such a spastic media fascist caucus that runs Congress every few years, difficult just to avoid those incredible, again self-inflicted loans. Man, if that happens, i mean that will be a real. You know, it's amazing. These people are very hawkish, but that's gotta be. Every country that would like to be in charges like. Greatest Dream is that we purposelessly default on the debt because we're too incompetent. And you are mainly just here to you know. Perpetuate our future right wing media careers rather than like advance legislation of some time.
C. Derick Varn:I mean, one of the things about that is very interesting in regards to the Republican party is we've also seen this happen at a state level, like we are seeing Republicans actually damage their state's economies to own the libs, which is going to be interesting as things become more and more real.
Rob Larson:Yeah, indeed, washington is just openly threatening to go after Disney because some time ago they opposed a anti-trans education bill And now, because the cadre of media personalities they put in charge of his new board didn't pay attention, disney was able to get approvals for 30 years worth of development right under their noses. It is true, but it's because of clumsiness. these people support markets, but they're just such clumsy dummies they don't know obviously anything about the economy. It's incredible to see that. I kind of think the right wing has just won so much on the economy that they're down to well. I think we should shoot the walls of banks to prove how cool we are.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, i think that's an interesting trend. One thing I think we have to look at with this is I don't know that with the bourgeoisie, with the actual capitalists, that they have a lot of faith in the GOP anymore, and that may a lot of people. I think that's good for the left, but I don't necessarily know that it is.
Rob Larson:No, i see this negative because, of course, to the extent that that is true and it's definitely a growing concern that you can't, your country club constituency can't trust the Republicans like you used to. It's no longer McConnell's party, It's true, but the response is just to be well, thank God we have the other corporate capitalist party and this turn of the Democrats That has kind of become my medium term political fears. The Republicans just become the blood and soil fascist party and the Democrats become the old Republican party of kind of nonpartisan, business oriented legislation And we'll end up like in France, where it's fascism versus neoliberalism and there's no possibility of a social democratic option.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, not to get into political speculation but the shadow of Macron losing to Le Pen, ironically because of workers' militancy and Mell O'Shaughn and the French left not being able to take advantage of that, leading to a you know, a victory that will probably, if it does happen, in the EU I mean like that's a real possibility from that result. So, yeah, these things seem a lot weird. I get why people are, why other countries are not wanting to deal with US hegemony anymore. At the same time, though I do, there is a complication to this end of the US dollar that I think some people look at but a lot of people don't, and that is the fact that you know, despite trading in Yuan, red Russia right now, when you see China act, they're pushing things like trading in swish francs, because I don't think they want to take on the kind of problems to their own internal economy that, being the only reserve currency, would do, because you kind of have to look at the United States.
Rob Larson:Indeed, and my I mean yeah, yeah, this is getting slightly outside my own personal wheelhouse, but yeah, my impression is that China, like actually to an extent, would prefer a multipolar world, not just rhetorically, but actually.
Rob Larson:I don't think China has an interest in, you know, taking over the role that we've had in the Middle East or overthrowing governments, like in the Cold War standard, but obviously they would like to have a regional spirit of influence, which most powerful countries aspire to have. I think they'd be happy to have a European Union that's independent of the US and a Russia that's more or less a separate force. you know it seems earnest And when you're a rising power against a big central power, it's in your interest to have multiple rising centers of power. After all, you know it. like you say it avoids putting on you or like the mantle of the new American successor in global leadership, and you know it's. you know it just, it just distributes focus around. maybe the narrative in the world is just, you're the new rising power And we've all got to fence you in. within circling military alliances becomes about just the decline of another country. Yeah.
Rob Larson:So you know these trades are in Chinese currency. like that's true, i think they're content just to see it sort of fracture down to a broader use of currency.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I think they would be happy to have a basket of currencies, which the dollar would still probably be a big part of it, but it would be a regional and that's given if the debt ceiling thing doesn't happen.
Rob Larson:If the debt ceiling thing happens, the bond market near would collapse and Yeah, indeed, and we'd expect a huge plunge in all the equity markets, and I mean, you know, in every market that there is, you know, the US dollar and you specifically like Treasury bonds have just always been the keystone of our entire, you know.
C. Derick Varn:last, 80 years of economic growth.
Rob Larson:My God, i mean if you listen to these boobs in the house like they have no idea what the stakes are or what the details are. We'll just prioritize payments like that's a default.
Rob Larson:As soon as someone doesn't get paid on time, it's a default. You're not going to fool the global credit rating agencies by like, well, we just didn't pay bureaucrats, we met our bond payments, are not in default. No, you're in default. You're breaking other legal agreements that you did to pay us. That's defaulting like that's. Many countries have tried that shit that have, unlike us, actually have precarious finances but aren't run by just complete self destructive TV acts.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I mean, arguably, this would make us not maybe like Argentina, because we still have a ton of productive capacity, but it would make us look a lot like Great Britain right now, which is vastly becoming an Argentina rank.
Rob Larson:actually, frankly, yeah, not a comparison you want made. Indeed, yeah, and I mean, and really I mean Britain, i think, is the ultimate example of these countries that are like well, we're still in the top five of countries. Yeah, if we want to break off from the mark, from the economy that we buy all of our materials from and sell all of our exports to, that's fine, we'll just, will be a new independent force. like no, you won't. like, you'll take, you'll be independent country that corporations have all the leverage over and they'll haul you out like the hell it had everyone else. Indeed, yeah, it's in regards to their stubbornly high inflation, everything else, i mean you know Britain right now. it's economic. it's economies in such a goofy state. So many years of recession on the last 20. I mean, they have never caught up since the 2008 crash. Pretty brutal to see anyway. so much of it is the legacy of 2016. And, of course, all the austerity that preceded it.
C. Derick Varn:of course, Yeah, i think this is the Brexit votes going to be un unpaying for a while, although it's. the irony is that there's a truth to the fact that the conditions of the European, of the European Union's agreement with the UK actually did lead to hyper exploitation of, say, eastern European EU members and the average leverage that to keep them wages suppressed.
Rob Larson:Oh, absolutely It's true. I mean, you know we're looking at this from the basis of yes and growth and you know national rise into climb. Of course, the core of it all is just built on exploiting whoever has the most exploitable labor force you can get your hands on. For Britain until Brexit It was the East European workforce, no doubt Now here in the US, you know we've such a tight labor market after COVID and just the fact that you can't make money working on American job anymore, it's relatively easy to pull people out of it. So we're just like Oh what do you know? we're finding a return of child labor in. Numerous states are passing or loosening their laws about kids working in bars and in retail and hospitality, and we have this big scandal about these undocumented migrant children frigging working in construction and customer service. It's incredible. But yeah, at the bottom, all this, of course, is built on exploiting the property less. I mean, that's just you know this is the rock we walk on the United States.
