Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Who Screwed Millennials?" with Tom Ballard

Transcript

"Who Screwed Millennials?" with Tom Ballard · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  I got it right here in my hot little hands, ladies and general persons drum roll. Please my stro
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  I should get an actual drum. I should get a drum set here and do a proper drum roll
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  Uh
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  And that's the end of my rant enjoy
• 4:09
  Can I hear them? Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas one of Australia's the biggest setup comics
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  On the show today Tom Ballard is a name known well and a face known well to all Australians
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  Uh, he's a young, you know, he's not he's not an oldie
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  He's a millennial and his latest book is a screed against the baby boomers from the perspective of
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  a millennial a socialist millennial which
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  Animates much of today's discussion me not being a socialist
• 4:40
  um
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  This isn't uncomfortable conversation in the sense that he and I sort of get stuck into it about
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  What we each believe and who's the true small L liberal
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  um ballard started out as the as the co presenting the uh the breakfast show on triple J
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  I guess that's when he first came to national attention
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  That's a national the national youth network that's publicly funded and very popular with the young hipsters and whatnot
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  That was from 2010 to 2013
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  He he left it to focus on stand-up comedy and became a sort of fixture of the Melbourne International comedy festival
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  A headliner at their in at their gala, which is broadcast on television and a much beloved event in Australia
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  He finally got his own television show in 2017 a nightly show
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  On abc 2 abc comedy the second public broadcast channel called tonightly with tom ballard
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  It lasted over a year
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  But didn't quite end up nailing it in the ratings and was probably too controversial for people to stomach
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  It was very out there. It was a you know, if you think of a kind of a John Stuart
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  John Oliver type model of a show that was the general gist
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  And it was a huge feather in tom's hat that he got it um
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  So I won't go on any further about this
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  I think if the rest of the conversation is very self-explanatory
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  Suffice it to say that I
• 6:02
  You know much as I disagree with tom on so many political issues. I really admire him and you may not get it from this interview
• 6:08
  But he's really really really fucking funny
• 6:11
  So I hope you enjoy this little taste of the style between me and the one and only Tom Bauer
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  Like it's terrible
• 6:32
  Oh, cuz it's so squeaky
• 6:34
  That's good isn't it? Just don't move
• 6:37
  Well, it did just stay perfectly still perfectly still a little time. Hello. Hello. What did you have for breakfast?
• 6:43
  Um, isn't that the always the best question to do to measure someone's levels on a microphone?
• 6:49
  What did you have for it's like saying you know, what was the last thing you masturbated to
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  haha
• 7:00
  Ladies and gentlemen that's the kind of quality humour that you can expect from tom ballads new book
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  It's called I
• 7:07
  Millennial one snowflakes
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  Skreed against boomer's billionaires and everything else and I was just asking you about this quotation on the front
• 7:17
  Which is from Andrew Bolt? Yes, who's the right-wing conservative
• 7:20
  commentator and colleagues in the sensible center. You would say that. No, I think it has
• 7:27
  common sense solutions. Does he have common sense solutions to the problems facing today?
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  I'd say so. You should put that on his book jacket cover. And I was asking where this came from
• 7:37
  because it says Andrew, but it says a true barbarian. Yes. Andrew Bolt. Did he actually say that?
• 7:42
  He said that about me. Last year I had a little to-do when I recorded a set,
• 7:47
  Senate Committee said it's part of the Melbourne Committee Festival. I remember this. You got
• 7:51
  in hot water. Hot water. I said, I jokes about people who vote for Liberal Party being lizards.
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  They should be sent to Manus Island and live in a privatized age care facility and live on
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  nothing but job seeker and coal. Very funny stuff. Did that, the gala? It was cut for the ABC
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  broadcast. A journalist who's just, you know, using all their journalists to integrity and pouring
• 8:16
  resources into answering the big questions found out about that set and the fact that it was cut,
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  they then reprinted, like wrote down what they thought my act was and published out the
• 8:27
  newspapers. Was it verbatim? No, it wasn't. It wasn't even verbatim. It was so annoying because
• 8:31
  another journalist from the same newspaper had been to the gig and reviewed the gig. If the
• 8:36
  thing is it's bad enough if it is verbatim because nothing looks the same on the page as it would
• 8:41
  be when you're actually doing it. But if it's going, if you're going to write it down, make it
• 8:45
  exact. Yeah, the words right. The words right. Maybe run them by you first.
• 8:48
  And in fact, a bit of the routine which I didn't do with the gala because I do have some level of
• 8:53
  taste and I do know what will and what work at a mainstream audience. It existed in my hour-long
• 8:57
  show where when things got particularly dark, talking about nursing homes and COVID, somehow
• 9:02
  the journalist thought that I did that joke at the thing and anyway. So who was the journalist?
• 9:07
  Who are we talking about here? I don't know. The names. It was in the little spotted section
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  or the little gossip section or whatever. So you're using the word journalist generously.
• 9:17
  Efforts in one of those parts of the newspaper. I think you used to write for this show.
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  But clearly it's a human being who has such familiarity with your act that they've taken that
• 9:25
  they've gotten confused between two different sets. Well, I would have submitted a recording of
• 9:32
  the set I think anyway. Whatever happened is that they reported on an existing routine saying that
• 9:37
  I performed that at the gala when I didn't. And then all these right-wing conservative commentators
• 9:44
  who of course hate the fact that workness is killing comedy and you can't say anything anymore.
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  Anyway, it's so offended. We're now getting offended by jokes that I did not tell
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  at a gig that they were not at. Right. Andrew Bolt writes a piece saying that the left likes
• 9:58
  present themselves as being kinder. Then along comes Tom Ballard. A true barbarian. He writes.
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  One of the greatest quotes of all time and I've used that as much as I can. Okay, good. So you've
• 10:08
  put that now. He'll love that word. He's selling books because it does because it's ambiguous
• 10:15
  about whether he's endorsing the book. Like you may, you could imagine that that's a positive
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  thing that he's saying about the book that of all the barbarians. You're the truest. You know,
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  I mean like exactly. He's not a phony. He's not an Erzatz barbarian. He's your ballard. Yeah.
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  He's a legit barbarian. And am I correct in believing as you handed me this book and why would I
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  not be correct in believing it because why would you lie to me about such a thing that this is
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  the only physical copy in existence. The only one that I have access to. I think in the world you said
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  or the universe. There are heaps more. If I burned this, there'd be no more Tom Ballard book. Please
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  don't. I just haven't got my box yet that I can right hand out. This is your only. I spent yesterday
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  signing 800 copies. Is that right? Yeah. There is a true. Is it a true statement of fact, Tom Ballard
• 11:01
  that when she's once you sign it, then you have to get paid for it. It means that the bookstores
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  can't return. They can't send them back. They send them back to sign as many as you can because
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  the other I didn't realize the bookstore can always send them back and the and the publisher will
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  pay him right. The publisher will buy back books that aren't sold. Yeah, they've got six months.
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  Not if there's a Tom Ballard scroll news in the front of it. If it's been defiled by being
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  writing. Why haven't you signed this one? I'm going to send this one back and get my money back.
• 11:30
  No, but you can't keep that. I need to take that with me. Okay, but this has a recommended
• 11:34
  retail price of probably at least $24.95. Wouldn't that? Great value there. What would this go for
• 11:39
  you? I can have $30 bucks. $350 pages. Not fancy. I don't think that's how you measure the
• 11:45
  quality of quality. Do you remember the line in the producers where the guy who's a Nazi is trying
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  to defend Hitler against Winston Churchill? And he's saying Hitler was a better painter than
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  Winston Churchill. He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon. True course. That's right.
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  So yeah, but Tom Ballard can write an entire book. He can write 350 pages. Tom, you're short.
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  There's pictures. And there's pictures too. So you this would make you we don't only
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  proust would be better than you. And everyone else here have the book back. Thank you very much.
• 12:24
  So what what why why if you who's got your goat? Why are you writing angry books?
• 12:31
  Actually, I'm fine, which is the annoying bit. I don't have any kind of amazing personal
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  reflection that I've been hardly done by. And even if all the problems that I raised in this book
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  you know get worse. Again, I'll probably be fine. So please relax listeners. But I'm generally
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  enraged and angry at the state of the world. And I've been thinking about that a lot over the
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  past couple of years that I have developed this somewhat of a reputation that my anger and
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  millennial rage has come through in my sound up comedy. And much like Andrew Bolton what you're
• 12:57
  concerned about is cancel culture. And PC gone man. And put a little thought right now gone man.
