<v SPEAKER_00>The core problem with affirmative action, how it was being practiced, particularly at Harvard, is that they were just being racist to Asians.

<v SPEAKER_00>But what's happening is not just like, oh, we're all just like well-meaning people trying to improve the other, these people had racist views about Asian Americans, where they said that like I think that these people's personalities are bad.

<v SPEAKER_00>That's just like you're a racist.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think it's weird that this has become like a question of like, oh wow, like this is a progressive university that is trying to do like, no, these people have racist views about Asian Americans.

<v SPEAKER_01>Hello, I'm Matthew Iglesias.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I'm Jerusalem Demsis.

<v SPEAKER_01>You're listening to The Argument, a show where two friends argue in a respectful, nuanced, hopefully informative way about politics, policy, and everything else we're interested in.

<v SPEAKER_00>This week, affirmative action and Matt has a take.

<v SPEAKER_01>My take is that it's bad.

<v SPEAKER_00>Affirmative action is bad.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yes.

<v SPEAKER_01>Why?

<v SPEAKER_01>I say two parts.

<v SPEAKER_01>One, I don't think it has like large benefits.

<v SPEAKER_01>I don't want to talk about that.

<v SPEAKER_01>Second, like I think in a basic way, it is like not a good idea to be slotting people into racial and ethnic categories and judging them on that basis.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's not fair to people and it's not healthy for society.

<v SPEAKER_00>I like, I guess like we could just start with the first one because I think it's a place where actually a lot of our disagreements would be resolved if there was like really solid empirical evidence about this.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I actually think there is a lot of of benefit.

<v SPEAKER_00>Why do you think that's not true?

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, so I mean, there's a few reasons, but I would say that like one kind of high-level fact that I learned at a certain point in life that changed my thinking that's like really sort of pretty basic, is that if you look at law school admissions or medical school admissions, um, they're doing affirmative action there, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>You are letting people in with lower LSAT or MCAT scores based on whatever.

<v SPEAKER_01>And, you know, in isolation, like, I don't know, who cares?

<v SPEAKER_01>It's not even that many people.

<v SPEAKER_01>But it's a it's a reminder that like diversifying the undergraduate admissions process is not like actually leveling the playing field.

<v SPEAKER_01>You're just redoing the same process again at the next stage.

<v SPEAKER_01>We happen to know because like LSAT is very precisely quantified, that it's there in the law school context.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I think it's sort of a generalized thing that you're not like producing some uh really effective, you know, like elite formation thing, which I think is like part of how this gets sticky, that it's like in the interests of institutions of higher education to actually exaggerate how effective they are.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think you're measuring effectiveness kind of weirdly here.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I mean, like there's ways we they have measured effectiveness, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>We see this with um increasing numbers of black doctors, black lawyers.

<v SPEAKER_00>You see these people actually entering the elite, and then you actually see and to me, what I'm interested in is when they get there, what do they actually do?

<v SPEAKER_00>And so for me, whether affirmative action is effective or not is a question of is it effectively improving society?

<v SPEAKER_00>So, does having more black doctors make people better off?

<v SPEAKER_00>We have research on this.

<v SPEAKER_00>Black patients have better outcomes with black doctors.

<v SPEAKER_00>We see that black doctors are more willing to go into primary care fields, which are really understaffed right now.

<v SPEAKER_00>There's a real shortage of primary care doctors.

<v SPEAKER_00>There's like research showing that with um black judges on a federal appell panel changes the behavior of their white colleagues in discrimination civil rights cases.

<v SPEAKER_00>Black legislators and state legislatures have more responsive governments to their constituents' needs in other contexts.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, we see this too.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like India has like a reservation system, which is different than affirmative action.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, it's more coda-based.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like Indian female legislators are more likely to respond to female constituents' concerns, and that means there's actually more um more water infrastructure because women apparently complain about that more than men do.

<v SPEAKER_00>So like I just think like clearly that's that to me is what the outcome is.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like the idea that, like, oh, you have to continue to do affirmative action later on the process seems like not that important to me.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, but I I mean the question is like, how are you getting to that outcome, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like I don't think it's the case that like letting in college students with different SAT scores based on their racial identity is why we have racially diverse uh state legislators elected.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I don't think there's like a meaningful linkage between those.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, we know the doctors and like lawyers, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, no, but I mean, so so the lawyer case is an interesting one, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because, you know, so there's this whole um thing going back, you know, 20, 25 years ago, there was a lot of talk about um mismatch hypothesis, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And so this is the idea that, you know, if you if you let somebody into a school where they're then going to be a below average student, that could be, that could have negative impacts on that person in their life.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um there's a a lot of different takes on this.

<v SPEAKER_01>It sort of goes in different directions depending on what you're looking at.

<v SPEAKER_01>But it but a particularly telling one is the law school case, because to become a lawyer, you need to go to law school, but then you need to pass the bar exam, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And so it's very bad to take out student loans and pay law school tuition and then not pass the bar exam, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And what happens in law school admissions is that, you know, some people who, you know, maybe have LSAT scores to get into like pretty good law schools instead end up at like the top, top ones.

<v SPEAKER_01>And that seems fine.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh, but some people end up in the kind of bottom ranked law schools who, by their LSAT scores, shouldn't have gone to law school at all.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then those people have very high LSAT flunk rates, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So that's like bad for them individually, but it also indicates that the whole process of like moving people up the chain is like not actually increasing the number of attorneys who are minted.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because at the end of the day, there's this like basic competence floor, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Provided by the bar exam.

<v SPEAKER_01>And you get something so medical school is not as well studied, uh, but there it's like an even stricter like line that you have to cross, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, like the really bad case for affirmative action in medical schools would be you have people becoming doctors who like can't practice medicine.

<v SPEAKER_01>And they're just not happening.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, that's exactly.

<v SPEAKER_01>But by the same token that that's not happening, the whole process is like not actually increasing the number of black doctors.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's just shifting the prestige of which medical school they attend, which has no real like meaning and impact on society.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then that fact, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So like black doctors are more likely to be general practitioners, um, which is good in a lot of ways because there's a shortage of GPs and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But that's also just to say that like medical school students who have higher MCAT scores are less likely to become GPs because it's not as lucrative, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So the whole apparatus is like creating resentment and ill will, but not actually creating more doctors.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, I actually think that like there's a lot of dispute about whether or not that's true.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like there's data from Sanders uh that shows that um students who were, who weren't admitted to elite schools didn't just shift to well-matched secondary schools.

<v SPEAKER_00>That like there's evidence that they often didn't attend law school at all.

<v SPEAKER_00>Again, like that seems like a question of what's, you know, it's unclear what's going on there.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think let's just even if you're correct, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like just put that to the side.

<v SPEAKER_00>There is a question about whether going to these elite schools changes the places that people end up in, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>Because maybe it's the case that you still get the same number of doctors, like you're saying, but perhaps you don't get doctors who are able to access specifics who don't like go after specific specialties or who aren't into uh don't have the network effects or benefits of being in part of elite schools.

<v SPEAKER_00>We know like the best research around what actually happens to people who go to selective schools indicates that it really doesn't matter in terms of like lifetime earnings or anything really material unless you're from like a very disadvantaged background, in which case it ends up mattering a lot.

<v SPEAKER_00>And the reason for this, and this is like in the Chetty research, this is also the Dale Kruger research, is that like you get the benefits of the network.

<v SPEAKER_00>So it would feel like really, really surprising to me that there was like no shift in like the elite composition of the United States if we got rid of affirmative action.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, but I mean, like what kind of shift in composition are you really talking about, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like I think like elite is like a kind of a vague um sort of assertion.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I think like again, your question is like doctors, lawyers, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like I think you would have like roughly the same number of African-American doctors and lawyers, and that would be fine, or like it might be better to have more, but you would have to work on that further upstream, you know, of the pipeline.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then, you know, you do get to a position, right, where it's like in politics, long before we had the idea of affirmative action, there was a concept of like the balance ticket, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So, like in in New York, you know, at the dawn of the 20th century, it was like you wanted to have like an Irish guy and a Jewish guy, uh, you know, either as like governor and lieutenant governor or something like that.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because you're just like, you're doing politics, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>You're doing representation and so on and so forth.

