Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 10/29/26: Ealy Vote Doom For GOP, Shock Polls In SC & KS, Bill Gates Dire AI Warning
Transcript
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- 0:15Speaker 2: Join us now to break down all things midterms, the
- 0:18Speaker 2: early vote, how the votes are going to come in,
- 0:20Speaker 2: what the polls look like. Is Zachary Danini someone I've
- 0:22Speaker 2: been really looking forward to speaking with? He is with
- 0:25Speaker 2: VoteHub and his analysis on Twitter and elsewhere has been invaluable,
- 0:29Speaker 2: certainly to me.
- 0:30Speaker 1: So, Zachary, welcome.
- 0:31Speaker 4: Thank you very much for having me on.
- 0:33Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. So we were just talking to Abdul El-Sayed.
- 0:36Speaker 2: So I thought we would start with this because you
- 0:37Speaker 2: just posted a long piece on how the votes are
- 0:40Speaker 2: likely to come in in Michigan. And so for all
- 0:44Speaker 2: of the people who are anticipating these results on election night,
- 0:48Speaker 2: how is this going to unfold? Where are the votes
- 0:51Speaker 2: going to come from initially? What do you expect here?
- 0:55Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'll zoom out a little.
- 0:56Speaker 3: The U.S.
- 0:56Speaker 4: Doesn't make it easy on us, right? Because each state
- 0:59Speaker 4: kind of conducts their own elections. Obviously, there are federal
- 1:02Speaker 4: laws and regulations they need to stick to, but how
- 1:05Speaker 4: ballots are cast, how they're counted, up to the states.
- 1:09Speaker 4: Within each state, usually, it's counties counting the specific ballots.
- 1:12Speaker 4: Then even within Michigan, within counties, you have towns, cities,
- 1:16Speaker 4: townships counting in different ways. So this makes it for
- 1:20Speaker 4: a pretty chaotic process that we study up on a
- 1:22Speaker 4: lot before a big night like next Tuesday. And how
- 1:25Speaker 4: Michigan works is there is a bit of preprocessing of
- 1:29Speaker 4: absentee ballots. But these mail-in ballots that come in late,
- 1:33Speaker 4: on Monday, on Tuesday, so not late as in after
- 1:35Speaker 4: the election, I mean, but just later, are often counted
- 1:38Speaker 4: right at the end in these major cities, Flint, Saginaw, Detroit,
- 1:43Speaker 4: Ann Arbor. And these are very blue areas, and these
- 1:46Speaker 4: are very blue ballots. So what this means, just all together,
- 1:50Speaker 4: is after 3 a.m., when we have almost, I don't know, 15, 20%
- 1:55Speaker 4: of the vote left in Michigan, those last 15 or 20%
- 1:58Speaker 4: of the votes are going to be very good for Al-Sayed,
- 2:01Speaker 4: and he could come back if he's losing by a little.
- 2:03Speaker 3: Was this similar, Zachary, to what happened in 2024? I
- 2:08Speaker 3: know Mike Rogers and others have said stuff like this
- 2:11Speaker 3: in the past.
- 2:11Speaker 2: Go ahead. Yeah.
- 2:13Speaker 4: So in 2020, we saw across the country these absentee
- 2:16Speaker 4: ballots getting counted last, and that was the whole thing
- 2:19Speaker 4: that happened with January 6th and the fraud claims, et cetera.
- 2:22Speaker 4: So a lot of states were like, okay, we need
- 2:25Speaker 4: to fix this basically after 2020. So now in states
- 2:27Speaker 4: like Pennsylvania, Georgia, those ballots are counted first. Michigan, Wisconsin
- 2:32Speaker 4: are the two states still, and we saw this some
- 2:35Speaker 4: in 2024, where you get still these late drops of
- 2:38Speaker 4: tranches of blue ballots from places like Milwaukee, Detroit, that
- 2:42Speaker 4: can shift toward Democrats. And we saw this with SLOC
- 2:44Speaker 4: in closing really well in 2024.
- 2:47Speaker 1: Gotcha.
- 2:47Speaker 2: So everybody can go ahead and drop your nightmare scenarios.
- 2:50Speaker 2: The Senate is coming down to Michigan and it goes
- 2:53Speaker 2: late into the night and then there's a big Detroit
- 2:55Speaker 2: mail drop. And you can imagine how much chaos Trump
- 2:58Speaker 2: is going to pull if that ends up being the scenario. But, Zachary,
- 3:02Speaker 2: I wanted to get your overall take on what you're
- 3:05Speaker 2: seeing in the early vote. And perhaps you could just
- 3:08Speaker 2: start with what we can and can't learn from the
- 3:11Speaker 2: early vote because those caveats are important. but also if
- 3:14Speaker 2: there are any particular trends that are sticking out to
- 3:17Speaker 2: you that you have found noteworthy thus far.
- 3:20Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 3:20Speaker 4: So, of course, caveats with early voting. We don't know
- 3:23Speaker 4: who people are voting for. We know many of the
- 3:26Speaker 4: people who are voting. We don't even know everyone who's
- 3:28Speaker 4: voting yet. But in some states like Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas,
- 3:33Speaker 4: we're talking about over two thirds of the votes being
- 3:35Speaker 4: cast before Election Day. And what we like to do
- 3:38Speaker 4: isn't just look at the overall number and say, oh,
- 3:40Speaker 4: more Democrats are voting than Republicans. That's great, or something
- 3:43Speaker 4: for Democrats, because that always happens. Election Day is always
- 3:46Speaker 4: going to be more red. But what we really like
- 3:49Speaker 4: to do is look at people who don't often vote
- 3:52Speaker 4: in the past, people who it's a feat, an achievement
- 3:57Speaker 4: to mobilize them, get them off the couch, and have
- 3:59Speaker 4: them cast a ballot. And overwhelmingly, when we're looking at
- 4:02Speaker 4: people who didn't vote in 2022, maybe didn't even vote
- 4:05Speaker 4: in 2024, but are coming out in the last few weeks,
- 4:09Speaker 4: they are disproportionately Democratic, which is good for Democrats because
- 4:13Speaker 4: it means you're reaching deeper into the base. And we
- 4:15Speaker 4: especially see this with two groups. First, young voters. In
- 4:19Speaker 4: 2024 in North Carolina, Gen Z turnout between registered Democrats
- 4:24Speaker 4: and registered Republicans was similar. This year, it's five to one.
- 4:28Speaker 4: Republican youth turnout has fallen off of a cliff. Second,
- 4:33Speaker 4: Hispanic voters, Hispanic turnout is very, very high, whether it's
- 4:36Speaker 4: in Texas or even North Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, places where
- 4:39Speaker 4: you don't think there being as many Hispanics, Hispanic turnout
- 4:43Speaker 4: is just very, very strong.