• 13:05
  All of that has faded into its significance to me. What's way more important is the fact that
• 13:09
  capitalism is going to kill us all and is put us on a path towards now. Wait a second. Capitalism
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  is the greatest engine of growth ever devised by mankind. Tom Ballard. Surely you mean the excesses
• 13:21
  of capital. What would you rather have communism? Why don't you go and live in Venezuela?
• 13:27
  Well, we're really going through all these. What do you mean by capitalism then? I mean the
• 13:35
  specific mode of economic production in which the means of production are privately owned.
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  It seems to be the most simplest sort of easiest way to sort of lay things out there.
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  That is the economic system under which we live. But then my joke criticism of your position
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  becomes less of a joke. Criticism and more of an actual question which is what alternative
• 13:56
  that has actually been tried? Would you prefer? Well, that has been tried. Well, I mean, you know
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  countries like Scandinavia in the Scandinavia at the moment, they are still capitalist countries
• 14:06
  certainly. But they are what we would more consider social democracies. So Australia, we live in
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  liberal democracy. And there is still certainly, yes, capitalist forces. There's still a free market.
• 14:19
  The scope of things which are not handed over to the private market and to the whims and
• 14:24
  excesses of capitalism is much, much larger. I think the state, the Norwegian state owns something
• 14:30
  like 70% of all wealth in the country. Yeah, but that's just because they have this weird thing
• 14:35
  where they've got lots of natural resources. And so they decided to take a share of the pie
• 14:39
  for the state. And they've got this massive bucket of money sloshing around, which is a bit akin
• 14:44
  to our superannuation. I mean, obviously it would be better if we also kept some of our mining
• 14:49
  money. It's just sort of saying. But can I think of any parallels between Australia and what it
• 14:53
  comes to the results? Yeah, of course. It's totally insane. You know, even Alaska, they don't
• 14:58
  hold on to the money, but they just send everyone a check. Yes. Yeah, right. So Alaska in 2022,
• 15:03
  every Alaskan got about $3,600 as a just a check from the state government because of all their
• 15:09
  oil revenue. So even they, even like in Yankee, in capitalist Yankee land, when they have a lot of
• 15:15
  resources, some of them choose to actually take some, keep some of it for themselves, which is not
• 15:20
  an idea that Australians have have ever undertaken. Well, Kevin Wright, our former prime minister,
• 15:24
  tried to introduce their mining super profits tax and was was rolled and rolled out of office
• 15:30
  for trying it. But nonetheless, the kind of under the Whitlow government tried to do something more
• 15:34
  is that allow the Australian people to own more with revenue and the queen initiated a coup
• 15:38
  and throughout Gulf Whitlam. So that's what happened. Majesty got rest of the soul.
• 15:43
  Okay. But the, but then it strikes me that your real criticism is not because if you speak to
• 15:50
  Scandinavian politicians, we're setting aside the weirdness of Norway's mining bucket of cash,
• 15:57
  um, the actual way that those countries, countries function is that they are still capitalist
• 16:02
  countries. As you said in the, in the sense that the majority of companies are private, the majority
• 16:06
  of things that are produced are produced by private companies and they therefore use the engine
• 16:11
  of capitalism as we might say, the profit motive to spur ingenuity and innovation and competition.
• 16:18
  And those things, Tom is smiling right now like these are all just cliches out of an
• 16:22
  ranch novel. I'm like, I'd like suddenly Friedrich Hayek is interviewing him. But this is generally
• 16:29
  well understood by economists to be the best way to produce an increasing standard of living
• 16:34
  and to produce stuff. And then what you do with the stuff is the question and the criticism of
• 16:39
  overly capitalist or free market societies is that the distribution of all of that stuff is wildly
• 16:44
  in unequal. And therefore the Scandinavian companies countries solution is, yes, keep the
• 16:50
  capitalism to produce lots and lots of stuff because when the state owns everything, you get
• 16:55
  sclerotic authoritarian regimes. So leave that in the hands of individuals to try to come up with
• 17:01
  cool ideas and invent iPhones and so on and then profit from them. But then the distribution of
• 17:06
  iPhones really, they said no, just like just entered into their brains didn't it? Like, oh,
• 17:10
  let's create an iPhone. They didn't have, you know, massive government intervention which allowed
• 17:14
  universities conduct research and the algorithms that underpin almost every single innovation
• 17:19
  on the iPhone or indeed the technology allowed us to go to space or whatever this is all
• 17:23
  government owned and wasn't guided by the proper motive at all. What's in any way?
• 17:28
  I think I would agree with the cartoon straw man that you're putting up there that yes,
• 17:33
  the environments in which things like iPhones happen more frequently and where the more
• 17:39
  interesting inventions happen are the ones where individuals are able to compete and strive more
• 17:44
  freely such as Silicon Valley and that that sort of behavior tends to occur less in Belarus and
• 17:50
  other places where there's high levels of government intervention in the in the economy.
• 17:55
  But Hagger, like let's so Silicon Valley is just trying to get the space now, okay?
• 17:59
  The government did it in 1960s. Yeah, but nobody's saying that you can't
• 18:04
  coordinate a government to do big things. I mean that you couldn't you wouldn't privatize
• 18:08
  the defense forces, right? I mean, if you want to blow shit up or go to the moon, then you know,
• 18:16
  then you can get a government involved all you want and the government, as you say,
• 18:21
  government research has contributed to all kinds of things that the private sector then picks
• 18:25
  up the ball with and runs on. But I mean, you only have to compare the ability of NASA to replace
• 18:32
  the shuttle program with Elon Musk's ability to replace the shuttle program to see a real life
• 18:37
  example side-by-side example of what a dollar buys you when the government is directing it and
• 18:42
  what a dollar buys you when a crazed billionaire is directing it. Yes, although Elon Musk's wealth
• 18:47
  massively propped up by government contracts as well. Well, yeah, because the government couldn't
• 18:51
  do what he can so the government has to pay him to do it. Well, can the government fundamentally
• 18:58
  not do what they want? I mean, this is again a chapter in privatization in the book. The idea
• 19:03
  that, okay, we get some innovation in the private sector, sure. But the idea that the
• 19:08
  exclusive hold on that and the private sector and the profit motive can produce innovation like
• 19:13
  noted before is just simply not born out by the facts. You've got a whole bunch of publicly-owned
• 19:18
  companies that were incredibly innovative. When it was in public hands,
• 19:22
  Quantus, one of the first airlines of the entire world to produce around the world airline,
• 19:26
  basically invented business class, all this technology, this airline safety technology,
• 19:30
  had the best safety record in the entire world, but I'm still government-owned.
• 19:34
  Shinkansen bullet train also developed by the Japanese company when it was state-owned.
• 19:39
  You know, the list is endless. NASA. Even in the Soviet, you know, communist
• 19:44
  Soviet world. Ah, he's talking about the Soviets now. Someone call Andrew Bolt. He's revealed his
• 19:50
  true colors. Well, come on in, guys, haul him out. He did. Who actually won this face race?
• 19:55
  You know, what it comes to a whole bunch of LED technology. I think it was a dog. Wasn't
• 19:58
  they send up a dog? I think a dog won the space race and pushed some buttons and then came
• 20:04
  plummeting backwards. I can't be this dog. Yeah, no, man. You're right. Look, Quantus was an
• 20:09
  innovative airline. Of course, it was individual human beings who invented the right brothers.
• 20:14
  And at a time when in the final days of Quantus being a state-owned company,
• 20:20
  the cost of a flight from here to Melbourne was what it would currently cost you to go back and
• 20:26
  forth to London 70 times or something. So you don't get a lot of good value out of governments,
• 20:31
  but governments can, I mean, any entity can invent things if you pour enough money into it,
• 20:37
  even I could. Even me. Like, if you gave me billions of dollars, then you said, can you figure out
• 20:46
  how to make a nicer airplane seat? I'd be fucking, I'd be all over it. I'd be out at the tip.