C. Derick Varn:So one thing I have to ask when I think about this right now is that we are going to see massive labor changes And I think you know I don't think chat, gpt is going to going to replace everybody, but I do think it's going to replace a whole lot of what we used to consider entry level data, white collar work, just like, frankly, automated data processing already did in the last 10 years.
Rob Larson:And yeah, i think people are going to be surprised like how much like certain fields, especially just like communications, like already we're having little mini scandals where entities put out some announcements and it's just, you know, they forget to take out the tag at the end that says pre generated by chat, gpt And I think also just speaks to how empty like public communication is now. Like if you're going to put out a statement from a university saying you're opposed to a strike or for some company apologizing for talk spilling chemicals somewhere, like it's such a boilerplate process, like it plays right into the strengths of this kind of AI, you know, so you can see it having a major place there. For, like white collar work absolutely will be affected by this. I mean, you know so many white collar people left off. You know automation and globalization of those blue collar people getting the chop and outsourcing car And you know, as we found out, munitions plants lately, as it turns out, we can barely supply Ukraine right now.
Rob Larson:You know this is it'll come for you too soon enough, pmc, you'll. You know you will not be spared.
Rob Larson:Don't you know at the end of the movie the villain sacrifices his evil sidekick to preserve his plan. I mean, everyone knows that.
C. Derick Varn:That to me is sort of the The problem with over-focusing on the PMCs because I've always been like in so much that it is a real class. We've already seen the credential weaken. In fact the movement was hyper-credentialization for things that didn't use to require credential at all, then devaluing the credentials. Then I think we're seeing now and I've seen this in insurance companies, we're seeing this in teaching, at least in red states devaluing, removing the need for the credential. Actually you devalued it but still having the pay raise ties to having the credential so you can pay lower too, and then ending on basically hollowing out the field. And I think we're gonna see that in a lot of places. You can't so much do it in nursing, but you can definitely do it in teaching.
C. Derick Varn:And I think the child labor thing is interesting, because I've been predicting that for about two years. I'm like, okay, are they really gonna double down and not open borders up? I guess they're not. Well, eventually in these red states, where there's just not a whole lot of work in the first place but there's also less and less people and there's a massive brain drain, they're just gonna have to start removing labor restrictions, and the easiest ones to remove are child labor restrictions. What other things might we see as? because one thing I can say is I'm not seeing Democrats push back on this very much, like rhetorically, like people are online, yeah, but I'm not seeing like we don't see any like Democratic senators like making a big deal of return the child labor in these states, because I think they realize they don't have an answer to it.
Rob Larson:Indeed, and yeah, i mean you will see noise about this in the Senate for sure, but it'll be from your reliable couple of voices, certainly not from the senators. Yet in these states that are most that are growing most reliant on this, it's difficult to anticipate, i find, how this will evolve. I recently reviewed a book for a Jacob and just discussing automation and how much of what we in the West now think of as being sophisticated algorithms that are produced by the tech platforms in search and in other areas are actually just the actual manual work of people in developing world being paid on a micro task basis and being paid micro wages for it. But we don't see that because we just see the tech, the tech interface, and you know what I mean This very thoughtful point which is like automation is only viable if it's cheaper than paying people, and often it isn't, because we pay so frigging low. So it's up in the air how these things like get deployed, like everyone knows. You know technology and its use. You know it's very historically contingent And we all know that it's based on your material forces. You know industrialization could have got us the millennium and you know luxury, gay, space, communism. Instead we get Taylorism to exploit us, like, to the maximum amount and make us appendages of the machine.
Rob Larson:So in my mind this is sort of unpredictable, just because there's no visible end to the global ranks of affordable labor, like, as you said, i mean these every Western states, you know, in Japan, and everybody is just tripling down on their xenophobic refusal to admit people and entities like the Biden administration are having to resort to, like all these side little obscure paths to let in a little bit of labor here and a little bit of tech labor here And here's some people who can go and get manual jobs, like trying to slide of hand some healthy migration into a country. You know, at a time when people of course obviously we should just throw in here the subtext of so much international migration is people fleeing countries that we in the West destroyed economically or often militarily. So of course the whole side of justice, let alone economic rationality, is a at least a dramatic liberalization of our immigration systems, if not open borders. Regardless of exactly what that refers to. It's impressive. I don't know, man, it's up in there. We'll see how much administrations and the political forces are able to keep out migrant labor.
Rob Larson:I don't know, i find that to be like a huge you know. I don't know. I feel like I say this a lot, but I feel like that's a major question for us is just how long people will prefer the trade-off of imagined racial purity in a country that's which is such a hilarious idea already Having that rather than having, like, a functioning economy where you have an adequate labor supply, you can get things in a timely manner and we hold the price increases down that are indeed beating up blue collar families. I don't know like you have enough crazy right wing political momentum. I mean, if Brexit and Trump taught us anything and there's enough crazy grievance mongering and among conservative aging boomers that they're willing to put through things that just hurt the economy. I mean Brexit itself. Again, i mean this thing's. We're just expected to take points off their GDP and their economic growth rate, and they have, and now it's harder to exploit the labor that runs the whole system. An amazing time to be watching policy.
C. Derick Varn:One thing I have to wonder that this is gonna get particularly dark is how much the states are where. it's not just about racial purity although it clearly has part of the popular ideology and I don't wanna like diminish that But it's also fear of instability from climate refugees that are gonna start pouring in if things don't change pretty quickly.
Rob Larson:Indeed, and I think people are still really underestimating, yeah, the proportions of what's in front of us. I mean, again, just going by the very median, relatively actually mild projections of public in the United Nations climate entities, just mild in the sense of not going with their most extreme possible projections. Large parts of the developing world are projected to become uninhabitable within less than a century, and most of all the Persian Gulf and the Indian subcontinent, which is a, i mean, just an incredibly dreadful thing to contemplate. And these are some of the most ancient societies that the world owes so much to historically and culturally and scientifically, and they could become depopulated if we continue just blasting fossil fuels into the atmosphere and changing its chemistry so fast.
Rob Larson:Already we're having this huge increase in days where it's incredibly dangerous to simply go outside and do anything in the Deccan Plateau and India and all the littoral around the Persian Gulf and Iraq and Iran Incredible to see that it's so early and we're seeing those heights.