- 4:45Speaker 3: So what's interesting, and I saw this specifically in Florida
- 4:48Speaker 3: and in North Carolina, how much, Zachary, can we extrapolate
- 4:52Speaker 3: state by state data to nationwide? Or is that just
- 4:56Speaker 3: a fool's attitude?
- 4:57Speaker 4: So what I was talking about is those four states, Florida,
- 5:00Speaker 4: North Carolina, Texas, Georgia, and then also I'll toss a
- 5:03Speaker 4: kind of Louisiana in there where we get really, really,
- 5:06Speaker 4: really high quality early vote data. Or in a specific
- 5:09Speaker 4: region of the U.S., kind of the southeast. But North
- 5:12Speaker 4: Carolina and Texas aren't super similar states, right? Texas is
- 5:15Speaker 4: kind of a sunbelt, heavy Hispanic state. North Carolina is
- 5:18Speaker 4: kind of mixed white and black and almost closer to
- 5:20Speaker 4: the mid-Atlantic region now.
- 5:22Speaker 1: And Florida, of course, is just its own thing.
- 5:25Speaker 4: But the reality is that consistently the last two election cycles,
- 5:30Speaker 4: these states did have some red flags for them, for Democrats.
- 5:33Speaker 4: And now they have red flags for Republicans. And even
- 5:35Speaker 4: in other states where we don't feel we have as
- 5:39Speaker 4: high quality data to work with, but it's still something.
- 5:42Speaker 4: So that would be Arizona, Nevada, Iowa, Kansas. It's still
- 5:47Speaker 4: we're seeing the similar trends kind kind of come come
- 5:50Speaker 4: out there as well, even if it's not what I'd
- 5:52Speaker 4: lead a conversation with.
- 5:54Speaker 2: So, Zachary, if the two groups that are really turning
- 5:57Speaker 2: up for Democrats in significant ways are young voters and
- 6:01Speaker 2: Hispanic voters, where are the states, the sort of key
- 6:05Speaker 2: battleground states where you would expect those groups to be
- 6:09Speaker 2: most impactful?
- 6:10Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
- 6:11Speaker 4: So I think Texas leads the list in the sense
- 6:14Speaker 4: it's a very Hispanic state. We'll expect about one in
- 6:16Speaker 4: four voters on November 3rd in Texas to be Hispanic.
- 6:19Speaker 4: And then the Democratic base in states like Texas, Arizona,
- 6:24Speaker 4: Florida is more of kind of a young, diverse vote.
- 6:28Speaker 4: On the other hand, states like Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, the
- 6:31Speaker 4: base for Democrats is very highly educated, high engagement white
- 6:35Speaker 4: voters and often in college towns like Madison or Columbus, basically.
- 6:39Speaker 2: So I.
- 6:41Speaker 1: Don't want to.
- 6:41Speaker 4: Overtly say that that just because, for instance, North Carolina,
- 6:45Speaker 4: we're seeing a situation where the electorate just by registration. Again,
- 6:49Speaker 4: we don't know who they're voting for. But these people,
- 6:51Speaker 4: when you register to vote in North Carolina, you say,
- 6:53Speaker 4: I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican and correlates heavily.
- 6:56Speaker 1: With vote choice.
- 6:57Speaker 4: We're seeing a situation where the electorate in North Carolina.
- 7:00Speaker 4: could be up to 10 points more blue alone just
- 7:03Speaker 4: on who's turning out. That would be Harris winning the
- 7:06Speaker 4: people who turn out in 2026 in North Carolina by seven.
- 7:10Speaker 4: And that is a North Carolina specific thing. We are
- 7:14Speaker 4: not seeing this anywhere else so far. But when you're
- 7:16Speaker 4: just seeing that type of environment in a state, obviously
- 7:19Speaker 4: states will be different. But still, just the overall picture,
- 7:24Speaker 4: states just range from Mediocre to horrific for Republicans so
- 7:29Speaker 4: far in what we're seeing.
- 7:31Speaker 3: Wow.
- 7:31Speaker 2: OK.
- 7:32Speaker 3: Can we put C6 up on the screen?
- 7:34Speaker 1: This is interesting. This is from Signal. It's a GOP pollster.
- 7:37Speaker 3: And they say among those who have already voted, 6
- 7:40Speaker 3: percent of Republicans have voted for the Democratic candidate, while
- 7:44Speaker 3: 0 percent Democrats have voted for Republicans. Among independents, Democrats
- 7:48Speaker 3: are winning by 37 points. Almost all Republican crossover comes
- 7:52Speaker 3: from voters who identify as mostly Republican voters.
- 7:54Speaker 1: Rather than strongly Republican.
- 7:56Speaker 3: So if that does hold, how would you see that
- 7:59Speaker 3: and extrapolate.
- 8:00Speaker 1: It to some of the data that we've seen so far?
- 8:02Speaker 4: So the early voting stuff, a lot of what we
- 8:04Speaker 4: just talked about is turnout, right? There are two ingredients
- 8:08Speaker 4: in the recipe to win elections. One is good turnout.
- 8:10Speaker 4: People who are more likely to vote for you than not,
- 8:13Speaker 4: you want them to come out and vote. Second is persuasion,
- 8:16Speaker 4: which is there are people who are pretty high engagement,
- 8:18Speaker 4: but they switch cycle to cycle. And it might not
- 8:20Speaker 4: be too many people. It might be 5% or 7%
- 8:22Speaker 4: of the electorate. But that's the big swings we see
- 8:25Speaker 4: from election to election. And so far, you know, it's Democrats.
- 8:30Speaker 4: Turnout looks quite good for them. We're seeing that in
- 8:32Speaker 4: this early voting data. And persuasion looks quite good for Democrats.
- 8:35Speaker 4: We're seeing these polls where Trump is 20 points underwater.
- 8:38Speaker 4: I mean, it shouldn't be a surprise when we're looking
- 8:40Speaker 4: at then these national generic ballot polls. And we see
- 8:43Speaker 4: a lot of people who said they voted for Trump
- 8:46Speaker 4: in 2024 are now supporting Democrats. But so let's slow
- 8:49Speaker 4: down here.
- 8:49Speaker 5: All right.
