<v SPEAKER_01>The closest that like Bernie Sanders will ever come to a median voter view is having this incoherent critique of oligarchy.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like I'm trying to ask the question of like, does Bernie Sanders' critique make sense?

<v SPEAKER_00>Hi, I'm Jerusalem.

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm Matt.

<v SPEAKER_00>And welcome to the argument.

<v SPEAKER_01>I want to talk today about the oligarchy.

<v SPEAKER_01>And specifically, I don't think the oligarchy is real.

<v SPEAKER_00>I feel like this is all like a definitional morass.

<v SPEAKER_00>It's gonna be like difficult to wade through, but like what do you mean when you're saying oligarchy?

<v SPEAKER_01>There's been a fighting oligarchy tour uh that has been going on for months.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh headlined by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, they have rallied with various candidates they're supporting.

<v SPEAKER_01>And, you know, so they have chosen to define their sort of factional project in terms of an oligarchy uh that they are they are combating.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh, but beyond like that sect, I remember after the 2024 election, um, Amy Klobuchar, who's I think is normally like a very moderate and level-headed person, she like complained that a broligarchy of tech people was like coming to the Trump inauguration.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, and some of this goes back to, you know, like older ideas that have been kicking around political science, literature.

<v SPEAKER_01>But there's there's some sense, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Shared perhaps by Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar, that like a small cabal of very wealthy people is like secretly running the country.

<v SPEAKER_01>And that, you know, what like a top-tier political concern is we need to stop them from doing that.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I just like I don't think that's happening.

<v SPEAKER_01>I don't think that explains American politics at all.

<v SPEAKER_00>There's a ton of rhetorical slippage in this entire conversation, but I think it's also just like par for the course for politics.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I just want to take like the like oligarchy as like a real thing steelman for a second, because I I do genuinely feel that'll be a better podcast, yeah.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I mean, but but I mean, like, just actually like I have been as a political journalist in more political spaces with a lot of wealthy people.

<v SPEAKER_00>Moving from being a person that was kind of just like in politics largely a private citizen not working in in that space to working in that space.

<v SPEAKER_00>It is like genuinely extremely off-putting.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like the way that like the private access that like very, very wealthy people get to politicians in a way that like regular people just do not have.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like it is just like not possible for like 99.9999% of normal people to ever get like sustained 30 minutes of attention from their elected officials.

<v SPEAKER_00>This is like obviously true.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, how would someone even divide their time?

<v SPEAKER_00>But like it's extremely frustrating because you like you have there's an ethos of democracy which is around like obviously one person and one vote, but that's supposed to communicate that you have equal power regardless of your position in society over the democratic system.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like we accept some level of inequality here.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, obviously, some people are gonna care more about certain issues, they'll be involved more, you know.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, if you don't vote, don't complain is I think a very normal thing that people feel.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, if you don't like engage in the political process at all, there's like a sense that you you've just chosen to opt out and that's that's fine.

<v SPEAKER_00>But the extent to which that is like visibly true in places like DC or New York is really, really frustrating.

<v SPEAKER_00>And when those sorts of things become visible to regular people for whom those are not obvious facts of life because they don't live in like, you know, large East Coast cities where these donor events go on, I think it's like completely reasonable to be like turned off by that.

<v SPEAKER_01>Sure.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, but I I do think it's important to try to understand like what is happening in specific ways.

<v SPEAKER_01>Now, it's definitely true that like politicians um pay different amounts of attention to different people and different people can get on their schedules in different kinds of ways.

<v SPEAKER_01>That being said, like, you know, if you want to attend a fundraiser uh with a politician and get some FaceTime with that person, the amount of money that you need to contribute to something like that is not like you don't need to be a billionaire.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, to be at one of these fundraisers where you get to see them in a room do their stump speech, and then you get to like they come down the line and say hello and you get like 30 seconds, like sure.

<v SPEAKER_00>But if you want 30 minutes of like a presid a major presidential candidate's time, like that's not true.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, I mean major I I think it's a little different, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, like what do you get?

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, you know, major presidential candidates, et cetera.

<v SPEAKER_01>Is this because of donations at all?

<v SPEAKER_00>So, like, I mean, there's like a great study from Friends of the Pod, um, Josh Calla and David Brockman, about this very question.

<v SPEAKER_00>They're like looking into like whether it is the case that like donors do get better access to both candidates and senior elected officials.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like generally what they're doing is that they're like testing out like requests for meetings to candidates and to senior um staff.

<v SPEAKER_00>And if the person is a donor, um, I think it's like five times as likely to get a senior staffer and like three times as likely to get FaceTime with the candidate yourself.

<v SPEAKER_00>Now, that's not like donors own this person, but that is like a level of difference that or like I think people would find that generally bad.

<v SPEAKER_01>Absolutely.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think, but I also think that people oftentimes misstate like how much influence does that actually give you?

<v SPEAKER_01>Who are the donors?

<v SPEAKER_01>What is the nature of the influence that is wielded that way?

<v SPEAKER_01>And also what is the reasons for it?

<v SPEAKER_01>You know, because if you go to a country with a completely different campaign finance system, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like an executive at Lego has a tremendous amount of access to Danish politicians, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Not because they make campaign contributions, but because like politicians care what the executives of the big companies in their country think.

<v SPEAKER_01>And also like they're correct to care about that, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like it's a it's a little icky, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Now, if somebody was like, how come you'll take a meeting with the executive from Vestis, another Danish company, and like not with me, it's like, well, the answer is the CEO of Vestis is more important than you are.

<v SPEAKER_00>And it's like I think that like this is, I mean, we're gonna get into this, which is just the actual material like impact of this different levels of uh, you know, FaceTime or influence that you have.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think that like most people are not consequentialists and like they're they're people who just have senses of what is like honorable behavior and the idea that, you know, like service worker comes to talk to her elected official and can't get a meeting, but Lego official like Ken.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I think that I just mean I I just want to like there is a broad, widespread feeling in the country that like this oligarchy feeling, or whether when you look at polls around like, do a small number of people have control of your government, like that people resonate with that seems to me a reflection of the fact that people have different moral intuitions here than maybe, you know, wonks like us.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, no, no, no.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I mean, I just I I I I think it's important to like talk through the modalities of influence because I think I think that people genuinely sort of misunderstand what's going on here.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because what I'm trying to say, like in a world with no campaign contributions and no donor influence, yeah, business executives would still get privileged access to elected officials, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And so to an extent, what's happening, because I think what a lot of with what left-wing people, the, you know, because there's there's the mass public and like their concerns, but there's this specific like left critique of oligarchy, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think that lots of left-wing people think of the campaign finance system as diminishing the influence of their left-wing ideas and empowering rich business people.

<v SPEAKER_01>And one of the points that I'm just trying to make here is that like business people are influential in any kind of um campaign finance system because of the real world consequences of their role in the economy, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think that's what people are uncomfortable with.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like when you're talking about regular people who are reacting in polls, like you look at polls and you ask people, like, hey, like, do you think that small numbers of people have control over government?

<v SPEAKER_00>And they largely say yes.

<v SPEAKER_00>I don't think they're a con they're thinking through the exact mechanism all the time.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like maybe they will say to you, Cassius United.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think they recognize that there's like an inequality between their value to an elected official and the value of a business person, and they're uncomfortable with the widening cat.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, it is literally true that a businessman can tell you, like, hey, I'm concerned about potentially having to lay some people off.

<v SPEAKER_00>These prices of my inputs are increasing and it's becoming a problem for the viability of this corporation that is important for your local hometown.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like representative, you know, these are these are representatives of of interests that are broader than their own individual like self-interest.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, so I think that's true, but I think that like it can be a feeling that's irrational when it when it gets like uh operationalized into policy choices, but the feeling itself, I think, is like not that unreasonable.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like you're I want to say, like, all the time I'm complaining about the left's insane politics and their hideous slogans and people hate them.