Rob Larson:I mean what that portends is, by the end of our lifetimes, significant population movements are gonna be happening, far larger than what we're already seeing today. I mean that's just the most basic reading of the science just indicates that people are not gonna be able to survive in these beautiful ancient countries Like it really is, like such a twisted, dark, as you said, thing to contemplate, and what it means will be a typhoon of desperate refugees trying to get to the northern mid-latitudes, where climate effects are projected to be milder And, of course, where the countries are that are responsible for this whole frigging mess in the first place, where it's gonna be more and more fortressy to keep those people out. Once there's a large enough number, it becomes difficult for militaries and navies to keep out like a huge, overwhelming number of people. God forbid, i mean, i certainly hope we can come up with something with the climate movement to forestall the worst of that because, again, just based on the climate projections for those regions, it's pretty hellish to contemplate what could be in front of us at this rate.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I think about that a lot.
C. Derick Varn:I think there's a whole lot of these developments around demographic shifts, and you hear a lot about the declining demographic shifts, all of say Europe, or you know, peter Zion, liking to make a big deal out of it. In China, which I will admit, there's gonna be a fairly massive, really quick shift downwards in population in China as well, but then I'm like we have people who are going to need to move, and I think these societies will accommodate them to survive. I don't know, though. I mean like society's doubling down on irrational things unfortunately do happen.
Rob Larson:That's so cool, like these days it doesn't give you a lot of confidence to see that, even though you're right. it's like economically impeccable logic. You have aging populations. you really need young people, like the big concern everyone says is we have to get rid of entitlements and raise the French retirement age and trim social security. Why? Because we don't have enough young people working to support the old people, and of course it's bullshit. We could just tax the wealthy to pay for these things. There's no reason why pensions have to come out of a payroll tax. Really we're the only ones who do that in the first place. But economically the logic of it is impeccable. You need young workers.
Rob Larson:The world is exploding with young people who are trying so hard to come here and work some shitty job that no one wants to know what their kids to work in the United States. But someone needs to wash the plates in the restaurant and someone needs to mow the lawns here, like no one wants their kid to do it, but they want it to get done. But I also don't want any scary foreigners to come in with their own language and really good food and ruin my lovely white community. It seems impossible that we would go on inflicting this kind of damage on ourselves. But after what we've seen, i mean, if any sensibility is gonna be present in the system, it's gonna be imposed on it by some kind of research that's not really left in some kind of scenario. Otherwise, yes, it's difficult to foresee it changing after what we've been through lately. My God.
C. Derick Varn:I definitely worry about this a lot because we are seeing, on one hand, i completely I don't love the idea of like taking mass scales of workers just because we want cheap labor. On the other hand, it was Reagan who liberalized immigration largely and a cynical scheme to not deal with the immediate demographic effects of the baby boomers in the 80s. And now that that's hit we've gone in the other direction from the same side. That was from the liberalizers in the past And this is not to praise Reagan. It was pernicious. It's just like guess worker programs in Europe are pernicious. But at least it made some evil rational calculus sense where right now I don't see that.
Rob Larson:Yeah, pretty much, i would say, that same generation that's gradually getting around to retiring and creating this in part. You know this need for a partially overseas source to labor force, like it's their weird, unnecessary late in life racism that's changed the political base of the Republican party and made it people who might have been neutralish toward immigration in the Reagan era very hostile to it now. And in the Reagan era I mean that's like the early days of neoliberalism people still had the new deal social compact in their hearts. Then you know like, oh, people are willing to support immigration and spending to deal to cope with the environment at least a little, or like affirmative action for racial minorities.
Rob Larson:In the US People are much more willing to support this stuff when they feel that economic times are good, when they feel the economy is growing and there's room for everybody, there's opportunity for everyone here in America with our free economy, then people will support that stuff. Like, as soon as we get a recession or long-term economic austerity because of neoliberalism for the past 40 odd damn years, people like lose that confidence. They're like, wow, you can't pay for anything anymore. It's hard to get by. What happened to all the jobs? Maybe it's awful foreigners. You know, i think that that change in the nation's character that Reagan brought about with those same voters are the ones that made them late in life significantly more immigration xenophobic than they might have been in the 80s when they voted for them.
Rob Larson:But it's just the workings of, I think, what happens to people's generosity when you shift from a system with a real social safety net to one where people are you know, as we always say on the left doing go fund me's for their insulin It's people feel they're desperate, They don't have that generosity of spirit that people think that they need to have to let immigrants into the country.
C. Derick Varn:Not that that really makes sense but it's true.
Rob Larson:And yeah it's tough to anticipate what's gonna happen. I mean, these younger people now are a completely different generation from the boomers. But you know, will we have a stable society long enough for them to become in charge? Who knows?
C. Derick Varn:I think a lot about that too, and one thing I wanna ask you, though, is, in this era of instability and with a lot of the fiscal levers that we've had probably going away, i mean one of the things that I believe into descriptive reality of, like modern monetary theory if you're dealing with a core economy, i am much more skeptical in its ability to do things in non-core economies. Or if core economies get super weak and you have trade parity, the kinds of like oh, we can force everyone to take our money. That the US does and makes something like MMT seem completely viable, becomes a lot harder to do Because there's a lot of modern monetary theory assumptions that assume, basically, national autarkies, which don't actually exist. So what should the left be doing right now?
Rob Larson:Yeah, well, for MMT itself. I mean I went to UMKC personally So I'm very familiar with a number of like the most nationally prominent figures supporting it And I think you know independent thinking about monetary policy and so on like as a healthy thing. You know, i'm glad people are discussing that. That's cool, it is true. I mean my main criticism of MMT all this time, yeah, has been that like it's mainly for economies like powerful enough to issue like real anchor fiat currencies Or, as you said, core economies. Very well expresses it. You know the United States, potentially the EU or China, could you conceive of them having enough you know global importance and commitment to their fiat currencies to be able to get away with, you know, running a significant program of monetary expansion to fund expansionary fiscal policy. But I mean, for most countries it's just out of the question. you know. I mean, and honestly that to me is a pretty damly weakness. You know, if a policy idea can't be done by, like Brazil or India, major economies but they would have, no, i mean, who thinks they could do that Like I've never heard anyone argue that. I think people are sort of taking for granted. It's something that's like, you know, for the big Western states or the European Union, you know, which you know just weakens. You know it's relevance in my mind, but to me the big thing is my main concern with.
