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Trump, the Tech-Right, and the Post-Neoliberal Order
414 Plays1 month ago
In this episode of The Beautiful Idea, we present an interview with author Jamie Merchant, author of Engame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline and numerous articles at The Brooklyn Rail. Merchant argues that we have entered a post-neoliberal age, with both Trump and Biden abandoning many of the touch-stones of corporate globalization that defined the past several decades.
But what comes next? During our discussion we talk about how and why Bidenism failed following the upheavals of 2020 and the rise of the Tech-Right as a bloc within the Trump administration. We map out what this formation wants and how it connects to the State's push to expand the American tech industry and in particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI).
We also unpack what it would mean to create new forms of autonomous class based street politics, as demonstrations against ICE and Tesla continue to grow.
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Transcript
Introduction & Guest Introduction
00:00:14
Speaker
Thanks for listening. to the beautiful idea a podcast from a collective of several anarchist and autonomous media producers scattered around the world we're bringing you interviews and stories from the front lines of autonomous social movements and struggles as well as original commentary and analysis follow us on mastodon and at the beautifulde show thanks for
00:00:55
Speaker
My name is jamie Merchant. I'm a writer in Chicago, and I just published a book called End Game, Economic Nationalism and Global Decline ah last fall in the Field Notes series that is published under the editorial leadership of Paul Matick at the Brooklyn Rail.
00:01:14
Speaker
And so I've been writing for that publication and a number of others, including The Baffler, The Nation, and These Times. among others, since roughly the mid 2010s on this theme of rising nationalism and kind of right wing radicalization, not just in this country, but around the world and what that means for contemporary left radical politics right now.
00:01:43
Speaker
And so that pretty much sums up what I'm about. Great. Well, thank you for taking the time to ah come on
Economic Nationalism & Tech Capital
00:01:51
Speaker
the show. You've done some really amazing interviews on the Antifada podcast. And like you said, there's some great articles in the Brooklyn Rail, which we'll link to.
00:01:58
Speaker
And of course, we want to encourage people to check out Endgame. Yeah, we want to talk about a lot of these things, about how tech capital, this increasing push towards the right in ruling class circles, you know, what that all means, this increasing push towards economic nationalism.
00:02:15
Speaker
And also, Moreover, what does all this stuff mean for not only social movements, but working class people? Like, what are we actually going to see into this stuff? So just to kind of get us started, i think it would help to define sort of the the
Origins of Neoliberalism
00:02:30
Speaker
terrain. So you talk about us kind of living in like a post-neoliberal world.
00:02:34
Speaker
I think it might be helpful just to define neoliberalism really quickly. And how did those policies shape us up until now? Yeah. neoliberalism these days as we did maybe 10 or 15 years ago.
00:02:50
Speaker
But the the ideology and political movement, just to start with a ah basic kind of first pass at it here and a kind of definition for neoliberalism you know can be traced back to the global inflationary and stagnation build crisis of the 1970s and the way that that crisis, which was global and especially, i mean, it was ah the effect basically the entire world was caught up two different degrees, but a worldwide inflationary wave that was accompanied in the advanced sort of capitalist core countries like the US s and Western Europe, Japan, by kind of rising class conflict and class struggle.
00:03:42
Speaker
in a variety of arenas. And so the ruling class of this country and others was kind of faced with the dilemma of how to kickstart capitalism or reorganize sort of ruling class like opinion and thought and and ruling structures and institutions in a way that would that would resolve that crisis and allow profitability to um to continue again and for capitalist corporations to kind of escape this inflationary trap that they were stuck in throughout the the decade of the 70s.
00:04:22
Speaker
And theyre basically, no one knew what to do for most of the but deck that that decade until you get Paul Volcker, the central bank, a very famous central bank chair of the Federal Reserve of the U.S., appointed by Jimmy Carter,
00:04:43
Speaker
And the late 70s, who basically implemented this, what's come to be known as the Volcker shock, where he let interest rates skyrocket up to close to 20 percent.
00:04:54
Speaker
Like right now, people complain about interest rates being really high. Right. Since the like you know the inflation wave of a couple of years ago and the central bank's response to it. But we're talking back in the late 70s, early 80s, interest rates of, you know, 18 percent, 20 percent set by the
Neoliberalism's Rise Under Reagan
00:05:11
Speaker
the Federal Reserve.
00:05:13
Speaker
And this had the effect of basically destroying the what remained of the the old industrial working class in this country, accelerating deindustrialization as it became basically too expensive to produce manufacturing and sort of high level industry here at a competitive cost and volume.
00:05:40
Speaker
And the beginning of what we now call financialization, is kind of a defining feature of neoliberalism, which really took off under Reagan and then came into its own and in the 90s and thereafter. And so in a stroke you had with the Volcker shock and the entrance of Reagan on the scene, ah the taming of inflation the really extraordinary pickup in deindustrialization and the disciplining of the working class, the mil the organized industrial working class, and the kind of cowing of the union movement, the organized labor legacy movement that was inherited from the sort of class struggles of the 30s and 40s, beginning to of the dismantling of that and the rise of ah what we now call financialization and our current sort of like
00:06:32
Speaker
dystopian finance, like finance and corporation based form of domination that we're seeing now. And so all that was happening. And it was sort of the, I guess, the policy side of neoliberalism, whose ideology, whose sort of ideological message was all about strengthening markets and making market competition and free trade.
00:07:00
Speaker
And political ideas like individual rights and the individual right to choose the right to work, all these sorts of labor ideas that informed the neoliberal vision of the labor market, making those a kind of political reality and getting ideological buy not just from elites, but from the the broader population for this ideological project.
00:07:27
Speaker
that was going to be you know this new era in which free markets and unregulated capitalism and free trade and another buzzword that eventually became very popular globalization.
00:07:41
Speaker
We're going to you know connect the world in this in a kind of seamless global marketplace that, you know, yeah, would have these kinds of economic institutions as its material base and would be accompanied by political and cultural ideas and values like like like individual human rights and and and so on.
00:08:07
Speaker
And so that kind of in an encapsulated form is what neoliberalism was about.
2008 Financial Crisis Impact
00:08:14
Speaker
It was about essentially the idea that the market knows the free market knows best and that the government can't do anything to improve on the outcomes that free and competitive markets ah provide And if anything, it only gets in the way. And it kind of came up, came about as an unintended outcome of the way that the ruling class resolved that that global crisis of the 70s that I was describing earlier.
00:08:44
Speaker
and so And so, yeah, that's kind of neoliberalism in a nutshell. To kind of attempt to bring us up to the present period, I think the the next piece in that puzzle is sort of the response to the 2008 economic crisis.
00:08:59
Speaker
and how that connects to the post-pandemic world that we live in right now. How does that then create the world in which we are now, which is defined for most people by just huge costs, no one can save any money, rent is going up and up and up, everything costs more and more. An event that I talk at some length about in the book is the great financial ah meltdown that happened in 2008.
00:09:27
Speaker
And wish some listeners might remember. And 2008, 2009, this aftermath kind of grinding on for years after that, that almost brought down the entire global economy.
00:09:40
Speaker
It was so it was so extensive. And what you had then was this system that was supposed to be like the, you know, the advertisement for.
00:09:53
Speaker
like the, the rationality and efficiency of this new free market based society, right. That was sort of postcold war post posts, uh, like post ideological conflict, post communism, post socialism, right?
00:10:08
Speaker
Like this was the system we had to work with and it was the American way. um and it, and it was all, all about, you know, the freedom of the freedom of competition on the market.
00:10:20
Speaker
Essentially, you have this this massive like financial crash that what that happened at the very top of the the economy among the biggest financial corporations, some of the biggest financial corporations in the country.
00:10:38
Speaker
And furthermore, the very corporations that were supposed to be the leading cutting edge of like sort of market-led innovation, they called it financial innovation, like all of these derivative contracts and weird arcane financial instruments that they used to trade so you what but they called in retrospect retrospect subprime mortgages in the U.S. housing industry for years and that they thought the markets could simply handle and that they if they spread the risk widely enough, you know it wouldn't.
00:11:13
Speaker
eventually amount to any kind of systemic danger to the system at large because the market, it or it's such and such an efficient administrator and organizer of information. It would never be ah risk at that level.
00:11:24
Speaker
But of course, that was dead wrong. And it turned out that it was creating these giant systemic risks across the entire financial system that we're building up over years. because people were defaulting on their, on their home mortgages and on their home loans.
00:11:41
Speaker
And it it was happening on a large enough scale that enough, you know, banks and institutions were losing money. And as that sort of began to creep up ah the the chain of, you know, the corporate chain, it eventually hit a critical point.
00:11:57
Speaker
And that's when you get the, the big crash in the fall of 2008. And so, and so ah Right around the time that obama was winning that president Barack Obama was was winning the presidential election of 2008, you had this massive government bailout of the of the financial system where all of the old sort of fairy tales about you know the the market and competition being the way forward for society were just kind of thrown out the window.
00:12:31
Speaker
And it it' be all of a sudden became a story about, oh, well, actually, the government has to simply step in and bail out like the entire financial system, like of private capitalism.
00:12:42
Speaker
And so it turned out maybe the government, you know, isn't always a problem. Like it's the the private capital system is going to fail and there's going to have to be these massive you know bailouts, essentially, when it does.
