Podcasts about John Kenneth Galbraith

Yesterday, the self-styled San Francisco “progressive” Joan Williams was on the show arguing that Democrats need to relearn the language of the American working class. But, as some of you have noted, Williams seems oblivious to the fact that politics is about more than simply aping other people's language. What you say matters, and the language of American working class, like all industrial working classes, is rooted in a critique of capitalism. She should probably read the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy's excellent new book, Capitalism and its Critics, which traces capitalism's evolution and criticism from the East India Company through modern times. He defines capitalism as production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets, encompassing various forms from Chinese state capitalism to hyper-globalization. The book examines capitalism's most articulate critics including the Luddites, Marx, Engels, Thomas Carlisle, Adam Smith, Rosa Luxemburg, Keynes & Hayek, and contemporary figures like Sylvia Federici and Thomas Piketty. Cassidy explores how major economists were often critics of their era's dominant capitalist model, and untangles capitalism's complicated relationship with colonialism, slavery and AI which he regards as a potentially unprecedented economic disruption. This should be essential listening for all Democrats seeking to reinvent a post Biden-Harris party and message. 5 key takeaways* Capitalism has many forms - From Chinese state capitalism to Keynesian managed capitalism to hyper-globalization, all fitting the basic definition of production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets.* Great economists are typically critics - Smith criticized mercantile capitalism, Keynes critiqued laissez-faire capitalism, and Hayek/Friedman opposed managed capitalism. Each generation's leading economists challenge their era's dominant model.* Modern corporate structure has deep roots - The East India Company was essentially a modern multinational corporation with headquarters, board of directors, stockholders, and even a private army - showing capitalism's organizational continuity across centuries.* Capitalism is intertwined with colonialism and slavery - Industrial capitalism was built on pre-existing colonial and slave systems, particularly through the cotton industry and plantation economies.* AI represents a potentially unprecedented disruption - Unlike previous technological waves, AI may substitute rather than complement human labor on a massive scale, potentially creating political backlash exceeding even the "China shock" that contributed to Trump's rise.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. A couple of days ago, we did a show with Joan Williams. She has a new book out, "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back." A book about language, about how to talk to the American working class. She also had a piece in Jacobin Magazine, an anti-capitalist magazine, about how the left needs to speak to what she calls average American values. We talked, of course, about Bernie Sanders and AOC and their language of fighting oligarchy, and the New York Times followed that up with "The Enduring Power of Anti-Capitalism in American Politics."But of course, that brings the question: what exactly is capitalism? I did a little bit of research. We can find definitions of capitalism from AI, from Wikipedia, even from online dictionaries, but I thought we might do a little better than relying on Wikipedia and come to a man who's given capitalism and its critics a great deal of thought. John Cassidy is well known as a staff writer at The New Yorker. He's the author of a wonderful book, the best book, actually, on the dot-com insanity. And his new book, "Capitalism and its Critics," is out this week. John, congratulations on the book.So I've got to be a bit of a schoolmaster with you, John, and get some definitions first. What exactly is capitalism before we get to criticism of it?John Cassidy: Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question, Andrew. Obviously, through the decades, even the centuries, there have been many different definitions of the term capitalism and there are different types of capitalism. To not be sort of too ideological about it, the working definition I use is basically production for profit—that could be production of goods or mostly in the new and, you know, in today's economy, production of services—for profit by companies which are privately owned in markets. That's a very sort of all-encompassing definition.Within that, you can have all sorts of different types of capitalism. You can have Chinese state capitalism, you can have the old mercantilism, which industrial capitalism came after, which Trump seems to be trying to resurrect. You can have Keynesian managed capitalism that we had for 30 or 40 years after the Second World War, which I grew up in in the UK. Or you can have sort of hyper-globalization, hyper-capitalism that we've tried for the last 30 years. There are all those different varieties of capitalism consistent with a basic definition, I think.Andrew Keen: That keeps you busy, John. I know you started this project, which is a big book and it's a wonderful book. I read it. I don't always read all the books I have on the show, but I read from cover to cover full of remarkable stories of the critics of capitalism. You note in the beginning that you began this in 2016 with the beginnings of Trump. What was it about the 2016 election that triggered a book about capitalism and its critics?John Cassidy: Well, I was reporting on it at the time for The New Yorker and it struck me—I covered, I basically covered the economy in various forms for various publications since the late 80s, early 90s. In fact, one of my first big stories was the stock market crash of '87. So yes, I am that old. But it seemed to me in 2016 when you had Bernie Sanders running from the left and Trump running from the right, but both in some way offering very sort of similar critiques of capitalism. People forget that Trump in 2016 actually was running from the left of the Republican Party. He was attacking big business. He was attacking Wall Street. He doesn't do that these days very much, but at the time he was very much posing as the sort of outsider here to protect the interests of the average working man.And it seemed to me that when you had this sort of pincer movement against the then ruling model, this wasn't just a one-off. It seemed to me it was a sort of an emerging crisis of legitimacy for the system. And I thought there could be a good book written about how we got to here. And originally I thought it would be a relatively short book just based on the last sort of 20 or 30 years since the collapse of the Cold War and the sort of triumphalism of the early 90s.But as I got into it more and more, I realized that so many of the issues which had been raised, things like globalization, rising inequality, monopoly power, exploitation, even pollution and climate change, these issues go back to the very start of the capitalist system or the industrial capitalist system back in sort of late 18th century, early 19th century Britain. So I thought, in the end, I thought, you know what, let's just do the whole thing soup to nuts through the eyes of the critics.There have obviously been many, many histories of capitalism written. I thought that an original way to do it, or hopefully original, would be to do a sort of a narrative through the lives and the critiques of the critics of various stages. So that's, I hope, what sets it apart from other books on the subject, and also provides a sort of narrative frame because, you know, I am a New Yorker writer, I realize if you want people to read things, you've got to make it readable. Easiest way to make things readable is to center them around people. People love reading about other people. So that's sort of the narrative frame. I start off with a whistleblower from the East India Company back in the—Andrew Keen: Yeah, I want to come to that. But before, John, my sense is that to simplify what you're saying, this is a labor of love. You're originally from Leeds, the heart of Yorkshire, the center of the very industrial revolution, the first industrial revolution where, in your historical analysis, capitalism was born. Is it a labor of love? What's your family relationship with capitalism? How long was the family in Leeds?John Cassidy: Right, I mean that's a very good question. It is a labor of love in a way, but it's not—our family doesn't go—I'm from an Irish family, family of Irish immigrants who moved to England in the 1940s and 1950s. So my father actually did start working in a big mill, the Kirkstall Forge in Leeds, which is a big steel mill, and he left after seeing one of his co-workers have his arms chopped off in one of the machinery, so he decided it wasn't for him and he spent his life working in the construction industry, which was dominated by immigrants as it is here now.So I don't have a—it's not like I go back to sort of the start of the industrial revolution, but I did grow up in the middle of Leeds, very working class, very industrial neighborhood. And what a sort of irony is, I'll point out, I used to, when I was a kid, I used to play golf on a municipal golf course called Gotts Park in Leeds, which—you know, most golf courses in America are sort of in the affluent suburbs, country clubs. This was right in the middle of Armley in Leeds, which is where the Victorian jail is and a very rough neighborhood. There's a small bit of land which they built a golf course on. It turns out it was named after one of the very first industrialists, Benjamin Gott, who was a wool and textile industrialist, and who played a part in the Luddite movement, which I mention.So it turns out, I was there when I was 11 or 12, just learning how to play golf on this scrappy golf course. And here I am, 50 years later, writing about Benjamin Gott at the start of the Industrial Revolution. So yeah, no, sure. I think it speaks to me in a way that perhaps it wouldn't to somebody else from a different background.Andrew Keen: We did a show with William Dalrymple, actually, a couple of years ago. He's been on actually since, the Anglo or Scottish Indian historian. His book on the East India Company, "The Anarchy," is a classic. You begin in some ways your history of capitalism with the East India Company. What was it about the East India Company, John, that makes it different from other for-profit organizations in economic, Western economic history?John Cassidy: I mean, I read that. It's a great book, by the way. That was actually quoted in my chapter on these. Yeah, I remember. I mean, the reason I focused on it was for two reasons. Number one, I was looking for a start, a narrative start to the book. And it seemed to me, you know, the obvious place to start is with the start of the industrial revolution. If you look at economics history textbooks, that's where they always start with Arkwright and all the inventors, you know, who were the sort of techno-entrepreneurs of their time, the sort of British Silicon Valley, if you could think of it as, in Lancashire and Derbyshire in the late 18th century.So I knew I had to sort of start there in some way, but I thought that's a bit pat. Is there another way into it? And it turns out that in 1772 in England, there was a huge bailout of the East India Company, very much like the sort of 2008, 2009 bailout of Wall Street. The company got into trouble. So I thought, you know, maybe there's something there. And I eventually found this guy, William Bolts, who worked for the East India Company, turned into a whistleblower after he was fired for finagling in India like lots of the people who worked for the company did.So that gave me two things. Number one, it gave me—you know, I'm a writer, so it gave me something to focus on a narrative. His personal history is very interesting. But number two, it gave me a sort of foundation because industrial capitalism didn't come from nowhere. You know, it was built on top of a pre-existing form of capitalism, which we now call mercantile capitalism, which was very protectionist, which speaks to us now. But also it had these big monopolistic multinational companies.The East India Company, in some ways, was a very modern corporation. It had a headquarters in Leadenhall Street in the city of London. It had a board of directors, it had stockholders, the company sent out very detailed instructions to the people in the field in India and Indonesia and Malaysia who were traders who bought things from the locals there, brought them back to England on their company ships. They had a company army even to enforce—to protect their operations there. It was an incredible multinational corporation.So that was also, I think, fascinating because it showed that even in the pre-existing system, you know, big corporations existed, there were monopolies, they had royal monopolies given—first the East India Company got one from Queen Elizabeth. But in some ways, they were very similar to modern monopolistic corporations. And they had some of the problems we've seen with modern monopolistic corporations, the way they acted. And Bolts was the sort of first corporate whistleblower, I thought. Yeah, that was a way of sort of getting into the story, I think. Hopefully, you know, it's just a good read, I think.William Bolts's story because he was—he came from nowhere, he was Dutch, he wasn't even English and he joined the company as a sort of impoverished young man, went to India like a lot of English minor aristocrats did to sort of make your fortune. The way the company worked, you had to sort of work on company time and make as much money as you could for the company, but then in your spare time you're allowed to trade for yourself. So a lot of the—without getting into too much detail, but you know, English aristocracy was based on—you know, the eldest child inherits everything, so if you were the younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, you actually didn't inherit anything. So all of these minor aristocrats, so major aristocrats, but who weren't first born, joined the East India Company, went out to India and made a fortune, and then came back and built huge houses. Lots of the great manor houses in southern England were built by people from the East India Company and they were known as Nabobs, which is an Indian term. So they were the sort of, you know, billionaires of their time, and it was based on—as I say, it wasn't based on industrial capitalism, it was based on mercantile capitalism.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the beginning of the book, which focuses on Bolts and the East India Company, brings to mind for me two things. Firstly, the intimacy of modern capitalism, modern industrial capitalism with colonialism and of course slavery—lots of books have been written on that. Touch on this and also the relationship between the birth of capitalism and the birth of liberalism or democracy. John Stuart Mill, of course, the father in many ways of Western democracy. His day job, ironically enough, or perhaps not ironically, was at the East India Company. So how do those two things connect, or is it just coincidental?John Cassidy: Well, I don't think it is entirely coincidental, I mean, J.S. Mill—his father, James Mill, was also a well-known philosopher in the sort of, obviously, in the earlier generation, earlier than him. And he actually wrote the official history of the East India Company. And I think they gave his son, the sort of brilliant protégé, J.S. Mill, a job as largely as a sort of sinecure, I think. But he did go in and work there in the offices three or four days a week.But I think it does show how sort of integral—the sort of—as you say, the inheritor and the servant in Britain, particularly, of colonial capitalism was. So the East India Company was, you know, it was in decline by that stage in the middle of the 19th century, but it didn't actually give up its monopoly. It wasn't forced to give up its monopoly on the Indian trade until 1857, after, you know, some notorious massacres and there was a sort of public outcry.So yeah, no, that's—it's very interesting that the British—it's sort of unique to Britain in a way, but it's interesting that industrial capitalism arose alongside this pre-existing capitalist structure and somebody like Mill is a sort of paradoxical figure because actually he was quite critical of aspects of industrial capitalism and supported sort of taxes on the rich, even though he's known as the great, you know, one of the great apostles of the free market and free market liberalism. And his day job, as you say, he was working for the East India Company.Andrew Keen: What about the relationship between the birth of industrial capitalism, colonialism and slavery? Those are big questions and I know you deal with them in some—John Cassidy: I think you can't just write an economic history of capitalism now just starting with the cotton industry and say, you know, it was all about—it was all about just technical progress and gadgets, etc. It was built on a sort of pre-existing system which was colonial and, you know, the slave trade was a central element of that. Now, as you say, there have been lots and lots of books written about it, the whole 1619 project got an incredible amount of attention a few years ago. So I didn't really want to rehash all that, but I did want to acknowledge the sort of role of slavery, especially in the rise of the cotton industry because of course, a lot of the raw cotton was grown in the plantations in the American South.So the way I actually ended up doing that was by writing a chapter about Eric Williams, a Trinidadian writer who ended up as the Prime Minister of Trinidad when it became independent in the 1960s. But when he was younger, he wrote a book which is now regarded as a classic. He went to Oxford to do a PhD, won a scholarship. He was very smart. I won a sort of Oxford scholarship myself but 50 years before that, he came across the Atlantic and did an undergraduate degree in history and then did a PhD there and his PhD thesis was on slavery and capitalism.And at the time, in the 1930s, the link really wasn't acknowledged. You could read any sort of standard economic history written by British historians, and they completely ignored that. He made the argument that, you know, slavery was integral to the rise of capitalism and he basically started an argument which has been raging ever since the 1930s and, you know, if you want to study economic history now you have to sort of—you know, have to have to address that. And the way I thought, even though the—it's called the Williams thesis is very famous. I don't think many people knew much about where it came from. So I thought I'd do a chapter on—Andrew Keen: Yeah, that chapter is excellent. You mentioned earlier the Luddites, you're from Yorkshire where Luddism in some ways was born. One of the early chapters is on the Luddites. We did a show with Brian Merchant, his book, "Blood in the Machine," has done very well, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I always understood the Luddites as being against industrialization, against the machine, as opposed to being against capitalism. But did those two things get muddled together in the history of the Luddites?John Cassidy: I think they did. I mean, you know, Luddites, when we grew up, I mean you're English too, you know to be called a Luddite was a term of abuse, right? You know, you were sort of antediluvian, anti-technology, you're stupid. It was only, I think, with the sort of computer revolution, the tech revolution of the last 30, 40 years and the sort of disruptions it's caused, that people have started to look back at the Luddites and say, perhaps they had a point.For them, they were basically pre-industrial capitalism artisans. They worked for profit-making concerns, small workshops. Some of them worked for themselves, so they were sort of sole proprietor capitalists. Or they worked in small venues, but the rise of industrial capitalism, factory capitalism or whatever, basically took away their livelihoods progressively. So they associated capitalism with new technology. In their minds it was the same. But their argument wasn't really a technological one or even an economic one, it was more a moral one. They basically made the moral argument that capitalists shouldn't have the right to just take away their livelihoods with no sort of recompense for them.At the time they didn't have any parliamentary representation. You know, they weren't revolutionaries. The first thing they did was create petitions to try and get parliament to step in, sort of introduce some regulation here. They got turned down repeatedly by the sort of—even though it was a very aristocratic parliament, places like Manchester and Leeds didn't have any representation at all. So it was only after that that they sort of turned violent and started, you know, smashing machines and machines, I think, were sort of symbols of the system, which they saw as morally unjust.And I think that's sort of what—obviously, there's, you know, a lot of technological disruption now, so we can, especially as it starts to come for the educated cognitive class, we can sort of sympathize with them more. But I think the sort of moral critique that there's this, you know, underneath the sort of great creativity and economic growth that capitalism produces, there is also a lot of destruction and a lot of victims. And I think that message, you know, is becoming a lot more—that's why I think why they've been rediscovered in the last five or ten years and I'm one of the people I guess contributing to that rediscovery.Andrew Keen: There's obviously many critiques of capitalism politically. I want to come to Marx in a second, but your chapter, I thought, on Thomas Carlyle and this nostalgic conservatism was very important and there are other conservatives as well. John, do you think that—and you mentioned Trump earlier, who is essentially a nostalgist for a—I don't know, some sort of bizarre pre-capitalist age in America. Is there something particularly powerful about the anti-capitalism of romantics like Carlyle, 19th century Englishman, there were many others of course.John Cassidy: Well, I think so. I mean, I think what is—conservatism, when we were young anyway, was associated with Thatcherism and Reaganism, which, you know, lionized the free market and free market capitalism and was a reaction against the pre-existing form of capitalism, Keynesian capitalism of the sort of 40s to the 80s. But I think what got lost in that era was the fact that there have always been—you've got Hayek up there, obviously—Andrew Keen: And then Keynes and Hayek, the two—John Cassidy: Right, it goes to the end of that. They had a great debate in the 1930s about these issues. But Hayek really wasn't a conservative person, and neither was Milton Friedman. They were sort of free market revolutionaries, really, that you'd let the market rip and it does good things. And I think that that sort of a view, you know, it just became very powerful. But we sort of lost sight of the fact that there was also a much older tradition of sort of suspicion of radical changes of any type. And that was what conservatism was about to some extent. If you think about Baldwin in Britain, for example.And there was a sort of—during the Industrial Revolution, some of the strongest supporters of factory acts to reduce hours and hourly wages for women and kids were actually conservatives, Tories, as they were called at the time, like Ashley. That tradition, Carlyle was a sort of extreme representative of that. I mean, Carlyle was a sort of proto-fascist, let's not romanticize him, he lionized strongmen, Frederick the Great, and he didn't really believe in democracy. But he also had—he was appalled by the sort of, you know, the—like, what's the phrase I'm looking for? The sort of destructive aspects of industrial capitalism, both on the workers, you know, he said it was a dehumanizing system, sounded like Marx in some ways. That it dehumanized the workers, but also it destroyed the environment.He was an early environmentalist. He venerated the environment, was actually very strongly linked to the transcendentalists in America, people like Thoreau, who went to visit him when he visited Britain and he saw the sort of destructive impact that capitalism was having locally in places like Manchester, which were filthy with filthy rivers, etc. So he just saw the whole system as sort of morally bankrupt and he was a great writer, Carlyle, whatever you think of him. Great user of language, so he has these great ringing phrases like, you know, the cash nexus or calling it the Gospel of Mammonism, the shabbiest gospel ever preached under the sun was industrial capitalism.So, again, you know, that's a sort of paradoxical thing, because I think for so long conservatism was associated with, you know, with support for the free market and still is in most of the Republican Party, but then along comes Trump and sort of conquers the party with a, you know, more skeptical, as you say, romantic, not really based on any reality, but a sort of romantic view that America can stand by itself in the world. I mean, I see Trump actually as a sort of an effort to sort of throw back to mercantile capitalism in a way. You know, which was not just pre-industrial, but was also pre-democracy, run by monarchs, which I'm sure appeals to him, and it was based on, you know, large—there were large tariffs. You couldn't import things in the UK. If you want to import anything to the UK, you have to send it on a British ship because of the navigation laws. It was a very protectionist system and it's actually, you know, as I said, had a lot of parallels with what Trump's trying to do or tries to do until he backs off.Andrew Keen: You cheat a little bit in the book in the sense that you—everyone has their own chapter. We'll talk a little bit about Hayek and Smith and Lenin and Friedman. You do have one chapter on Marx, but you also have a chapter on Engels. So you kind of cheat. You combine the two. Is it possible, though, to do—and you've just written this book, so you know this as well as anyone. How do you write a book about capitalism and its critics and only really give one chapter to Marx, who is so dominant? I mean, you've got lots of Marxists in the book, including Lenin and Luxemburg. How fundamental is Marx to a criticism of capitalism? Is most criticism, especially from the left, from progressives, is it really just all a footnote to Marx?John Cassidy: I wouldn't go that far, but I think obviously on the left he is the central figure. But there's an element of sort of trying to rebuild Engels a bit in this. I mean, I think of Engels and Marx—I mean obviously Marx wrote the great classic "Capital," etc. But in the 1840s, when they both started writing about capitalism, Engels was sort of ahead of Marx in some ways. I mean, the sort of materialist concept, the idea that economics rules everything, Engels actually was the first one to come up with that in an essay in the 1840s which Marx then published in one of his—in the German newspaper he worked for at the time, radical newspaper, and he acknowledged openly that that was really what got him thinking seriously about economics, and even in the late—in 20, 25 years later when he wrote "Capital," all three volumes of it and the Grundrisse, just these enormous outpourings of analysis on capitalism.He acknowledged Engels's role in that and obviously Engels wrote the first draft of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 too, which Marx then topped and tailed and—he was a better writer obviously, Marx, and he gave it the dramatic language that we all know it for. So I think Engels and Marx together obviously are the central sort of figures in the sort of left-wing critique. But they didn't start out like that. I mean, they were very obscure, you've got to remember.You know, they were—when they were writing, Marx was writing "Capital" in London, it never even got published in English for another 20 years. It was just published in German. He was basically an expat. He had been thrown out of Germany, he had been thrown out of France, so England was last resort and the British didn't consider him a threat so they were happy to let him and the rest of the German sort of left in there. I think it became—it became the sort of epochal figure after his death really, I think, when he was picked up by the left-wing parties, which are especially the SPD in Germany, which was the first sort of socialist mass party and was officially Marxist until the First World War and there were great internal debates.And then of course, because Lenin and the Russians came out of that tradition too, Marxism then became the official doctrine of the Soviet Union when they adopted a version of it. And again there were massive internal arguments about what Marx really meant, and in fact, you know, one interpretation of the last 150 years of left-wing sort of intellectual development is as a sort of argument about what did Marx really mean and what are the important bits of it, what are the less essential bits of it. It's a bit like the "what did Keynes really mean" that you get in liberal circles.So yeah, Marx, obviously, this is basically an intellectual history of critiques of capitalism. In that frame, he is absolutely a central figure. Why didn't I give him more space than a chapter and a chapter and a half with Engels? There have been a million books written about Marx. I mean, it's not that—it's not that he's an unknown figure. You know, there's a best-selling book written in Britain about 20 years ago about him and then I was quoting, in my biographical research, I relied on some more recent, more scholarly biographies. So he's an endlessly fascinating figure but I didn't want him to dominate the book so I gave him basically the same space as everybody else.Andrew Keen: You've got, as I said, you've got a chapter on Adam Smith who's often considered the father of economics. You've got a chapter on Keynes. You've got a chapter on Friedman. And you've got a chapter on Hayek, all the great modern economists. Is it possible, John, to be a distinguished economist one way or the other and not be a critic of capitalism?John Cassidy: Well, I don't—I mean, I think history would suggest that the greatest economists have been critics of capitalism in their own time. People would say to me, what the hell have you got Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek in a book about critics of capitalism? They were great exponents, defenders of capitalism. They loved the system. That is perfectly true. But in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, middle of the 20th century, they were actually arch-critics of the ruling form of capitalism at the time, which was what I call managed capitalism. What some people call Keynesianism, what other people call European social democracy, whatever you call it, it was a model of a mixed economy in which the government played a large role both in propping up demand and in providing an extensive social safety net in the UK and providing public healthcare and public education. It was a sort of hybrid model.Most of the economy in terms of the businesses remained in private hands. So most production was capitalistic. It was a capitalist system. They didn't go to the Soviet model of nationalizing everything and Britain did nationalize some businesses, but most places didn't. The US of course didn't but it was a form of managed capitalism. And Hayek and Friedman were both great critics of that and wanted to sort of move back to 19th century laissez-faire model.Keynes was a—was actually a great, I view him anyway, as really a sort of late Victorian liberal and was trying to protect as much of the sort of J.S. Mill view of the world as he could, but he thought capitalism had one fatal flaw: that it tended to fall into recessions and then they can snowball and the whole system can collapse which is what had basically happened in the early 1930s until Keynesian policies were adopted. Keynes sort of differed from a lot of his followers—I have a chapter on Joan Robinson in there, who were pretty left-wing and wanted to sort of use Keynesianism as a way to shift the economy quite far to the left. Keynes didn't really believe in that. He has a famous quote that, you know, once you get to full employment, you can then rely on the free market to sort of take care of things. He was still a liberal at heart.Going back to Adam Smith, why is he in a book on criticism of capitalism? And again, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. He actually wrote "The Wealth of Nations"—he explains in the introduction—as a critique of mercantile capitalism. His argument was that he was a pro-free trader, pro-small business, free enterprise. His argument was if you get the government out of the way, we don't need these government-sponsored monopolies like the East India Company. If you just rely on the market, the sort of market forces and competition will produce a good outcome. So then he was seen as a great—you know, he is then seen as the apostle of free market capitalism. I mean when I started as a young reporter, when I used to report in Washington, all the conservatives used to wear Adam Smith badges. You don't see Donald Trump wearing an Adam Smith badge, but that was the case.He was also—the other aspect of Smith, which I highlight, which is not often remarked on—he's also a critic of big business. He has a famous section where he discusses the sort of tendency of any group of more than three businessmen when they get together to try and raise prices and conspire against consumers. And he was very suspicious of, as I say, large companies, monopolies. I think if Adam Smith existed today, I mean, I think he would be a big supporter of Lina Khan and the sort of antitrust movement, he would say capitalism is great as long as you have competition, but if you don't have competition it becomes, you know, exploitative.Andrew Keen: Yeah, if Smith came back to live today, you have a chapter on Thomas Piketty, maybe he may not be French, but he may be taking that position about how the rich benefit from the structure of investment. Piketty's core—I've never had Piketty on the show, but I've had some of his followers like Emmanuel Saez from Berkeley. Yeah. How powerful is Piketty's critique of capitalism within the context of the classical economic analysis from Hayek and Friedman? Yeah, it's a very good question.John Cassidy: It's a very good question. I mean, he's a very paradoxical figure, Piketty, in that he obviously shot to world fame and stardom with his book on capital in the 21st century, which in some ways he obviously used the capital as a way of linking himself to Marx, even though he said he never read Marx. But he was basically making the same argument that if you leave capitalism unrestrained and don't do anything about monopolies etc. or wealth, you're going to get massive inequality and he—I think his great contribution, Piketty and the school of people, one of them you mentioned, around him was we sort of had a vague idea that inequality was going up and that, you know, wages were stagnating, etc.What he and his colleagues did is they produced these sort of scientific empirical studies showing in very simple to understand terms how the sort of share of income and wealth of the top 10 percent, the top 5 percent, the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent basically skyrocketed from the 1970s to about 2010. And it was, you know, he was an MIT PhD. Saez, who you mentioned, is a Berkeley professor. They were schooled in neoclassical economics at Harvard and MIT and places like that. So the right couldn't dismiss them as sort of, you know, lefties or Trots or whatever who're just sort of making this stuff up. They had to acknowledge that this was actually an empirical reality.I think it did change the whole basis of the debate and it was sort of part of this reaction against capitalism in the 2010s. You know it was obviously linked to the sort of Sanders and the Occupy Wall Street movement at the time. It came out of the—you know, the financial crisis as well when Wall Street disgraced itself. I mean, I wrote a previous book on all that, but people have sort of, I think, forgotten the great reaction against that a decade ago, which I think even Trump sort of exploited, as I say, by using anti-banker rhetoric at the time.So, Piketty was a great figure, I think, from, you know, I was thinking, who are the most influential critics of capitalism in the 21st century? And I think you'd have to put him up there on the list. I'm not saying he's the only one or the most eminent one. But I think he is a central figure. Now, of course, you'd think, well, this is a really powerful critic of capitalism, and nobody's going to pick up, and Bernie's going to take off and everything. But here we are a decade later now. It seems to be what the backlash has produced is a swing to the right, not a swing to the left. So that's, again, a sort of paradox.Andrew Keen: One person I didn't expect to come up in the book, John, and I was fascinated with this chapter, is Silvia Federici. I've tried to get her on the show. We've had some books about her writing and her kind of—I don't know, you treat her critique as a feminist one. The role of women. Why did you choose to write a chapter about Federici and that feminist critique of capitalism?John Cassidy: Right, right. Well, I don't think it was just feminist. I'll explain what I think it was. Two reasons. Number one, I wanted to get more women into the book. I mean, it's in some sense, it is a history of economics and economic critiques. And they are overwhelmingly written by men and women were sort of written out of the narrative of capitalism for a very long time. So I tried to include as many sort of women as actual thinkers as I could and I have a couple of early socialist feminist thinkers, Anna Wheeler and Flora Tristan and then I cover some of the—I cover Rosa Luxemburg as the great sort of tribune of the left revolutionary socialist, communist whatever you want to call it. Anti-capitalist I think is probably also important to note about. Yeah, and then I also have Joan Robinson, but I wanted somebody to do something in the modern era, and I thought Federici, in the world of the Wages for Housework movement, is very interesting from two perspectives.Number one, Federici herself is a Marxist, and I think she probably would still consider herself a revolutionary. She's based in New York, as you know now. She lived in New York for 50 years, but she came from—she's originally Italian and came out of the Italian left in the 1960s, which was very radical. Do you know her? Did you talk to her? I didn't talk to her on this. No, she—I basically relied on, there has been a lot of, as you say, there's been a lot of stuff written about her over the years. She's written, you know, she's given various long interviews and she's written a book herself, a version, a history of housework, so I figured it was all there and it was just a matter of pulling it together.But I think the critique, why the critique is interesting, most of the book is a sort of critique of how capitalism works, you know, in the production or you know, in factories or in offices or you know, wherever capitalist operations are working, but her critique is sort of domestic reproduction, as she calls it, the role of unpaid labor in supporting capitalism. I mean it goes back a long way actually. There was this moment, I sort of trace it back to the 1940s and 1950s when there were feminists in America who were demonstrating outside factories and making the point that you know, the factory workers and the operations of the factory, it couldn't—there's one of the famous sort of tire factory in California demonstrations where the women made the argument, look this factory can't continue to operate unless we feed and clothe the workers and provide the next generation of workers. You know, that's domestic reproduction. So their argument was that housework should be paid and Federici took that idea and a couple of her colleagues, she founded the—it's a global movement, but she founded the most famous branch in New York City in the 1970s. In Park Slope near where I live actually.And they were—you call it feminists, they were feminists in a way, but they were rejected by the sort of mainstream feminist movement, the sort of Gloria Steinems of the world, who Federici was very critical of because she said they ignored, they really just wanted to get women ahead in the sort of capitalist economy and they ignored the sort of underlying from her perspective, the underlying sort of illegitimacy and exploitation of that system. So they were never accepted as part of the feminist movement. They're to the left of the Feminist Movement.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Keynes, of course, so central in all this, particularly his analysis of the role of automation in capitalism. We did a show recently with Robert Skidelsky and I'm sure you're familiar—John Cassidy: Yeah, yeah, great, great biography of Keynes.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the great biographer of Keynes, whose latest book is "Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of AI." You yourself wrote a brilliant book on the last tech mania and dot-com capitalism. I used it in a lot of my writing and books. What's your analysis of AI in this latest mania and the role generally of manias in the history of capitalism and indeed in critiquing capitalism? Is AI just the next chapter of the dot-com boom?John Cassidy: I think it's a very deep question. I think I'd give two answers to it. In one sense it is just the latest mania the way—I mean, the way capitalism works is we have these, I go back to Kondratiev, one of my Russian economists who ended up being killed by Stalin. He was the sort of inventor of the long wave theory of capitalism. We have these short waves where you have sort of booms and busts driven by finance and debt etc. But we also have long waves driven by technology.And obviously, in the last 40, 50 years, the two big ones are the original deployment of the internet and microchip technology in the sort of 80s and 90s culminating in the dot-com boom of the late 90s, which as you say, I wrote about. Thanks very much for your kind comments on the book. If you just sort of compare it from a financial basis I think they are very similar just in terms of the sort of role of hype from Wall Street in hyping up these companies. The sort of FOMO aspect of it among investors that they you know, you can't miss out. So just buy the companies blindly. And the sort of lionization in the press and the media of, you know, of AI as the sort of great wave of the future.So if you take a sort of skeptical market based approach, I would say, yeah, this is just another sort of another mania which will eventually burst and it looked like it had burst for a few weeks when Trump put the tariffs up, now the market seemed to be recovering. But I think there is, there may be something new about it. I am not, I don't pretend to be a technical expert. I try to rely on the evidence of or the testimony of people who know the systems well and also economists who have studied it. It seems to me the closer you get to it the more alarming it is in terms of the potential shock value that there is there.I mean Trump and the sort of reaction to a larger extent can be traced back to the China shock where we had this global shock to American manufacturing and sort of hollowed out a lot of the industrial areas much of it, like industrial Britain was hollowed out in the 80s. If you, you know, even people like Altman and Elon Musk, they seem to think that this is going to be on a much larger scale than that and will basically, you know, get rid of the professions as they exist. Which would be a huge, huge shock. And I think a lot of the economists who studied this, who four or five years ago were relatively optimistic, people like Daron Acemoglu, David Autor—Andrew Keen: Simon Johnson, of course, who just won the Nobel Prize, and he's from England.John Cassidy: Simon, I did an event with Simon earlier this week. You know they've studied this a lot more closely than I have but I do interview them and I think five, six years ago they were sort of optimistic that you know this could just be a new steam engine or could be a microchip which would lead to sort of a lot more growth, rising productivity, rising productivity is usually associated with rising wages so sure there'd be short-term costs but ultimately it would be a good thing. Now, I think if you speak to them, they see since the, you know, obviously, the OpenAI—the original launch and now there's just this huge arms race with no government involvement at all I think they're coming to the conclusion that rather than being developed to sort of complement human labor, all these systems are just being rushed out to substitute for human labor. And it's just going, if current trends persist, it's going to be a China shock on an even bigger scale.You know what is going to, if that, if they're right, that is going to produce some huge political backlash at some point, that's inevitable. So I know—the thing when the dot-com bubble burst, it didn't really have that much long-term impact on the economy. People lost the sort of fake money they thought they'd made. And then the companies, obviously some of the companies like Amazon and you know Google were real genuine profit-making companies and if you bought them early you made a fortune. But AI does seem a sort of bigger, scarier phenomenon to me. I don't know. I mean, you're close to it. What do you think?Andrew Keen: Well, I'm waiting for a book, John, from you. I think you can combine dot-com and capitalism and its critics. We need you probably to cover it—you know more about it than me. Final question, I mean, it's a wonderful book and we haven't even scratched the surface everyone needs to get it. I enjoyed the chapter, for example, on Karl Polanyi and so much more. I mean, it's a big book. But my final question, John, is do you have any regrets about anyone you left out? The one person I would have liked to have been included was Rawls because of his sort of treatment of capitalism and luck as a kind of casino. I'm not sure whether you gave any thought to Rawls, but is there someone in retrospect you should have had a chapter on that you left out?John Cassidy: There are lots of people I left out. I mean, that's the problem. I mean there have been hundreds and hundreds of critics of capitalism. Rawls, of course, incredibly influential and his idea of the sort of, you know, the veil of ignorance that you should judge things not knowing where you are in the income distribution and then—Andrew Keen: And it's luck. I mean the idea of some people get lucky and some people don't.John Cassidy: It is the luck of the draw, obviously, what card you pull. I think that is a very powerful critique, but I just—because I am more of an expert on economics, I tended to leave out philosophers and sociologists. I mean, you know, you could say, where's Max Weber? Where are the anarchists? You know, where's Emma Goldman? Where's John Kenneth Galbraith, the sort of great mid-century critic of American industrial capitalism? There's so many people that you could include. I mean, I could have written 10 volumes. In fact, I refer in the book to, you know, there's always been a problem. G.D.H. Cole, a famous English historian, wrote a history of socialism back in the 1960s and 70s. You know, just getting to 1850 took him six volumes. So, you've got to pick and choose, and I don't claim this is the history of capitalism and its critics. That would be a ridiculous claim to make. I just claim it's a history written by me, and hopefully the people are interested in it, and they're sufficiently diverse that you can address all the big questions.Andrew Keen: Well it's certainly incredibly timely. Capitalism and its critics—more and more of them. Sometimes they don't even describe themselves as critics of capitalism when they're talking about oligarchs or billionaires, they're really criticizing capitalism. A must read from one of America's leading journalists. And would you call yourself a critic of capitalism, John?John Cassidy: Yeah, I guess I am, to some extent, sure. I mean, I'm not a—you know, I'm not on the far left, but I'd say I'm a center-left critic of capitalism. Yes, definitely, that would be fair.Andrew Keen: And does the left need to learn? Does everyone on the left need to read the book and learn the language of anti-capitalism in a more coherent and honest way?John Cassidy: I hope so. I mean, obviously, I'd be talking my own book there, as they say, but I hope that people on the left, but not just people on the left. I really did try to sort of be fair to the sort of right-wing critiques as well. I included the Carlyle chapter particularly, obviously, but in the later chapters, I also sort of refer to this emerging critique on the right, the sort of economic nationalist critique. So hopefully, I think people on the right could read it to understand the critiques from the left, and people on the left could read it to understand some of the critiques on the right as well.Andrew Keen: Well, it's a lovely book. It's enormously erudite and simultaneously readable. Anyone who likes John Cassidy's work from The New Yorker will love it. Congratulations, John, on the new book, and I'd love to get you back on the show as anti-capitalism in America picks up steam and perhaps manifests itself in the 2028 election. Thank you so much.John Cassidy: Thanks very much for inviting me on, it was fun.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