<v SPEAKER_00>Or like we need Tim Walls to really uh masculine up the ticket.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah, I mean, exactly though, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like people, people talk about that all the time.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like Joe Biden was old, so he was gonna have Kamala Harris who was gonna be more exciting, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like this kind of stuff is going on all the time.

<v SPEAKER_01>And that happened before.

<v SPEAKER_01>There just like wasn't a view that it was like, oh, I need an Irish guy who went to Yale, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>You know, it's like you would just find somebody, like somebody who you liked.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like it's it's politics, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And, you know, I think there's a we're journalists.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think media is like a really strong case for like, well, we should care about representation, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because if you're putting together, I mean, it just matters what you're trying to do, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like at the argument, you're trying to like define a vision of liberalism.

<v SPEAKER_01>So you don't want columnists who like don't fit in liberalism, but then you want a range of things that could be right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And you know, what that's like, you know, if you're putting together a football team, it's like you need some offensive linemen and you need some receivers.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's not like who's the best, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>You want to like have the whole diverse set, yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah, like range of things.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like we actually always achieve that in life without this kind of like manipulation of the upstream credentials.

<v SPEAKER_01>What do you mean?

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, I mean, just like what I was saying, that like in old-timey ethnic politics, like we were able to do this stuff.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, you're able to put together teams of people that you think are good.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yes, but you'd be you mean like not within Harvard or something.

<v SPEAKER_00>You just mean like overall in all of society.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah, that it's just kind of like Ivy League's stolen valor, that it's like American institutions that require diversity will be unable to function unless we can like rubber stamp them as being pen graduates.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like that's obviously there's there's like an empirical like dispute here that we're not gonna resolve on a podcast, whereas I actually don't agree that you're gonna have the same numbers of like black doctors, lawyers, CEOs, managers, et cetera, without this.

<v SPEAKER_00>We do see this a little bit evidence in California after the um ballot measure that strikes down affirmative action.

<v SPEAKER_00>You see fewer manager-level black, uh black managers in in California as a result of this.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, again, it's like some suggestive evidence.

<v SPEAKER_00>I don't think it's like fully resolves the entire dispute, but I just don't think it's clear that we know which way it's gonna go.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think it's also just like important to just ask you like, what is the value of going to an elite school?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, what happens to you when you go there?

<v SPEAKER_00>You went to Harvard?

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_00>I have no idea what happens in those hallowed houses.

<v SPEAKER_01>Ah, it's lovely.

<v SPEAKER_00>Again, I'm just like really, I mean, I mean, because like clearly you're saying, like, okay, it's not that big of a deal in terms of like producing lawyers, doctors, et cetera, at the composition maybe we would want.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I assume like you agree it's good that there are black doctors that are that are treating black patients and they're happy about that.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like there's even black doctors treating white patients.

<v SPEAKER_00>Really?

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah, you know, my son's pediatrician, my dentist.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like it's okay.

<v SPEAKER_01>We're living in a diverse society.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yes.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I mean, like, really, like I mean, like to me, it's like I think there's like a weird like bane switch that happens with anti-affirmative action people sometimes where they're like, listen, it doesn't really matter if you get to go to Harvard or not.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, you can still and I'm like, okay, but then why is everyone so worked up about who gets to go to Harvard?

<v SPEAKER_00>Clearly, there's like a value here that we're talking about that we should just then define.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, I mean, I actually think this is an interesting question, like in the opposite direction, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Which is that if like part of what they are trying to do when they do admissions at the top levels of elite schools is like the schools are trying to entrench their own positions in society, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think if you had a universe where like Harvard was admitting on the basis of pure standardized tests, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And it was um much more heavily Asian uh than it's been, much fewer uh African-American and Latino students, like lots of left-wing people would start becoming like more skeptical of these institutions as institutions.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, lots of college professors who tend to have super duper left-wing political commitments would like feel bad about themselves and their lives and what's going on.

<v SPEAKER_01>There would be more criticism of like being a Princeton professor and doing takes on the internet all the time about how leftist you are.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like, I think that would all be like healthy developments for society.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I'm not surprised that the institutions themselves feel that it's good to be able to do admissions this way.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I think it is good for them, right, to be able to practice this kind of like political ticket balancing and make sure that um, you know, I remember an admissions officer told me like 25 years ago.

<v SPEAKER_01>She was like, look, you know, um the way Congress works is we have these majority-minority districts, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like there's gonna be black representatives elected, there's gonna be Latino representatives, and we want like as many of them as possible to be Harvard graduates.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, like, which I think works, works well uh for Harvard.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh, but like I don't think it works well for society.

<v SPEAKER_01>It creates this sense of gamesmanship and unfairness around things.

<v SPEAKER_01>And you have this kind of like really unprocessed uh you remember when Elizabeth Warren did her DNA test?

<v SPEAKER_01>Famously.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And so then that like backfired on her.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then she kind of like apologized.

<v SPEAKER_01>But what she apologized for was like breaking the norms of like how tribal membership functions.

<v SPEAKER_01>Oh, oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>You know what I mean?

<v SPEAKER_01>That like whatever it was, she didn't apologize for like what I think is the thing that a normal person would say she did wrong, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Which was like she made up or misrepresented her ethnic identity to gain an advantage on the job market.

<v unknown>Right.

<v SPEAKER_00>So I mean, I I think I think now we're okay.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, there's a few strands in what you've just said.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, like, one is this question of unfairness and how it is decided, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>Because like ostensibly, there are a lot of different fair systems you could create for who gets to go to a university.

<v SPEAKER_00>Harvard could decide the only people it's admitting are people who want to do computer science.

<v SPEAKER_00>Sure.

<v SPEAKER_00>It's not gonna admit anyone who doesn't who you know wants to work in the humanities, or it doesn't want to admit anyone who it only actually wants to work for people who go to um who went to school in Massachusetts.

<v SPEAKER_00>So it's only gonna admit people from Massachusetts.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like there are a bunch of systems you could create that people that say is like either fair or unfair.

<v SPEAKER_00>So like there's like two ways to think about fairness.

<v SPEAKER_00>One is like, is the system someone is using fair?

<v SPEAKER_00>And also within the system they have said they are using, are they accurately evaluating people?

<v SPEAKER_00>And then I feel like it's fair.

<v SPEAKER_00>So like, for instance, they say everyone above a certain GPA gets in.

<v SPEAKER_00>I had that GPA, did they let me in?

<v SPEAKER_00>And so to me, I think that like the former is the place where people are actually getting um like confused.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, what is it, the purpose of these schools and what should they be doing?

<v SPEAKER_00>From my perspective, it is like the goal of like our elite higher education because it has such a large influence on who becomes a member of Congress, who ends up running these large um Fortune 500 companies, who has tons of discursive power at uh media.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like when I was at the Atlantic, it became like abundantly clear that like in the hiring process, we were having like way more Yale people making it to the final round than one would do a normal look at the distribution of people who've gone to Yale and want to do journalism and come to the Atlantic.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, you weren't even able to get, you know, some more uh elite college students from from other places in the final rounds of hiring in a couple of instances.

<v SPEAKER_00>And my point is like all of that is true.

<v SPEAKER_00>So the question is like, okay, given that that's a system we have, like obviously I think we should change that.

<v SPEAKER_00>It would be good if these schools did not have this level of power.