00:12:57
Speaker
And so that really kind of. Destroyed the central conceit of of neoliberalism. And it destroyed the foundation for elite ideology because they really believed in this stuff.
00:13:13
Speaker
And it left them kind of scrambling for it left the elites. That is, you know, kind of scrambling for a new a new form of governance or or rule.
00:13:25
Speaker
And so. what essentially happened was you get this massive state intervention where they bail out, you know, all of the biggest banks, they ah privatize the risks, they socialize the costs. It's all done, you know, at the public, at cost to the talk to the, to the public, to the taxpayer.
00:13:46
Speaker
And the, the basic kind of new policy regime that comes together in the, in the years that follow is to remove any kind of of, and I promise this is getting to the ground level questions that you that you mentioned, to remove any kind of systemic policy risk, right, from the financial system that would, you know, that would threaten it in such a way again.
00:14:13
Speaker
And so to just to kind of make a long story shorter, the the government and its kind of regulatory agencies have began to put a new kind of suite of regulations in place ah for banks and for lenders and financial institutions um across the the financial system and using the central bank that basically all but guaranteed that there would be no no other major crisis like that that that was threatening the whole system in 2008.
00:14:48
Speaker
And at the same time, you had the Federal Reserve pumping ah billions and billions of of dollars of newly printed digital dollars into the financial system, into onto onto the balance sheets of private banks, private institutions to you know to fortify them and to to kind of strengthen them in the wake of the crisis.
00:15:11
Speaker
And these new regulations and this new policy of just seemingly unlimited money and very low interest rates, I should i should add, led to this massive historic crisis run up in asset values.
00:15:24
Speaker
That is to say, financial, like property that is held in the form of financial claims to to wealth among, you know, very rich investors and and owners. And so you have all, as a result, all of this this capital, all of this this this money sloshing around in the system looking for something to invest in and And the U.S. doesn't have much productive investment opportunity for for like rich investors looking for like old line industry or or productive like enterprises to invest in because almost all that stuff has been de-industrialized and shipped offshore. It's not a very productive economy, the US, in the sense it doesn't make very many useful things.
00:16:13
Speaker
But what it does have is tons of of very valuable urban real estate And so, for example, you saw just a flood, you know, floods of money, not just from U.S. s investors, but from investors all over the world flooding into American cities, buying up property, pushing up property values, pushing up rents, making it increasingly difficult just to live and to live in these cities.
00:16:39
Speaker
And that's been a huge factor in the cost of living crisis in this country.
Post-2008 Economic Shifts
00:16:44
Speaker
And, you know, prices i have and rents, prices of property and rents and mortgages have generally only been going up and making it harder and harder to simply to live in American cities.
00:16:59
Speaker
So that's a ah major part of the the kind of everyday. you know, cost of living crisis that that everyone is facing. At the same time, ah ton of this surplus capital goes into things like, well, we could get into, I guess, a discussion about things like limited language models, so-called AI, I'm sorry, large language models and AI a little bit later,
00:17:29
Speaker
But you have all of this money going into venture capital directed at startups and the so-called gig economy, you know, that's taken over more and more of the sort of economic landscape and created like a whole new sort of subclass of these, you know, of gig work and gig jobs that is kind of like a catch all for the for the the labor market and for people who wouldn't be able to, you know, to find jobs necessarily in other parts of, in other parts of the economy. It's kind of, it serves as like an employer of of last resort in a lot of, in a lot of contexts. And so, I mean, those are just two kind of, kind of examples of the way that the, you know, this, this huge mass of surplus, know,
00:18:19
Speaker
money or surplus capital, if you want to call it that, that can't, that doesn't really have any other outlet for and investment goes into assets like real estate that, you know, it does increase in value, but, you know, great benefit to the investor, but a great cost to the people who can no longer afford, you know, to live there.
00:18:43
Speaker
And then, i mean, we you know, we have ah cost, like another dimension of the cost of living crisis, um which has kind of come in to really come into force after the pandemic.
00:18:56
Speaker
And that, again, is the result of not just this kind of factor that I'm describing, but also the whole way that supply chains and again, the kind of limitations of the U.S. economy ran up against the but kind of disruptions of the pandemic era.
Trump & Biden: Post-Neoliberalism?
00:19:16
Speaker
and led to you know the prices of a lot of basic products just going up because there wasn't basically there wasn't enough of them to meet the demand ah of the needs the basic needs of people.
00:19:31
Speaker
In your writing, you talk about how both Trump and Biden are both these post-neoliberal presidents, and you talk a lot about the actions that Biden took, you know the CHIPS Act,
00:19:41
Speaker
you know, implementing some tariffs and stuff like that. The reason I want you to talk about this is because like, if we were to listen to, you know, like the neoliberals at like pod save America or something like that, which are, you know, former speechwriters for Obama, the, the narrative from them is that, you know, Biden was the most progressive president since FDR and all this stuff and did all these wonderful things for the working class.
00:20:07
Speaker
And I think it's interesting because you kind of pick apart and say like, well, actually, this is done for real economic reasons and it really doesn't have anything to do with making people's lives better. But is this move to do X, Y, Z? So so pull that out a little bit for us.
00:20:21
Speaker
There was there was a great deal of. Well, let me. Yeah, I guess let's start with with with Trump and the sort of post neoliberal lot like presidency. Right.
00:20:32
Speaker
So already in in the first Trump administration, you had this move towards trade wars, like the beginning of what we're seeing right now, like, you know really in a really like hyper intense form.
00:20:50
Speaker
All that was, of course, started in Trump's first presidency when he began to ah use tariffs as a kind of economic coercion tool.
00:21:02
Speaker
And began to take a much more belligerent line against, you know, economic enemies, notably China. And just in general, began to pivot towards a much more aggressive, like and economic a kind of pro posture of very nationalistic, like.
00:21:22
Speaker
economic warfare against against other countries in a way that was ah kind of would have been un unthinkable in the old like the days of of neoliberalism when right the the idea again was that you know government shouldn't be in the business of intervening and and markets and they should just let markets kind of do the work and let trade and private initiative you know organize our our like our economic lives.
00:21:49
Speaker
Trump in a lot of ways, kind of through that rule book, like out the window when he and when he came into the first term of his of his presidency and started basically down this path that we're that we're now seeing ah really sort of culminate in this, like in some ways, a ah what may be a new era of of world history, but we'll get to that a little later maybe.
00:22:16
Speaker
So Trump sort of kicks this off And begins with this much more hawkish economic nationalism that that would have been, you you know, not really entertained by his by his predecessors. Seriously, certainly not Obama.
00:22:34
Speaker
And then when ah when Biden gets in there, he you know, when Biden wins, I mean, basically in the first year at the end of the first year of the pandemic in 2020. It was right after, you know, historic uprising in the summer of that year. Biggest you know mass uprising the country has ever seen.
00:22:54
Speaker
think that's I think that's actually correct. And the George Floyd insurrection, a a really embarrassing and humiliating for the U.S. state invasion of the of the U.S. Capitol by the, you know, the conspiracy crazed QAnon mob in January of 2021.
00:23:15
Speaker
And in general, just the sense that society was breaking down from the stresses of the pandemic and the population was was losing its mind. And so by the Biden administration gets in there with what they think is kind of a mandate to, you know, to really like put the nail in the coffin of neoliberalism and use the, you know, use the machinery of the of the government, you know, of public administration to to do something that will, that will actually help the majority of the population, right. To pass like some, some new laws and some, some economic policy that would be a break from the past. And that would actually, you know, empower the mass of the the working population and get a handle on this, like really this, like, you know, sizzling and and, and almost explosive social crisis that had been
00:24:11
Speaker
um and brewing all throughout 2020 and 2021. So they were kind of looking at the whole terrain and being like, you're all crazy because you've got the George Floyd uprising, you've got January 6th. They're like, we've just got to put you know, a lid on this boil, basically.
00:24:26
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. and And then you saw this on the national security side, too. Like after after January 6th, like there were all these, you know, like the like Department of Homeland Security, FBI were releasing insurrection, basically like strategy guides for the new like the new approach to domestic dissidents. And it was, you know, it was looking at the radical left and the radical right and sort of like, you know, this the the rise of all these new kind of like like social, like quasi paramilitary, you know, ish organizations like on the right. And I mean, like they were looking at the Proud Boys. They were looking at Antifa or Antifa as Trump was fond of saying groups like that they were seeing as like basically, yeah, like parastate organizations that they had to start cracking down on.
00:25:16
Speaker
And so there was both a national security and a kind of economic side of this response to This this massive you know upswell of popular discontent.
00:25:27
Speaker
And it's it's I think it's a fairly true kind of radical maxim that class struggle drives ruling class organization. That without the the kind of heat of, you know, of basically.
00:25:44
Speaker
mass uprisings and mass insurrection and different forms of class struggle, the ruling class has no incentive to to organize itself and get serious about actually you know governing with some kind of legitimate mandate.
00:25:58
Speaker
So I think that's that's what that's what we were seeing with the Biden administration. I feel like most people, the feeling is that despite what the people at Pod Save America would say, and I mean, you know even what you're talking about,
00:26:12
Speaker
Most people feel that the Biden years were not one in which, you know, their lives
Biden Administration's Challenges
00:26:17
Speaker
became better. You know, i mean, this is one of the reasons that I would say Trump won, obviously. And just the feeling is that, you know, post pandemic, everything got more expensive, like all of the things that we associate with kind of the neoliberal era, I guess now the post neoliberal era have just accelerated.
