Episode 43
Robert Tracinski on Workism
Robert Tracinski visits us again to expand on three of his recent articles, published in Discourse Magazine. We have a stimulating, thought-provking discussion. Why don’t you listen in?
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Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services:
- Swiss basic income campaign sets ‘Guinness’ record
- The Case for Neo-Classical Liberalism
- The Need for a Culture of Achievement
- In Defense of “Workism”
- What Does Ayn Rand Have to Offer to Our Era?
- “My Work Done My Way”
- ‘Cost Disease Socialism’ and the Crisis of Our Time
Episode 43 (56 minutes) was recorded at 8 PM CET, on February 4, 2022, with Ringr app.. Editing and post-production was done with the podcast maker, Alitu. The transcript is generated by Veed.io.
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Transcript
We're back in the Foxhole
Speaker:again today with Robert Tracinski.
Speaker:He's got a recent article on Discourse Magazine called
Speaker:In Defense of Workism the Word in Quotes.
Speaker:And I want to read what I call the subtitle.
Speaker:The goal of public policy should be to
Speaker:help people find meaningful work, not to help
Speaker:them drop out of the labor force.
Speaker:Rob, can you give us a broad
Speaker:perspective on why you wrote that article? Okay. Yeah.
Speaker:So the subtitle actually was written by the people of
Speaker:Discourse, and I think it's a little more boring.
Speaker:It gives that it's a public policy angle
Speaker:on it, which is part of the article.
Speaker:But I really want to go to the
Speaker:deeper moral and psychological issues behind it.
Speaker:There's been this in the last couple of years.
Speaker:This term workism has popped up
Speaker:and it's popped up as a pejorative.
Speaker:I view it as sort of an updated version
Speaker:of workaholic, but it's the idea of how terrible
Speaker:it is that people are being encouraged to find
Speaker:personal identity and meaning in their work lives.
Speaker:And so the argument against workism, is that
Speaker:it's unrealistic that most people's work is just going
Speaker:to be drudgery and they're not really going to
Speaker:be able to find meaning of fulfillment in it.
Speaker:And it's really just a way to convince
Speaker:people to slave away, to enrich the man,
Speaker:to serve the corporate interests and the capitalists.
Speaker:And the fascinating thing about this to me is it comes
Speaker:from both the left and from the right, because from the
Speaker:left, they have the old long standing anti capitalism.
Speaker:I was going to say that's
Speaker:primarily Marxist ideology kind of a. Yeah.
Speaker:Mark had this weird thing where in the ideal society,
Speaker:the famous quote is the ideal society, you'll be able
Speaker:to be a literary critic before lunch and a herdsman
Speaker:in the afternoon, and you sort of meander your way
Speaker:through a bunch of different jobs.
Speaker:Apparently specialization at the division of labor
Speaker:was not something he was into.
Speaker:And that you had this sort of casual approach
Speaker:because your work wouldn't be tied to making money,
Speaker:your livelihood would be tied to your work.
Speaker:You'd be able to cash.
Speaker:You just do whatever you want.
Speaker:In modern parlance, in modern terminology, this
Speaker:has turned into this movement that basically
Speaker:says having the work is terrible.
Speaker:It's all just drudgery.
Speaker:And the real ideal is that you
Speaker:should be able to live without working.
Speaker:So I point out that there is a
Speaker:push now for the universal basic income.
Speaker:It's called a guaranteed minimum income.
Speaker:It has different names over time because they have
Speaker:to change the name because the old one falls
Speaker:into distribute and they just revive the same idea.
Speaker:But given a new name, it sounds fresh
Speaker:and futuristic, but this is the idea.
Speaker:We all get paid a certain amount of money every
Speaker:month, no matter what, regardless of whether we work.
Speaker:And we can all support ourselves on that.
Speaker:And so in Switzerland, they were pushing this campaign.
Speaker:This Ginormous poster just had a
Speaker:record for the world's largest poster.
Speaker:And the poster said, what would you do
Speaker:if your income were taken care of?
Speaker:And so it's very openly gotten to be with the UBI.
Speaker:That the case used to have the sort of idea
Speaker:that, well, it will liberate people to find better work,
Speaker:and they still work, but they do better work.
Speaker:And now it's become very openly no, the goal here
Speaker:is that nobody would have to work at all, and
Speaker:you'd be able to focus on things other than work.
Speaker:Now, obviously, this doesn't work.
Speaker:You project this for a whole society. Who is it?
Speaker:Who is taking care of your income if nobody's working?
Speaker:They don't think that far ahead of me. Exactly.
Speaker:But the money is there. It's just there, right?
Speaker:That's right. It grows on trees.
Speaker:Well, I think what it really comes out
Speaker:to, man,Ayn Rand picked this decades ago.
Speaker:It comes down to you'll do something. Mr.
Speaker:Rearden, as a seen in Atlas Shrugged,
Speaker:what do you get counting on?
Speaker:How do you think this is all going to work out?
Speaker:And so he says, oh, well, you'll do something.
Speaker:And he realizes that's it there will always be a guy
Speaker:like Hank Rearden around who will do something and make all
Speaker:the money and produce all the goods so that everybody else
Speaker:can then spend their time on leisure activities.
Speaker:But the fascinating thing to me is this
Speaker:is also now coming this attack on workers.
Speaker:And I've seen it also coming from the right.
Speaker:And the reason is that they see work
Speaker:as competition to the religious values as the
Speaker:center and meaning of your life.
Speaker:That's part of what there's been
Speaker:this long sort of alliance between
Speaker:uncomfortable alliance during the Reagan years.
Speaker:The Reagan years is the high point
Speaker:of this uncomfortable alliance between the religious
Speaker:right and the free marketers.
Speaker:And then we're also just fusionist movement where
Speaker:we all work together because we're all against
Speaker:the Soviet Union, we're all against communism.
Speaker:We can work together.
Speaker:But that has been coming apart.
Speaker:And part of the way that's coming apart
Speaker:is that the religious right thinks family and
Speaker:faith should be the center of your life.
Speaker:They should be what gives meaning
Speaker:and purpose to your life.
Speaker:And markets are secondary at best.
Speaker:And so they've developed a more
Speaker:sort of anticapitalist attitude, very much
Speaker:like borrowing elements of the left.
Speaker:And their idea is that they don't want anything
Speaker:to compete with faith as the source of meaning
Speaker:and purpose and value of people's lives.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So substitute worship of the state
Speaker:for worship of the Church. Exactly.
Speaker:The self shouldn't be subordinated to the state.
Speaker:The south should be subordinated to the
Speaker:Church, to the family, to tradition.
Speaker:Didn't someone say a free man on his
Speaker:knees doing his duty is a contradiction?
Speaker:I don't remember where that quote is
Speaker:from I think it was Ms.
Speaker:Rand, but I don't remember, honestly. Yeah.
Speaker:It doesn't ring a Bell for me.
Speaker:I think I've heard it somewhere, but it
Speaker:doesn't ring a Bell for Ayn Rand.
Speaker:But anyway, I'm sure somebody in our audience
Speaker:will look it up and let us know.
Speaker:So I figured if there's anybody who's going to
Speaker:make the case for work as having as actually
Speaker:having meaning and value, as being a source of
Speaker:personal identity and meaning in your life, it's got
Speaker:to be the Objectivists, right? Yeah.