<v SPEAKER_01>That is not my critique here.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I agree, like the closest that like Bernie Sanders will ever come to a median voter view is having this incoherent critique of oligarchy.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like, I'm trying to ask the question of like, does Bernie Sanders' critique of the oligarchy make sense?

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And this is why I keep rolling back to the fact that with no campaign finance, the business executive still has a higher voice, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because Bernie, these are they're trying to say something specifically about wealthy individuals as distinct from, I think, like business executives in their corporate role, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because like the main thing that is empowered by like rich people wielding their financial clout rather than people with a structural role and business wielding their empowers um like left-wing uh ex-wives um and like heirs and kids and things like that, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Who would not have clout.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like nobody would care what Mackenzie Scott thinks, if not for the fact that she's super duper duper rich.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, the CEO of Walmart, I'm sure, like makes a decent living, but isn't actually a billionaire, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because it's it's not a founder-owned startup anymore.

<v SPEAKER_01>The the Walt Walton heirs are extremely rich, but the CEO of the company is just an influential person, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>In light of what it is he actually does.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I myself have like qualms about donor influence over things and like rail and complain about this and stuff like that.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like I think like a big thing that's happened in the Democratic Party is that Democratic Party donors are have these like very left-wing views about climate change that they have imposed on people.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, abortion rights donors have uh imposed a very rigid orthodoxy that like got Democrats away from safe, legal, and rare rhetoric.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like, I think that's bad.

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<v SPEAKER_00>The places where I depart from the oligarchy people is that they seem to have, I guess the word a term I used earlier is rhetorical slippage here.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like sometimes it's the there's like a small cabal of billionaires that's in charge.

<v SPEAKER_00>But then they're like an oligarchy.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yeah, like literally an oligarchy.

<v SPEAKER_00>But then sometimes it's actually it's like the top 10%, which includes people who are like a two-income professional household in the suburbs.

<v SPEAKER_00>But then then it's like, well, but none of these people actually believes we should tax anyone earning less than$400,000.

<v SPEAKER_00>So we're not talking about those people.

<v SPEAKER_00>So there comes, I think that like the problem here is that they want to have it like every which way without really defining what they're talking about.

<v SPEAKER_00>But you, as you just said, have had critiques about the influence of like climate donors or abortion donors, et cetera.

<v SPEAKER_00>So, like, what is the mechanism by which those people have outsized influence?

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, yes, it's it's wealth, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, and and like it it's bad when people wield their influence in bad ways.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I sympathize with that.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I mean, again, the concept of an oligarchy, it seems to me, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>It posits a kind of a um like a consolidated, you know, like rich guy.

<v SPEAKER_00>It's like conspiratorial, yeah, yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Oligarch class, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And you in fact see like a very polarized set of influential political donors, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like there isn't uh like an oligarchy, quote unquote.

<v SPEAKER_01>Or, you know, you take like a true megabillionaire whose political influence I think has been destructive over the years, um, is Mark Zuckerberg, who is super duper duper rich.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh, but he the main thing that he political intervention that he tried to make was through uh FWD.us, and he like tried to get Democrats to adopt more left-wing views on immigration and criminal justice issues.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think that played a big role actually in bringing Trump back to power.

<v SPEAKER_01>Then after Trump won in 2024, like Zuckerberg like put on a gold chain and went on Joe Rogan and complained about like Joe Biden being woke and said we needed more masculine energy.

<v SPEAKER_01>So he like went into the realm of like evil right-wing billionaires.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right, yes, yes, yes.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I mean, like the the main political intervention he made was a left-wing political intervention that was done.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I want to understand this better because you're so your view is that like the it's the wealth of uh of of these climate and abortion owners.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think that like people will understand that differently than what I think you're actually saying, because it's not, oh, they're literally buying a politician, it's that they are funding groups that will engage in the democratic process to make their issues more salient, to put out white papers saying that their ideas are correct, to draft bill language, to lobby on the hill.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like what you're talking about is billionaires are able to have outside influence on democratic discourse because they can just produce more discourse.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yeah, they can do.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I remember something that opened my eyes that had never really occurred to me.

<v SPEAKER_01>This was naive, but you know, a long time ago, I worked at Center for American Progress.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I I didn't like really have like a policy role there, but I was in a meeting with some people who did, and we were talking about I forget what we were talking about, actually.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I said, like, we should do like a program that's about how to make um like bus networks better.

<v SPEAKER_01>Uh, because that's like a topic that I'm interested in.

<v SPEAKER_01>I I forget what it would maybe I was saying this would be good for climate or would be good for poor people.

<v SPEAKER_01>I don't know, whatever it is.

<v SPEAKER_01>And somebody said, like, well, if you can find somebody who would fund that, like we would love to do that.

<v SPEAKER_01>And it wasn't, you know, again, this wasn't like evil Center for American Progress donors were preventing us from doing like an improved bus network thing.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's just literally like you can't do anything at a nonprofit unless somebody will give you money to do it.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I'm like, I'm not a fundraiser, I'm not a tactical person, I'm not like really interested in grant organizing.

<v SPEAKER_01>Maybe if I'd like put my mind to it, I like I could have found somebody to fund this.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like it was just the reality is that what gets worked on is what gets funded.

<v SPEAKER_01>And rich people wield a lot of influence through that, but so do like the people who control grant-making foundations, some of which have a living donor, but many of which have dead donors, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So, like, part of I don't like the term oligarchy, but like it is true that there is inequality in American society and that some of this manifests an unequal political influence.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like the program officers at the Rockefeller Foundation are not billionaires, and their power will not be curbed by like taxing the rich, but they wield wildly disproportionate power over American politics because they control these pools of philanthropical money.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like we could say, like, that's good, that's bad.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, but it's like if you want to have an accurate picture of what does unequal political voice look like in the United States, you just need a much richer uh understanding of it than to just say, like, well, Steve Ballmer has a lot of money.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because like Steve Ballmer does have a lot of money, but as far as I know, doesn't try to wield political influence with it at all.

<v SPEAKER_01>Lots of people who have much smaller fortunes than him, but like care more about political issues, uh, wield much more influence.

<v SPEAKER_01>So, like, one really important um axis of unequal political influence in the United States is how much do you care?

<v SPEAKER_02>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And in a lot of ways, that's the biggest one, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like people the people who care about politics tend to have relatively extreme opinions, and that has like an unhealthy impact on society.

<v SPEAKER_01>But also, I don't know how to like make people give a damn.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think that like to contrast this to the to the normal view.

<v SPEAKER_00>Because the normal view, this is the view that's like I think espoused by Sanders, espoused by other people, is that Citizens United and like the other campaign finance Supreme Court decisions had a direct impact on the ability for wealthy people to control politics.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like some parts of this that are like of the story that are like straightforwardly true.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, Citizens United, but also, you know, like Speech Now and um McCutcheon, like all of these make it much easier to give tons of money and like uncap it and also like let um interest groups uh spend on their own.

<v SPEAKER_00>So if you look at Open Secrets, Super PAC spending went from 62.6 million in 2010 to over 4.1 billion in 2024.

<v SPEAKER_00>Dark money contributions jump from 359 million in 2012 to 100 to 1.4 billion in 2024.

<v SPEAKER_00>So again, like that's a lot.

<v SPEAKER_00>And also the money is also concentrated to the top 100 individual donors go from 1.5% of all federal election spending in 2008 to like the 15% range in 2024.

<v SPEAKER_00>So it is like literally true that this h like there was a, there were Supreme Court decisions that changed our campaign finance system.