British writer Phil Tinline has written a book titled "Ghosts of Iron Mountain." The publisher Scribner calls it "an investigative masterpiece for readers curious about the surprising connection between John F. Kennedy, Oliver Stone, Timothy McVeigh, QAnon, Alex Jones, and Donald Trump." In his introduction, author Tinline says the book is the true story of a hoax. A hoax that shocked the nation in the late 1960s and that once created seemed impossible to extinguish. Those involved in the hoax included Victor Navasky, E.L. Doctorow, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Leonard Lewin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

British writer Phil Tinline has written a book titled "Ghosts of Iron Mountain." The publisher Scribner calls it "an investigative masterpiece for readers curious about the surprising connection between John F. Kennedy, Oliver Stone, Timothy McVeigh, QAnon, Alex Jones, and Donald Trump." In his introduction, author Tinline says the book is the true story of a hoax. A hoax that shocked the nation in the late 1960s and that once created seemed impossible to extinguish. Those involved in the hoax included Victor Navasky, E.L. Doctorow, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Leonard Lewin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An informative discussion with Dr. James Sturgeon, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Univerity of Missouri-Kansas City, on his new book Institutional Economics: Theory and Pratice. We talk about how institutional economics, which can be traced to prominent American economists such as Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons, and John Kenneth Galbraith, is an alternative way of doing economic analysis and problem solving when contrasted with what passes for mainstream economics today.

In this brief episode of Talking Politics Q&A, with Anushka Asthana away, Tom Bradby and Robert Peston answer a range of questions, namely:Isn't it time that all expenses for MPs and the Lords were stopped?Do you think Trump is grooming and positioning his sons to run for presidency in four years to ensure a Trump presidential dynasty and the extreme MAGA movement continues?Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith gave us the phrase: "the age of uncertainty". What age are we all living in now?And... fun and politics do not go in the same sentence - agree or disagree?Got a question for us? Email on talkingpolitics@itv.com You can listen or watch Talking Politics on Youtube, ITVX or your favourite podcast platform.Remember to subscribe so you NEVER miss an episode!

AI en de mondiale race naar AI-dominantie zijn al maanden een grote hype, dus we weten allemaal dat er veel op het spel staat. Toch durft Paul Schenderling na het lezen van een aantal scherpe analyses de stelling aan dat we de impact van deze race nog steeds schromelijk onderschatten. AI-dominantie heeft niet alleen grote gevolgen voor producten, diensten en banen, maar zal naar alle waarschijnlijkheid ook de machtsverhoudingen in economieën wereldwijd op z'n kop zetten en een nieuw economisch tijdperk inluiden. In deze podcastaflevering legt Allard Amelink, onze podcasthost, Paul het vuur na aan de schenen: Waarom zou dit zo zijn? Wat betekent dit voor bedrijven, werknemers en burgers? Hoe kan Europa hier het beste op reageren? En wat kunnen wij zelf doen? Je hoort het allemaal in deze aflevering, waarin we je meenemen in een achtbaan en daarna weer netjes met beide voeten op de grond zetten (beloofd!). Bronnen en analyses die ten grondslag liggen aan deze aflevering:Rob de Wijk, De nieuwe wereldorde.Ronald Meester en Marc Jacobs, De onttovering van AI.Henry Farrell en Abraham Newman, Underground Empire.Daron Acemoglu en Simon Johnson, Power and Progress.Karl Marx, Das Kapital.Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism.McKenzie Wark, Capital is Dead.Koen de Leus en Philippe Gijsels, De nieuwe wereldeconomie.John Kenneth Galbraith, The Industrial State.

Our third and final interview with Fred Provenza unfolds like a symphony in four parts, each movement resonating with deep reflections on human connection, nature, and the inner workings of the mind. With a cadence that mirrors the unfolding of a well-composed piece, Fred takes us through a journey of shifting perspectives and shifting lives, inviting us to hear the music of the earth as it teaches us to reconnect, simplify, and grow. Like the slow movement of a piece, the interview reflects the wisdom of experience, with Fred sharing lessons learned through years of work, struggle, and discovery. Together, these four movements create a harmony of ideas that echo the timeless truths of our relationship with the world around us.Movement 1: Fred Provenza on the Role of Mindsets in Shaping Our Relationship with NatureFred explores how mindsets, shaped by polarized perspectives, can be transformed through respectful dialogue and open-mindedness. Reflecting on his experience as a teacher, he recalls how he helped students transcend the boundaries of their differing views, fostering a deeper understanding of the complex issues surrounding livestock, rangelands, and the land itself.Movement 2: Fred Provenza on Stories that Connect and Inspire ChangeFred delves into the power of stories in creating connections and inspiring transformation. He emphasizes how the act of nurturing relationships with the land can foster a sense of community, grounding individuals in something larger than themselves, while also illustrating how personal experiences—like the shared beauty of a native garden—can bring people together in mutual appreciation.Movement 3: Fred Provenza on the Purpose of His Work and Bringing JoyReflecting on his legacy, Fred speaks candidly about his life's work and its true purpose: to inspire joy and awe in others. He highlights how reconnecting with a sense of wonder, especially after facing life's challenges, can bring peace and meaning. Fred reveals his desire not for grand accomplishments, but for helping people rediscover the joy of being alive.Movement 4: Fred Provenza on the Wisdom of Letting Nature Self-OrganizeIn response to the quotes from John Kenneth Galbraith and Charles Massey, Fred offers profound insights into the wisdom of stepping back as we grow older. He discusses the gift of reduced energy levels and how this shift allows us to embrace a simpler, more hands-off approach to life—allowing nature to regenerate on its own. Reflecting on the importance of humility and learning, Fred advocates for changing mindsets and simplifying life to connect with what truly matters.As you listen to the final movement of this symphonic conversation with Fred Provenza, we encourage you to stay with us until the end. Sometimes, it's not the facts and figures that resonate the most, but the deeper, intuitive understandings that unfold as we reflect, shift, and grow. Fred's insights challenge us to reconsider the way we approach life, nature, and even our own existence—asking us to embrace the wisdom of simplicity, connection, and change. Stay with us to the end, because the most important lessons aren't always found in what we know, but in how we come to understand it.