- 8:49Speaker 4: Everything sounds great for Democrats, Zachary, right? Why is the
- 8:52Speaker 4: Senate not a lock? Why would you also say the
- 8:54Speaker 4: Senate's very competitive? The answer is because Democrats are fighting
- 8:57Speaker 4: this battle on red turf. They have to win two
- 8:59Speaker 4: states out of Iowa, Ohio, Texas, Alaska. Trump won all
- 9:04Speaker 4: four of those states by double digits in 2024. Things
- 9:08Speaker 4: are going very well for Democrats and better be going
- 9:10Speaker 4: very well for Democrats if they want a chance to
- 9:12Speaker 4: win Texas. chance to win Alaska. These are not states
- 9:15Speaker 4: that Democrats normally contend in. A Tallarico one point loss
- 9:19Speaker 4: in Texas would be the best performance for a Democrat
- 9:22Speaker 4: in the state in 32 years.
- 9:24Speaker 1: And at this point, it would still be a big
- 9:25Speaker 1: disappointment for Democrats.
- 9:27Speaker 2: All right, Zachary, you had to quick move locations because
- 9:30Speaker 2: there was a meeting about to start there, although I
- 9:32Speaker 2: kind of like this new background better. But you were
- 9:34Speaker 2: saying 2022, tale of two candidates, pick up where you
- 9:37Speaker 2: left off. Yes.
- 9:38Speaker 4: A tale of two candidates and two races in 2022.
- 9:41Speaker 4: So first of all, let's go to New York three.
- 9:44Speaker 4: This is a seat that Biden won by double digits
- 9:46Speaker 4: on Long Island. And there were some negative things for
- 9:48Speaker 4: Democrats going on. Kathy Hochul did not perform very well
- 9:52Speaker 4: in that gubernatorial election. There was some general fatigue from
- 9:56Speaker 4: New York voters in general against Democratic leadership. And Republicans
- 10:01Speaker 4: flipped the seat, even though Biden won it by double digits.
- 10:03Speaker 4: We'll go to Washington three. Republicans nominated Joe Kent there.
- 10:07Speaker 4: This is a seat that Trump won. And in a
- 10:09Speaker 4: red year, you'd think this would be a lock for Republicans.
- 10:12Speaker 4: Most forecasters, race raters had it as a seat that
- 10:16Speaker 4: Republicans should win.
- 10:16Speaker 1: But Joe Kent, who had some ties to.
- 10:19Speaker 4: Fringe right groups, turned out to be a terrible candidate
- 10:23Speaker 4: and ended up losing a district he should have won.
- 10:25Speaker 4: And this is something we see happen more in midterm years,
- 10:28Speaker 4: like 2022 was, 2026 is, because there's no national race
- 10:32Speaker 4: that's tying everything together. Different states and different candidates are
- 10:36Speaker 4: going to see bigger or smaller shifts usually toward or
- 10:40Speaker 4: away from Democrats. And in the case of Susan Collins
- 10:43Speaker 4: in Maine, even a shift toward Republicans in a blue year,
- 10:46Speaker 4: just because She's such a strong candidate.
- 10:48Speaker 1: In the past.
- 10:50Speaker 3: Well, Zachary, we really appreciate your time, man. Thank you
- 10:52Speaker 3: for all of this breakdown and for bearing with us
- 10:54Speaker 3: as you had to change rooms. But excellent analysis. We'll
- 10:57Speaker 3: have a link to your Twitter in our description. We
- 10:59Speaker 3: recommend everybody go and follow him.
- 11:01Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you, Zachary. Take care.
- 11:07Speaker 3: Turning now to polls. Well, what we have is some
- 11:09Speaker 3: very interesting ones from The New York Times.
- 11:12Speaker 1: Absolute shocker. Let's put it up here on the screen.
- 11:14Speaker 2: D1.
- 11:15Speaker 3: Where we have the Senate race that is in the
- 11:18Speaker 3: state of South Carolina, officially a toss-up, according to them. 48-48, Dr.
- 11:25Speaker 3: Annie Andrews tied with Lindsey Graham's sister, Darlene Graham. In Florida,
- 11:31Speaker 3: they find a much tighter race than originally expected, with
- 11:34Speaker 3: Ashley Moody at some 50%, Angie Nixon at 44%. Another
- 11:39Speaker 3: big headline out of this, which is a crazy, crazy finding.
- 11:44Speaker 3: is Flanagan at 54 and Tafoya only at 40. Previous
- 11:48Speaker 3: polls out of the state of Minnesota had this to
- 11:50Speaker 3: be a three- or a four-point race. Obviously, we had
- 11:54Speaker 3: seen some tightening in the state of South Carolina, Crystal,
- 11:57Speaker 3: and we knew also that South Carolina had been visited
- 12:00Speaker 3: by Donald Trump, that they were putting $ 5 million in,
- 12:03Speaker 3: that Darlene Graham's campaign significantly seemed in trouble. This Darlene
- 12:08Speaker 3: Graham situation seems very emblematic of the whole Kemp-Paxton situation.
- 12:12Speaker 3: problem where if he was a normal John Cornyn Republican,
- 12:15Speaker 3: I think they would probably win, maybe not by a lot, but,
- 12:19Speaker 3: you know, maybe one or two points, which it shouldn't
- 12:21Speaker 3: be that close in the first place. But you have
- 12:24Speaker 3: a Democratic wave, an energized Democratic base, in addition to
- 12:28Speaker 3: an absolute joke of a candidate here with a woman
- 12:32Speaker 3: who who literally said something like foreign policy is not
- 12:35Speaker 3: my expertise. I mean, that's completely insane, considering that's the, quote,
- 12:41Speaker 3: legacy of your dead brother, who for some reason that
- 12:44Speaker 3: makes you qualified to be in the United States Senate. Remember,
- 12:47Speaker 3: not just appointed to full out the rest of his term.
- 12:49Speaker 3: but for a full six year term to the United
- 12:52Speaker 3: States Senate to represent South Carolina in the Senate. And
- 12:56Speaker 3: so regardless of whether Darlene Graham, you know, pulls this
- 12:59Speaker 3: off and we'll see the humiliating display now so far
- 13:03Speaker 3: is just enough of a problem for Republicans who don't
- 13:06Speaker 3: need to be spending money and spending Donald Trump's time
- 13:10Speaker 3: in the state if they want to try and hang
- 13:13Speaker 3: on here. It's just it's humiliating for them. It absolutely is.
- 13:16Speaker 3: I mean, we'll give that we'll just give the caveat.
- 13:19Speaker 3: It's the New York Times, one poll. It could be
- 13:21Speaker 3: totally wrong, and we'll get to that in a second.
- 13:22Speaker 2: Of course.
- 13:23Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 13:24Speaker 2: Focusing on South Carolina first to begin with, even though
- 13:27Speaker 2: the Minnesota poll is in some ways just as striking
- 13:30Speaker 2: and more of an outlier, actually, from what the South
- 13:34Speaker 2: Carolina poll shows, because other polls have shown very similar dynamic.