Speaker:And recently, for various reasons,
Speaker:I've been rereading The Fountainhead.
Speaker:And of course, Howard Roark is making a lot of
Speaker:appearances in my articles when I write about this stuff,
Speaker:because it struck me that The Fountainhead is the place
Speaker:where Ayn Rand deals with this issue of the value
Speaker:and meaning of work, the centrality of work.
Speaker:But she deals with it not on a political
Speaker:or economic level, because more of that comes in
Speaker:Atlas Shrugged.
Speaker:But in The Fountainhead, she's dealing with
Speaker:it on the moral and psychological level.
Speaker:And The Fountainhead is all about Howard Roark
Speaker:quest to do my work my way. Right.
Speaker:And her original title for the
Speaker:book was Second Hand Lives.
Speaker:And it's about these people, like Peter Keating, who the
Speaker:source of meaning of valuing their lives is other people,
Speaker:the approval of other people getting the good opinion of
Speaker:other people, doing what everybody else wants them to do,
Speaker:being what everybody else wants them to be.
Speaker:And in contrast to that, if that's not the
Speaker:source of meaning, if there's a source of meaning
Speaker:that's within yourself, how do you find that?
Speaker:And Howard Roark finds that is my work, my way.
Speaker:The actual process of coming up, of creating something, of
Speaker:coming up with a new idea of building something becomes
Speaker:is the central activity by which the self is expressed
Speaker:by which your own vision of life is made real.
Speaker:And so that's what really
Speaker:she's focusing on The Fountainhead.
Speaker:So I'm relying a lot on The Fountainhead and Howard
Speaker:Roark because he provides such a great example of that.
Speaker:Yeah, I agreed.
Speaker:I was thinking earlier today, your article again, that this
Speaker:phrase again, I'm pretty certain this is for Ms.
Speaker:Rand thinking men can't be ruled. Yes.
Speaker:And that's why they want everyone. Yeah.
Speaker:Don't worry about it. Enjoy yourself.
Speaker:We'll pay you something, we'll give you
Speaker:something, we'll give you a pittance. Yeah.
Speaker:I think that the welfare state and the universal
Speaker:basic income, the big argument I've made about that
Speaker:is really a plan for creating a permanent underclass,
Speaker:because by taking people out of the world of
Speaker:work, by giving them no independent sources supporting themselves,
Speaker:no independent goals, no independent values that they're working
Speaker:towards, it creates a group of people who are
Speaker:basically living a dependent life with nothing to support
Speaker:them except somebody else providing for them, and usually
Speaker:the state's providing for them.
Speaker:In this case.
Speaker:And it creates basically a permanent group of people
Speaker:who are used to being dependent, to having no
Speaker:independent goals of their own, and then to just
Speaker:being susceptible then to being told what to do
Speaker:or to relying on whoever it is that's taking
Speaker:care of them, to take care of them.
Speaker:So, yeah, it is definitely it creates
Speaker:a permanent underclass of purposeless, people who
Speaker:are easily enough pushed around and a
Speaker:permanent bureaucracy to take care of them. Yeah.
Speaker:Again, I think since that's been in place since
Speaker:1960s, in the last decade or so, again, we're
Speaker:seeing with the walk away movement and things like
Speaker:that, we're seeing that starting to crack, I hope.
Speaker:What do you think?
Speaker:One of the things that's happening I find fascinating is
Speaker:that the Hispanic vote is moving to the right, and
Speaker:this is a long predicted event that's finally happening.
Speaker:And the main reason it's finally happening is that
Speaker:the big wave of Hispanic immigration to the US
Speaker:from 30 years ago or so, we had this
Speaker:peak of people coming across the border from Mexico.
Speaker:That big wave has sort of subsided.
Speaker:And then what's happened is that what you mostly have
Speaker:now, you have a lot more second generation immigrants here,
Speaker:people who think their parents came over 30 years ago,
Speaker:and now I've got a second generation.
Speaker:And they're doing what immigrants have always done in
Speaker:America, which is they rise up the ladder.
Speaker:More of them complete high school.
Speaker:More of them go to College.
Speaker:They start businesses.
Speaker:They prosper and they get better off.
Speaker:And when they prosper and they get better
Speaker:off, they actually become more conservative economically in
Speaker:their outlook because they're running businesses.
Speaker:They understand that the effect that regulations and
Speaker:taxes have on their lives tax the richer.
Speaker:When you regulate companies, you're not
Speaker:just regulating somebody else regulating them. Right.
Speaker:The other thing is that they want the American dream.
Speaker:That's why they came here as immigrants.
Speaker:They came here to get the American dream.
Speaker:And as they start to get the American dream, they become
Speaker:more susceptible to, more open to a party that wants to
Speaker:pitch them on being in favor of the American dream.
Speaker:Now I think the Conservatives do it very badly and
Speaker:are doing it worse than they've ever done it.
Speaker:But they're winning over votes.
Speaker:Republicans are winning over votes because
Speaker:the Democrats are basically the party
Speaker:that's against the American dream.
Speaker:I have a new piece up on Discourse.
Speaker:Part one just went up today.
Speaker:Part two is going up later.
Speaker:And it's basically advice to the Democrats on I
Speaker:think they need to save the Republic by becoming
Speaker:a viable alternative party, giving us something that we
Speaker:might actually possibly consider voting for.
Speaker:And I think there's a little I'm getting
Speaker:hints and nibbles and things like that.
Speaker:There are some Democrats who
Speaker:are interested in doing this.
Speaker:I am trying to set up some interviews with a
Speaker:few Democratic politicians who are trying to form a
Speaker:center left or more reasonable version of the Democratic
Speaker:Party, where the agenda isn't all dictated by Alexandria
Speaker:OCASIOCORTEZ and the progressive left.
Speaker:And so this is basically my suggestions for if
Speaker:you want to put together a viable Democratic Party
Speaker:agenda that would not be dictated just but not
Speaker:to be a watered down version of whatever crazy
Speaker:fever dream the far left came up with this
Speaker:morning, because that's exactly what happens, right?
Speaker:Yes, Alexandra says something and it's completely insane and she
Speaker:has no idea how it's ever going to work.
Speaker:But that sets the agenda.
Speaker:And everybody else in the Democratic Party has to
Speaker:say, well, here's a moderate watered down version.
Speaker:So they have to come up
Speaker:with their own independent agenda.
Speaker:So I make a suggestion for that.
Speaker:And one of the counter key points of that is
Speaker:I said, people don't want handouts, they want prosperity.
Speaker:And I talked about this issue of Hispanic voters.
Speaker:They came here for the American dream.
Speaker:If you had Democrats who actually embraced the American dream
Speaker:and talked about the American dream, and we're in favor
Speaker:of entrepreneurialism and people getting ahead and then rising up
Speaker:in the world and not just touting, oh, here are
Speaker:the welfare benefits we gave out.
Speaker:They could actually start to win.
Speaker:They could win those voters back to do a lot
Speaker:better than they're doing right now, whereas they had the
Speaker:most unpopular opponent that they could possibly wish for in
Speaker:Donald Trump, and they narrowly won the election.
Speaker:And they're going rocketing down in the
Speaker:polls every day to pull themselves.
Speaker:I think there's a bit of panic out there.
Speaker:I think it's why you get these feelings.