James Galbraith er en amerikansk økonom og professor ved Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs i Austin, Texas. Måske kender du hans efternavn, for hans far, John Kenneth Galbraith, var en umådeligt indflydelsesrig økonom, der i årtier var knyttet til Det Hvide Hus og formidlede økonomi i populære bøger som The Affluent Society. James Galbraith er fortsat i sin fars fodspor, og hans nye bog Entropy Economics, der udkommer senere i denne måned, er udgangspunktet for ugens udgave af Langsomme Samtaler. I bogen gør Galbraith og hans medforfatter, professor Jing Chen, op med, hvad de mener er årtiers fejlslagen økonomisk tænkning og præsenterer i stedet et nyt grundlag for at tænke over økonomiske spørgsmål – et grundlag med rod i livsprocesser. I løbet af samtalen når Lykkeberg og Galbraith også forbi oligarkernes indflydelse på det amerikanske demokrati, årsagerne til Bidens fejlslagne industripolitik samt hvilke konsekvenser Trumps tariffer risikerer at få for Europas økonomi.

On today's episode, Kyle Grieve discusses the anatomy of a speculative event, why it's so easy for people to take part in them, and why these events are unlikely to stop in the future; a few major euphoric episodes from history outlined in the book, three more recent bubbles that most listeners lived though, why the rise in IPOs are often the result of mini bubbles, six primary takeaways from the book to help protect yourself from investing in bubbles, and a whole lot more! IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 03:26 - The blueprint of a speculative event 04:10 - Why we fool ourselves into following people with money who don't deserve to be followed 10:04 - A contrast of risk tolerance between Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffet 15:13 - A detailed account of Tulipomania and the story of the $80,000 price tag for a Tulip 19:13 - How a convicted criminal helped mastermind one of the most giant bubbles in history 25:36 - The importance of due diligence in assisting investors to avoid bubbles 28:13 - How bubbles feed on themselves, opening pathways for other businesses to take advantage of the euphoria 34:56 - A few of the precipitating factors that caused the great depression and the damage it created 39:43 - Breaking down the "Dot-com" bubble, the Great Financial Crisis, and post Covid-19 euphoria 55:41 - Why investors should take responsibility for their wins and their losses And so much more! Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, Kyle, and the other community members. John Kenneth Galbraith's book, A Short History of Financial Euphoria. Follow Kyle on Twitter and LinkedIn. Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcast episodes here. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our Premium Feed. NEW TO THE SHOW? Follow our official social media accounts: X (Twitter) | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok. Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: River 7-Eleven Toyota Connect Invest Public TastyTrade Fundrise Shopify American Express The Bitcoin Way ReMarkable Sound Advisory Facet SimpleMining Bluehost HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Spotify! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

This week we speak with Bill Raduchel, who has served as a high-level executive and strategic adviser for organizations such as Sun Microsystems, AOL Time Warner, Xerox, McGraw-Hill, and the Salvation Army. Over half a century working with systems, software, and networks, he has remained at the forefront of the technology revolution in media, education, and corporate governance including recognition at Sun as CIO of the Year and the top CFO in the computer industry and at AOL as CTO of the year. He holds more than fifty issued patents as well as a PhD in econometrics from Harvard, where he taught for five years with John Kenneth Galbraith. He has been writing software in some form since he turned fifteen years old in 1961. He is also the author of The New Technology State. This book is about society—how it has changed and what technology is enabling us to do to ourselves. [Repeat from April, 2024]For more on Bubble Trouble, including transcripts of the show, visit us online at http://bubbletroublepodcast.comYou can learn more about Richard at https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-kramer-16306b2/More on Will Page at: https://pivotaleconomics.com(Times below correspond to the episode without considering any inserted advertisements.)The New Technology State: Redefining the Tech and Government Landscape00:00 Welcome to Bubble Trouble: A Skeptical Conversation00:46 A Journey Through Tech and Economics06:23 The Evolution of Technology and Its Impact on Economics08:02 The Writing Process and Insights into Bill's Book11:21 Exploring the New Technology State and Government Challenges17:43 The Intricacies of Tech Talent and Government Staffing19:53 Tech Debt and the Challenges of Modernization25:55 The Global Tech Landscape: Government and Private Sector Dynamics25:55 Wrapping Up Part One and Teasing Part Two25:55 Simplifying UK Government Websites: A Double-Edged Sword25:55 The Dangers of Centralization and Cybersecurity26:10 Big Tech, Government, and the Quest for Regulation27:59 The Talent Gap in Government and Tech Regulation Challenges29:15 Innovative Solutions andthe Power of Decentralization30:15 The Role of Startups in Tech Innovation and Employee Motivation31:59 Google's Management Revolution: Lessons in Innovation34:45 The Complexities of Regulating Big Tech40:05 Navigating the Future of AI and Government Regulation42:19 Economics, Education, and the Future Workforce44:56 Smoke Signals: Warning Signs in Tech and Regulation50:06 Credits Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a speech in North Carolina outlining her economic platform, including a federal ban on price gouging, expanded tax credits, and more. The proposal to tackle corporate price gouging has sparked significant pushback from both the establishment wing of the Democratic Party and various factions within the Republican Party. About a year ago, we spoke with economist James Galbraith on the back porch of his Vermont childhood home, where he was raised by John Kenneth Galbraith—one of the 20th century's leading policymakers and thinkers on government regulation of prices. Today, we're revisiting that conversation, which originally aired on July 7, 2023.James K. Galbraith is a professor of government and business relations at the University of Texas at Austin. Galbraith has an extensive history of working in government, including as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and an economist for the House Banking Committee. Galbraith joins Ryan Grim to discuss the implementation of price controls by the U.S. government, how it brings down prices, how the Biden administration has used it and could use it more, and how Galbraith's father — economist and politician John Kenneth Galbraith — was instrumental in setting price controls during World War II. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Let's not forget that it also sent Natalie's kids to collegeWe (your EPM Conversations hosts) owe a lot – a financial kind of debt as well as a professional one  – to Shankar and Hyperion/Oracle on premises /PBCS/EPBCS/EPM Cloud Planning.  Seriously, I first set eyes on what was then Hyperion Planning Desktop (which alas I cannot find a screenshot of but know it's out there somewhere), I thought, “Cameron, you idiot, this is the future” and so it has been through (gulp) decades of work.  Never, our Performance Management audience, look askance at a sure thing.   Part of that product's success has been Shankar Viswanathan's careful stewardship of a product that grew from an application wrapper around Essbase (and a horrific and quickly abandoned Win32 app that was supposed to be the workspace of users of All Things Hyperion and yes, Shankar, I really do hope you didn't create that) to a complete EPM cloud platform.  At its core, planning and budgeting hasn't at it's core really changed all that much (ZBB came and went, driver based planning is still here, and yes AI/ML now has its turn in the Wheel of Planning  Fortune) but what we still call Planning certainly has.  Of course Shankar didn't write each line of code nor did he define and design every bit and bob of UI, but it's easy to see his steady hand in Planning's evolution through the lens of customer success.IntrospectionEach and every one of EPM Conversations' guests is a joy for they are enthusiastic, open, thoughtful, visionary, and just about everything one might hope for in a colleague and a friend.  Shankar is all of things and yet he is different. By that I mean Shankar is quiet in the physical sense.  We struggled with Shankar's voice until we (we = Celvin) realized that is simply how Shankar talks; he is well worth listening to and the volume button on your phone isn't that hard to use.  Sometimes how we think is reflected in how we speak:  introspection, consideration, reasoning, and sensitivity don't need to be shouted to be understood.  Shankar is well worth a listen.Maybe the most interesting partAll of what I wrote about Shankar's professional interests hold true for his personal ones.  There's a wide range in all three areas of historical men, literature, and movies:  E.O. Wilson, , Gandhi, and Steve Jobs for the historical figures, in reading, Ayn Rand as a teenager, to E.F. Schumacher's  Small is Beautiful, John Kenneth Galbraith's  The Anatomy of Power, and Fritjof Capra's  The Tao of Physics, and finally a varied palette of movies in Shawshank Redemption,  The Bang Bang Club,  and Heat.This is, in case you've not been able to tell, one of my favorite episodes.Join us, won't you?