Rob Larson:I would say this I like MMT because I feel like anything that makes Americans less deficit hawkish is good Agreed. And what I don't like about it is I feel like this makes people think oh, we don't have to fight the big battles to tax the rich to pay for all this stuff, rather than just having a you know, you know a electronic money printing policy. Like you know, taxing the rich isn't just to fund all of our great progressive policy and Medicare for all and you know exploring the universe and stuff. It's to take money out of the bastard's hands so that they can't quite so easily purchase the media or buy off our damn senators all the time. So I like that.
Rob Larson:It makes people less scared of deficits. Like that is phenomenal The fact that it takes some of the focus off. We tax the rich not just to fund our good shit, but also to take the money away from them. How does this plan make Elon Musk not able to buy communication platforms? Like that is a weakness of MMT. It doesn't do enough to castrate the satanic power of the ruling class, in my opinion.
C. Derick Varn:My critique of MMT has not been its descriptor, but it's similar to you. It said it doesn't have a realistic view of class power and thus a lot of its normative fixes are not. They're utopian. Actually, not because it's not possible, but because there's no reason why a capitalist power would ever do any of that.
Rob Larson:Yeah, if we had a movement to like make that happen, why don't we just socialize investment, for God's sake? Like why are we leaving Right exactly The Federal Reserve and the Treasury in charge of this stuff? like fuck those Wall Street scum bags? Like, why are we? it has the merit of being something we could do with the existing institutions. You could argue that's a merit because it doesn't acquire huge movements that change institutions over years to take place. So fair enough. But I think that cuts both ways. It also means it's not transformative enough with an idea to be like one of our main policy goals. I'm all about like auditing the Fed and stuff like that, but until we have a totally different economic system, i mean the Fed's important In its evil role. It keeps our messed up system on its feet, which you know you don't necessarily want everyone thrown into unemployment again to get socialism. I hope it doesn't require that.
C. Derick Varn:Right. I guess if you're a market socialist and you believe in like people's banking and you know I'm open on these questions, i'm open on markets one way or the other I tend to be somewhat market skeptical. but if you're a market socialist and you promote something like a people's bank, then yes, i would be all about MMT conditions, but that's a political project that needs more ambitions than just like a fiscal fix. Yeah, that's already so much bigger.
Rob Larson:Yeah, exactly, i feel like anything to bring this about would just automatically have so much bigger stakes than a departure or monetary policy kind of deals with.
C. Derick Varn:Right, and so I guess my big push on MMT left is like okay, fine, even if you're right. let's stop pretending, however, that this is just something we could get elites to do, stephanie Kelton style Like, or that the Democratic Party would do this because they understand that. you know that because I always hear them in here say, oh like, well, the Republicans understand that deficits don't matter actually, and Democrats don't, and I'm like I think all these sides understand more than you give them credit for.
Rob Larson:I definitely agree with you there. I mean Republicans know that deficits do matter. You use them to destroy the social welfare state. What do you mean? you think Republicans think they don't matter? That's how that's. Running them up with military spending and tax cuts is how they create the pressure to sooner or later go after social security. It's been so popular. You know they struggle with that, but they know the political value of it, even if it's, you know, for their own evil ends. Like, i don't think. I think that's a pretty I wouldn't say typically cosmetic, but that's a very cosmetic reading of these, yeah, configurations.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, i agree Not to you know, to come out of another left economic ideology, so to pivot away from that a little bit, but I do think it feels very hard now to be a leftist and say we have a good answer for the current problems in the United States.
C. Derick Varn:It's also not gonna be hard on the world, because as a leftist, i do actually think we have to think about that Like.
C. Derick Varn:I've wondered, like if we had power and we wanted to say really have a responsible left wing foreign policy to start ramping down American imperialism without a disaster or a crisis, obviously a lot of concessions would have to be made to states like China We'd probably need to change your immigration policy, probably need to change your land ownership policy in general. But beyond that, we'd also need to talk about like helping places ramp up currencies alternative currencies that were safe, and also encouraging them to still trade with us, but without the labor arbitrage and trade disparity that's normally included in these free trade deals, because these free trade deals are always ironic. They were never free trade deals Like they usually were, like good for American businesses, kind of bad for American workers and terrible for everything in the countries who were trading with deals, like you know, Yeah, much more like mercantilism, these free trade deals which is amusing, because that's almost the opposite of what free trade is about.
Rob Larson:it's true, yeah, i mean well in my mind. yeah, if we if we, the left had real policy making authorities, i mean you'd be seeing such a different operating landscape in the first place. I mean in my mind, like any real left wing movement that comes to power in a Western state, i mean among its policies has gotta be capital grants as reparations to the developing world countries that we've fucked over 50 ways to get rich, or to get our wealthy people rich in our countries. You know, which is a hell of a political lift actually aiding countries like the way conservatives think that all of our money does, because they're not familiar with reality and budget numbers. But like that's something that would be on the table. Like and, after all, like part of the idea with immigration is like, yes, the West needs immigration, so it suits our economic needs and our GDP and so on, but like the goal is for people to get to live in their countries. no one, very few people who aren't already from a developed country just want to leave their own country. People like what? to live where they know, people where they have family, where they speak the damn language. for God's sake. you know, pull up stakes and go to some totally alien society that also doesn't want you there. And that's like ugly laws like American and Australia and the European Union do to keep out immigrants. Like who wants that? Like these people would rather be in their own countries, but we've made them so intolerable and economically just completely suffocating that people are pouring out of these countries.
Rob Larson:So like a program of capital grants that like helps to rebuild in part these countries and let them have a socialist program of development, like that's how we create the positive foundation for things like maybe some kind of currency block.
Rob Larson:You know, i mean, the problem for these developing world countries is oh, it's the, you know it's the Algerian real.
Rob Larson:what's that worth? You know these countries struggle with their currencies getting dumped and they have to spend a ton of money building up reserves so that their bond buyers are happy that they have emergency funds and so on. Like that's part of how we keep these countries shackled to their debts and so on, you know, so having larger international blocks for currencies, like an African Union currency to go with the Euro currency for the European Union, like something like that, like that's how you get a block strong enough to have sovereign monetary policy and do MMT if that's what they feel they want, you know. But to me, like the economics, the fundamentals of our relationships with these countries would have to change a lot. if you have a, you know, a socialist economic order worthy of the name that it kind of puts, all these issues You have, currency and policy kind of, you know, not in their place but in perspective, because I mean so much structurally would have to change first to get to that point.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, i think that's a fair point. I mean, one thing we have to really look at when we're talking about international order issues. I mean, one of the ironies actually of the multi-polar world is like for a long time China really struggled, particularly after the end of the Soviet Union, to save our international order, and they effectively kind of did it in 2008, which I don't think we give them enough credit for.
