Tech Antitrust, The War On Algebra, The Right To Disconnect, & Squatter Revolution In The US
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Appeared on the daily show standing ovation OK. The crowd is like going wild. Like I did not realized until this interview that SHE genuinely believed her job was to make sure that these companies actually fail.

The proposed law will legally establish a right to disconnect. Just turn the phone off, dude. All the norms that I know that were email jobs, none of them work hard at all.

And she's like, why do these spoke s want kids learning math so fast and then shereen shot something. If you're advocating for equity and education, you're always going to be advocating for gifted kids to not perform.

And gifted ways is taking over. By the way, I venezuelan migrants who got released an ice processing center. These are the west Venus whelan i've ever seen in my life.

What's up, guys? Welcome back to the pod. Uh, that at the top, I want to start with lino.

This is a couple days old. Lon appeared on the daily show. You, this is a binds ftc chair. Women is kind of like industry terrorist and chief. Her job is to dismantle big tech roughly.

I mean, that sort of her self proclaim job, I guess at this point, is the Mandate that SHE believes that he has a and she's been executing, you know, with great force uh SHE calls herself self sort of entrepreneurs about IT SHE peared to the daily show, big to do mostly the headline there was um john had wanted to do this at apple and was not allowed for whatever reason. I got to tell you, I wanted to have you want a podcast and apple asked us not to do IT to have you. They literally said, please don't talk to her.

I said down to a watch you just because i'd heard so much about IT and what I found was much funny er than that um so first while he shows up, this is a government official, right? Her job is to just sort of glass companies. I didn't even think that anybody knew who he was outside of tech.

Standing ovation. okay? The crowd is like going wild over linking. Not even said anything at this point. Um SHE sits down at this point now the crowd every time he said of incentive is a twenty minutes sort of mutual mass paraty interview between her and steward just like loving each other, obsessed with each other ah every time he even sort of casually implies that she's going to go after this sort of tech company. Wild cheers from the audience and about like five minutes.

And I realized the sort of strange absence of any actual claim that any tech company have done anything wrong, what so ever. I sort of kept waiting for that to happen, and I never IT never appeared once I get your thoughts, I to go through a few sort of interesting pieces of the interview first, and just get your take on ally in this kind of cultural moment that were in more generally at one point, in their sort of lambasted of tex steward. Pretty sure, sort of argue, don't argue, suggested that jeff beels was still running amazon.

Uh, there was at one point of conflation of boeing. So uh, lindon mentions, if they don't get sort of big tech under control, you know, boying jets are going to keep falling out of the sky so this bizarre conflation of that airline with I don't want apples potential monopoly um the APP store um the most interesting intelligences ce to me I think in the real substance of IT probably this conversation a SHE spoke about instagram, specifically the instagram acquisition. Now when facebook acquired instagram, like ten years ago, I was univerSally made fun of throughout, not only, you know, the press, but tech. Everyone was like, this is crazy. A billion dollars for what IT make no sense.

Facebook buying the free smart phone, mobile sharing, up for a billion dollars.

a .

billion .

dollars .

of money. For a thing that kind .

of ruins your pictures now, obviously have seen is like the most genius move ever in the history of social media. Lena says her. Her breakdown for this is like at the time that facebook acquired instagram, they needed to acquired instagram because facebook, such for mobile and instagram, was great at IT.

And if facebook did not acquire instagram, that company, he believes, would have failed, which I didn't realize, like I did not realize until this interview that SHE genuinely believed her job was to make sure that these companies actually failed. Like what is IT about if you just break that position down? What he is saying is like success itself is anti competitive.

Anyway crazy interview. Um really what you see there is a desire on her part to take apart business. Um there's not really an actual claim that she's made uh against any of these companies that he went after and the crowd loved IT so SHE certainly at her and john both.

And we said earlier, maybe few weeks back, maybe couple months back, we talked about steward being a new force in media. He certainly is. The clippers are huge.

The show is huge. His audience loves IT. Um what do you make of the linear moment?

I mean, it's pretty clear that there is a attack backlash, but I feel like a surprising and a little bit dismaying to see a standing ovation for the message of lindon. Is sentiment text bad? And people are like, you know.

chipping out over which a government official to the whole framing that steward cap hammering home with her SHE SHE gave IT to herself SHE SHE invoked the language like scrappy upstart and what not. They are trying to frame an official for the most powerful government in human history as an underdog in a fight against, in a fight against tech. That's crazy to me, like who actually holds power in this country.