This week we speak with Bill Raduchel, who has served as a high-level executive and strategic adviser for organizations such as Sun Microsystems, AOL Time Warner, Xerox, McGraw-Hill, and the Salvation Army. Over half a century working with systems, software, and networks, he has remained at the forefront of the technology revolution in media, education, and corporate governance including recognition at Sun as CIO of the Year and the top CFO in the computer industry and at AOL as CTO of the year. He holds more than fifty issued patents as well as a PhD in econometrics from Harvard, where he taught for five years with John Kenneth Galbraith. He has been writing software in some form since he turned fifteen years old in 1961. He is also the author of The New Technology State. This book is about society—how it has changed and what technology is enabling us to do to ourselves.For more on Bubble Trouble, including transcripts of the show, visit us online at http://bubbletroublepodcast.comYou can learn more about Richard at https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-kramer-16306b2/More on Will Page at: https://pivotaleconomics.com(Times below correspond to the episode without considering any inserted advertisements.)In this episode of Bubble Trouble, hosts Richard Kramer and Will Page engage in a deep dive conversation with guest Bill Raduchel, exploring his extensive 60-year career transitioning from chemical engineering to economics, and eventually into the tech and media industries. Raduchel discusses his views on conventional wisdom, the evolution of technology, and its implications on economics, suggesting that technology has outpaced neoclassical economic theories due to its scaling properties and the significance of information. He shares insights from his book and experiences, addressing issues like tech debt, government staffing challenges in the face of rapid technological advancements, and the potential impact of AI on the future of software development. The episode covers the dynamic between big tech companies, government regulation, and the inevitable challenges posed by significant shifts towards AI and increased power demands. Raduchel also presents intriguing ideas on innovating government structures and discusses the practicalities of managing a rapidly evolving tech landscape.00:00 Welcome to Bubble Trouble: A Skeptical Conversation00:46 A Journey Through Tech and Economics06:23 The Evolution of Technology and Its Impact on Economics08:02 The Writing Process and Insights into Bill's Book11:21 Exploring the New Technology State and Government Challenges17:43 The Intricacies of Tech Talent and Government Staffing19:53 Tech Debt and the Challenges of Modernization25:55 The Global Tech Landscape: Government and Private Sector Dynamics25:55 Wrapping Up Part One and Teasing Part Two25:55 Simplifying UK Government Websites: A Double-Edged Sword25:55 The Dangers of Centralization and Cybersecurity26:10 Big Tech, Government, and the Quest for Regulation27:59 The Talent Gap in Government and Tech Regulation Challenges29:15 Innovative Solutions andthe Power of Decentralization30:15 The Role of Startups in Tech Innovation and Employee Motivation31:59 Google's Management Revolution: Lessons in Innovation34:45 The Complexities of Regulating Big Tech40:05 Navigating the Future of AI and Government Regulation42:19 Economics, Education, and the Future Workforce44:56 Smoke Signals: Warning Signs in Tech and Regulation50:06 Credits Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The American Dialect Society's 2023 word of the year? Enshittification. And our guest on this edition of Chicago Public Square Podcasts, Cory Doctorow, is the guy who coined it.Hear him define it—and his harrowing explanation of how he, one of the world's most tech-savvy authors and journalists, got scammed out of $8,000 before he could figure out what was going on. Also: The one “ironclad” rule you should follow to avoid a similar fate.And then, in this—our first conversation since this podcast from 2019—you'll learn, among many other things, why he thinks Amazon embodies enshittification and why so many major publishers refused to consider one of his books.Listen here, or on Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Amazon's Alexa-powered speakers or Apple Podcasts. Or if you prefer to read your podcasts, check out the transcript below.And if you're a completist, here's the original, mostly unedited, behind-the-scenes raw audio and video from the recording of this podcast via Zoom on YouTube.■ Enjoying these podcasts? Help keep them coming by joining The Legion of Chicago Public Squarians.■ And consider subscribing—free—to the daily Chicago Public Square email newsletter.Now, here's a roughly edited transcript of the interview, recorded March 7, 2024:[00:00:00] Charlie Meyerson: The American Dialect Society's 2023 Word of the Year? Enshittification. And our guest is the guy who coined it:[00:00:10] Cory Doctorow: What I think is going on is that this bad idea, right?—“Let's make things worse for our customers and our suppliers and better for ourselves”—is omnipresent in every firm.[00:00:21] CM: Cory Doctorow's a science fiction author, activist, and oh, I'd say a very active journalist with an email newsletter he publishes daily. His new book is The Bezzle, a high-tech thriller whose protagonist is … an accountant. More on that to come. I'm Charlie Meyerson with ChicagoPublicSquare.com, which, yes, is also an email newsletter. And this is a Chicago Public Square Podcast. Cory, it's great to see you again. What's new since the last time you and I recorded a podcast—almost exactly five years ago this month, back in 2019?[00:00:55] CD: Well, there was a pandemic, and you know, lucky for me the way that I cope with anxiety and stress is by writing. And so I wrote nine books, which are all coming out in a string, which has left me pretty busy—but in a good way. My friend Joey Dilla says, when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. So that's definitely where I'm at now.[00:01:18] CM: You have a daily email newsletter, you have a podcast, and you're on this nationwide book tour now, although you're home now in California. When do you rest, huh?[00:01:27] CD: Well, when I rest, I think about how terrible everything is, and so I try to do as little of that as possible. I mean, my family and I go off and do things from time to time. But, yeah, I have always written as a way of processing the world, and the world needs a lot of processing, so I'm doing a lot of writing.[00:01:48] CM: Did your, uh, restlessness contribute to an unfortunate happening that I think shocked a lot of readers on February 5, 2024, when it was the most-tapped item in Chicago Public Square? And I'm gonna quote you here, “I was robbed $8,000-plus worth of fraud before I figured out what happened, and then he tried to do it again a week later.” What happened?[00:02:11] CD: Yeah, that was while I was taking a rest as it happened. So for Christmas break, my wife and I, and then my daughter and my parents joined us, went to one of my favorite places in the world, New Orleans. So, we landed and needed cash. So I went to an ATM in the French Quarter, was like a, a chase ATM, and the whole transaction ran and then it threw an error and said, we can't give you your money. I was like, Ugh, what a pain. And later on, we were walking through town and we passed a credit union's ATM branch.I bank with a one-branch credit union. And most credit unions don't charge fees to each other. So I was like, oh, we'll just use this one. So I got some money up. A couple of days go by, it's time to leave, my folks have already gone, my wife and daughter are at the hotel, and I've gone out to get my very favorite sandwich just before we go. And my phone rings and it's the caller ID for my bank.And they say, “Mr. Doctorow, this is your bank calling. Uh, did you just try and spend a thousand dollars, uh, at an Apple store in New York?” And I was like, Ugh. One of those ATMs turned out to be dodgy. Either was the one that threw that error. And the reason was that it had, like, a skimmer mounted on it and they captured my card number.Or maybe it was that cheap Chinese ATM that the one-branch credit union I went to was using one or the other. I was definitely skimmed. So, you know, I make my peace with it and I start talking with this guy and you know, when you bank with a little one-branch credit union, they don't have their own after-hours fraud unit. They just contract out. And so these guys, you know, they're a little clumsy. They're a little amateurish. They ask you a bunch of questions your bank should know the answer to because they're not really your bank, they're their fraud center partner.I'm just going through this whole thing and it's going on and on, and I can see the store that sells my sandwich, and I can see the time ticking down.And finally, I said like, “Look, fella, you've already frozen the card, you've gotten most of the recent transaction data. I'm gonna go. When I get to the airport after I clear security, I'll call the bank's after-hours number,” and he got really surety and I was like, you're just gonna have to suck it up.This is how it goes. You know, whatever losses you're experiencing have nothing compared to the losses of me missing my flight with my wife and daughter. So go back and go to the, go to the airport and on the way I look at my phone and I find out that DC-737 Max Boeing Aircraft has just lost its door plug and all the 737 Maxes in the U.S., they've just been grounded. And we get to the airport and it's a zoo. Everyone's trying to rebook. By the time we get to the gate, we've got five minutes. 'Cause there's just the lines, you know. Massive.So I call the bank's after-hours number and they say, “Sorry, sir, you pressed the wrong button. This is lost cards. Fraud's a different number, but it sounds like you told the guy to freeze your cards. So it should be fine. Just come in on Monday and get your new card.”So, uh, Monday morning I print out the list of all the fraudulent transactions, about $8,000 worth, and I go into the bank. And the cool thing about the one-branch credit union is that the person who helped me out was a vice president there and she was pissed about this $8,000 fraud. 'Cause if Visa wouldn't cover it, then we'd have to eat it. You know—not me, but the credit union and, and so she's pissed. I'm pissed. And I say, “Look, you know, some of this has to do with that crummy after-hours fraud center you guys use. 'Cause I told them to freeze my card on Saturday and all this fraud took place on Sunday.”And she said, “Ugh, that's no good. I'm gonna call them up now and find out what's going on.” She comes back five minutes later and says, “They never called you on Saturday. That was the fraudster.”My card hadn't been skimmed at all. So it turns out that guy—I'm like thinking about all the information I gave him: “Well, I gave him my name, but that's in my Wikipedia entry. Gave him my date of birth; that's in my Wikipedia entry. I gave him where I live; that's in my Wikipedia entry. I gave him the last four digits of my credit card, and that's not an—and then I was like, “Wait a second. He didn't ask for the last four digits. He asked for the last seven digits”And I said to the vice president of the bank, “You guys only have a single VISA prefix, right? The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue?”She's like, yep.And I'm like, “OK. So I gave him the last seven digits and that was enough. Then he had the whole card number. And that's how they robbed me.”And he did it again the following Friday just before MLK weekend. And he called at 5:30 just before the bank's closed for a three-day weekend or just after the bank's closed for a three-day weekend, which is like the fraud golden hour.And, you know, I recognized who it was and, and he said, “You know, your car's been compromised. It's so and so.” And I'm like, “No, it hasn't. Card's still in my wallet. Hasn't left my wallet since I picked it up on Monday. Why don't you tell me what the after-hours number on my card is? 'Cause I'm looking at it now. You tell me what number I call back to speak to you.” And he is like, “Mr. Doctorow, this is not a game. I have told you that there is active fraud on your card. If you don't complete the anti-fraud protocol with me right now, then any losses will be yours to bear. The bank will not identify you.”I'm like, “That's adorable.” So I hang up on him and he calls me back and I'm like, oh, this guy is like definitely a fraud, right? Any doubt I had is immediately dispelled. So I just hung up with him and blocked his number. And then I called the risk management person at the bank when they reopened on Tuesday—'cause again, small bank, you get to talk to the person, and it turns out that there's some a leak somewhere in America's credit union supply chain. And somehow fraudsters are calling people knowing what bank they bank at, and knowing their phone number, neither of which is a matter of public record for me.And that was the convincer for me. So even though I go to Defcon, the big hacker conference every year, and I go to those social engineering competitions where people get in a little soundproof booth in front of an audience and try to trick store clerks into giving them sensitive information, usually the store management has given them permission to try this out.And I'm an expert on this stuff and I've written multiple novels about it. I got fooled. I got fooled using Swiss cheese security, which is where you have all these different layers of security. They've all got their little holes in them, like slices of Swiss cheese. Most of the time the holes don't overlap and there's no way to go all the way through the defenses.But I was on vacation on the day the DC-737 Max, you know, had its door plug fall outta the sky. An hour before I was leaving, right after I used not one but two dodgy ATMs in one of the property crime centers of the world. You know, as all of these things all lined up, all the holes of the Swiss cheese lined up, I got fooled.You know, there are lots of lessons here, but one of them is if you think you can't get fooled, that's the guarantee that someday you're gonna get fooled.[00:08:35] CM: Well, you're certainly one of the most tech-savvy humans I'm aware of in this world. Is there any lesson that you gather from this? For the rest of us?[00:08:43] CD: So the ironclad rule should be, and the rule that I normally follow is when your bank calls you, you say “Thank you very much. Do you have an operator number or anything so I can speak to you? 'Cause I'm gonna call back the number on my card.” That is complete proof against the fraud.Now, the banks could do something about this 'cause the reason that I didn't do it that day is 'cause I wanted to get that goddamn sandwich and calling and speaking to someone like a rando in their voicemail tree and trying to tell them, you know, like, give them all my account information, a lot of which I didn't even have 'cause it's just, it's in my laptop back in the hotel—going through all of that with a stranger would've eaten up all the time I had. So I was like, “Oh, I'll just deal with this guy. He knows my number, he knows my name, and he knows where I bank. It's clearly from my bank.”But if they were to call you up and say, “Mr. Doctorow, this is your bank, this is my operator number, or a unique five-digit code, or whatever, write it down. Call the number on your card. And give that number to the interactive voice response system. The bank is gonna pay me to sit here idle for 15 minutes waiting for you so you can find a quiet place to sit down and call, and you will speak directly to me. We won't have to go through a long process where you have to get me up to speed on the thing I'm getting you up to speed on, and we'll just, we'll just make it work.”You know, we haven't found out yet whether or not Visa's gonna honor this claim. But if my bank loses $8,000 this year because of me—and it's a credit union, so I'm a member of it, right? I'm co-owner of this bank, as are all the other customers of it—that's all the money they're gonna make for me this year, including the interest on my mortgage, right?Like they've just zeroed out one of their most valuable customers. Paying the after-hours fraud center or an in-house fraud center to have a little bit more idle time at the margin so that you can have a higher fidelity of anti-fraud is something absolutely worth it. And you know, this is emblematic in some ways of what happens when you squeeze all the slack out of the system—is that you kind of groom people to cut corners because they know the process sucks.So I think that it could be improved, and you know, clearly a lot of the blame here is on me, but not all of it.[00:11:01] CM: You're generous to accept even some of the responsibility.[00:11:04] CD: Well, I should have known to call them back. But I didn't.You know, I spoke with that risk management officer, and I was like, “Let's go through the way your interactive voice response system characterizes each of the options when you call after hours,” because I had missed the anti-fraud. 'Cause it's not called “anti-fraud.” Like “If you suspect fraud on your card, press 2.” It was something else. Right? It was like, “If you have a problem with your account,” and I was like, “That's something else.” I didn't even press it.So we discussed new wording and they're gonna put new wording in. Also, I'm speaking at DEFCON this year again. This year's theme is “Enshittification,” and so they're giving me a keynote slot, and that always comes with a bunch of free speaker's badges. What I usually do when I speak there is I go to the people in line waiting to buy a badge and I just pick five people and give them badges. But I'm saving one for my bank's risk management officer, and she's gonna get in for free and she can go to those social engineering competitions.[00:12:00] CM: Well, I've fallen in love with this word that you coined, enshittification, and I need to note for our listeners that there are two T's in the middle of enshittification.CD: Mm-hmm.CM: How did you decide on two T's?[00:12:13] CD: You know, the first time I used it, I only put in one. CM: Did you? Okay. CD: Two T's is better. CM: You think so?CD: It makes shit an infix and it makes -tification the suffix instead of -ification.CM: OK. CD: So en is the prefix, shit is the infix, -tification is the suffix, and that second T is doing some work there. The American Dialect Society, when they gave the word the honor—and it's not just their word of the year, it's like their digital word of the year, and, I don't know, like their sweary word of the year; it, like, took top honors in a bunch of categories—they are actual cunning linguists, and they went ahead and dissected the word and figured out what all the things meant. I couldn't diagram a sentence if you paid me.[00:13:01] CM: I knew you'd have a reason for the double-T, and thank you for fulfilling my expectations. Yeah. But let's back up for people. I imagine there are a few who do not yet know about enshittification.CD: Sure.CM: What is it? [00:13:15] CD: It's a term I coined to describe a specific pathology of late-stage internet platforms. Platforms are the unlikely endemic form of the internet. You know, for a medium that was supposed to disintermediate everything, the fact that the biggest form of business on the internet is intermediaries is pretty wild. And—if you wanna think of it as, like, a pathology—it describes the natural history, like what happens when a platform unifies and it has a very specific kind of decaying model where first it allocates value to end-users; those end-users flock in and get locked in somehow, so that when the company then starts to take away some of that value to give it to business customers, the users don't leave, can't leave. Then those business customers come in because of the attractive proposition that's being made to them. And then they get locked in because they're there for the end users who are also locked in. And then once everyone's locked in, all the value is drawn out and given to the firm, the platform. And then the whole thing turns into a pile of shit, hence enshittification.Um, but it also describes like the underlying mechanism, like what's going on inside the firm? Why are digital firms so able to enshittify? And it's because digital is very flexible. I had someone email me this morning and say, well, Panera Bread is steaming towards, its IPO and there's this investigative report that says that they've cut back on their ingredients, their ingredients aren't very good anymore.That's enshittification too, and it's not quite. Because enshittification involves this process I call twiddling. It's when the platform can change the business rules from moment to moment. So a really good example is an Uber driver who's the business customer in that two-sided market riders and drivers.So Uber practices this thing called algorithmic wage discrimination, which is a violation of labor law that they say doesn't violate labor law. 'Cause they do it with an app. And what they do is if you are a driver who's selective about which rides you take, if you only take the highest dollar value rides, then each ride that's offered to you comes at a higher dollar value than it would if you were less selective.The less selective you become, the lower the return per mile and minute becomes in small increments that are very hard to notice, and if you become more selective, they toggle back up again. And so the rate is going up and down and up and down in response to your perceived selectivity in a fully automated way.And this is a kind of game of exhaustion because at a certain point, you take your eye off the ball and you start taking rides that are worse and then the rides get worse and worse and worse. Meanwhile, you're jettisoning those things that you used to do as side hustles that let you be more selective.That's what it means when you're taking worse rides as you're taking more rides. And at a certain point, you're just like fully locked in. You have a car lease to meet because you've bought a car just to drive for Uber. You've got some other overheads that you're trying to meet, and your wages sunk to the very bottom that algorithmic wage discrimination is a term vena dubo coined is a thing that Panera Bread would love to do.It's a thing that like. You know, the black-hearted coal bosses of Tennessee Ernie Ford songs would love to do. But you know, like doing that manually with an army of guys in green eyeshades is not practical. And digital firms can alter the business logic from second to second in ways that offline firms or firms that have some physical component struggle to do.And so that's the underlying mechanism. And then the next question is, why is it happening to everyone all at once? Why are all these platforms enshittifying now? That's kind of the epidemiological question, right? Where's the contagion coming from? Because when a lot of firms start doing something all at once.In the same way, it's unlikely to be related to something endogenous to the firm. It's not just that like a bunch of people had the same bad idea at the same time in all these companies, right? What I think is going on is that this bad idea, right? “Let's make things worse for our customers and our suppliers and better for ourselves” is omnipresent—in every firm, right? Every firm is trying to find the equilibrium between apportioning value to say employees or suppliers and to customers and to themselves. And there are some constraints, right? One is competition. If you know, if you offer a substandard product and there's somewhere else your customers can go, they'll go there.If you pay substandard wages and there's somewhere else your employees can go, they'll go there. You know, all of this stuff about “Nobody wants to work” is hilarious because I guarantee you they'll work if you offer double the wage, right? “Nobody wants to work at the wage you're offering” is like, “Nobody wants to sell me a plane ticket at what I think it's worth.”That sounds like a me problem, not like an American Airlines problem. Right. So, you know, the competition acts as this check on firms, but competition has been in free fall for 40 years. And I think that across the threshold, right? We allow companies to buy their major rivals. We allow them to engage in predatory pricing, to exclude new market entrants.We allow them to buy nascent competitors before they can grow to be threats and then extinguish them. We allow them to do all the above, right? You have Amazon, which tried to buy Diapers.com—Diapers.com, which, you know, as is implied by the name, was an e-commerce platform that sold diapers. They were doing a really good business and they didn't wanna sell to Amazon.So Amazon first tried to do an anti-competitive acquisition, right? To take a firm that was its rival in a certain vertical and, and buy it. So the firm wouldn't do that. So then they did predatory pricing. And buying the nascent rival and predatory pricing would've been illegal until the Carter administration. Carter removed some Jenga blocks from the antitrust tower. Reagan started pulling them out by the fistful, and every administration since has lowered the amount of antitrust enforcement we do—to the point where now companies can just get away with murder. And so Amazon said, all right, we're gonna start selling diapers below cost. They sold diapers below cost to the tune of a hundred million dollars in losses—which, put Diapers.com outta business. Right? So that's predatory pricing. Then they acquired Diapers.com at pennies in the dollar. So that's the anti-competitive acquisition, and then they shut them down. That's, a catch and kill, right? All of this was, is illegal under the black letter of competition law.None of it was enforced against. Amazon also derived a secondary benefit from this. And that secondary benefit was informing every other source of capital that if you invest in a company that competes with Amazon, the best you can hope for is an acquisition. But what's probably gonna happen is you're just gonna get driven outta business.It's what venture capitalists called the kill Zone, and it's why people don't compete with Amazon. And so we lost the constraint of competition and we lost the constraint of regulation. Because when a sector dwindles to a handful of firms, they find it very easy to agree on a single lobbying position, and they can make their will felt in Congress, in the expert agencies and in court, and they can get away with whatever they want.[00:20:25] CM: What is your cure for enshittification?[00:20:27] CD: So if you take each of these constraints, right—the first one being competition—restoring that constraint will reduce the power of firms to enshittify, right? If they have to worry about you quitting or leaving as a customer, then they have to treat you better. And if they don't get the message, then you can go somewhere that treats you better.So we are in a historic moment for antitrust enforcement. As we record this today, the European Union has just started enforcing the Digital Markets Act. Here in the United States, we have generationally significant leaders at the Department of Justice Antitrust Division—with Jonathan Kanter at the Federal Trade Commission with Chair Lina Khan, and at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau with Rohit Chopra.No coincidence that there is a bipartisan effort to slash all of their budgets working their way through the mini budget right now. Right? But reinvigorating antitrust is a way to restore the disciplinary power of competition. It also restores the power of regulators because it's not just antitrust that regulators do—it's everything.And if you want a company not to rip you off, say the way Amazon does. So if you go to Amazon, you click the first link on an Amazon search, on average, you pay a 29% premium relative to the best item. 'Cause Amazon makes $38 billion a year selling payola the right to make the top search result.If you walked into a Corner store or Target and said, “Sell me your cheapest batteries,” and they sold you batteries that were 30% more expensive than their cheapest batteries, That would be fraud. Amazon's regulatory capture allows it to say, “It's not fraud when we do it with an app,” just like Uber says, “It's not a labor violation when we do it with an app” or Google says “It's not a privacy violation when we do it with an app.” Make those companies more fragmented and you starve them of the capital they need to suborn their regulators, and you also introduce a collective action problem where they just become too many companies to agree on what it is they're gonna tell their regulators.CM: Are you available for federal office?CD: Uh, no. I wrote nine books during lockdown and I just agreed to write a 10th one about unification. I'm busy till 2027.[00:22:35] CM: Cory and I have something else in common—decades apart from one another. We've both been contributors to the Venerable Journal of Science Fiction Locusts, although my main contribution consisted of a series of cartoons I drew as a teenager. What do you make of the state of science fiction these days? Text, TV, motion pictures.[00:22:53] CD: Well, it's certainly at an interesting moment. I mean, there's one way in which the most salient fact is that it's dominated by five companies—five major publishers that sell to one national brick-and-mortar chain owned by a private equity fund, Barnes and Noble; and one rapacious monopolist e-commerce platform, Amazon.Ninety percent of the audiobooks are controlled by Amazon subsidiary Audible. There's a single national distributor, which is Ingram. All the other distributors are owned by the Big Five publishers. So I published a book in 2020 with my colleague Rebecca Giblin about how monopolists rip off creative workers.None of the Big Five publishers wanted to publish it 'cause it was really critical of them. So we published with a wonderful independent press called Beacon that's 150 years old, owned by the Unitarian Universalists. Albert Einstein once very famously said, “If there is hope in this world, it the Unitarian-Universalists and Beacon Press” (Editor's note: Not quite, but not far off in spirit.) Beacon is distributed by Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the world who got a dollar every time we sold a book explaining why they were an evil monopolist.Right? So. That's one way in which science fiction is just on the ropes, right? You have four major studios, thankfully, uh, thanks to our friends in the federal government, Paramount did not just sell to Disney, but they're looking for another suitor. And so, you know, in every way we are struggling.You have HBO Warner, which is cutting shows they have—and not because no one wants to see them, but because David Zaslav—the villain from central casting who runs that business—has figured out that he can get more in a tax credit for writing off a show than he can for releasing it—taking stuff that people, like, miss their parents' funeral to work on and just flushing it down the toilet. So in those ways it's very bad. In terms of the work being produced, it's never been better. I mean, we're in an amazing moment for the field. People are writing incredible things—notwithstanding the massive scandal at the Hugo Awards last year, which is a whole different story about the difficulties of hosting the Hugos in China and the mistakes that the non-Chinese Hugo administrators made.[00:25:07] CM: I missed that. Give us the short version of that.[00:25:09] CD: Oh my gosh. So after the Hugo Awards are awarded as you leave, they're handing out sheets of photocopied paper with all the vote tallies and nomination tallies—that didn't happen at the WorldCon China, which was the first ever held in China, which has more science fiction fans than all the rest of the world combined, and, you know, more than deserves a world con. Instead, the committee that oversaw the Hugos waited until the very last minute permitted by the bylaws to release the numbers, whereupon everyone realized that something was up. And it turns out that they had unilaterally disqualified innumerable works both Chinese and also a number of works by American and European Chinese writers of Chinese descent. And they had done this—it transpired after lots of memos leaked and so on 'cause they stonewalled when people asked about this—they'd done this not because anyone in China had asked them to, but because they thought that the Chinese government would get upset if they didn't.And they went so far as to assemble dossiers on people nominated for awards and disqualify them if they thought they had been to Tibet. It turns out the person that they disqualified for having traveled to Tibet, had traveled to Nepal, which is not Tibet …CM: Easy mistake to make.CD: These were Americans and Canadians, not Chinese fans. And they disgrace themselves. They disgrace the award. The people who won the award now have an asterisk next to their name. When they were fighting for their reputations and stonewalling, they were gratuitously insulting to these writers, most of them of Chinese descent. You know, Chinese Americans primarily when they question this and they are fans of very longstanding people who have volunteered to run this award for decades.And this is the way they're going to end their careers in fandom. It's quite sad.[00:27:05] CM: One of the things Cory told me, back when we talked in a previous podcast in 2019, was that one way to spot terrible technology in our future would be to take a look at what the powers that be are foisting on prisoners. And now five years later, his new book The Bezzle offers a look at just that. But why did you set it to open in 2006?[00:27:28] CD: Well, for that you need to understand these nine books I wrote during lockdown. So one of them was a book called Red Team Blues, and the conceit behind Red Team Blues is, it's like a detective thriller about a hard-charging, two-fisted but lovable forensic accountant—67 years old, spent 40 years in Silicon Valley undoing every bit of mischief that a tech bro ever thought to do, finding all the money that people use spreadsheets to hide. And the conceit was, it's like the last volume of a beloved detective series you have read for 25 years and grown up with.Except I'm not gonna bother writing the other books; it's just the last one. And it was pretty successful. I sent it to my editor who I love dearly. I met him on a bulletin board system when I was 17 years old. He's edited all my novels, and he will not think that I am being overly critical of him when I tell you that he's not the world's most reliable email correspondent.And so when I sent him the manuscript after finishing the first draft, I finished it in six weeks from the first word to the last. In that first draft, I sent it to him and I expected months to go by. And instead the next morning there was an email waiting for me that was just, that was a fucking ride.Whoa. And he bought three of them. And there's a problem because this is the last adventure of Martin Hench forensic accountant. There is some precedent for bringing a detective out of retirement. Very famously, Conan Doyle brings Sherlock Holmes back over Rickenbacker Falls because Queen Victoria offered him a knighthood.My editor is a very powerful man in New York publishing. He is a vice president in the McMillan company, but he cannot knight me, so I was not gonna bring poor old Marty out of retirement. And so I had to come up with something else. And it occurred to me that I could write these books out of order. I could write them in any sequence.He's like the Zelig of high-tech finance fraud. He's been at every place where someone ripped someone else off with a computer. If I wrote them out of order, I wouldn't have any continuity problems 'cause when the series goes backwards, you're not foreshadowing—you're backshadowing. And the more detail you throw in, the more of like a, you know, absolutely premeditated motherfucker you appear to be—even if you're just winging it.So this is the second book. The first one is set in the 2020s. It's a cryptocurrency heist novel. This one is about the era where Yahoo is buying and destroying every successful Web 2.0 company. It's a time I know very well. I was there. I founded a startup that, you know, Microsoft tried to buy—that our investors then stole from the founders and then the deal fell through and the chaos that ensued.And so I've lived through it. And so it was a moment I really wanted to write about in particular because. It's the moment that represents the time between the dot-com bubble bursting and the subprime bubble bursting, and it's this period that you can think of as the bezzle. The bezzle, B-E-Z-Z-L-E, not B-E-Z-E-L.Not the rectangle around your phone screen, but this term that was coined by John Kenneth Galbraith to describe what he calls the magic interval. After the con artist has your money, but before you know it's a con. And in that moment, Galbraith says everybody feels richer, everybody is happier. The national stock of happiness goes up for so long as the bezzle is going.The longer the bezzle goes, the more unhappiness debt you accumulate because the more money gets pumped into the fraud. Right? And so the irony of the bezzle is that the people who are in it don't want you to rupture it, even if that will save them from losing everything, because it's when the unhappiness starts. It's like continuing to drink so that you don't get hungover.The more you do that, the worse the hangover becomes, and that moment, those charmed and difficult years from 2002 to 2006, are really an ideal time to tell a story that I think of as Panama Papers fanfic.[00:31:49] CM: The Bezzle has a few Chicago connections. One is a name well known to people in Chicago: Wrigley. Give our listeners a taste of how that comes into play.[00:31:59] CD: Yeah, so that same editor of mine, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who I love dearly but is not the world's most reliable email correspondent—when he edited my first novel, now almost 25 years ago, he gave me this piece of advice with his editorial note that I've never forgotten: He said a science fiction novel has the world and the character, and they're like a big gear and a little gear. And the point is to turn the world all the way around so the reader can see what's going on in the world.And the way you do that is by having the little gear, the character, turn around as many times as it takes to spin the world one complete revolution. And the teeth have to match for that to happen. The world has to be a macrocosm of the character. And the character has to be a microcosm of the world. And when the books don't work, check your micro-macro correspondences, see if they're, if the one is the miniature of the other.So one of the things that I do in these novels about scams is I try to start with a small scam that's a kind of microcosm of the big scams. So the big scam in this book is about prison tech, but the small scam in this book is a Ponzi scheme and it's set on Catalina Island, and Catalina is a place I've fallen in love with since I moved to Southern California.And it's for people who don't know, it's this kind of storybook island across the channel from Long Beach. It's the deepest channel in the world. And this island was owned by the Wrigley family. It's where the Cubs used to have their spring training.It's where Marilyn Monroe was a child bride. It's where the CIA was founded. It was home of the largest ballroom in America and every week the most popular dance music program in the world used to broadcast live from high atop Avalon on beautiful Catalina Island. It's home to—originally—13 male bison that got loose after shooting a Zane Gray movie. But then old man Wrigley decided it would be un-Christian to have 13 bachelors. So he imported 13 cows for them—not understanding that, uh, bison form harems. And they have ever since struggled with an out-of-control bison population.It's a remarkable place and one of its peccadillos leftover from Old Man Wrigley is that when he gave the island to a land trust, he decreed that there would never be a fast-food chain on the island, which, you know, whatever. In terms of folly pursued by billionaires, it barely registers. I'm not a big fast-food eater myself, but for the people on the island, fast food has become a kind of forbidden fruit.And if you go to the little K to 12 school and you go for an away game with your football team, everyone expects you to bring back a sack of sliders because everyone wants to try, you know, the fast food they can't get on the island. And so I made up a little Ponzi scheme involving hamburgers brought over from the mainland and flash-frozen … to be traded as futures in the same way that housing and luxury tower blocks—only incidentally, a place where someone might live—is primarily a source of leverage and a safe deposit box in the sky, which, you know, in the runup to the 2008 crisis was, you know, often bought and sold several times before it was built, had multiple, uh, collateralized debt obligations and synthetic collateralized debt obligations hanging off of it and could be inflated into paper worth 10 or 20 times its value, which is exactly what happens to these deep-frozen hamburgers on the island.Thanks to a wicked real estate baron, who it turns out is doing the same thing with real estate as he is with hamburgers and who becomes so enamored of his own cleverness that he begins to relish the moment when the whole thing bursts and the island's economy tanks. And that's where Marty Hench and his friend come in and they decide to do a controlled demolition of this Ponzi before it can take down the island.[00:36:16] CM: You know, as I read The Bezzle, I thought. Boy, there's a lot of food in this book. How important is food and cooking in your life? Or was that just you writing about people for whom it is a big deal?[00:36:28] CD: I mean, I love to cook, but Marty Hench is a better cook than I am. I love books that have delicious food in them. And I love books that have delicious food that's well appreciated. You know, the Hemingway hamburger of, you know beef, salt, pepper, turn it once, don't touch it again, is actually pretty goddamn good advice for making a hamburger. I put a little butter in the pan depending on the fat content in your ground beef, but it's not bad.I find these books to be a really fun way to kind of do the adult version of what I did in the Little Brother books. So in the Little Brother books, it's kind of like that cool uncle or your friend's older brother puts an arm around your shoulder and says, “Lemme tell you how the world really works, kid.”And just opens your eyes. And these books are more like, let me tell you how the worst things in the world are done. And counter sinking that with the great pleasures of life, I think makes these books more balanced.[00:37:41] CM: Your books were some of the first that I read on mobile devices—a Blackberry in my case—and I know you've continued to champion that technology. Digital rights management—DRM, the fences around the use of people's electronic content—has been a longstanding concern of Cory's. How're we doing?[00:38:01] CD: Well, again, back to that, you know, generational moment for tech and antitrust. There is, for the first time in the whole time that I've been working on this, some real energy to do something about it—some sense that it is iniquitous.So, to give you a sense of how screwed up this whole system is: In 1998, Bill Clinton signed this law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Section 1201 of that makes it a felony to traffic in, quote, a circumvention device for effective means of access controls to copyrighted work.So if there's a thing that stops you from accessing a copyrighted work and someone makes a tool that allows you to access it. That tool is illegal and the person who who gives it to you as a felon can go to prison for five years and pay a $500,000 fine for a first offense. So what that means, very practically speaking, is if I want my audiobook sold on Audible, which requires digital rights management—a lock on every book that ensures that it can only be played on a device that Amazon has approved of—then I can't leave Amazon and take you with me. If I decide that Amazon is abusing me, and they really do abuse their suppliers, especially in the audiobook world.There was a ghastly scandal last year called Audiblegate, which involved at least $100 million in wage theft from independent audiobook authors that Amazon did with a scummy accounting trick. So if I go, look, I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna take my readers with me, and I'm gonna give them a tool so they can unlock their books, take them to whatever app the next store I decide to sell on uses, I commit a felony. Not only do I commit that felony, but the felony carries a harsher penalty than you would pay if you were to go to a pirate website and download the book. But it's also like a higher penalty than you would pay if you were to go into a truck stop and shoplift the CD of the book, and it's probably a higher penalty than you would pay if you stuck up the truck that delivered the CDs and stole the truck.Right. So for me to allow you to access the book that I wrote maybe that I financed the audiobook for, that I read the audiobook for is a crime that exceeds the penalties then that you would pay for even really serious property crimes involving other people's property. And this just gives Amazon enormous leverage.People are getting sick of this in Oregon. They've just passed a right-to-repair bill. That prohibits companies from using this technology to lock parts to their devices. So if you take a screen outta one iPhone and put it in another iPhone, right? If you're an independent repair shop, and Apple won't sell you parts, but you're buying broken phones and harvesting dead parts out of them, you have to do something called parts pairing, where you enter an unlock key, and the same law—this law that prevents you from unlocking your audiobooks—also prevents someone from giving you a tool to do the parts pairing. And so the screen won't work on the phone. Oregon's just banned using that technology, so they can't overturn this law. It's a federal law, but they can ban you from using technology that implicates it.Um, I think that. You know, we are in a moment where enough is enough. People are getting really pissed off about it. They're no longer getting duped by the story that this stuff is anti-piracy technology that stops people from stealing from you. And they're realizing that the thing that you have to worry about is not that your readers might.Read or listen to your book the wrong way, but rather that the companies that distribute your books might rip you and your readers off that you are class allies in the fight against monopolies.[00:41:55] CM: Back to your daily newsletter, in which you deal with issues like this every day. It reads typographically like an email newsletter circa the turn of the century. You run full web addresses …CD: Mm-hmm.CM: … URLs. You don't hyperlink words or phrases. Why is that?[00:42:15] CD: So I want it to be future-proof. So I want you to take something out of your inbox from 20 years ago that I wrote and copy and paste it into some other format that doesn't exist yet. I. And for you to be able to know what all those links were.So there's no tracking redirect, you know, like the t.co redirect that Twitter uses or I think it's HREF that Tumblr uses, and so on. They all have their own little redirects. I want the link to be live. I want you to be able to see the semantics of the link before you copy it or before you click on it.I want you to be able to see whose link you're going to without having to sort of glance around somewhere on the screen for a link preview. And I want you to be able to copy and paste it between programs—even programs that don't carry over the style information or the link information—and have it all carry over.And so that's why putting it all in that plain text format is, is so important to me. I do every now and again, shorten a URL if it's very, very long. So sometimes I'll, I'll link a gift link from the New York Times, from my subscription to the New York Times in the thing. And those NYT gift links are obnoxiously long, like hundreds of characters.So I have my own URL shortener, and so I'll sometimes do a little URL shortener in there, but for the most part, I don't shorten URLs.CM: Closing thoughts, Cory?CD: We're emerging from a 40-year neoliberal period incubated at the University of Chicago—thank you very much— …CM: Yeah, sorry about that.CD: … Where we only talked about economics and never about power. I got an email from someone yesterday saying that it's not price gouging. If profits go up when gas price inputs go up at the pump, right? If the cost of oil goes up, then the cost of gas goes up because the investors, I.Want the same margin. So if gas is a dollar a gallon coming into the gas station and they're getting a 50% margin, then it'll be a dollar 50. If it's $2 a gallon, then they'll get $3 and so on. And that's not price gouging, that's just maintaining a constant a constant margin. The thing is no