Speaker:It's a bit of panic out there that they
Speaker:realize we had to pull ourselves out of this
Speaker:funk, that the woke agenda is not winning over
Speaker:the American people, that the American people only in
Speaker:the last election, the American people only hated us
Speaker:slightly less than the other guys I know.
Speaker:Could that be the case then, for
Speaker:new liberalism or Neo, the Latin word? Exactly.
Speaker:Classical liberalism that you wrote a peace on? Yeah.
Speaker:Before we started, you guys mentioned I've been doing a lot
Speaker:of pieces at Discourse, and they've actually put me on a
Speaker:kind of a regular column, a once a month column.
Speaker:Now, I do other pieces in addition
Speaker:to the column, but my monthly column
Speaker:for them is called The Neoclassical Liberal.
Speaker:So it's basically the idea of saying, let's
Speaker:try to take classical, classical Liberal ideas, the
Speaker:ideas of the free marketers, the Liberals in
Speaker:the 19th century, since Liberals in the Henry
Speaker:Hazlitt sense, let's take those ideas and then
Speaker:also reach across to the, quote unquote neoliberals.
Speaker:And the neoliberals are the sort of relatively market friendly,
Speaker:relatively sane center left people and try to find some
Speaker:way to influence them and make common cause with them
Speaker:and get them to adopt a better agenda.
Speaker:Because when you think about it, this is a
Speaker:50 year process here in which you had basically
Speaker:the far left hippie counterculture that came up and
Speaker:sort of took over the Democratic Party circa 1960,
Speaker:1968, 72 somewhere in there.
Speaker:And ever since then, they've been sort of struggling with
Speaker:the fact that, okay, we have a more sane and
Speaker:moderate group of Democrats and a more sane and moderate
Speaker:Democratic base, but we have these basically insane academic types
Speaker:taking these ideas, preposterous ideas from academia, and then demanding
Speaker:that the party has to fall in line, and that
Speaker:becomes the Democratic Party party line.
Speaker:And that's that conflict within the party.
Speaker:It happens to every political party that Republicans have
Speaker:had the same thing in various forms over the
Speaker:years with the religious rights, wanting everybody to fall
Speaker:in line with whatever their crazy new ideas.
Speaker:So the Democrats are really struggling with that.
Speaker:And I think what happened in the last ten
Speaker:years or so, especially in the last ten years,
Speaker:is that the far left sort of on campus
Speaker:woke faction of the Democratic Party became extremely dominant.
Speaker:And I think you're starting to see a
Speaker:little pushback and backlash against that to say,
Speaker:wait a minute, let's come up with agenda
Speaker:that's not entirely dictated by these people.
Speaker:So I'm not super optimistic they're going to be able
Speaker:to do that, just as I'm not super optimistic about
Speaker:what the Republicans are going to be able to do.
Speaker:But I'm glad that some people are trying.
Speaker:And part of my goal is to say, let's try to reclaim
Speaker:the idea of liberalism from the left and create that idea.
Speaker:There's another alternative.
Speaker:And the most promising thing I see right now
Speaker:is that party identification of the two major parties
Speaker:is lower than it's been in a long time.
Speaker:People want an alternative.
Speaker:They want to be independent, and
Speaker:outside of they're not signing on.
Speaker:I saw a great poll the other day that something
Speaker:like only 30% of voters want either Donald Trump or
Speaker:Joe Biden to run for President in 2004.
Speaker:So it's like, well, that makes sense.
Speaker:That's a real sign of sanity there that
Speaker:two thirds of the people realize, two thirds
Speaker:of the public is sitting around thinking, can't
Speaker:we do better than these two guys?
Speaker:I know what you mean. Believe me.
Speaker:I'm going to jump back.
Speaker:In your case for neo classical liberalism
Speaker:article, can you outline a bit what
Speaker:you meant by cost disease socialism? Oh, yeah.
Speaker:So cost disease socialism isn't my coinage.
Speaker:It's something that came from the neoliberal side of
Speaker:things, but it refers to student loans are a
Speaker:great example where the government goes in.
Speaker:And it's really a version of why for years have
Speaker:been writing about what I call the paradox of subsidies.
Speaker:This is the idea that government goes
Speaker:in to subsidize something because it thinks
Speaker:people really need the education.
Speaker:People really need to be able to go to College.
Speaker:They need higher education.
Speaker:It would be good for them.
Speaker:We'll come in and subsidize it, and then in the
Speaker:process of subsidizing it, they end up pouring so much
Speaker:money into it that they make it more expensive.
Speaker:And this is the classic case of student loans, where
Speaker:like two thirds of all student loan and federal money
Speaker:grant money that goes into higher education, about two thirds
Speaker:of it gets swallowed up by the education bureaucracy, by
Speaker:the administration of the school, and ends up basically just
Speaker:driving up the actual cost of tuition and making it
Speaker:harder for people to afford College.
Speaker:So they need more subsidies, et
Speaker:cetera, in this vicious cycle.
Speaker:And that's sort of what cost disease socialism is
Speaker:the center left attempt to grapple with this.
Speaker:The idea that the government comes in to provide you
Speaker:with something and ends up just making that thing more
Speaker:expensive and meaning you need more subsidies to get it.
Speaker:And they're doing this with they're talking
Speaker:about doing this with Daycare federal daycare
Speaker:subsidy that would make Daycare more expensive
Speaker:and less affordable for the average person. Right there.
Speaker:The goal is to drive out private mom
Speaker:and pop daycare, to have government control. Yeah.
Speaker:And that's part of it is that we're going to
Speaker:try to cover funding for daycare, but then we're going
Speaker:to put all these new rules about who you have
Speaker:to hire and how you can do it.
Speaker:And so the mom and pop daycare place that
Speaker:somebody might have been sending their kids to before
Speaker:suddenly that you can't run that anymore.
Speaker:And so you have fewer
Speaker:providers and more government subsidies.
Speaker:And what do you think is going
Speaker:to happen to the price of this?
Speaker:It's going to keep going up.
Speaker:And that's what they've done with health care on there.
Speaker:Obamacare is arguably I think it's a great
Speaker:case of that where there's huge government subsidies.
Speaker:But what that means is now nobody can afford to
Speaker:do what I used to do 20 years ago as
Speaker:a freelancer before all this came in, I used to
Speaker:buy my own health insurance and I got better insurance
Speaker:for less money that is available today. And okay, great.
Speaker:There are government subsidies now, but you've made
Speaker:it so that it would be utterly impossible
Speaker:for anyone to afford it on their own.
Speaker:Yeah, but you've got this choice of health
Speaker:care plans, all administered by the government.
Speaker:So it's not really a marketplace of health care.
Speaker:Like I said, plans are generally worse than what
Speaker:I used to have, higher deductibles and all.
Speaker:I used to buy a higher deductible health
Speaker:insurance because I was 20 years younger, right?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I was a lot less likely to use
Speaker:my health insurance on a regular basis.
Speaker:And it was basically there.
Speaker:If I got hit by a car and I got hit by
Speaker:a bus and needed $30,000 in medical expenses, I wanted to be
Speaker:covered, but I didn't want to be covered for every little thing.
Speaker:And so it was really easy to get
Speaker:a high deductible insurance that was relatively cheap.
Speaker:Well, the Obamacare insurance is really expensive,
Speaker:but it's also a high deductible insurance.
Speaker:So I have a bigger deductible that I used to have.