00:26:36
Speaker
and i mean i understand what you're saying, but I guess how does this square with the reality that we're feeling that, yeah, you you passed a law that you know tried to attack China you know making computer chips or something? like What does that actually mean for me?
00:26:53
Speaker
I guess like what did that actually mean when the rubber hit the road? like Did it just not make an impact? or Yeah, they they failed comprehensively. Is what is what happened. They they completely failed in their attempt to act to do what I was describing.
00:27:08
Speaker
That's what like that. I think that's what they wanted to do. Right. they They wanted to restore ah domestic legitimacy for the American government. Right. Restore popular respect for the the basic liberal institutions of the government and restore American prestige ah abroad among allies and competitors. Right.
00:27:31
Speaker
And they completely failed on both counts. Right. For all the reasons you mentioned. The the the elector the electoral campaign of Biden and then Harris last year ended in failure and Trump was restored to power. The one thing that they wanted to avoid the most. Right.
00:27:52
Speaker
Was Trump returning to power and and all of the. like ah just everything that entailed. So, I mean, did Biden get pushed back from economic elites to not go too far or?
00:28:06
Speaker
I mean, that definitely happened. They had a kind of, they had a more like comprehensive idea or I wouldn't necessarily call it comprehensive, but they had the first version of the kind of like social policy they wanted to pass, which they called build back, you know, the build back better legislation.
00:28:26
Speaker
was aimed at empowering like broadly the what we call the care economy, like people who work in a particular part of the the sort of service work part of the workforce, you know, who take care of people who work in schools, who work in health care, hospitals, and make up a huge and growing portion of the workforce.
00:28:49
Speaker
Like they were originally thinking of like intervening in that area of the labor market, right? And directing funding and labor law towards empowering that sector of ah workers, which seemed especially pertinent in the wake of the pandemic, right?
00:29:06
Speaker
But there was significant pushback from corporate elites, especially in health care and other sectors against exactly that idea. Once once the kind of elites, the business elites in those in those areas, like like found their footing again because they had been momentarily thrown off by all the chaos of the pandemic year and then, you know, the the huge social uprisings of that year.
00:29:34
Speaker
they began to regroup and realize that they weren't, you know, they weren't okay with the direction that the Biden administration was, was going in with that particular approach. And so what you ended up getting was the hilariously named inflation reduction act and a couple of other bills that worked that were aimed at infrastructure and semiconductor chips.
00:30:00
Speaker
And, know, The idea was that they were going, you know, they build this as basically a new kind of I mean, i don't I don't think they ever said it was going to be I don't know if they ever said it was going to be like the new second coming of the New Deal. But certainly a lot of commentators were calling him like, yeah, the second coming of FDR. And this is the most significant you know social policy since since the New Deal. And it was going to you know rebuild the working class and make America a great industrial power again and you know it was going to just like renew among other things renew democratic the democratic alliance with the working class which they're always you know anxious and and freaking out about
00:30:43
Speaker
But the problem is ah couple of things. It takes years and years. So they you know, they're basically just pouring government money, throwing government money at private corporations to to build any kind of factory in these areas. You know, um green energy, semiconductors and and the like.
Asset Values & Cost of Living Crisis
00:31:00
Speaker
But it takes years and years to build like, for example, a semiconductor factory. And beyond that, modern factories barely employ a fraction of the workers that they once did right back in the industrial, like the sort of classic industrial era.
00:31:18
Speaker
I mean, the like a modern semiconductor factory, you know, employs like mostly a handful of engineers who hang out in a control room in pressing, yeah like pressing buttons on a on a screen to manipulate ah the machinery downstairs.
00:31:34
Speaker
And so and so that is the kind of investment, right, that they were that they were directing their their their law and energy towards in the Biden years.
00:31:46
Speaker
And it as a result, it's just it doesn't produce, you know, the the near the level of jobs that they are advertising it as. You know, it doesn't doesn't produce the level of employment, the the new kind of process, you know, well-paying.
00:32:01
Speaker
jobs that they were saying it was. And even, i mean, even assuming it it would, it would take like the better part of a decade to fully build out their entire vision.
00:32:11
Speaker
And that's assuming it doesn't get completely overturned by, ah you know, like Trump part two coming in and overturning all of it, which looks like it's, it may very well happen now.
00:32:24
Speaker
So just basically yeah it as ah as a program for restoring the legitimacy of the U.S. state in the eyes of its citizenry and the world, you know, Bidenism was just a total failure.
00:32:39
Speaker
And it didn't it had no effect. It had very little effect on the everyday lives of and of ordinary workers and and citizens, most of whom don't even know what the Inflation Reduction Act is, much less the the CHIPS Act, you know, that's aimed more at these critical technologies, resources like semiconductors.
00:33:00
Speaker
And the cost of living crisis continues to go up because the ah pandemic, you know, resulted in all of these really disruptive changes in the global like supply networks that bring the the kind of products and services to the U.S. market that it has come to depend on over the last several decades.
00:33:25
Speaker
And in addition to that, corporations were profiteering, you know, like crazy, like marking up, like marking up the price of ah goods as much as they could get away with.
00:33:38
Speaker
And i during the Biden years, just to make a, you know, to make as as much profit as they can, because they could, because they could get away with it. Because, you know, in an economy like ours, capitalist economy, private companies set the prices at which they they sell the stuff that they offer. So.
00:33:55
Speaker
So, yeah. So basically they capitalized like corporations capitalized on the shortage of products and stuff that people need that was created by the pandemic and just jacked up their prices.
00:34:06
Speaker
And profits, as a result, went through the roof for most corporations you know throughout the Biden years, and while it became ever more expensive for ordinary people just to get by.
00:34:18
Speaker
So for all of those reasons, you know ah Bidenism and that whole project, And the Democratic Party was a total failure. You know, reading some of your stuff in the Brooklyn Rail, it's interesting because my read of it is like when you talked about the Biden era.
00:34:33
Speaker
it's It's much more on an international stage. It's much more chaotic and cutthroat than I think like the neoliberals would paint it as, this kumbaya international order all tied together through you know the UN and all these like legalistic bodies, which of course, you know i mean just look what's happening in Gaza. That's obviously bullshit, but you know You kind of paint this picture where even under Biden, like all of these supposedly aligned states are all trying to cut each other's throats, either around like climate policy or trade agreements and stuff like that.
00:35:09
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit โ of course like all this stuff is just you know going through the roof under Trump now โ But talk a little bit about that push where it just seems like it's a free for all. Like they're all just trying to get ahead of each other because of all these different economic pushes. I don't know. How would you describe it?
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah, that is. I mean, that's the long and short of it right there. i mean, what we've been seeing is since Trump won, each administration just doubling down on the like the the crazy nationalistic policies of its predecessor.
00:35:44
Speaker
So Biden, the Biden administration, at the same time that it was trying to reposition itself as this global you know leader of ah democracy or whatever, was implementing, yeah, all of these ah this new regime of.
00:36:01
Speaker
this new regime of trade warfare, basically, against its enemies, mainly China and Russia, based on kind of weaponizing the the global dollar payment system, particularly in the in the case of of Russia after its invasion of of Ukraine in 2022 and increasingly invasive and restrictive
Economic Nationalism Policies
00:36:21
Speaker
export restrictions and penalties against China and its affiliated companies that yeah basically were just a ah major doubling down on the first and the first Trump administration's policies and also like ah like a great increase in the tariffs against against China that Trump had started Biden just increased those even more.
00:36:47
Speaker
And in fact, I think put a 100 percent tariff on electrical vehicles from China. All but setting up, you know, like a protected domestic market for Elon Musk and and Tesla, who otherwise couldn't compete on, and you know, against China and other global electric car manufacturers.
00:37:08
Speaker
So in addition to that, the but the kinds of policies that I mentioned from your from your previous question that were kind of directed at trying to renew American manufacturing, it was billed as right.
00:37:21
Speaker
What they call industrial policy, which is we're we're bringing back ah old school industrial policy where you know the government can intervene in specific strategic areas of the economy.
00:37:34
Speaker
to to support them and to give them advantage an advantage over their global competitors, right? Like the same thing that U.S. elites used to complain all the time about like the china like China's government doing, you know, like and like so-called supposedly cheating and supporting their you know they're nationally owned or I'm sorry, their nationally based companies with with government support.
00:38:02
Speaker
The U.S. is now just doing that. And complaining when for the most part, complaining when other countries do the same thing. And so when the rest of the world sees the United States like the former flag bearer for neoliberalism and free trade, just aggressively pursuing industrial policy and capturing investment from its former allies.
00:38:28
Speaker
Like a massive amount of investment has come from Europe, actually, lured by these really lucrative you know so offers of um state subsidies and loans and tax benefits from the U.S. government to invest here in the U.S. instead of Europe.
00:38:44
Speaker
um They see the U.S. just, you know, brazenly like capturing investment from around the world and using the state to do it. And so they're going to pursue the same kinds of policies. Right.
