Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Alvaro Bedoya - The Fired FTC Commissioner Sounding the Alarm on Corporate Power

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Interview Only w/ Alvaro Bedoya - The Fired FTC Commissioner Sounding the Alarm on Corporate Power · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
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• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Badoya and Alvarro is a former Commissioner of the FTC.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: It was a Biden appointee. He thought he'd still be
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: a member of the FTC. Actually, I'm guessing it is.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: It is June of twenty twenty six. In May of
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, more months I would have been commissioned. Yeah,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: but the president decided that his term should end earlier,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and at some point Alvro decided to stop fighting that.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: And the Supreme Court looks like he would have lost
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: that fight anyway. And hey, everybody's got to make a living.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: But true Alvro is here, and we want to look.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go off in a few places. One,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: you know, we mostly obsess over a topic. He is
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: obsessed over Alvro that you've obsessed over, and that is privacy.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: What is the line? And it is sort of the
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: because it has never been enumerated in our constitution and
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: this is why frankly, we have the regulatory bodies that
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: we have, I think on this front, but also talk
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: a little politics and where where the where this new
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: regulatory fight UH is going to go and whether the
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party is equipped for it. It's good. Good to
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: meet you, all right, nice to meet you. Well, let
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: me start with your time at the ftcing UH. And
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: simply because and this may have been a question I
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: was going to reserve for later. But given given your experience,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: that we we broke, we broke a norm. This wasn't
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: a guardrail. As it turned out, this wasn't something Congress
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: wrote into law, and perhaps they should have. But we
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: broke a norm where you know, if you were confirmed
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: member of one of these sort of semi independent agencies,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the SEC, the FTC, the FEC, the FCC, that you'll
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: stay on until your term expires, regardless of who's president
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: this term. Donald Trump decided to challenge a lot of
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: those guardrails. He said, mixed six in the courts of
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: doing it. But it is sort of up endo these agencies. So,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: given your experience, does Congress need to change the actual
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: law in how the FTC works if we want to
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: guarantee some sort of independence for the FTC.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: So certainly what Congress would need to do is codify
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: the existing Supreme Court precedent saying that the FTC is independent.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And let me clarify just one thing.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: So, in many instances, this president has violated norms. Here
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: it is Supreme Court black letter law for ninety years
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: that by a nine to zero a ruling that the
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: president cannot remove members of the Federal Trade Commission without cause.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: And so if we wanted to reinstate that, well, what
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: would have to happen? Honestly, you'd need a different Supreme Court.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Let me take back my initial answer, because the Supreme Court,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: if it decides this case the way we think it will,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: which is say, yes, you President Trump can fire FTC commissioner, we.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: May we're taping June twenty second. By the time this airs,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: we may already have this this ruling, you know, because
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: it could happen literally any hour.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Now, let's just say it would be very surprising if
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: they decided that the FTC were in fact independent, and
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: so honestly, you would need a different Supreme Court because
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Congress did right into the law you can't remove someone
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: without cause. The Supreme Court in you know nine.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: You define cause. I mean, I don't mean to be
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Oh no, it's it's defined. It's defined in the laws
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: to find it.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Okay, it is malfeasance, neglect, or inefficiency and so and why.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And that is very subjective, is it not?
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not so subjective because it was never used
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: for the FTC. In the subsequent ninety years, it was
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: broadly understood to be a high bar, and it was
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: understood to prevent someone getting removed just because the president
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: didn't like their politics, didn't like how they kept on
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: suing their donors, and so it was a pretty high
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: bar and it withstood, you know, ninety years worth of
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: the test of time.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I'd say, right, it's interesting that you say it's the
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court and not Congress that needs to because here's
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the other thing, the semi independent agencies. I mean, I
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what's in worse shape our
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: legislative branch or a judiciary branch. But I tend to
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: believe it's the legislative because the judiciary can only rule
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: on what Congress does do or doesn't do. Right, And
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Congress is, you know, purposely been ambiguous because they've wanted
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: the executive branch to actually have more running room. Right,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: this was an intentional many of the ways they've passed laws.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: The ambiguity was a feature, not a bug. And I
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: guess that's the question I have, is that if we
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: want and truly independent agencies on the consumer protection front,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: which to me, FTC, FCC, SEC, those are those are
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: the those are the bulwarks of consumer protection in one
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: form or another, do we need to write And by
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the way, I'd throw in the FED and the FBI
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: into that too. I mean, I don't want to create
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: a fourth branch, but a truly does it need to
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: be does the articles of its creation need to change?
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: So this Supreme Court, if it rules the way we
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: think it will, will say you can't have that. You
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: described it as a fourth branch. You can't have this independent,
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: you know, executive branch agency, but that doesn't directly report
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: to the president. And so yeah, you would need to
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: have that change now, I think, and I think there's
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: a compelling case for it, you know, I think I
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: think one of the reasons we were fired, if not
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: the reason we were fired, is that we kept on
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: suing the president's donors, and we had we had Amazon
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: in court and not one, but two cases, one for
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: ripping off mom and pop sellers on their site, another
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: for making it nearly impossible we alleged to get out
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: of Amazon Prime. We were trying to undo the merger
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: of Facebook with Insta on WhatsApp, where Mark Zuckerberg famously said,
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: you know, why compete when we can buy them, And
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: we were enforcing a privacy consent to create against Elon
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Musk and on and on and on, and so I
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: think it's very clear that we were inconvenient and that
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: we would make a Ruckus, and that's why we were
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: removing And I think there's a pretty easy case to
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: be made that you want consumers, small businesses, working people
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: to be protected irrespective of how much money these people
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: have given to the president. And that's what we lose
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: when you lose this independent FTC.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: So one of the positives that I take away from
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the Trump era is that Trump has provided an MRI
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: for our system. Right, it is the ultimate MRI. We
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: are finding out, Hey, oh, it turns out norm these
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: norms should be laws. It turns out these laws they
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: probably need to be rewritten. It turns out we need
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: to do this. Not that it turns out, you know,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of it's you know, it's like having
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: it's like turning on the black light in the hotel room.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: You went, oh my god, right, like maybe that's the
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: better metaphor. And so, you know, I look at the
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Department of Justice. I don't think it should be an
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: executive branch agency. I think it turns out it's just
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: it is too vulnerable to It doesn't matter that, you know, Okay,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: maybe the next president will respect some guardrails and norms.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter the way the system is built, there's
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: always going to be political questions about decisions the Justice
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Department made as long as it's that tightly intertwined with
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: with the executive branch. So you know, again, I'm gonna
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: move on here in a minute, because you and I
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: are not here to redesign and have a new constitutional convention.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: But it seems as if Trump, when it comes to
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: essentially everything between us and the law, he's really blown
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: a hole through it and we might need to rethink
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: all of the architecture of this.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and let me drill down on the Amazon example
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: I gave, because I think that that is where the
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: black light is showing some real damage. So, you know,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: we allege that Amazon made it so hard to get
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: out of Prime that they literally called the UI the
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: User interface flow, the iliad flow. You know. We alleged
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: that the executives knew that it was impossible, but just
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: wouldn't fix it. We alleged they were making mom and
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: pop businesses give them fifty cents on every dollar they
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: made on the site, and the moment those businesses said hey,
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: I'm going to sell for less off, Amazon make more
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: margin because you know, it's pretty easy to beat a
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: fifty percent margin gobbled up by Amazon. The moment they
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: did that to offer me and you lower prices, chuck,
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Suddenly they'd be booted off of the bybox. What else happened?