The t companies hold a lot of power and a lot of wealth, but the government is power that they're literally power. What is he talking about? I don't understand this. You're not an underdog and steward kind of I mean, he is just he's like a clown for the democrats. I understand that he's very good at IT.

Um but the way that he sort of to see like a left wing person sit down with the government of a figure head of real power, that's crazy to me that just it's embarrassing. I don't know why. I don't know. I don't know why he thinks that he's fighting for for the little guy there. I mean, she's the biggest guy you could possibly be.

Yeah, I don't really get how andy trust supposed to work in the tax space. This is something as possible for a log time because i'm generally somebody who I support and I trust you know ah I think there is a lot of specially agrico during other places where is is just gotten way too big that is uncompetitive and um something goes with medical sector.

And there's a lot of companies where you could break them up because they make a product, uh, and they have basically theyve cornered the market and nobody is can enter IT IT because what to be competitive. And it's things like insulin or um seeds to monsanto brand, a sorry, a patented seeds, things like that. But when IT comes to tech, the reason that these are monopolies because of consumer choice, you know when you go to the groceries, when you buy tomato, you don't know it's a monsanto tomato, you just buy the tomato um and the the competition is all around prize.

And if you are big enough, you can corner the market and essentially make things are competitive with with tech, though I thinks a lot different. So you're talking about social media because people are choosing these companies because they offer a product. And in order for a social media companies work, you have to have scale.

People on facebook, instagram, twitter, whatever, because other people are on IT, uh, so you can break IT up and have two different twitters with, you know, half of the consumers go to one half to go to the the other. You would basically just you would create two companies where one would succeed, one would fail, and then you would have a monopoly all over again. So the the whole concept of, uh, and you just to comes to social media is specifically has never really make sense to me at all.

I noticed this a handful of few years ago. They started to, and this is a great question of what do they actually mean when they are talking about anti trust here? I think forever the idea was, is their consumer harm?

You know, is this company corner ing a market on some vital thing that you think probably famously, the railroads right like you you need access to the railroads. And if you don't have IT your screed and if someone is corner the entire market and they can jack up the Prices, there's clear consumer harm there. Um they're really have distance themselves from that question of consumer harm uh and you could say I think you can make an argument certainly john and hates doing IT um that social media is harming people, harming kids.

specifically. I think the evidence there is pretty mixed that we've talked this a little bit. We're sort of all kind of roughly intuitively feel that it's bad, but there's not I know these little evidence there, but it's sort of a separate question when IT comes to anti trust.

If you think it's really bad, like a cigarets or something, that's not an eighty trust question. That's like an F D A question or something. Um there they are now for for the monopoly conversations, for the anti trust conversations, they are really sort totally discarding the question of whether or not this person having dominance is bad.

And in fact, there are these places where dominance is really good, including in the marketplace. Talking about amazon, like amazon at scale, is able to do delivery the way that IT is for so inexpensively. And that's actually really good for consumers.

The Prices is historically have been really good. You can break that apart and sort of find some the various thing that they are doing. Sure, there is something that someone in the comments leave us uh but in general, like cheap shit people tend to enjoy.

And um that's what amazon has been able to afford. They're always care. And so you have to sort of ask yourself like what is the real reason for this? And I think it's linked to the people cheering in in the standing ovation and what not.

IT does just seem like they're very rich and they're very successful and in a manner that has not really been seen in you know a long, long maybe ever sort of time. This many people are this few people with so much wealth, right? Like that's the thing itself that is bothering them. It's not that the success is hurting anybody else is the success is itself sort of unprecedented um and IT just drives people like this crazy yeah .

I need the the nefarious things that companies like gams on doing do not actually affect the average person. In fact, they actually help the consumer in some voice which is why uh anti trust has been slow because it's just a if the consumer is getting you know something for a cheaper prize or whatever you can really be. But the stuff that they're doing is like, uh, hurting other small businesses.

essentially. Like I ve hurt stories about people like they'll make a product they are selling IT on. Amazon IT does really well and then amazon basically copies their product and sells at a cheaper prize.

Um and so stuff like that um you know I think is genuinely that is anti competitive. That is a problem. But why these people are cheering, in my opinion.

But let's talk I want to talk about this question that you just raise anticompetitive. You know you said IT is anti competitive and that's why it's a problem. I don't know first, I don't know that it's anticompetitive. It's competitive in the they're winning the competition.

But I would say why does IT why why is competition itself the thing that we are pricing here? Why are we saying they they need to not be winning this competition? It's like you care about consumers? Or do you care about sort of this strange like ideal of of a of lots of people competing? I don't really know why we care about that.