<v SPEAKER_00>But given that that's true, we should want these schools to have a cross-section of society represented in them.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>But so there's a question of like what is the causal impact here, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because like with everything in education, you have like treatment effects and you have selection effects, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And it seems to me that overwhelmingly, like what is happening is that, you know, elite segments of society are dominated by like, roughly speaking, the people who had high SAT scores.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like, yes, those people tend to go to elite colleges.

<v SPEAKER_01>And also when you're scanning people's resumes, it's like a cheat sheet, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like if somebody can get into Yale, that person is probably pretty smart and conscientious.

<v SPEAKER_01>And so that's like giving you some kind of information.

<v SPEAKER_01>That's not to say that like you can manipulate social outcomes by manipulating.

<v SPEAKER_00>But we see the Dale Kruger research, the the the uh the uh uh uh Raj Chetty research that shows that disadvantaged students get like a massive benefit from going to these, you just don't buy that.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's like a huge I don't think the scale of those impacts is actually that large.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean I think the best.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, so I the the David Deming, I think, had the the kind of the latest on this.

<v SPEAKER_01>And you know, his take is that he's showing really large impacts um of attending uh these kind of elite schools.

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm like, I mean, the charts say what they say.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, you know, whether you want to say it's it's large or small.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, yeah, so it's just put numbers on it.

<v SPEAKER_00>Chetty's data shows that attending an Ivy League school doubles the likelihood of a student from the bottom income quintile for reaching the top income quintile in adulthood.

<v SPEAKER_00>That mobility effect is larger for underrepresented minority students than for white students.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like that's like a big effect if that's true.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, okay, but here's another one, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So the same thing.

<v SPEAKER_01>They're showing, okay, your predicted main income rank for going to a flagship public school or going to an IV plus school, it goes from 76 to 79, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So it's like really, really small.

<v SPEAKER_01>To try to generate like a large causal effect, they get this other concept, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Which is, well, not what's your average income, but are you working at an elite firm or at a prestigious firm?

<v SPEAKER_01>And they show really big impacts there, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So that's the like Yale to Atlantic pipeline that you're talking about.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I feel like that's like self-referential, that just like you're characterizing as elite like the institutions that are Are they not elite?

<v SPEAKER_01>Do you disagree?

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean if we're like playing with the state.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's not that I disagree.

<v SPEAKER_01>I it's just I think it's not actually that meaningful.

<v SPEAKER_01>For who?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like for for the world.

<v SPEAKER_00>It's not meaningful.

<v SPEAKER_00>So you're saying that you don't think the world is any different if everyone who writes at media institutions is white?

<v SPEAKER_01>No, that's not what I'm saying.

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm saying that I don't think that it's that meaningful to say like I think that with the Atlantic, what the Atlantic decides it wants to do in terms of its hiring, in terms of building a diverse staff or not, is like a decision that the Atlantic is capable of reaching on its own as a management question, and it is not actually being forced on them by the admissions decisions at the Ivy League.

<v SPEAKER_01>Now it is true that if these things were happening in secret and like nobody knew what was going on, that it's possible you could have really, really big causal impacts around this.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like that's not true.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like But sorry, I just want to clarify here because like you're saying, like, yes, like in in media and politics, there's reasons to care about representation happening.

<v SPEAKER_00>You were also saying that yes, people are use Yale as or Harvard or whatever as a way of saying, like, okay, this person's clearly conscientious, whatever.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I also think that like it's true these schools are doing something.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I think going to Yale can make someone more aware of things, smarter, more uh access to knowledge they otherwise would not have had.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I think there's these schools are actually producing some value in the students, particularly for ones who didn't have elite networks to begin with.

<v SPEAKER_00>So, like maybe they're more aware of potential jobs they could take they didn't know about before because their friend's parents didn't have those kinds of jobs.

<v SPEAKER_00>So, like, I think they're actually creating a group of people that would not have otherwise existed, like people who would know to apply to a fellowship at the New York Times to be a journalist.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I just think it's like not true that there's not some shift happening.

<v SPEAKER_01>So I'm a little more skeptical than you are of that.

<v SPEAKER_01>But that is where, though, I do think like fairness concerns need to come back into this.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because if you to the extent that you do believe that attending, you know, let's say it's Harvard rather than UMass Amherst provides very large benefits to the individual, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Controlling for their own qualifications, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

<v SPEAKER_01>Then I think there's like a real question to ask is like, why is it that, you know, the child of Vietnamese immigrants whose parents work in a restaurant, like, why don't they deserve access to those connections and things like that?

<v SPEAKER_01>And that's also where questions like, you know, um, Barack Obama, when he was modding out on the campaign trail in 2008, you know, he said, I don't know that my daughters need to get a special leg up in admissions here.

<v SPEAKER_01>And again, the point there is that, well, if what we're trying to do is give people access to like elite networking opportunities, he wasn't president at the time, but he was he was already a United States senator and prior to that a professor at Henry Chicago Law School.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, it's not a question of like even like who needed the help, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>It's that like Sasha and Malia Obama do not need to attend Stanford to get access to elite networking.

<v SPEAKER_01>And there's plenty of white people like living in rural areas and whatever else who don't have access to those elite networks.

<v SPEAKER_01>So if we had a system that was like geared towards some kind of like networking equalization, I could see a rationale for that.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like that's not at all the way the system operates.

<v SPEAKER_00>I I agree that I don't think that Malia Obama needed to go to Harvard to meet other Harvard professors.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um I think that like she already had that covered.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think that seems fair to say.

<v SPEAKER_00>But that becomes more of like an implementation question where like, I agree that it is really bad to have an affirmative action system that like is the one that has existed, um, that says, oh, we think that if you are a, you know, black millionaire's son, that is more valuable to us than a Vietnamese child of immigrants who's actually poor.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, that's just like, okay, now yeah, we should fix the system to like actually do that.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like, I agree, then there are unfairness concerns, the people who get left out.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think that that's true, whatever system we create.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, some people won't get to go to Harvard, and that's really unfair.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like, that sucks.

<v SPEAKER_00>And then the question is, who then should we distribute that to?

<v SPEAKER_00>And we get back to my original point, which is the real way to define this is whether, or the real way to decide who gets to go to Harvard is to say, like, what makes society better off?

<v SPEAKER_00>I think for me, is society better off in a world where there are not racial groups that do not have access to the kinds of social networks that pre-produce the entire elite?

<v SPEAKER_00>No, I think that's worse.

<v SPEAKER_00>Now, I think the meta answer here, which I think most people have, is like it's really bad to have a system where like all of our elite are basically funneled through like four or five schools and like we probably should fix that.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think that's great.

<v SPEAKER_00>Someone should do that.

<v SPEAKER_00>Seems really hard to do.

<v SPEAKER_00>In the meantime, I think affirmative action is the way that you can fix that problem.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, but so okay, yeah, you were saying, like, well, this is an implementation question.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Which, okay.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, you know, when I I think about, you know, the course of my lifetime or the trajectory of this debate over time, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And and Bill Clinton, when he was president, when he was modding out, right, he says, uh, well, we need to mend it, not end it, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>This was when proposition whatever was passing in California, et cetera.

<v SPEAKER_01>That seemed like a good take to me at the time.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh, in retrospect, it like it also seems like a good take.

<v SPEAKER_01>Similarly, like what Obama said seems like a good take, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like Obama wasn't saying, I think we need to move immediately to a completely like identity-blind admission system based wholly on standardized tests.

<v SPEAKER_01>He was making a kind of a common sense like implementation critique point.

<v SPEAKER_01>And yet somehow, like, those changes don't get made, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>There's no movement in that direction at either of those points in time.

<v SPEAKER_01>Neither of those presidents, in their capacity as president, actually attempted to make any of these kinds of reforms.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like it's something that I got increasingly cynical about as time passes, you know, because sure, sure, it's an implementation issue.