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: In the meantime? There was a report? Senator Sanders put
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: out a report showing that alleging that Amazon systematically did
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: not refer its workers to outside medical care for at
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: least two weeks because that was a critical reporting period
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: for what constitutes a serious injury. He alleged that the
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: discs in people's backs were bulging and breaking, their wrists
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: would stop working. And what happened? So this is all
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: the contact we alleged? What happened since then? Million dollars
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: for the inauguration, twenty nine million dollars in the first
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Lady's pocket for the documentary, according to a New York Post,
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: who knows how much to license the apprentice? Who knows
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: how much for the Golden Ballroom? And you have one
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: of those FTC lawsuits go away where the executives don't
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: even have to pay a dime in personal fines, no demotion, nothing,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: And who do you have as the new head of
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration? A former Amazon Safety Executive.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: So if this can happen, then absolutely our laws against
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: bribery and corruption are fundamentally broken when oligarchs can pay
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: to have their safety people in charge and pay to
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: have these lawsuits go away. Absolutely, we need to start
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: from scratch in terms of strengthening these laws.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: No, it's a I mean, ultimately all we have is
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: civil litigation. It feels like, at the end of the day,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the only thing that is working is civil litigation. Right,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: the only thing companies fear is civil litigation. I mean,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I agree, it is. Yeah, it is. I think both
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: state governments and federal government is abdicated on this. All right,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: let's talk about your passion, and that is privacy. I've
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: been waiting for a Congress. I've been waiting for a prediction.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: I may back when I thought I was smart about
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: these things, you know, saying after the two thousand and
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: six elections, boy, you know, you know what the next
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: big thing, you know, Patient's Bill of Rights was sort
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: of the that was sort of the shiny metal object
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: of campaigns during the before Obamacare GAPT got passed, you know,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: for Democrats to show and even occasionally a Republican to
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: say no no, no, no, I care about I care about you.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Over the medical industry, I thought a privacy bill of
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: rights fashioned after that so called Patient's Bill of Rights
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: was coming. John Tester, that O six race he privacy
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: was one of the big things, particularly a place like Montana. Right,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: that resonated a lot. That's twenty years ago. Yeah, we
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: still don't have this digital bill of rights that I
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: thought was coming. And oh my god, technology has so
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: accelerated that it's even harder to protect our privacy. At
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: this point, I say, this is somebody who has I
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: think is a semi public thing. I have to give
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: up my right to privacy. I could argue that I've
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: been compensated to do that to a point, right, but
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: it's really disconcerting that that I have, I do not
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: have any control in my government has no way to
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: give me control of privacy. So I think this is
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: an enormous impossible task. But look, how do you eat
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: an elephant one bite at a time? What's the first bike?
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: I think some of the most important privacy protections today
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: are not getting passed in Congress. They're not frankly being
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: one in state legislatures. They're not being one in lawsuits,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: even although you know, some of the verdicts against Meta
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: around the addictiveness of its platform are pretty compelling. I
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: think they're being one in collective bargaining agreements by labor
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: unions across the country. And I think this is like
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: the sleeper story about protecting our digital selves, our digital identities,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: our digital persons are professions. I think this is the
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: hidden story. So and by the way, I used to
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: be every word you said. I used to agree with
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: and say, we need a federal privacy law. But then
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: what happened, Chuck, I was Al Franken's chief counsel. We
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: stood up a privacy subcommittee, and then I was that
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: guy who had to start moving pieces into place. And
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: you would not believe the lobbying that met me. You know,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: I would try to assemble a couple of scrappy privacy
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: groups together, civil liberties groups together. And then all of
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: my friends and their friends, my fellow Senate aids would say, hey,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: do you know that, like Meta is lobbying on your bill,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: and be like, it's not even out of committee yet,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: what are you talking about? Like, oh, yeah, they told
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: us it would be the end of the Internet, And
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: so what I've noticed, is.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: The end of the Internet with these Internet Yeah exactly.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Let me give you a very concrete by the way,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: like who thinks the Internet is just really well built
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: going be careful, really, you're promising the end of the Internet,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: that's right away.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: No, no, I honestly, I think a lot of parents
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: would would say that. But there was a really creepy
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: thing that was happening on on the lots in film
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: and TV over the last several years where background actors,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: people we call extras, we're getting tapped on the shoulder
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: and then untild hey go to tent forty six, will
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: you Why? Oh, don't worry, but I'd just go. They'd
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: show up, they'd walk into the tent or walk into
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: the building, and suddenly they'd be asked to stand for
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: three hundred and sixty degree scans of their bodies their faces.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Some people were asked to do this in the nude.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Other people were asked to a mote and when they
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: would ask what the heck is this for, a lot
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: of them wouldn't get an answer. When they would ask, hey,
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: can I get paid for this, they'd say, oh, no,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: this is part of the standard daily pay. You get
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: and finally people started figuring out, oh, this is to
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: add you in post to a crowd scene so that
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: we can we don't have to pay you your daily rate.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: We could just drop it in the digital alv Robado
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: or the digital Chuck Dodd into that scene without paying you.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: And as a result of the screen actors strike, that
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: was stopped. And now you need to be told, given notice,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: given information as to what's happening. You have to decide
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: whether you will allow it, and you have to get
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: paid for it. And you know, I think it's really important.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Sometimes privacy is too abstract and people are just have
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: to imagine, you know, the valuable thing about themselves that's
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: being taken. What people need to understand is that now
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: companies are trying to digitize and monetize our livelihoods, you know,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: and make decisions about us at work based on information
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: and systems that are totally opaque to us that they
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: entirely control. And I could give you example after example
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: of how labor unions have started winning bright line protections
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: against this kind of thing.