<v SPEAKER_00>As a result of that, you saw a constant amount of ri uh spending on uh elections.

<v SPEAKER_00>So we more spending.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like it feels like people take that to me, like, okay, well, like obviously then the the impact here is like very, very clear.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, the best study I've read about this is one that looked at the um places where uh Citizens United states had their own bans on corporate union slash union spending.

<v SPEAKER_00>And so you could like contrast states that did do that before Citizens United versus ones that didn't.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um what they find basically is like in states that had strong union support, there's like not really much impact because unions also were now able to spend a ton of money to counteract Republican spending.

<v SPEAKER_00>But in places that didn't, Republicans gain like a three to four point vote share and a five-point jump in seat share on average.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um and in states like Texas and Mississippi, Idaho and the Carolinas, which are very low union business heavy states, um, up to 12 points.

<v SPEAKER_00>But then in places like California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, basically nothing happens.

<v SPEAKER_00>Because again, high union.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I remember when I was an intern uh in in at Emily's List, uh, like, I don't know, God, I'm like now old.

<v SPEAKER_00>So I guess it was like 2015 or something like that.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, you know, someone at Emily's List Hype was like, oh, like this is a controversial opinion publicly, but like to be honest, like Citizens United was like really good for Democrats too.

<v SPEAKER_00>We have tons of people that are spending money for us and for our causes.

<v SPEAKER_00>So it's just like I mean, it just depends on what state you're in, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>Do you have the counterbalancing effects?

<v SPEAKER_01>I'm I'm I'm pretty dubious of that study.

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

<v SPEAKER_01>Like college professors in America are like on one about labor unions and like published nonsense about this all the time.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I mean, like that, I mean that seems I mean it seems true that labor unions did spend tons of money.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, labor, yes, labor union, labor unions spent money, but like Citizens United came down, I think, in 2010, right, in Obama's first term.

<v SPEAKER_01>And there was this immediate concern by Democrats that they were gonna get buried in money by Republicans.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, and in 2012, they did get outspent by Republicans.

<v SPEAKER_00>But famously in 2012, Democrats still won.

<v SPEAKER_01>But but right, but Obama won in 2012.

<v SPEAKER_01>What happened next is that Donald Trump entered the Republican Party.

<v SPEAKER_01>And Donald Trump came to the Republicans with a proposition that Republican Party donors hated, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like Republican Party donors spent all this money on Mitt Romney.

<v SPEAKER_01>They failed.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then they like cooked up the infamous RNC autopsy report, where they were like, what we've got to do is move to the center on immigration.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then Trump was like, fuck you, let's not move to the center on immigration, let's move to the center on Medicare and Social Security.

<v SPEAKER_01>He got outspent by like a bajillion to one in the Republican primary, won by huge margins.

<v SPEAKER_01>Then he ran against Hillary Clinton, who outspent him by huge sums of money.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then he won anyway.

<v SPEAKER_01>He was outspent.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then then we entered this Trump era in which Democrats were constantly outspending Republicans, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>In 2018, in 2020, in 2022, um, in 2024, uh, the margin was not as big as it had been earlier.

<v SPEAKER_01>But Democrats outspent Trump.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, now it looks like it's flipping, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>That like Trump has actually reconsolidated um conservative donors behind him.

<v SPEAKER_01>And Republicans are probably going to outspend Democrats in the upcoming midterms.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like the whole basic story of Trump era politics was like donors not getting their own.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, we're taping this like right after the like a bunch of primaries just happened.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like, I like the thing exactly what you're saying right now is what makes me so frustrated by oligarchy discussion.

<v SPEAKER_00>Course, because there's like never any kind of like, huh?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, look at all these times that these rich people fail.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, we just saw Matt Mahan, who was like a tech-backed California governor candidate, who I thought was very good, very poor showing despite a bunch of spending on him.

<v SPEAKER_00>Psychot Chuck uh Chakrabarty in San Francisco lost to uh you know Scott Wiener, despite self-funding and spending millions and millions of dollars.

<v SPEAKER_00>Eric Jones, another self-funder from the tech community, he's trailing outside the top two in like a in another Bay Area race.

<v SPEAKER_00>There's also um, you know, Ethan Agarwal, a tech entrepreneur who people thought was going to go after Rokana, also a total non-speaker.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I think I think actually of these California primaries, the biggest one that just raises like conceptual questions about the oligarchy is Tom Steyer.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because not only did Tom Steyr spend a ton of money and lose to Javier Becerra, but like Steyr ran his campaign embracing the oligarchy narrative.

<v SPEAKER_01>Oh, yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah, like the fact that Psychot lost in a way, um, or or some of these other people, it's like, well, who knows, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because like maybe the oligarchy was behind Scott Wiener after all.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, now we're getting spicy.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, who knows, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>But Steyr got, you know, he he hired the fight agency, which is like the premier makers of like populist ads.

<v SPEAKER_01>And he ran all these things about how the evil Javier Brissera was like being propped up by uh PSGE and um McDonald's and Chevron and all this stuff, and that like he, Tom Steyer, was the pure of heart candidate who wasn't taking corporate money.

<v SPEAKER_01>So we appear to be pivoting the argument to like the way to fight oligarchy is for like ego maniacal billionaires to launch self-funded campaigns.

<v SPEAKER_01>He then outspent his opponent by a huge amount.

<v SPEAKER_01>He had the anti-oligarchy message, but you know, like people power, which is just to say, like middle-aged Latino voters who like Nancy Pelosi just like put Becerra over the top.

<v SPEAKER_01>Then yeah, Mahan is this other thing where like I I would have voted for Matt Mayhan.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like I thought his ideas were just correct.

<v SPEAKER_01>But also he initially launched with like rich guy backing.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I don't know, like I think like the voters of California, they just disagreed with like our shared critique of what's happening there.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think that like this is specifically this idea that these rich people losing doesn't tell you anything about this like broader oligarchy message is something that I find very frustrating because, like, while I'm more sympathetic than you to like the problems of you know, um wealthy influence in in politics, um the problems that I often identify are things like in uh I think we share this actually, is in housing or in places where there's low salience of the democratic focus, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like places like land use regulations or tiny regulations that have like outsized impact on specific industries at the state level, even at the federal level, like these are places where you see the outsize impact of specific interest groups.

<v SPEAKER_00>Sometimes that's like, again, like that's reasonable.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like you do want someone who's in the chemical manufacturing industry to have input on like what's going to happen when they're regulating various chemicals because they often have subject matter expertise that's helpful.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, you want independent people as well, but it is useful to hear from like industry people on these things.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like, but that's a hot take.

<v SPEAKER_00>But that's you know, like what is a hot take?

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, because I mean I feel like industry capture Yeah, I mean, well, well, there's a lot of concern about like revolving door and you know, too many private sector people.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think it's like a genuinely hard question, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because you don't want the Treasury Department to be just a hundred percent run by people who come out of the financial services industry and are just sort of like talking their own books.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But you also don't want, I think, like you want people who You want no expertise.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And but I mean, it's not just you don't want no expertise, but like you don't want all of the expertise to be purely academic.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like interfacing with the business community is a legitimate part of the regulatory function.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, also the vast majority of the people who can do management, like work in the private sector where that's value, you know.

<v SPEAKER_01>And if you've ever worked in nonprofits academia, it's like they're legendarily poorly managed because you know, because there's a the opposite of a wage premium to work in these worlds, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like you you accept a lower pay in order to be achieving like self-actualization.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, but then that means that people want to do like the public facing interesting work, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, whereas like Walmart will just pay somebody to be a mid-level logistics manager and do a good job because they're making money, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So I I think like you started with like people have unequal political influence, and that gives people qualms.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I agree that like both of those things are true, but we end up in a worse.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I think this is I I think the populist rhetoric about this, you know, it both it reflects real concerns that people have, but it also like validates it back to them to have like a United States senator um telling the voters that like that like billionaires run this town, um, when it's like actually much more complicated.