00:38:56
Speaker
The same kinds of like, you know, cut your neighbor's throat, aggressively push your own corporations at the expense of everyone else's and in all the other countries, um regardless of whether or not they call themselves allies or not.
00:39:10
Speaker
um But pursue this really like aggressive, like state managed form of corporate capitalism. at the expense of your, uh, your competitors and even your, your erstwhile allies.
00:39:25
Speaker
And so all around the world, right? Yeah. You see, you see, companies you see countries, governments pursuing the same kinds of policies, ah the same kind of industrial policies the that, uh, that are, that the Biden administration was trying to pursue for this country.
00:39:44
Speaker
And, This is a zero sum game, essentially. You know, there there is a limited amount of capital. There's I mean, there's ah there's a ton of surplus capital you know floating around in like worldwide financial markets right now.
00:40:02
Speaker
And so but it it it won't invest. People won't invest in it. Invest in. I'm sorry. People will not like investors will not be OK with that being used for production.
00:40:15
Speaker
for industrial right uses unless it's sufficiently profitable. And so in order for it to become profitable, that you have you have to have governments increasingly offering these, you know, these really sweet monetary incentives like subsidies and tax breaks to private investors to make it profitable for them to invest.
00:40:39
Speaker
And so, yeah, basically, we have a kind of it's it's kind of like a race to the bottom right now between this new policy regime of like state directed industrial policy where countries are competing with each other in an increasingly aggressive way um to attract investment much, you know, like desperately needed investment in certain areas and at each other's expense.
00:41:06
Speaker
And so it's a it's it's a really deep economic crisis that also has obviously a very ah volatile military and geopolitical aspects to it as well, which, of course, we're seeing ah accelerate pretty quickly under Trump right now. But, who you know Biden was obviously happy to to move along quickly, too.
00:41:32
Speaker
So that's that's the kind of trajectory we're on is, you know, neoliberalism has failed comprehensively. The global capitalist economy can no longer grow like in a transnational way to support like all of the most powerful countries ah growing together.
00:41:51
Speaker
ah just doesn't it's it's not that productive anymore. And so national governments have to compete against each other with increasingly like massive subsidies for private capital to invest in in in their countries.
00:42:07
Speaker
And that's the basis. Yeah. For this, like, economic, political, maybe you want to call it neo-imperialist competition that we're seeing right now. Does that kind of get to your question?
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think one of the the more interesting things that you brought up in your pieces is that ah the environmental side of this is that, you know, while especially like, you know, the Democrats talk about, oh, we need to combat climate change. If you look at the actual policies, like all of these states are rushing to just push as much as they can especially now with tech and ai all of these industries that are just destroying the planet and you know if it just seems so nihilistic looking at it from a bird's eye view of just that you know there's no consideration for the environment or a desire i mean maybe there's they're thinking a little bit like you know maybe in a couple decades we can kind of like
00:43:01
Speaker
I mean, there is some of that, but at least in the short term right now, they just seem to be doubling down as much as possible. And it seems that also to, I mean, from my perspective, correct me if I'm wrong, but they all see themselves as in a mad dash to outdo the other countries and try to, it's it's almost like a a race to you know get to the finish line to build up their ah infrastructure in terms of tech stuff.
00:43:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's there's a focus on these key kind of technologies, you know, they call them industries of the future that are seen as the ones that are essential for, you know, for competition in the years to come. I mean, yeah, things like semiconductors, areas like, you know, green technology, post-carbon infrastructure, although, of course,
00:43:53
Speaker
Trump and company might be, you know, putting the kibosh all of that now. But certainly during the Biden years, there was the thought that, look, China is going to be dominating all these areas in like, especially like the the post-carbon economy in the years to come. And we have to get serious about this if we're going to compete, you know, globally with them.
00:44:16
Speaker
And Trump may very well be pulling the plug on all that now. But that would But yes, it's essentially ah it's a it's a race for investment in these key, among other things, in these key technologies and in these key industries.
00:44:33
Speaker
um AI, of course, being another one, which is which is way, way overhyped, of course. But they, in any case, you know the elite do see this as one of the areas where they have to maintain ah competitive edge you know again against their global ah global adversaries.
00:44:50
Speaker
or were're we're cooked, basically. So yeah, it's definitely a big ah big part of this.
Tech Entrepreneurs & Trump
00:44:56
Speaker
Well, I wanted to switch gears again. Let's talk about ah the terrain under Trump.
00:45:02
Speaker
And you know there's been a lot discussed, and we will talk about this as well, but sort of the forces behind Trump in terms of just the the tech capitalists that are backing him, especially you know tech elites and stuff like that.
00:45:15
Speaker
Talk a little bit about that. like When you look at those people, if you if you look at the... The sort of economic ruling elites that have formed part of his coalition, what what do you see? Why is that there and what do they want to get out of Trump?
00:45:29
Speaker
This is definitely one of the, I think, most important questions of the moment. I think right now to sort of understand what's happening in the American ruling class, there's been kind of a civil war within the the highest tier of the corporate ruling class of this country unfolding over the last maybe, maybe decade or so, but it definitely picked up speed like after the pandemic and during the Biden years.
00:46:03
Speaker
And there are, there are many dimensions to it, but it's basic kind of cleavage is between on the one hand, the tech and kind of private equity And well, let me say this, like the the kind of tech entrepreneurs, right, which is represented by Musk and Peter Thiel and David Sachs and these kind of weirdos who are the, you know, the the most recognizable kind of figures of the but technological kind of the new tech, right, we might call it Mark Andreessen, these kinds of people.
00:46:40
Speaker
And then like the Silicon Valley set. And then you have, in addition to that, ah whole group of financiers who come from what is called private fund, the private funds industry, basically for shorthand, which is like private equity, hedge funds, and just similar kind of smaller private financiers, like very wealthy individuals, right? But like this group of financiers whose numbers have increased like just explosively over the last seven or eight years when money was really cheap, interest rates were really low or near zero. And there was tons of new money entering the the private financial system from the Federal Reserve.
00:47:28
Speaker
It created this whole new crop of small investors and private funds. Cryptocurrency right but is is fully a part of this as well.
00:47:41
Speaker
that all grew up in that environment and became multiplied by the thousands and became but kind of some of Trump's most loyal, like if I could use the term petty bourgeois, like foot soldiers.
00:47:56
Speaker
And so there's, that those are kind of, they're related, but those are kind of two different, like, I guess, factions of Trump's like financial backing in and his coalition.
00:48:09
Speaker
And then on the other side of of the cleavage, you have the these massive, like really powerful government-connected corporations like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, the big banks that you know most people will be familiar with, will like and that they've heard of.
00:48:31
Speaker
But even more so, these giant asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard, and State Street Advisors. these These are also extremely, especially BlackRock, are extremely well-connected financial, massive financial corporations that are much, at this point, much bigger than the investment banks themselves.
00:48:56
Speaker
And that controls something like 20 to 25% of most of the stock market. I mean, they I should say they have ownership shares.
00:49:07
Speaker
In, for example, like the S&P 500 stock market index, like BlackRock and these other big like asset companies I'm describing. Right. Like they own an average of around 20 percent of like every company in the in the S&P 500.
00:49:24
Speaker
So it's like they own just a huge chunk of the entire economy. And they're very well connected to the government. They help the government design policies. They help ah they help government carry out policies like execute them.
00:49:39
Speaker
And so they're very well connected to the state. And there's been ah kind of brewing like conflict between that, like very powerful and kind of well-connected faction of finance and this smaller kind of petty bourgeois and tech right faction of finance that is lined up behind trump and what you're seeing right now i think is the the trump faction really just going to town attacking their enemies you know in the state like dismantling
00:50:15
Speaker
Or dismantling agencies whole basically wholesale or, you know, replacing their their leadership with their preferred like their preferred people who are going to give them, you know, advantageous federal contracts and lucrative deals instead of the the Black Rocks and the Goldman Sachs of the world.
00:50:35
Speaker
And there's a lot more to be said about that. But I think that that kind of that division in the ruling class is a really important one. right now and i think it explains it explains a lot behind the kind of like this this this weird motley crew of you know like finance and tech freaks who've lined up behind trump 2.0 and are really doing a lot of the like the sort of policy and ideological labor like holding the whole thing together
00:51:08
Speaker
So they see. it yeah So basically they see Trump as a figure to kind of launch this power play, you know, like launch this like economic coup to basically take economic and profit opportunities you know off the plate of the incumbent financial like giant corporations and and award it to themselves instead.
00:51:30
Speaker
Right. Through this like new kind of corporatized, like new monarchist state or whatever you call it. that is that is coming together right now. Yeah, there's a recent piece by a three-way fight where they quote Aaron Bartley, who said that the tech elites and tech riot, as you said, you know they wanted they want to use the state to manage the transition to crypto.
00:51:55
Speaker
They want to push AI, of course, but they also want to use the state to aggressively shield U.S. corporations from especially Chinese tech, which, I mean, I guess we can see how well that worked out.
00:52:07
Speaker
They also want to make sure that the government will provide infrastructure and push away environmental regulations, which will allow them to build more stuff up and use more power because all this stuff, especially ai uses so much power. Yeah. And yeah, just push like this sort of protectionist nationalist economic policies that will that will allow them ah to compete with China. At least that's what this person argues. ah I'm assuming you're pretty much in agreement.