- 13:38Speaker 2: One of the things that seems to be impacting some
- 13:42Speaker 2: of these races in the South is extraordinary Black turnouts.
- 13:46Speaker 2: And some of the analysis I've seen is this has
- 13:49Speaker 2: a lot to do with the Supreme Court ruling on
- 13:52Speaker 2: majority Black districts, that that has really motivated people. You're
- 13:56Speaker 2: seeing a particularly striking turnout in Louisiana, which is the
- 13:59Speaker 2: state that was the focus of that Supreme Court ruling.
- 14:02Speaker 2: So any of the states that have significant Black populations,
- 14:07Speaker 2: that may end up being a very critical factor. South
- 14:10Speaker 2: Carolina is one of those states that has a relatively
- 14:13Speaker 2: significant Black population. Another issue is I don't really understand
- 14:17Speaker 2: all of the intraparty beef here, but Darlene Graham's opponent
- 14:21Speaker 2: in the primary comes from the western part of the state,
- 14:25Speaker 2: Greenville-Spartanburg area. I know well because I went to Clemson
- 14:27Speaker 2: University for a while. And they apparently are not feeling
- 14:31Speaker 2: Darlene Graham. And the polling reflects her really underperforming with
- 14:35Speaker 2: Republicans in that part of the state. That being said,
- 14:39Speaker 2: I've been watching a lot of Nate Silver podcasts lately,
- 14:41Speaker 2: and he basically put it like, It's possible for Annie
- 14:44Speaker 2: Andrews to win, but it's going to have to be
- 14:46Speaker 2: like a parlay. Like, all of these things are going
- 14:48Speaker 2: to have to hit. The Black turnout has to be crazy.
- 14:51Speaker 2: The underperformance in the western part of the state. Republicans
- 14:54Speaker 2: stay home. Democrats come out. Like, that's the way it's
- 14:57Speaker 2: going to have to be. White college educated voters in
- 15:00Speaker 2: South Carolina are much more conservative than in a lot
- 15:04Speaker 2: of other parts of the country. And there are much
- 15:06Speaker 2: less of a sort of swing between the parties kind
- 15:08Speaker 2: of demographic. So that makes the landscape very difficult. I think,
- 15:12Speaker 2: you know, I do think Annie Andrews is in the hunt.
- 15:15Speaker 2: I think it is possible for her, but it's still
- 15:18Speaker 2: just for me, it's still hard to imagine she's going
- 15:20Speaker 2: to be able to fully pull it off. If she does,
- 15:22Speaker 2: we are in really wild territory on the Minnesota piece.
- 15:27Speaker 2: If we could talk about that for a minute. So
- 15:30Speaker 2: this result to me is actually less crazy than it
- 15:33Speaker 2: seems on its face, simply because Minnesota is a state.
- 15:38Speaker 2: that if the generic ballot nationwide truly is D plus 11,
- 15:42Speaker 2: you would expect the Democratic candidate to win by double digits,
- 15:45Speaker 2: whether it's 10 or 14, somewhere in there. Now, you
- 15:50Speaker 2: might say, on the other hand, OK, well, Peggy Flanagan
- 15:53Speaker 2: is associated. She's part of the Tim Walz government. It's unpopular.
- 15:56Speaker 2: They've had all these issues with fraud. That's dragging her down. True.
- 16:00Speaker 2: On the other hand, Minnesota is also the focus of these,
- 16:04Speaker 2: you know, Minnesota, Minneapolis, with all of this, you know,
- 16:07Speaker 2: insane ICE activity that really inflamed Democratic voters and independents,
- 16:11Speaker 2: by the way, in the state. So if you kind
- 16:14Speaker 2: of take those as a wash and bring it back
- 16:17Speaker 2: to just neutral terrain. It will not shock me at
- 16:20Speaker 2: all if we end up with that race not being
- 16:22Speaker 2: close at all. And the thing that Nate Cohn points
- 16:24Speaker 2: out is that neither party is spending in that race
- 16:28Speaker 2: like it's close.
- 16:30Speaker 1: Neither.
- 16:30Speaker 2: The Republicans are not acting like this is a battleground
- 16:33Speaker 2: and like they're just a few points down and they
- 16:34Speaker 2: can pull it over the line with a dump truck
- 16:36Speaker 2: of money. They're not acting like that whatsoever. And so
- 16:39Speaker 2: I think that's a really important tell, too, in terms
- 16:42Speaker 2: of whether they think that race is actually in range
- 16:44Speaker 2: or not.
- 16:45Speaker 3: And picking up on that, I do think that this
- 16:48Speaker 3: interesting clip from Nate Silver about whether this is the
- 16:51Speaker 3: end of the Trump era or not is very relevant.
- 16:53Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
- 16:55Speaker 2: So what feels momentous?
- 16:56Speaker 6: If the election goes roughly as the polls say it
- 16:59Speaker 6: will go, then in some ways it would mark the
- 17:02Speaker 6: end of the Trump era. I think he'll still be
- 17:07Speaker 6: president for two more years. But the minute the 2028
- 17:09Speaker 6: election campaign begins and if Trump has a bad night
- 17:12Speaker 6: as polls show, then. he's a super lame duck, right?
- 17:16Speaker 6: You might draw an analogy to Bush after 2006.
- 17:20Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's undoubtedly correct. And I watched
- 17:24Speaker 2: this whole podcast with Ezra. I've been, I've mentioned before,
- 17:26Speaker 2: I've been listening to a lot of Nate Silver. He
- 17:28Speaker 2: has a podcast now with some of the old FiveThirtyEight friends.
- 17:33Speaker 2: And you have to give him credit for the fact
- 17:36Speaker 2: that he has been pretty directionally correct basically every cycle.
- 17:41Speaker 2: You know, even going back to 2016, He was one
- 17:45Speaker 2: of the few that was like, yeah, Trump could still
- 17:47Speaker 2: win this thing. You know, yeah, I know what the
- 17:48Speaker 2: polls look like, but there's still a chance that, you know,
- 17:51Speaker 2: that he pulls this off.
- 17:52Speaker 1: Even Ryan got into a fight.
- 17:53Speaker 4: Do you remember that?
- 17:54Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 17:54Speaker 1: Ryan got into a fight with him.
- 17:56Speaker 5: Oh, really?
- 17:57Speaker 1: No, I don't.
- 17:58Speaker 2: But, you know, last cycle with Trump, he basically said,
- 18:03Speaker 2: I remember this very well. It's kind of a jump ball.