Rob Larson:They did everything we told them to do and arguably spent us out of that recession. You could argue you know people make that macro case.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I think. I don't think it's an absurd case to make, I don't think it's clear, but I think it's at least justifiable.
C. Derick Varn:It's a plausible argument at least Right, and so you know, i remember I was listening to Radio Warnord recently and they were talking about it's actually surprising is taking China this long to make these kinds of outings, and I'm like, yeah, and they're actually fairly modest, they're just like we're gonna finally make the Saudis and the Houdis talk and tell the Saudis to give up on this war. They can't possibly really win And we'll get credit for that and we'll get good deals out of it, because the United States has pissed, you know, muhammad bin Salman off by Yeah, joe Biden's one remark, which is one 20th of what the Saudis deserved to hear, like that was enough to piss off little baby prince.
Rob Larson:enough to, yeah, have a real effect on the global distribution of power. Amazing, isn't it? How small of a thing, these delicate vein. you know, these people are all rich and powerful. They never hear anyone but kissing their ass, so as soon as they're criticized, it's like a thunder clap to them, you know. It is amazing, though, man, it's true, and you know, china playing this giant role in the economy for the West, you know, slash take, you know used to take credit for it. Like well, we made China big. They should become, you know, liberalized more, and now it's China's evil, and they fooled us and they stole our economy. somehow, definitely a and stupiding has happened with regard to China over the last few years too. I just remember Rick Scott. you know that hideous Golem senator from Florida, the biggest Medicare fraud judgment in US history on his record. He ran the Republican Senate campaign last year into big fat ditch, where they lost seats, when, you know, the other party was incumbent in the White House and they had an inflation year.
Rob Larson:For God's sake, like everything on their side. And they lost seats and this guy is going on TV and he says every American has to think in their heart Russia, china, is my enemy. It's like you're the one who put out a policy plan to cut social security and raise taxes on the poor which was like specifically delineating Like you're the enemy, scott, not like China, which would like to have a peaceful rise to global influence for itself, and I think actually, yeah, probably like some kind of multipolar world like we used to have for most of the world and indeed Chinese history. Western dominance is still relatively fresh on the time scale of Chinese history.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, i think that's a fair point, one of the things I think you know. I think we have to be realistic about what this means, and a left should like, for example, probably not start pretending that China's fully grown, completely socialist economy or something like that, because that's I don't know. I don't think you can participate in the world markets like the way they do and be a fully socialized economy, frankly. But I do think we just have to be way more responsible about this. And one of the things that I have seen I just think about.
C. Derick Varn:I was thinking today about 2008, believe it or not, and they're not time period because they were providing cheap teachers in schools. One of the cut the foreign language department. Everybody was taking Confucius Institute teachers of China and talking about how we're gonna integrate with the Chinese economy, blah, blah, blah blah. And it literally took the pivot to Asia, particularly after 2010, and for that to start to fall apart. Now, i was always ambivalent about the Confucius Institute Chinese Teaching Program because it basically was undercutting teachers out of jobs. That's why they were doing it is. They didn't wanna pay for wages. China was footing the bill for these teachers and they were also getting Chinese wages, not US wages when working in the United States, which dramatically reduced their cost to either nothing or very little to the school districts. But I can't imagine that happening now. I mean, i know that program still technically exists, but I almost guarantee you no one's using it, and so it's been interesting to We're throwing out TikTok now, for God's sake, because it's so-.
Rob Larson:I mean, my God. I mean we're throwing out the idiot hot team dancing app because it's from China. Yeah, we've traveled some distance. Since then you're right.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, i mean, i was just thinking about that because I'm like as much as I would love to ban TikTok as a educator.
Rob Larson:Yeah, yeah, yeah, i'm gonna challenge for you throw your phone in the garbage challenge.
C. Derick Varn:That's right. I don't want to ban TikTok for any of the reasons given, nor do I wanna take people's free speech away, which seems. Both of those motives are behind this restrict act. Oh yeah, I understand And I think it becomes really transparent when they're like, and we're gonna have the Department of Homeland Security intersect with the Chamber of Commerce on who's a security threat.
Rob Larson:We're in good hands here. That's difficult to conceive of two worse institutions to be in charge of policy decisions. We want American apps that destroy the brains of young people, foreign ones, from foreigners? It's terrible. It's amazing that people are taking that seriously. I mean, snowden's leaks are all about like, yeah, the US government is using our domestic companies to look at all the metadata from all your text messaging And our concern is maybe TikTok is spying on our idiot teens and they'll know all of our teens' skin regimen secrets, or maybe the nuclear launch codes if you put those on Tick-O. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, you know it takes a while for people to get into a crazy racist fervor. I guess is what we're seeing here. You can get away without that for a while maybe.
C. Derick Varn:So I guess this does leave us to kind of turn this to what can we do? I mean, one of the things I think we have to deal with is, even though we were all patting ourselves in the back—well, i actually kind of wasn't—but most of us were patting ourselves in the back about the Democrats not losing nearly as bad as we normally predict them. We was in the midterms, just in November 2022. And I've heard a lot of hand wrangling from even people who I normally respect, like Robert Brennan, dylan Raleigh, that make it seem like Biden's going to embrace some kind of neoprogressive agenda far after COVID, which I think is pretty clearly being undone right now. What do we think they can do now that they've lost Congress? I mean, in a political sense—and I don't actually think even the Democrats are disnialistic—but in a political sense, being like, okay, you know what, pull the debt ceiling bomb and destroy us all so that we can finally be rid of you.
Rob Larson:That would be inshallah. But the party will exist as long as the base exists, and the base—a racist, dumb base in this country will always probably endure. And, frankly, i mean the Republican Party base now is mainly a media institution. I mean, that's why conservatives have such political force and why they can act together, which they often do still do. We did lose a portion last year after all, like it's shambolic and crazy, as they become Like they still have the organization that comes from being funded by billionaires. So you have structure and institutional memory and shit like that.
Rob Larson:I would love for it to come crashing down for people to blame the idiot right of society. They won't. I mean, they'll have media that tells them. And if only penniless black migrants from Haiti hadn't caused this financial meltdown, then idiots will believe it. You know, i mean people who are not familiar with the world except through the weird online and media lens that overlays everything that happens in the eyes of people I don't know. I think if it comes down like that, i think it's going to be pretty hard on everyone across the spectrum there. They're going to be furious and I don't know if they're going to react in a thoughtful way. It's unpredictable, though Again, i almost made a prediction there. I stopped myself, got to be careful. It's such a This is a baffling-ass era.