00:52:36
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. They, i mean, people like, like Musk and, and Thiel and I mean the whole, The whole crew, like they, yes, they they need state protection and support to basically batter down like regulations and tax threats and competition from, you know, from global competitors in in China and and especially Europe.
00:53:03
Speaker
Europe is very keen on taxing um multinational American you know technology and Internet companies. They've been trying to make that happen for for years And of course, you know, American companies don't want don't want to pay taxes. And so but I think they're going to lean, you know, they're going to use the Trump administration to kind of badger Europe into dropping that.
00:53:26
Speaker
And and yeah, they need they need really forceful, like protectionist leadership or or a state that's willing to go do whatever it takes to.
00:53:39
Speaker
to ensure their you know their their market like their market access and their their market opportunities and and profits against think it's competitors, especially and companies in ah countries like China, whose companies are increasingly like competing at the same level as American corporations are, who are no longer like kind of like unequivocally the the global leaders.
00:53:59
Speaker
Yeah, so there's there's definitely also this global dimension to it. they They want global American technological and corporate dominance. And they want to to use this administration as a kind of battering ram to to force that through, basically, as much as they can.
00:54:20
Speaker
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00:54:36
Speaker
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00:54:51
Speaker
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00:55:01
Speaker
what? And I mean, you know, Trump has said this himself, but the allegiance from the Democrats to Trump now has really shifted with a lot of the tech elites. And we'll talk about this a little more in terms of, you know, the ideological aspect to this. But is it just because that the Biden, you know, kind of and a lot of the people in that administration tried to meagerly go after a lot of these companies that they just freaked out and said, we've got to go with Trump now? That's definitely part of it.
00:55:30
Speaker
the like if you you know If you look at what people like Musk say or people like Marc Andreessen or even Peter Thiel, lot of these tech leaders or whatever you want to call them, maniacs, are on our on the record.
00:55:55
Speaker
basically describing the, you know, the Biden regime as this almost like quasi-socialistic or outright socialistic administrative overreach. I think, you know, they've like...
00:56:09
Speaker
They've called the Securities and Exchange Commission under Biden, very, you know, moderate, very moderate agency was run by an old Obama guy during the Biden years. They they or described it as conducting a ah war on on crypto they try to destroy it. No, just just but like just for like going for light regulations and ah cryptocurrency, you know, they see it as like potentially destroying their entire industry.
00:56:38
Speaker
Lena Khan in the area of antitrust, you know, regulation and enforcement was was sort of ah a very scary individual to them as well.
00:56:49
Speaker
She was especially interested in going after like Amazon, but not just, you know, among others. And to to actually get serious about monopoly power for so from some of these like legacy technology companies, none of that got very far.
00:57:05
Speaker
in the event, but that didn't stop the the kind these kind of like tech right leaders from, you know, seeing this as like an existential, this this very mild, like push for moderation or regulation as some kind of like existential threat to their, know, to their very being.
00:57:23
Speaker
And then if you look at like Scott Besant, who is, who is Trump's treasury secretary, I mean, he's he has a whole line about how you know Bidenism, i mean, his argument is that Bidenism was like the but complete replacement of the market by central planning.
00:57:45
Speaker
And that it was like basically a kind of, you know, ah like quasi-Soviet economic model that needs to be you know fought back against and kind of countered with good old Biden.
00:57:59
Speaker
you know, private capitalism and entrepreneurship. And so, yeah. And so they like whatever they think. I mean, I do think that they they saw it as they saw these <unk>s very moderate gestures towards regulation as as a as a as a major, major threat to their to their industries. But also beyond that, I should say that.
00:58:24
Speaker
banks And getting back to the kind of ruling class civil war theme I was outlining a minute ago, the banks, the bank big banks, you know are very, very interested in like stronger, more stringent regulations in the kind of tech like fintech space and cryptocurrency in like app based banking, like all of these kinds of new tech company driven things.
00:58:53
Speaker
like like banking initiatives and and companies. the The old big and you know the big investment banks were were very interested in pushing for regulation on the the kind of tech right that is like Trump's tech right during the Biden years.
00:59:12
Speaker
And in fact, the Securities and Exchange Commission was run by this guy, Gary Gensler, who's himself like an old banking guy, think from Either Goldman or or JP Morgan.
00:59:23
Speaker
And so, yeah, there's there's a way in which, you know, the Biden's push for regulation of the new kind of these newer tech spaces was, you know, coming from certain very powerful and well-connected factions of ah capital, you know, in its own right.
00:59:41
Speaker
And yeah, beyond beyond that, I think there's a very interesting interview that appeared with Andreessen in the New York Times like a month or so ago. And he was it was with Ross Douthat, I think.
00:59:57
Speaker
And in that he he describes how basically he was kind of like a card carrying Democrat, you know, as a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur for years and years.
01:00:08
Speaker
Until around, like, I don't know, 2010, 11 or ish, when employees at startups and technology companies started speaking up about their work conditions and about what the company and about what these tech companies are actually doing and if they're doing anything like useful or good for society.
01:00:33
Speaker
And he he in that interview, i mean, I would encourage any listener to check it out. I mean, he sounds very like very sort of like scared and traumatized by this episode he he went through.
01:00:45
Speaker
He and his colleagues, you know, the owners of these technology firms like like Google and and Amazon and but many other smaller ones as well. um where this like, you know, politically conscious sort of middle range professional, like class of of ah professional workers was were coming into their workplaces and speaking up consciously about political and economic and environmental issues.
01:01:11
Speaker
And so I think I think there's also a you know a class backlash element at work here where these all the a lot of the investment in the anti woke movement.
01:01:23
Speaker
ah so-called woke like messaging and and backlash from the Trump administration is coming from a big source of ah fuel for it. Are these these sort of tech figures like Andreessen who were freaked out by the politically conscious like cohort of workers who joined their companies in the in the 2010s and were making it hard for them just to be like, you know,
01:01:51
Speaker
profit pursuing like capitalist companies and, you know, doing these like very inconvenient, like pushing for these inconvenient environmental and social like considerations into, into the, the ways that companies were, uh, were operating.
01:02:10
Speaker
And so I think that there's like a real push, there's real interest in using Trump and the larger kind of anti-woke backlash you know, as a way to discipline this like kind of budding radicalization within that kind of professional stratum of workers and kind of basically, yeah, tamp that down and reassert sort of owner and boss authority and in that area of the economy, if that makes sense.
01:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that is just such like a ah ruling class elite statement. Like, you know, I didn't want to be a fascist, but then someone spelled the word union, you know, at our board meeting. And I just exactly had to start quoting Hitler because, you know, what else can you do?
01:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that kind of brings us to our next topic is really kind of unpacking, you know, this shift. You know, we've been talking a little bit sort about the nuts and bolts, but I'm, you know, what do you make of this move by, I mean, you brought up Thiel, Mark Andreessen is another one, which supposedly he's, um,
01:03:13
Speaker
advisor to the new trump regime obviously people like uh curtis yarvin has been cited as an influence by jd vance what do you make of this move from sort of like liberal libertarian politics to just full-on neo-fascist and techno-monarchist Or if you look at someone like Musk you know doing the Nazi salute, coming out in support of AFD. A couple years ago, he was just this weird guy that smoked weed on Joe Rogan, and now of a sudden he's like you know the leading person at the head of like this neo-fascist movement.
01:03:47
Speaker
So what does this say about sections of the elites who are openly backing such authoritarian, far-right, neo-fascist political movements? What else does this say about our world?
01:03:59
Speaker
Well, I think there's not a very โ I don't think there's a ah very thick line between libertarianism and fascism, actually, like American libertarianism, you know, because โ I libertarianism, like at its core, is all about just the absolute untrammeled freedom of the individual.
01:04:21
Speaker
And in a capitalist context, I mean, that that just easily translates into the absolute untrammeled freedom of the of the boss, basically, of the business owner, the property owner, the corporate autocrat.
01:04:35
Speaker
And as long as you have a system based on private property and wage labor, where you know economic activity only happens through this this class division between owners and and workers like libertarianism is just ah kind of naturally shades into these these very fascistic forms of like personalized power and domination because that's what economic like that's what capitalists or I should say private economic power very often kind of translates into, right? It's just the the power, the freedom of the of the individual investor, entrepreneur, and so on.
01:05:17
Speaker
But so that's kind of, i think that connection is is always there in libertarianism. And so it's not so great a leap actually to to for them to move towards this this new vision of the ah state and the corporation within it um which I think they kind of find in Yarvin, right? Like the, like a convenient expression for it.
01:05:41
Speaker
I mean, Yarvin and and Peter Thiel, right. I've been like kind of associates for, for many years. i mean, Yarvin for a long time was just kind of like the, you know, the court, like kind of like a court scribe for Peter Thiel's like unhinged musings about these things. But over years, it over years, it kind of, yeah, cohered into this larger,
01:06:02
Speaker
take on the on the hollowed out state and the the corporate monarch um who leads basically society like a ah kind of startup or something.
01:06:13
Speaker
um It very, very conveniently gravitated towards, you know, the very kind of business that people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk lead themselves in that kind of vision that Yardin outlines.
01:06:26
Speaker
And so, yeah, I think there's there were a number of these forces that ah came
Ideological Shifts & Power Dynamics
01:06:35
Speaker
together. they're They're by no means like ideologically fully aligned.