• 20:53
  I'd be scrimmaging around. I'd find the best Tom Ballard airplane seat ever, but that doesn't
• 20:57
  mean that's the best way to allocate resources. The best way to allocate resources if you want
• 21:02
  inventive new things to happen is to get a bunch of creative people in a room together and get
• 21:06
  them to all squabble over who's going to do the best version of it. Right, which can just, yes,
• 21:12
  describe the government or private sector. That's the squabbling bit and the best bit is the
• 21:18
  is the private sector analogy. But if your government bit is more like top down collaboration of
• 21:24
  I'm going to tell you in this department what you have to do. Well, yeah, I'm a democratically
• 21:30
  elected official with in theory, which it varies, try to work towards the public good and
• 21:34
  therefore redirect resources to achieve that particular goal. Another great example, okay.
• 21:40
  CLS, right, the Commonwealth laboratory systems. No, CSL rather. Commonwealth serum laboratories
• 21:47
  publicly owned for a long time. World leading innovation, creating anti, you know, anti-venom
• 21:52
  vaccines publicly owned obviously by the Commonwealth for a very long time until the
• 21:56
  Keating government privatizes it in the early 90s. Now since then, it's, you know, it's extremely
• 22:02
  valuable. It's a multi-billion dollar company. It's CEOs won the highest paid CEOs in the country.
• 22:07
  Well, guess what? CSL limited the privatized version of it starts, stops producing certain things
• 22:14
  because it's not, it's not as profitable. I'm starts jacking stuff away like we don't, you know,
• 22:17
  we could make this jacking stuff away. What do you, what you're lowering the standard of this?
• 22:23
  Junking. Junking is better too. Okay, starts touching their junk and jacking it away. No,
• 22:29
  starts junking and shelving a whole bunch of fake and an example, which
• 22:33
  medicines because it's entire motivation now is to increase shareholder wealth as opposed to
• 22:39
  serve the public. Yes. So I mean, that's an interesting example because I think even, even a wild
• 22:45
  I'd conservative might concede that there are areas where you want government to address market
• 22:53
  failures, for example, and that maybe like there are things like our investment in the development
• 22:59
  of anti-biotics where there's no money in it, but it's important. Yeah, that's weird. Right. There
• 23:06
  are things that, there are things that drug companies won't do unless there's lots, unless there's
• 23:11
  government coordination, there are things like, I mean, a fire department is a, is a classic kind of
• 23:17
  example that the libertarians will be privatized in London and and New York. Right, you just have
• 23:22
  a system. They used to be private, used to buy your own insurance and then people's very quickly
• 23:26
  realize that, hey, fires don't actually check paperwork. Yeah, so it's not quite a good
• 23:30
  thing that doesn't have fire insurance sort of how it works. Yeah. Now with your own lighthouse,
• 23:35
  the lighthouse is another example that you always get an Econ 101. Oh, yes.
• 23:40
  Who's going to, how are you going to make the ships that benefit from the lighthouse, pay for
• 23:44
  the lighthouse? Right. And actually, again, that that was initially a free market thing where they
• 23:49
  would tack, they would levy the ships to build the lighthouses, but nonetheless becomes a,
• 23:54
  like a horrid old example of why you need state intervention. Right. You're making me more and
• 23:59
  more libertarian. I think I just want to create an iron randy and free market, a country now,
• 24:04
  and just show you how productive it would be. Oh, yeah. Well, my first class airplane sweep.
• 24:08
  Yeah. Where's, and where's the example of that actually working, by the way?
• 24:14
  Maybe like Kansas.
• 24:18
  You know, because again, well, to the extent that I'll wear the, hey, socialism has never been
• 24:23
  tried as a very weak defense. Obviously, it has, obviously, we have a historical examples that
• 24:27
  left us people obsessed about constantly. And I never stopped thinking about what actually
• 24:31
  happened in Soviet, Soviet Russia and, you know, how these systems work the good and the bad of
• 24:37
  these systems and how they failed. Sure. But I am yet to hear exactly the free market libertarian
• 24:45
  utopia. Someone like Peter Till wants to build it out of the ocean. I know he's got around to that
• 24:49
  yet. Yeah. I have the same criticism of my libertarian friends when they're like, you know, we
• 24:53
  should, everything would be so much more equitable if we could get rid of social welfare systems,
• 24:58
  because then it would be up to the individual to make sure that their own charity comes to the
• 25:02
  floor instead of having their, you know, generosity co-opted by government institutions. And I'm like,
• 25:08
  okay, where has that ever happened? Where has that ever happened? That does not happen.
• 25:14
  But I would similarly say that, you know, one reason why so many countries have settled on a
• 25:22
  predominantly free market economic system in the past couple of hundred years is because to the
• 25:30
  extent that you allow that to work, it does have a good track record of producing innovation and
• 25:36
  producing prosperity. And it's not a coincidence that the countries that have deployed that economic
• 25:42
  system the best are the ones that have been the most incredibly wealthy. And the ones that have
• 25:47
  been the most bureaucratic and the most government guided have tended to decay.
• 25:52
  Well, there's also been the thing that those wealthy countries that are free market and capitalist
• 25:55
  haven't really let other countries have a decent crack and say something that's a little less
• 25:59
  capitalistic, for example. And I mean, that's, again, when you look over the history of the 20th century
• 26:04
  and what actually went down to the Cold War, you realize, hang on, how much did Chile get to try
• 26:11
  out socialism? Because as soon as a democratic socialist was elected in A&D, what do you know,
• 26:15
  you've got the CIA, you've got Nixon saying, this cannot be allowed to succeed. We want to make
• 26:20
  the economy screen and eventually destabilize that administration so much with a bit of help from
• 26:26
  Australian security intervention forces as well. The first 9-11. It was, you know, it was on 9-11,
• 26:32
  the coup. The A&D coup was on September 11, 1973, an interesting piece of, I did not know.
• 26:39
  It's an interesting tidbit of information. Yes, when they went in a shape. It was, if you're a
• 26:44
  Chilean, like that was worse than 9-11. You ended up having 30 years or something of a brutal
• 26:49
  dictator, like throwing people out of buildings for disagreeing with them. Yeah, not pretty,
• 26:54
  not pretty. But anyway, so let's put aside economics then. Culturally speaking, what's got
• 26:59
  Tom's goat? Well, there should be a segment shouldn't it? We should do a segment, we should do
• 27:04
  already a segment called what's got Tom's goat and we'll have a little jingle at the beginning
• 27:08
  and then you'll hear, I'll be like, what's got you goat this week, Tom?
• 27:12
  On the culture front, well, it's interesting because I suppose, I mean, what this book is hopefully
• 27:16
  explaining in the charting is my evolution or my drift further left from where I was in 2015,
• 27:22
  2016. So where were you there? Well, always a bleeding heart lefty progressive, Gabo, of course.
• 27:29
  You know, I cared about things like the environment, I cared about gay rights, I cared about
• 27:33
  refugees, the human rights was a big part of my childhood, my parents, both members of
• 27:37
  Amnesty International and through their example, I kind of learned all that. Then Trump gets
• 27:41
  elected 2016's the craziest year of all time, I start asking some bigger questions. And those
• 27:46
  questions eventually lead me to a political economic critique of, yeah, Western capitalist societies.
• 27:53
  Right. Every sort of you follow the rabbit hole and things do eventually keep coming back to
• 27:58
  economic questions in a way that our economic systems places a whole bunch of money and wealth
• 28:04
  and power and influence in the hands of very few people and the fact that we live in a class
• 28:08
  society. Now, once you swallow that red pill for a while or you follow that for a while, you start
• 28:16
  to view a lot of cultural things as being very silly as distractions, as products are of our class
• 28:24
  society. And often as instruments used by the people who actually run stuff to distract us.