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  Speaker 1: vary and rates may vary. Collective bargaining, I see that.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: I am a you know, I am am I'm a
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: mixed minds. Tell me more. I'm on collective bargaining for
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: certain industries, like I'm not always there, you know, I
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: believe you know, the labor unions for physical labor are
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: in it beyond a necessity, Like without them, you put
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: people's lives in danger. And I've always been of mixed
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: minds on sort of the intellectual property labor unions, right,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: call them writer unions and things like this. But you
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: make a compelling case that collective. Individually, it's much harder
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: to protect your intellectual property, but collectively you may have
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: a better chance to protect your I mean, in some ways,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: it's how we got college It's how the college football
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: world started to get compensated when one player, it was
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: actually a college basketball player, Charles O'Bannon, decided that a
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: video game using his likeness should have compensated it before
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I used his likeness. And then, of course that was
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: the beginning. It's one of the Obannon brothers. It's the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: beginning of what we have today in college sports that
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: won't get fixed until there's elective bargaining. You know, I
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: think that there's there's no doubt there to nature. Look,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: I you make a compelling case on that. On privacy,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: but can I talk about the individual? No? No, no, no,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: But I want to talk about sort of the consumer. Okay, privacy. Well,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: let's get to the let's get the privacy, because here's
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: another argument I've heard about privacy. Individual. My individual preferences
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: are of very little value to Meta and to Amazon,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: but my entire zip codes preferences are hugely important, and
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: that's always been It's the it's the collectively, our data
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: is worth a lot to these people individually, If we
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: were all compensated for the individual contribution that our data
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: provided these companies, it would be minuscule. So what is
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the balance to strike here? So?
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Look, I think there's two kinds of protections that need
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: to be put in place here. First, our protections are
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: part of them, are protections around privacy and the collection
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: and use of data. But equally important is in antitrust
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: and the amount of power these entities are allowed to
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: amass such that they are too big to regulate basically
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: and too big to check. And so I think it
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: is only by having the combination of these things that
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: you can actually begin to exert a level of protection here.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: So I mean, so you basically asked the gazillion dollar
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: question around this, You know, how do you solve this?
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: I think it is through a combination of restrictions on
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: certain data, sure, but then restrictions all so on how
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: you use that information. And for example, the census has
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: a great rule that has been waived at certain points
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: in this country's history. It was waived during the Japanese Internment.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: It was abused in other moments, but it has this
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: general rule that says, you can't use this information to
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: harm people. Ok, you can only use this for statistical
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: and demographic purposes.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: And so you see.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: How you know, it's one thing to say thou shalt
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: not collect this social Security number and this fingerprint. It's
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: another thing to say, hey, guys, look, you'll figure out
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: the details. But the most important thing is that you
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: not use this against people's interests.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Now, So I think that's.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Part of it, having a set of yes, restrictions about collection,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: some bright line rules around use.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: But the other thing is, well, you've got to have
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: good enforcement though to make something like that stiff. I
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: give you an example of once one rule that is
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: always violated and never enforced. So in the FEC database,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: you know that there's a law that says you cannot
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: use the FEC database to target donors. You know, because
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: if every donor that's given over two hundred dollars is
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: sitting there in a free federal database, you're looking for
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: leads and people to donate your campaign. Now, it is
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: against the law to use the FEC database to solicit folks. Yeah,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: enforcement and proving it are very difficult.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: And by the way, the people on the other side
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: are very aware of this. And I'm not talking about
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: campaign finance. I'm talking about big tech. And one of
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: the ways they've succeeded in basically breaking tons of laws
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: around privacy is by slowly starving the agencies that are
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: charged with enforcing those laws, namely the Federal treat Commission.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: And so you stack up our privacy division at FTC,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: it's like maybe fifty or one hundred people, depending on
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: whether you account lawyers or para legals or whatnot. Go
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: compare that to the agency at you know, the UK's
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Consumer Protection Agency. Go compare that to the EU member
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: States consumer protection agencies or Japan's stack us up to
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: the G seven, and our enforcement has basically never reached
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: the levels it had.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: The pushback on that would be, what's that, Well, growth
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: in Europe and Japan is stagnant. Growth here in the
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: United States is not. I mean, that's that they're going
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: to throw back at you. I think you would I
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: joke that thank God for the EU, or I'd have
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: no privacy protections.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, I think to say that the
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: delta in growth is attributable to privacy protections. I think
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: is pretty hard to write.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: The next one, but that's one. It's a whole list
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: of the regulatory burdens of the EU are generally cited
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: all the time, like here's I'll give you an example. Ever,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: somebody at Meta who told me a story, so you know,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and sort of the radicalization of Zuckerberg and that so
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: early on, Zuckerberg is convinced by his lobbyists settle with
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the EU. Let's go ahead and settle with the EU.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: And he regrets it. He regrets cooperating, and he didn't
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: like all the different times that they've launched investigations and
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: his new mantras, we're fighting all regulation, every country, every level.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: We will never cooperate on regulation ever again. And you know,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: that's that's a scary proposition, given the power that a
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: META has in our information ecosystem. But you know, there
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: is this perception of bureaucracy that the business world thinks
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: is just anti growth, and.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Honestly, that is a disease that affects our economy. That
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: is that is deeply shameful. So let's just stick with
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: with Meta. This company has gotten so big and Zuckerberg's
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: control of the company is so total because I'm sure
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: you know the share are structured so that Mark Zuckerberg
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: still exerts effectively total control over the company.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: I did the same thing. I mean, isn't Musk learned?