01:06:39
Speaker
There's like a lot of these people really hate each other. Like Steve Bannon, like one of, you know, Trump's guys from MAGA 1.0, like one of the main kind of ideological like figures from the first Trump administration, you know, is really freaked out by all of the ah new people like tech ideology around especially transhumanism and some of the weirder kind of ideas that that musk and that crew get into what do you what do you make of that because i mean it's it's hard to read that rift between bannon and musk because bannon will say like oh yeah they want techno feudalism he's just this like crazy rich guy like basically
01:07:24
Speaker
his wealth and influence is an affront to our populism but then he'll turn around and be like oh but i want to use his money to like make sure all these fascist groups win elections so it's like well what is it bro like right right and and plus it's like i mean who is bannon he's a he's a guy that worked at goldman sachs that literally got arrested on a yacht owned by a chinese billionaire you know for stealing money from like maga moms because he was running a scheme So, I don't know. But that tension is an interesting. And I think if anything is to be read into that, it's โ and I mean you can see this in you know people like Nick Fuentes and stuff as much as you even want to pay attention to him. But I do think it is telling that they are anxious at Musk because they see in him a a potential for the followers that they have.
01:08:19
Speaker
especially just like rank and file MAGA people to potentially break and get disaffected by the new Trumpian project, which has totally changed since 2016.
01:08:31
Speaker
And i mean, even like a lot of people have made a lot of Bannon's comments around going after like Medicare and Medicaid. But if you look at what he actually says, he's totally all about that. He just knows intrinsically that those the people that vote for Trump and like put the signs out and stuff and go to the rallies,
01:08:49
Speaker
A lot of them depend on those programs. And they remember in 2016 when Trump said, oh, we're not going to touch Social Security. We're not going to touch Medicare and Medicaid. And now, of course, that's totally changed.
01:09:00
Speaker
it's It's a balancing act that like the Bannon and MAGA 1.0, that kind of like the the so-called you know grassroots, I guess, like electorate or constituency that's been around since the first Trump administration.
01:09:17
Speaker
It's a kind of balancing act between that they that that they're trying to that the leadership is trying to walk between that anxiety that you describe about the potential for this thing to go off, you have to be co-opted the the like the like you know, the tech freaks and their, their bizarre ideas and their obsession with the H1B program and their contempt, their obvious contempt for ordinary Americans on the one hand. And then on the other hand,
01:09:47
Speaker
The the product of Bannon and his contemporaries for, you know, since 2015, 2016 has been to do what he calls you know the deconstruction of the administrative state.
01:09:58
Speaker
And it was something that was laughed off by liberals and a lot of kind of commentators for years because it's like, haha how are you ever going to, you know, dismantle this like bureaucratic you know monstrosity that's been this giant state that's been built you know over the course of.
01:10:16
Speaker
more than half a century. But in fact, that's exactly what they're they're going to work doing right now. And, you know, Musk and his sort of like poodle haired Hitlerjugend in Doge are running amok, you know, doing doing exactly that, like in in the in the Federal Reserve, in the Treasury, like in the IRS, like wreaking havoc.
01:10:42
Speaker
and doing everything they can to you know, to, to go after whoever they see as their perceived enemies of Musk and Trump and the administration more, more broadly within, in the so-called deep state.
01:10:55
Speaker
So it's like they are there, you know, this, this coalition currently being led by Musk at all is, is pursuing the, the, the deconstructed state that Bannon and his faction have been saying is their number one goal since, you know, for almost a decade or basically a decade now.
01:11:13
Speaker
And, and that is, I mean, that's really the the glue I think that's holding this, this otherwise very conflictual coalition together right now is it's like, it's, they're getting results, you know, or at least looks like they are.
01:11:30
Speaker
And, and I think as long as that, that proceeds that, and it continues to look like that, You know, the the results can hold the coalition together. Now, I think that it might start to get a little dicier if some of the current trends that we're seeing right now continue to like continue to get more pronounced and and in terms of popular opposition to what you know Trump 2.0 is doing.
01:12:01
Speaker
And if they really do end up going after like the the major, you know, Great Society and New Deal social insurance programs and and cutting those in order to make budgetary room for billionaire tax breaks.
01:12:15
Speaker
and Yeah. i mean, if they really do, you know, go through with all that, you it's it's very easy to see a major popular backlash against it coming together.
01:12:27
Speaker
But, you know, I wouldn't count on on anything as a sure as a sure thing at this point. But it's what we can say is that it's always those programs have always been seen as untouchable, you know, politically. And and then and that it would be political suicide to go after them, you know, with the with the budgetary cutting knife.
01:12:49
Speaker
But so I so will that remains to be seen. And if that kind of if if popular, if unpopularity with what they're doing begins to really pick up more broadly, then I think you could start to see that like that dormant you know conflict between the Bannon faction and the the sort of musk cadre breakout more more openly again.
01:13:14
Speaker
So so we'll see for the moment. It's it. It hangs together. i also think that I mean, the right is just. Even though they all hate each other, it's like they're they're they're not bad at you know the art of political compromise and like, you know, forging a broad coalition where everyone may not necessarily agree on everything. But there is one there's like a common sense of a project that can hold everyone together.
01:13:42
Speaker
long enough to see themselves as doing the same thing. I mean, even, you know, even doing the, the Sieg Hiles at like the, the events and stuff, it's like, that's it. It, everyone else like reels back and wrote repulsion from that, but they, it it brings them together, right? Because everyone that they hate is like, Oh my God, how could you ever?
01:14:03
Speaker
And they're, and all of them are sort of in on it. And so it, you know, it unites them ideologically and kind of ritually. Even as the liberal America, you know, reels back in horror from it.
01:14:16
Speaker
How do you see like the Doge stuff playing out? I mean, last night as we're recording this, Trump just gave a big speech. Sort of the cornerstone of this is celebrating Doge, talking about how they're finding all this fraud, which is, you know, largely b s This is just, you know, a smokescreen for going in and privatizing a lot of this stuff.
01:14:36
Speaker
When you look at the news and see stuff like you know they're going to like go after Social Security and you have the former head of the Social Security agency saying, like yeah, there's going to be a collapse and massive disruption, which would mean โ I mean I've talked to friends that work with people that are largely on Social Security and you know the first thing they said is, yeah, that means thousands and thousands of people are going to be homeless. you know They're not going to be able to pay their bills. I mean if you're on a fixed income and that gets disrupted โ know, you're screwed.
01:15:04
Speaker
You know, what what, are you going to do? What is that? What is the ripple effect through society for that? It's, it's hard to make sure, you know, like sure predictions because one thing I think that we, that we have learned over the last like a decade or so politics in this country and, and worldwide is like any, you know almost anything can happen and things, something that you thought was undoable or or impossible or,
01:15:32
Speaker
unimaginable or unimaginable or whatever, it could just very well one day, you know, actually happen. And so it's hard to, and you know, it's, it's, things are very unpredictable and we're a very fluid historical moment right now.
01:15:47
Speaker
But I think that the, I mean, they're, they're testing, basically they're, they're sort of testing the boundaries of what they can get away with in, in a lot of different ways.
01:16:00
Speaker
And they may very well see if they can like, you know, float a trial balloon around like, oh, so maybe we, you know, maybe we cut social security benefits this much, but we give you, we give you a back in this like, you know, obscure tax break or something.
01:16:20
Speaker
And so, you know, it comes out like a wash, but like it's, it's some kind of, deal like that, right? Where like they, they can look like the average voter can look at it and be like, well, they say I'm not getting fleeced at least, but that would probably not work out, you know, nearly as well in practice as on paper.
01:16:38
Speaker
And so there's the question of like, you know, what will happen when people's, it let's just, let's say they do go through with something like this and they do, you know, cut, make large cuts from social security, Medicaid, Medicare,
01:16:54
Speaker
and so on. i mean, the entitlement, all the entitlement programs, right, which is really what they're interested in.
Social Security & Political Boundaries
01:17:02
Speaker
i mean, there's a, there is ah you know, a line, an old, like,
01:17:08
Speaker
an old line that says you if you do this, it's going to be a popular, you know, uprising and there's going to be a huge, massive backlash and that you will be destroyed, you know, electorally and you will be eternally hated in the arena of politics. And so you can't do it, but there's, you know, and there's another way of looking at it, which is like, they're, they're trying out, they're experimenting with basically all the old, you know, received truths of politics.
01:17:39
Speaker
Like, for example, you know, you can't deconstruct the administrative state. It's too big. It's too bureaucratic. It's too entrenched. There are too many interests at stake or whatever. Well, they're just doing it, you know. And so maybe they they do. They just, they make, they cut these programs and they come up with some sort of political rationalization for it.
01:18:00
Speaker
And then the question becomes, like, do Do we see that big, you know, massive backlash and response or, do you know, or do we not? Like, do people are people just kind of resigned, you know, to to the current reality?
01:18:16
Speaker
And does it seem does it seem to like kind of overwhelming and just demoralizing? Right. To to do anything about our people. is the sense of of of loneliness and alienation, you know, strong enough amongst the general population that, you know, Trump and Musk and their goons can can get away with this.