The competition piece, why does that matter? history? Ally, I think you can make the argument that you need to care about that because that and consumer harm were linked. But if it's not the case, then which thing should you care about? And it's like clearly, you should care about the consumers.

There's a more there's maybe a more silicate anio here, which is the department of justice law IT against apple, that one of the things accusing apple love is not allowing others smart watches to pair with the iphone. And it's like what that is totally incoherent along the lines of competition because this is just a product that they offer that the consumer can either opt into or opt out of. And um I don't see how I don't see how any competition concerns come in there at all because it's it's basically a one product. Did the iphone in the apple watch pair and that's a confusing it's .

like a saggy enisa back in the day got really, really huge. And then they were sued because they wouldn't allow you to play .

intendo games on the sugar or something that actually the best .

of my knowledge, that's never happened but OK but like it's like that's IT, that's what IT is. That's what happens here when they think it's just too big. And so you have to be allowed for the absence one. It's like you have to be allowed onto the APP store to to compete.

But then when again, when when we get to the point where it's like, well, how is this harming consumers is always some really abstract, idealistic argument about like we'll just imagine all of the flourishing of interesting ideas we would have if IT we're more open. And I actually think that that's true. And I fucking hate how closed off apple is, but it's it's not really clear that it's worse for the consumer.

In fact, I think you can make an argument that is much Better for the consumer. Apple famous, I mean, when apple first took off IT was the era of the people were getting virus. Is on their computer still like, I mean, your computer crippled with viruses? And apple took off because he was a closed system that was Better at placing.

Like I I mean, there a lot of reasons part of IT was a brain monopoles like looked Better than those cool ipod commercials that they were cool, then everyone loved them. I mean, who knows? But the closed element of that system was seen as advantages for certain things that were seen as to the consumers benefit.

Yeah I mean, I think that select the broader question has been happening for anti trust for a long time, which is does is the consumer the only person that matters in the equation? Or is there a broader project of. Competition that we need to be pursuing on the market.

But is that are we mate? Is IT becoming too difficult for smaller firms to compete? And you know what effects does that have on innovation, on the broader economy? bola? There's like a whole body of literature about this. But I mean, I you can make the argument either way. I mean, I do think there are downsides to something like apple or like if you get you know if you get an iphone, you are kind of like a locked into the stem where you .

have to keep in just you can just not use an you can just not use an iphone. And when IT comes to the the sort of argument about, you know, these companies are you can't compete with them anymore and what not? There wasn't a version of amazon before amazon, and there was an a version of facebook before facebook, like all of these companies were.

So there was an a version of uber before uber. They're all sort of first of their kind. I mean, yes, it's true.

I think competing with them at this point is very, very hard. I don't know entirely how you would do. Think about google.

The google is searching, apply and has forever. Um IT hasn't hurt consumers. IT seems totally fine for consumers.

And it's weird to sort of invent something that never before existed that was the google specifically. IT was there. I was their algorithm.

Another alga would have been IT was their specific search. Forget what I was exactly. IT was like that there. Their tech, the underline technology behind their search was very different than when to come previously, was very simple and IT was very effective and they won. But IT wasn't like IT didn't exist before that. So it's just weird to say like you're too big to compete with if what you're competing with is something that is brand new. IT would be like if this podcast got huge and like, I mean, millions of people are watching IT and people are saying like, well, it's not fair to other people who want to start a part is podcast it's like, okay, sorry, I do not tell .

you yeah just i'm just like making like yeah so .

make future I want to understand what has going on with this. It's crazy and actually river, what do you make um as sort of like I would say like a like a glen Greenwald in leftist um with a healthy suspicion of government. What do you make of like the steward sort of sitting down with the government official thing in and just, you know her publicly as a left wing guy? I mean, it's strange. No.

yeah does. And IT IT reminds me of, if you remember a couple of years ago when lives were buying stamps because of something that the post faster general did with male and baLance said he was like three layers of convoluted political nonsense um but like the post office website sold out of stamps IT was like a weird thing but is like it's this rise of political hobby as a hobby as on where you have not only the Johnson to know who this woman is but his audience snows of this woman is and it's it's in a way it's like a sub cultural thing. I actually don't think that IT even described like the average democratic voter or anything. It's it's really odd .

h such in the last thought before we move on to another banger, if I do says on myself river.

to your point about how consumers are driving tech monopoly in a lot of ways in ways that they they weren't necessarily driving agricultural monopoly or real monopoly. I mean, I think my sense of this whole tech anti trust debate is like if consumers want to proactively opt out of things like amazon and spend more money to support small businesses because they sort of think that, you know, the monopoly of amazon or apple and olive for phones is bad and they want to spend more money to buy other goods is almost like a political statement that seems like the way to sort of fight ah the technology.