Speaker:It covers less of my regular day to
Speaker:day expenses, and I'm paying more for it.
Speaker:And I'm thinking how only the government could
Speaker:come in and help you by creating set
Speaker:out to help you and create that situation.
Speaker:This goes back to this issue of Work Ism Too,
Speaker:which is that one of the things I came up
Speaker:with in this recent article that really struck me.
Speaker:I've written before a little bit about
Speaker:this fantasy of this guy who wrote
Speaker:a whole book called Star Trek Economics.
Speaker:I think he called The Truck
Speaker:and Amics or something like that.
Speaker:But it's this idea of taking Star
Speaker:Trek as his inspiration and he's taking
Speaker:the Utopian Roddenberry version of it.
Speaker:Like in the future, there'll be no money and everyone
Speaker:will be well off, but nobody has to work.
Speaker:The whole economic system we run as a
Speaker:sort of weird utopian socialism, which is glancingly
Speaker:referred to here and there in the franchise.
Speaker:Well, this person takes it seriously and says, oh,
Speaker:yeah, we can do this because we're going to
Speaker:have such great high technology that we'll have the
Speaker:replicators and we can make whatever we want.
Speaker:So therefore, we're a post scarcity society and
Speaker:everyone can be provided for without the need
Speaker:for work or trade or commerce.
Speaker:And the thing that struck me about it in this
Speaker:one, though, is that in writing this article about work
Speaker:ism, is I realized that if we were ever to
Speaker:get to the Star Trek future that's projected in science
Speaker:fiction, imagine that literally centuries of dedicated work that's going
Speaker:to be required to get us anywhere close to having
Speaker:Warp drive and replicators and all this amazing technology that
Speaker:they show in the TV shows and in the movies.
Speaker:And so there's this weird sort of techno utopianism
Speaker:that imagine we're going to have socialism with all
Speaker:this amazing high tech, but they don't even think
Speaker:about what kind of work ethic is required to
Speaker:get us anywhere close to that.
Speaker:Yeah, the merciless dedication of completing a task that's
Speaker:the other thing I point out is one of
Speaker:the things I like about the Star Trek series,
Speaker:or at least the Next Generation version of it
Speaker:especially, is that everybody in there is actually there's
Speaker:supposedly no money, but everyone in there is actually
Speaker:really dedicated to their work.
Speaker:And that's what makes it interesting.
Speaker:And by some of my favorite episodes are
Speaker:the ones where it's like Geordi La Forge
Speaker:spends an hour solving an engineering problem. Right.
Speaker:And they make it exciting
Speaker:and interesting in the process.
Speaker:That's basically the idea that you have to
Speaker:have that attitude of work and solving problems
Speaker:and new technological ideas and building the future
Speaker:is exciting and meaningful and interesting.
Speaker:It's a source of identity
Speaker:and meaning in people's lives.
Speaker:And why wouldn't it be?
Speaker:Because you're talking about building the future.
Speaker:You're talking about creating new things and solving
Speaker:problems and basically taking on all the problems
Speaker:of human life and solving them.
Speaker:Of course, that's a source of meaning
Speaker:and identity and value in people's lives.
Speaker:How could it not be? Exactly.
Speaker:Let me Echo then RoyK, obviously one
Speaker:of my favorite heroes my whole life.
Speaker:But the way that Ms.
Speaker:Rand describes just the philosophical aspect of work
Speaker:should be the central purpose of your life.
Speaker:Can you expand on that a bit for the audience? Okay.
Speaker:We talked about it all the show so far,
Speaker:but let's keep going there, if you don't mind. Yeah.
Speaker:Now, of course, one of the things
Speaker:people object is what about family?
Speaker:What about other aspects of your life?
Speaker:And I'm living proof you can do both.
Speaker:It's not an either or choice.
Speaker:I've got kids that I love spending time with my kids.
Speaker:It doesn't mean I don't work.
Speaker:And also when you think about, you know, I love my
Speaker:kids and I spend a lot of time with my kids.
Speaker:They're very important to me.
Speaker:But I want them to grow up
Speaker:to be independent, purposeful people who are
Speaker:not living the lives of Pampered Aristocrats.
Speaker:I'm not working so they can live
Speaker:the lives of Pampered Aristocrats who will
Speaker:spend their time on meaningless trivia.
Speaker:I want them to also find work
Speaker:that they will find meaningful and enjoyable.
Speaker:And when you think about it, work
Speaker:is the substance of human life.
Speaker:If you just sort of back up at the highest
Speaker:level and look at what is human life all about?
Speaker:Human life requires the creation.
Speaker:Everything we eat, everything we have, the clothes we
Speaker:wear, the houses we live in, all the tools
Speaker:we use to travel or to learn.
Speaker:All of those things have to be created.
Speaker:They have to be produced.
Speaker:And all of human history is a process of
Speaker:people working hard to discover and create and build
Speaker:and figure out how to produce all of these
Speaker:things and produce them constantly making progress, producing more
Speaker:of them, producing better things, making life easier, making
Speaker:it, increasing the range of our action, increasing where
Speaker:human beings can live from the tundra, crossing continents
Speaker:and going over mountains and surviving in the tundra
Speaker:that's all of human history has been.
Speaker:That process that is the essence of human
Speaker:life is you're out there in nature trying
Speaker:to figure out how you can produce and
Speaker:create the things that are necessary for life.
Speaker:And this is a vast, open ended process, too, because
Speaker:you start with the caveman and you get all the
Speaker:way up to modern society with medical care and skyscrapers.
Speaker:And I was going to say ocean liners that's
Speaker:even out of date supersonic airplanes and all that
Speaker:we have or about to have today.
Speaker:And then, of course, you can project beyond that.
Speaker:We talked about the Star Trek future
Speaker:and then now we have this.
Speaker:We can go and we can have replicators and work
Speaker:drive and we can explore strange new worlds and seek
Speaker:out new life and new civilizations, et cetera.
Speaker:So it's this process that is the essence
Speaker:of human life from the very beginning of
Speaker:human life and is so open ended.
Speaker:It's been the process of human life
Speaker:over essentially 100,000 years, and we can
Speaker:project it going into the future.
Speaker:So there's so much to be done into, to be created,
Speaker:and that is the central activity of human life now.
Speaker:It doesn't mean there are other things that we do.
Speaker:I'm a great fan of two biggest
Speaker:hobbies are my kids and music.
Speaker:I'm an amateur pianist.
Speaker:I like to play classical music, so it's
Speaker:hugely valuable and hugely important to me.
Speaker:The central thing is that the activity of life
Speaker:is to build and create and come up with
Speaker:new ideas and make new things, and everything else
Speaker:is given value and made possible by the fact
Speaker:that you were doing that one central thing. Great. Yes.
Speaker:And also there's a philosophical issue here too, because
Speaker:we talk about the needs of human life.
Speaker:There's the needs of food, clothing and shelter.
Speaker:There are the immediate physical needs, sure.
Speaker:But because we reach those, we provide for
Speaker:those needs by means of using this incredibly
Speaker:complex consciousness that we have, this conceptual consciousness,
Speaker:it's incredibly complex and advanced.
Speaker:The needs of that consciousness also create a whole other
Speaker:set of needs, a whole other set of psychological needs
Speaker:that are really basically, these are the things that you
Speaker:need because you've got this really complex brain.