<v SPEAKER_00>Because the populace don't have the courage of my convictions, I guess.

<v SPEAKER_00>Because what they should be saying is you're right, there is uh a cabal of people that is uh reducing your ability to live better lives.

<v SPEAKER_00>They're called the homeowners of America who are blocking new housing and new construction.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, unfortunately, 80 million people uh are our homeowners and uh that's a lot of people.

<v SPEAKER_01>But even the homeowners, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I think when Yibiism was new, yeah, um, I think that a lot of us toiling in the trenches, you know, really wanted to have like materialist explanations of things because this kind of stuff is like really in the ether.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And so it was like, ah, like the homeowners, they're blocking the new housing.

<v SPEAKER_01>And William Fischel, who did a lot of the foundational work on this, he had his home voter hypothesis, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And it's like, well, people are gonna exclude apartment buildings in order to like prop up their home values.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think as um like Yimbi politics has gotten more advanced and we've gotten more academic research on this specific topic, it's actually really complicated that view of like the self-interested homeowner blocking construction.

<v SPEAKER_00>I don't even think it used to be overstated, but it still is true that homeowners in, especially if we're talking about uh high opportunity suburbs where you would want to have more class integration, um, they are like opposed to like apartment buildings.

<v SPEAKER_00>And yes, and you're right, part of that doesn't have to do with literally property values, but I think it has to do, and again, we're getting a little far afield here because it's just mine and mess billiwick.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I just I I mean, I actually just do think that like, you know, a politics that was focused on um, you know, we want to expand the social welfare state and there needs to be greater taxation of wealthy people.

<v SPEAKER_00>And you know what I mean?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, there's like I think it is not the case that you could not have populist language focused on like good policies.

<v SPEAKER_01>Sure.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I mean again, I think if you, you know, if you if you read neighborhood defenders, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>One thing that's striking there is that so this is a book, um, Catherine Eisenstein and uh Einstein.

<v SPEAKER_00>Einstein, uh Matthew Glick, and then one more that we're both forgetting.

<v SPEAKER_01>Okay, well, that's a tough one.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um You know, this is about the people in New England, especially who like rally together uh to block new housing.

<v SPEAKER_01>And, you know, one of the striking things about it is like they're genuinely quite idealistic, you know, in their motives, uh, but also that the institutional mechanism through which this functions is very inegalitarian, but it's the inequality of like who bothers to show up.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And so, you know, with any kind of Which is in part material.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yes.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's in part material, but it's in part, I mean, institutional mechanisms that were created in order to solve the alleged problem of like city officials all being in the pockets of developers.

<v SPEAKER_01>We created this other situation where city officials are in the pockets of big community.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, well, just like the most neurotic people who happen to be among their constituents, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And like I remember I was so struck.

<v SPEAKER_01>I wanted to put solar panels on the roof of my uh my house in DC.

<v SPEAKER_01>And this required a waiver from the Historic Preservation Review Board.

<v SPEAKER_01>And that I was told by the solar company would be easier to get if I got an endorsement from my advisory neighborhood commission.

<v SPEAKER_01>So I had to like get on the schedule of the ANC, and then I couldn't make it next month because I was traveling for work.

<v SPEAKER_01>So it was like another month, and I had to go.

<v SPEAKER_01>I had to sit through the whole meeting.

<v SPEAKER_01>And at the meeting, you have various people and they're petitioning for zoning variances.

<v SPEAKER_01>This ANC, like the actual members on it, they seem super reasonable and they were just giving everybody their variances.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like the seven most insane people who live in the neighborhood were showing up to this meeting to be like, well, what if we made a bay windows?

<v SPEAKER_01>And then the developers would be like, sure, you know, we can do that.

<v SPEAKER_01>And it's like, what, like, what is this?

<v SPEAKER_01>Right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, why are we doing this?

<v SPEAKER_01>And I mean, we can call that oligarchy too, I guess, if we want, but it it strikes me as downstream of like delegitimizing the formal political process because of the sense that the formal political process is like secretly corrupted.

<v SPEAKER_01>And we've like invented something worse.

<v SPEAKER_00>It's true that there were, there was like real industry capture of, and which I mean happens even now, like especially if you look at like state and local um uh if you look at state and local politics, like capture by both interest groups and also business interests is like happens all the time.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like that to level which I think that like there's fundament functionally like not local democracy in most of this country.

<v SPEAKER_00>It's just like run by interest groups and like nobody really votes.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think it was incorrect, obviously, to decide that the response to the industry capture, um particularly the federal government, which again was was was actually happening, um, was to say, like, okay, well, we just need to create a nut like a bulwark against industry capture that's a different way of capturing the government.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, what you really want is to like shore up the ability of um elected officials to um make these decisions and trust that like those people are elected.

<v SPEAKER_00>But that doesn't actually respond to the problem of low salience things.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I think on high salience issues, things like healthcare, big economic policy, immigration, whatever, when things become very salient, you just like see politicians go like, well, like this is I'm not gonna lose my election over this, like I've gotta move, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>But most issues aren't like that, even if they end up impacting high salient issues salience issues eventually.

<v SPEAKER_00>And so I don't actually think like anyone has a response to this.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, how do you actually solve the problem of like low salience issues will never be like that democratically checked by the public?

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah, but I mean, again, I think I think back to the, you know, the fighting oligarchy tour, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>You know, one like real industry capture example is regulation of dental hygienists, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Where the scope of practice for dental hygienists varies a lot from state to state.

<v SPEAKER_01>In places where a hygienist is allowed to set up her own office and clean people's teeth on her own, um, people are in better dental health because it is cheaper than when they need to be supervised by a dentist.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like a narrow cabal of evil dentists controls the state legislature in most states because people don't, as you say, like people just don't care enough about this, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>But does that insight like align with an AOC anti-oligarchy rally?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because to me, it cuts against what she's saying.

<v SPEAKER_01>That like we have all these dysfunctions in the political system and they relate to like interest groups and stuff that's bad, but like dentists aren't billionaires, they're just kind of prominent local business people.

<v SPEAKER_01>And the reason they're able to capture this is because people like don't focus on the issue.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, but like Bernie Sanders and AOC could focus on like poor people's lack of access to dentistry services, uh, but they choose to focus on like their own particular narratives about these things.

<v SPEAKER_01>And it's like occluding from people like what's actually going on in in American political economy.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think that like this is actually useful to go back to the original research that was Page and Gillins?

<v SPEAKER_00>Yeah, Gillins and Page.

<v SPEAKER_01>I've never heard never heard someone give pages due first, but so I'm very concerned about the issue of alphabetical order discrimination, which is something that I have never been able to get, you know, don't worry about it.

<v SPEAKER_01>Anyone to care about anyone to care about.

<v SPEAKER_01>And Mark Zuckerberg, notwithstanding my concerns about forward.us, I think that you and I, you know, Z and Y.

<v SPEAKER_01>Let's look like let's work on this.

<v SPEAKER_00>Uh I always liked having like kind of early in the alphabet, but not too early, because you never get picked first for anything, which is like good, so that you know projects later.

<v SPEAKER_00>But no, I'm not I'm not why.

<v SPEAKER_00>But yeah, so Gillins and Page, I mean Sanders literally cites this in a hearing in 2014.

<v SPEAKER_00>Robert Reich, who is one of the big kind of economic populist leaders, was Department of Labor secretary under Bill Clinton and like has become like a very He makes a lot of videos.

<v SPEAKER_00>He makes a lot of videos, but he's like a very prominent voice in the uh left populist um ecosystem.