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: This is a case where Musk learned from Zuckerberg. All
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: these guys learn this. They don't want shareholders to actually
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: have power in their companies to.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: I think it's a Peter Thiel playbook, but now I
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: think it was. Last year Reuters reported that a that
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Meta was letting its chat bots that faced adolescents have
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: quote unquote and I quote sensual conversations with preteens. Right,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: you have Sam Altman talking about rolling out erotica on
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: their chatbots.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Since he took a little step back.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: But we have let these and this was the other
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: half we were talking about the two have we have
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: let these companies, and Meta is the best example, gobble
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: other smaller companies up such that they don't compete with them,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: they just buy them. We've let it happen so much
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: that anytime someone starts talking about breakup and breaking these
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: companies up, someone inevitably says, well, hold on a second.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: They're a pretty big part of my retirement account. You know,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: hold on a second, you're going to have pension funds, No,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: you do, so then you have some of your normal
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: allies are like, hey, buddy, this screws up our pension investments,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: and we might you know, we might you break up now.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Of course I would argue, I just lost my grandmother
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: at ninety nine years old. Oh wow, she ran out
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: of money at ninety six thanks to the breakup of
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: AT and T. Is what I used to say. My
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: grandfather believed in only only one stock. He would only
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: buy AT and T. AT and T breaks up, and
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: it extended her retirement. Like, by the way, the breakups
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: of these companies could actually be really financially lucrative. I mean,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I half joke. One of the reasons I invest in
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Amazon is simply betting on the breakup. Like that's part
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: of the curve r that's part of my investment strategy
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: on Amazon. It's like it put it this way, it's
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: inevitable to me that they'll self break up before the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: government does it for them.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I think you're hitting on something that that that
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: small businesses and small retailers know, and some people like
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: you know which is that the American public benefits from
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: having robust competition of smaller and maybe some mid sized
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: competitors going head to head. We could go through example
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: after example in videos.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: I love about long distance. You know, you want to
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: talk about something that I'm ten years older than you
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: or I believe so even you have only vague memories
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: of the long distance wars and all this stuff. But
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: you know, we didn't even have competition. You had to
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: pay the rate that your phone company set. Period, then
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: we got competition, and then guess what, we got no
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: more charging for long distance phone calls. Within a twenty
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: year pero, we went from being having to time calls
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: with Grandma after eleven o'clock in one time zone because
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: it was cheaper. Trust me, that was my family. We
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: were always looking for the cheapest. Oh.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: I remember we were doing the long distance crew.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I loved it. And what you're doing the overseas, you
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: had to plot that out, and if you had relatives,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: you know, everybody, you'd sort of figure out. Maybe you'd
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: use a calling car that might help save you a
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: couple of bucks here. I remember those and the breakup
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: of eighteen we literally go from a breakup of AT
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: and T in nineteen eighty two, to cheaper long distance
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: rates in the nineties, to no long distance rates by
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: two thousand. That's not an accident, yep.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: And now we've had the reconsolidation of wireless, and you know,
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: I think one of the big mistakes that was made
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: in the prior Trump administration was letting the purchase of
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: T Mobile go through. And the idea we were told
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: is that, oh no, this isn't a merger of four
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: competitors down to three. It's acts actually two competitors up
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: to three because we need we need a big company
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: to compete with Verizon and the likes of Verizon. And
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: now what we don't have is crazy John Lajaire, you know,
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: cutting people crazy deals on T Mobile, and instead we
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: have these three juggernauts who provide work service and the prices.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Just go up and up and up and and.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Honestly, this is starting to happen with streaming, with the
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: paramount Warner Brothers merger, the attempt to merge them.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: You know, you had you.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Know, we used to have a world where Disney and
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: twenty first Century Fox were different, Amazon and MGM were
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: different companies. Discovery, Warner Brothers were different companies, you know,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: and and and now all those companies are gobbing each
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: other up and we're about to have I think the
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: number five streamer merged with the number three streamer. And
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: already look at your streaming bill, you know, the stream
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Do you ever recall getting an email saying, hey, congratulations,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: your streaming bill is actually dropping, you know, a dollar
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: next month.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Never gone, it.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Never goes down. And instead they to use Corey Doctor's
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: term the and shitify it. You know, it used to
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: be the Prime had no ads, Suddenly Prime has ads.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: And it used to be that that you know, twelve
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: dollars Netflix plan had no ads. Suddenly it has ads.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: And so we're living this. You had that breakup, you
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: have that explosion in innovation you had you know, you know,
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: long distance is no longer a thing, but now you're
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: getting the reconsolidation. And that's what we're living with streaming.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: And that's why, yeah, go ahead.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: And it's funny. You know, a lot of a lot
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: of political policy victories need narratives and need but they
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: also need a memory. And you know, I worry about
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: this a lot when it comes to adding some constitutional
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: amendments because it's arguably never happened even in my lifetime.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've added one technically, a technical one that
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: has to do with pay raises, but essentially we haven't
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: added one and over, you know, since the lowering the
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: voting age of what I would say substance. Again, this
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: one was a specific having to do with congressional pay
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: raiss And if you don't you, if something has not
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: happened in over fifty years, then we have a hard
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: time believing it can happen. Like I'll sit here and say, look,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: we need a couple of constitutional amendments, and I'll be like, well,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: that's never going to happen, and you're like, okay, it
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: doesn't until it does. In our history, and we're at
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: one of those moments, right, They're in the Robber Baron
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: and the launch of the Industrial Revolution. There was crazy
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: growth and crazy abuse of labor and crazy abuse of consumers,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: and over essentially a thirty year period, we as a
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: society ever so slowly chipped away at that to try
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: to essentially right size the Industrial Revolution to our democracy.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: It took us thirty to forty years to do it. Arguably, yes, right,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: but that is that is what got us there, starting,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: you know, with getting a couple of constitutional amendments. Then
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: we got the alphabet soup of FDR era and sort
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: of the regulatory state was built. I know we're going
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: to go through a similar period like this, but it
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: is hard. It is hard to get people to buy
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: into that and breakups of companies. When's the last major breakup?
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Like I'm sitting here trying to tell people, Hey, breakups
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: are good for consumers. Breakups are usually good for everybody.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: They're good for stock prices, they're good for consumers. The
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: only people they are bad for is a couple of
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: executives who had a monopoly going. But I feel like
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: you need a story to tell to convince people that
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: this that this fight, these fights are worth it.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: I think there's two stories people need to know, one
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: from seventeen ninety and another from twenty twenty six. The
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: seventeen ninety story is the story of the Missing Amendment.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: And I don't know if you know about Thomas Jefferson's
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: Missing Amendment, No.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Tell me about it. So stuff like this.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So Jefferson and Madison were corresponding, and you know, Madison,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: I think is first pen on the Bill of Rights.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: But Jefferson is feeding him ideas, and Jefferson's giving him
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: my after idea, and Madison's just putting him, putting them in,
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: putting him in. And I think, you know, I couldn't
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: be getting the specifics off on this, but it's like
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: the quartering of soldiers, freedom of the press, et cetera,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: et cetera. But Jefferson keeps on saying multiple times, you
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: need an amendment against monopolies in the Bill of Rights.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: And it was just that it was like he had
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: seven or eight ideas and it was just that one
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: that didn't make it into the Bill of Rights. And
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: mind you, like you might think, like why why is
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Jefferson against monopolies? These guys hated monopolies. You know, the
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Boston Tea Party was a protest against a monopoly on
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: tea grant company. I think it was the duchiest India
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: company that was granted this monopoly on tea. And so
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: the people in Boston were pissed. They're like, no, we
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: like ta and what we like cheap tea, good tea,
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: not this crappy stuff that this monopolist gives us. And
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: so from the beginning our government are systems of power
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: or of protecting the people were built against one kind
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: of overreach, government overreach, not the overreach of private power.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: You know, the trust in the late nineteenth century, corporations today,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: fast forward to today, which is the hopeful story. So
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: I came into this most recent job at the FTC
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: a pretty traditional I would call myself a normy East
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Coast liberal. You know I, oh know, you.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Checked all the boxes.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: I correct, set of committeety, built right, guilty as charged.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: And you know I called the president of white supremacist,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: you know I I And look, I still believe many
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: of those things. But I had this luxury. People think
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: that the luxury of federal jobs is you make money.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: You don't make money. The luxury you have is you
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: get to meet the entire American people. You get to
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: visit with a great in South Dakota, a pharmacist in
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: West Virginia, corn and soybean farmers in Iowa, shrimpers in
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: the Gulf. You know, the people who build the skyscrapers
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: in Miami. You know the undocumented workers who build those skyscrapers.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: And the hopeful story is that if you divide those
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: people up by the color of their skin, or their
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: party politics, or their religion or red state, blue state,
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: blah blah blah, immigrant native, et cetera. They look totally different.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: When you look at what they worry about every day,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: it is exactly the same. It is these corporate behemoths
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: bleeding them dry. And number one, they will tell you that.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: And when you put them in the same room, they
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: recognize each other, and so they you know, I had
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: it in a room a Hollywood filmmaker and an Iowa
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: cowcaf and soybean farmer, and they immediately recognize each other
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: and say, oh, yeah, my inputs are winnowing down.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: You know, I used to have twelve places to buy seat,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: now I have two.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I used to have four places to get my archival footage.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I'm about to have two.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: You know, I used to have six places to sell
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: my documentary. Now I have three, and I'm about to
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: have one if this merger goes through. Or oh I
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: used to have four places that process my cattle. Now
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: I have one. And if we can unite around that,
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: I do think you could get a constitutional amendment. You
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: certainly could get another set of laws like the wave.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: You just described from eighteen ninety nineteen thirty six of
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Laws Checking Corporate Power.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: What is a consolidation that's pro consumer in your mind?