Speaker:And this really complex brain has requirements of
Speaker:its own that you have to feed, things
Speaker:you need to do to feed it.
Speaker:And that's why we need companionship and romantic
Speaker:love, and that's why we need it's part
Speaker:of the reason we need family life.
Speaker:I mean, family life comes from the fact that we're
Speaker:not like animals where you care for the kids for
Speaker:six months and then off they go, a child reaching
Speaker:the humans have this because of our big brains, we
Speaker:have this immense period of growth and development that's required
Speaker:18 years plus with higher education.
Speaker:So because of our complex brains, it gives us
Speaker:a whole set of new complex needs, requirements of
Speaker:our consciousness, like art and family and love.
Speaker:But these are all still tied to the fact that
Speaker:we have this complex brain so we can go out
Speaker:and solve problems and build things and do things.
Speaker:And it's tied back to the fact that the
Speaker:fundamental reason why we have this complex brain that
Speaker:creates these complex psychological needs is because of the
Speaker:need for productive work, the need for creating things.
Speaker:Agreed.
Speaker:Let me give a couple of examples of that.
Speaker:I mean, today's culture you have
Speaker:Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson.
Speaker:They're bypassing NASA, if you will. Okay.
Speaker:We'll get space shuttle up for 50,000,000,001 flight.
Speaker:Elon Musk has for 50 million.
Speaker:He's got three dozen Rockets going almost all the time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm currently waiting very impatiently for Starlink.
Speaker:They have the chip shortage at them.
Speaker:I'm on their waiting list for the
Speaker:satellite Internet from Starlink, which is good.
Speaker:I'm waiting very impatiently for it because all
Speaker:the other options are not so great.
Speaker:Yes, I can't wait to see that
Speaker:here in Connecticut or wherever I live.
Speaker:Hopefully it will be nationwide soon
Speaker:enough to probably be worldwide, though.
Speaker:Yeah, it's there.
Speaker:It's just they can't produce the dishes fast enough.
Speaker:But that's a great example of the practical result of being
Speaker:able to launch dozens of satellites all the time is you
Speaker:could put up a bunch of these small Internet Internet satellites
Speaker:that cover the whole globe and deliver high speed broadband to
Speaker:everyone without having to have to have a land connection, which
Speaker:Unfortunately, I'm too far out in the 6th to be able
Speaker:to get at my house.
Speaker:So I'm really hoping that this comes soon.
Speaker:But this is the sort of thing that this
Speaker:tremendous productive it's the open edgedness of this, that
Speaker:there's always something new that you can create that
Speaker:goes beyond what we have before.
Speaker:And with this option in the future, you could work
Speaker:wherever you want in a way, the gig economy.
Speaker:Could you comment on that recent attack
Speaker:on the freelancers and the gig economy?
Speaker:But you could sit wherever you want and work for
Speaker:whoever you want, but now you should be labeled in
Speaker:the Union and in a certain class of work.
Speaker:How has that played out?
Speaker:All right, I know all about the gig
Speaker:economy because I've been a freelancer in one
Speaker:form or another for a very long time.
Speaker:And I just was saying the other day
Speaker:to someone that I think I overreacted it.
Speaker:I said, I've been working on the
Speaker:Internet since before there was an Internet.
Speaker:I am literally as old as the Internet.
Speaker:The Internet started in okay.
Speaker:But what I can say is I was working on
Speaker:the Internet since before there was a World Wide Web.
Speaker:So the World Wide Web, the
Speaker:Hypertext links and all of that.
Speaker:Before that, there was AOL America Online or
Speaker:there was email and things like that.
Speaker:They were used in that chat
Speaker:groups and things like that.
Speaker:But the World Wide Web, I put on my
Speaker:best Jimmy Stewart voice and say, well, why, when
Speaker:I was a kid, the Internet didn't have pictures.
Speaker:All we had was text.
Speaker:So the modern Internet of the HTML and the
Speaker:visual interfaces and all that, that was 1995.
Speaker:I've been working on the Internet since before that.
Speaker:So I know all about the gig economy.
Speaker:And it is literally true.
Speaker:I live outside of in the middle of nowhere in
Speaker:central Virginia, and I'm able to do that because 30
Speaker:years ago in my line of work, I would have
Speaker:had to be in New York or DC.
Speaker:You have just no choice.
Speaker:You have to live in one of those two
Speaker:cities because that's where the media companies are, and
Speaker:that's where you go into the office.
Speaker:And I don't go into the office.
Speaker:I haven't gone into the office in 20 years.
Speaker:So the Internet has actually made it possible
Speaker:for people to work freelance, to work part
Speaker:time or to work for a company remotely.
Speaker:A tremendous amount of flexibility and freedom that
Speaker:people have, which I very much appreciate.
Speaker:And now there's an attack on Freelancing.
Speaker:Now, this started with in California, they
Speaker:did a bill called Ad Five. Right? Bill five.
Speaker:And they passed this.
Speaker:And it was supposed to target Uber.
Speaker:And the idea of, oh, well, Uber is exploiting
Speaker:its workers, and to protect those workers, we're going
Speaker:to put them out of a job.
Speaker:It's a typical sort of left wing thinking. Right.
Speaker:And so they pass this law basically saying if anybody works
Speaker:for you for in a certain capacity or for too many
Speaker:hours, etc, you have to hire them as an employee.
Speaker:They can't be a freelancer.
Speaker:And the amazing thing is they wrote this thing to
Speaker:target Uber, and they seem to have had no clue
Speaker:what the effect they have on anybody else.
Speaker:And suddenly there were and I knew some of
Speaker:these people, there were freelance writers in California who
Speaker:all their work dried up because there was this
Speaker:limit that you could do like 35 pieces of
Speaker:articles a year for somebody.
Speaker:And if you did more than 35 articles a year, then
Speaker:you had to be an employee, they had to pay you
Speaker:more, and they had these benefits and all those other things.
Speaker:And now 35 articles is actually a lot I
Speaker:don't know that I have anybody for whom I
Speaker:write more than 35 articles right now, but that's
Speaker:for my articles are big, longer articles had a
Speaker:whole bunch of people who are freelancers, who are
Speaker:doing small articles like summaries of you work for
Speaker:a court reporter publication, and you did little summaries
Speaker:of court cases, little one or 200 word summaries.
Speaker:And there were people doing hundreds of those a
Speaker:year, and suddenly they were out of work.
Speaker:Out of work because it didn't comply with AP Five.
Speaker:And you had waiters think of
Speaker:a typical Hollywood type of situation. Right.
Speaker:The aspiring actor.
Speaker:Well, what does an aspiring actor work?
Speaker:What does that mean?
Speaker:It means you wait and you like, and if you're
Speaker:an aspiring actor, you want the flexibility of being like
Speaker:working for a caterer where you can say, well, I'll
Speaker:work this job, but I can't do that job because
Speaker:I have to interview for a part.
Speaker:I have to audition for a part.
Speaker:So musicians and actors like the flexibility of being
Speaker:able to work in a job like working for
Speaker:a caterer, doing it freelance because it gave them
Speaker:the flexibility in their schedule that they needed.
Speaker:And then suddenly they found they couldn't do it because
Speaker:if you were doing too many of these freelance work
Speaker:for these people, you would get shut out.
Speaker:And really what this was all
Speaker:about was protecting the unions.
Speaker:It was hurting people.
Speaker:And so they did this at 85 in California.