<v SPEAKER_01>Sure, I could imagine writing something down that is like more nuanced and that is taking a comprehensive look at things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like nobody is doing that.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think the Supreme Court, in its most recent ruling, has like continued to leave the door open to a school saying, like, we are doing something more nuanced than a just kind of basic, like, give you an extra 100 points on your SATs.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, and I will be interested to see how that plays out.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like if anybody comes up with anything.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, like, I'll say this.

<v SPEAKER_00>One, I'm not going to say that I think affirmative action is a popular issue.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think you can just like you can just look at the so, you know, the idea that like Clinton and Obama are saying this, like, I think that's like fine and probably made sense politically for them to do.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like putting that to the side, the question of what is actually optimal, like there are a lot of policy areas that I have like views on where they're not doing the optimal thing.

<v SPEAKER_00>I don't think that that means you just like give up on the issue.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I mean, I think it depends like how far from optimal you are, how responsive the systems seem to be to things.

<v SPEAKER_00>I don't um, the Supreme Court just like, I mean, like clearly it was responsive.

<v SPEAKER_00>It was like, okay, if you're not gonna fix it, we're gonna like literally make it impossible for you to do this current iteration of what you're doing.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like, I think we also should just remember here that like the core problem with affirmative action, how it was being practiced, particularly at Harvard, is that they were just being racist to Asians.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, what was happening is not just like, oh, we're all just like well-meaning people trying to improve the it's like these people had racist views about Asian Americans, where they said that like I think that these people's personalities are bad.

<v SPEAKER_00>They don't like think that they have anything like, oh, these are all the same, you're like playing your uh, you know, violin and you like do math and like whatever.

<v SPEAKER_00>I'm like, that's just like you're a racist.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like that's the core problem to address there.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like, yes, like we should fix the system, but I think it's weird that this has become like a question of like, oh wow, like this is a uh progressive university that is trying to do like, no, these people are have racist views on Asian Americans.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, okay, but I mean again, like, you know, I I I've been alive, I've been, I've been reading takes, I've been seeing the discourse.

<v SPEAKER_01>And you know, it was a it was a striking moment to me that as that trial was proceeding and as the evidence was coming out, like I wasn't hearing from progressive-minded people.

<v SPEAKER_01>I wasn't hearing from Democrats, I wasn't hearing from like center-left columnists like, oh, like there's a real problem here.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like something has to be.

<v SPEAKER_00>I don't know.

<v SPEAKER_00>I feel like I like when I was reading the evidence that was being presented during the Supreme Court case, I was like actually shocked and it updated.

<v SPEAKER_00>I was like, oh, these people are like really racist Asian people.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like I just I know other people who had that view too are like, oh, seems quite bad, and they shouldn't do that.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I mean, like, you know, I always feel better when I talk to you.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um and, you know, I I feel like you're a very reasonable person.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, I remember when the SFFA decision came out, and like I, you know, I like wrote an article about it, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And it's like, you know, how could schools change and like be better and do better things?

<v SPEAKER_01>And I read other stuff that happened, and I I would, I would feel better about the world and like the Democratic Party and center-left politics if like more of the statements there had been saying something clearly bad was going on with this crude anti-Asian discrimination.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And we need to think harder, work harder to achieve representation and diversity in our elite without resorting to these kind of practices.

<v SPEAKER_01>What I was actually seeing was a lot of just very flat, you know, Supreme Court bad kind of stuff.

<v SPEAKER_01>And again, I will concede that this is an implementation detail, but I think that if we, you know, expand beyond uh the college admissions span, you see actually like a very cynical set of practices in place.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>So um, and my son's school, at least the last time I looked at it, the school lunch services are provided by a company called Sedexo Magic.

<v SPEAKER_02>Okay.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I saw that and I was like, well, like what is like I was familiar with Sedexo, which is a like a cafeteria, they do a lot of schools, prisons, hospitals, et cetera.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, what's what's the magic?

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, and and the magic is Magic Johnson.

<v SPEAKER_01>And what happened is that Magic, a great basketball player, love Magic Johnson.

<v SPEAKER_01>I think he's become underrated as time has passed.

<v SPEAKER_00>But as in basketball or like Yeah, in basketball.

<v SPEAKER_01>But as a businessman, he's a smart businessman, he has a company called Magic Johnson Enterprises.

<v SPEAKER_01>Okay.

<v SPEAKER_01>And one of the things they do is they have this subsidiary that's 51% owned by Magic Johnson, 49% owned by Sedexo.

<v SPEAKER_01>And it's just a relabeling of Sedexo's cafeteria services, except now it's a minority-owned business.

<v SPEAKER_01>So they qualify for some DCPS contracting, you know, set-aside thing.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, they brag on their website about uh working with so many HBCUs.

<v SPEAKER_01>And it's like what is being achieved here?

<v SPEAKER_01>Right now, I could imagine somebody it's 1965.

<v SPEAKER_01>We just signed the Voting Rights Act, and the DC government is like, we are going to make sure that we are supporting minority-owned businesses.

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm like, yes, I a hundred percent understand what you are trying to accomplish here.

<v SPEAKER_01>But is Sedexo magic accomplishing what you were trying to accomplish?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I don't think it is.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think so.

<v SPEAKER_00>Who cares, man?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, sorry, like I there are other situations where I'm like, yeah, like someone's really missing out here.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, who cares?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, this is one of those things like, yeah, this seems on suboptimal and like it shouldn't happen.

<v SPEAKER_00>It'd be bad if it didn't happen.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I'm like, this is not like every single government program, every single private sector program, anything that you do is gonna have like these weird edge cases where something bizarre happens and no one really meant to like, okay, so like Sedexo now is making money, but also now Magic Johnson's making money.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I don't does it, has it affected the school quality?

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, I mean, you is your son complaining about it.

<v SPEAKER_00>No, no, no.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, yes, but I mean that's that's like different.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, you know, school lunch is bad, it's uh kind of a human universal.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, I think that a lot of people have been asking recently questions about like the scope of local government spending um in blue areas versus red areas.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think that as we poke underneath the hood, there's a lot of sort of uncomfortable things happening.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh, there was a good op-ed in the New York Times recently, um, you know, about public sector labor unions.

<v SPEAKER_01>Friends of the Pod, Rob Gordon.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I believe it is it is not that well studied, uh, but it seems to me that you have meaningful cost inflation from these kind of contracting set asides.

<v SPEAKER_01>And also that there's a lot of, you know, questionable uh assignments, that there's a lot of um uh use of people as just cutouts, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>That this is a kind of a common practice here.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, Judge Glock wrote a piece for City Journal about this recently.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I will concede, it's like a more anecdote-heavy piece than like I would want to see.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I read it and I was like, well, I'm gonna get like the real facts on this.

<v SPEAKER_01>And it's the kind of thing, you know, you go to your NBER, you go to your Chat GPT research, and they're like, they're just not coming up with much.

<v SPEAKER_01>And unfortunately, um, America's college professor community is pretty skewed toward the left.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think one of the main ways that that manifests is like what gets on the research agenda in the first place.

<v SPEAKER_01>And there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in the question of like is affirmative action and government contracting like what is it achieving and at what cost seems a little understanding.

<v SPEAKER_00>So I am I am I think that if there's like some some cost or whatever to to doing this, like that that seems bad and we should not be bloating the government in order to uh or taking money from taxpayers, particularly in a you know, majority minority city, in order to give Magic Johnson more money.

<v SPEAKER_00>That seems like correct to me on the merits.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um but I think I'll say this like the reason why I say like who cares is like I think that a lot of what's driving the animosity around affirmative action in all contexts is there's like a sense that there's like some sort of ultimate fair system that like exists out there in the ether and that this is like pulling us away from it in a way where I'm like, there are a lot like almost all the things that we will like recognize as reasons why it's okay for someone to get into college, is like quote unquote unfair in some respect.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, there's like broader ones that I think Libs will agree with, which is like the cosmic affairness of like who gets to be born in America or be in America or go to school, like these are like cosmically unfair questions, like, do you have a disability?

