Latest / Prompt Air / A Parabolic Parable of the Coin Collective and the $200 Billion Chattel Subsidy

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A Parabolic Parable of the Coin Collective and the $200 Billion Chattel Subsidy · Prompt Air

• 0:00
  I have to be honest. When you sent over this
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  file, the Brown Equity papers, I thought we were
• 0:04
  looking at, I don't know, paint samples. Right.
• 0:06
  It sounds like an interior design pamphlet or
• 0:08
  something. Exactly. But then you open it and,
• 0:10
  wow. This is not a design brochure. It reads
• 0:14
  more like a crime scene investigation. It really
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  is a forensic audit. The author, Nimrod Allen
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  III, he calls it a parabolic parable. It's this
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  story that digs into the past to explain the
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  present. And the central claim is just. It's
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  huge. The paper argues that the specific brown
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  color UPS... uses pullman brown right pullman
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  brown that it isn't just branding they call it
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  crystallized social capital that was what extracted
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  from black labor extracted and now they've sent
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  a bill for it a bill for how much a very specific
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  bill an invoice for exactly 200 billion dollars
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  okay wait 200 billion? That, I mean, it sounds
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  like a number you just pull out of thin air.
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  How does an auditor even start to justify that
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  over a color? To get the math, you have to go
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  back to the source. So 1867, George Pullman,
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  he invents the luxury sleeping car. But the cars
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  don't run themselves. He needs to create an entire
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  servant class. And he specifically targets men
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  who were just emancipated from slavery to be
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  his porters. And that's where this first concept
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  comes in, the chattel discount. What is that
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  exactly? Well, it's brutal arithmetic. In the
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  1920s, a living wage was around $166 a month.
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  Pullman paid these men a base wage of just $78.
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  That's less than half of what they needed to
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  live. Not even half. He knowingly built a business
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  model that forced them to survive on tips. So
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  Pullman was essentially making the American public
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  subsidize his company's payroll. So the public
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  pays the wages, the corporation keeps the profit.
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  But it was more than just carrying bags, right?
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  The report says they created the brand itself.
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  Exactly. These men, who were often just called
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  George, no matter their real name, they performed
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  this immaculate emotional labor. They created
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  the feeling of safety, of luxury. They made Brown
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  mean trust. That's the social capital. And that's
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  where UPS comes into the picture. Yeah, that's
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  the part I didn't get at first, the jump from
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  trains to delivery trucks. It happens in 1916.
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  A guy at UPS named Charlie Soderstrom... needs
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  a color for his fleet. And the papers argue he
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  didn't just pick brown because it hides dirt.
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  No, he chose Pullman Brown specifically to appropriate
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  that entire reputation the porters had built
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  over decades. So he's borrowing the feeling.
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  A transference of trust. Complete transference.
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  Then, much later, 1998, UPS trademarks the color.
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  The report calls it enclosing the commons. They
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  legally privatized a public reputation. And this
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  is where it gets into... Like a spy novel for
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  me. You don't just steal a reputation. You have
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  to control the people who built it. This Faye
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  Five protocol. That was their espionage machine
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  to stop the porters from unionizing. It was a
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  full on surveillance state. You had the spotter
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  or the eye. The eye. Yeah. And imagine this.
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  A passenger is just sitting there holding a hotel
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  guidebook flat against the train window. And
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  that's a signal. That's the signal. It told any
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  porter who saw it, you are being watched by the
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  company. It was about creating constant paranoia.
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  And there were others besides the spotter, right?
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  Oh, yeah. You had the Judas Goat, who was an
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  internal traitor snitching on his co -workers,
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  the O -Fay agent, basically Pinkerton detectives
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  undercover, and then, maybe the worst one, the
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  Whisperer. The Whisperer. that sounds ominous
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  it was psychological warfare the whisperer's
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  only job was to spread rumors and propaganda
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  to destroy solidarity and the report's argument
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  is that the money spent suppressing the labor
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  proves how valuable that labor really was which
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  brings us all the way back to that two hundred
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  billion dollar invoice now that we have the history
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  How do they get to that number? It's a three
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  -part calculation. First, $66 billion in straight
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  -up wage theft. That's the chattel discount compounded
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  over time. Okay, that makes sense. Second is
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  brand royalty. The report levies a 5 % royalty
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  on UPS revenue for using the brown identity.
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  That's the biggest piece. Eighty five billion.
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  Rend on the reputation. Precisely. And the last
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  forty nine billion is punitive damages for the
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  Faye five surveillance for the trauma it caused.
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  So this whole thing, the Brown equity papers,
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  it's not a history lesson. It's an actual demand.
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  It's a demand for what they call a Chapter 7
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  liquidation of history. They propose using eminent
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  domain to seize the trademark for Brown. Seize
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  it from UPS. And return it to what they call
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  the coin collective, the descendants of the original
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  porters. It just flips the entire script. There's
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  this metaphor they use, a coin. For a century,
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  it always landed on heads for capital for the
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  corporation. And this report is demanding that
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  the coin finally, finally be flipped to tails
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  for labor, for the porters. It really challenges
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  you, doesn't it, to look at one of those trucks
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  and see something totally different. It definitely
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  changes how I'll see the next package that shows
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  up at my door. Does the brand belong to the person
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  who buys the paint or the people who built the
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  feeling? Thanks for listening to this deep dive.