If you think it's bad, I don't think someone likely nichols ing in a and you know implementing some top down government solution that probably is gna have just the effective you know eventually recreating the monopoly in a different ways. People are always going to up into the best technology. There are always going to choose google page rank over, you know whatever other search competitor came before IT. Um that seems like the solution to me because I do feel I understand people who are out of frustrated by you know amazon practices around copying other consumer goods or just like don't want to live in a world where you're ordering your toothpaste to be delivered by prime or something like that. But if you don't want to live in a world like that, you should just go out and buy your own tooth faced at the store instead of ordinary to your house like a lot of this just seems like consumers are choosing convenience uh and you know, you get the world that you pay for basically.

right? And I get there is A A degree of, like the more people do IT, the more you sort of have to do IT yourself, you know, the the world ops you into the system at a certain point. But I don't know, I don't really hear people talking about IT this way.

I don't hear people talking about the sort of remote culture and house of spiritually harming that maybe is. And I don't see people talking about making the context of the fc. Do not talking about social media or of depressing us and our kids.

It's it's just a straight economic argument that doesn't make any sense. And IT, patrice, I think the real motivation behind all of this, which is just to punish people who are successful in tax specifically, which increasingly, I do believe is seen as a found of by the, by washington people. I think that is seen as they found of competitive power, which is alarming.

And you see these people kind of emerging from washington, wanting to be involved in tech. There are no shortage of people from, you know, whatever administration immediately making A B line into either a VC shop or working in house at some giant tech company. Or in the case of what is face, I forget his named how the guy worked for drop, who now think he's going to buy tiktok, right? Like they're all fanatic zing about being mark zuck burg is this weird memetic health cape um and and I think that's that's what is happening.

It's like IT is this just a war for power uh is nothing to do with any of us. Um speaking of this connection though, thank god for mad hani in san Francisco who went from being just one of the worst supervisors in history to one of the worst state assessment in california state history. That is sort of what happens, I think in the state in santa.

You can really break that down for us later, but seems like people to sort of fail up for out throughout their entire careers. Uh, this due drops a bill and IT is going to be, you know, people have the the the actual right, he argues, to disconnect from their phone and what he means by that is, uh, a limited number of hours to which you can be reached by email. IT will be after which, after the set number of hours IT will be literally illegal. I think brand, and I believe you will want the research is one be literally illegal to send a email. I don't know.

I packed IT for me. The proposed law will legally establish a right to disconnect. And basically, it'll require every employer in california to have a policy or action plan communicating how I will implement that standard. That's from a news article that I read about IT to is not totally under percent clear.

Enforcement of the law will be done the other department of labor, which could levy fines at one hundred dollars per incident for prayers with a who like, I don't know, paying somebody at five one P M. It's something like that. It's it's totally, in my opinion, the weird law that i've ever come across, quite Frankly, because for me, IT doesn't make IT doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Because people self select into jobs that are difficult and they self select out of jobs that are difficult at the same time. If this if this bill is directed at the laptop class, the laptop class that .

doesn't .

want to work very hard and wants to just like clock in at nine and leave at five, they're already in jobs like that. So i'm not sure what this like in the people that I want to work. Hards are like going after ambitious aspirational positions and ambitious companies and working hard because they choose to do that.

So it's totally weird that like california is just like, no, I don't consent you know when everybody else is consenting um so yeah I think so really weird like that mean yeah it's solely that mean it's like not me you know and I don't I don't get IT it's creepy to me like why why is california? It's almost like they they assume that there's a quote in the in the standard by honey, they got him to to talk about the bill. He says right now it's it's very mercy and he's talking about jobs, I guess like it's very marky.

And people on the left, people are left expecting to be working in responsive all the time. And so that's a quote. He's like people don't know what to expect their jobs and so honey actually thinks that there are like hundreds of thousands of californians again in the laptop class you don't know what their job expectations are IT doesn't like for for me, this is like not actually realistic and not happening.

I think I there is an interesting thing here, at least I think that honey is correct to address new behaviors in a world where we fundamentally changed because of technology, right? The phone has changed behavior. I think people are way more connected now than they ever were.