<v SPEAKER_00>These are like random luck things that you have no control over that end up defining so many things about how your life turns out.

<v SPEAKER_00>But even like other things which are more germane, which is I think gender.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I think it's really interesting that like people don't seem to care that much about the massive benefit men get in college higher admissions practices, um, uh uh and you know, getting to go to college uh and getting uh better, better, better rates of being able to attend college at lower um GPAs and SAT scores than women do.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I don't really care about this that much.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think that like it would be good for people to recognize what's happening.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think there's like a reason why there's not that much of an outcry about this.

<v SPEAKER_00>And it's largely because men are 50% of the country.

<v SPEAKER_00>Most people have dads, brothers, sons, whatever, men in their lives, and they're like, this seems like reasonable, but also I think there's like a meta feeling that like fair is like 50-50.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yeah, there should be 50% women, 50% men.

<v SPEAKER_00>That seems like reasonable to me.

<v SPEAKER_00>And if that's kind of like out of skew, we should just make sure that's okay.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, that doesn't seem crazy to people.

<v SPEAKER_00>I know like the purported justification for all of this is that like colleges want to make sure that like dating markets still work.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I like, I like don't really think that's why people are generally okay with this as a system.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think it's largely that we've constructed an idea of fairness around gender equality, which leads to people to believe that 50-50 kind of makes sense there.

<v SPEAKER_01>See, I I actually think I think you should take the dating point more seriously.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because like I think that what is driving a lot of these dynamics in the admissions standpoint really is like the schools themselves uh operating to maximize like their own interest, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And so, like, one reason that you don't see that much complaining about this is that the the people, the women on campus who by definition have did get in, like they prefer it that way.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yeah, but the people who complain about affirmative action and race are the people who don't get in.

<v SPEAKER_00>So, like, why aren't all these women who yeah, I mean, those are the complainants in these lawsuits, there's the people who are not.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like why aren't there all these women who like didn't get into like Wesleyan or whatever?

<v SPEAKER_00>Why aren't they like really pissed that like they that some unqualified dude got in ahead of them?

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, I think we you should actually distinguish between two things, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like one is like who are the plaintiffs in lawsuits.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And so, like, yes, those are by definition the people who didn't get in.

<v SPEAKER_01>But then the other is like who's complaining in the discourse, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>I feel like every admission season you get like tweets about like people who are like, oh, I had a 1600 SET score and sure, sure.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, you do get that.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I mean, you there's a persistent controversies about elite admissions, and they were louder in the past, actually.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, if you just sort of survey the the discourse, um there there used to be more center-left, uh center-right um like columnists and stuff in America complaining about stuff.

<v SPEAKER_01>And it's just usually other graduates of the same elite institutions just complaining about how they work, you know?

<v SPEAKER_01>Or it used to be when you had non-leftist professors, it was just conservative professors saying, like, I don't like this system, I don't think it's how it should go.

<v SPEAKER_01>I think that you raise a good point that like affirmative action for men in college admissions, especially not at the top schools, but at like the middleist schools, is underrated as a phenomenon.

<v SPEAKER_01>I think it will get more rated.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like I think if people start to complain about this, a lot of people who are not currently fired up.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like when I look at the discourse of what's happening with how men should have access to elite spaces, whether it's higher ed or whatever it is, like right now it seems the discourse shifting towards like more affirmative action for men should exist.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like I think when you look at the concerns of a lot of people, which I think there's like reasonable ones about like why boys aren't doing as well as girls in school.

<v SPEAKER_00>Now you're cheating.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like this is supposed to be a different episode.

<v SPEAKER_01>We're gonna talk about Richard Reeves.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, it's a whole different episode.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think I think there's like this this larger push where you see people saying, like, well, actually the school's not fair because it's set up for girls or whatever it is.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like, I think there's like a level here where people have this background assumption that I think is fine to have as a society, that like generally you shouldn't see massive gender imbalances in places that we think are as important.

<v SPEAKER_00>You don't think we should have a hundred percent women judges.

<v SPEAKER_00>We shouldn't have a hundred percent female doctors.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I think that's like a reasonable thing to like have as a society decide that they don't want that to exist, because I think people have sense about like fairness, but also like the downstream impacts of how that would impact the gender in in in being treated or or interacting with that profession.

<v SPEAKER_00>And so I think that's fine.

<v SPEAKER_00>But then I think we should realize like that, like import this logic then to other areas that we care about.

<v SPEAKER_00>I agree per your like one of your first comments on this podcast, that it would be great if we didn't have to like care about people's race and that we could just sort of ignore that.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like that seems like an optimal society we would end up in where that doesn't actually impact how you are treated or how your life outcomes are.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like I think that nobody actually really enjoys being instrumentalized or thought of as like a particular member of a group when it comes to like government policy.

<v SPEAKER_00>That's not like something people really love.

<v SPEAKER_00>But at the same time, like we live in a society, and the society is, has already treated people in a certain way, but on basis of their gender, on their race, et cetera.

<v SPEAKER_00>And we have policies that react to that reality.

<v SPEAKER_00>And so I think to me, like, let's just import our logic here about gender over to race.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I'm more inclined to read it the other way and say that, like, you know, you wouldn't care if it was like 90% of law schools were female?

<v SPEAKER_00>You wouldn't care?

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, I'm not saying would I care, would I not care?

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm saying that like I think we should ask harder questions about affirmative action for male college applicants.

<v SPEAKER_01>I will also say though, I mean, again, not to do a Richard Reeves podcast.

<v SPEAKER_01>Richard Reeves is the uh the American Institute for Boys and Men.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh, he has been raising concern about boys doing worse in school, going to college less, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

<v SPEAKER_01>You know, uh, to like try to port like gender discourse into race discourse is is tricky.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I feel like a lot of what he's doing is closer to like respectability politics for boys.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like he's not like he's not saying we need colleges to do even more aggressive affirmative action for male applicants.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like he's saying, like, we as a society need to care more about how boys are doing in elementary school and middle school.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, no, but also I mean, I'm pretty sure one of his three proposals is that we should we need more male teachers.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yes.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like this is where we get into what I think is interesting.

<v SPEAKER_01>As you say, one of the differences of this case is there's just a lot of people of both genders.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like it we're very well women, less.

<v SPEAKER_01>We're very well supplied with both women and men.

<v SPEAKER_01>So if you say something like, we should try to have more male elementary school teachers, how would you do that?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like it seems like a hard question, but it's not like you're gonna run out of men.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, no, but I think that probably you're gonna have some sort of affirmative action somewhere in that system.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

<v SPEAKER_01>No, no, but I'm just saying quantitative.

<v SPEAKER_00>Oh, okay, yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's like imagine a world in which the number of male elementary school teachers doubled.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's just in the grand scheme of things, not that many human beings involved relative to the number of men.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>When you look at sort of individual cases, right, I think you can often say, okay, we have like a strong argument that uh racial representation in this area like may matter, that it may be significant for society.

<v SPEAKER_01>But you also have like an adding up constraint, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like I remember one time, you know, it was in in in 2020 when everybody was doing these takes.

<v SPEAKER_01>I it was like a National Geographic or something, but it was like a squib about how we need to talk about the lack of African Americans in marine biology.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like one of the questions I had was like, like, do we need to talk about that?

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>This is not actually the same as like, well, are there any black judges, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Or are there any black Well, I'm not sure.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, I'm not sure.

<v SPEAKER_00>The marine biologists could talk about it.

<v SPEAKER_00>That seems fine.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, maybe I've noticed my profession's all white, like maybe there's a cost there.

<v SPEAKER_00>Who knows?

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>But also if there's like a short supply of like qualified, technically skilled African American scientists, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>We maybe actually need to think about the question of like, where do we want them to be?

<v SPEAKER_00>Do we want them to be doctors or do we want them to be like Marine biologists?