Rob Larson:Even the things we see that make sense, that are enduring patterns. There's just so much. It's a turbulent era right now and it sucks. They're excited to read about but they're stressful to friggin' live through. So as far as what we can do going forward in this specific era, it's difficult. So much of what we can do is just basic institution building that the right has a 20-year edge on us with because they're funded by billionaires. You can build things up with a few, lots of money that endures over time. We're seeing a fairly real labor wave right now. It's not enormous historically, but often they start with just ripples and wildcat teacher strikes and train breakmen about to go on strike and Congress stops them. This is what labor movements look like. For most of our lifetimes we haven't really had one of those. That is something we should see as a thing we can encourage and participate in.
Rob Larson:I'm in a local and I'm a union local and I'm our labor council rep and stuff. It takes some time but it feels good to be part of how the organization can happen Politically. You have so many incredibly safe Democrat districts in the United States that should be contested in one by cool socialists. Obviously it's taking place from lots of boring, unremarkable civil positions across the country all the way up to the Chicago mayoralty. To the extent that's an influential position, which is pretty debatable. These things are happening.
Rob Larson:Cool people can find a district where they have roots and who are telegenic, and find a beatable, shitty corporate Democrat and try to beat them. We do that in my district. I've been trying to help Rebecca Parsons, who's a very cool DSA socialist with lots of great housing policies which are a really big deal out here on the West Coast. We struggle to put her up against our congressman who is Derek Kilmer, who's the head of the new Democrat caucus in the House, which is the great Clinton conservative Democrat caucus very pro business, which sucks. These are areas where we can push. Sometimes we get people in and then you're getting your socialist ideas on media that people see You bring in people. This is tiny, annoying steps, but I think we're at right now. Anyway, that's my first reaction.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, I think I will say this I do think we need to be honest with people about union leadership right now, because we've seen Oh god, I know.
Rob Larson:Yeah, I'm an AFT. And they endorse Hillary before they even do a poll of us. Just insanely offensive.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, i think the Randy Weingartner going to Ukraine thing was something for me.
Rob Larson:Thank goodness, i feel, really feel like I'm being represented. My main concern at work has been Ukraine, and are we doing enough to get a nuclear war going? We should try her.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah. So this is one of these times where I do think I'm in agreement with you that we have a moment of real labor militancy. Actually, i'm on record as being a skeptic of the actual union leadership, of that labor militancy, but I think what's going to be interesting about this and this is again is a moment of dark hope. One of the reasons why the labor leadership is so complacent is bond and real estate commercial real estate investment, which is about to take a really big hit.
Rob Larson:So it's like Commercial real estate.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, yeah, it's incredible.
Rob Larson:I mean, that is such a long legacy. The labor movement is the senior leadership becoming little capitalists who run little labor corporations? Yeah, that's something that you always got to be dealing with. And trying to come up with new ways to bind their decisions to membership votes or referenda or something. Yeah, that's a struggle in itself. For sure We love to see, oh my God, all these Starbucks shops getting unionized in the face of Howard Schultz Inject that directly into my nervous system.
Rob Larson:It's so great. Of course, these are all people who are mostly joining SEIU affiliated locals. I don't think Is Andy Stern still in charge of the SEIU. Who knows? I mean, seiu's record is a mixed record. Getting people into a corporate union that needs a lot of work, i don't know. After 40 years of no labor movement, i feel pretty good about that as a start. But you're completely right. I mean, the first thing these people got to realize is great, you want a bargaining union If sooner or later, all these new bargaining unions have to take on our shitty leadership And the Teamsters are making it work and they've got a big fat strike around the corner barring contract breakthroughs, so we'll see. But I think you're completely right about that. The record of national level, especially union leadership, in this country is a frigging atrocious. So that's a very, very good faith thing to tell people coming into the labor movement Now it's like it's not just all over now that you're in a local.
C. Derick Varn:No, yeah, i think that's what we should be doing, but I also think we need to be in the union. I like you, i'm a rep And I think you kind of have to be, so when people hear me, they're like, oh, you slug on unions all the time. I'm like, yeah, but I'm in one and from the inside.
C. Derick Varn:Like, like it's because I'm frustrated with things inside And I will admit, with teachers unions there is a there's also. We have some advantages We're hard to scab on, but we have some disadvantages. State legislatures can just do shit to us. Yeah, we're at the mercy a lot of the time It's true because we're exempted from the National Labor Relations Act, as is almost all state workers. So, yeah, yeah, it's an interesting. It's an interesting battle.
Rob Larson:Yeah.
C. Derick Varn:I like your hesitant to make predictions right now because, for example, i don't even know which states are going to be red states anymore, because the abortion thing actually is playing out in a strange way. Like, i mean, i guess we can say Florida is going to be pretty safe. Maybe they're going to pass abortion restrictions so severe that even conservatives are worried about it. Indeed.
Rob Larson:North Dakota just went down to a six week ban this afternoon. Yeah, it's happening now. Yeah, and you know it's incredible, like you have Trump saying I think it's going to hurt us that shoot.
C. Derick Varn:I think it's going to hurt us This abortion thing, like you caused it, you fucking rich simpleton, amazing to see that I think and not to defend Trump, but I think he's actually shot that they actually really meant it, like one of the things I learned about Trump is Trump, trump, i think, is actually surprised that people believe the bullshit. It's true.
Rob Larson:Trump is, i mean no one. You know, despite all these recent media entities, no one's more of a media entity, primarily the Donald Trump, and anytime when they're like policies becomes like an actual change and moves the marble walls of our institutions in this way.
C. Derick Varn:You know it's like unsettling. Like you totally doesn't like it.
Rob Larson:Like he's alarmed by it and probably his idiocy. I mean, you have to recognize he is very good evil political instincts. He's like I think this is going to hurt us And then they lost the most winnable And like you said, you know, in 28,. Or you ask, give me a 2022 last year, like it's you know, of limited victory to see like a bunch of Democrats come in or you'll keep their Senate majority. Hey girl, although it's great to see a bunch of Republicans eat shit, though, like that aspect is fantastic. So you know it speaks to the fact that people had were wondering if Roe, having been you know that big, you know tailwind for conservative organizing all these years, will shift into the opposite for the left. One hopes early signs are that people are pretty pissed off about it. So we're able to get some momentum and all it took was women losing their rights Fantastic.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, it's. It's pretty, pretty horrifying. So we're going to leave it kind of darker today. I think anyone who's looking at the economic trends of the of the current environment has to be a little bit darker. But let's try to end on something a little hopeful. What are the positive trends, if there are any, that you see upcoming for, say, left wing organizers, socialists, labor, etc.