<v SPEAKER_00>And they really rest a lot on this one study, which basically was trying to look at um whether like whose opinions independently predict what actually happens in policy.

<v SPEAKER_00>So you can look at like middle class people, upper class people, business groups, different interest groups, like lobbying groups, like when you look at their public, when you look at public opinion, like does what they want actually happen?

<v SPEAKER_00>Um and they find something that ends up becoming like a really hot button issue.

<v SPEAKER_00>They find that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impact on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I'm I'm quoting what um uh what Sanders actually said in that 2014 hearing.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, this is like this paper gets like critiqued quite heavily.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, I think like even if you were to buy that everything was fine with this paper, to be like quite literal about what they're measuring, they're only looking at the 90th percentile of Americans, which is about 146,000 household income at the time.

<v SPEAKER_00>So, like, if we were saying, like, yes, these people have way more influence, that's again, that's not oligarchy.

<v SPEAKER_00>You're just saying that like richer people in America have more influence.

<v SPEAKER_00>But the broader problem with the paper is that when other people like replicated with the exact same data, their findings, they see like A, there's like correlation between the middle and upper classes on like most issues, like 90% of cases.

<v SPEAKER_00>And then when you isolate only the cases where those two groups disagree, rich people win only 53% of the time, which is basically a coin flip.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, so I I think it's like important here because like, I mean, they don't really talk about this as much.

<v SPEAKER_00>Now I don't hear Sanders on an oligarchy tour citing Gillins and Paige or whatever.

<v SPEAKER_00>But the like slippage from there is this study that says people in the top 10% have outsized impact on our politics, to actually there's a cabal of billionaires and millionaires.

<v SPEAKER_00>And now, actually, no, there's just a handful of billionaires and they're tech billionaires, and those are the people that are the main problem.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, even in the Steyer example, like you saw a lot of left-wing people really defending Steyr and saying, like, well, Becerra is controlled by the billionaires, even though Steyr is a billionaire.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like, I just think people need to be like more straightforward here.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like they think like they're actually upset because they have policy differences.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, what they're upset about is that they have these specific policy views and they're trying to attach it to this oligarchy frame, but like the actual substance of what they're talking about doesn't even support um the underlying research doesn't even support what they're saying.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, and I think, you know, this is really important, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>In the the the Gillens and Page A, that the original point they were making was about the disproportionate political uh influence of what I guess you would characterize as the mass affluent, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like they're talking about a large group of people who are just richer than the average person, which is just a very different phenomenon from the idea that billionaires, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And even like Bernie Sanders in his 2016 campaign used to talk about billionaires and millionaires, and then he dropped the millionaires, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Inflation, man.

<v SPEAKER_01>And there are way more millionaires than billionaires.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And a billion is a much larger number than a million.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, one of the wisest things I ever heard about politics is that all numbers that end in aliens sound the same to people.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But this is like a really big difference between saying that the aggregate political influence of everyone who is wealthy enough to be a homeowner in like a coastal city, you know, it like outweighs the influence of poor people.

<v SPEAKER_01>And the idea that like the 400 people on the Forbes 400 list oh, right, this is radically different.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then what they found, again, when you did it is like actually like a modest difference in influence.

<v SPEAKER_01>A really good book that I read a long time ago is called Lobbying and Policy Change, Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why, uh, by Frank Baumgartner and a bunch of co-authors.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like the really important finding of this book is that in the vast majority of cases, whichever side is lobbying for policy change loses.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right?

<v SPEAKER_01>That like the number one thing about the American system of government is that it is hard to change the status quo.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And it is just not the case that the side that has more money wins the fight.

<v SPEAKER_01>Now they look at it and it's, you know, it's as you would think, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>A lobbying campaign that has a gajillion dollars behind it is somewhat more likely to win than one that has a million dollars behind it.

<v SPEAKER_01>If you have no dollars, I mean, this is back to my my bus map reform idea.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, you need more than zero dollars, or else, like, literally nothing will happen, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>You have to find somebody with money to back you, or there's absolutely no chance of anything happening.

<v SPEAKER_01>But like sides that get outspent in in lobbying domains, um, like lose all the time, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because you're just defending the status quo.

<v SPEAKER_01>And if you think about the United States as a country that has a lot of status quo bias, I think that just gets you so much closer to the truth about like why it's hard to achieve utopia than if you think of it as a country that is um controlled by billionaires, you know?

<v SPEAKER_01>And there's like a really big difference between those diagnoses, even though it's true in both cases that like if a billionaire like happens to get jazzed up about my dental hygienist reform, like that does meaningfully increase the odds of it happening, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because right now nobody's doing it.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like this is just like a take that people write sometimes.

<v SPEAKER_01>So like the wealthy like wield more influence, but if if Bill Gates decided to go all in on dental hygienist scope of practice, like he'd still probably lose.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um that's the reality of America.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, I really do think that like largely what this all comes down to is that people underrate small d democracy.

<v SPEAKER_00>That like you we literally e no matter all the things that Trump is doing, Republicans have done to undermine small D Democratic um uh uh, you know, processes, you still do need to win more votes than the other guy to like win your election, which like is a massive check.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, like right now we just saw um Republicans really turn on Trump when it comes to the$1.8 billion slush fund he was supposed to, he was gonna try and institute, which was basically a fund that he was gonna like reward political opponents.

<v SPEAKER_00>It was like January 6th people um for quote unquote unfair prosecution.

<v SPEAKER_00>And um, you know, Republicans were like, okay, like quite a bad look.

<v SPEAKER_00>Corruption looks really bad.

<v SPEAKER_00>Corruption's one of the things that, like, I mean, in our argument polling, but also everywhere, like is popping as a really big concern.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, it's something that John Osov talks about all the time on the campaign trail.

<v SPEAKER_01>And also, like, people are mad about gas prices in Iran.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>So it's just Republicans are feeling nervous.

<v SPEAKER_00>They're feeling nervous, but like I think corruption in particular is something that is popularly understood as being a bad part of the Trump um administration.

<v SPEAKER_00>And as a result, I mean, like they turned, I mean, and again, like they turned on him, and he's not going to do this.

<v SPEAKER_00>And the thing that frustrates me the most about like the left populist worldview is that they're like, there's no updating when this kind of thing happens.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, okay, like what does it actually tell you then about the impact of wealthy people vis-a-vis the democratic public?

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think the part where I still feel like Matt that you're not giving like fair shake to is that even though I agree with you that the mechanism by which most of the policy influence is had is that these billionaires are largely funding interest groups, activists, they're funding academic research institutions, et cetera, to push ideas that they already agree with.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like I don't even think this is like bought.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like this is like they already agree with people, and so they give those people money so those people can continue doing what they're doing with the internet.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean it's it's it's it's the bus reform again, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>It's like everyone who cares about policy has more than one thing that they think.

<v SPEAKER_01>Aaron Powell Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like the investors in the argument agree with me on a lot of things.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like they did not pay me to agree with them.

<v SPEAKER_00>They paid me because I agree with it.

<v SPEAKER_00>They invested because they agree with me.

<v SPEAKER_01>Trevor Burrus, Jr.: People people try to find funding for the work that they want to do.

<v SPEAKER_01>And if they can find someone who agrees with them, they get money and they go work on that.

<v SPEAKER_00>Aaron Powell The thing that concerns me is that like fundamentally underlying liberal democracy is this idea of like public reasoning, that like in public, we're all getting together, we're like arguing over different things, and like not that like there's a marketplace of ideas that will always win out with the best idea, but there is like some ability for people to understand things together.

<v SPEAKER_00>So Medicare for All is said for the first time, and like people don't know what that means.