I think IT has a lot of I think IT has a lot of negative effect on our lives too. I I sort of agree with all of these different things. Um I think it's worth talking about. I think it's a crazy thing to pass a law on. It's specifically crazy because one I don't know what kind of law you would pass to really fix this problem of a fundamental shift in society because of a technology that change the way that we communicate.

But what he sort of does is he raises the possibility for opting into a city using where really you work in a start up, for example, there's there's no such thing as a start up that can just clock out after, you know, after the hours of five or before the hours of nine. IT doesn't doesn't work that way like there's work all of the time. There are lots of jobs, even outside of startups that are like this.

You're working in the newsroom and you're chasing a story. They don't just stop in the end of a story because, well, I D like reached my average hours per week. You're on salary.

You're not getting paid by the hour. And if you want to be paid by the hour, you can do that. There are jobs where you can do that. Um I think that is a complicated labor issue, and I would be more willing to sort of even entertain IT if IT wasn't framed in such a way was like I personally would not even be permitted to opt into a situation like this.

You see this huge push also on the left to get that when I see the left, it's i'm talking far left like rose in bio left, hammer and sickle in bio left leftists like crazy arranged twitter left uh you see A A push to ban like what they called child labor which is fourteen year world's working at mcDonald or something um anyone who's a teenager getting a job which I it's another situation where I think to myself it's not your right to tell me what I can cannot do my job when I was thirteen working illegally um and in fourteen when I started working legally on the board walk IT changed my life for the Better IT was one of the best things that ever happened to me I worked all the time I absolutely loved that I made new friends. I had my own money, I had freedom um and IT was all sort of with a kind of training wheel situation and I get that these you know high level. The reason even have child labor laws is because you have these situations of exploitation or whatever um you kids you know forcing factories and what not by their family.

Okay, that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is you are telling me a adult perfectly capable of making his own decisions on the way that he wants to live, how to live. And IT annoyed me.

IT really does not. It's more than IT infuriates me. I would say I .

am infuriated. River is a professional class politics and is essentially what IT is.

Is there's been this weird move on the left and I thought about this a lot early in my career how the modern boat is essentially just a form of uber needle class politics um or pmc politics class politics everyone to call IT and that's basically what this is because if you are a working class person and you are not going to be getting slack messages at all and you're definitely not going to be getting more in the world the night and I do sometimes and that's fine because I signed up for this and I get a nice salary and whatever. Um I I think. I think it's kind of ridiculous to go after amy.

They're clearly playing to their the left is really playing to its base, which is no more working class people. IT is people who have detail jobs. And I mean, that of itself is one of the crazy st critical developments, I think um of of the twenty first century is that the people is that this great divide between the left and the working class just keep good getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Um I find a passion for that reason but I mean I yeah I mean I don't like you know sometimes that is kind of hard to find word life baLance um if you work remotely, if you have a job where you're like, you know journalism, where you're kind of on the clock of time, but it's what you signed up for and um this can handle IT. Then you know you to get another I don't .

know what I sort of thought that you would have of everyone here been the most kind of interested, at least in the question or like you clearly interested but like open to IT for some reason do you not can could you .

maybe steal me? Whether are coming from yeah where they're coming from as they want a they want to create more work life baLance um for people they don't have they view as a labor issue where your productivity is reason. Yet a lot of people in these sort of e mail job positions feel like they are still on the clock all the time.

That create these neros and uh the consistence of anxiety here slide novation you sleep whatever and I did IT, but uh, it's what you signed up for. I just really don't like growing up the way I did like I never thought I would have a job where the this sort of thing would even be a problem to me as opposed to like paying my bill. So I kind of just don't have a lot of sympathy for this type of, should I? I don't know IT area takes me uh IT feels like uh source snobby ge upper middle class complaining and I don't I don't like .

that which you .

know this is like that Tyler that created tweet about cyber bullying that he posted in twenty twelve just just like shut the laptop like.

yeah I mean, come on IT is is hard, I can see but then again, I mean, honest, when people don't respond.

who's the coming else around .

now I I don't think I think I might be the what do you think about this first before I say where where I think I island here?

Well, I think that this is I mean, my issue with this bill really is that I think it's not going to change anything in practice and it's just going to add a lot of ridiculous red tape. I mean, there's a clauses IT that if you have a if you're gonna a job that might require round the clock work at times or work know about odd hours, you have to specify IT in someone's contract.

Um and so you know for a start up, I would assume every startup is going to have a clause in the contract that says, you know your you might be required to work around the clock if you know we have a big product launch coming up for something like that um which is like, okay, so what is this bill going to do in practice? I mean, you're going up to like add some clauses to a contract. Uh, some employee might get mad and sue you.