- 18:06Speaker 2: But if I had to go with my gut, I'd
- 18:08Speaker 2: say Trump's going to win. And he was right. And
- 18:10Speaker 2: now he is looking at the polling. He's looking at,
- 18:14Speaker 2: I think, maybe even more significantly, those quote unquote fundamentals.
- 18:19Speaker 2: And he's saying it would be crazy to think that
- 18:23Speaker 2: Democrats are not going to have a very good night
- 18:25Speaker 2: and potentially like a really crazy night. And it is
- 18:27Speaker 2: possible that the polls are actually underestimating Democrats. And the
- 18:30Speaker 2: way that he explained it, which to me made a
- 18:32Speaker 2: lot of intuitive sense, as he said, compare it to
- 18:35Speaker 2: twenty eighteen. You know, it's another midterm with Trump where
- 18:39Speaker 2: you've got tremendous Democratic energy and enthusiasm. And Democrats had
- 18:43Speaker 2: a good night. They won the House. They didn't take
- 18:45Speaker 2: the Senate because they had a similarly difficult landscape. But
- 18:48Speaker 2: it was overall, you know, Democrats, I think, won the
- 18:50Speaker 2: popular vote by like eight points. It was a good
- 18:52Speaker 2: night for Democrats. But Trump was still popular on the
- 18:57Speaker 2: economy then. His approval rating was not nearly as low.
- 19:00Speaker 2: We were not mired in a deeply unpopular war. Gas
- 19:03Speaker 2: prices were not $ 4. 30 today. Diesel was not at record-breaking levels.
- 19:09Speaker 2: So if you think of 2018, plus you layer on
- 19:13Speaker 2: top of that deep disapproval of Trump, horrific economic numbers
- 19:18Speaker 2: and pain, and a Republican Party that really has no
- 19:22Speaker 2: response on the issues that are most critical to people
- 19:25Speaker 2: right now, then it becomes not hard to imagine how
- 19:29Speaker 2: the bottom really falls out for them.
- 19:31Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.
- 19:32Speaker 3: I What people need to remember about 07-08 is that
- 19:39Speaker 3: Bush really was a side character. And that sounds very
- 19:43Speaker 3: strange to say, but that was at the time of
- 19:46Speaker 3: the Barack Obama and the Hillary Clinton dramatic primary. To
- 19:50Speaker 3: the extent Bush was relevant, it was about what he
- 19:52Speaker 3: was doing in Iraq during the entire financial crisis. The
- 19:56Speaker 3: story of the financial crisis was always more about Hank
- 19:59Speaker 3: Paulson than about what Bush himself was going to do. Bush, remember,
- 20:03Speaker 3: famously tried to even push TARP over the line and
- 20:06Speaker 3: it didn't work at first because so many Republicans were like, yeah,
- 20:09Speaker 3: I'm not going along with you. I mean, people really
- 20:11Speaker 3: don't remember how much power he lost entirely in our system.
- 20:15Speaker 3: That's really when the Obama era began. So that's what's
- 20:18Speaker 3: the interesting thing about the Trump era, because the Trump
- 20:20Speaker 3: era has lasted longer than any politician in the United
- 20:23Speaker 3: States since FDR. And that is because he did not
- 20:27Speaker 3: serve in the middle of those of Joe Biden's term.
- 20:30Speaker 3: And yet, even though Biden was president, he was a
- 20:33Speaker 3: side character to all of the forces that were happening
- 20:37Speaker 3: behind the scenes, really, since Trump came down the escalator
- 20:40Speaker 3: and Trump's grip on the GOP never broke. So that's
- 20:43Speaker 3: what the substantive question of this is, is if you
- 20:46Speaker 3: lose multiple red states, which you love won by double digits,
- 20:50Speaker 3: then your hold is dead, actually, entirely as a national
- 20:54Speaker 3: political figure.
- 20:54Speaker 1: There really is no coming back from it.
- 20:56Speaker 3: And I think what the problem, though, and this is
- 20:59Speaker 3: the one issue, which is different than Bush, is that Bush,
- 21:04Speaker 3: he would still give Republicans permission to break with him
- 21:08Speaker 3: because he was a political pragmatist. Trump will never do that.
- 21:11Speaker 3: And there is still a MAGA faithful who love Donald
- 21:14Speaker 3: Trump or who have a lot of trust in Donald Trump.
- 21:17Speaker 3: And he and his brittle and narcissistic ego will never
- 21:21Speaker 3: allow a J.D. Vance to criticize him. I mean, Crystal,
- 21:24Speaker 3: I mean, neither of us probably remember it, but I'm
- 21:27Speaker 3: sure you've read a little bit about the 2000 election.
- 21:30Speaker 3: You know, Bill Clinton was very personally hurt that Al
- 21:33Speaker 3: Gore distanced himself from Bill Clinton. In retrospect, it's actually
- 21:38Speaker 3: a bad idea. But, you know, at the time, Al
- 21:40Speaker 3: thought he was making the right decision. But it's not
- 21:42Speaker 3: like Clinton was demanding that Al Gore leave. you know,
- 21:47Speaker 3: to take him on the campaign trail. He was hurt
- 21:49Speaker 3: by it, but he didn't say anything. Trump doesn't have
- 21:52Speaker 3: that in him. And so that is the last part
- 21:55Speaker 3: of this, which is I'm reluctant to say that we
- 21:58Speaker 3: can fully move on from where he's a main character.
- 22:01Speaker 1: And that's because of Trump himself.
- 22:04Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's going to be a sort of
- 22:05Speaker 2: death rattle where Republicans are going to be screwed because
- 22:10Speaker 2: they they will pay a price. for breaking with him,
- 22:14Speaker 2: and they will pay a price for not breaking with him.
- 22:17Speaker 2: And you're getting a preview of that in a way
- 22:18Speaker 2: with the midterm elections right now, because Trump has decided
- 22:22Speaker 2: to put himself at the center of all of these races,
- 22:25Speaker 2: you know, going to Michigan, where Mike Rogers has tried
- 22:27Speaker 2: to be like, oh, I'm not really on board with
- 22:29Speaker 2: this Iran war. Well, now there you are on stage
- 22:32Speaker 2: hugging President Trump, and he is a deeply unpopular figure
- 22:36Speaker 2: in the state of Michigan. And so his midterm convention
- 22:40Speaker 2: down in Texas, Ken Paxton admitted on that leaked audio
- 22:44Speaker 2: that that was a disaster for him numbers wise. And
- 22:46Speaker 2: the polling bore out that it was actually bad for
- 22:49Speaker 2: all Republican candidates took a hit in the polls because
- 22:52Speaker 2: of the way he wanted to put himself. at the
- 22:54Speaker 2: center of the show and tell people, vote as if
- 22:57Speaker 2: I'm on the ballot. Well, guess what? You're underwater in
- 23:00Speaker 2: literally every single state in the entire nation. So if
- 23:03Speaker 2: people are voting like you're the one on the ballot,
- 23:05Speaker 2: you're getting wiped down. And so that is the dynamic
- 23:09Speaker 2: that I think you're right is going to continue to
- 23:11Speaker 2: play out where Republicans will kind of be damned if
- 23:14Speaker 2: they do, damned if they don't. But in terms of
- 23:17Speaker 2: his dominance of the entire political conversation and the level
- 23:22Speaker 2: of sway that he's had, I do think we are
- 23:24Speaker 2: coming to an end of an era here, especially if
- 23:27Speaker 2: the midterms go the way that they're sort of trending
- 23:29Speaker 2: at this point.