• 28:29
  Right. So yeah, if we're if we're fighting a long identity politics lines, then we're not actually
• 28:33
  focused on the fact that billionaires kind of run the whole show. Well, then why do so many people
• 28:38
  on the left seem so obsessed with the culture wars? Well, now left now you talk about liberal
• 28:43
  left or you talk about like socialist left hard left because I think that's the difference. I'm
• 28:47
  talking about the people who spend a lot more time being worried about whether or not there's
• 28:53
  adequate representation and diversity and welcomes to country for indigenous land recognition and
• 29:01
  whether or not people are being addressed by the correct pronouns and whether or not we're
• 29:05
  making sure that nobody does any reports about transgender detransitioners and whether or not,
• 29:10
  you know, that kind of what conservatives would call the cancel culture left is a cohort of
• 29:15
  society that spends a lot more time talking about those issues than they do talking about inequality
• 29:20
  or talking about justice. Certainly now and this I think is where we'll probably get into some
• 29:25
  some big disagreements, but to me that is a version of liberalism, okay? That is a social liberalism
• 29:33
  that is left liberalism, which is something that I used to very much subscribe to with liberalism,
• 29:38
  a political ideology in tradition, with its focused on individual, okay? And so individual liberty
• 29:44
  out of that grows identity politics and that is obviously still hegemonic in Australia,
• 29:50
  in the UK, in the US, most people are liberals of some some flavor or liberalism as sort of the
• 29:55
  bedrock of a lot of the dominant political ideology of our time, particularly in the neo-liberal era,
• 29:59
  right? So when you migrate a little bit further left as I have all you, you know, land up
• 30:05
  being a socialist, I think you see through a lot of that stuff and you don't want to be an
• 30:11
  asshole. I think there is a terminological confusion which will confuse a lot of people here
• 30:16
  because there tends to be generally when we talk about this stuff, there tends to be a group of
• 30:21
  people who call themselves liberals or smaller liberals or classical liberals or maybe libertarians
• 30:27
  who align broadly with an idea of culture as being based on the individual, on the sanctity of
• 30:35
  the individual, they will respect things like an individual bucking the group think of their tribe,
• 30:42
  they'll see history as at its best when it respects the the sort of autonomy of the individual
• 30:49
  and allows people to break out of customs and conformism and express their themselves however
• 30:55
  they want to and get jiggy with whoever they want to and have the maximum amount of freedom
• 30:59
  that is compatible with a stable civilization and they will contrast that sense of liberalism
• 31:06
  as against tribalism identity politics group think mandates on what you can say social
• 31:15
  expectations conformism and they'll see that latter trend as growing at the moment as we no longer
• 31:24
  think of an individual indigenous Australian as a person who's capable of speaking and thinking
• 31:29
  for themselves but rather they have to be a caste member in our grand narrative about the justice
• 31:35
  you know about the irredeemable racism of this continent and the original sin of its invasion by
• 31:41
  European colonial powers to take but one example or that you know that pride has to be
• 31:48
  foremost in people's minds in their acceptance of LGBTQIA plus people and that that terminology
• 31:55
  is terribly important and and that we should all be filling out diversity trackers on our radio show
• 32:01
  is to make sure that we have the right number of groups of people right this is a way of thinking
• 32:06
  about things which is about groups it's about identity groups it's about tribes it's about who has
• 32:12
  been discriminated against who's been sat on historically how do we elevate those people how do
• 32:18
  we make sure that people who have traditionally held power white straight men are brought down a peg
• 32:23
  its group it's thinking about power structures in terms of groups that's illiberal that's an
• 32:31
  illiberal way of looking at the world some people even call it like a form of cultural sort of
• 32:35
  neo-mauism or Marxism in the sense that you that you're viewing the world as a battle between
• 32:40
  groups the way that Marx had an economic explanation right now had various cultural
• 32:45
  yes and various cultural explanations about you know for Mao it was like academics as a group
• 32:50
  pitied against workers as a group you know for pole part it was like if you wear glasses then
• 32:54
  we're going to execute you because you are the cohort of you know you're the cohort of
• 32:58
  fancy I'm going to say I don't want to ruin everything let's let's lose the nose guys yeah so I
• 33:04
  think you're going to run into problems just in terms of communicating what you're talking about
• 33:08
  how do you reconcile it sure okay so that's yes okay so level of groups and collectivism based
• 33:13
  along identity lines okay this is a great to take the comes so I'm a you know I believe in
• 33:18
  collectivism right as as a socialist to I struggle to call myself a Marxist because I haven't
• 33:24
  read like the books but I've read the summaries and I'm like I think I get the vibe you've read
• 33:29
  books that are shorter than your own 350 page books no but it's longer than a communist manifesto
• 33:38
  you get a list read that one I read that one yes I read that one when I was about 15 I read that
• 33:42
  one it's all right you smart guy and word pictures though I'm in my book I've pictures a lot
• 33:48
  but did you have you seen those picture books of Karl Marx as well there are ones with like a
• 33:52
  little cartoon of him with his big bushy moustache and his eyebrows like right hunched over a
• 33:58
  a pattern pen writing okay so you so as a collectivist yes so we collectivist on on class
• 34:04
  basis right so there was a leftist critique of that same identity politics that you're talking
• 34:08
  about and the leftist sort of says yes this these ideas of of liberation often adopted a whole lot
• 34:15
  of this kind of socialist class politics language about liberation and oppression as you say
• 34:20
  but if you aren't talking about class if you sincerely think that you know a that Beyoncé
• 34:27
  and a working class African-American person has the same experience of life living in society
• 34:33
  under capitalism then you're not seeing the full picture and certainly in in the States all right
• 34:38
  and let's be honest a whole bunch of our cultural conversation Australia stems from these kind
• 34:42
  of battles in the States by by Twitter and such and culture the liberals which are overwhelmingly
• 34:49
  social liberals in the kind of in the left left wing tradition in the kind of you know FDR kind of
• 34:55
  vibe what I would just generally describe as neoliberals but the left are obsessing as you say
• 35:01
  around identity issues to the detriment of a class analysis which is much more interesting to me
• 35:07
  and I think socialist yes right I mean many of my actual left wing friends who are more left
• 35:13
  wing like you are who are not obsessed with the culture wars but want actual economic justice
• 35:20
  for for people yes and they may not go all the way to set to to socialism and the government ownership
• 35:27
  of of the means of production but they'll go fairly far in saying like we have to do a better job
• 35:34
  of making sure that you know retrenched coal miners in Appalachia have have a future and
• 35:40
  have health care and have you know undertaken care of yeah they will regard that what you're
• 35:46
  calling the sort of liberal kind of culture war left as the illiberal left as like yeah a left
• 35:57
  that is not that is defiantly not liberal because it's not about individuals it's about
• 36:03
  it's about groups yes yes and I understand that confusion and perhaps you know I'm not fully
• 36:08
  qualified enough I mean I was writing a book with some funny pictures of me as a baby but
• 36:12
  you know the I understand what you mean by the illiberal left in that it's allocating people
• 36:16
  into groups and there's certainly a section of identity politics with does that but I would also
• 36:19
  argue that is an identity politics based on liberating the individuals that is that is viewing
• 36:25
  their individual liberation because groups because there are because it's certainly true
• 36:30
  that certain groups particularly minorities sexual and gender and class minorities have been
• 36:36
  broadly speaking treated very poorly throughout our our society right and so
• 36:41
  that same liberalism that would initially lead say Martin Luther King to campaign for
• 36:49
  equality before the law which is part of the civil rights struggle is a form of liberalism
• 36:53
  absolutely then he goes further towards the end of his career just as before he gets assassinated
• 36:58
  he starts making some bigger structural critiques about the economic system of capitalism
• 37:02
  and the Vietnam war okay and it describes himself as something of a democratic socialist
• 37:06
  before before he dies and liberals today don't like to talk about that because that's a little
• 37:10
  class worry but that's a very very interesting part of his evolution and I think it's a big part of
• 37:14
  lots of like again lots of people I talk to sort of say yeah I used to care looking back
• 37:19
  I used to care about all this other stuff I used to think that that was where that was what
• 37:23
  politics was was fighting racism and sexism and such all very important battles but the missing
• 37:29
  element was who has money who has power yeah how economic structures determined I mean now you're
• 37:35
  sort of singing from my hem sheet if that's a way up is that a metaphor are you singing from my
• 37:40
  song book or maybe you're praising maybe you're writing my hem sheet or maybe you're reading from
• 37:44
  my song list speaking your language uh in the sense that uh I think a lot of the current culture