So I guess there's legal fees with that um and maybe now you'll have to pay out some money from the department department of labor might advocate on their behalf or something a company might have to pay out some money in settlements if they don't add that case to the contract. But in practice, IT just seems like totally mean california. Ari has all this insane like it's it's a miracle the tech industry emerged here because the state has so many insane like requirements on running a company and you know, all of this red tape.

And this is just more of the same thing. I mean, I am actually sympathetic to people who wanted just connect to five pm, but I think that this bill is not onna really do anything meaningful. And again, I feel like my instinct of these things is like you opt in to the jobs. And if you have a problem with the company culture in an ideal world, I guess you know you could maybe try to change IT or sort of yeah.

is there an exception for doctors or or people like that jobs where like somebody dies if you don't show up because that I mean, that seems like crazy to me where if I am like in the hospital and like there's only one doctor area that knows I can like do my heart surgery or whatever and he's like sorry, off the clock.

All these bills work where it's sort of ambiguous and then they just punish you if they don't like you. Um and it's it's like you don't know until you know, I do think the broader when this is a similar to the acting in a way, but I think this one is more interesting or more compelling. If we're living in a world, everybody has opted into the system or enough people have opted in that you sort of have to opt in to to compete.

And we can divorce this right now from the work issue. We can just talk about the expectation that I have from my friends that I respond to text um fairly quickly is very new and or or my surely my my family, my mom like uh my like my partner is that that is a strange behavior that never existed before. That went from, I mean, ten years ago. Fifteen years ago you could kind of let A A tex sit, but the the at this point, you really can't um you're expected to sort of respond and that is that has kind of default opted all of society into a level of connectivity that many people are probably not most people, I bet, are probably not comfortable with. I think most people would like to be more unplugged, but it's it's very hard to do that socially now because so many people are on no.

yeah, just turn the phone .

after yes, but there are consequences for that never .

existed before yeah, I think that's a good point. I just for me like I can't cut over, I just I don't buy have a hard time buying the necessity of this particular bill um first off, I like all the norms that I know that working email jobs, none of them work hard at all. They all takes super long lunches.

They wake up at eight fifty nine because they are working from homes still. And they take off as soon as they can. Like at four, like at four fifty nine P. M. They are off. I don't I totally don't buy this notion that there are a bunch of exploited upper middle class workers that are getting nightmares from their slack messages who can't just shut off the phone and a who can who have like opted into jobs that would even do that to them. I I don't see IT like it's I don't think it's realistic.

It's all the not. It's like you have to imagine it's the same ford, csco nonprofit industrial complex type person and the government worker who are working ninety five ves who are complaining the most about this. And the ironic thing is I don't want this build a past, but probably if all of those people were doing less work, IT would be Better. I mean, the government not doing work at all at this point but on the now profit side, like we IT would be a social benefit if they just fuck and stopped for a little while. Um last thought on this before we move on to the war on algebra.

Yeah I think IT feeds into the ambient anxiety of the prior middle class that barbering right described pretty well and a fear following which is the book was writing really before the internet took off.

But IT is this book that basically says that like there there's a sort of anxiety that pervades like the professional classes because your job is your identity and there is you kind of have to always be even if you don't work that hard, you have to be prepared to work at any time. And like the if you don't, if you aren't able to do that, then you are going to fall in. It's it's difficult to you you vaster your identity and you have to become like a regular sort of like shift worker and a you lose not only your job, your income battues.

So I kind of lose your identity and way. And I think that like that that sort of like a little bit of what this is about. It's not that people don't necessarily or like afraid of like responding to an email at six p or whatever.

They don't want to have to like think about the emo. They want to be treated like um oh a waiter or whatever. To be honest, the happy as i've ever bit in my life was when I was like a waiter and I was probe because I would go in, I would clock in and then I got off and I got drunk over time. So my twenty so IT didn't matter. But like, I mean, that was kind of, you know, you are very like you don't think about work when you're not at work and that's what people want but they also want the income and the prestige and the identity of being like, well, you know i'm a coder or am a writer and you know whatever uh, you can have IT all this tradeoff to everything and you just have to accept that if you can then you know choose a slower pace, choose a different list. Logistics s up there can be less money.

That comes along with, I think, an interesting distinction. I was also, I was the best and I loved IT. IT was the best job I ever had um we know the best job I ever had, but IT was the probably the happiest like the most peaceful that I ever was uh and that's just not how art works and that's not how building companies works and that's not how really demanding jobs where you feel like you accomplish something tremendous work.