- 23:30Speaker 3: Yeah. If it is an abject blowout. I mean, the
- 23:33Speaker 3: real question is whether people have their permission to break
- 23:36Speaker 3: from Trump. And I just I don't see that yet.
- 23:39Speaker 3: I know you think you see that.
- 23:41Speaker 1: I still don't.
- 23:42Speaker 2: Here's what I he's never going to give them permission.
- 23:45Speaker 2: But what you are going to see is people who
- 23:49Speaker 2: some Republicans who calculate exactly what Nate Silver is saying here.
- 23:53Speaker 2: This guy's old and he's on the way out. And
- 23:56Speaker 2: the next part, what comes after, there's going to be
- 24:00Speaker 2: a scramble and there's going to be people positioning themselves
- 24:02Speaker 2: in different ways, making different bets about where the smart
- 24:06Speaker 2: place to land is ultimately going to be. So there
- 24:10Speaker 2: will be some who believe that the smart bet is
- 24:14Speaker 2: to now find some principles that especially on something like
- 24:17Speaker 2: the Iran war, which is deeply unpopular, right? Or on
- 24:19Speaker 2: his incredible earth shattering level of corruption. They may find that,
- 24:26Speaker 2: you know what, this is a place where perhaps I
- 24:28Speaker 2: should say something, perhaps I should take a stand. So
- 24:31Speaker 2: there's going to be a lot of jockeying and you're
- 24:34Speaker 2: going to have some people who make the bet that, no,
- 24:35Speaker 2: I'm just going to continue to tie myself to Trump.
- 24:37Speaker 2: But I do think if you have this massive shellacking,
- 24:40Speaker 2: including in shocking red states, that you will have some
- 24:44Speaker 2: who calculate You know what? Now's the time actually to
- 24:47Speaker 2: position myself differently for the future.
- 24:50Speaker 3: You know, when we'll really find out is impeachment time
- 24:54Speaker 3: is Trump is going to be impeached. We all know
- 24:55Speaker 3: it is whether any Republicans will vote. That will be
- 24:59Speaker 3: the actual test of whether this is actually going to happen.
- 25:03Speaker 5: I don't know.
- 25:03Speaker 1: I mean, I'm excited to find out. I certainly am.
- 25:08Speaker 3: All right.
- 25:09Speaker 2: Also wanted to keep our focus today on what is
- 25:11Speaker 2: going on in the world of AI. Bill Gates sounding
- 25:14Speaker 2: increasingly alarmed about the era that we are entering into,
- 25:18Speaker 2: saying that he predicts it will be the most chaotic
- 25:20Speaker 2: 20 years in human history. Let's take a listen.
- 25:23Speaker 5: My big concern is this 20-year transition period where you'll
- 25:29Speaker 5: have winners and losers and a lot of disruption. And
- 25:34Speaker 5: we have to get through that. in order to get
- 25:39Speaker 5: to that period of abundance.
- 25:40Speaker 6: You think it's 20 years from now?
- 25:42Speaker 5: You know, I pick that as a reasonably safe number.
- 25:46Speaker 5: There's a variety of milestones. For example, humanoid robots, you know,
- 25:51Speaker 5: are those two or three years away, as some would say,
- 25:55Speaker 5: or more like eight years away, as other people would say.
- 25:58Speaker 5: There's not that many people saying that given the amount
- 26:02Speaker 5: of capital and number of companies, particularly in China, that
- 26:06Speaker 5: are working on that, There's no notion that it's unsolvable
- 26:10Speaker 5: to have a hand and fingers and be able to
- 26:13Speaker 5: deliver physical labor at very, very low cost. And so
- 26:21Speaker 5: I could be wrong about that number. It could be
- 26:25Speaker 5: slightly less or slightly more. But on that order of magnitude, yes.
- 26:30Speaker 5: If we don't choose to massively slow down or stop, then...
- 26:37Speaker 5: We will have robots that can build houses, grow food,
- 26:41Speaker 5: do surgery. And none of the things that human labor
- 26:48Speaker 5: provides to the economy will be necessary.
- 26:51Speaker 2: None of the things human labor provide will be necessary.
- 26:54Speaker 2: 20 chaotic years. I think it's worth noting about Bill Gates,
- 26:58Speaker 2: however you feel about him. I've got a lot of
- 26:59Speaker 2: thoughts about him myself. This is someone who's obviously not
- 27:03Speaker 2: a Luddite, number one. Number two, he's also someone who
- 27:07Speaker 2: was initially quite skeptical of the technology itself. The folks
- 27:12Speaker 2: at OpenAI had brought him some early versions of ChatGPT,
- 27:16Speaker 2: and he was like, eh, I'm not really that impressed.
- 27:18Speaker 2: He thought there would really be a limit to it.
- 27:20Speaker 2: And then they got to a point where it thoroughly
- 27:23Speaker 2: impressed him. And then he was excited about the technology.
- 27:27Speaker 2: And now he's become quite fearful of where we're going,
- 27:30Speaker 2: how quickly we're going there and how poorly prepared we are. So,
- 27:34Speaker 2: you know, add it to the list of voices of
- 27:37Speaker 2: people who know something about the space who are saying
- 27:40Speaker 2: that we are about to enter into a period unlike
- 27:43Speaker 2: any we have faced in human history. And, you know,
- 27:47Speaker 2: you always make this point, Sarah, and I think it's
- 27:48Speaker 2: such a good one, too. Even he's, he talks about
- 27:52Speaker 2: the theoretical abundance once you, you know, if you can
- 27:55Speaker 2: survive this gauntlet of the 20 years of chaos that we're,
- 27:58Speaker 2: you know, being plunged into against all of our wills.