Speaker:It was a disaster.
Speaker:They had to come back later and try to fix
Speaker:it and put they didn't get rid of the idea.
Speaker:They didn't decide this is a bad law.
Speaker:We should just get rid of it.
Speaker:They did what they usually do, which is, oh,
Speaker:well, we'll create some exceptions for the people who
Speaker:are yelling at us the most and for the
Speaker:people who are freelance writers, they're sympathetic enough for
Speaker:the College educated, Liberal, College educated, left wing progressive.
Speaker:The freelance writers are
Speaker:sympathetic enough constituency.
Speaker:We'll create a car vault for them and loosen the
Speaker:regulations on them, but we'll keep them for everybody else.
Speaker:Well, now what they've done is they got something
Speaker:called the Pro Act, and it's something like protecting
Speaker:the right to organize URL that is now being
Speaker:pushed through on the federal level that is going
Speaker:to do all the things that AB Five did.
Speaker:It's going to do it on the federal level.
Speaker:And it's like they just do not learn at
Speaker:all from the experience they had with 85 or
Speaker:rather, maybe it's not that they didn't learn.
Speaker:It's that this is what they wanted.
Speaker:They wanted people to be in more control, to be
Speaker:working in a more controlled way, a more regulated way,
Speaker:a way that would be under the under the hand
Speaker:of the government, rather than being this sort of independent
Speaker:gig worker who's deciding their own hours and deciding their
Speaker:own line of work and doesn't have to go through
Speaker:anybody else to set it up.
Speaker:And I think that's really what it is.
Speaker:It's a war on the independence of
Speaker:work, thinking people can't be ruled.
Speaker:Let's take a nosedive here.
Speaker:I've noticed this, too, and it kind of scares me.
Speaker:Tucker Carlson, endorsing the
Speaker:agenda of Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker:You would think that those two
Speaker:would be a bitter enemies.
Speaker:Well, what's been happening is it's
Speaker:part of a wider thing.
Speaker:And Tucker Carlson is the
Speaker:most prominent is very prominent.
Speaker:It's a top rated show. Oh, yes.
Speaker:I don't want to do a great term.
Speaker:They've come up with now called nut picking.
Speaker:You can always find a crazy person
Speaker:out there who's saying something really insane.
Speaker:And there's this tendency of reporters to say,
Speaker:oh, there's some right wing, some Republican legislator
Speaker:in Ohio, some backbench guy in the Ohio
Speaker:state legislator says something really crazy, and that
Speaker:represents the views of all Republicans and could
Speaker:do it on the other side, too.
Speaker:I just saw something similar to that from
Speaker:the right about or left some guy.
Speaker:Exactly to the backwater Democrat, or can you
Speaker:believe this College Professor at podon University said
Speaker:this outrageous thing, and therefore that represents everything
Speaker:that the Democrats stand for. Right.
Speaker:I don't want to do nut picking, but with
Speaker:Tucker Carlson halfway to show on Fox, hugely influential,
Speaker:and he is at the leading edge of influence
Speaker:of this sort of nationalist conservative outlook.
Speaker:And very much he's trying to take the
Speaker:right and turn the right against free markets.
Speaker:And that's why he sort of actually had this thing
Speaker:a couple of years ago where he took a speech
Speaker:by Elizabeth Warren and said, this sounds great.
Speaker:This sounds like Trump at his best, that we're
Speaker:not delivering everybody over to this corporate agenda.
Speaker:Now, the anti corporate attitude on the right is coming
Speaker:from the fact that a couple of big corporations like
Speaker:Google and Twitter and some of the Facebook, the big
Speaker:media companies are hostile or semi hostile.
Speaker:They're supporting woke political ideas.
Speaker:So therefore, the attitude here is if somebody's
Speaker:not on board with us politically, and therefore
Speaker:we should be attacking them and taking away
Speaker:their rights and taking away their freedom.
Speaker:So if big corporations aren't and this has been
Speaker:a problem, this is not a new problem.
Speaker:It's been a problem.
Speaker:I think Iran Ran said to install Patterson ones like
Speaker:in the 30s or 40s, we're going to have to
Speaker:save capitalism from the capitalist because you had these big
Speaker:corporations that were sort of cow towing and trying to
Speaker:Curry favor by signing up for a big government agenda.
Speaker:It's just nothing due.
Speaker:It's not like this just happened. Right.
Speaker:But the nationalist mindset is basically, if you aren't supporting
Speaker:me politically, if you aren't supporting our side to politically
Speaker:keep us in power, then therefore we will use the
Speaker:power of the state to punish you.
Speaker:And so they've taken that in this sort of
Speaker:anti capitalist direction of we need to start punishing
Speaker:corporations because they're not paying wages high enough.
Speaker:You could support a family.
Speaker:Actually their complaints, they're not paying wages high enough
Speaker:that you can support a family on one income
Speaker:because this is the traditionalist thing, right? Yes.
Speaker:True.
Speaker:Women belong at home, and therefore we should force companies to
Speaker:pay men more so the women can stay at home.
Speaker:I call the TV Land economics. Right.
Speaker:They've watched too many 50s sitcoms or whatever.
Speaker:Yeah, they used to TV Land used to be a cable TV
Speaker:show that had all these sitcoms from the 50s and Leave It
Speaker:to Beaver and Father Knows Best and that sort of thing.
Speaker:And that Leave It to Beaver thing of the father
Speaker:who works in some sort of vague kind of job,
Speaker:who's the breadwinner who goes to work and the mom
Speaker:who stays home and vacuums and pearls. Pearls.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Juke Cleaver was very good.
Speaker:She was very pretty.
Speaker:This was vacuuming of pearls.
Speaker:It's kind of this joke like,
Speaker:oh, who would ever do that?
Speaker:But you have to also realize that the vacuum
Speaker:cleaner was like your new technology at the time.
Speaker:I did some research for an article on that.
Speaker:I looked up adoption of these various different
Speaker:household appliances and Leave It to Beaver was
Speaker:made just at the point where widespread adoption
Speaker:is a vacuum cleaner was becoming like an
Speaker:over 50% of households kind of thing.
Speaker:And when you think about it,
Speaker:you could vacuum and Pearl.
Speaker:That was the great thing about a
Speaker:vacuum cleaner is all this backbreaking work
Speaker:of dusting and cleaning and sleeping.
Speaker:It was a lot easier when you had a vacuum cleaner.
Speaker:You didn't have to break a sweat so you
Speaker:could do it in a house dress and pearls.
Speaker:So vacuum incidental, it's kind of a
Speaker:joke, but it's not incidental to this.
Speaker:It was a result of
Speaker:this incredible labor saving devices.
Speaker:Now, those labor saving devices would also, shortly thereafter, make
Speaker:it a lot easier for women to go back into
Speaker:the workforce and to take jobs and have the double
Speaker:income families, especially as the kids get older.
Speaker:But it's this weird thing where the Conservatives, the traditionalists
Speaker:have this thing of wanting to wind back the clock
Speaker:to progress is all well and good up to this
Speaker:certain point, at which point everything should stop and we
Speaker:should permanently stay in that situation.
Speaker:But I think it really comes from
Speaker:the fact that this is this sort
Speaker:of Tucker Carlson nationalist conservative thing.
Speaker:What it's really being driven by is the fact
Speaker:that this is the thing I keep returning to.