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: In history? Is there? You know? Well there are I could?
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Could you know? So I'll give you an industry that
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: I deal with, which is right? Right? Which is which
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: is what? Radio's? My radio? Okay, we saw it, And
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: certainly this is happening with newspapers. I think the same
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: attitude with this Tegna next our merger is being used,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: which is, hey, this is a dying industry and consolidation
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: gives it an opportunity to collectively survive longer than it
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: would if these if they were competing. You know, there
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: is a point where a sort of dying industry of
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: some sort of radio being where consolidation actually extends the
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: life of that of said industry. Yeah, you accept that premise.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: And is there a time when there is such thing
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: as a good consolidation?
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Look, I think in anti trust law it's recognized there's
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: the failing firm defense if you are a firm that
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: is feeling, if you're a hospital that's about to go
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: under and suddenly you know, a chunk of you know,
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Western Pennsylvania is not going to have a hospital. You know,
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: it is recognized an anti trust law that a merger
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: that otherwise might be deemed.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: This happened on the financial crisis. Merrill Lynch was bought
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: by JP Morgan, right in order to think that's at
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: the time, it was seen as a they waved, they
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: waived a they waived an issue, they waived some law
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: in order to allow KP. Morgan to do this because
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: at the time it was deemed a necessity.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I might use yeah, I might not say it's
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: like that one. But let me give you a different examples.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: You put me on the spot. You said, give me
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: one consolidation that's good. And let me just give you
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: one example of a company that has used it for
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: good things. But there's another side to it. But is
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: the outlier. So I filed a lawsuit against the company
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: called Southern Glaciers, and they we alleged that they systematically
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: gave large customers basically secret deals that other customers did
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: not get and in the public reporting, I'm not going
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: to verify it.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: One of those large customers is Costco.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, And so let's just say for the sake of argument, Costco, Right,
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Costco is aggressively vertically integrated. And and look, even though
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: I have a lot of problems with how Costco throws
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: its weight around in the market, I can't deny that
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: consumers like Costco. Okay, Like, I'm not going to be
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: out here here and deny it. But but let me
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: tell you Costco is the way they treat the end
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: consumer because I have serious problems with how they screw
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: over their smaller competitors by allegedly cutting secret deals, you know,
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: with their suppliers. But there's only one Costco. It's not
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: like people are out there saying, oh, I'm in love
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: with this other company. Man, I get these amazing deals.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: With these own b There are other costcos. Bjys exists,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Sam's Club exists.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: I would compare popularity reports of those companies. Costco is
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: head and shoulders above the rest.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I'm saying Costco isn't more popular, but there are other companies.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm not.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying wholesaler, They're the only you know, wholesaler
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: out there. I'm saying the way they use their vertical
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: integration is is qualitatively and quantitatively different than the rest.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: I think most people's experienced with vertical integration, though, is
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: health insurance, and there is no costco among health insurers.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: What you have right now are three vertically integrated tranches
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: of health Insuran, pharmacy, Benefit Manager, and pharmacy or specialty pharmacy.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: And people loathe their health insurers. And if you add
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: Blue Cross, Blue Shield, maybe there's a fourth. And these
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: insurers I'll say, oh, you know, we give you all
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: these benefits from the vertical integration.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: I don't see any of those benefits.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: Instead, what I see is that they're systematically bankrupting their
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: competitive pharmacy. The pharmacies that compete with their pharmacies, they're
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: bankrupting them by systematically steering lucrative prescriptions to their own pharmacies.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: I see that every single time I go to the doctor.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know about you, I get these random follow
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: on bills for twenty dollars here, ninety dollars there, one
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty dollars there. And so you know, I
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: think that that vertical integration was supposed to be this
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: amazing thing that's supposed to give us COSTCO after costco
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: after costco, when in reality, what it gets us is
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: United Health Group after EDNA, after x y zcz insurre.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Interesting, So you were you found an example that is
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: an exception to prove your role guilty as charge. Look
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: I and I what about the dying industry aspect? Oh yeah,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I mean look clear channel sort of right, clear channel,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: iHeart radio. I guess it's iHeart radio now, you know,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: sort of. There were some mergers that it was allowed
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: to happen in the nineties that some people push back on.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: But you know, the whole industry was was was shrinking,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: and given where it ended up today, did it end up?
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: You know, is there a different Let me ask it
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: this way. You at the FTC, would you look at
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: a merger differently if you knew the industry was was shrinking,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: if it's customer shrinking.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Look, keep keeping it vague because they can't talk about
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: specific cases. You know, I believe in the failing firm defense,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: and I believe that when a firm is failing that
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: that it should be allowed to merge if it's going
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: to benefit the public and protect them. But what I
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: would also say is that you see example after example
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: of US blocking a merger and kind of like your
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: your long play Amazon strategy and your mom's AT and
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: T strategy. The breakup results in this supposedly struggling firm,
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: you know, uh, or the firms that we're about to
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: emerge doing much better, you know, both in terms of
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: the stock market and in terms of their their revenues
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: and and look like I think you're you're focusing on
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: the media and and whatever. But I think it's yeah, look,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: I think it's I think it is. It's it's appropriate
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: because right now we're dealing with this Paramount Bros. Merger
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: and one of the arguments that's being made is that
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: that Warner Brothers is struggling and it will never survive.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: And I look, I can make an argument that neither
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Paramount or Warner Brothers can survive. Is going to catch
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Disney and Netflix. Okay, not going to happen. And the
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: only shot that Warner Brothers in Paramount and Frankly Peacock, right,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: it was the three of them. This goes to the
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: similar argument probably that you're going to come back at
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: me with that the T Mobile made when the T
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: Mobile sprint thing happened. But the assumption was Disney and
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Netflix have such a headstart, Amazon has such a deep pocket,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: you know that sort of thing that the only shot
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: that Warner Brothers in Paramount has or throwing Comcast in
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: there is two of the three have to have to
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: combine in order to have a competitive shot. Yeah, that's
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: the argument. What's the flaw in there?