• 37:51
  wars are uh uh uh people engaging in them are victims of being distracted from the actual
• 38:00
  elephant in the room and the elephant in the room is what I call class but what you might call
• 38:05
  capitalism or inequality or class whatever the class class a class system which arises out of
• 38:11
  capitalism uh yes and the particular form in which that class is well I don't I'm not I'm not sure
• 38:16
  I would grant you that because I think class I think class broadly understood is a fact of human
• 38:22
  nature and not even just human nature a fact of just social arrangements in general and that the
• 38:27
  Soviet Union had had its class and feudal societies had their classes and I don't know of any society
• 38:34
  or even any group of animals that don't have that don't form themselves into some sort of class
• 38:40
  where one group is trying to hoard things from other from other groups I think it's just part of
• 38:46
  the the nature of scarcity unless you have an unlimited quantity of abundance then you're going to
• 38:53
  find uh animals compete animals and plants competing over things and that and the ones who are more
• 38:59
  successful at gaining things and that being fitter so to speak I'm going to find ways of aggregating
• 39:05
  themselves and helping each other yes well we've been helping each other is the keeper is the key part
• 39:09
  I mean yeah they're that's right yeah certain certain society you know people different people in
• 39:14
  different societies perform different roles but whether or not that's one people getting you know
• 39:18
  everything one group one section of that group getting absolutely everything all the
• 39:22
  but that's not how class works one doesn't get everything well no well so so class is an interesting
• 39:27
  interesting thing and I do think this is quite accurate within the Marxist sense when we're talking
• 39:32
  about class we're talking about your relationship to production that's how Marx tends to think
• 39:35
  about it okay so yeah not just an income bracket not just yeah no I'm talking about I'm talking about
• 39:41
  a cult I'm talking about a culture of class I suppose and I guess we're kind of talking about two
• 39:46
  things because obviously if you're talking about animals and you're not talking about culture so
• 39:49
  much you're talking about economics you don't have resources but let's just stick to the cultural
• 39:53
  question of class because I think some one thing that's happening is that there's a there's and
• 39:58
  this now this is an economic question as well but there's an economically privileged elite class
• 40:03
  of intellectuals at the moment who don't conceive of themselves as a privileged class who spend a
• 40:08
  lot of time speaking on behalf of quite unquote disadvantaged minorities and enforcing the
• 40:15
  codes of their own sort of university educated elite speak on everybody else and that they are
• 40:23
  misdiagnosing class problems as cultural problems so what I mean is like there are a lot of all of
• 40:31
  the people who are causing all of these culture cancel culture issues and stuff like that I mean
• 40:36
  it's not actual trans people who are causing the culture wars about transgender issues most trans
• 40:43
  people who I know are not huge sticklers about your use of pronouns the people who are huge
• 40:49
  sticklers about your use of pronouns are largely university educated white people who are out of
• 40:54
  the trans community who are imposing a kind of class warfare on everybody because they think that
• 41:01
  they're socially enlightened and that they're fighting the good fight and that's true I mean
• 41:08
  every single indigenous Australian I know is much more welcoming and open-minded and thoughtful
• 41:13
  about diversity mandates and expressions of diversity and the voice to parliament and what that
• 41:21
  should look like than the rigid white saviors who are coming out of our educational institutions are
• 41:30
  so that's sort of what I mean by class there's like a there is a cultural and and it's actually
• 41:36
  it's actually a way of looking down on people of lower classes right I mean it's a way to basically
• 41:42
  write off people who aren't university educated who might have slightly more retrograde ideas
• 41:47
  that were widely accepted three minutes ago in in in historical time as being dinosaurs who you don't
• 41:53
  have to listen to and you don't have to bring into the national conversation yeah so I don't know
• 42:00
  whether you think that's I recognize the idea that is this this this culture war used as a
• 42:04
  form of class war and when you when there is a lack of class analysis within people's critique of
• 42:10
  society then yes you do you hey tendency to view matters of culture and interpersonal behavior
• 42:19
  as the most important thing as opposed to the broader big economic picture that's true and look
• 42:24
  academia intellectuals have played a role throughout capitalism to either justify the status quo
• 42:31
  to scientifically diagnose or to excuse things as they are and say no everything's fine here or
• 42:38
  this particular class of people beneath us and we can exploit them for our own economic advantage
• 42:43
  that's there's a long rich history of that that's for sure um but uh hmm yeah that'll do
• 42:53
  I was like I was like I don't think he has no I don't know what we disagree with we're here no
• 42:57
  no I don't think I'm not sure we do disagree maybe there's a slight disagreement about the
• 43:01
  economics of class but probably not a terribly interesting one without looping back to the
• 43:04
  questions about communism and capitalism but one thing that I'm also interested in
• 43:10
  the work capitalism is a really good point of it right yeah at the moment to me that left the
• 43:15
  socialist left and the right could both diagnose what capital is I think this is you know massive
• 43:22
  figures of capital and corporations adopting the language of identity politics and liberation yeah
• 43:28
  um you know Nike releasing an adc say in a black lives matter and everyone and the left says
• 43:34
  this is ridiculous this is capitalism just trying to profit off a social movement and capital
• 43:40
  has no value it's no no personal values or integrity or anything or anything like that has no
• 43:45
  more philosophy its entire motivation is to maximize profits that's all they care about that's how
• 43:50
  we should view their actions as a as a corporation people on the right seem to think that
• 43:55
  all capitals gone woke and they really believe it right like say what some like Peter Dutton
• 44:00
  seems to think these massive corporations generally are taken over by actual committed
• 44:05
  communists and Marxists who want to try and pollute your kids mind but he doesn't really believe
• 44:10
  that does what he says does he I think I think there are generally people particularly on the
• 44:14
  doesn't he also see that it's a stupid charade but he just doesn't think that that corporations
• 44:19
  should play that game it should do that yes okay well it certainly seems to be some people in
• 44:23
  the right-wing commentary that seem to be sincerely concerned that either the Marxists took our
• 44:28
  education and so everyone rising to the top of corporate Australia is secretly a Marxist I think
• 44:33
  those people are the same people who are on the blurb jacket of your book telling you about
• 44:37
  variance the towering public intellectuals of Australian society anyway so that's you know an
• 44:43
  example of how that yeah the end result of that cultural yeah totally and I take your point
• 44:48
  Eric and most people in the broadly defined working class who are trying to just survive and
• 44:53
  put up with a bullshit of living in the capitalist society see all of that stuff as as nonsense yeah
• 44:58
  and I mean the people who are imposing the workness on these corporations from inside are
• 45:02
  precisely the elite classes that I'm talking about that I'm disparaging these are the people who
• 45:07
  you know you will go on the on pride day it's always interesting there's a Twitter feed that will
• 45:13
  compare the different Twitter like you know how you can change corporations can change what
• 45:20
  their images on Twitter obviously on social media for depending on the day so if it's a special
• 45:25
  day then blah blah blah so you can compare them in different jurisdictions and on pride day you
• 45:30
  can look at all of the big companies in there you know in rich developed democracies and they've
• 45:37
  all got the rainbow flag and then you look at what they're doing on their Middle Eastern accounts
• 45:43
  yeah locking up of course they don't yeah of course they don't have a rainbow flag you know on
• 45:48
  their Lebanon on the version let alone the you know the Saudi version so there's incredible
• 45:55
  cynicism and and I don't think it's just that they're that they think that they're cynically
• 46:00
  co-opting the language of social justice I actually think that they think that they're doing
• 46:04
  something good and it's that delusion which I would say is a kind of a class delusion it's a kind
• 46:09
  of a it's an elite cultural class which thinks that it is the uh doing God's work on earth it's
• 46:16
  almost like a clergy well it doesn't I mean it doesn't matter whether they believe it or not really
• 46:21
  it's not it's not doing I suppose not do you think yeah but Madagra is a great example of this right
• 46:25
  Madagra started by radical socialists and communists yeah I'm protested in the street that was
• 46:30
  illegal they got bashed by the cops yes they were seeking liberation because they were oppressed
• 46:35
  on the base of their identity right but they also had a bigger vision of transformation and liberation
• 46:40
  and could see the bigger system that capitalism is also ultimately the thing that oppresses all of
• 46:46
  us and the thing that will liberate us or the thing where you seriously some of them thought that
• 46:50
  they didn't all think that I was spoken to to people who are marching back then who just wanted