01:18:36
Speaker
And that's kind of maybe what they're betting on. Right. Is that. the, you know, the population has been largely quiet since 2020. And in terms of, you know, like, let's say mass street level activity, and they're wondering, you know, they're toying with the idea, like, maybe we can just do this and there won't be like a big, a massive backlash against it. But it, I mean, they don't care about like ordinary people getting hurt by it. Right. Like that, that's not what they care about. It's just like,
01:19:06
Speaker
you know can they Can they pursue this agenda without massive ah consequences at the level of ah politics and and society? so that's what we're about to find out, I guess. In terms of AI, tech and stuff like that, i mean, this this could be a whole podcast, of course, in itself. But I'm curious, you know, when you look at the doubling down on tech and AI stuff.
01:19:32
Speaker
I mean, I just see that as just such a huge bubble. mean, people are already mad at automation and jobs being taken over and like cashiers being replaced by automatic checkouts and stuff like that.
01:19:44
Speaker
Right. And AI just seems to be, you know, another thing towards that. And also too, it's like, what are you getting? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah I mean, I mean, my, I guess, like short and quick, let's say compact take on AI is that it has our so-called AI because it's not, I mean, maybe it's a semantic issue, but it's not true intelligence, like artificial intelligence, in my opinion.
01:20:12
Speaker
But these, yeah, these language models, they do have very like useful kind of applications in certain, you know, like certain mundane tasks or or some professional tasks. Like they're pretty good at writing code.
01:20:25
Speaker
And they're pretty good at like regurgitating like boilerplate messaging for, you know, public facing organizations at that, like, you know, that, that sounds very like trite and sort of corporatized and soulless, but you can kind of go in and like work on it and, and make it usable.
01:20:47
Speaker
It's good at like these kinds of tasks, you know, and, but these are, these are kind of, you know, some niche, some not so niche, but they're very specific, like tasks in certain, in certain areas of work for certain kinds of workers.
01:21:02
Speaker
And so far this, this broader claim that it's going to revolutionize the workforce and it's going to unleash this new era of, you know, on like unimaginable productivity and prosperity and, you know, launch like the next big, know,
01:21:20
Speaker
like revolution in, you know, in, in capitalists, in the capitalist economy on the same level as like the industrial revolution or something. I mean, there's no indication ah of that so far, you know, being anything close to, to like coming in the future. i mean, there's, there's a lot of hype.
01:21:40
Speaker
There's a lot of like talk about like, well, maybe it'll do this. Maybe it'll do that. But, you know, maybe one day it'll it'll achieve like God level sentience or whatever and enslave the human race.
01:21:53
Speaker
But all of it is just hype so far. And it has just so far. It's it's been very similar to all the previous so-called you know tech breakthroughs that Silicon Valley was supposed to deliver and.
01:22:07
Speaker
then didn't, you know, I mean, if if but there was this idea of big data, like 15 years ago, that was going to revolutionize everything, you know, there was the, like the stupid metaverse idea and like virtual reality more broadly, like that was going to be the next big thing that look that like revolutionized the whole tech landscape. And then there was cryptocurrency.
01:22:30
Speaker
And it's just like, it's one thing after another that they have to keep trying to kind of like come up with the next iPhone or whatever. That's going to kind of change everything or change much of how we we work and live.
01:22:44
Speaker
But it's it's nowhere near being able to do that, it seems. so so So, yeah, my take on that is like some useful, like particular use cases here and there for very specific kinds of work, but nothing near what would be needed to like justify these absolutely insane things.
01:23:03
Speaker
valuations that these companies have on the you on the stock market. So it's definitely a bubble. You know, this is sort of ah a met, speaking of meta, a very meta question. But, you know, as we look at this merging of tech oligarchs and Trump, and we think about or envision or hope for some form of, you know, street action, anti-capitalist opposition, you know, we look at a lot of what's been happening so far. It's been like angry town halls,
01:23:29
Speaker
We're seeing protests outside of Tesla. We're seeing lots of anti-ice organizing, which is really inspiring. But a lot of these things are, you know, we're seeing people showing up to support gender affirming care outside of hospitals. We're seeing a lot of different sort of currents. They all seem sort of disconnected to each other.
01:23:45
Speaker
But also a lot of this stuff is, you know, if you look at like a lot of the Tesla protests, a lot of this sort of like older folks with like witty signs type energy. No one voted for Elon Musk.
01:23:56
Speaker
You know, a lot of groups like Indivisible are out, which, you know, I think it's great. Don't get me wrong, but I think it is sort of like regimented to like a certain section of society. And I don't think there's necessarily ah an an answer to this. But if we were to envision sort of like an Occupy 2.0 breaking out in this moment, what would be the we are the 99 percent type slogan for for now? Yeah.
01:24:19
Speaker
i hope I hope this question makes sense, but I guess like how do we, i think there is a ah question like how do we articulate sort of the antagonisms and the the overall reality of the moment of what's happening in terms of the state and capital coming together in this new amalgamation and sort of put that out into the world because the liberals seem very interested in in talking about, you know, Trump's stance on Ukraine and stuff like that and like how this is illegal, where it seems like we've got to really articulate a real street-level class politics. like What does this actually mean for our lived realities, for our workplaces, for our lives, so for how we
Rethinking Class Politics
01:24:59
Speaker
live?
01:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. this think this is a really great question. And, i mean, i the question of, like, yeah, what would the new we are the 99% slogan be is, I think, a really interesting one.
01:25:15
Speaker
And in some sense, I think it's like we may not know until it happens. You know, like it may be that kind of that kind of moment because these things can't always be foreseen or kind of prefigured.
01:25:28
Speaker
But in general, I think the problem with ninety nine percent versus one percent is it was kind of this frame of. it was a frame of inclusion or exclusion from the political order. It was like, it was like a claim for representation.
01:25:45
Speaker
It was like, you know, we represent the 99%. They, you know, the old, the, whatever the the richest billionaires are the 1% and the political system works for them.
01:25:57
Speaker
Let's, you know, let's make a government that works for 99%. And i mean, there were you know there nuances there, but that's kind of the like the logic that it was that it was working within.
01:26:09
Speaker
And I think right now we we need to think bigger. We need something on the same scale or scope as as the the Bannon teams, like deconstruct the administrative state, right?
01:26:21
Speaker
Like something that sounds like it might sound kind of outlandish in its ambition um until it's not. You know, we need that.
01:26:32
Speaker
We need that kind of of scope to our whatever we want to have. We want to talk about this, this nascent movement that may or may not be you know coalescing in the months to come.
01:26:46
Speaker
So right now, yeah, like you mentioned, there are a lot of like. important there's a lot of important action happening kind of in the you know in the margins here and there some picking up pace i know there's been a lot of uh there's been some important school walkouts happening yeah and part of the larger kind of ice solidarity anti-ice solidarity work tesla anti-tesla anti-musk protests are are great irate people you know raising hell at town halls also great and so it's like you know, how can we, how do we connect the dots between these disparate, you know these disparate actions and also tie them into a larger project of, what I would, what I would say class formation right now. Uh, I mean, i think we, we want obviously class politics, like renewing class politics is the, the goal and figuring out like what,
01:27:42
Speaker
it could it would look like in this moment and an effective form of class based like worker led opposition, you know, to this new corporate state, what it, what it could look like right now. But I think there's almost a prior question of of class formation that we need to figure out. Like, how do we, you know, how, how do all the, the incumbent actors in the, the class landscape, the,
01:28:06
Speaker
You know, the community activists, the organizers, the the union, union organizers like Frank and file union workers, teachers, programmers, students, you know, everyone from across the ah kind of landscape, the the diverse landscape of the of the working class of what should be right.
01:28:27
Speaker
A unified working class, but is not like how do we how do we connect the dots in this moment of mobilization right now? in a way that is that that sets our ambition high enough and sets an inspiring enough kind of tone for what we're aiming at that isn't just like, you know, throw the bums out like Musk wasn't elected, like in that old kind of logic of representation, like I was describing before.
01:28:52
Speaker
But, you know, takes aim at the whole system of, you know, exploitation and expropriation itself. And how do you make it accessible at an ordinary level?
01:29:04
Speaker
Right. Like, so it's not I mean, part of the strength of the big rhetorical strength of ninety nine percent percent percent was like anybody could get it. You know, literally, it it didn't take any kind of like radical background or familiarity with like radical traditions to get. it's just intuitively it makes sense.
01:29:21
Speaker
You know, like what what's a similar what's what's a similar similarly intuitive concept. kind of language for us right now that also captures the ah scope and scale of of what we need to do.
01:29:34
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess to that point, I mean, another question I have is how important is it to pick at and call out and examine and sort of make the case about the push towards like literally techno monarchy that a lot of these people that animates a lot of the ideology of these people.
01:29:54
Speaker
like I mean, for instance, like, you know, Bernie has been doing all these town halls recently in like red areas where thousands of people have come out. And I think, you know, i've I've listened to his speeches and looked at that. And if you look and if you listen to what he's saying, he's mostly just basically talking about what he usually talks about, like, you know, shit sucks. It's getting worse.
01:30:12
Speaker
These people just want oligarchy. They want to enrich themselves. I find it interesting that that what they're not talking about, and maybe this isn't important, or maybe this isn't what really is going to move the dial, but like it seems like they're leaving out the conversation about sort of the ideology, like the the class ideology and class formation of of our enemies, essentially.