Current Affairs magazine's "House Economist" Robert Larson joins Ben Burgis to continue the weekly series of Thursday Night Debate Breakdowns by watching left-liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith's 1981 appearance on William F. Buckley's Firing Line. (There might also be a surprise bonus mini-breakdown at the beginning of the show.)Read Rob at Current Affairs:https://www.currentaffairs.org/author/rob-larsonFollow Rob on Twitter: @IronicProfessorFollow Ben on Twitter: @BenBurgisFollow GTAA on Twitter: @Gtaa_ShowBecome a GTAA Patron and receive numerous benefits ranging from patron-exclusive postgames every Monday night to our undying love and gratitude for helping us keep this thing going:patreon.com/benburgisRead the weekly philosophy Substack:benburgis.substack.comVisit benburgis.com

John Kenneth Galbraith, économiste réputé pour son franc-parler, disait que la fonction principale de la Bourse était de séparer les imbéciles de leur argent. Le dernier sondage de la banque ING auprès des épargnants belges ne fera sourire personne. Il montre que pas moins de 40% des jeunes de moins de 35 ans ont déjà été arnaqués et le plus souvent via des plateformes on line qui leur ont fait donc miroiter des rendements de 10% minimum, qui plus est garantis. Ce sondage montre que pas moins de 40% des jeunes investisseurs de moins de 35 ans ont déjà été arnaqués, le plus souvent via des plateformes on line qui leur ont fait miroiter des rendements de 10% minimum et qui plus est, garantis. Mes confrères de la presse écrite se sont étonné que des jeunes puissent tomber dans des pièges aussi grossiers. 10% de rendement et en plus garanti. Mais c'est faire injure aux jeunes de penser qu'ils sont plus stupides que leurs aînés en matière financière. Hélas, toutes les classes d'âge sans exception, restent très naïves. Je rappelle que l'escroquerie, tout de même la plus importante de l'histoire, a été réalisée par Bernard Madoff qui avait réussi à berner les membres bien informés pourtant de la belle société new yorkaise, avec des rendements de 11% annuels et qui tombaient chaque année avec une régularité de métronome suisse. Des hommes d'affaires réputés, des acteurs confirmés et même un Prix Nobel de la paix ont cru aux belles paroles et aux chiffres du passé de notre ami Bernard Madoff. Jusqu'au jour où on a découvert que c'était l'argent des nouveaux clients qui servait à payer le rendement offert aux anciens clients, une arnaque vieille comme les pyramides. Aujourd'hui, c'est souvent par les cryptomonnaies que l'escroquerie vient. Elle est facile d'ailleurs à vendre. L'an dernier, le Bitcoin a tout de même grimpé de 160% en 2023 et c'est donc tentant de se dire qu'il est possible de devenir riche rapidement. Et les jeunes sont des proies faciles via les réseaux sociaux, surtout si on ne leur dit pas qu'un an auparavant, la même cryptomonnaie avait chuté de 60%… --- La chronique économique d'Amid Faljaoui, tous les jours à 8h30 et à 17h30. Merci pour votre écoute Pour écouter Classic 21 à tout moment : www.rtbf.be/classic21 Retrouvez tous les épisodes de La chronique économique sur notre plateforme Auvio.be : https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/802 Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America's Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder that all that glisters is not gold. He picked on traits of the waning landed class of Americans and showed how the new moneyed class was adopting these in ways that led to greater waste throughout society. He called these conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption and he developed a critique of a system that favoured profits for owners without regard to social good. The Theory of the Leisure Class was a best seller and funded Veblen for the rest of his life, and his ideas influenced the New Deal of the 1930s. Since then, an item that becomes more desirable as it becomes more expensive is known as a Veblen good. With Matthew Watson Professor of Political Economy at the University of WarwickBill Waller Professor of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New YorkAndMary Wrenn Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West of EnglandProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist who Unmade Economics (Harvard University Press, 2021)John P. Diggins, Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton University Press, 1999)John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Seabury Press, 1978)John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Penguin, 1999) Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Penguin, 2000), particularly the chapter ‘The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen'Ken McCormick, Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen's Economics (Cambria Press, 2006)Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman, The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen (Yale University Press, 2012)Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (William Morrow & Company, 1999)Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (first published 1899; Oxford University Press, 2009)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (first published 1904; Legare Street Press, 2022)Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (first published 2018; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (first published 1923; Routledge, 2017)Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (Penguin, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Complete Works (Musaicum Books, 2017)Charles J. Whalen (ed.), Institutional Economics: Perspective and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Routledge, 2021)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America's Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder that all that glisters is not gold. He picked on traits of the waning landed class of Americans and showed how the new moneyed class was adopting these in ways that led to greater waste throughout society. He called these conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption and he developed a critique of a system that favoured profits for owners without regard to social good. The Theory of the Leisure Class was a best seller and funded Veblen for the rest of his life, and his ideas influenced the New Deal of the 1930s. Since then, an item that becomes more desirable as it becomes more expensive is known as a Veblen good. With Matthew Watson Professor of Political Economy at the University of WarwickBill Waller Professor of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New YorkAndMary Wrenn Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West of EnglandProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist who Unmade Economics (Harvard University Press, 2021)John P. Diggins, Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton University Press, 1999)John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Seabury Press, 1978)John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Penguin, 1999) Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Penguin, 2000), particularly the chapter ‘The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen'Ken McCormick, Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen's Economics (Cambria Press, 2006)Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman, The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen (Yale University Press, 2012)Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (William Morrow & Company, 1999)Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (first published 1899; Oxford University Press, 2009)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (first published 1904; Legare Street Press, 2022)Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (first published 2018; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (first published 1923; Routledge, 2017)Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (Penguin, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Complete Works (Musaicum Books, 2017)Charles J. Whalen (ed.), Institutional Economics: Perspective and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Routledge, 2021)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America's Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder that all that glisters is not gold. He picked on traits of the waning landed class of Americans and showed how the new moneyed class was adopting these in ways that led to greater waste throughout society. He called these conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption and he developed a critique of a system that favoured profits for owners without regard to social good. The Theory of the Leisure Class was a best seller and funded Veblen for the rest of his life, and his ideas influenced the New Deal of the 1930s. Since then, an item that becomes more desirable as it becomes more expensive is known as a Veblen good. With Matthew Watson Professor of Political Economy at the University of WarwickBill Waller Professor of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New YorkAndMary Wrenn Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West of EnglandProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist who Unmade Economics (Harvard University Press, 2021)John P. Diggins, Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton University Press, 1999)John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Seabury Press, 1978)John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Penguin, 1999) Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Penguin, 2000), particularly the chapter ‘The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen'Ken McCormick, Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen's Economics (Cambria Press, 2006)Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman, The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen (Yale University Press, 2012)Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (William Morrow & Company, 1999)Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (first published 1899; Oxford University Press, 2009)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (first published 1904; Legare Street Press, 2022)Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (first published 2018; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (first published 1923; Routledge, 2017)Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (Penguin, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Complete Works (Musaicum Books, 2017)Charles J. Whalen (ed.), Institutional Economics: Perspective and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Routledge, 2021)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America's Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder that all that glisters is not gold. He picked on traits of the waning landed class of Americans and showed how the new moneyed class was adopting these in ways that led to greater waste throughout society. He called these conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption and he developed a critique of a system that favoured profits for owners without regard to social good. The Theory of the Leisure Class was a best seller and funded Veblen for the rest of his life, and his ideas influenced the New Deal of the 1930s. Since then, an item that becomes more desirable as it becomes more expensive is known as a Veblen good. With Matthew Watson Professor of Political Economy at the University of WarwickBill Waller Professor of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New YorkAndMary Wrenn Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West of EnglandProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist who Unmade Economics (Harvard University Press, 2021)John P. Diggins, Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton University Press, 1999)John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Seabury Press, 1978)John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Penguin, 1999) Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Penguin, 2000), particularly the chapter ‘The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen'Ken McCormick, Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen's Economics (Cambria Press, 2006)Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman, The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen (Yale University Press, 2012)Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (William Morrow & Company, 1999)Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (first published 1899; Oxford University Press, 2009)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (first published 1904; Legare Street Press, 2022)Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (first published 2018; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (first published 1923; Routledge, 2017)Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (Penguin, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Complete Works (Musaicum Books, 2017)Charles J. Whalen (ed.), Institutional Economics: Perspective and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Routledge, 2021)

He is a writer, an actor, a poet, a storyteller, an anti-storyteller -- and he cares about both the world outside and the one inside. Danish Husain joins Amit Varma in episode 359 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about his life and learnings. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Danish Husain on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Wikipedia and IMDb. 2. TheHoshrubaRepertory, Qissebaazi and Poetrification. 3. Danish Husain interviewed by Irfan for Jashn-e-Rekhta. 4. The art of storytelling -- Danish Husain interviewed by Purva Naresh. 5. 'Becoming the story when performing it' -- Danish Husain interviewed by Roanna Gonsalves. 6. The 27 Club. 7. Self-Portrait — AK Ramanujan. 8. The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter -- Mark Strand. 9. Collected Poems — Mark Strand. 10. Man's Search For Meaning -- Viktor E Frankl. 11. The Importance of Satya — Episode 241 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Uday Bhatia). 12. Amitava Kumar Finds the Breath of Life — Episode 265 of The Seen and the Unseen. 13. Aadha Gaon — Rahi Masoom Raza. 14. Out of Place: A Memoir -- Edward Said. 15. The Incredible Insights of Timur Kuran — Episode 349 of The Seen and the Unseen. 16. Private Truths, Public Lies — Timur Kuran. 17. Varun Grover Is in the House — Episode 292 of The Seen and the Unseen. 18. The Gita Press and Hindu Nationalism — Episode 139 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshaya Mukul). 19. Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India — Akshaya Mukul. 20. Where Have All The Leaders Gone? — Amit Varma. 21. Santosh Desai is Watching You -- Episode 356 of The Seen and the Unseen. 22. The Life and Times of Nilanjana Roy — Episode 284 of The Seen and the Unseen. 23. Bombay--London--New York -- Amitava Kumar. 24. Fighting Fake News — Episode 133 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pratik Sinha). 25. Sample SSR conspiracy theory: He's alive! 26. Life is Elsewhere -- Milan Kundera. 27. The Four Quadrants of Conformism — Paul Graham. 28. Ignaz Semmelweis on Britannica and Wikipedia. 29. India's Tryst With Pandemics -- Episode 205 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Chinmay Tumbe). 30. Age of Pandemics — Chinmay Tumbe. 31. Kashi Ka Assi — Kashinath Singh. 32. A Meditation on Form — Amit Varma. 33. Scene: 75 -- Rahi Masoom Raza (translated by Poonam Saxena). 34. Folktales From India — Edited by AK Ramanujan. 35. The Indianness of Indian Food — Episode 95 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vikram Doctor). 36. The Refreshing Audacity of Vinay Singhal — Episode 291 of The Seen and the Unseen. 37. Stage.in. 38. The Age of Average -- Alex Murrell. 39. Nothing is Indian! Everything is Indian! -- Episode 12 of Everything is Everything. 40. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages — Peggy Mohan. 41. Understanding India Through Its Languages — Episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Peggy Mohan). 42. Early Indians — Tony Joseph. 43. Early Indians — Episode 112 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tony Joseph). 44. Caste, Capitalism and Chandra Bhan Prasad — Episode 296 of The Seen and the Unseen. 45. ‘Indian languages carry the legacy of caste' — Chandra Bhan Prasad interviewed by Sheela Bhatt. 46. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman — Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya). 47. Premchand, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie on Amazon. 48. Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Saul Bellow, Henry Miller and Octavio Paz on Amazon.. 49. Midnight's Children -- Salman Rushdie. 50. Selected Poems -- Dom Moraes. 51. Theatres of Independence -- Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker. 52. Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chugtai on Amazon. 53. Toba Tek Singh -- Saadat Hasan Manto. 55. How Music Works -- David Byrne. 56. Danish Husain's anecdote about Mahatma Gandhi and Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. 57. Poems -- Louise Glück. 58. Harmony in the Boudoir -- Mark Strand. 59. And Then One Day: A Memoir -- Naseeruddin Shah. 60. Kohrra -- Created by Sudip Sharma and directed by Randeep Jha.. 61. If You Are a Creator, This Is Your Time -- Amit Varma. 62. Make Me a Canteen for My Soul — Episode 304 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Sameer Seth and Yash Bhanage). 63.  The Aaron Levie tweet on the market for cars. 64. 'A feeble no may mean yes': Indian court overturns rape conviction -- Michael Safi. 65. Grace is Poetry -- Danish Husain.  66. Train-Track Figure -- Kay Ryan. 67. अंधा कबाड़ी -- नून मीम राशिद. 68. The Conjurer of Meaning -- Danish Husain. 69. Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians -- Edited by Sudeep Sen. 67. Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English: 2022 -- Edited by Sukrita Paul Kumar & Vinita Agrawal. 68. मत बुरा उस को कहो गरचे वो अच्छा भी नहीं -- कलीम आजिज़. 69. शम्-ए-तन्हा की तरह सुब्ह के तारे जैसे -- इरफ़ान सिद्दीक़ी.. 70. हुस्न-ए-मह गरचे ब-हंगाम-ए-कमाल अच्छा है -- मिर्ज़ा ग़ालिब. 71. हिरास -- साहिर लुधियानवी. 72. Separation -- WS Merwin 73. वो जो इक शर्त थी वहशत की उठा दी गई क्या -- इरफ़ान सिद्दीक़ी. 74. तुम्हें डर है. -- गोरख पाण्डेय. 75. शायद कि ये ज़माना उन्हें पूजने लगे -- अब्दुल वहाब सुख़न. 76. Kya sitam hai waqt ka -- Madan Mohan Danish. 77. फ़राज़ अब कोई सौदा कोई जुनूँ भी नहीं -- फ़राज़. 78. कौन-सी बात कहाँ , कैसे कही जाती है -- वसीम बरेलवी. 79. A Plain Landscape -- Danish Husain. 80. इतिहास की कगार -- दानिश हुसैन. 81. Jawaab -- Kumar Ambuj (translated by Danish Husain). 82. Your Touch -- Danish Husain. 83. The Joke -- Milan Kundera. 84. Herzog -- Saul Bellow. 85. Edward Said, Mary Oliver and Toni Morrison on Amazon. 86. Step Across This Line -- Salman Rushdie. 87. Harishankar Parsai, John Kenneth Galbraith and AS Byatt on Amazon. 88. Garam Hawa -- MS Sathyu. 89. Shatranj Ke Khilari -- Satyajit Ray. 90. The Godfather -- Francis Ford Coppolla. 91. Do Ankhen Barah Haath -- V Shantaram. 92. Mandi -- Shyam Benegal. 93. Party -- Govind Nihalani. 94. Khosla Ka Ghosla! -- Dibakar Banerjee. This episode is sponsored by the Pune Public Policy Festival 2024, which takes place on January 19 & 20, 2024. The theme this year is Trade-offs! Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. And subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It's free! Episode art: ‘The Actor as a Builder of Worlds' by Simahina.