<v SPEAKER_00>You have to have a process by which people hear individuals they trust or distrust talking about it.

<v SPEAKER_00>There's debate over the cost or benefits of it.

<v SPEAKER_00>This is partially why um this process is partially why, like, you know, Medicare for All might pull really well, but hey, Medicare for All, but your taxes have to go up doesn't pull well.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, this is all a part of this like broader, like Discussion that has to happen in order for liberal democracy to actually work.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I do think it's a problem that like the discursive processes are like captured.

<v SPEAKER_00>And the most obvious example of this is Elon Musk, right?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like when you look at Twitter, um, pre-Eon, post-Elon, I mean, it is literally, I think, shifted the discourse of tons of people who are politically powerful in a right word direction.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, like there's like trivial examples of this, which is that like people are like more comfortable like saying things that are considered like quote unquote not woke or whatever.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, but like also just like the like shifted the overton window of conversation to the right on various issues, like the types of things that are now like normal to say about trans issues, about immigration, about the Biden administration, about people like that, it is just literally more right wing.

<v SPEAKER_00>And when you talk to elected officials or, you know, people who work on the Hill or in Washington, D.C., they feel that shift very directly because that is the place where they get tons of information.

<v SPEAKER_00>Now, of course, like there's like a backlash to this, like you when you're exposed to like insane right wing views, it also like makes you like, okay, these people are a little crazy.

<v SPEAKER_00>But this one man's decision to like purchase literally a specific town square had like massive outsized impact, even though he didn't do anything literally undemocratic.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, yes.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, uh I agree.

<v SPEAKER_01>This is like a feature of life.

<v SPEAKER_01>But here's here's my counterpart.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I think that's a little bit.

<v SPEAKER_01>No, no, no, no, no.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I mean, my, you know, so go way, way, way back to you know, early, early Vox days.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, and Thomas Piketty's book uh is out and people are people are reading it.

<v SPEAKER_01>And um Ezra Klein, um, you know, more recently known for abundance, uh, he writes a piece that's called The Doom Loop of Oligarchy, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And and this is, I think, you know, a core concern, a real idea, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Not just a loose characterization that's in here, which is that because rich people have excess political influence, that there is an independent like economic policy reason to want to check the size of their fortunes, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So, you know, I mean, Esther is always like center-left guy, a Democrat, me too, like I support progressive taxation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

<v SPEAKER_01>But also in a in a Rawlsian sense, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>I think there's like a level of egalitarianism in which you're actually making people worse off economically, and like that's not good.

<v SPEAKER_01>You want a growing economy with like, you know, a rising tide, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And so there's this question of like, is there this independent reason found in the political science papers or in Thomas Piketty or something to say that we should like go beyond the optimal bend point on the curve?

<v SPEAKER_01>And I I think that, you know, it's not it's not that it's untrue that very rich people can exert disproportionate political influence.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I think that before you make economic policy choices, deliberately make economic policy choices that make society poorer, you should have like a really good reason for that.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like a really clear argument about like why this is important, about why curbing specifically the power of the ultra-wealthy is gonna get to a better situation.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I just don't think we're there.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I don't think Piketty was there.

<v SPEAKER_01>I don't think Gillins and Page's research support that specific conclusion.

<v SPEAKER_01>I don't think Bernie's rhetoric about this is like super clear as to what he's even talking about, that he could switch from millionaires to billionaires so rapidly.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, the Elon Musk buying Twitter thing is like really fascinating.

<v SPEAKER_01>A.G.

<v SPEAKER_01>Salzberger also exerts wildly disproportionate influence.

<v SPEAKER_01>The New York Times.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>New York Times, the Salzberger family is more affluent than the average Americans, but like they're not on the Forbes 400 list, they're just like not that rich.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, because the New York Times, you know, Elon Musk's fortune comes from Tesla and he just bought Twitter, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>The Salzburgers' money just is the New York Times.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, their influence is that the New York Times is incredibly influential.

<v SPEAKER_01>And the reason the New York Times is so influential has to do with like it was founded, you know, over a hundred years ago, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's like a true thing about America, that what A.G.

<v SPEAKER_01>Salzberger thinks about politics matters like more than what I think, um, or what you think, and what you and I think matters more than what the average person thinks, because there's just dispro people differ in how large of a microphone they have.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I just don't see like a solution to that that's compatible with um freedom.

<v SPEAKER_01>You know, like what do we you can't own a newspaper.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, everyone's podcast has to have an equal audience.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I have too many Twitter followers because I was an early adopter.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, what like what what are we doing?

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, I do think that like the f original sin of so much of this discourse is an obsession with inequality, qua inequality, rather than okay, there's inequality that we're uncomfortable with, but like there's certain kinds of it that have material impacts that we find unreasonable or that like stem from something unjust.

<v SPEAKER_00>So, like an inequality that is born of, you know, sexism or, you know, treatment of someone unfairly based on an immutable characteristic, like we can have a problem with that because like that underlying what we're saying is that there is like an emeritocratic system that has been um that has been distorted as a result of, you know, bigotry or unfair treatment or whatever.

<v SPEAKER_00>And then there's like other, there's a second way of caring, which is like, okay, there's like inequality, and that's like really bad because we think it's harmful when there are lots of children who are poor and don't have food, and that's like a broadly shared view.

<v SPEAKER_00>But that actually doesn't have to do that much with inequality.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, I agree, like the juxtaposition, like I have felt this when I'm doing reporting on homelessness in like very wealthy like cities.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like when you like walk by like$10 million homes, and then like you see someone like literally living on the street, like that is a very like visceral moment, and it's very difficult to like witness that and not feel like a level of injustice.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like then you have to go, like, okay, now how would I resolve this problem?

<v SPEAKER_00>Right.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like there's like such an instinct to just like sit in that emotion and go, like, well, there are the oppressors and the oppressed, and therefore, in order to help the oppressed, we just need to like hit the oppressors.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like those people are just the people who are seem like they're benefiting from the system or like are clearly benefiting the system one.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I mean, but the important thing here is that like you sh I think it's good that people have the instinct to view inequality and see something and feel that.

<v SPEAKER_00>But then like the value of all these interest groups and these people who have the m time to like think through the politics and the policy of this is to go like, well, how would I actually help this homeless person?

<v SPEAKER_00>Because would it help them to do a wealth tax?

<v SPEAKER_00>Does that actually solve homelessness in like the Bay Area to like do a wealth tax?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, does it actually resolve this problem that I have about like widespread child poverty or hunger?

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, and then that's what's so frustrating me is like that doesn't actually do anything to solve the thing that you originally said you're upset about.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yes.

<v SPEAKER_01>No, I mean I I I agree.

<v SPEAKER_01>And this is, you know, I mean, again, with the with the dentists, yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>I think it's true.

<v SPEAKER_00>I do love the dentist thing.

<v SPEAKER_01>No, I mean it's you know, factually, one reason why the dentists will win these lobbying battles is that dentists are relatively affluent.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>But the reason to reform scope of practice is just it's a good idea.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's not like, well, we need to like break the power of the dentists in order to have the downstream because I just I don't think that you can change the fact that across a number of different dimensions, just like some people are better situated to wield political influence than others, and some of those people wield it badly.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, it's like uh an aspect of the human condition that I think um we need to reconcile.

<v SPEAKER_00>Inequality is or like difference is an aspect of the human condition that lots of people are uncomfortable with.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I mean, not just that, but just that, you know, uh there's a lot of issues, they can't all be salient simultaneously.

<v SPEAKER_01>Most people don't care that much about democracy.

<v SPEAKER_01>If you try to create participatory institutions where it's like, well, we're gonna ask the community, but it's like the community mostly won't show up, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>So it's like you can't, you know, you have to think about like, are we making things better or worse?