Rob Larson:Yeah, you know we're winning visible battles. I mean the Chicago thing. You know big city mayoral offices are pretty limited in their power but they're great for like showing you can do it. And I mean, to me the biggest trend is just looking at today's young people, like they are themselves are growing up with wide horrified eyes at everything happening in the world and have a clock is ticking down on them when they're just, you know, coming into awareness of what's happening. Like the left, if we can run out the clock on this, like time is on our side to this specific extent that, like these younger generations have far more left wing views, i mean almost wall to wall on subjects, and that's something that can matter. To the extent we can hang on to the political franchise and keep any decisions in the political realm and out of the frigging Supreme Court's robes in general, like that, i mean that's very favorable, you know. You know people have a widening openness to like major economic changes and even specifically the S word, which of course we should definitely take with a grain of salt. I mean socialism is almost an empty of a word, as liberalism is. You know, you have to be specific because it means people using 50 different ways. But like that's encouraging, especially with zero media support. Like these things are broadly favorable, like it's relatively good organizing material out there. I think it's 80% of American support. I think it's 80% of Democrat support Medicare for all 70% of the national electorate. I mean that's phenomenal. We got organized around that shit So we've got like good raw materials.
Rob Larson:What happens is, you know we're all so much on our phones now and spending so much time online. Like that becomes so much of the aperture through which we view reality. Like it's hard there because it's such a dumb parody of how we live our lives. So say people, you know, don't focus on your shitty online. You know environment, especially now that Professor Idiot is buying it and ruining it and fucking with it not stop. You know your favorite online social platforms. If you're out actually like talking to people and doing something in your local or in some kind of political entity, you will feel better and it will help you do this shit. You got like real political and labor based events happening that man as tenuous and vulnerable and compromised by shitty leadership, as you said, like these movements totally are compared to five years ago when we had none of this. I am very grateful for it.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, i think that's interesting. Actually, one thing I will say is, on one hand, we saw growth in union numbers for the first time, actually at the beginning of the odd teens, and we kind of not seeing them generally, except in specific sectors, although I'm glad they're the sectors that they're in. I mean like services, like food services, unionized by like 0.5 or 1.5% or something pathetically low like that. It's real low. And so just proving that it's even viable, because that's when the general assumption is, like even a non-franchise corporate houses, when intersecting with Taff-Hartley and all that led to like, oh, you can't really do anything at the food service anyway, they're transitory workers. You can only like get I don't know 10 people per shop. So if it, if like this, the reason why the Starbucks thing is important is because if it's viable and if they actually can get a good labor contract out of it, that is a reversal of 100 year trend. So that's good And there's going to be a big battle, i think, over this whole resuring thing which, after the Fed keeps quits trying to lower our unemployment, to raise our unemployment rate, to lower employment.
C. Derick Varn:Let me figure out how to say that right, once it quits trying to do that as a last ditch effort to somehow stop inflation, which probably won't work. We are going to be in the need to reshore a lot of things. That's one of the potential advantages for the US of a multi-polar world for US citizens, not for US rich people, because we're going to have to like the cost of transactions are just going to be really high. We've already seen that with COVID, and so the next battle is going to be make sure those new jobs come in, are the are unionized in the way that they would have been in the 1940s and 50s and they aren't like neoliberalized shit jobs And that. And what I'm going to say is like that's that. For me, that's a place of opportunity, but it will be a hard fight, because when we achieved this last time, we were on the up end of the profitability scale And now we are not.
Rob Larson:Indeed. Indeed If you look at like the new moves to, yeah, re-onsure some of our industries, i mean the big ones, so far is the chip industry, because, god forbid, we keep getting them from across the Pacific where, you know, in Taiwan and China, have their continuing dispute. But the public subsidies the inflation reduction act which adds so much of this climate, and ship reshoring subsidy money in it, like they do come with like a various conditions. They include, like provision of onsite childcare, competitive wages It might have been union scale wages, i think, but I don't think there's a specific provision about requiring card check for employees or anything like that. That really would like make a significant difference there. So time will tell.
Rob Larson:And it's just like the industry itself is constantly lobbying to get successive legislation passed to exempt them from those requirements. And every Wall Street Journal editorial is talking about how smart it would be to not make companies have to provide anything for their workforce in exchange for all the public money and then the insane profits that they make in the industry. So you know like there's a little bit of that recognition, at least among elites. But I mean, you know it's already a pretty wimpy requirements and they're backing away from it now. You know TSMC, like you know Taiwan, the Taiwan Semi-Conductor Manufacturing Company that makes all of our big phone CPUs.
Rob Larson:They've announced like publicly that they intend to like lobby against having to follow those various pretty mild, like yeah, pro labor provisions, like the provision of childcare, that come with those subsidies. Like we'll take the money we're going to keep fighting on having to spend a little bit of it to provide some daytime care for the workforce's kids. Amazing, yeah, so you're right, it's going to be a hard battle. Like the tiny benefit that's in the IRA is already like getting resisted. I mean, i'm a big surprise, but that just shows like it is correct. You are right. Like there will none of that will be like thoughtfully recognized. As you know we really should do this. That is not going to happen.
C. Derick Varn:No, but it is a place of possibility and what I think is in another places. So, like again, my thing is always like we need to be honest about how hard this fight is, but it is actually a fight that is actually winnable. There are other fights that aren't winnable.
Rob Larson:It's true. It's true, this is not exactly the Palestinian right of return Like this is something that we could, we actually might be able to achieve.
C. Derick Varn:Right. So you know, my favorite one is like a universal jobs guarantee, and I'm like that's not winnable with a whole lot of other stuff happening first. Yeah, again, yeah, that's one of those things.
Rob Larson:That's like victory number 300 on the list. We have so much to do to get to jobs guarantee or UBI or whatever. I mean none of those things aren't anything close to the balance of political forces we have now. People do just need to realize that, especially younger people who feel like we just have a few you know, next year we'll get, you know, sanders in and then this will all change Like it's going to take more than your lifetime to deal with all this stuff. People don't sometimes have that longer term picture.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, and I get why that feels really pressing when we have climate change and who knows? it seems it does. Sometimes it does seem like our bourgeoisie wants to just like go out and a big, flaming nuclear war so that we're the there's no one after them, which I laugh because it's so horrifying. I mean, what else to say?