For decades, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was perhaps the most influential multi-issue organization in American liberalism. The first book-length study of the ADA since 1986, Scott Kamen's From Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023) details how the ADA and its key figures, including the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, exerted their influence on critical debates in post-war liberal politics, helping to define the very essence of liberalism. Taking the ADA's story into the 1970s and 1980s, Kamen also illustrates how the ADA profoundly shaped the New Politics movement, which upended Democratic Party politics with its challenge to the Vietnam War, demands for redistributive economic policies, and development of a far-reaching politics of race, gender, and sexuality. By bringing the ADA and its influential public intellectuals into the story of the New Politics movement, Scott Kamen reveals how American liberalism shifted away from the working-class concerns of the New Deal era and began to cater to the interests of a new, suburban professional class. By the 1980s, many Democratic politicians, activists, and voters had embraced a neoliberal ideology that coupled socially liberal attitudes with market-based solutions, eschewing an older progressive politics steeped in labor issues. In so doing, Kamen historicizes several of the most contentious issues in contemporary Democratic politics—from neo-liberalism to identity politics—powerfully revealing how the ADA shaped some of the most critical debates in American politics today. Scott Kamen is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, Valencia Campus. He has published in the Michigan Historical Review, Peace & Change, The Sixties and the Southern Historian and received his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2016. Thomas Cryer is a PhD Student in American History at University College London, where he studies race, nationhood, and memory through the life, scholarship, and activism of the historian John Hope Franklin. @ThomasOCryer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

For decades, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was perhaps the most influential multi-issue organization in American liberalism. The first book-length study of the ADA since 1986, Scott Kamen's From Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023) details how the ADA and its key figures, including the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, exerted their influence on critical debates in post-war liberal politics, helping to define the very essence of liberalism. Taking the ADA's story into the 1970s and 1980s, Kamen also illustrates how the ADA profoundly shaped the New Politics movement, which upended Democratic Party politics with its challenge to the Vietnam War, demands for redistributive economic policies, and development of a far-reaching politics of race, gender, and sexuality. By bringing the ADA and its influential public intellectuals into the story of the New Politics movement, Scott Kamen reveals how American liberalism shifted away from the working-class concerns of the New Deal era and began to cater to the interests of a new, suburban professional class. By the 1980s, many Democratic politicians, activists, and voters had embraced a neoliberal ideology that coupled socially liberal attitudes with market-based solutions, eschewing an older progressive politics steeped in labor issues. In so doing, Kamen historicizes several of the most contentious issues in contemporary Democratic politics—from neo-liberalism to identity politics—powerfully revealing how the ADA shaped some of the most critical debates in American politics today. Scott Kamen is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, Valencia Campus. He has published in the Michigan Historical Review, Peace & Change, The Sixties and the Southern Historian and received his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2016. Thomas Cryer is a PhD Student in American History at University College London, where he studies race, nationhood, and memory through the life, scholarship, and activism of the historian John Hope Franklin. @ThomasOCryer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

For decades, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was perhaps the most influential multi-issue organization in American liberalism. The first book-length study of the ADA since 1986, Scott Kamen's From Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023) details how the ADA and its key figures, including the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, exerted their influence on critical debates in post-war liberal politics, helping to define the very essence of liberalism. Taking the ADA's story into the 1970s and 1980s, Kamen also illustrates how the ADA profoundly shaped the New Politics movement, which upended Democratic Party politics with its challenge to the Vietnam War, demands for redistributive economic policies, and development of a far-reaching politics of race, gender, and sexuality. By bringing the ADA and its influential public intellectuals into the story of the New Politics movement, Scott Kamen reveals how American liberalism shifted away from the working-class concerns of the New Deal era and began to cater to the interests of a new, suburban professional class. By the 1980s, many Democratic politicians, activists, and voters had embraced a neoliberal ideology that coupled socially liberal attitudes with market-based solutions, eschewing an older progressive politics steeped in labor issues. In so doing, Kamen historicizes several of the most contentious issues in contemporary Democratic politics—from neo-liberalism to identity politics—powerfully revealing how the ADA shaped some of the most critical debates in American politics today. Scott Kamen is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, Valencia Campus. He has published in the Michigan Historical Review, Peace & Change, The Sixties and the Southern Historian and received his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2016. Thomas Cryer is a PhD Student in American History at University College London, where he studies race, nationhood, and memory through the life, scholarship, and activism of the historian John Hope Franklin. @ThomasOCryer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

For decades, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was perhaps the most influential multi-issue organization in American liberalism. The first book-length study of the ADA since 1986, Scott Kamen's From Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023) details how the ADA and its key figures, including the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, exerted their influence on critical debates in post-war liberal politics, helping to define the very essence of liberalism. Taking the ADA's story into the 1970s and 1980s, Kamen also illustrates how the ADA profoundly shaped the New Politics movement, which upended Democratic Party politics with its challenge to the Vietnam War, demands for redistributive economic policies, and development of a far-reaching politics of race, gender, and sexuality. By bringing the ADA and its influential public intellectuals into the story of the New Politics movement, Scott Kamen reveals how American liberalism shifted away from the working-class concerns of the New Deal era and began to cater to the interests of a new, suburban professional class. By the 1980s, many Democratic politicians, activists, and voters had embraced a neoliberal ideology that coupled socially liberal attitudes with market-based solutions, eschewing an older progressive politics steeped in labor issues. In so doing, Kamen historicizes several of the most contentious issues in contemporary Democratic politics—from neo-liberalism to identity politics—powerfully revealing how the ADA shaped some of the most critical debates in American politics today. Scott Kamen is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, Valencia Campus. He has published in the Michigan Historical Review, Peace & Change, The Sixties and the Southern Historian and received his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2016. Thomas Cryer is a PhD Student in American History at University College London, where he studies race, nationhood, and memory through the life, scholarship, and activism of the historian John Hope Franklin. @ThomasOCryer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

For decades, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was perhaps the most influential multi-issue organization in American liberalism. The first book-length study of the ADA since 1986, Scott Kamen's From Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023) details how the ADA and its key figures, including the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, exerted their influence on critical debates in post-war liberal politics, helping to define the very essence of liberalism. Taking the ADA's story into the 1970s and 1980s, Kamen also illustrates how the ADA profoundly shaped the New Politics movement, which upended Democratic Party politics with its challenge to the Vietnam War, demands for redistributive economic policies, and development of a far-reaching politics of race, gender, and sexuality. By bringing the ADA and its influential public intellectuals into the story of the New Politics movement, Scott Kamen reveals how American liberalism shifted away from the working-class concerns of the New Deal era and began to cater to the interests of a new, suburban professional class. By the 1980s, many Democratic politicians, activists, and voters had embraced a neoliberal ideology that coupled socially liberal attitudes with market-based solutions, eschewing an older progressive politics steeped in labor issues. In so doing, Kamen historicizes several of the most contentious issues in contemporary Democratic politics—from neo-liberalism to identity politics—powerfully revealing how the ADA shaped some of the most critical debates in American politics today. Scott Kamen is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, Valencia Campus. He has published in the Michigan Historical Review, Peace & Change, The Sixties and the Southern Historian and received his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2016. Thomas Cryer is a PhD Student in American History at University College London, where he studies race, nationhood, and memory through the life, scholarship, and activism of the historian John Hope Franklin. @ThomasOCryer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

For decades, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was perhaps the most influential multi-issue organization in American liberalism. The first book-length study of the ADA since 1986, Scott Kamen's From Union Halls to the Suburbs: Americans for Democratic Action and the Transformation of Postwar Liberalism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023) details how the ADA and its key figures, including the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, exerted their influence on critical debates in post-war liberal politics, helping to define the very essence of liberalism. Taking the ADA's story into the 1970s and 1980s, Kamen also illustrates how the ADA profoundly shaped the New Politics movement, which upended Democratic Party politics with its challenge to the Vietnam War, demands for redistributive economic policies, and development of a far-reaching politics of race, gender, and sexuality. By bringing the ADA and its influential public intellectuals into the story of the New Politics movement, Scott Kamen reveals how American liberalism shifted away from the working-class concerns of the New Deal era and began to cater to the interests of a new, suburban professional class. By the 1980s, many Democratic politicians, activists, and voters had embraced a neoliberal ideology that coupled socially liberal attitudes with market-based solutions, eschewing an older progressive politics steeped in labor issues. In so doing, Kamen historicizes several of the most contentious issues in contemporary Democratic politics—from neo-liberalism to identity politics—powerfully revealing how the ADA shaped some of the most critical debates in American politics today. Scott Kamen is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico, Valencia Campus. He has published in the Michigan Historical Review, Peace & Change, The Sixties and the Southern Historian and received his PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2016. Thomas Cryer is a PhD Student in American History at University College London, where he studies race, nationhood, and memory through the life, scholarship, and activism of the historian John Hope Franklin. @ThomasOCryer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The purpose of purpose is growth and profit. It is a means to an end, and we are capitalists. We just happen to live in a time when it's never mattered more to the decision to purchase something." – Seth Matlins -------------------------------------------------------------------   Seth and I had the opportunity to discuss an intriguing article he wrote titled "Capitalism's Crisis of Perception." The article delves into the evolving landscape of capitalism and the need for a shift in perception and practice. We explored the changing dynamics of capitalism, the role of conscious consumerism, and the implications for businesses and marketers. The landscape of capitalism is changing and with it, the emergence of conscious consumerism, and the evolving role of marketers and business leaders as well. It calls for a paradigm shift in how capitalism is perceived and practiced, emphasizing the importance of purpose-driven brands and ethical business practices in today's world. -------------------------------------------------------------------   Here are my show notes:  Marketing, capitalism, and evolution. (2:15) Marketing successes and a unique scratch-and-sniff book. (11:48) Twitter's decline and Elon Musk's impact. (16:56) The power of lurking and listening in business and marketing. (23:49) The impact of Coca-Cola's partnership with American Idol. (27:38) Evolving capitalism and marketing. (34:06) Capitalism's imperfections and potential solutions. (40:13) The role of marketing in driving change and evolution in capitalism. (45:52) Marketing, innovation, and the role of CMOs in uncertain times. (51:38) Marketing and advertising trends and challenges. (55:30) -------------------------------------------------------------------   Quote of the Episode: "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." - John Kenneth Galbraith -------------------------------------------------------------------   If you like what you see, please subscribe to the show: bit.ly/subscribetotheshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest: Bill Raduchel, AuthorOn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/wjraduchel/____________________________Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society PodcastOn ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli_____________________________This Episode's SponsorsBlackCloak

En este episodio de #PodcastLaTrinchera se une el Prof. José A. Molinelli González  para una sesión de nerdeo intenso de teoría y ciencias políticas sobre su carrera académica, sus objetivos y retos como profesor de ciencias políticas y sociales en Puerto Rico, la naturaleza discursiva de la política puertorriqueña, el imperio de la economía, el futuro de la arquitectura de los gobiernos republicanos, experimentos en gobernanza democrática en Latinoamérica y mucho más.El Prof. Molinelli es un profesor asociado en la Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, la Universidad Interamericana y la Universidad Ana G. Méndez. También es candidato a un juris doctor  en la facultado de derecho de la Universidad Interamericana. Junto a Marleny Cruz, es uno de los anfitriones originales del programa "Governance Talk Show," disponible en SOS Radio Live en el siguiente enlace. También pueden ver el episodio de José A. Molinelli en el Beto Podcast en el siguiente enlace.Para contactar a Christian Sobrino y #PodcastLaTrinchera, nada mejor que mediante las siguientes plataformas:Facebook: @PodcastLaTrincheraTwitter: @zobrinovichInstagram: zobrinovichThreads: @zobrinovich"Quizás la estrategia más antigua, y ciertamente la más sabia, para el ejercicio del poder es negar que se posea." - John Kenneth Galbraith

Today, we're sharing an episode of the podcast Deconstructed from our friends over at The Intercept, an award-winning investigative news organization. Centrist and right-wing economists continue to advocate for laying off workers and engineering a recession to address inflation. But why not set price controls instead? This week on Deconstructed, host Ryan Grim is joined by James K. Galbraith, a professor of government and business relations at the University of Texas at Austin. Galbraith has an extensive history of working in government, including as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and an economist for the House Banking Committee. Galbraith and Grim discuss the implementation of price controls by the U.S. government and how such measures bring down prices. They also explore how the Biden administration could expand its price control efforts, and how Galbraith's father — economist and politician John Kenneth Galbraith — was instrumental in setting price controls during World War II.If you like Lever Time with David Sirota, be sure to check out Deconstructed on all podcast platforms and subscribe.A transcript of this episode is available here.

Centrist and right-wing economists continue to advocate for laying off workers and engineering a recession to address inflation. But why not set commodity price controls instead? This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim is joined by James K. Galbraith, a professor of government and business relations at the University of Texas at Austin. Galbraith has an extensive history of working in government, including as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and an economist for the House Banking Committee. Galbraith and Grim discuss the implementation of price controls by the U.S. government, how it brings down prices, how the Biden administration has used it and could use it more, and how Galbraith's father — economist and politician John Kenneth Galbraith — was instrumental in setting commodity price controls during the post-World War II era.If you'd like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give, where your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference.And if you haven't already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review — it helps people find the show. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

¡Una de las peores crisis económicas de la historia! La especulación colectiva, la falta de regulación, la ambición de Wall Street, el desconocimiento financiero, la mala estructura bancaria y la poca inteligencia económica causaron el gran crash de 1929. Vale la pena una mirada a este recuento de Galbraith, un libro escrito en 1955 pero que hoy en día sigue más vigente que nunca. ¡A seguir aprendiendo!

¡Una de las peores crisis económicas de la historia! La especulación colectiva, la falta de regulación, la ambición de Wall Street, el desconocimiento financiero, la mala estructura bancaria y la poca inteligencia económica causaron el gran crash de 1929. Vale la pena una mirada a este recuento de Galbraith, un libro escrito en 1955 pero que hoy en día sigue más vigente que nunca. ¡A seguir aprendiendo!

Edith TuckerDescribed by the great John Harrigan as a first-rate journalist, Edith Tucker had already experienced a full and consequential life before a later life conversion to journalist. She dropped out of college to marry and then, in addition to raising four children, she got involved in local government, first in Pelham, NY and then in Wellesley, MA where she served as Chair of the Finance Committee and on the school board for nine years. She became an activist in the women's movement and fair housing and attended the 1976 Republican National Convention. After meeting the great Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, Galbraith hired her to work for him, assisting him in the transcription and writing of his books and speeches and later serving as his appointment secretary.Edith was not the kind to let any grass grow under her feet so when a later employer moved his business to her hometown, saving her more than an hour commute each way, she decided to fill in those two hours by going back to college. She was accepted at Wellesley College as a Davis Scholar, majoring in Government. As a non-traditional student she was nervous about her ability to jump back into academic life - especially while working full time. She didn't need to worry, because she graduated summa cum laude and won the Erasmus Prize in history, bolstered by a paper that she wrote about the treatment of Chinese laborers in Massachusetts' Shoe Factories, a paper that influenced the State's adoption of the Chinese Inclusion Act.In 1994 she and her husband moved to New Hampshire and she went to work at the Berlin Reporter and later moved to the Coos County Democrat, owned by John Harrigan.A three-term state legislator during the last six years Edith has done a lot of thinking about some of the great issues we face in our country. The wisdom of her thoughts will make this podcast very enjoyable for you.

Who's lived a more varied, interesting political life over the last 6 decades than Jeff Greenfield? Aide and speechwriter to Senator Robert Kennedy...staffer for NYC Mayor John Lindsay...successful political consultant with the famed David Garth...and then as an omnipresent political commentator at CBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN...5 time Emmy Award Winner...author of several books. This is a great, wide-ranging conversation with one of the most respected, enduring, and distinctive voices in American politics.IN THIS EPISODEHow the New York Yankees are responsible for Jeff's political obsession…The serendipitous path that led Jeff to become an aide to Senator Robert Kennedy…Jeff's memories of the U.S. Senate of the 1960s…Jeff on the political savvy of RFK…The stories behind two of RFK's most memorable speeches in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr's Assassination…Jeff talks how the 1968 election might have played out had Senator Kennedy lived…What it was like writing a speech for Robert Kennedy…Jeff's theory on the right match of speechwriter and speaker…Jeff's time working with famed political consultant David Garth…The ad Jeff wrote as a media consultant of which he's most proud…Jeff talks his connection with longtime friend William F. Buckley…The story of Margaret Thatcher insulting Jeff on national TV…Jeff's move from political consulting to working in television…The media job Jeff held that was the most fun…Jeff's approach to interesting television commentary…Four of Jeff's pet peeves about contemporary political punditry…The “single most powerful event” Jeff ever attended…Recommendations from one of Jeff's favorite restaurants and favorite band…AND  Aeschylus, Muhammad Ali, Barney Greengrass, the Beatles, Tom Bettag, Beyonce, Big Pink, Tom Bradley, the Bronx High School of Science, Ron Brown, Buggs Bunny, bullshit measurements, Hugh Carey, William Sloane Coffin, communist cigars, computer manuals, Daffy Duck, Richard Daley, doo wop, Fred Dutton, Peter Edelman, Dwight Eisenhower, elephants, Firing Line, Joe Frazier, John Kenneth Galbraith, John Glenn, the Grateful Dead, Averell Harriman, Lester Holt, Hubert Humphrey, Inspector Javert, Irving Ives, Jacob Javits, journalistic utopias, jut jaws, Murray Kempton, Henry Kissinger, Ted Koppel, John Lindsay, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Lil Nas, losing altitude, Russell Long, the longest slogans in the world, Al Lowenstein, the Making of the President, Eugene McCarthy, Joe McCarthy, George McGovern, Stephen Miller, mock primaries, Bill Moyers, the National Review, The New York Times, Richard Nixon, Lee Harvey Oswald, particle physics, personal antipathy, Ronald Reagan, Robbie Robertson, Howard Samuels, Ted Sorensen, Aaron Sorkin, Adlai Stevenson, Norman Thomas, Donald Trump, two doses of herpes, Unconventional Wisdom, the unit rule, V-E Day, the violence of institutions, Adam Walinsky, wartime correspondents, Watergate, Billy Wilder, wretched ironies, Sam Yorty & more!

Getting to Yes Full Book ReviewMore Content On Bookey Best App For Book Summary. Negotiation is closely related to our lives. Buyers and sellers bargain over the price of a product. Employees strive for a promotion or a pay raise from the boss. Children debate their parents over what time to go to bed at night. These are all familiar negotiation scenes in our daily lives. Everyone is a negotiator, and those who are better at negotiation meet their needs more efficiently. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In presents the research results of the Harvard Negotiation Project. This book will teach you how to negotiate more efficiently and help you achieve win-win outcomes! Overview | Chapter 1Hi, welcome to Bookey. Today, we will unlock the book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. Negotiation is closely related to our lives. Every one of us is a negotiator in the sense that we all face various negotiation scenarios every day. Thus, negotiation is an essential skill that we should master. However, negotiation is not simple, and it is often hard to achieve good results. You may have encountered awkward situations like the following: Neither you nor the seller is willing to budge an inch while bargaining. Your boss rejects your request for a promotion or a pay raise. You argue with your colleague over differing proposals. So, is there any negotiation method that defends our interests while also satisfying the other party? Of course, there is! The book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In proposes the “principled negotiation,” a general strategy that applies to various negotiation situations. This so-called "principle" refers to the inner appeal of interests. The key is to treat your negotiating partner as a collaborator and focus on basic interests. Then, search for solutions that satisfy both parties' common interests based on objective standards to achieve win-win outcomes. This book was published in 2009 and has been a bestseller ever since. It has also been recommended by John Kenneth Galbraith, the advisor to three U.S. presidents, Cyrus Roberts Vance, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and Ayn Rand, a famous writer from the U.S. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In was written by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton. They are three senior experts from the Harvard Negotiation Project. They are not only researchers but also practitioners in the field of negotiation. They provide professional negotiation consulting services for many individuals, companies, and even government agencies.

Il y a un lien entre ZEUS et la spéculation ! Dans la mythologie grecque, on avait coutume de dire que Zeus rend fous ceux qu'il veut perdre. Zeus, c'est le mot ancien pour dire cupidité. Retour sur la faillite de FTX, la deuxième plus importante plateforme d'échange de cryptomonnaies. En matière d'escroquerie, les auteurs de ce feuilleton financier ne manquent pas d'imagination. Tous les jours ou presque, il y a une révélation par la presse américaine sur ce scandale FTX. On comprend qu'il s'agit d'un véritable détournement de fonds. N'oublions pas que cette plateforme d'échange de cryptomonnaies a été valorisée à un moment donné à 32 milliards de dollars. Et aujourd'hui, elle ne vaut plus rien. 0 $ et personne ne sait où sont partis les fonds qui y ont été déposés. Cela pose d'ailleurs la question de la responsabilité des analystes ou des auditeurs de cette entreprise. Comment peut-on valoriser une entreprise ? 32 milliards et puis voir ces milliards partir en fumée en quelques jours ? Autre fait étrange, il n'y a aucun registre du personnel. Cette plateforme entourée d'une myriade de sociétés, on parle de plus de 150 sociétés, et on ne sait pas combien de membres du personnel. Impossible de retrouver leur trace… Sujets évoqués : discussions, trace écrite, décisions, dirigeants, plateforme, frais du personnel, cryptomonnaie, émoji, presse américaine, scénaristes, film, faillite, économiste, John Kenneth Galbraith, Bourse, agence, Bloomberg, plateforme d'échange, investisseurs, grandes écoles, universités, analystes, fondateur, plateforme, gourou, mathématicien, Bill Bonnaire, --- Amid Faljaoui, notre chroniqueur, pense qu'il y a un lien entre Zeus et la spéculation ! --- La chronique économique d'Amid Faljaoui, tous les jours à 8h30 et à 17h30.