• 46:54
  freedom they just wanted to be treated like everybody else they wanted to be able to get they
• 46:58
  wanted to be able to rent apartments they wanted to be able to get mortgages without being
• 47:01
  discriminated against they wanted their relationship to be recognized by the state they wanted to
• 47:06
  not be able to not be excluded from going into a hospital when their partner was dying you know
• 47:11
  because they're not considered to be a spouse I've been talking about specifically the communists
• 47:16
  and the like there were people living in communist communists communists and yes all queer you know
• 47:20
  claims but those ones particularly they're kind of radical politics that played a huge role in that
• 47:24
  initial you know 78 protests and those and those those bashings okay so so you know cut to today
• 47:32
  in which there's a Colgate flow I remember watching Marty Groud saying a Colgate float and
• 47:35
  Delta Guadrub dead together top of it you know this doesn't seem quite right absolutely there's
• 47:39
  a level of progress in there which is fine but also this the detachment between the view that
• 47:45
  capitalism oppresses all of us and it is capitalism that you know is responsible for fueling racism
• 47:51
  and discrimination against queer people you know it is the economic system that's used to do all
• 47:55
  that like I think that was part of the initial vision of Marty Groud that has in the legal era
• 48:00
  those kind of things are being detached and so now politics is about the liberation of the
• 48:04
  individual and interpersonal discrimination as opposed to a broader critique of how our society
• 48:10
  is organized and what that means with it yeah I don't I don't want to get bogged down by defending
• 48:13
  capitalism every time you you throw it in there but I will I will just make the point
• 48:17
  that you know so many of the civil rights movements throughout history including the gay one have
• 48:28
  based their ideas have based their objections to discrimination on smaller liberal ideas about
• 48:34
  liberal flourishing and those are the smaller liberal ideals ideals of the same people who developed
• 48:38
  capitalism as an economic system it's about individuals treating each other as individuals
• 48:43
  rather than groups being at war with each other but I know that that doesn't comport with a Marxist
• 48:47
  interpretation of history but in a practical sense the greatest the greatest freedoms have been
• 48:53
  found in societies which also had free markets we don't have that you know it's it's not a co-incidence
• 48:59
  I don't think that dozens and dozens and dozens of times through Western Europe and North America
• 49:02
  and Australia and so on you have free market systems that are also the places that where you find
• 49:07
  the greatest respect for human flourishing for the individual but are people truly free in a capitalist
• 49:14
  society and if they're homeless will they cut off what to pay their rent or the working multiple
• 49:17
  jobs are being exploited by their boss and sexually abused at work well we were talking about being
• 49:22
  free from discrimination from legal discrimination on the basis of your sexuality well exactly
• 49:26
  exactly this is the so this is liberalism so we're all equal before the law you take out all the
• 49:31
  the the discrimination of the on the books right and so we're all equal for the law but you're still
• 49:36
  living under a capitalist society which is massive inequality yeah yeah I'll grant you that I mean
• 49:41
  but it's just that you you know in the alternative you've either got the you've either got inequality
• 49:47
  and you're not being discriminated against on the basis of your sexuality or you've got inequality
• 49:52
  and you are being discriminated against on the basis of your sexuality so I'd rather just not have
• 49:56
  the discrimination on the basis of sexuality and then we can resolve the economic question as an
• 50:01
  I think we can just get okay right right let's fix all the laws then we'll just get to the
• 50:04
  act you can do both at the same time but where where is this society which has had both a
• 50:08
  respect for individual rights and you know a refusal to discriminate against people on the basis
• 50:13
  of being of their minority status and also egalitarianism and economic equality well where is this
• 50:21
  where is this well again if we come back to the social development of Scandinavia yes I mean
• 50:26
  you know any socialist is like liberalism plus right so there are all these liberal values that
• 50:30
  socialists will totally agree on and say yes of course you know these these things that we treasure
• 50:34
  under liberalism is is fine but the when you when you stop at the
• 50:39
  supposed freedom and liberation of the individual and don't tackle the class question then that's
• 50:43
  when you have a society with massive inequality and injustice in that respect right so in the
• 50:48
  social democracies yes they still have free markets and a level of capitalism but when the scope
• 50:54
  of capitalism is reduced okay when when there is greater state intervention and ownership
• 50:59
  and collectivism greater worker power you know it is no coincidence that they're in those societies
• 51:04
  which have to an extent gone somewhat beyond the free market liberal capitalist societies of the
• 51:10
  UK U.S. and Australia you have less inequality these are happier and freer society yes yes
• 51:17
  yeah but they just couldn't be without capitalism they wouldn't be without their free market
• 51:22
  producing all their goods why why do you say that well because all I mean all that Scandinavian
• 51:28
  the only thing that sets Scandinavian countries apart from other failed socialist or communist
• 51:34
  countries is the fact that they have well-functioning free markets that's the well-functioning
• 51:41
  free markets produce all of the goods that they're then able to give to the people who they
• 51:45
  want to give them to and the the only way you can produce any goods of anything is through
• 51:48
  what it seems to be I mean it does seem to be every other place that tries to do it that tries to
• 51:54
  seize all the means of production and have the government do it themselves to then disperse it
• 51:58
  just seems to suffer from a lack of incentives a lack of innovation a kind of sclerosis over time
• 52:04
  things start decaying you do seem to need people running things who have a bit of nows and get up
• 52:10
  and go and a bit of Hootspur and a little bit of an idea of things getting better rather than just
• 52:14
  being functionaries inside of bureaucracy to make yeah to to make progress I don't know where I
• 52:21
  don't know where else what they're looking to as an example we sort of say well we are entering
• 52:27
  into the you know socialist has never been tried conversation in which you know the vision for a
• 52:32
  better society the frustration with the status quo is the question of is this sincerely the best
• 52:38
  that that we the best way to organize our society this is seriously the best that we can do when
• 52:42
  you look around the the massive inequality in our society when you look at the struggle not
• 52:46
  our society the ones you're talking about like Sweden or Denmark or something yes I mean that may
• 52:54
  be as good as we can do right now that's what I'm saying I mean it may be because I mean to the
• 52:58
  retort to any other claim would be the Churchill and one of like that those are the best those are
• 53:03
  the best society that I mean sorry those are the worst systems apart from all the others
• 53:06
  you know the men like it's if you compare something to the to the ideal that Tom Ballard has created
• 53:14
  in his head it's always going to fall short but if you compare it to actual things that have been
• 53:18
  tried many many many many many times in lots of places throughout history we have hundreds of
• 53:24
  countries around the world all of which have tried different variations of levels of state
• 53:28
  involvement levels of Marxism various ways of arranging themselves various respect for individual
• 53:34
  rights or not respect for individual rights various relationships between tribes power sharing
• 53:38
  arrangements in places like Lebanon between sects and religious groups I mean the ones that you
• 53:44
  would want that you Tom Ballard would want to live in tend to be the ones that have that have a
• 53:50
  a sort of small L liberal traditional ideal that was developed in Western Europe and in the UK
• 53:57
  and inherited by North America and and Australia of a respect for individual rights a respect for
• 54:05
  property rights a broadly free market generation of goods and services which then get distributed
• 54:11
  by government and you're looking at me like this is and this is a new idea well I just I don't
• 54:17
  know what the idea is here so we just say okay we're we're done I mean politics is about changing
• 54:21
  society for the better okay so if we look at our society the frustrations with Australia today the
• 54:26
  Australia that my generation is inherited you know what what what the questions you ask yourself
• 54:31
  like a what should be changed to make it a better and more equal society okay and if if we agree that
• 54:37
  you know the Scandinavia model is a more equal better society for people so the the idea to move
• 54:42
  Australia from a liberal democracy to a social democracy which is really all that you know
• 54:47
  any leftist movement in this country could seriously hope for in the in the near term okay that's
• 54:52
  ultimately the program of say the Australian Greens social social democratic party I think even the
• 54:57
  most committed you know the socialist or cobitist would be like the reforms that often people are
• 55:02
  calling for in the near future outside of an actual revolution yeah is sincerely pushing people
• 55:07
  further further to a model in which the market dominates less of our lives as a society today right
• 55:12
  now the resistance to that from Australian capitalism and to the Australian political status quo