Rob Larson:Yeah, i mean, they do have their own kids, like I would say, remind people like bourgeoisie, like the amount that they invest in their shitty kids is a lot Like they want a continuation of society that they continue to be in charge of and be the elites and pat themselves on the back while they have expensive lunches and rely on the labor of the working class. Like they want to go on. You know people who are in charge of the ones who have an incentive to keep the system going, but it's also because the system has so many freaking contradictions that they kind of don't want to recognize. You know dynamics of escalation in the wars that they love including Ukraine right now, god help us and all the shortcomings of the system and the instability of private investment. I mean all this stuff. You know they don't quite want to recognize that or, if they do, in a very technocratic manner, we can fix and maintain things.
Rob Larson:So I try to reassure myself by thinking you know the rich and powerful don't want things to, you know, completely fall apart, but they're idiots like everyone else. I mean, they didn't see 2016 coming. They were surprised by COVID. They didn't expect 2008. Like, all these things surprised all of us. They surprised them. So they have an interest in keeping things going. But there is. You know, dumb and short sided as your average greedy douche.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, i think that's probably a good place to edit on because it's an important reminder. I will say that it's important and reminder because that's also both terrifying but a bit of hope, because whatever people you know, like the people who are like, well, the, you know the CIA and they're running everything And I'm like I just don't see evidence that they're that competent. Why?
Rob Larson:indeed, you know, they fuck up like all the time, Like are you awake?
C. Derick Varn:Like I mean, CIA is a great case.
Rob Larson:Like, are you familiar with the Bay of Pigs? Are you familiar with water? Like, are you familiar with you know? like, oh my God, i mean it's like a record of bundling for every operation Ajax that succeeds in overthrowing Iran, there's two bays of pigs. I mean, you know it's filled with dummies, just like every other institution, and they have leaks and they have successes and they have like big fat fuck ups to be expected. When we imagine these people are omnipotent or able to completely stop things, that's one way, i think, go too far And, above all, we must remember our dignity Dignity, i say.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, Yeah. And similar with the bourgeoisie, like the heroic bourgeoisie of the Fordist period is long dead. Like those people were competent, but they're not here anymore.
Rob Larson:Yeah, that's a rising ruling class and it does make a difference. Yeah, It's true, I mean those people, yeah, in like the New Deal era. I mean that was the you know, born out of labor, but then it, you know, does also become like the 1950s American system of dominating the world. So, yeah, definitely capable of traveling in dark directions, but with a competent ruling class, you know, you can rule a global system of imperial management for several decades, before Vietnam even makes you begin to question it. Right, Like there's competence and then there's just the whole world of illusions. You need to be a rich person or a powerful person who doesn't frigate hate themselves.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, i mean I'm not putting up a whole lot of faith and class traders, but I imagine there's going to be a few, because occasionally people have consciences. That does happen.
Rob Larson:So you know you need some Frederick Engels in there. You know I mean you need those little sources of. You know those little opportunities for resources are no small thing for us.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, there are a few millionaires who backed the Bolshevik excuse. So I mean like it does happen, but I also think you can't depend on them at all.
Rob Larson:No, you know you can't depend on them arriving or staying Like. it's like a video game, power up with this limited window. You know you've got certain opportunity to get what you can out of it before they go, but my investment advisor told me to move my money in a different direction.
C. Derick Varn:Yep. So I guess this is where we can wrap up, but I want to ask you because, ironically, even though we're a socialist podcast reexampling a weird petty bourgeois brand the air market, do you have anything to plug?
Rob Larson:You know. Sure I appreciate that. Yes, i mean, of course. Well, i just always my sorry, i have a cat in me now That's okay.
Rob Larson:I have a very, very fine books you can use to understand capitalism a lot better My book Capitalism versus Freedom, the toll road to serfdom, which I wrote to be a single volume refutation of Hayek and Freeman's writing on libertarianism. So if an audience member would like to have a very full picture, i mean I wouldn't want to say definitive book, but a book that addresses all the main aspects is still a fun read, if I dare say so, like actually enjoyable to consume, like that's a very strong option that some of your listeners might especially like. And I have an article on the Federal Reserve itself and it's ugly tightening cycle that we're in right now. I think it's in the next issue of current affairs. I think it's the next issue, which I think is the May June current affairs great magazine. People should consider subscribing. We still have very, very fine contributors, beautiful art in that thing. So those are pretty fun opportunities for people who want to learn more about our twist of economic system. We should check it out All right.
C. Derick Varn:Thank you so much for that, and I will vouch for your Capitalism versus Freedom book. In fact, it's right over there, nice, so I'd like to see you on the show. So it's, it's a and. Also, not only did I buy the book, i didn't use my power, because I'm also one of the people who accepted the book, but that's how I discovered Rob actually I was. I was in the voting committee for for that book when it came into zero. Oh God, that's hilarious 1450.
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, yeah, i was one of those guys, so. So I definitely suggest people read that book, and I think your, your, your bit tyrants is also pretty useful to read, although you know, as I've been saying, i have no idea how much this is about the change, because I feel like all those I, i, what, i agree with you they're still staying dominant, but, oh my God, are they losing money. And people ask me where that money is going And I'm like it's not going anywhere, it's just being de-created.
Rob Larson:It's it's. It's it's market equity. They can just dematerialize. Oh yeah, yeah, and that's mainly meta itself. And then it was doing fine until they decided to just pour money into Mark Zuckerberg's masturbation fantasy. They were going strong until then And the core business is hanging on. It's no longer.
Rob Larson:When I wrote the book, the big five you know Microsoft, apple, google, amazon and Facebook were the five biggest companies in the world And they were all intact, which is very unusual. Now it's those four and I think Berkshire Hathaway replaced Facebook or actually might be Tesla now. But you know text dominance of the top is still very real And you know my big prediction in the book that tech would become kind of co-dominant, with Wall Street at the core of capitalism and sort of how it operates and how it allocates capital. I feel like that's holding up pretty good. I mean, silicon Value Bank like shows how real it is. It's a mixture of both sectors. It's a VC catering bank that then has a giant crash Like both of the systems are manifest there. Both of the sectors are manifest there. So I feel like it's holding up okay.
Rob Larson:Relevance wise, so far A lot of the big developments have been in just tech, adjacent industries And so far other than the European Union, like the limited amount of screws being put on these companies. So far, lots of pissed off people, but they could. You know they have a pretty good block on the legislature. I don't see any real legislation coming after them. The courts are mostly on their side in terms of the existing interpretation of the trade laws and the Fair Trade Act. So time will tell. But so far the books relevance. I feel like it's held up pretty good, although, in fairness, i am planning on writing a sequel in a year or two once some more shit goes down. What are many other books I got to get around to?
C. Derick Varn:Yeah, Yeah, we'll be looking out for it. Thank you so much for coming on today. Sure, i hope you enjoyed my pleasure CD.