Work comes where IT comes and you work as hard as you have to do to get something done um and yeah that's that sorry, mat tani. I even never had a real job in your life. But this is not how working works.

There's there's an obvious way to sort of raise yourself confidence and be proud of yourself is to do work that you're proud of and to do work that you're proud of. It's not usually easy. And I think, like you said, river, the laptop class here in california is trying to have its cake needed to and they're gonna get there by limiting their work hours. We'd even though they .

already don't work hard.

making they do not work hard. This there's nobody that's. That all there are so many companies can go to where they're giving you mental health days are giving you half day fridays. Um hr is just buzzing around and asking if you're all right, there's perks you like. This still exists. Nobody in california, the laptop crisis, just like does has not like nobody y's being forced to work more than they want to, except for those people who are opting in and actually doing you know like things that they care about.

Um I do want to move on such a you probably would watching this kind of, I guess, yet another dusk up over the question of whether or not we should be teaching our kids math uh, on twitter, settling on garreton and a company he invest in and this one arranged activist, I believe activists. I don't know the media personality. I don't know what he is, just tell me the story and let's talk about .

math yeah speaking of members of the laptop class in california with nebula job descriptions, I mean, you so basically last week we talked about to boller and this kind of push to water down math education across california, which is happening in public schools all over the country.

One of the solutions that enterprising people have sort of thought of to fight back against this, like idiotic fiction of pathetic h education, is creating their own companies that teach kids, uh, math and acela ated pace. And so one of these companies is called mental va. Uh, gerry can happens to be invested in IT.

Um I don't know, may be through Y C. M, not sure, but the company seems pretty cool. It's like an APP that has all of these sort of courses and you can put very Young children on IT and they will learn up to college level courses before there in seven grade. So they teach reading um IT looks like per their sort of curriculum, they're trying to teach four year olds kindergarten and first great math, which pretty cool. Apparently they're trying to teach seventh graders ap calculus and fifth graders ap computer science.

Alder were one in two and fourth grade um and they have a sort of interesting methodological approach where they're doing flipped classrooms where kids of self study the material and then they can work with a tutor, I think, who will sort of help them a reinforce the concepts ah and they have a ton of interest even though i'm not even sure they've launched ed officially yet. So anyway, that brings us to Emily mills who i'm not actually sure what he does. She's always on twitter. I mean, everyone who's like familiar with sf twitter politics knows who sf males just her using him is she's also really obsess with you sona SHE like has this long tweet thread where she's like mike elana piece and founders fund involved yeah you you should look into IT ah is like also involved you involving the schoolboy recall he brings up the this .

this is fan behavior hi Emily. Thank you for your sport.

SHE is IT was actually really good promoter for us um yeah SHE you know like mentions your interview with Chris roof o she's she's a fan SHE SHE looked .

into closing my mom but she's one of my biggest fans. That sounds .

like yeah SHE read the about page on party wars anyway. So Emily mills tweet out like screen shots of the slide deck from in tava which you're saying you we're going to teach two year olds to read a second great level and all this kind of cool stuff um and she's like, why do these folks want kids learning math so fast and then share screen shot something where I don't know someone someone to society with the company is like, you know, we want to accel ate human achievement and they are talking about how many lives will be lost if the mr. Nave vaccine came a year later. So this is kind of this idea that know we should be educating kids well and as early as possible so that we can innovate more effectively ah in the short long term and SHE then says like SHE sort of reframes her critiques like this is an attempt to exploit children's labor because basically the ideas like these tech brows want to teach kids advanced math and coating so that they can build products for them and become this like under class of cheap labor but .

I give me paint a picture what that is that's like i'm imagining just like thousands of like little ten year old in lab coats at a chok board just doing addition and like that's crazy that's an awesome in a way but very a weird it's like a very bizarre mesh dark fantasy.

But that's not even what she's saying. She's saying they want the tech rows are coming after your future labour. I don't think that he's saying that that the tech bows are going to exploit ten year odds.

No, he does say he says, um SHE SHE sites a video of a not a kid of a guy who works for rapid, I guess, which is investing and SHE said these investors literally want the kid's labor um and he then doubles down in in comments and take that guy so he he .

responds and he's like because he goes off on biology as well and he goes after in going to do we're we're going to do we're going to take over create institutions about blog's like this is scandalous. They're going to take out they're na do new things in and create a new world in. Object is like, yes, we are doing that. Did you think that did you really think you could just capture the schools, brainwash our kids band math and we wouldn't do something about IT like we're going to give you our children? No um yes there was a fun IT was a fun crazy war SHE had a lot of support IT seemed like, I mean, he wasn't like, yes, she's a crazy person and he has thousands of followers SHE has a lot of she's part of that a whole sort of scene of hard left I don't know if activists, personalities, whatever the people who should have fuel the local elections.