Speaker:I think it's hugely important that
Speaker:people haven't quite figured it out.
Speaker:I haven't quite taken it on board is that
Speaker:over the last 30 years, basically religious belief has
Speaker:collapsed and America is rapidly becoming a secular nation.
Speaker:Now, I don't think it's not majority secular yet,
Speaker:but I think the poll came out just recently
Speaker:that the number of people who are either atheists
Speaker:or have no specific religious belief, that's now more
Speaker:of the population than evangelical Christians, not by a
Speaker:large margin yet, but still.
Speaker:Yeah, 30 years ago.
Speaker:I remember that when I was a kid and I
Speaker:first decided I'm an atheist, it made you a freak.
Speaker:You were totally an unprecedented phenomenon
Speaker:in the Midwest in 1984.
Speaker:It was not a widely held viewpoint,
Speaker:and so it's become much more common.
Speaker:We are now getting more to the point
Speaker:where it's like one third of the country
Speaker:is basically secular and non religious.
Speaker:A third of the country is vaguely
Speaker:religious, but not that into it.
Speaker:And there's only a third left
Speaker:who really have strong religious belief.
Speaker:And that's a huge change from just a few decades ago.
Speaker:And I think that's what's happening is that the
Speaker:religious right types are freaking out because of that.
Speaker:They realize they're losing the culture, they're losing the
Speaker:dominant position they had in the culture, and they
Speaker:could 30 years ago in the Reagan year.
Speaker:Of course, they could say, oh, we're
Speaker:the moral majority, we're the silent majority
Speaker:who have these religious places.
Speaker:They're under attack by these elites and universities, but
Speaker:we have the majority of people behind us, and
Speaker:now they're realizing they can't really say that anymore.
Speaker:And I think they're in panic mode.
Speaker:And so what they become fascinated with is how
Speaker:can we use government and the power of government
Speaker:to arrest the slide of religious belief, to shore
Speaker:up religious belief by giving it government support?
Speaker:And that's what's pushing a lot of the nationalists is
Speaker:this idea that we tried having this alliance with you
Speaker:free marketers of libertarian types, and it didn't work.
Speaker:Religious belief collapsed.
Speaker:So therefore, we need to now have the government coming
Speaker:in and putting a thumb on the scales and supporting
Speaker:our traditional views and supporting our religious views.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:They're playing the victim card as well then, too. Yeah.
Speaker:Well, also, I think too, they're indulging in a very
Speaker:destructive fantasy, because if the problem is that the majority
Speaker:is no longer shares your religious views, how do you
Speaker:think that giving power to government is going to be
Speaker:used to promote your religious views? Right.
Speaker:Because you can't get a majority of people behind
Speaker:you tearing down these limits on government and giving
Speaker:the government more power over the realm of ideas.
Speaker:You're really just creating more power that's going to
Speaker:end up in the hands of the other side. Yes.
Speaker:So it's really great that you're creating all
Speaker:these new powers that can be used by
Speaker:Bernie Sanders and whoever comes after him.
Speaker:And Bernie is a little too old right now.
Speaker:All this power that we used by President Caesio
Speaker:Cortez ten years from now, I think she comes
Speaker:eligible in 2004 to run for President.
Speaker:Just to keep that in mind that you said 2004.
Speaker:You mean 2024.
Speaker:I think she actually becomes eligible
Speaker:to run for President that year. Yeah.
Speaker:Just in case you ever wanted to not go to
Speaker:sleep, just keep that in half late one night.
Speaker:Something will prevent you from going to sleep.
Speaker:Just roll that thought around in your head. Yeah.
Speaker:Now I've lost some altruders.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Maybe we could go ahead and point out a
Speaker:great piece that Rob you have done here on
Speaker:how do you pronounce that Australian publication?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Could you tell background how you did that when somebody
Speaker:was writing a piece on rent and then you okay.
Speaker:So the great thing about this, I
Speaker:just sort of broke into Quillette.
Speaker:I've been occasionally sending the pitches over the years,
Speaker:and I think I didn't get in contact with
Speaker:the right person and didn't hear back.
Speaker:And then I finally got somebody there who started
Speaker:publishing some pieces by me, and I did one
Speaker:late last year on a different topic.
Speaker:And then not long after that, they
Speaker:had a piece that came out.
Speaker:And I've seen worst pieces on Iron,
Speaker:but not a lot of worst pieces.
Speaker:It was kind of a sloppy sort of random thoughts
Speaker:about Iron Rand kind of thing that was highly inaccurate.
Speaker:And I thought I said, well, I've got this
Speaker:contact now, Colette, I'd like to pitch on something.
Speaker:I said, you know, I could do a
Speaker:rebuttal of this piece, but the piece is
Speaker:not really good enough to deserve revoke.
Speaker:The guy was really fascinated with the
Speaker:article was about supposedly Iron Rand.
Speaker:It was very light on the actual content of our
Speaker:ideas and very heavy on biographical details, most of which
Speaker:were taken from these sort of disreputable sources with axe
Speaker:grind in order to make her kind of look bad.
Speaker:I thought, well, that's not
Speaker:really why bother answering that?
Speaker:So I said, you know what, I've had a
Speaker:piece I've wanted to send for a while on
Speaker:basically Iran Rand's answer to our age of wokeness.
Speaker:What is her answer?
Speaker:What is the thing that she
Speaker:offers as an alternative to that?
Speaker:So I said, tell you what, I'm
Speaker:just going to pitched that to them. And they took it.
Speaker:And I think a week or so, a couple
Speaker:of weeks after that other piece was published, they
Speaker:had mine in which I basically talked about.
Speaker:The piece I did in Discourse is kind of a
Speaker:follow up to that one about the piece about work
Speaker:is it was a follow up to that one because
Speaker:I pointed out that the problem with our woke age
Speaker:is that people are finding meaning and value in their
Speaker:lives in the wrong places because they don't have someone
Speaker:showing them the meaning and value of productive work, of
Speaker:creating and building and coming up with new ideas.
Speaker:And specifically, I referred to a somewhat influential study
Speaker:that was done a few years back, about ten
Speaker:years ago, there was a couple of sociologists who
Speaker:sort of broke things down as they asked.
Speaker:They classified different societies based on this question
Speaker:of what is it that gives meaning and
Speaker:value in your life and what gives you
Speaker:social status in a certain kind of society?
Speaker:They say, well, hundreds of years ago the predominant
Speaker:thing was you had an honor society where it
Speaker:was your honor, your reputation, your social status and
Speaker:position that gave meaning and value to your life.
Speaker:And that's why you had a culture of dueling, right?
Speaker:Because if somebody insulted you, that was an attack
Speaker:on your honor, your honor had you defended at
Speaker:all costs, then you had a culture of dignity.
Speaker:And so think of like Frederick Douglas or
Speaker:Martin Luther King, where you could be attacked
Speaker:in prison, enslaved, you could be treated unjustly.
Speaker:But that didn't fundamentally affect your
Speaker:internal sense of your own value.
Speaker:And in fact, it might even increase your value
Speaker:in your status in the eyes of others because
Speaker:you maintain your own internal sense of dignity.
Speaker:And then that's been replaced by a culture of victimhood
Speaker:where it gives meaning and value to your life.
Speaker:And what gives you status in the eyes of others is your
Speaker:ability to claim to be marginalized or to be a victim.