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like, you know, that that's a that's a different.

<v SPEAKER_01>Question.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think I think it would get kind of awkward.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I like understand why people don't want to have that kind of conversation.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, it's challenging.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But it's like, you know, when you say like I think that ethnic representation in media and politics has like a kind of very clear rationale.

<v SPEAKER_02>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>But that does imply like fewer people doing something else.

<v SPEAKER_00>So like I haven't like read obviously this National Geographic piece or whatever.

<v SPEAKER_00>And obviously I think like we should talk about something as like a pretty low bar.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I'm fine with people talking about what we're doing.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, it's fine.

<v SPEAKER_00>We can talk about whatever we want.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I mean, like, uh more germane to what you're saying here.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um I think that it is a good development for society for people to look at groups that have been disadvantaged in some way in the past and raise the question, why are they underrepresented in this space?

<v SPEAKER_00>Now, what you do after that, I think is like depends clearly on what you're saying, like what's going on there.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I think when we think about um a lot of professions, we shouldn't expect there to be the large gender and racial gaps that there are if people were free to make the choices they wanted to make.

<v SPEAKER_00>Not all professions, people can have like tastes that are different for whatever reason.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like I don't think it's just the doctors and lawyers and journalists that matter here.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think that this can extend to jobs that many people might have um outside of that.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, for instance, most people are not attempting to be in any of those jobs.

<v SPEAKER_00>And there's network effects that are even more pernicious, I think, in jobs that are not among the elite.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, often if like, I mean, this is often a nepotism problem, like, oh, do you want to start a construction company or like whatever it is?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, there's like there's all those same problems.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like, it does seem interesting to me.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, hey, there's a lot of lucrative construction jobs popping up as a result of like the Inflation Reduction Act, but like there are no black construction-owned companies.

<v SPEAKER_00>And no, sorry, this is just a hypothetical.

<v SPEAKER_00>Oh, yeah.

<v SPEAKER_00>Hypothetically, there are no black construction-owned companies in the area that we're building this new plant in whatever in South Carolina.

<v SPEAKER_00>That seems unlikely, but like, let's just go with the counterfactual.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like, in that world, I think it would be reasonable for the government to say, like, hey, like, we're about to spend billions and billions of dollars investing in communities.

<v SPEAKER_00>How do we want to do this?

<v SPEAKER_00>Now, as someone who has spent a lot of my time criticizing government for spending like way too much time on this issue, like I agree with you directionally.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I don't want the government to like, when you're trying to just invest in building up the manufacturing capacity of clean energy, like, okay, now we need five more other things you have to like to care about.

<v SPEAKER_00>But at a macro level in society, like if within these industries they're having these conversations, that seems actually like a positive development.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, seems good.

<v SPEAKER_00>The marine biologists, the construction workers, like whatever, them doing that internally to the um to the uh actual industry is actually, I think, a better outcome than like top-down.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah, but I okay, so but I but I picked my marine biologists, you know, for a reason.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because it's different from construction workers, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because marine biologists are highly educated, highly trained people, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So you're drawing in a in a broad sense, this is the same set of people who might have become doctors or lawyers or politicians or gone into a different branch of research science other than marine biology, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And like we just we know because we can look at the college admissions figures and we can look at the SAT scores, and we can look at the high school graduation rates, et cetera, that like the first order reason why African Americans and Latinos are underrepresented in any like technical, yeah, high elite field is that they are underrepresented just in the broad population of like people who had really good grades in high school, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And go on and do these things.

<v SPEAKER_01>So you should ask like, is there a specific racial discrimination happening in marine biology?

<v SPEAKER_01>But you should also just always have in mind the counter hypothesis that there just aren't that many like graduates of selective colleges and universities.

<v SPEAKER_01>And so you get back to, you know, I think like very classic ideas about politics and public policy that like we should talk about, like early literacy instruction and, you know, like child poverty and just like really broad, generic kinds of questions rather than these like hyper-sur-faceted.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think I agree with you on that totally, but I actually don't think it trades off.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like I don't think the energy spent on like affirmative action in college has like anything to do with whether or not we have a child tax credit, whether or not we're like doing literacy education in California, these things like seem like completely unrelated to me in ways that like I think so.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I'm not I'm not gonna be able to prove this.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like I think that's the point of podcasting.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>I think that these things are closely related.

<v SPEAKER_00>What do you mean?

<v SPEAKER_01>I think that there's like a real turn away from like, you know, if you if you read like Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And he is talking about, you know, like what do we do, you know, if we want sort of uplift for black people in this country.

<v SPEAKER_01>And he's saying, like, we could just try to like guilt trip white people into helping us out, but like that's not gonna work.

<v SPEAKER_01>That's not how democratic politics works.

<v SPEAKER_01>And we're gonna need to try to build solidarity with poor white people behind a like generic program of like economic equality, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And that's the freedom budget, that's Bayard Rustin uh in the 70s and into the 80s, um, you know, because um uh King is dead by then, obviously.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think there's a real turn away from that in the political system toward this much more elite focused, you know, representational politics that like understandably low-income white people feel is very bad for them.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And that like it's very divisive and like really undermines the possibility of political coalitions whose purpose is like generically good public services.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, so I don't know.

<v SPEAKER_00>So affirmative action becomes a big deal starting in uh John F.

<v SPEAKER_00>Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson administrations.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like this is like still when you're saying there's this materialist focus in you know left politics.

<v SPEAKER_00>So I don't know if it super correlates there.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, I agree that if you are like a low-income white person and you feel for whatever reason that the left party in the United States or like liberals in general are like concerned with distribution of resources, elite status among high income people or just among like elite more broadly, yeah, like that, I'm sure that would piss you off because you're like, even if you don't have a problem with like affirmative action, which you probably do, um, you're like, why aren't you focused on like poverty measures?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like that's sure, well taken, that's true.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I don't know if that like actually is the reason why like what you're identifying is actually the reason why um people on the left haven't focused on these like larger problems.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like to me, when I think about uh why it has just been such a focus on these like representational issues, I think there's a lot of criticism of this during like the George Floyd era where people are like, okay, why are we doing all of this millions of dollars going towards these PR statements or firms or whatever, rather than actually materially addressing the issues of police brutality or whatever?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I think it's because it's harder to do the other thing.

<v SPEAKER_00>It's like quite hard to like teach everyone, like take a student who like doesn't have food at home adequately and like help them learn how to do math.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like that's like a difficult problem to do.

<v SPEAKER_00>And so people take like lower hanging fruit all the time.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I don't think that actually it's there's some sort of, I don't know, decision that's been made by anyone to be like, I care less about material issues.

<v SPEAKER_01>No, I mean it's not a decision, like, but it's a it's a it's a evolution of the political process.

<v SPEAKER_01>So things.

<v SPEAKER_01>And again, conceding that on some level this is an implementation issue.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like the way the college bargain was struck, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Is you know, you say, okay, well, we want to make a more diverse class.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And so the question is is like, who is gonna bear the cost of that adjustment?

<v SPEAKER_01>And it was structured so that the cost of the adjustment is borne by Asian kids and by working class white kids from working class family.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I mean, but you know, it's like the least burden of adjustment was put on the most privileged set of white children, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And then a kind of like vague racial hand waving is used to be like, ah, like white people who are privileged are gonna be like set at a disadvantage and and equalized, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>But there's no actual steps being taken to try to ensure that the cost of the adjustment is borne by the most privileged people or that the benefits go to the least privileged.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think the point is like the cause, I think you're like the causal error, like sorry, who we're blaming for this is not all the same.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, so I think that like many progressive advocates of affirmative action policies would prefer a world in which disadvantaged people were going to Harvard or Yale or whatever at the expense of privileged women.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think they would prefer that to be happening.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, but like the schools also have a say in this process.