<v SPEAKER_01>And on a lot of issues that like progressive-minded people care about, like immigration, like climate, um just like don't have this class dimension.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like people's views differ, like people have different uh I I don't know how to put it.

<v SPEAKER_01>You know, it's like I grew up in New York, I've always lived in like big diverse cosmopolitan cities.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, I go to Kirk County, Texas, and I'm like, how come there's no Indian restaurants here?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, this sucks.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um but lots of other people like don't like immigrants, you know, and like that has a very large influence on American politics.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, that is a perfect segue to peer review.

<v SPEAKER_01>What are we talking about?

<v SPEAKER_00>Which is our our segment where we talk about a new or just interesting white paper.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, we have one today about uh the impact of immigration on mortality among the elderly.

<v SPEAKER_00>So basically, um they're just trying to figure out like, does immigration, does more immigration benefit um old people, 65 plus those on on Medicare?

<v SPEAKER_00>Um and they find that a 25% increase in the steady state flow of immigrants to the US results in 5,000 fewer deaths nationwide.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um and they they they look at like nursing uh homes as a key mechanism driving this result.

<v SPEAKER_00>Now, I I think well, like the paper itself, uh, you know, it it's uh it's it it does it's like really good at isolating the impact of immigration itself because like you wouldn't want to measure accidentally, like, okay, there are really immigrant heavy cities, and those cities have uh more longevity for uh you know seniors by factor something that's unrelated to the immigrants.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um and so they're able to isolate this.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, and they're also want to isolate the fact that like older people might move towards immigrant-rich areas because there's like more care for them in those places.

<v SPEAKER_01>The idea here is that a lot of immigrants work in like home healthy type jobs.

<v SPEAKER_00>And they're yeah, and they look at specifically like Filipinos are and like other they try to weight the immigrant populations based on like how likely they are to actually work in healthcare.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like Filipinos are way more likely than Mexicans to work in um elder care.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, and you know, obviously like this catches my eye in particular because elderly Americans are less likely than younger Americans to support immigration.

<v SPEAKER_00>But it seems to me like, you know, you wrote an article for the argument uh, you know, a few months back about you know that touched on the idea that immigration, um the case for immigration kind of goes down in a world where AI can do so many of the jobs and can actually be the like, you know, increase in labor, quote unquote, that immigrants usually provide.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, but I think it like doesn't actually ring true specifically for care, which is an area where I think humans are gonna have a really hard time turning that over to AI, like aspects of that, sure, like monitoring, make sure a baby's still breathing, like whatever.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like people want a human being taking care of their grandpa and like playing chess with him, not like uh they don't want him just like playing Magnus Charleston on like chess.com constantly.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, you're shrugging uh for our auditory listeners, but I think that I would win out in this in this case that like most people do want human beings taking care of taking care of their uh elderly family members.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I think as a result, like you have this weird situation where like people who benefit, I think, maybe the most from immigration are often like the least supportive of it.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, you know, just to give a sense of the scale here, though.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, a 25% increase in the steady-state flow of immigrants to the US, that's like hundreds of thousands of people, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Um so you know, we're talking about a large increase.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um, yes, but like to be clear, like they're measuring deaths.

<v SPEAKER_00>So you have to think about like the rest of the healthcare impacts.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like things that don't measure.

<v SPEAKER_00>So it's like death is like the one that's easiest to actually capture, but you should presume that like they're benefiting them on all these other measures of longevity or healthcare.

<v SPEAKER_01>No, no, no.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure.

<v SPEAKER_01>I just you know, I think it is understandable that this is primarily an issue where like people who like immigration will want to like put it in their binder of like these are good arguments in favor of immigration rather than something that's gonna change the minds of people who feel that high levels of immigration are destroying society.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think that for I think that you're correct that like for the people who are motivated by this idea that like, you know, there is a cultural shift in the country as a result of immigration they're not comfortable with, this is like not persuasive.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think like most people are like not super ideological, like they have discomforts in some directions, but they're also like America's land of immigrants.

<v SPEAKER_00>They're just like, Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.

<v SPEAKER_01>Look, I I'm not I'm not I'm not trying to totally dismiss it.

<v SPEAKER_01>I just mean there's some things, you know, that relate to like the air pollution caused by tires disintegrating on the highway.

<v SPEAKER_01>Where I like, I really feel like if I could just convince people that this study is true, like we would change how it's regulated.

<v SPEAKER_01>Immigration just has a lot of like other equities.

<v SPEAKER_01>Right.

<v SPEAKER_01>No, I think that's And to the point, I mean, to the point of the whole conversation about oligarchy, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Part of the difficulty.

<v SPEAKER_00>The real oligarchy is like meritocracy.

<v SPEAKER_01>No, part of the difficulty you have persuading people about this is that you know, the the benefit here is of like expanded supply of low-wage workers.

<v SPEAKER_01>But that's like also the an argument that's leveled against immigration all the time, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And so, you know, you've got to tell people, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>This whole idea, separate from people's concerns about um cultural change of immigration, is like you have to convince people that like the labor market is a positive sum experience, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And that like it's not a zero-sum scramble against billionaires.

<v SPEAKER_01>Because you're saying here, right, like you are gonna derive extra material resources are gonna flow to America's elderly.

<v SPEAKER_02>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_01>And that the mechanism through which that's gonna happen is like international labor migration, uh, driving down the cost of employing home health aids.

<v SPEAKER_02>Yes.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, and that's just like a very different world from a world in which uh we have to fight the oligarchy.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I mean, I do think though that like this speaks to, I mean, we had a podcast recently that I thought I really enjoyed about the um uh asylum.

<v SPEAKER_00>And one thing that Matt and I, you know, despite disagreeing a lot on that podcast, one thing we really agreed on is this idea of understanding immigration as something that should be in the national interest.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I do think that like there are lots of people who like do not understand and are not even be there's not even an attempt to convince them about how much immigration is actually in their direct interest.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like this happened, um, I mean, lots of the time immigration activism and discussion is about look how amazing these immigrants are.

<v SPEAKER_00>America is a nation of immigrants, you should support it.

<v SPEAKER_00>You're a bigot, maybe if uh if you don't support immigration, um, uh, you know, look at the unjust things that they're fleeing.

<v SPEAKER_00>Do you really want to stop these children from like it is very focused on either like almost like a charitable mindset that you're trying to tap into, or um, you know, you are a bad person for having qualms about this.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I think in general, like there's not actually a lot of this sort of thing where it's like literally you will be better off.

<v SPEAKER_00>You, you personally will have these better outcomes in your life if you are willing to accept immigration.

<v SPEAKER_00>But I think on top of that, there's like a focus on uh there's like a there's a, you know, I I think about this a lot when it comes to the like Yimbyism, like early stage Yimbyism often really did focus on like desegregation or focusing on the idea that there were this, as we talked about earlier, a cabal of homeowners that were blocking change that was necessary in order to produce um housing abundance.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like ARP got on board with a bunch of like zoning reforms because they recognize that there's like self-interest here.

<v SPEAKER_00>And I think that like the successful Yumby coalitions have been ones that are like, actually, you can just make this argument for libertarians, for right-wingers, for progressives, for like basically anyone, because housing supply is just like a universal human need.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um I don't know, like I really like this paper because I think it's actually just like straightforwardly useful.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah, I mean, I think I think the question, you know, ultimately is if you want, you know, because there's there's two different ways in which this sort of comes up, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think back, I don't know, 15 years ago, like classic immigration debate was there's all these people who've immigrated here illegally, you know, mostly from Mexico, mostly like sneaking across the border explicitly to work.

<v SPEAKER_01>And the question was like, how freaked out about that should we be?