Dr. Galbraith is a world-renowned economist and son of the famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Dr. Galbraith earned his bachelor's from Harvard and his master's and Ph.D. from Yale. All in economics. From a young age, James worked within the U.S. Congress working on policy. He eventually worked his way up to the Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee role. He is also the Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, where he currently teaches. His latest book is titled "Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice: The Destruction of Greece and the Future of Europe." The book is a detailed investigation into the cause of the Greek Debt Crisis and an examination of post-crisis policy. In a series of essays and letters, Dr. Galbraith lays out the meaning of the Greek Debt Crisis and how Greece and the EU can move forward. Together we discussed the tension between national and EU governments, the political fallout caused by the debt crisis, and even brought up one of our favorite guests, Yanis Varoufakis. To check out more of our content, including our research, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/

Dr. Galbraith is a world-renowned economist and son of the famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Dr. Galbraith earned his bachelor's from Harvard and his master's and Ph.D. from Yale, all in economics. From a young age, James worked within the U.S Congress working on policy. He eventually worked his way up to the Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee role. He was the former chair of the board of Economists for Peace and Security, a group of economists focusing on peace and international security. He is the director of the University of Texas Inequality Project and managing editor of "Structural Change and Economic Dynamics." He is also the Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, where he currently teaches. Together, we discussed global inequality, how the ideas of Henry George influenced China, and even debunked the efficient markets hypothesis. To check out more of our content, including our research, visit our website: https://www.hgsss.org/

  Book: JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Jim DiEugenio: Hardcover, Kindle The BluRay and DVD version of both the documentaries were released on July 19, 2022 You can order it here Bonus content includes audio Commentary for JFK Revisited by both Oliver Stone and Jim DiEugenio The documentary is the best-selling bluray/dvd on amazon for three weeks now !! Jim DiEugenio to speak about the making of the film at the CAPA conference Get an autographed copy of the book JFK Revisited for just $35 You can also get autographed copies of Jim's two other books for just $25 each!! Jim's address: P.O. Box 4354, Burbank, CA 91503 At Kennedys and King Article: Fletcher Prouty vs. the ARRB by Jim DiEugenio Article: Fletcher Prouty vs Edward Epstein by Jim DiEugenio Smearing Col. Prouty is a way to get back at Oliver Stone's movie JFK FREE Borrowable Ebook: Report from Iron Mountain by Leonard C. Lewin New York Times Book Review: Report from Iron Mountain: The Guest Word by Leonard Lewin Report from Iron Mountain is a satirical novel John Kenneth Galbraith and Victor Navasky were consultants for Lewin's book Video: Jim Garrison meets Mr. X (Oliver Stone's JFK) "The organizing principle of any society is for war" - Mr. X Articles: Oliver Stone in Quebec City by Paul Bleau: Part 1, Part 2 Paul Bleau's upcoming articles based on the Jim Garrison files Please email Len at osanic@prouty.org if you would like to access the Garrison files Articles: Exposing the FPCC by Paul Bleau: Part 1, Part 2 Part 3 of the series to be posted soon Clay Shaw was a con artist, probably one of the greatest Pseudo experts in the critical community were preaching that Garrison had nothing Operation Mongoose Listener questions answered Order the JFK Revisited: The Complete Collection with an exclusive autographed poster by Oliver Stone!! Book: Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook Book: The Paradox of our National Security Complex by Richard Otto: Paperback, Kindle Book: Rethinking America by Richard Otto: Paperback, Kindle Lisa Pease tweets about Allen Dulles' calendar for 1963 that has gone missing When Jim spoke to Marina Oswald, she didn't want to talk about Ruth Paine June 10 1963, JFK's American University commencement address titled 'A Strategy of Peace': Audio, Video, Text June 11 1963, JFK's landmark Civil Rights Speech: Video, Text There has been a systematic effort to diminish Kennedy's achievements The Kennedys and Civil Rights: How the MSM Continues to Distort History by Jim - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Hack historians like Larry Sabato claim that JFK did nothing for civil rights until 1963 FREE Borrowable Ebook: Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties by Harris Wofford Documentary: Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963): iTunes, Prime, Google Play, Vudu Book: Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours that Made History by Andrew Cohen: Paperback, Hardcover, Kindle Book: The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act by Clay Risen: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook FREE Borrowable Ebook: Promises Kept by Irving Bernstein  

Welcome to Day 1934 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom The Great Leaders – Daily Wisdom Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps. We are on Day 1934 of our Trek, and it's time to explore another nugget of wisdom, which includes an inspirational quote and some wise words from Gramps for today's trek. Wisdom is the final frontier in gaining true knowledge. So we are on a daily trek to create a legacy of wisdom, seek out discernment and insights, and boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; this is Gramps. Thanks for coming along on today's trek as we increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%2016%3A16&version=NLT (Proverbs 16:16)  How much better to get wisdom than gold, and sound judgment than silver!    If you apply the words you hear today, over time, it will help you become more healthy, wealthy, and wise as you continue your daily trek of life. So let's jump right in with today's nugget: Today's quote is from John Kenneth Galbraith, and it is: All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: the willingness to confront the significant anxiety of their people. The Great Leaders Nearly all people have anxiety about something in life. It is up to the great leader to know and understand those they lead so they will confront the fear and stress that will impact their ability to lead. A great leader will have empathy for those they lead. They will know them well enough to understand them and what may impact their performance. While a mild amount of stress may be helpful, if the stress levels increase too much, it will certainly negatively affect the outcome. Each person you lead will have a different level of stress which causes anxiety. You must know your team well enough to know what that level is for each person. It is always important to also understand that those stress levels may vary daily. Finally, you must establish an exceptionally close bond with those you lead to be effective and extraordinary. Become a great leader so that you can assist your team to stretch and grow to be all that God designed them to be. Lead well! https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Peter+5%3A6-11&version=NLT (1 Peter 5:6-11) So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. 7 Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are. In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. 11 All power to him forever! Amen. As you ponder this nugget of wisdom for yourself, please encourage your friends and family to join us and come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.' If you would like to listen to any of our past 1933 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. In addition, I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player to automatically download each day's trek. Finally, if you would like to receive our weekly newsletter,' Wisdom Notes,' please email me at guthrie@wisdom-trek.com. Thank you so much for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and, most importantly, your friend as I serve you through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal. As we take this trek together, let us always: Live Abundantly (Fully) Love Unconditionally Listen Intentionally Learn Continuously Lend to others Generously Lead with...

Last Sunday night, as cryptocurrency prices plummeted, Celsius Network — an experimental cryptocurrency bank with more than one million customers that has emerged as a leader in the murky world of decentralized finance, or DeFi — announced it was freezing withdrawals “due to extreme market conditions.”Earlier this week, Bitcoin dropped 15 percent over 24 hours to its lowest value since December 2020, and Ether, the second-most valuable cryptocurrency, fell about 16 percent. Last month, TerraUSD, a stablecoin — a system that was supposed to perform a lot like a conventional bank account but was backed only by a cryptocurrency called Luna — collapsed, losing 97 percent of its value in just 24 hours, apparently destroying some investors' life savings. The implosion helped trigger a crypto meltdown that erased $300 billion in value across the market. These crypto crashes have fueled worries that the complex and murky crypto banking and lending projects known as DeFi are on the brink of ruin.Eighty nine years ago today the Banking Act of 1933 — also known as the Glass-Steagall Act — was signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt. It separated commercial banking from investment banking — Main Street from Wall Street — in order to protect people who entrusted their savings to commercial banks from having their money gambled away. Glass-Steagall's larger purpose was to put an end to the giant Ponzi scheme that had overtaken the American economy in the 1920s and led to the Great Crash of 1929. Americans had been getting rich by speculating on shares of stock and various sorts of exotica (roughly analogous to crypto) as other investors followed them into these risky assets — pushing their values ever upwards. But at some point Ponzi schemes topple of their own weight. When the toppling occurred in 1929, it plunged the nation and the world into a Great Depression. The Glass-Steagall Act was a means of restoring stability.It takes a full generation to forget a financial trauma and allow forces that caused it to repeat their havoc. By the mid-1980s, as the stock market soared, speculators noticed they could make lots more money if they could gamble with other people's money, as speculators did in the 1920s. They pushed Congress to deregulate Wall Street, arguing that the United States financial sector would otherwise lose its competitive standing relative to other financial centers around the world. In 1999, after Sandy Weill's Travelers Insurance Company merged with with Citicorp, and Weill personally lobbied Clinton (and Clinton's Treasury secretary Robert Rubin), Clinton and Congress agreed to ditch what remained of Glass-Steagall. Supporters hailed the move as a long-overdue demise of a Depression-era relic. Critics (including yours truly) predicted it would release a monster. The critics were proven correct. With Glass-Steagall's repeal, the American economy once again became a betting parlor. (Not incidentally, shortly after Glass-Steagall was repealed, Sandy Weill recruited Robert Rubin to be chair of Citigroup's executive committee and, briefly, chair of its board of directors.) Inevitably, Wall Street suffered another near-death experience from excessive gambling. Its Ponzi schemes began toppling in 2008, just as they had in 1929. The difference was that the U.S. government bailed out the biggest banks and financial institutions, with the result that the Great Recession of 2008-09 wasn't nearly as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s. Still, millions of Americans lost their jobs, their savings, and their homes (and not a single banking executive went to jail). In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, a new but watered-down version of Glass-Steagall was enacted — the Dodd-Frank Act — which has been further diluted and defanged by Wall Street lobbyists.Which brings us — 89 years to the day after Glass-Steagall was enacted — to the crypto crash. The current chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, has described cryptocurrency investments as “rife with fraud, scams, and abuse.” Yet in the murky world of crypto DeFi, it's hard to understand who provides money for loans, where the money flows, or how easy it is to trigger currency meltdowns. There are no standards for issues of custody, risk management, or capital reserves. There are no transparency requirements. Investors often don't know how their money is being handled or who the counter-parties are. Deposits are not insured. We're back to the Wild West finances of the 1920s. In the past, cryptocurrencies kept rising by attracting an ever-growing range of investors and some big Wall Street money, along with celebrity endorsements. But, as I said, all Ponzi schemes topple eventually. And it looks like crypto is now toppling. So why isn't this market regulated? Mainly because of intensive lobbying by the crypto industry, whose kingpins want the Ponzi scheme to continue. The industry is pouring huge money into political campaigns. And it has hired scores of former government officials and regulators to lobby on its behalf — including three former chairs of the Securities and Exchange Commission, three former chairs of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, three former U.S. senators, and at least one former White House chief of staff, the former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and more than 200 former staffers of federal agencies, congressional offices and national political campaigns who have worked in crypto. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers advises crypto investment firm Digital Currency Group Inc. and sits on the board of Block Inc., a financial-technology firm that is investing in cryptocurrency-payments systems.In a famous passage from his 1955 book The Great Crash 1929, my mentor, Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith, introduced the term “bezzle” (derived from embezzlement). Galbraith observed that the bezzle in a financial system grows whenever people are confident about the economy, and reveals itself when confidence ebbs: At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement which … varies in size with the business cycle. In good times, people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances, the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly. In depression, all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved. The bezzle shrinks.Crypto is pure bezzle — as is now being revealed. If we should have learned anything from the crashes of 1929 and 2008, it's that regulation of financial markets is essential. Otherwise they turn into Ponzi schemes filled with bezzle — leaving small investors with nothing and endangering the entire economy. It's time for the Biden administration and Congress to stop the crypto bezzle. What do you think? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

John Kenneth Galbraith war einer der einflussreichsten Ökonomen der Nachkriegszeit. Der Berater von Roosevelt und Kennedy stritt zeitlebens für einen starken Sozialstaat. Dieser sollte die Armut, die seiner Meinung nach der Kapitalismus produziert, abmildern. (BR 2016)

(NOTAS Y ENLACES COMPLETOS DEL CAPÍTULO AQUÍ: https://www.jaimerodriguezdesantiago.com/kaizen/130-la-estructura-del-mundo-v-como-funciona-la-economia-primera-parte/)Entro en la web de un famoso diario español y las noticias dicen cosas como: «La debilidad del euro frente al dólar agrava la escalada inflacionista de la Unión Europea», o «los ingresos de los hogares españoles se redujeron a finales de 2021» o «el fondo de rescate europeo propone dar liquidez ante crisis imprevistas»… pues vaya planazo, ¿no?Ya te he dicho en más de una ocasión que desde hace un tiempo tengo la sensación de que estamos en un cambio de ciclo. Uno que no tengo claro hacia dónde nos llevará. Pero para mí es un ejercicio interesante el de intentar entender cómo son esos hilos invisibles que mueven nuestro mundo. Es eso que empecé la temporada pasada llamando «La estructura del mundo». En el fondo, en realidad, es básicamente ir añadiendo piezas a un gran modelo mental de cómo ha funcionado nuestra historia y cómo puede hacerlo en el futuro. Y en ese modelo, hay un punto que hemos tratado muy poco: la economía. En parte lo hemos tratado poco por mi propia desconfianza. Un famoso economista canadiense, John Kenneth Galbraith, decía que «las predicciones económicas hacen de la astrología una ciencia respetable». Yo no sé lo suficiente del tema como para ser tan despiadado como él, pero es cierto que mi sensación es que los sistemas económicos son tan complejos - y, sobre todo, se han vuelto tan complejos - que las ideas y los modelos que usamos para explicárnoslos fallan más que una escopeta de feria. Dicho esto, esos mismos modelos son los que usan quienes nos gobiernan para tomar decisiones. Y aunque a menudo tengo la sensación de que esas mismas decisiones sirven más para que se cumpla lo que creían que iba a pasar si no las tomaban que aquello que pretendían conseguir al hacerlo, pienso que entender esos modelos es un conocimiento básico. Y de eso va a ir éste capítulo de hoy y alguno que vendrá después. Los vamos a dedicar primero a poner algunos cimientos básicos para que en el futuro podamos hablar de cosas un poco más complejas. Y, quizás, más locas.

Johnny Vedmore is an independent journalist from Cardiff, Wales. He discusses his masterful article on Klaus Schwab's mentors, including Henry Kissinger and John Kenneth Galbraith. Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest: The YouTube version of this interviewJohnny Vedmore's article on Klaus SchwabPart 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 of the BMS series on Klaus Schwab and the Great ResetAn evaluation of Herman Kahn's “Year 2000” forecasts. Part 1 of John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Age of Uncertainty"Trailer for the Kubrick film, “Dr. Strangelove”Bob's novel, MinervaSchwab's books The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Covid-19 and the Great Reset ​For more information, see BobMurphyShow.com. The Bob Murphy Show is also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and via RSS.

Johnny Vedmore is an independent journalist from Cardiff, Wales. He discusses his masterful article on Klaus Schwab's mentors, including Henry Kissinger and John Kenneth Galbraith. Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest: The YouTube version of this interviewJohnny Vedmore's article on Klaus SchwabPart 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 of the BMS series on Klaus Schwab and the Great ResetAn evaluation of Herman Kahn's “Year 2000” forecasts. Part 1 of John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Age of Uncertainty"Trailer for the Kubrick film, “Dr. Strangelove”Bob's novel, MinervaSchwab's books The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Covid-19 and the Great Reset ​For more information, see BobMurphyShow.com. The Bob Murphy Show is also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and via RSS.

Johnny Vedmore is an independent journalist from Cardiff, Wales. He discusses his masterful article on Klaus Schwab's mentors, including Henry Kissinger and John Kenneth Galbraith. Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest: The https://youtu.be/odWca-JRTDE (YouTube version) of this interview. Johnny Vedmore's https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/03/investigative-reports/dr-klaus-schwab-or-how-the-cfr-taught-me-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb/ (article on Klaus Schwab). https://www.bobmurphyshow.com/episodes/ep-227-behind-klaus-schwab-the-world-economic-forum-and-the-great-reset-part-1/ (Part 1), https://www.bobmurphyshow.com/episodes/ep-228-behind-klaus-schwab-the-world-economic-forum-and-the-great-reset-part-2/ (Part 2), https://www.bobmurphyshow.com/episodes/ep-232-behind-klaus-schwab-the-world-economic-forum-and-the-great-reset-part-3/ (Part 3), https://www.bobmurphyshow.com/episodes/ep-233-behind-klaus-schwab-the-world-economic-forum-and-the-great-reset-part-4/ (Part 4) and https://www.bobmurphyshow.com/episodes/ep-235-behind-klaus-schwab-the-world-economic-forum-and-the-great-reset-part-5/ (Part 5) of the BMS series on Klaus Schwab and the Great Reset. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/evaluation-some-technology-forecasts-year-2000 (An evaluation) of Herman Kahn's "Year 2000" forecasts. Part 1 of John Kenneth Galbraith's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN8yPLaBVm8 ("The Age of Uncertainty.") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPU1AYTxwg4 (Trailer for the Kubrick film), "Dr. Strangelove." Bob's novel, https://www.pzolo.info/minervaFinal.pdf (Minerva). Schwab's books https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1524758868/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=consultingbyr-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1524758868&linkId=6d4b5ae46682d4edde8d80860d6bea11 (The Fourth Industrial Revolution) and https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/2940631123/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=consultingbyr-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=2940631123&linkId=5a38165038350b85da97cbe213726b3a (Covid-19 and the Great Reset). #Commissions Earned (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.) http://bobmurphyshow.com/contribute (Help support) the Bob Murphy Show. The audio production for this episode was provided by http://podsworth.com/ (Podsworth Media).