<v SPEAKER_00>Then the question becomes should you push for affirmative action at all, given the schools are like obviously not gonna stop admitting these like legacy admits who like give millions of dollars to their school?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, that's like there's like there's multiple actors in this fight.

<v SPEAKER_00>But anyway, I do think that you're striking on something here that's important, which is just like the zero-sum nature of this is like really, really bad for liberals.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, usually like the thing that like abundance liberals in particular, like we like to do is go, like, okay, let's make more of it.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like you can do that to some extent.

<v SPEAKER_00>You can make Harvard bigger.

<v SPEAKER_00>That actually has a lot to do with with Yimbyism.

<v SPEAKER_00>And some in some ways you should make Berkeley bigger, but all these schools bigger, and like you could emit more people, reduce the temperature.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like, it's a big country.

<v SPEAKER_00>There are like lots of high school graduates, it's a big world, lots of them want to come to America and study here.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like you're not actually going to be able to make these schools able to facilitate that for everyone, in particular because like elite status is, of course, by nature somewhat zero sum, even if it it can be larger, obviously.

<v SPEAKER_00>Our elite class is larger today than it was six years ago in some ways because of population growth.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, but I think that like what I want to ask is like, are you okay with economic affirmative action?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like if people were like, okay, we're just going to let in, we're gonna give you an extra point boost if like your family income is below 50k, are you like fine with that?

<v SPEAKER_01>I think it could be okay.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, it would depend like what you actually did.

<v SPEAKER_00>If it was like a clear standard, like if it was a clear standard of like some kind of economic injustice and we'd be able to do that.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I I think I think you can think of a few different ways to try to structure something like that.

<v SPEAKER_01>I have just become I don't know how to put it, but like cynical about this, about these institutions, uh cynical about the kind of um blame shifting where you know I'll hear things like what you just said.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's like, well, you know, like, you know, it's like no true leftist, blah, blah, blah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like the actual like epicenters of left politics in the United States of America are elite universities.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like But like the cross-pressured, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like my point, like the different pressures, like a university is not like one person.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I'm I am I have shifted to a stance of like pure non-constructive criticism of these institutions and the way that they are doing that.

<v SPEAKER_00>No, no, no.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I mean, but I mean, like, I will admit it.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's like I don't have like my proposal where I'm like, here's how it should be.

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm saying that like I think that what has been going on is like quite bad, that it is like genuinely hard to justify to the people who end up on the downside of it, that it is not having the benefits that it is supposed to have, that it's not targeted at helping the people who it is supposed to be helping.

<v SPEAKER_01>And that, you know, the institutions that we are talking about are being run by people who would identify as progressive if you ask them.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like they've gotta do something, they need to fix something.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like the situation is is bad and they need to change it.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, so I think on that, I'll agree to disagree that like there's a lot of nuance one could add to this conversation.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I I'm surprised that you are you are not willing to to bite the economic affirmative action bullet here.

<v SPEAKER_01>Wh which one would be biting it?

<v SPEAKER_00>Saying yes, yes, that I want to give.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh sure.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I I I I am pro.

<v SPEAKER_00>But why I don't get why you're so hesitant about it.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I get that you're like, you're just now just like mad because you're like, okay, I'm mad these institutions have basically like fucked this up and they've been awful to many people and have refused to engage in a kind of self-criticism about this.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like just on the merits here, it seems like the economic stuff really does address many of your fairness concerns.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah, I mean, like Richard Callenberg has a good book about this.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I think it's good.

<v SPEAKER_01>I just I also feel like it's become a little bit of like um a little bit of a cop-out.

<v SPEAKER_00>You can't let yourself get negatively polarized against your own ideas.

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm not I'm not negatively polarized against my own ideas.

<v SPEAKER_01>Listen, I would applaud if tomorrow Princeton was like, here is our new plan.

<v SPEAKER_02>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And it is to help people based on some kind of objective metric of economic disadvantage, which is you don't want to make it super gameable, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Where you can just like manipulate your parents' AGI for one year and apply and get an admissions boost.

<v SPEAKER_01>So I think it's like a little bit of a hard question that these smart professors could probably come up with an answer to.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I would congratulate them if they did it.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think it is It does present some hard problems.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, what if you grew up and you had a bunch of money, but then you like lost it all in the stock market and like Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, there's yes.

<v SPEAKER_01>I I think it is like a little bit harder than it than it sounds.

<v SPEAKER_01>But also it's such an obvious idea that has been floating around for so long and nobody does it.

<v SPEAKER_00>My actual idea is that we need to do like Texas's 10% thing, but all not really for action reasons, but just so we get a bunch of rich people moving into poor school districts and we just like end residential segregation.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yeah, so I think the results of explain to listeners.

<v SPEAKER_00>Texas basically says anyone in the top 10% of their class gets to go to is it any UT school?

<v SPEAKER_00>Is that how it works?

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh well, originally it was the top 10% could go to UT Austin.

<v SPEAKER_00>UT Austin.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then because Texas's population has grown very rapidly, that became unworkable and it became like top 7%.

<v SPEAKER_01>Okay.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then the eighth through 10th were going to other whatever.

<v SPEAKER_01>Texas uh the details are complicated, but yeah, the idea.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like then, like the incentive is like if you're someone who's like has a kid who's like a smart kid, but it's not gonna be the top 10% of your like exclusive suburb.

<v SPEAKER_00>Then you're like, oh, let me move them to like the shittier school district that's in a poorer area.

<v SPEAKER_00>And then you like end residential segregation.

<v SPEAKER_00>So this is my real take.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, we should just do that.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah, I mean, I think there was that there's good evidence on that, you know, as its impact on the real estate market.

<v SPEAKER_01>I was thinking about that in DC.

<v SPEAKER_01>So DC has a couple of selective high schools, but they're not like strictly test-based the way the New York, Boston, Chicago ones are.

<v SPEAKER_01>There's this very fuzzy admissions process, and it's a little stressful as a parent because you're like, I don't even totally understand what's happening here.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I was thinking that the city has a has achieved a lot of desegregation of its elementary schools, not all of them, but of many of them.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh, but it like breaks down at the middle school level in like a pretty problematic way.

<v SPEAKER_01>One way you could solve that is if you said, okay, admission to school without walls is going to be purely based on tests, but it's gonna be the top, you know, X percent of test takers from each middle school.

<v SPEAKER_02>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>You then are creating like a very strong incentive for like bougie parents to enroll their kids in uh, you know, troubled neighborhood middle schools, but then like reduce residential segregation, get a more diverse set of parents involved in the schools.

<v SPEAKER_00>Then you get a bunch of the benefits from Rod Chetty's research on moving to opportunity.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I think this is great.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And if you did that, right, and somebody was like, well, why aren't you just admitting strictly based on test scores?

<v SPEAKER_01>You could then say, well, look, not only is there some like diversity benefit, but like actually by manipulating the system in this way, I'm like, I'm using high school admissions as like a lever to accomplish all these other things in the housing market, in the structural.

<v SPEAKER_00>I guess I actually think is a really great place to close.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think it just really clarifies that you and I have like a different view of both the available evidence and what is not actually studied.

<v SPEAKER_00>That I think there's actually quite a large benefit accruing to society from doing affirmative action in elite spaces.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like you're like much more skeptical on those benefits.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I think that like, you know, if someone comes out with a great study that like clarifies this that me and Matt will both agree to, I think that would actually shift us in ways that, you know, I think we have values, disagreements in other places.

<v SPEAKER_01>So now will we turn to more empirical?

<v SPEAKER_01>Let's turn to more empirical empirical social science research, um which will resolve everything.

<v SPEAKER_00>This is our peer review section.

<v SPEAKER_00>I'm obsessed with this paper.

<v SPEAKER_00>Okay.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think it's just so funny.

<v SPEAKER_00>It's actually quite short, it's like 28 pages.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um it's called Smartphones, Online Music Streaming and Traffic Fatalities.

<v SPEAKER_00>It is a NBER working paper.