01:30:35
Speaker
How much our interests are not included in that, and like they are literally antagonistic to the majority of the people they seek to rule and really hate them and just want to obliterate them.
01:30:46
Speaker
ah That's not and that's an easy... argument to make but i think like in 2017 there was a lot of discussion about how bad and evil and disgusting like the alt-right was and i think that was an important conversation to have and like how that animated a lot of the stuff that trump was doing and i think that that would be in like i think the left should really take that on like we should be having community forums and discussions and education about like look this is the ideology that's really moving this stuff like we've this is bad and you know
01:31:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure. for sure like These, i mean, these people are like, you know, Musk and which, by the way, is super unpopular. Like he has his like online, you know, like sycophants or whatever. But most like, yes, like ordinary people, what they think of Musk and like a lot of people will be like they, you know, he sucks.
01:31:38
Speaker
We hate him. And I think that's that's his popularity has only increased since he's taken more of a ah limelight. But people I mean, yeah, these people are repulsive to to most ordinary, you know, the ordinary citizen, the ordinary worker.
01:31:51
Speaker
and for In a lot of cases. And I think, you know, it should be like part of our task is to make it clear that like they're not outliers. You know, they're not like they're not particularly like on characteristic figures for our for our moment. They're like they're the worst excesses of one system. You know, the capitalist system like they represent like basically system of of.
01:32:19
Speaker
private ownership of economic resources in its very worst and and most disfigured forms. But they're not qualitatively different from the same capitalists who, you know, from the capitalists who basically, you know, work more closely with the Democrats, right, for example.
01:32:41
Speaker
So, I mean, they, you know, it's two parties, basically, what the but two political parties, one one party of capital. And i think somehow getting that message across so that it's not just like, you know, we have to get rid of the the kind of these outlandish and and cartoonish villains and get responsible leadership back in, kind of you know, back in back in office, which was kind of the narrative from 2016 to 2020.
01:33:08
Speaker
Because that responsible leadership is very, very likely not to return or it's or it's going to look very different because. ah Like I said, each administration, Republican and Democrat, is just doubling down on the same like hyper-nationalistic and militaristic policies of its of its predecessor.
01:33:25
Speaker
And so even if there were to be you know a Democratic successor in 2028 or whatever, it's probably going to look you know very, very, very different. in the wake of four years of this Trump administration than before, or from what people would would have expected four years ago. And so anyway, yeah, I think we have to like emphasize the, the inhumanity and and freakishness of these people.
01:33:49
Speaker
And just also while also emphasizing that, like, you know, this is what our current system, the way it's organized produces. And it's the same kinds of people who run, you know, the economic organizations that control our society.
01:34:06
Speaker
And, you know, the only way out of it is if is if we organize ourselves independently, autonomously build our own basis of power as as workers, as citizens, as community members without relying on the elites to bail us out because they have no vision but but our exploitation, basically.
01:34:28
Speaker
That's the basis of their rule. And so we have to figure out you know how to recompose ourselves differently. as a class that's capable of acting for itself against yeah against their you know their mission.
01:34:40
Speaker
Totally agree with that. You know, the last question I would ask you is that, like, you know, we mentioned the Tesla protests, which do seem to be spreading, getting larger. i mean, in Tucson last week, there was like a thousand people that showed up outside of the Tesla dealership. We're seeing, you know, different acts of sabotage, lots of graffitis going viral and stuff like that. At the same time, there are all these international protests actions as well happening against Tesla and that stock is diving.
01:35:08
Speaker
I mean, it's definitely having an impact not only on the culture, on the cultural landscape and like destroying the brand, so to speak, but also physically on the the stock of the company.
01:35:19
Speaker
I'm just curious with that in mind, just looking at this, you know, kind of stepping back, like are there things and campaigns you think, or is this an example of that that could be done that would have a positive impact in specifically going after like the tech industries that are connected to this stuff? I mean, yeah, definitely the, but like hitting Tesla, like hitting Musk where it hurts is absolutely like a great way to, a great way to go forward.
01:35:48
Speaker
Like the more the more universally hated and despised he becomes, ah the fewer people are going to want to you know buy and own and be seen driving Teslas or Cybertrucks.
01:36:01
Speaker
And with all the tariff walls going up in other countries against the US, you know, we're not we're not going to be able to export like Tesla will not be able to export.
01:36:12
Speaker
ah the stupid cars to foreign markets. So that's, you know, with that, with a shrinking domestic market and no and no access to foreign markets. I mean, that's a, that's absolutely like a way to, you know, get at particular choke point, just do good old fashioned, like, you know, rabble rousing, raising hell about how much, um how much Musk sucks and how people shouldn't be associated with any of those brands. Yeah.
01:36:39
Speaker
So hopefully that we continue to see that grow. That's very healthy. Very nice. I think in addition to that, the campaigns for union organization and recognition ah among tech companies or in the larger kind of, you know, amorphous sector called tech, but including that includes companies and, you know, in video games and and health tech in the kind of startup ecosystem in the larger media.
01:37:09
Speaker
like kind of landscape in general, where there's been a flurry, like a lot of of worker led organizing, the kind of stuff we were talking about that freaked out Andreessen before that stuff, you know, those campaigns hopefully can keep, keep going and keep growing because that's like a section of the working class that is, that has gradually become more and more class conscious.
01:37:34
Speaker
over the last 10 years and is only hopefully going to just continue in that in that direction and continue organizing in the very spaces that make the you know the tech overlords ah the most afraid and um and anxious.
01:37:51
Speaker
And so, you you know, I think that but like that kind of organizing and those like kind of leading, the leading edge of you know what remains of profitable industry in America connecting up with the different work workplace organizing campaigns unfolding in the larger healthcare care sector, in in the care economy, you know in cafes and in retail that has also been picking up um or at least had was on the upswing for several years following the kind of big upsurge we saw in 2021.
Workers' Rights & Activism
01:38:31
Speaker
You know, I think there's a lot of exciting organizing happening just in and the traditional workplace, and the the traditional workplace style that hopefully can be connected up with the profession, the workplace happening, the the the workplaces in the more tech professional spaces I was describing.
01:38:49
Speaker
A lot. The big wild card here is if they if Musk and and all do abolish, they do succeed in abolishing the National Labor Relations Board.
01:39:01
Speaker
Which they, you know, which i think SpaceX and Trader Joe's and like one other company, they have a lawsuit that I think at some point is going to be heard by the Supreme Court that will rule on the constitutionality of the NLRB.
01:39:17
Speaker
And so... If they do come down on on the corporation's side, then that would mean the NLRB is unconstitutional. And we're basically back to the law of the jungle when it comes to workers versus capitalists in this country. Right. No labor law. No, no recognized, no, no procedures for conducting elections, no procedures for recognizing unions, for bargaining negotiations, any of that.
01:39:44
Speaker
And so that will be very that will be a very interesting development if and when that that happens that will present new new risks and new opportunities for organizing. But anyway, so, yeah. So I think any and all of those those things are you know great ways to to strike at the at this current kind of crop of freaks who are the ruling class vanguard at the moment.
01:40:08
Speaker
And, yeah, as I see it, our job is to get out there and, like I said, just connect the dots between all these different forms of action and try to articulate some kind of common program and vision that brings everyone in.
01:40:22
Speaker
and alignment on it as a class. Well, uh, before we ask you to tell us where we can get a copy of end game and follow your work, I mean, do you have anything else you want to talk about? We've been talking for a long time, anything else you would encourage people to keep in mind as we go forward over the next months?
01:40:39
Speaker
Uh, just don't, it's going to be easy to, you know, just to fall down the, the, the pit of despair and doom scrolling and, just to to feel demoralized, you know, in the months to come.
01:40:54
Speaker
But just, like, stay, you know, stay connected with the, like, you know, the resistance and the actions and mobilizations that are happening. Get connected up in your local communities, your local city, wherever you might be, if you can, with whatever, you know, organizers and activists and and and organizations are active where you are.
01:41:17
Speaker
Find, if you're not already. And find, you know, find a way to find a group that that kind of speaks to you and that does the work that you are that you feel called to do if you're not already connected to it. And just, you know, it's amazing what kind of positive effect on morale, just being being active, you know, in organizing and activist spaces, you know, can can do.
01:41:40
Speaker
And so I would just encourage anyone who's feeling down, feeling overwhelmed and defeated, just not to, you know, not to fully. Give in to despair and just, you know, get into the struggle, whatever way makes sense for you.
01:41:53
Speaker
And yeah, just keep it up. Well, where can people get a copy of Endgame? Well, of course, link this in the show notes. Any other places besides the book that you would encourage people to follow your work at?
01:42:05
Speaker
Yeah, you can find me on Blue Sky, which is the non-Nazi Twitter platform, basically. And I'm just, I think I'm just Jamie Merchant on there. And if you're interested in the book, you can just Google in game Jamie Merchant and that the the publisher's website should come up.
01:42:23
Speaker
You can check that out. And yeah, in general, I think that's that's that's pretty, pretty easy to fit to figure out.
01:42:41
Speaker
Thanks for listening to today's episode of The Beautiful Idea. News and analysis from the front lines of anarchist and autonomous struggles everywhere. Catch you next time.