Many people today say they are unaffiliated, or don't have a religion. They are against organized religion, and distrust historic institutions or hierarchies, so they feel that they have no religion. But everyone has a religion. There may not be weekly meetings that are attended at traditional brick and mortar churches or mosques or synagogues or ashrams or hermitages or monasteries, but there are worship services that outperform traditional liturgies and there are pilgrimages that would rival the Canterbury Tales. People will drive across the country to see Mickey Mouse, or wait outside bookstores for the next Harry Potter book. They will meet up for costume and role playing parties where the fantasy is accepted as reality. They will sleep outside on concrete to get the next iPhone. They will fly ten thousand miles to hear the keynote speech from the Apple CEO. The sports pilgrimages that men make to football stadiums is spoken of with hallowed tones, as if to stand where Joe Montana or Joe Namath or Joe Theisman once threw a hail mary pass is a more highly regarded holy ground than where Gabriel said the actual words “Hail Mary, full of grace” to the Blessed Virgin Mary herself. As a non-believer, when I reviewed my worldview, I realized I'd found a similar replacement for what I'd had before in traditional religion, with curious parallels. A trick of the mind happens when we abandon our idea of religion. When we declare that we have “no religion,” we have already replaced our concept of religion with something different, but the parts are all there. To sum up the modern view that I held - my worldview that I felt had removed all religion - it went something like this: The universe was formed from a massive explosion of pre-existing matter, and gradually over time we evolved from single-celled organisms into fully sentient beings, assembled from far flung star parts and activated by solar power. Whether any pre-existing power or intelligence existed is unknown and unimportant. The creator acted as a clockmaker or artist, and he crafted 100 types of atoms and various physical laws to govern the universe, finely tuning key variables like gravity to keep the dance of atoms and chemistry valid throughout the ages. The laws governing the behavior of matter and energy cannot be broken; the creator cannot or chooses not to poke his finger into the game to disrupt nature and produce miracles. We inhabit a speck on a speck, known as the planet earth, which may be one of many habitable planets in the universe. Pursuit of knowledge and progress is the way, as knowledge is leading us toward a promised land of equality and plenty for all. Against the forces of superstition and ignorance, progress moved forward. From the first living organism, our earliest ancestor, until today, the accretion of knowledge is leading to higher life forms. This progress creates stepping stones of knowledge toward when we will be fulfilled in our understanding by advances in science, engineering, and technology. The rapid leap forward we are experiencing today should have, could have, and would have happened much sooner, but free thought was kept imprisoned by religious institutions until the age of the Enlightenment dawned on the dark ages. Embattled by its enemies, science has finally been unshackled to reveal the truth of the universe. We were only kept from this future by the backwardness of traditional culture, childish superstition, patriarchy, powerful institutions, and primitive tribal structures. In the near future, planetary death will occur through climate change unless we repent of our wasteful ways and adopt a purely rational, scientific view. Through green energy we will be saved. The day is near when we will be able to transfer our conscious mind into a digital immortality. One day we will escape death, shake off our bodies, and have limitless knowledge and pure freedom. Finally, in the distant future, the solar system will collapse, the sun will swallow the earth, and the universe will consume itself into a singular dense spot of matter, and explode once again to restart the cycle. This modern view has it all. By “all” I mean this worldview contains everything that constitutes a religion. I was taking part in a modern religion that has all the trappings of any religion that has ever existed. This modern religion also has its own vocabulary and language and revelations and sacrifices. The priests of this religion even have uniforms or vestments called lab coats and, in the software world, hooded sweatshirts. There are monks and priests in today's secular religion as much as there ever were in Islam, Buddhism, or Christianity. Not only that, but this “Scientism” has the key elements that form a creed: a beginning, an ending, a progression, a hero, a villain, and an apocalypse. I realize the word Scientism sounds strange, but what else could it be called? The only thing missing from it is God. But then it is we ourselves that take his place, so it certainly does have a god, but it's just an evolved ape who wears clothing and stares at screens all day. This realization was an unexpected discovery to me, but so obvious once examined and dissected. We cannot live without some kind of religion. Everyone walking this earth has a religion, whether he or she knows it or not. Consider how people will wait outside for three days for a Harry Potter or Star Wars movie, or will camp out all night on Black Friday for a sale. Consider just how devout members of the Democratic or Republican parties can be, how they will spend hours a day trumpeting the good of their own party while calling out the evil of the opposition. Monks could hardly show such dedication in a cloistered desert hermitage. Fashion and musicians and car companies and cosmetics and guns and pornography have their constant followers, ever faithful in defense. The willingness to defend these modern things makes traditional religious defenders and apologists appear to lack zeal in comparison. While I pretended not to have a faith, I most certainly did have a religion. We are wired for it, and if it's not Christianity or Islam or Buddhism, a religion will surface in something else, like money or health or technology or Harry Potter or socialism. Science, Post-Modernism, and Socialism are religions in disguise. The body itself can become a kind of religion. Literally, millions of devout gym members are attending their worship services on treadmills and leg press machines right now. Everyone is living according to some kind of ultimate faith, whether they admit it or not. As someone who once found that science and religion could not co-exist, I now reject that division. In fact, I find it to be the opposite, as faith and reason are both needed if wisdom is to be found. I've mentioned this several times, but faith and reason are the two wings that make us fly. A bird with one wing cannot leave the ground. To find meaning and purpose in this life we need both reason and faith. The imaginary battle of faith vs. science that has been heated and hammered into a modern worldview is pure invention, but children are being steered to believe that invention. Those driving us in this direction have a clear agenda, and they don't know it, but it's an agenda that will backfire. This way forward will backfire, because a worldview that lacks an ultimate meaning results in a lifetime of trying to fit square pegs into the God-shaped hole in the heart. There is another blowback that is coming, but this one is for those who guide children away from God, as words directly from Jesus stated plainly: “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the person through whom they occur. It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.” Note: this blowback is coming for those with and without faith. The first commandment of Jesus was to love God, thus the very first sin, the worst sin, is to reject God. American culture has fully adopted rejection of God, and I fell for this bait, hook, line, and sinker, for about fifteen years. Unfortunately, there is a blaring warning about this for our souls from Jesus, as teaching children to reject God or causing them to lose faith is called out specifically as a guaranteed path to hell. Turning away from God violates the first rule - not just the Old Testament rules - but of the two commandments of Jesus. The first sin in Genesis was a rejection of God, hence the name original sin. Funny how things all tie together in this strange book. This theme of “turning away” and “turning back” is a story arc, a loop, a core truth, a central point of it all. And of course, the point of the entire body of scripture and church and worship and faith is to remember to have humility before God. I don't think I know a single person who doesn't believe that “humility before God” sounds like a bad idea, and that includes atheists and scientists and rednecks and hippies. Most of the atheists I know say they don't believe in God, but scratching the surface a bit you come to realize that they mostly hate arrogance in religious people and, therefore, they hate God, as if God were some sidekick of a certain person, or group of people. This is an example of throwing out the baby Jesus with the bathwater. It can be a newsflash to some people that Jesus himself also hated religious hypocrites, which may shock people because they realize that they are not that far from God after all. That's the joke on us moderns who mock traditional religion and “organized” religion: we think we've shrugged off religion, like it was a dirty shirt, because we are now too smart, too busy, and too enlightened. But turns out that we had another shirt on underneath, with the same brand name, titled: religion. We run from one religion right into the arms of another religion. Why? Because we have no choice. We must. Our hearts require it. We cannot help it or hide from it. If we get rid of our Rosary we'll go find crystals and horoscopes. If we discard daily reading the Gospels, we'll do daily readings on politics or sports or technology. We want meaning. We need reasons for belief, and we need a sense of right and wrong, and like it or not, the built-in urge for religion surfaces in every person in all ages. This feature of human experience cannot be stifled, or not for long, and even when stifled it's still peeking out though we may be unaware. “God and country” provided the old banners that gave people meaning, and all of history has shown how those can be abused and twisted into cruel and unusual manifestations of evil. God, country, and even family are being replaced with a variety of distractions today, but this will not last long. A time of plenty and peace leads to diversion and distraction. The period of relative peace held now will fade, and along with it, so will these new religions. The new religions revolve around the individual. The old standards, with all their flaws, provided a sense of purpose and meaning in people's lives. The book of Genesis did not take shape by accident. It is the result of thousands upon thousands of generations of understanding how human life and society stay together. The story begins with God, then leads to a family, and finally that family forms a nation. Literalists miss this because they are not looking for it. This order matters, because as soon as we attempt to ignore God, we begin to destroy the family, and as the family goes, so goes any nation. The 20th century smashed the notion of national pride as always being a good thing, as disorder and death can drape itself under a flag. The nations of Germany, China, and the Soviet Union all tossed out God as the first casualty and followed that attempted murder with millions of actual murders of human beings. Today it's less fashionable to have national pride, but if you doubt that national pride still exists, you don't need to look for a redneck with a jacked up pickup on the gravel roads of America. Watch the opening of any World Cup soccer game, when the national anthem rings out for each team. Look at the faces of the players, eyes wet with tears, their cheeks and foreheads steeled like flint for the coming match, their arms linked in solidarity with teammates and somehow even the crowd. The bond of nationhood cements the people through the playing of the song. The crowd sings at the top of their lungs to give strength to the men on the pitch, like soldiers set to fight a 90 minute war by sport, as proxies for the hordes of citizens at home; to win glory for the symbol of their common flag; to bring honor to that shared patch of dirt that the nation calls its home, where all its dreams and feats and failures and hopes and history, good or bad, has tied them together. That nationalism and tribalism is very much still there, just as our sense of religion may appear hidden but is ever-present. National pride must be checked by the higher power of the divine, but whenever the policy of “God first” slips, nationalism becomes a brutal god, and so now we are rightfully wary of leaders who promise the moon and stars. Even family pride must be checked by the divine, or the same problem arises. Further yet, even when “God first” is replaced with “religion first” then the religion itself becomes a God, and God gets shoved to the side. This can happen with Catholics or Muslims or Jews. Anything replacing God marks the end of truth and results in guaranteed chaos, because there is no ultimate truth or justice. Nationalism is good, in the right dosage. Individualism is good, when kept beneath the Creator. Religion is good, when humility before God remains the focus. In other words, all of these things are good, when ordered correctly and not in themselves the ultimate goal. Religion is best when it does not wield state power, but rather acts as the moral compass of state power. This is why the arguments for religious freedom, from Tertullian and Justin Martyr to Thomas Jefferson and Dignitatus Humanae, remain critical for future generations, perhaps even more today than when those writers first shared their ideas. Any attempts at coercion of faith upon people will fail miserably, and cannot avoid devolving into a horrifying totalitarianism. This applies to nationalism, individualism, or religion. If this sounds like exaggeration, you need look back no further than 100 years at the many dictatorships and attempts to crush all forms of dissent. And again coercion has re-appeared, with its current manifestation in America taking up the banner of individualism as the ultimate good. The saying, “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it,” is not true. We will repeat history whether we know history or not. Today, politics and career often take a front seat over God, family, and flag, as we attempt to provide meaning through votes and jobs, and at our peril ignore the crusty old dangerous ways of nationalism and organized religion. The idea today is that we must smash the old. “Smash the patriarchy” is as meaningless a phrase as “Support the troops” or “Defund the police” but all of these work as slogans because of their vague intention and unfocused aim. All three of these slogans pretend to preach virtue, but only make the speaker feel superior for selecting a side. What we have today is a situation of personal feeling as truth, which means that we clamor for a stamp of approval for whatever is we want to do, and in doing so we deem our desires themselves to be good and just. Why? Because we want them. Whatever we want is right. At the end of the book of Judges, the final line matches our times today: “In those days there was no king; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” That is where we sit today, and history will play out what the old civilizations and peoples found out the hard way, from thousands of years of mistaken pathways through war and peace and seasons of change. In the book of Wisdom chapter two might have been written today, in our age of rising atheism and indifference, as the sacred writer uses the voice of the culture of the self to describe its beliefs. There is nothing new under the sun. The author of Wisdom states plainly what those without faith in God seek: to craft a world to satisfy delights and to never stop partaking of those delights, right up to the last day, since if there is no afterlife, judgement, or resurrection, then what else is there but food, drink, entertainment, and “fun”? Virtue is for suckers. For by mere chance were we born, and hereafter we shall be as though we had not been; Because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason a spark from the beating of our hearts, And when this is quenched, our body will be ashes and our spirit will be poured abroad like empty air….Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are here, and make use of creation with youthful zest. Let us have our fill of costly wine and perfumes, and let no springtime blossom pass us by…But let our strength be our norm of righteousness; for weakness proves itself useless. (Wisdom 2) This is summing up the “will to power” three thousand years before any German tackled it. All of this chapter of Wisdom sounds familiar today. We have middle-aged men gulping testosterone pills and protein shakes, worshipping the god of youth, with the enemy being old age. Marriages are sacrificed for pornography every day, as the sacred desires of our fickle minds must be satisfied. Technology is a god that promises to solve all of our problems, even though it actually created the problems that it now needs to solve (see: Climate Change, the threat of Nuclear War, Cyber attack, mega-earthquake from fracking, Coronavirus). Consumerism presses forward with the latest fads, gadgets, vehicles, and fashions to occupy our wants and desires. Rampant self-indulgence runs riot as “to each his own” plays out in real time before our eyes. Sin is seen as only that which could harm another, which is the masterstroke of our egos to allow us to keep us clinging to the seven deadlies because they only harm ourselves, and even self-harm is denied, as the addictions cut so deep that even senior men cannot give up habits that should have died as they passed adolescence into adulthood. At least the Greeks gave names to the gods. We pretend there is no god while we live out full lives worshipping them. Hephaestus, Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Dionysus, Aphrodite, Eros. I challenge you to watch TV ads and see if you can tell exactly which god is calling for worship in each commercial. There may be a good opportunity for a board game or Bingo cards for finding which Greek god is being dialed in each advertisement. This religion of “science” is not the only modern replacement for religion around, it's just one of the better and most complete candidates because it has a full cosmology. By definition it cannot extend into matters of faith and morality, but for many followers it does. The role of science is to observe and explain the natural world, but when it extends past that it becomes philosophy and often bleeds into religion. Our modern cosmology and understanding of the universe looks back on that of the book of Genesis with a sneer, but a thousand years from now it's just as likely that our understanding will look equally silly. Our concepts of black holes and quantum physics and string theory could sound as ludicrous as the “firmament” that held the waters above and below the earth. It's even possible that the firmament theory of Genesis will seem more wise, should the next round of cosmological definition be something completely strange to us moderns. But in either case, the structure of the universe that we “know” at different points in history tells us nothing about faith or morals, and advances in telescopes and computing cannot mine truth any better than the old thinkers and storytellers. Plato and Paul and Confucius and Buddha and Shakespeare and Dante have deeper insights into truth than all the scientists in history, even if they had never heard of calculus or chemistry. Science makes for a good religion because it can explain so many things, make sense of our world, and provide an answer for all questions. Ever since Voltaire's lifelong relentless attack on religion made headway, legions of science apologists stand at the ready to take up arms in defense of Nature to act as a check against the slightest whiff of religious fanaticism. It has become every bit as religious as religion, as can be seen in the long crusade of ink and letters from Voltaire to Karl Marx to Sigmund Freud to John Dewey. The claim is that we are creatures caught up in a cosmic accident, where knowledge can only be ascertained by the scientific method. Only what is observable, repeatable, and testable is real. Consciousness is merely a result of evolution. Our morality and stories are but guardians and guides for our own self-preservation, learned through a cruel history of pain and suffering. Art, literature, and religion are side-effects of overactive imaginations of weak and primitive tribes that invented magic, superstition, God, gods, and goddesses for psychological and sociological survival. This modern god of science has a scapegoat for blame, for redemption, for justification, just like the old religions. A religion must have an enemy, as all gods promise approval, cheerleading, and ultimately righteousness, which means someone else must lose. Christianity has the devil, The Fall, and Original Sin. There has to be a loser, an opponent; you cannot be a freedom fighter today without an oppressor. You cannot be freed without overcoming a master. For the modern gods, the enemy is still there if you look for it. The other political party must be wrong. The ravages of age and deterioration is to blame. Diet, sugar, fat, and high-fructose corn syrup are to blame. The anti-intellectuals are to blame. The hillbillies are to blame. The immigrants are to blame. The rich are to blame. Those on welfare are to blame. The capitalists are guilty, squeezing blood from the workers. No, the flip-side, the communists are causing the problem by killing all motivation. There is a hero and a villain. My favorite quote about the grand left-right argument of economics is from John Kenneth Galbraith who said, “In capitalism, man oppresses man. In communism, it's just the opposite.” While that is funny, it's also a true statement. But it's also worth noting that one of those ideologies has proven repeatedly to embrace wholesale slaughter of humans much more readily than the other, and I don't even have to mention which one for you to know the answer, and it is the same one that inherently denies God as one of its core tenets.And then there's the most popular villain of all: the Christians. Science fundamentalists tend to take aim most pointedly at Christians, and often Muslims, too, but in this cultural moment it is the Christians. Never mind that fact that modern science would not exist without Christianity, or that most of the great breakthroughs were made by God-fearing people. Let's set aside those minor names, like Mendel, Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, Faraday, Mendel, Pasteur, Kelvin, and Einstein. Ignore those thinkers for a moment. Because there is some truth to the accusation of blame, of course, as many readily point at the Spanish Inquisition and behavior of “Christian” explorers in the New World that followed on Columbus' heels. Yes, Europe has horrific segments of history, as religions can be abused and twisted. For instance, read the letters of St. Bartolome de las Casas to hear about what Spanish wealth-seekers were doing to natives in the Caribbean, some under the banner of their supposed faith. It is revolting. Were it not for de las Casas writing in the 1520s to alert about the horrors of the Spanish running amok in the New World, the Church would not have written Sublimus Deus in 1537 condemning all enslavement and re-asserting the fact that natives are created in the image and likeness of God. And even then, could a letter from the Pope suddenly halt the evil of men running wild who want nothing more than gold, violence, and sex? No. But it does make me wonder how much longer and how much worse this state of butchery would have continued if no one like Bartolome de las Casas had been present to witness and report on the evils, because he was one of the few voices crying out from the literal wilderness of the New World. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated event in human history restricted to Europeans, as you can read stories of the gulags in Russia or the lengthy list of massacres in China or find numerous accounts of similar gruesome events coming from the Ottomans or Romans or Zulus or Mayans or Incas or Hawaiians or First Nations or literally any culture that ever existed, try as we might today to gloss over the shared flaw in our hearts, which has always been with humans wherever we have lived. Thanks to the 20th century, when nationalism and socialism reigned, Europeans lead in all body count statistical categories for brutality and inhumanity, but to assume that only one continent of people is capable of atrocity is to ignore reality and all of history. We want to plug our ears and close our eyes, but to pretend that one group of people has this flaw while other human groups do not carry this same disease is to bury our heads in the sands of a version of history that would be more aptly called fantasy.One undeniable fact is that as we gain knowledge and mastery over science and technology, we become increasingly deadly, as each invention increases the death toll, from the longbow, to the broadsword, to the stirrup for riding horses, to the musket, to the cannon, to mustard gas, to the atom bomb, to the inter-contintental-ballistic-missile, to biological weaponry, to whatever unexpected coming attack will slay our modern energy grids and supply chains and water supplies. The reason why is that with each advance, the greed of opportunity is seized by people. The question is always, “How can we make money or benefit from this new knowledge,” and rarely “Should we be doing this at all?” I have seen this firsthand in product meetings where the ability to do something is adopted, such as spy on shoppers, or install keystroke logging software, and the uneasy question usually arises about ethics from mousy engineers, but is quickly knocked down by an executive or manager who wants a good fiscal quarter. To observe this human tendency to exploit others does not require a war to observe. We are all seeking to find an advantage using whatever tool is available, just as a younger sister learns to cry tearfully to thwart a bullying older brother, because she learns it can summon a father or mother to arrest the bully. If the younger sister had a taser that proved more effective, they would just use that. Christians never needed any extra assistance from its own followers to earn the hatred of its enemies. No, they are hated even when they are preaching the Good News with humble hearts and mercy in mind. But rest assured, any atrocity or horror committed under the banner of professed Christians never came from Jesus Christ, the founder of the faith. Anyone who says it does, doesn't understand Jesus, and needs to start again on Matthew 1, verse 1 and proceed to John 21, verse 25. The evils people do in Jesus' name have never come from Jesus. This is something quickly forgotten. Whether or not those who acted in God's name as a wolf in sheep's clothing were true believers does not even matter, because the bloodstain remains. The wound of scandal brought by someone professing faith remains for a long time. The lion is supposed to lay down with the lamb, not eat it, no matter how delicious the lamb. The believer is supposed to give unto Caesar, not become Caesar. Christians in error have become the example held up in pop culture. Many TV shows today have the villain as a Christian. It's easy to see who the villain of American society is by watching movies or reading books from a specific year, as once the Soviets held all the roles of villains, then it was middle-eastern Muslims, and today it's almost entirely Christians. Yet Jesus still remains risen up, glorified, and no matter what evil men carry out, he himself can never be sullied. This is why Christianity can be stood up time after time, after every apparent deathblow. It rises again with Jesus himself. Because of the high standard set by Jesus, we can never live up to it, not fully, and often not even minimally. For this reason the sex abuse of children by Catholic clergy hurts all the worse, because Jesus' Church on earth is meant to be the keeper of the light of faith, and “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” yet for all the truth, beauty and goodness that the faithful see in our Church, in its essence and meaning, its buildings, its art, its Catechism, in the history, the mysteries of the Holy Mass, in the Sacraments, in the Rosary, in the Real Presence of the Eucharist, it hurts terribly when the attack comes from the Church itself, when trust has been eroded from the inside. Still the beauty of all those parts can never be destroyed or diminished, no matter how far fallen followers have gone in the ruination of their own souls. Betrayed trust among non-Christians brings bruises, but among the faithful, from inside, the betrayal gives a nearly fatal wound. The saying, “There is no honor among thieves” is meant to be intended for non-Christians, which is why the sex abuse scandal provides endless firepower for powerful guns aimed at the Catholic Church. For the billion people who have known and trusted good priests, this was especially painful, sometimes too hard for words, to the point that excuses were made, and sometimes even excuses for the excuses for the behavior, when there is no excuse that can be allowed. The pain of the victims supersedes all guilt and shame. But it was not God that committed the crimes, nor the Church, but corrupt men who abused their power and violated every precept of the faith and caused immeasurable scandal. For the many that would like to see the Church wither and die, thinking that this event will surely be the final death of Christianity, they will be sorely disappointed. Scandal has rocked the Church for 2,000 years and each of those looked like the last punch, but the Church will never die because it cannot die. I'm not claiming this to be arrogant. I'm not writing this to be rude. I'm saying it because it is a fact. In every age, Jesus somehow gathers a people to his Church.Every generation of humans rediscovers the power of the same man from Nazareth, over and over, again and again, because nothing comes close to its power, nothing touches the completeness of the life of Jesus, and nothing overcomes the resurrection once you come to believe it. Clearly, I have no right to speak for anything regarding the Church. I have no status. I'm not even a very good Catholic. I should probably just shut up and not share my opinion on these topics. But I know what I've found, and it's something quite different and far more meaningful and powerful than what my old religion of science could offer. This is a public episode. 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Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington examiner, is one of the most important political writers and thinkers of his time. He helped found the Almanac of American Politics in the early 70s and was the lead author for decades. He worked in politics himself, before transitioning to a role as a journalist, author, and pundit - always being an incisive and influential analyst of American politics at each stop along the way. In this conversation, we talk his roots in post-war Detroit, his time working for Democratic candidates and as a Democratic pollster, founding the Almanac, moving from left-of-center to right-of-center, and he gives his thoughts on some of the most pressing issues facing the political system and country today.IN THIS EPISODE…Michael's memories of growing up in post-war Detroit…The first election Michael remembers in detail…The up-and-coming politician Michael worked for at an important time…Michael talks his movement from liberal to conservative…Michael shares his memories of being on the scene during the momentous 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention…The off-hand comment that led to Michael's involvement in forming and writing the Almanac of American Politics…Michael talks the nuts and bolts that have gone into writing the Almanac for 40 years…Michael spends several years working with legendary Democratic pollster Peter Hart…The time when Senator Joe Biden took issue with something Michael wrote in the Almanac…Michael remembers the impact of Senator Pat Moynihan…Some of Michael's favorite political convention memories…Michael's involvement in the infamous 1980 convention fights between the forces of Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy…How Michael makes the jump from political consultant to an opinion writer and journalist…The 3 books that shaped Michael's political thinking…Michael's thoughts on today's political writing…Michael talks the unusual place that California holds in today's politics…Michael's take on the current state of both political parties…Michael compares today's political scene to the politics of the 1880s…Michael's current view on what demographics tell us about politics…The issue of the last decade on which Michael wishes he'd have been much more active…AND…the 1967 Detroit riots, 8 Mile Road, the UAW, US-16, the arsenal of democracy, Dan Balz, Big 3 Auto Companies, baloney and malarkey, David Broder, James Buchanan, George W. Bush, Pat Caddell, Jimmy Carter, Jerome Cavanaugh, Bill Clinton, Geoffrey Cowan, Mario Cuomo, Richard D. Daley, Duke University, Dwight Eisenhower, flotsam and jetsam, Gerald Ford, John Kenneth Galbraith, Newt Gingrich, Meg Greenfield, Martha Griffiths, Jon Grinspan, John Gunther, Lou Harris, Hubert Humphrey, Al Hunt, Jim Hunt, Harold Ickes, Jesse Jackson, John Judis, Jack Kemp, John Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, V.O. Key, Lyndon Johnson, John Lindsay, Samuel Lubell, Madison Square Garden, Walter Mondale, The Moynihan Report, Wade McCree, George McGovern, Ralph Nader, Newton's Second Law of Motion, Richard Nixon, Kirk O'Donnell, Tip O'Neill, Charles Oakman, Barack Obama, obvious impractical proposals, Nancy Pelosi, podium passes, prayers of political scientists, Franklin Pierce, David Price, Oliver Quayle, Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reagan, recessed steering columns, Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, Tim Russert, E.E. Schattschneider, Mark Shields, superdelegates, supply side economics, John Paul Stevens, Ted Stevens Airport, Ruy Teixeria, Bob Torricelli, Donald Trump, Grant Ujifusa, Carl Wagner, George Wallace, Woodrow Wilson, Worland Wyoming, Sam Yorty, Coleman Young, & more!