<v SPEAKER_00>The co-authors are Vishal Patel, Michael Leo, uh, Christopher Warsham, and Anupam Jenna.

<v SPEAKER_00>Uh, they're all at Harvard Medical School.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, and basically, the like they're interested in whether smartphones, like what the impact of smartphones is on traffic fatalities.

<v SPEAKER_00>And they decided to use an interesting measure or instrument, which is that like people are probably using their smartphones more the day that Taylor Swift drops a new album, um, or any major artist drops a new album.

<v SPEAKER_00>But as you can see from the paper, a lot of them are Taylor Swift albums.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's like basically justice.

<v SPEAKER_00>I'm like a little bit concerned because it is like a very much like a has Taylor Swift killed like dozens of people.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um and what they find is that on days where a major popular album drops, traffic fatality has increased by nearly 15%, which is like almost 20 people per day.

<v SPEAKER_00>It's like 20 extra people are dying as a result of this because people are distracted on their smartphones.

<v SPEAKER_00>And so therefore they're in traffic and they're like scrolling to go to the next uh one or to the next uh song or like replay the song they just played, or just in general, they're distracted.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think um a big part of this is just that like people are literally just like singing and not paying attention.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, one thing that's really interesting in the paper is they find like larger effects for certain kinds of people.

<v SPEAKER_00>So um the fatalities is larger in absolute terms among younger drivers, um, male drivers, white and Asian drivers, and also on nicer days, which is like like makes sense, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>It's very funny.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like you when you're in driving your car and you're like, oh, let me turn on some music and like really like, you know, jam out.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like it's probably not a nice day where we put the windows down, so you're like super distracted.

<v SPEAKER_00>So anyway, a lot of suggestive evidence that like, you know, they're not just measuring something um else accidentally.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I thought this was a very fun paper.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's a bit of an you know, it's an interesting interest instrument, yeah, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Um it's a little bit unclear because they do show that like people stream music more on the days when a new album comes out, which makes that makes a lot of sense.

<v SPEAKER_01>So, but like what are they doing in the car on the days when they're not streaming the new Taylor Swift album, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like that was sort of my Maybe like less locked in on the music.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, I don't know.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because that was a you know, because because my model of like the streaming impact is that I normally listen to podcasts when I'm driving.

<v SPEAKER_02>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I sometimes listen to music when I'm driving.

<v SPEAKER_01>And so, you know, if my favorite band comes up with a new album, I'm going to shift on that day away from podcasts toward music.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And it'll probably be somewhat sticky for, you know, a period of some weeks.

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm not actually increasing my smartphone use, though.

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm just substituting across two different things.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, I think sometimes people just don't listen to anything.

<v SPEAKER_00>You never like, you're never like driving and like in silence.

<v SPEAKER_01>That's my question.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like that, that's horrifying to me.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, are people just driving around in silence and then and then and then like the Drake album comes out and they're like, wow, instead of sitting here alone like an idiot, uh, like you should be listening to podcasts all the time, supporting the content industry.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, and you know, we're doing video podcasting now, which everybody is.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, do not watch the podcast while you're doing it.

<v SPEAKER_00>That happens to me in Ubers all the time now, is watching people watch YouTube videos.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I'm very alarmed by that.

<v SPEAKER_00>I actually do think the big thing here, what this what this indicates to me, because like they also find that like being alone in the car makes you more like has higher uh associated with higher fatalities as well.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like I think people really underrate how easy it is to be distracted when they're driving.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like I think it's like actually something that I people don't like.

<v SPEAKER_00>I have a lot of I mean, as someone who drives myself, like you're like, okay, like, okay, if I look at my photo for a second, it's like not that big of a deal.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like it's like not huge if I like I'm just switching something over or I'm just checking to see if my husband texted me or like whatever it is.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, that's something where I think people often would rate themselves as being like, oh, I'm paying attention.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I'm not a distracted driver.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I think that that's like one contribution to this paper.

<v SPEAKER_00>But the other contribution to this paper is just sort of like people are not going to stop listening to music in the car.

<v SPEAKER_00>So we need to shift over to self driving cars immediately.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like this is just like, I mean, I was looking at these top ten albums.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, yeah, we've had like Taylor Swift's, she's like number one, number uh nine, and number ten on here.

<v SPEAKER_00>But you also make it.

<v SPEAKER_01>That's true.

<v SPEAKER_00>We I we're not giving Drake enough to actually Drake maybe actually has more total first day streams because he's Taylor has uh nine and ten list.

<v SPEAKER_01>We can't just let white people dominate music streaming in Jerusalem.

<v SPEAKER_01>Therefore the murders of various Americans.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I mean, like, I don't know.

<v SPEAKER_01>There's actually a lot of popular uh black musicians in American history.

<v SPEAKER_00>I don't know if you're we don't need it, we don't need affirmative action for me.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um but I guess like I feel like you have a rant about self-driving cars in DC.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I no, I have no rant.

<v SPEAKER_01>You have no rant about this?

<v SPEAKER_01>Um we have a mayor's election coming up.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh one of the candidates has taken a strong anti-Wimo stance, which she claims is for safety.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I mean, I agree with the point that you were making, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>This paper is looking at the incremental smartphone distraction factor.

<v SPEAKER_01>But per what I was saying about switching, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Most people are using their phone on some level.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's safely, it's just for listening to music, it's just for the direction.

<v SPEAKER_01>But their phone is there with them while they are driving all the time, whether Taylor comes out with a new album or not, they're listening to the old Taylor albums.

<v SPEAKER_01>You know, they're better anyway.

<v SPEAKER_01>And and when you're thinking about, I think when a lot of people think about because I because I've seen the the politics, the polling on this, there's a lot of genuine public skepticism of self-driving cars, separate from the interest group politics.

<v SPEAKER_01>And people are comparing what they think a robot driver will be like against their idealized version of a human driver.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But the really great thing about a robot is like however good the robot driver is, it's that good all the time.

<v SPEAKER_02>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm really fucking tired today because I had to stay up late.

<v SPEAKER_01>If I I'm not gonna drive later today, but if I did, I would be driving at less than 100%.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>The Waymo is always 100%.

<v SPEAKER_01>The Waymo is never like stressed out over Trump.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, or just a person who would never, ever, ever get a text, you know, to when they're driving, except they happen to know that their best friend is doing something really, really stressful.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And they see that person is calling, and now it's like, uh, you know, there's all these exceptions, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I wouldn't look off the road and replay a song, but it's Taylor's brand new album, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>All these things happen.

<v SPEAKER_01>People get drunk, uh, people get 10 years older and their eyesight gets worse and they haven't updated their glasses, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like the human fallibility factor is like so big and so multidimensional.

<v SPEAKER_01>And as you say, like not going anywhere, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>We're not, we've got a rule that like you can't like be futzing around on your phone when you're driving.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like nobody's stopping you from when this podcast ends, like firing up the next episode.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because, you know, because like you and me, like we're so lovable and and distracting and compelling.

<v SPEAKER_01>And people aren't gonna be like, well, you know, I'm driving 70 miles per hour on the highway.

<v SPEAKER_01>I can't, I can't afford to listen to those points.

<v SPEAKER_01>So, yes, we need the robots.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, if you are listening to this while driving, we we implore you, wait until you get to a stoplight before you switch over to the next episode.

<v SPEAKER_01>Or use the voice controls.

<v SPEAKER_00>I hear that that's actually also distracting.

<v SPEAKER_01>Okay, don't do that.

<v SPEAKER_01>I haven't looked into this at all.

<v SPEAKER_00>Anyway, um, I think that's a great place to end it.

<v SPEAKER_00>If you're on the road right now, I'm begging you, wait till you get to that red light and we'll just drive in silence like a psycho.

<v SPEAKER_00>Exactly.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, all right, we'll see you next week.

<v SPEAKER_00>Bye.