- 28:01Speaker 2: And what he describes also is a sort of dystopia
- 28:05Speaker 2: that in their minds is is a utopian outcome. So
- 28:10Speaker 2: even the good version sounds terrifying. Even the, okay, you
- 28:14Speaker 2: survived the 20 years and you get to the other
- 28:16Speaker 2: side and we have, quote unquote, abundance, also sounds very
- 28:19Speaker 2: disturbing and I think will be uncomfortable for a lot
- 28:22Speaker 2: of people.
- 28:23Speaker 1: I totally agree.
- 28:24Speaker 3: And I think this is where the whole probability of doom,
- 28:27Speaker 3: this is what's important. Like, oh, AI will kill us.
- 28:30Speaker 3: It may not kill your body, but it'll kill your spirit.
- 28:32Speaker 3: It'll kill what makes being human even remotely important. You know,
- 28:37Speaker 3: the robotics piece is actually the one where I was
- 28:39Speaker 3: speaking with some people, very knowledgeable, kind of on the frontier.
- 28:42Speaker 3: They were telling me on the robotics front, we're about
- 28:45Speaker 3: a year away from complex like household and or labor tasks.
- 28:50Speaker 3: And specifically, the bottleneck is not software. The software exists. Remember,
- 28:54Speaker 3: we've showed everybody that video of that robot, which was
- 28:57Speaker 3: hooked up to the latest chat GPT model. But what
- 29:00Speaker 3: it really exists is the production pipeline to be able
- 29:04Speaker 3: to build this stuff, economy at scale, then be able
- 29:07Speaker 3: to self-regulate. If you take a look at some household items,
- 29:11Speaker 3: the leaps in technology are stunning. I'm talking about fridges.
- 29:14Speaker 3: There are now fridges that are on the market, which
- 29:17Speaker 3: can scan the item of food as it goes into
- 29:19Speaker 3: your fridge and tells you whenever it expires.
- 29:22Speaker 1: This is readily available. You can go and you can
- 29:24Speaker 1: buy it at Home Depot.
- 29:25Speaker 3: Vacuums, a few other household appliances have new AI interfaces
- 29:30Speaker 3: that are built in, which are dramatically better than anything
- 29:32Speaker 3: you could buy even two or three years ago, not
- 29:34Speaker 3: to mention television. But the actual humanoid type robots, which
- 29:38Speaker 3: will immediately be put into place at manual labor, is
- 29:42Speaker 3: actually not that far away. And right now we're talking
- 29:46Speaker 3: about the white collar workforce reduction. And I don't want
- 29:48Speaker 3: to minimize that. Let's put, for example, E3 guys, please,
- 29:52Speaker 3: up on the screen. Microsoft, Bill Gates' former company, is
- 29:56Speaker 3: now literally going to lay off some 60,000 employees, 60,000,
- 30:03Speaker 3: in terms of letting them go and offering buyouts. Now, remember,
- 30:08Speaker 3: what we're already watching, let's put E4, is Goldman Sachs'
- 30:12Speaker 3: latest estimate. Quote, we are starting to see clear signs
- 30:15Speaker 3: that AI impact is spreading beyond the technology sector across
- 30:18Speaker 3: non-manufacturing industries, the share of U.S. firms that have adopted
- 30:22Speaker 3: AI and regular business now show statistically significant negative correlation
- 30:26Speaker 3: with employment growth and statistically significant positive correlation with unemployment.
- 30:32Speaker 3: But I actually think there is a hidden jobs crisis,
- 30:35Speaker 3: which is not even remotely measurable, and that is the
- 30:39Speaker 3: reduction of of entry-level jobs. Entry-level jobs, we can measure
- 30:43Speaker 3: a little bit through youth unemployment, but what we can't
- 30:46Speaker 3: necessarily measure are all the jobs that would exist if
- 30:49Speaker 3: they hadn't had all of this new technology. AI, work
- 30:53Speaker 3: from home, a lot of these things are boons for
- 30:55Speaker 3: people who are middle management and upper with some career experience.
- 30:59Speaker 3: But getting your foot in the door, a lot of that,
- 31:02Speaker 3: even though the labor itself you were doing was quite menial,
- 31:05Speaker 3: what you were really doing is you're learning how to
- 31:06Speaker 3: be an adult in the world.
- 31:07Speaker 1: You're learning how to.
- 31:09Speaker 3: Socialize, you know, a lot of people meet their spouses
- 31:11Speaker 3: at work, a lot of people, you know, do stuff
- 31:13Speaker 3: like this, right? Or and so what the problem overall
- 31:17Speaker 3: of what we're watching is that the reduction in that
- 31:20Speaker 3: will create a genuine crisis.
- 31:22Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 31:22Speaker 2: I mean, what we're being sold from the ginseng huangs
- 31:25Speaker 2: of the world and whatever is, number one, the story
- 31:27Speaker 2: about employment that's like, well, every other technological revolution, humans
- 31:31Speaker 2: have found other things to do. And number two, when
- 31:34Speaker 2: you're asked, OK, well, what sort of things? He'll go
- 31:37Speaker 2: to like, well, maybe you'll work at like a high
- 31:40Speaker 2: end spa or you'll make artisanal cheese or something like that.
- 31:43Speaker 2: I don't think that's going to be enough. I know
- 31:45Speaker 2: I'm not sure about that. If you look at the
- 31:48Speaker 2: trends throughout the modern era of human labor, most humans
- 31:54Speaker 2: worked as farmers. And then you have industrial revolution. Then
- 31:57Speaker 2: you have most people going into manual labor. And then
- 32:00Speaker 2: when you start to have technological automation there, then people
- 32:04Speaker 2: go into knowledge work. And you've seen the decline, and
- 32:07Speaker 2: this is globally, of manufacturing labor. There's obviously still a
- 32:12Speaker 2: lot of people that do that. But by and large,
- 32:14Speaker 2: the growth has all been in the knowledge sector. There
- 32:17Speaker 2: is nowhere else to go. Right. The last bastion of
- 32:20Speaker 2: things that humans do better than machines is to think
- 32:24Speaker 2: that's it. That's the last frontier. And so once that's gone, no,
- 32:28Speaker 2: there isn't anywhere really to turn. Now, maybe and I
- 32:32Speaker 2: have socialist friends who think this and communist friends who
- 32:36Speaker 2: think this. Maybe it will be better. Maybe it is
- 32:39Speaker 2: a better world that we can aspire to where you
- 32:41Speaker 2: have fully automated luxury communism and people can focus on
- 32:44Speaker 2: things that are deeper meaning, actually, than just being able
- 32:48Speaker 2: having to, you know, go in and clock in. And
- 32:51Speaker 2: most people hate their jobs and earn a paycheck in
- 32:53Speaker 2: this sort of soul sucking way. There probably is a
- 32:56Speaker 2: world that exists that would be superior to that and
- 32:59Speaker 2: would have better and deeper meaning. But the way we're
- 33:03Speaker 2: barreling towards it is with no brakes and no safety
- 33:06Speaker 2: net is utterly terrifying because no one has any answers
- 33:11Speaker 2: for what people will do with their time. And Sagar,
- 33:14Speaker 2: you rightly point out that on the current trajectory, the
- 33:16Speaker 2: answers about what we're likely to do with our time
- 33:19Speaker 2: are quite disturbing, are really quite disturbing indeed. And especially
- 33:23Speaker 2: on the track that we're on, where all of the
- 33:25Speaker 2: tech is owned in the hands of a handful of people,
- 33:29Speaker 2: this is going to result not in some luxury communism.