Speaker:And that's what the sort of woke culture is.
Speaker:Everybody has to find some way.
Speaker:Someone is talking about how I saw something
Speaker:else recently about somebody talking about advising kids
Speaker:on their essays for your applications to universities.
Speaker:And to get into the elite universities,
Speaker:your essay has to be all about
Speaker:your victimhood, the hardships you suffered.
Speaker:And these are mostly upper middle class, welloff,
Speaker:kids who have had pretty easy lives and
Speaker:talk about the Hoops they go through to
Speaker:develop this narrative of being marginalized and being
Speaker:a victim and having all the hardships they've
Speaker:gone through because that's what being asked for.
Speaker:And so in response to that, I said what I'm
Speaker:Rand offers is the idea of a culture of achievement
Speaker:where your work and your achievement is what gives meaning
Speaker:and value to your life and status in a society.
Speaker:I think that's radical because it goes against
Speaker:it really is like an alternative to both
Speaker:sides in our current culture war. That's true.
Speaker:It is radical, right.
Speaker:You have the woke kids who are so
Speaker:in need of victimhood, they have to search
Speaker:for microaggressions, which are by definition insignificant.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:If it's micro, micro means small.
Speaker:If it's a microaggression, really, it
Speaker:is by definition not important.
Speaker:But you have to inflate it out of
Speaker:importance because victimhood is what gives you value.
Speaker:But at the same time, I think you've gotten
Speaker:that same victim mentality on the right that, oh,
Speaker:we're victims of the elites in Washington, DC.
Speaker:You're victims of the cultural elite.
Speaker:We're being punished on Facebook.
Speaker:And Meanwhile, the top ten most shared stories
Speaker:on Facebook, they were from Ben Shapiro and
Speaker:guys like that, conservative sources, right? True.
Speaker:We're being persecuted by Google.
Speaker:We're being persecuted by this and persecuted by that and
Speaker:also creating this thing where meaning of value comes to
Speaker:your life, from owning the lips and from being a
Speaker:culture warrior who's constantly in online battles against the other
Speaker:side and how trivial and unimportant all of that is
Speaker:compared to the idea that you could be going out
Speaker:there building the future.
Speaker:You could be going out there trying to figure
Speaker:out how to create Warp drive or take something
Speaker:more realistic, how to create a flying car, or
Speaker:how to create autonomous self driving.
Speaker:We're still working on self driving cars.
Speaker:They're not quite here.
Speaker:I think that's when they just started in San
Speaker:Francisco, self driving cabs just recently, but they're still
Speaker:not really quite there for prime time Europe.
Speaker:They are already with trucks.
Speaker:Self driving trucks. Oh, really?
Speaker:Over long distances.
Speaker:Yeah, I know that trucks were actually one of the
Speaker:things we considered one of the first applications for it,
Speaker:because driving on the highway is a lot simpler than
Speaker:driving on the streets of the city.
Speaker:There's a lot fewer things you have to keep track of.
Speaker:That's true. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker:And actually the big thing, by the way, I want to
Speaker:give you a heads up on so coming from an agricultural
Speaker:state, John Deere is now selling a self driving tractor.
Speaker:Oh, my goodness. Good deal.
Speaker:They went all in on this and pursued the technology.
Speaker:And now that's coming out.
Speaker:And of course, a self driving tractor is
Speaker:actually the easiest form of autonomous vehicle because
Speaker:you're in the middle of a field.
Speaker:There's a lot less stuff in a cornfield.
Speaker:There's a lot less to keep track of than
Speaker:even you don't have to worry about other drivers.
Speaker:You don't have to worry about
Speaker:pedestrians for the most part.
Speaker:So I think it's going to be one of the
Speaker:first places we see widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles.
Speaker:Is the farmer looking on his smartphone to
Speaker:see, how are my tractors doing today?
Speaker:Yeah, exactly. Wow.
Speaker:I just harvested a whole bunch of corn
Speaker:while back in the barn doing something else,
Speaker:and the tractor is out doing it.
Speaker:That's going to be a huge productivity boost,
Speaker:and it's going to be one of the
Speaker:way that the future really arrives, that the
Speaker:autonomous vehicle future really arrives here.
Speaker:But that's the sort of thing we should be building
Speaker:and the sort of thing we should be doing.
Speaker:And all this time spent fighting the culture war, I
Speaker:mean, a lot of people are getting the message from
Speaker:either the left or the right that going on social
Speaker:media and fighting the symbolic battles of the culture war.
Speaker:That's where the action really is.
Speaker:That's what really gives meaning
Speaker:and value to your life.
Speaker:And of course, it does.
Speaker:It's actually in the wider scene of
Speaker:things not very significant at all.
Speaker:That's true, Robert. That's true.
Speaker:I guess the overall lesson is, no matter
Speaker:how bleak it looks, there are intellectual and
Speaker:cultural currents that are not only fighting that
Speaker:bleakness, but surpassing it with incredible achievements.
Speaker:And the lesson I like to keep in mind, especially
Speaker:for objectivity when you feel in despair, is to realize
Speaker:that the vast majority of people are actually living by
Speaker:our value, the values we espouse on a daily basis.
Speaker:The vast majority of people are actually out
Speaker:there, and they're working, and they, for the
Speaker:most part, finding value in their work.
Speaker:And they want to grow.
Speaker:They want to prosper the woke people.
Speaker:And the culture warriors are this tiny fringe really, of
Speaker:like 8% of the population, but they're 90% of the
Speaker:traffic on Twitter, but they're only actually 8% of the
Speaker:population in reality, in the real world.
Speaker:So the thing I always see as the hopeful
Speaker:message for objectiveness is that what we're simply doing
Speaker:is advocating an explicit form, the implicit way that
Speaker:most people are living their lives.
Speaker:Most of the time we just need to convince to
Speaker:bring that message to them in a way that convinces
Speaker:them that this is how I'm actually living.
Speaker:This is how this is.
Speaker:This is what is responsible for all the
Speaker:good things that are happening in my life.
Speaker:And I could make things go even better if I
Speaker:knew that explicitly and we're more consistent in it.
Speaker:One of the reasons we created this podcast. Exactly.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Robert, it's been great having you.
Speaker:I really appreciate your time.
Speaker:It's always a pleasure, I guess.
Speaker:Martin, are we downloaded in 50 countries now?
Speaker:What's some of our stats?
Speaker:So, Robert, you have a worldwide audience.
Speaker:Let them know where your web presence is. Yes.
Speaker:That's one of the first rules for the gig economy.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:Always engaged in self promotion because nobody else
Speaker:is going to promote you for you.
Speaker:Nobody else is going to promote you. All right.
Speaker:So the main thing is I switched my newsletter
Speaker:over to substance so it's Krishinskyletter substant comb.
Speaker:I started a substant in 2004.
Speaker:It was just like 13 years before substac existed.
Speaker:Finally now they've created a platform that
Speaker:works better than whatever I cobbled together.
Speaker:So I've gone over there.
Speaker:So transistulator substant.com.
Speaker:You can also find my columns at discoursemagazine
Speaker:which I think is discoursemagazine.com by the burkata
Speaker:center of free market think tank and I've
Speaker:been writing a lot for them recently. Very good, Robert.
Speaker:Thanks for Manning the foxhole with us today.
Speaker:Enjoyed it. Thank you, Smith. Take care.