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: There's two flaws. The macro level flaw is maybe there's
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: some world where that's true. Loading down that company with
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: eighty billion dollars in debt at god knows what interest
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: rate is not going to produce a healthy firm. I mean,
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: find me a healthy company with eighty billion dollars of
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: debt on its books.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: You can't.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: The other is that if you look at some of
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: those linear those linear properties, CNN is actually growing and
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: this idea that some of these linear channels are actually
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: dying or dead is not true. But here's the other argument,
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: which is whole markets are going to die. So documentary films.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty confident me and you believe that you need
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: to have a good nonfiction documentary film market out there.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Right now, there's three buyers of serious documentary. There is
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: CNN Films, HBO and Netflix. Netflix, as you might know,
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: well pretty much only buys. And I just had a
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: roundtable in Atlanta. Oscar nominated filmmaker Crystal and Hampton did
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: an Oscar imin movie about Atlanta abortion clinics. Stood up
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: and said, Netflix isn't buying my stuff. They're interested in cults,
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: true crimes, and celebrities that take that one off the block.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: What you're left with is CNN, HBO, and I had
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: a guy in Atlanta stand up and say, oh, yeah,
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: you know I did. I did sound and post production
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: for Navalney, for Icarus and for twenty Feet from Stardom,
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: and Icarus and Navalney are both very critical of the
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: Russian regime. Guess who bought Navalney CNN Films. Now David
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: Ellison wants to buy CNN and HBO. Do you think
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: he's going to make the next Navalney. I don't think so. Separately,
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: you have the actual historical truth, so you know you
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: know that there are four TV news archives out there there,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: CBS and NBC, ABC and the Crown Jewel CNN, which
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: has round the clock news footage for the last forty
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: five years. You are about to go down to a
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: world where half of that is controlled by one family,
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: and one family that has made its political stakes very
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: evident in who they support and don't support. So you're
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: about to go from three buyers of documentary to one
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: or two depending on how you count them, and four
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: sources of archival footage to really two or three depending
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: on how you count them. And every documentary filmmaker I
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: talked to says, look, our industry was already about to die.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: This is the coffin and the grave for us. And
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: so I would say that at the macro level, the
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: numbers don't pencil out, and at the specific market level,
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: for something as important as documentary, you're about to see
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: whole chunks of the market die.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: You're making a really good intellectual argument, but you haven't
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: made a financial argument. Tell me more. Well, I'm sitting
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: here like I was thinking about this. Does I know
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: the consumer would benefit from more documentaries exposing and surfacing
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: truth out there? And you and I both know that
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: civically we are a better society and a free society
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: when we have Yeah, that I feel like you have
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: a better shot at killing this merger if you can
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: make a more direct impact on the consumer case. Oh,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: I'll give you.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: I'll give you two very clear consumer cases. Number one,
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: the price of streaming. Like you said, you know, you
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: should chart out the cost of the streamers. It's like
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: the cost of fertilizer in Iowa. Okay, like they just
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: it's lockstep and it's always up and it's above inflation.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: And if you go down from five big streamers to four,
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: obviously prices are not going to go down.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Number one.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Number two, Let's say you don't care about documentary. Okay,
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: let's say you care about watching a good show with
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: your wife or with your husband at the end of
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: the night to like decompress. And let me tell you
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: what the writers who stood up in these town halls
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: we did in New York and LA said. They said,
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: they stood up and they said, look, you don't realize this,
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: but you're gonna laugh less. You know a world where
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: there are you know, every single time one company gobbles
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: up another, it means that there's fewer people who are
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: going to get the joke. And I need to make
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: safer jokes. I need to make broader jokes, and I
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: basically need to dumb down my content. I had rom
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: com writers stand up in a in a movie theater
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: in LA say, you don't appreciate this, but this is
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: what's already happening, and it's only going to get worse.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: And then the last example I'll give you is like,
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: think of the great television shows, the ones with like
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: the long character arcs, with you know, the complex characters.
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: You can really invest in it, you know, The Wire,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: The Surprise, ran Os, The Office Friends, Sex in the City.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: When was the last show like that that you came
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: across recently?
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: So let me let me throw a counter at you.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: Tell me and I say this and that, this is
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: the in my spirit of free market, please, the free
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: market of ideas, And that is so. The world you're
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: describing was actually a small period of time. Okay, peak TV.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Every show you just mentioned there, Yeah, was born in
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: the nineties and died sometime in the teens. Okay, fifty
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: years of television was shit. Okay, NYPD Blue was an innovation.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: We'd laugh at that show today. Hill Street Blues right
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: was a it is it is the it is A
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: was a terrific show for its era. If you watched
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: it today, it would feel like it was written for
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: sixth graders. Yeah, and I sit this, I say it
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: this way. It was because we had no place for
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: creativity to explode that the minute the Internet came in,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the buried to entry and we
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: had documentaries all over the place, and we had and
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: so we had a burst of creativity that gave us
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: this twenty year peak that you just went through. And
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: now there's a period of consolidation. Now I look at
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: this as a weirdly inevitable cycle, and in the world
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: of media, it's true. And I can go back to
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: the go back, and my listeners have heard me go
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: on on this before, which is simply if you go
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: back to the minute we figured out how to reproduce photographs.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: That technology spawned a whole bunch of the news magazines,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: and we had magazines all over the place. Then we
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: had consolidation, and then we did moving pictures and it
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: you know, at first it exploded. We had a lot
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: of little radio stations, and then we had consolidation, and
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: then cable TV and we had an explosion and then consolidation.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Tell me why this is, We're just not going through.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: So I look at what's happening here and it feels
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: like the end of an era. But inevitably, you and
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I both know the way sort of create creativity works
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: and the free market works. Is I understand the fear
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: of sameness? Well, I would say, is we live fifty
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: years of that shit where Love Boat and Fantasy Island
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: and all this garbage television that we got that I
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: grew up with in the seventies and eighties, where we
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: thought reruns of Leave It to Beaver were innovative, right,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: and then we go to this, you know where this
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: burst of creativity, when we had a burst of diversity
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: of places to actually express that creativity. Yeah, don't you.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: I mean my counter is that I agree with all
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: of these concerns. Yeah, but I'm betting on the human
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: race to just burst through creativity in another place.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying people are going to stop making songs,
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: making art, making movies and making films. What I am
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: saying is that the reason no tangent, my apologies, oh no, no, no,
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: we talked about was beautiful. We are needlessly suffering a
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: drought that we did not need, that resulted that came
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: from these Wall Street guys just getting rich off these mergers.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: Because you know what happened is you know Disney, Fox,
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: sam Ison, MGM, Warner AT and T Warner, AOL Warner Brothers, Discovery,
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: you know, the whole thing consolidated down and now I
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: don't know if you saw this from Seth Rogan, but
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: I just heard a bunch of people talk about it
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: in Atlanta and New York. Now it's financial guys in
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: charge of film and television, and they'll say like, hey,
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: how many followers does that guy have?