<v SPEAKER_01>And a lot of people, you know, Tom Ten Credo and and others of the time when when I was new, they were saying, like, we should be like really freaked out about this.

<v SPEAKER_01>This should be like a first order like concern of ours.

<v SPEAKER_01>Too many people have snuck across the border and they're working here legally.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I was really into it, I mean, this paper wasn't out at that time, but like this kind of thing that was like, this is actually not that big of a problem.

<v SPEAKER_01>You know, it's like not ideal.

<v SPEAKER_01>Obviously, nobody's like gonna say my vision of immigration is a lot of people should sneak across the border and work for cash under the table.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I was saying, like, it's actually kind of fine.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, this is a lot of upside to this sort of thing.

<v SPEAKER_01>As the immigration debate has evolved since then, it's like actually the the dovish position has landed more on defending specific legal structures, and then it raises the question when it connects to the economics literature of well, are the structures like matched well to like actually maximize these benefits?

<v SPEAKER_01>And the answer is no.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, in in much the case that like the old system also wasn't.

<v SPEAKER_02>Okay.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, right.

<v SPEAKER_01>And so it's like, well, as we keep having this debate, and as the pro-immigration side, I think, has like mostly been losing ground, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>It's like, can we refocus on these questions of like actual advantages?

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, but that means giving ground on like debate points that don't like relate specifically to this kind of thing.

<v SPEAKER_00>I'm gonna refrain from turning this into another 40-minute pod about immigration because I do want to ask you about like the AI thing, because I do think this is something that's me and you've both been kind of worried about.

<v SPEAKER_00>I mean, the big benefit of immigration is expanded labor supply, whether it's the high-scaled immigration or like just the broad entry of new workers, um, both in their ability to like, you know, do different various jobs, but also to specifically plug up areas where there are quote unquote shortages.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like we just want more construction workers and in the short term, it's hard to like make them domestically.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um and AI kind of undercuts some of this.

<v SPEAKER_00>Like, if AI can just actually do tons of labor without humans, you just need fewer humans to achieve economic growth.

<v SPEAKER_00>I think that like care and places where people really do want human touch.

<v SPEAKER_00>Yes, cheaper AI options could take over for some people, but like I think most people don't view that as like a good thing.

<v SPEAKER_00>And you're gonna see A, a bunch of protectionism against this.

<v SPEAKER_00>So you're gonna see situations where no, you are not allowed to have AI robots unsupervised.

<v SPEAKER_00>You need like a ratio of like AI robots to humans watching grandpa and grandma in the in the nursing homes, or like conversely, for very young children too.

<v SPEAKER_00>People are gonna be very uncomfortable with the idea of like no human beings raising small kids.

<v SPEAKER_00>But like it sounded like you were skeptical of this idea earlier.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, it's trippy to even think about.

<v SPEAKER_01>I mean, I learned a piece about this.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like, I find it increasingly difficult to write like honestly and coherently about like any public policy issue because it ends up converging on like these sort of speculative questions about AI, you know?

<v SPEAKER_01>So it's like I'm just like turning off my uh brain and I'm thinking about the like evolution of the immigration policy debate since 2005 or so, and like labor markets and one billion Americans and aging of society, and like really like what I think we should have is more temporary guest workers to fill in these kind of things.

<v SPEAKER_01>But I'm people keep calling this a doomer take, but I am like not a doomer.

<v SPEAKER_01>I am bullish on the power of artificial intelligence to uh come up with humanoid robots to address a lot of these concerns.

<v SPEAKER_01>And like I my best guess, although I'm not like 99% credence on this, but like I think above 50% is that in the relatively short term, we are going to see a real relaxation of human labor as the constraining quality.

<v SPEAKER_01>Some of that won't be because um robots are directly displacing care work.

<v SPEAKER_01>It's gonna be because robots are displacing people from, you know, like officey jobs.

<v SPEAKER_01>And then those people are gonna say, like, well, like what is it?

<v SPEAKER_01>You gotta do care work.

<v SPEAKER_01>What is it that I can do?

<v SPEAKER_01>But some of it is that like robots are gonna have advantages, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Because like one problem, one downside to relying on uh immigrants to do this sort of thing is that elderly people um benefit from like uh connec people they can talk to, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And you know, it's like somebody doesn't speak your language and you can't do that.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um one thing AI is really good at is like not losing patience with your bullshit.

<v SPEAKER_01>You know, and like having really long, in-depth conversations about whatever it is you want to talk about, whatever it is you're interested in.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think that like elderly people will find that aspect of AI to be like really powerful and actually, frankly, not just elderly people, you know, um, that like this is gonna um be a be a boon in a lot of these kinds of roles, uh, but is also gonna, you know, diminish I don't know.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like it's I I I think the the interaction of like immigration, labor market economics, AI is like a really tricky topic because I don't think that it's in bad faith that progressive-minded people talk about the economic benefits of immigration.

<v SPEAKER_01>But it's not like you would be saying, oh, fuck these people, if like you read a different paper about labor market economics.

<v SPEAKER_01>Like you have a true cosmopolitan ethos and like you care about the well-being of people born in the Philippines.

<v SPEAKER_01>So you're like glad that there's this good evidence that they saving the lives of olderly people.

<v SPEAKER_00>When when reality correlates with my worldview.

<v SPEAKER_01>Well, and not just when it correlates with your worldview, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>But like specifically, like if like cranky old people who don't like immigrants could see direct benefits to them, yeah, right, that could really like unlock political change, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>And so it's like the the world might just change in an inconvenient way for people who have cosmopolitan.

<v SPEAKER_01>Even back to Bernie and the oligarchy, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>He was saying the other day that the government should own 50% of the AI labs, and that's because you know they stand on the backs of like the entirety of human knowledge.

<v SPEAKER_01>But so it's like, why should if you if you accept the moral reasoning of that argument, why should the American government own 50% of the labs, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Now, obviously, part of the answer is like politics, right?

<v SPEAKER_01>Like the nationalizing uh AI labs is like a heavy lift.

<v SPEAKER_01>Um, nationalizing AI labs on behalf of Nigeria is like, that's like really not gonna happen.

<v SPEAKER_01>So I I like I I get why the bill is written the way that it is, but like cosmopolitanism and democracy are in some tension.

<v SPEAKER_01>And I think like a bigger tension than oligarchy and democracy.

<v SPEAKER_00>True, but only to the extent that cosmopolitanism doesn't result in high economic growth.

<v SPEAKER_00>And like this is exactly what we're talking about with AI, but like most cosmopolitan views are like, you know, pro-free trade, pro-um uh free movement of people.

<v SPEAKER_00>Um like those things are what are the bedrock of economic growth, which is to be clear, like most people want economic growth.

<v SPEAKER_00>It's like a positive thing.

<v SPEAKER_00>But it may but I think the AI, you're right, like does interact with this in ways where uh really unknown.

<v SPEAKER_00>And then it becomes a problem of like, okay, well, like, is everyone in the world who doesn't live in a country where you can tax AI labs basically just like fucked forever?

<v SPEAKER_00>And I we try to usually use peer review to end in a more positive way, but that is kind of my fear.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeah.

<v SPEAKER_00>Well, uh, for positive conversations like these, subscribe to the argument.

<v SPEAKER_01>You know, awesome, like share it with your friends, you know, like it.

<v SPEAKER_01>We're not in a zero sum podcasting universe, you know.

<v SPEAKER_01>We've got to share the wealth.

<v SPEAKER_01>Exactly.

<v SPEAKER_01>Fight the oligarchy, you know.

<v SPEAKER_00>Fight the oligarchy, subscribe to the argument.

<v SPEAKER_01>Yeoman podcasters.

<v SPEAKER_00>Uh, thanks so much, and we'll see you next week.