• 55:17
  will be extremely fierce well totally I mean and completely irrational no I mean that's fine but
• 55:22
  then my advice would just be don't alienate potential allies by getting distracted by invoking
• 55:28
  the evils of capitalism because it just sounds like then you're asking for more than you actually
• 55:34
  do want because I mean if you want to if you want just the policy of the Greens to be implemented
• 55:39
  then that's fine I mean you've got you've already got 20% of Australians on board right but you're
• 55:44
  going to lose a lot of the 20% if you're like oh and by the way capitalism is responsible for
• 55:48
  racism because then you go like well hang on what wait I do I do want to I do want a little dose
• 55:53
  of productivity in my world still productivity there'll be no productivity at the socialism
• 56:00
  no no choose we'll go for a four day wait what it just me about this whole liberal idea Tom it is
• 56:08
  so the reason why I think and we had lunch recently and you said I so would you call yourself a
• 56:13
  liberal and I was like yeah and you were like I was like I just said that I was a member of the KKK
• 56:19
  so would you call yourself a pedophile yeah but I mean I only share kids on the occasion
• 56:25
  but but what interests me is that the reason why I would say that I'm a liberal is has very little
• 56:30
  to do with economics because I think the basic economics settled I don't think you agree with that
• 56:35
  but I think the you know the the most left-wing people in Scandinavia would broadly agree with
• 56:42
  the most right-wing people in America that you want some component of private ownership and
• 56:46
  property rights in in your economic mix so I don't think that's the liberal question for me the
• 56:53
  liberal question why I think what I value about liberalism is the kind of the the energizing idea
• 57:02
  that ultimately everyone should be free to do and believe whatever they want to and the fact
• 57:09
  that things are offensive to people shouldn't matter the fact that the church or the state is
• 57:14
  going to object or capital is going to object shouldn't matter that people should be able to
• 57:19
  yeah I mean to me that to me liberalism stands it shouldn't matter what what does it mean if
• 57:23
  capital doesn't like what you're saying and use it it should not to stop you saying that all
• 57:28
  to sideline you as much as possible yes it should not be able to well we should push back yes and
• 57:33
  we as liberals should push back against that because that would be a kind of corporatist or
• 57:36
  mercantilist like form of oppression and so liberalism to me as a as a spirit rather than like an
• 57:45
  economic system is a spirit of rebellion of anti-authoritarianism of of kind of pluckish determination
• 57:54
  and it's a spirit of Galileo it's a spirit of Copernicus it's a spirit of the enlightenment it's
• 57:59
  a spirit of rebels throughout history who have bucked trends and who have told
• 58:07
  bossy authority figures to go fuck themselves that's what liberalism means to me in a cultural
• 58:15
  sense and that's why I think of the woke as being as illiberal as fascists are illiberal on the right
• 58:24
  and you are someone who who fits that mold perfectly I mean I can't think of anyone in
• 58:30
  Australian entertainment who as gleefully and successfully punches the bourgeoisie and the norms
• 58:38
  right have accepted polite discourse as you do and you walk that line like a masterful tight
• 58:45
  rope walker of just being on the right side of acceptability so that you're not hounded out of
• 58:50
  town whilst also saying things that are extremely provocative to your audiences in a way that
• 58:56
  will still endear you to them somehow and have these middle class property owning boomers laughing
• 59:02
  at your jokes that they're expense so what is that to you if not liberally like what what is that
• 59:09
  and why is my am I just misguided about terminology there I mean if you want to be a rebel and
• 59:16
  and and and and and someone who yeah gives the middle finger to the status quo and questions
• 59:22
  things I mean you know like socialists people have critiqued capitalism are are the ultimate
• 59:30
  totally until they get into power and which at which point they become conformists what do you mean
• 59:37
  well again we're going to go back to the yeah but socialism hasn't really been tried yet but
• 59:43
  most countries that have proclaimed themselves to be socialist countries or communist countries
• 59:48
  have not had the same respect for descent as smaller liberal countries do right which is just like
• 59:55
  well yes there's no argument here all the stuff that you listed the individual freedom that these
• 1:00:00
  are all great things right for us to be free and for us to pursue the things we want to do and
• 1:00:06
  to be happy and to have our basic material needs met to live a fulfilling life free from the
• 1:00:12
  pressures that are so often put a put put upon us under a capitalist system these are things that
• 1:00:16
  we agree on that the the socialist parts with you from from the liberal analysis when when the
• 1:00:23
  liberal refuses to engage with the class question I guess what I'm saying is to recognize socialist
• 1:00:28
  arenas fun as you why you fun but who do you see the word socialist is banning about to the point
• 1:00:35
  where people think I don't know people who I'm not talking about I'm not talking about
• 1:00:39
  Anthony Albanese and I'm not talking about democratic socialists who want it to become more like
• 1:00:43
  Denmark I'm talking about the socialists who I went to uni with who want a revolution and who are
• 1:00:48
  very bossy and self-important and and frankly if they did get into power they would be fucking
• 1:00:53
  authoritarian you're not that well then elect me vote for me everyone vote one talk I don't know
• 1:01:01
  I got the way to say it come from then like where does your sense of I don't know well anti-conformism
• 1:01:07
  come from yes well I mean for me you know realizing that I was not like all the other boys and that
• 1:01:12
  I liked being a big old gay and just for me and I know this is not true for everyone but immediately
• 1:01:18
  put me somewhat at odds with you know received wisdom and the way things are set up was never
• 1:01:23
  particularly religious always viewed religion through the prism of initially being like oh that
• 1:01:28
  those are the people who hate me for being gay I found I was clearing out my my parents shared
• 1:01:34
  a few weeks ago and found like some old school forms and when I went to high school I deflated
• 1:01:39
  we had religious education at my public high school for some reason had to fill out a form and
• 1:01:43
  I said you know what do you think of God and religion and the only thing I wrote was I've not
• 1:01:48
  really just got nothing against anyone who does believe in God I strongly disagree with the way
• 1:01:52
  the church approaches homosexuality is a new seven four years but I came out so immediately you
• 1:01:59
  yet put yourself at odds with the way things around I guess you know I sort of came of age politically
• 1:02:04
  in the age of John Howard so there's all these conservatives the power they always use a long serving
• 1:02:08
  conservative prime minister yeah prime minister in Australia war on terrors rolling out as well
• 1:02:14
  and like this all seems really wrong it doesn't seem to be like the way things should go this seems
• 1:02:19
  bad George Bush seems like a bit of an idiot so I think you know initially yeah just by the nature
• 1:02:24
  of being the son of to labor voting slash human rights enthusiasts and public schoolteachers in
• 1:02:30
  my parents and realizing I'm gay it immediately puts you at odds with all the the way that things
• 1:02:36
  are supposed to run I think and just every time society tells you this is the way things are
• 1:02:40
  supposed to go you go hang on I'm going to take that with a grain of salt and speaking of
• 1:02:43
  conformism and individualism in light of what you were saying earlier about like the pink dollar
• 1:02:49
  and sort of you know like the the gay washing I suppose of corporate the corporate world what
• 1:02:55
  was your relationship to gain us when you were seven when you were in year seven and you were
• 1:03:00
  writing that about the church well I mean again that's before I come out no I know but yes
• 1:03:05
  it must be starting to to bubble up in your head right that there's this thing called gay
• 1:03:10
  yes there's a community called gay yes they do a big mighty grave every year yeah right they
• 1:03:14
  have some television shows I guess well and grace or something or like Ellen has come out probably
• 1:03:18
  at this point right and did you find that to be a welcoming vision or an alienating one oh it was
• 1:03:28
  more it was well at that point is like I don't want anything to do with gay I don't want to be gay
• 1:03:33
  do not want to be gay pretty sure I appear to be gay based on the thoughts coming into my head
• 1:03:37
  do not want to be gay eventually by year 10 I'm going this isn't going away I guess I'm gay that's
• 1:03:42
  sad but I guess I'll have to deal with that and then eventually you know getting to a point of
• 1:03:48
  acceptance of love would be like oh you can be amazing to be gay that's actually that's totally
• 1:03:53
  fine wouldn't be straight for quits yeah so it's actually it's it's something that I embrace
• 1:03:58
  and over time eventually learn but I will say I think and you and I share this in some way a
• 1:04:04
  initially a level of an alienation or not seeing myself in the queer community necessarily
• 1:04:08
  and as as as a gay man I wasn't particularly camp and wasn't into all the things stereotypically
• 1:04:16
  associated with camp came in yeah yeah yes I found it a very oppressive and strange
• 1:04:22
  behemoth with the world of gayness and I was I was attracted to girls which which was an
• 1:04:28
  impediment to my like self-realisation because that's one of the worst things you can do if you
• 1:04:34
  have to be effective to girls they're really positive we let you say the call man I know I