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: Oh how many? You know? You literally decisions that's based
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: on marketing, I know, and looks like, yeah, I am,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: I guess I look at it. You know, I've sort
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: of you know, this is where I think the great
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: thing that has been exposed is you can't trust a
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: publicly traded company to own a news division. I just
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: think it just right, You just can't trust it. I
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: say this individually, people at these organizations want to do
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: the right thing. Collectively, it's hard if you have management
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: that doesn't want you to do it. So, you know,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: this is why I believe we're going to have a
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: united artist for journalism, a united artist for local media,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: and I think united artists for united artists, Like I
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: think it's it's one could argue that co ops cooperatives
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: of small business organizations not merging but figuring out how
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: to work together take advantage of scale without having to
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: give up their intellectual property. I think is the healthier
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: way for our economy to grow next. And I know
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: I'm exploring ways like how do we bring back the
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: co op in business jargon? I know why Wall Street
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to bring it back because the margins are
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: not high enough.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you'll see a rich Shavayne. I'm sure you're
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: well aware of in agriculture, in grocery.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: All over the place. We need more land to lf.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: We need more companies like Land of Lakes if you
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: want to support your small business.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's anti trust exceptions for cooperatives to let
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: them collaborate in the way you're describing. And uh, absolutely,
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: I think it is a road forward that that Europe
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: has gone down quite a bit, that that we should
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: go down and it is a way to check this.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: You know, Wall Street, what could you have done at
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: the FTC to encourage cooperatives more of the creation of
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: more cooperatives? Interesting?
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, I have a list of things I wish
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: I did more of. I wanted to get do more
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: to protect franchise ease. That's something that if I'd had
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: more time I wanted to do. I wanted to do
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: more to protect people against AI chatbots. I think that
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: there's some real, some horrible stuff happening on co ops.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: To be honest with you, the existing laws in anti
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: trust are are have exceptions for agricultural cooperatives. I can't
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: say I had any knock on my door and say hey,
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: I need this to make it easier to organize a
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: co op. I would have taken that meeting in a heartbeat.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: Well, that's another one that feels like people don't know
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: how they work and they're afraid of them. They only
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: think about it is Yes, isn't that how New York
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: City sells condos? And it's like no, that's It's like
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: like ninety percent of people's awareness of a co op
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: is that it's very funny. Yeah. Interesting. Let me quickly
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: get you out of here. You you were quoted recently
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: and it caught my eye as saying that you don't
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: think the Democratic Party is built for this current environment
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: that Donald Trump has created. And I've let me tell
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: you what I heard, and tell me if I heard
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: you correctly, because this is a fear that I've had
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: that the that there's a if you can't beat them,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: join them defense. Like I've talked with another former Biden
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: official who said to me, I'm learning all the ways
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: that Project twenty twenty five took advantage of vague congressional
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: authorities in the in the agencies in order if in
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: order to do in order to sort of do things unilaterally.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: Is that the right answer? Why do you think that's
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: the is that the I don't want to presume that
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: you think that's the right answer, But that's what I heard,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: and I worry that that's not the right answer. That's
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: a response to the moment, and I get it. Yeah,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: what long term that probably is damaging is what he's doing.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: Look, let me tell you two things about what I meant.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: One is about risk aversion and one is about just snobbiness.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: So right before we were fired, Commissioner Slaughter and I
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: called maybe twenty or so members of Congress and we said, hey,
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: we think we're about to get fired. Uh, we think
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: if we're fired, it'll be illegal. And you know, how
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: do you want to you tell us you know you're
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: you're members of Congress. You know what should we you know,
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: how should we talk about this? Think about this et cetera,
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: and Chuck. You know, I'll be honest with you, seventeen
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: or eighteen out of the twenty were deer in the headlights.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: They were completely overwhelmed. They did not know what to do.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: Many of them overtly said to us with a look
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: of you know, not a little panic in their eyes.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: We are overwhelmed. We don't know what to do. And
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: these are the folks who are supposed to be political animals.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: These are the folks who are supposed to be street fighters,
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: you know, fighting for people. And so we need more
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: people who understand, you know, the terms of engagement is
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: not a bill and a press conference in the steps
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: of the Capitol. It is meeting direct with people. Here's
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: the other, really really important thing. We just saw this
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: play out with the UFC fight. There's there's some people
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: out there saying the UFC fight is corrupt. I agree
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: with you. You know, doing something you know that's paid for
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: by Crypto and that you can only stream on Paramount Plus.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: You know, that is called corruption. Using a public facility,
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: the White House, you know, nonetheless, to enrich a particular
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: set of companies. That's ugly, that's dirty, that's illegal. But
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: there are also a bunch of people saying, oh, you know,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: like oh that's on the left, say oh that's classless,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: you know, oh, like oh that's so horrible, you know, like, oh,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: a fight on the lawn, you know what a bunch
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: of rednecks. And let me tell you, Like I flew
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: into Atlanta the next day bumped into a guy. He
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: was wearing a you know, two point fifty UFC thing,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: and I want up doing Hey, hey man, how's a fight?