- 33:33Speaker 2: It's going to result in digital feudalism. That is the
- 33:37Speaker 2: trajectory that we are very, very clearly on right now.
- 33:41Speaker 2: I also just wanted to highlight another troubling incident as
- 33:45Speaker 2: we continue to stumble through what has been called Black
- 33:48Speaker 2: October because of all of the mass cybersecurity incidents that
- 33:51Speaker 2: we've had around the world and have been impacting people
- 33:55Speaker 2: more and more. Put E2 up on the screen. Now,
- 33:58Speaker 2: I want to be clear. It is not 100% clear
- 34:01Speaker 2: whether or not this cybersecurity breach was AI-driven. However, experts
- 34:06Speaker 2: in the field say you should just assume at this
- 34:08Speaker 2: point that any hack you're seeing is being at least
- 34:12Speaker 2: partially enabled by AI. So we have a cybersecurity issue
- 34:16Speaker 2: that forced a major New Mexico hospital to divert patients
- 34:20Speaker 2: and close clinics. They had to race to fix a
- 34:23Speaker 2: cybersecurity issue on Monday that forced it to send ambulances
- 34:27Speaker 2: to other hospitals, left the state without an emergency department
- 34:31Speaker 2: capable of treating the most serious injuries. The University of
- 34:34Speaker 2: New Mexico health system told people not to show up
- 34:37Speaker 2: at its main hospital in Albuquerque and canceled appointments at
- 34:40Speaker 2: its more than 30 clinics. said it was working to
- 34:42Speaker 2: resolve the issue, the extent and nature of which was
- 34:45Speaker 2: not immediately clear. That network conducts about 900,000 outpatient visits,
- 34:50Speaker 2: receives 100,000 emergency room visits each year. It operates the
- 34:54Speaker 2: state's only level one trauma center. And this hack took
- 34:59Speaker 2: them offline completely for some period of time where they
- 35:02Speaker 2: had to completely divert everyone to other systems. This is
- 35:08Speaker 2: a glimpse of the world we live in now and
- 35:10Speaker 2: what may be coming at us more and more frequently.
- 35:13Speaker 2: And it's just a reminder of how vulnerable we are,
- 35:16Speaker 2: whether it's the hospital system, whether it's the banking system,
- 35:20Speaker 2: whether it's the electrical grid, whether it's public utilities. We
- 35:24Speaker 2: just went, well, not us, but these oligarchs in combination
- 35:28Speaker 2: with the Trump government decided just to barrel forward with
- 35:31Speaker 2: these models, knowing to some extent the risk, understanding the
- 35:36Speaker 2: cybersecurity risk, and basically put superhuman cyber hacking capabilities in
- 35:40Speaker 2: the hands of anyone who cares to have them around
- 35:43Speaker 2: the globe. So that is the world we're living in.
- 35:46Speaker 2: And we are playing with fire, I think is the
- 35:48Speaker 2: best way you can say it.
- 35:50Speaker 1: I totally agree.
- 35:50Speaker 3: My last thought on this, what you were saying about,
- 35:53Speaker 3: you know, to great respect to those socialists and communists,
- 35:56Speaker 3: I think that reading history, the Industrial Revolution is easily
- 36:01Speaker 3: a informing us about what's going to happen. You know,
- 36:04Speaker 3: we just go, oh, well, the Industrial Revolution happened and
- 36:06Speaker 3: it was all fine.
- 36:08Speaker 1: Yeah, there was about a.
- 36:08Speaker 3: 40 or 50 year period of deaths and mass labor
- 36:12Speaker 3: strikes and of social strife, of Great Depressions, of silver panics,
- 36:17Speaker 3: of mass suicides.
- 36:18Speaker 2: And that's if you live in the developed world.
- 36:19Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
- 36:20Speaker 2: If you live in the developing world, in a lot
- 36:22Speaker 2: of ways, you're still living in that realm.
- 36:24Speaker 3: Yeah, you are still living in that realm. You're exactly right.
- 36:26Speaker 3: And so let's think about that, what it was like
- 36:28Speaker 3: for the people who lived through that 40 or 50
- 36:30Speaker 3: year transition. It was one of the most extraordinary transitions
- 36:33Speaker 3: of their lifetime. Many of them saw it as some
- 36:36Speaker 3: of the hardest and most difficult fights that they ever had.
- 36:40Speaker 3: And In our U.S. education system, we learn nothing about
- 36:44Speaker 3: the labor movement or the fight for a, you know,
- 36:46Speaker 3: for a four hour or for a 12.
- 36:48Speaker 1: Hour work day.
- 36:49Speaker 3: I mean, just to get lunch breaks was a titanic,
- 36:53Speaker 3: titanic effort to make sure that there was unionization and
- 36:57Speaker 3: worker protection was one of the greatest struggles of the
- 37:01Speaker 3: age in which thousands of people died. Tens of thousands
- 37:05Speaker 3: of people, if you count people who died from bad
- 37:07Speaker 3: working conditions, disease, they lived I'm not saying that's going
- 37:11Speaker 3: to happen to us, but I'm saying that is a
- 37:13Speaker 3: very instructive path about how difficult it was to live
- 37:17Speaker 3: through that.
- 37:18Speaker 2: It's even worse than that, because at least at that
- 37:21Speaker 2: point in time, they needed our labor. So we had
- 37:24Speaker 2: some leverage. We had some power. If you're talking about
- 37:28Speaker 2: a technology that eliminates that need entirely. then what leverage
- 37:34Speaker 2: and power do we have left in the system? And that,
- 37:38Speaker 2: to me, that dynamic is what is truly terrifying.
- 37:42Speaker 1: That's right. All right.
- 37:43Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.
- 37:45Speaker 3: There'll be a Friday show for tomorrow. And don't forget,
- 37:47Speaker 3: next week, it's the big one, Election Day.
- 37:50Speaker 1: We'll see you then.