• 1:04:39
  just I don't even I don't even like the label anymore but but the idea that if you that there was
• 1:04:44
  this type of a human being who whose main thing whose main desire in life was to sit us
• 1:04:51
  tried a giant inflatable penis on Oxford Street once a year in February and it had a very
• 1:04:56
  particular fashion and a very particular politics and a way of dancing and a way of dressing and
• 1:05:02
  a way of speaking I obviously wasn't that and so I in you know in some respects in hindsight I
• 1:05:09
  think that the again conformism and groupthink and easy kind of tribal identity politics maybe this
• 1:05:17
  is why I'm allergic to it maybe this is one reason why I'm allergic to identity politics is I felt
• 1:05:22
  very viscerally the downside of being excluded from a group that was purporting to speak on my
• 1:05:28
  behalf right okay yes well okay so if you're feeling torn in that you know okay these people
• 1:05:34
  are supposed to represent me and that they don't and they don't necessarily understand that
• 1:05:40
  I've always loved camp men and the I love queer culture I guess I just I never really felt
• 1:05:47
  just wasn't me yes right I mean I thought it was hilarious I thought Julian Clare he was very
• 1:05:52
  funny but I clearly wasn't Julian Clare yes a hyper camp British you know comedian yeah sure
• 1:05:57
  and that's fine and look I'm not even British I think you can certainly hold on to your own
• 1:06:03
  individualism you can get a sense of who you are as an individual person and allow for the complexities
• 1:06:09
  in nuance of life while at the same time you know recognizing the fact that certain groups based
• 1:06:16
  on their identity have been historically treated a certain way that though that legacy still lives
• 1:06:21
  with us today and that that extends to both identity groups and also economic classes for sure yeah
• 1:06:30
  I mean will it ever will there ever be a point at which we've won the battle enough that it
• 1:06:37
  becomes counterproductive for the community to set this big vision of itself up as this behemoth
• 1:06:44
  that has to be joined or not joined in other words will we ever reach a point at which there's
• 1:06:48
  such tolerance of gainers that we don't really need pride hmm well they keep making homophobes
• 1:06:55
  I must say and sometimes I think the level fewer and fewer well yes with fewer and fewer with
• 1:06:59
  less and less power true yes yeah I mean there's almost nothing you could do in a corporation
• 1:07:05
  nowadays that would be more likely to get you hauled before HR and potentially fired than to be
• 1:07:12
  openly homophobic well maybe in your corporation here in shred but as you were saying if you work
• 1:07:17
  for a massive multinational that you know regularly colludes with the Saudi government or whatever
• 1:07:22
  or sponsoring the guitar world carpet whatever I mean if you start if you start pushing back against
• 1:07:27
  the corporate wokeness to the point where it hurts profits then you'll start to get some pushback
• 1:07:31
  that you worry about that yeah that's again that's again the the material analysis the the
• 1:07:36
  critique of capitalism is is the important element to that that story I think but I but I take
• 1:07:41
  your point like and this is the frustration and there is a movement within the Mardi Gras again I
• 1:07:46
  know we keep coming back to that because we're yeah yeah it's what you're buried to a bed and I
• 1:07:49
  suck dick but um it's all we think about but there is this real movement within the Mardi Gras
• 1:07:54
  right now to get it back to its radical grassroots right and sort of say hang on we shouldn't be
• 1:08:00
  allowing I mean um Gilead was a major sponsor of the Mardi Gras few years ago now Gilead charges
• 1:08:07
  extraordinary amounts of money to gay men in the US who want to access um what's that the prep prep
• 1:08:15
  right so again which is like a sort of a prophylactic against HIV yes yeah yeah something you take
• 1:08:22
  to you know an incredible innovation that would have grown out of some private sector uh profiteering
• 1:08:28
  but also through a uh pure research pure scientific research with no profit motive whatsoever
• 1:08:34
  so we have this but it didn't right I mean it was a private it was a consequence of a private drug
• 1:08:38
  drug company a private drug company that would have been starved by people who educated through a
• 1:08:43
  publicly funded education system based on previously probably not probably no probably in the
• 1:08:48
  they're probably in the states are probably I mean they're at their university education would
• 1:08:51
  not be publicly funded well there are much of universities in America they get public funds
• 1:08:56
  you know the people who go on to invent uh you know life-saving drugs that gigantic drug
• 1:09:01
  companies tend to have gone to Ivy League schools but that can be another another example of
• 1:09:05
  inequality of the barbarous inequality but also standing on the shoulders of scientific research
• 1:09:10
  that is shared throughout the world through a spirit of global cooperation with no
• 1:09:14
  interested in profits whatsoever yeah but anyway what's what's the point about this so I
• 1:09:19
  drew you mean a drug company is drug sharing uh so drug company profiteering by charging uh
• 1:09:24
  then uh uh extraordinary amounts of money for their life-saving um uh for life-saving medication
• 1:09:30
  is is listed as a sponsor for for Mardi Gras and so the radical get across through its
• 1:09:35
  socialist anti-capitalist section of Mardi Gras would say this is this is yeah we should be
• 1:09:40
  up to something more than just being a corporate front for uh messages of uh glib tolerance
• 1:09:46
  yes yes because of in the material reality thanks to capitalism this massive here he goes again
• 1:09:52
  he's using the word again he's going to blame every good capitalism well I've got a sore foot
• 1:09:57
  capitalism to blame because it's made the shoes it made these shoes made these shoes that made
• 1:10:03
  my foot so uh the book is called what's the book called and it's the way to fight a comedy book
• 1:10:08
  is this a comedy book Tom the level of research what's the book oh it's called I'm a lady
• 1:10:15
  old one that's like straight against boomers billionaires and everything else yeah but then it's a
• 1:10:20
  comedy book it is funny yeah unfortunately I only had a pdf of it you know how bad it is to read
• 1:10:28
  off a pdf it is annoying it's annoying but I liked the bits that I read as I was scrolling through
• 1:10:33
  it on my iPad thanks man and when I get an actual copy of the book I will send you a hug copy
• 1:10:38
  that would be nice wouldn't that would be great capitalism sucks by my book capitalism sucks by
• 1:10:43
  capitalism sucks and Josh disagrees with what liberal means by my book you should put that on
• 1:10:50
  the cover of the second print you should put the man the quote the quote from me quote from Josh
• 1:10:55
  that ABC radio the man doesn't even know what a liberal is well you take around for our first
• 1:11:04
  date questions because our most loyal subscribers get a special bonus section and we it's like
• 1:11:09
  we're on a first date and I peppy you with sort of raw shark questions and you just the first
• 1:11:15
  thing that comes in your mind okay and people want to get the bone all the bonus content with no ads
• 1:11:19
  uncomfortable conversations dot sub stack dot com or something like that it's a go to go just
• 1:11:23
  research for uncomfortable conversations on sub stack you ready the greatest broadcaster of our age
• 1:11:27
  and this is preparation for you see and that's capitalism working right there Tom that's that's
• 1:11:34
  capitalism working right there my fans want more content than I can provide them with yes so I'm
• 1:11:38
  like well you know how about you kick in and then maybe I can go on a holiday or something that's
• 1:11:43
  not what I use the money to be free podcasts for all would they won't even need to be a
• 1:11:48
  picture but who would be making those podcasts people see this is the thing and me I'd be enslaved
• 1:11:53
  you basically say you'd say you've got to make another podcast I go what's in it for me you'd go
• 1:11:57
  from each according to his ability to each according to his needs yes I'm like I've got lots I've
• 1:12:01
  got more ability than I have need so you I'm just going to be working hard do you enjoy making a
• 1:12:05
  podcast I don't enjoy making the podcast enough that I'll make the additional content without
• 1:12:09
  getting paid for you don't need the additional content on the socialist okay because you've got
• 1:12:13
  all your material well then people will be getting less less John that's fine if that's the
• 1:12:18
  trade the world is clamoring for more Josh steps content Tom this is what you don't understand
• 1:12:24
  about capitalism clamoring and I'm about to give it to them right now because they are loyal
• 1:12:32
  subscribers they're going to pay for it otherwise I wouldn't do it for the extra bit I mean I'll
• 1:12:36
  do the free bit anyways anyway um what's the best cuisine Italian okay what's been the best year
• 1:12:48
  of your life so far um god that's a very very good question um I guess I have to say the one
• 1:13:00
  where I met my boyfriend oh that was 2020 so that's absolutely not true I was ironically
• 1:13:07
  2016 was a crazy year for me in which I was creatively fulfilled and I guess it was beginning of a
• 1:13:14
  a new stage of my life and I was starting to ask some big questions so yeah 2016 nice the year you
• 1:13:19
  became a communist if there was if there was an Olympic Games for every day activities what what I
• 1:13:26
  was just a little taste of our first eight questions which you'll be able to hear all of if you
• 1:13:32
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• 1:14:00
  next time. Uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma follow me Josh Seps on Twitter
• 1:14:11
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• 1:14:17
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