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: And you should have looked at him. He was like, oh,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: you know what it was. It was amazing, you know.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: I saw I saw him, you know, this fighter, and
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: I could tell it was a big fighter. I don't
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: follow UFC. My brother does. He was like, oh, he
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: was in the oval. He was like reading the Declaration independance.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: And he came out and like, you can meet everyone.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: Everyone's so nice. And he said this, it was free.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't have to pay for a ticket. And he
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: wasn't like some lobbyist. It was just like a regular dude.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: He was a free Obviously I had to pay for
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: the food, you know whatever, but like it was amazing, right,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: And I think what we on the left miss about
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump is yes he was. Uh, he is a bigot,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: you know, yes he he divides us, but he also
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: sees a portion of this population that too many of
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: us on the left have discarded as a bunch of yogls.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: You know, you know this is him. I always say,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: you know he this This snobbery, by the way, goes
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: back to there was a time when when the w
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: w E was the w w F back in them
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: and uh what I grew up with you It wasn't
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: it wasn't ever like you know, ESPN never would put
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: a you know, would never deign to like cover it,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: let alone air it. And you know, Madison Square Garden
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to have WrestleMania, and they were looking for
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: venues and it was Donald Trump's semi bankrupt casinos in
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Atlantic City that needed that needed events and needed headliners.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: And you know he got into wrestling because he thought,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: well why not. They'll bring people into the seats and
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: it introduced him to a whole conversation. He ended up
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: having a conversation with a group of Americans that other
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: politicians hadn't had a conversation with. So no, I think
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: the snobbery thing is is an excellent point. You know,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: my whole thing on the UFC fight was I'm really
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: looking forward to the NFL Draft on the mall. And
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: if you said they wanted to put the UFC fight
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: on the mall as America's arena, right that's free and
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: open to the public where all of our stuff is done,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: you know, you can I can defend that. You know,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: just because you don't like the UFC doesn't mean you
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: know it was. I think putting it behind the private
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: gates and a velvet rope for a personal birthday party
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: was the part that was the birthday party is.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: But let me push back a little on that, because
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: I'm sure me and you we've been to White House parties, right,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: we've been to and and it's folks like us who
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: got to go to those spaces, and.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: You want to see other people be able to get.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: The exactly and like that guy in a Lanta who
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: got to go to the White House and see his fighter,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: you know, like, hey man, you know, and I believe
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: in that. It is the making it about your birthday
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: and enriching your oligarch buddies. That is what is ugly
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: and dirty and illegal about this now.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: And this is what Trump. This is the pressure Trump's
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: put on the left, which is, you know, I always say,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: there's like, take the cleaning up of DC. I'm glad
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: the fountains work in Union Station now you know twork.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: I hadn't seen it. It's only work and you're like, well,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: I've not seen that and it's cleaned up, and that's
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: kind of nice. You know, ten percent of what he's
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: focused on I agree with. It's the other ninety percent,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: you know, he takes everything and just makes it, you know,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: And I think that's always the tough line for the
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: left to walk, like how do you well, look, he's
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: not wrong about like we probably ought to take better
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: care of some of these monuments, you know, and spruce
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: things up. And the city should always be proud to
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: serve Americans when they come and visit, right, it should
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: be a showcase city. Like, yeah, I want the Smithsonian
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: to have the attitude Joe Demaggio to say he had.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: Why does he play hard every game because he doesn't
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: know if somebody's watching him for the very first time?
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: And you know, yeah, I want Washington, d C. The
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: first time a six, six year old or seven year
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: old visits they're like wow, right, I want them to
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: always feel wow. So and how do you find like,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: you know, that's another problem. Right, it looks like the
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: rights having more fun than the left. And I guess
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: that's something Mumdanni changed, right, And that's something that Mamdanni
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: brought that nobody else has figured out how to bring
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: yet to their political campaigns.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: It is not just mom, Donnie, it's it's also you know, labor.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: I went to the California Labor Federation conference in Sacramento
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: a couple of months ago.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: It was amazing. It was so much fun.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: People are really cool, Like it's not it is it is.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: I think at some point like meritocracy is good, you know,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: going to nice schools, yes, you know, as an immigrant,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: you know, my parents are super proud of where I
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: went to school, et cetera, et cetera. But at a
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: certain point on the left, we put those things on
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: a pedestal and we rewarded, you know, titles and laurels
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: and risk aversion rather than scrappy people who are connected
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: to regular working people and small business owners. And that
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: is something that you know, Zeron Mamdani and the labor unions,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: which too often we've taken for granted still have authenticity,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: you know, the ability to come across as regular human
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: beings who do not you know, focus group what they're
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: about to say at all moments in time.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: So I think it's there.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: I just think it hasn't been centered in the left
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: and the Democrats in the party.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: Who are your favorite potential twenty eight candidates? Yeah, well,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, look, that's that's tough.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, mom, Donnie can't because he's he was
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: born abroad. Look, I let me tell you about people
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: who I'm really impressed by. My congressmen from my old hometown, Binghamton.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: Guy named Josh Riley. I was co counsel with him
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: for Senator Franken. He is in court with the public
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: utilities in upstate New York trying to stop them from
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: raising rates on people. There are elected officials in Tennessee
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: and Arkansas who are passing bills Republicans who are passing
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: bills to break up these vertically integrated health Insuran pharmacy middleman,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: you know, pharmacy oligopolies. There is a guy in Colorado
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: named David Seligman who sued this weird corporate landlord named
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: Gray Star, who was basically billing people for rent when
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: their relatives died. They said, oh, you got to pay
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: the rest of the rent on this guy. On this
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: he's running for attorney general right now in Colorado. A
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: populis progressive, so less than one person. There are a
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: group of people who aren't getting a ton of attention
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: because they haven't hit the national scene yet, but are
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: doing the work and who my hope is five years
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: from now will be household names.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: The generation have been Nator's raiders.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: Except anti monopoly rather than deregulatory. But yes, the same spirit.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: I'll agree with you now the consumer advocates. Look, the
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: fact is it wasn't members of Congress that responded. It
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: took That's right. It was people responding with civil litigation
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: that eventually, right, I mean civil litigation success usually leads
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: to passage of laws, not vice versa.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: Right, right, Yeah, I agree with that and popular movements,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: whether it's against data centers or against AI at work.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: That is the future.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: And I do think that the future is bright across
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: the country in terms of pushing back on corporate powers.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Alvarro, this is great. We've gone an hour. I could
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: go longer with you. I want to have you back
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: and just thank you. I think I interrupted you way
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: too much, so I apologize for that. But this is
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: we are going through a new industrial revolution, and I
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: do fear that waiting to regulate is going to be
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: too late. And we were able to catch up in
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: the industrial revolution. And I know there's some people saying, well,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: we'll catch up, it'll all work out. Yeah, Okay, this
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: moves a lot faster and our government government doesn't know
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: how to move this fast. Yep. I agree with that.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: But I think we're on the cusp of that new
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: response to the second Gilded Age, and that's something I'm genuinely.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: And it is probably going to start at the state
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: level because that's where you'll get bipartisanship because the federal
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: levels is a bit too polarized at the moment. But
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: what you brought up in Tennessee and Arkansas have seen
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: it too. I mean, this is it's consumer facing first,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: and you start to see it, you know, when you
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: see people like Marjorie Taylor Green starting to articulate similar
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: things as a Jasmine Crockett, You're like, Okay, these are
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: people that are just interacting with small business people, whether
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: it's in the cities or percent one hundred percent Alvarro,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: this is great. Thank you.