One point someone asks her, what is your beef with trying to teach math? And SHE responds and says, what is my beef with turning little todd's into learning robots? So people can use them for their future labor and bragging rights, while partner partners with people who planned to utilize funded government services until they're cheap to fail and start there.

He also said he was only men who were going after her, and her implication was that, like a manner in some way specially obsessed with teaching math to kids. And then I guess, maybe being interested in math. And i'm sitting, you're thinking, like, who is the is this the feminist position that only then care about math? I don't know. Seems suspicious. River, what would be Better to say?

IT reminds me of like, old school and argues that I used to meet sometimes when I was like, more on the left, where the whole thing is like, school is bad because IT teaches your kid how to be a good little work. I get like IT prepares them for the word force, where they can be exploded by capital, unlike all that's going to happen anyway.

So it's like a weird thing where they don't the idea that education should have anything to do with like labor productivity, which is like what the society builds. I I don't know what this could like. Everybody in the fucking soviet union was a civil engineering like they had like like they actually were pretty invested in like making people learn practical skills to the point where I kind of actually like on a hand because they were like you they figured out when you were like five like what your occupation was going to be or whatever. Um but IT it's like it's really um it's so it's so strange to be like that argument that like kids like shouldn't be prepared uh to further workforce that shouldn't not you shouldn't teach some practical skills that IT should just all be reading like already lord or something but it's cry. Don't you just .

sort of get the sense that SHE doesn't really believe this? I I think that the left in s in all of the cities, really this has been this is in new york is is the big deal in boss. And i've seen this player um they got themselves in hot water by you know going after gifted and talented programs, algebra specifically under fire in california because not necessarily we don't want our kids to learn math and started because only some kids we're learning algebra at a certain age. And those kids with a gifted kids who were doing Better at math, they were set of waited into these things.

So in an effort, I think, to do something that they perceived as the far of procedures like equitable, uh, an equality issue, a race space issue, um they created this sort of strange dynamic where they were going after the education, people were going after teaching kids. And so the really luni tunes like like Emily, then they see all this happening. And rather than be like will wait a minute, maybe my guys are wrong about something.

For example, like, I think that we should teach kids math. Actually, they have to actually find a way in their mind to justify what they think the left is actually fighting for. And in this case is we shouldn't teach our kids back.

And so SHE creates a bizarre fancy, uh, where, you know, we're teaching kids mass so they can participate, capitalism or something and you can go after in that dimension. But I don't I just give a sense you just really believe IT. I think it's all just like, you know reptilian lizard brain reaction to the discourse yeah I mean.

I do think though in my mind like equity to exact equity means equality of outcome. These people, if you're advocating for equating education, you're always going to be advocating for gifted kids to not perform and gifted ways because you then won't have equality of outcome. And that Emily mills seems like totally discontinuous also like going aside on her, as he said, he was leaving twitter in my last year and or something for master on her blue sky. And she's like she's got an insane amount of of tweet still.

You know what is going on for teen? As anyone checked in, I masted on only .

even what that is, is the same as blue sky.

A blue sky all see screen shots of every. Now they were massive, and I haven't heard of in ages.

I think the blow, at least blue sky, was where they, they uncovered the the linux back door hack that we had to take on a few days ago. So something's happening.

There was none of those will ever work because it's only loves going there that twitter is the hate side. Like you have to have your foil, you know, to mean, like you have to have, like somebody to fight with, otherwise IT doesn't work. Like that's why people go on twitter is to fight with other people.

Yes, you cannot. There's never going to be a nice twitter. There's never going to be like a libs only twitter or conservatives only twitter that I mean, the reason the blue sky doesn't work is the same race and that what is trumps thing? Truth so yeah, this is the same day I only see screen charts of that if trump h is posting and that's only because he's on there because he's like contractual, obliged or whatever he wants to come back to twitter. You can tell .

I think I once I mean, I wanted believe that true because I do enjoy tweet and sort of the way they affect the world around them, sort of like it's like in the matrix, like you're the one and you just bend reality. He's like that with short form content. Um but I I get the sense that he has a weird rivalry with elon mosque and there, I think trumps really suspicious of elon sort of naturally he like looks to men like that and doesn't see if you, if you can, if you can be in charge of something or someone threatened to him.

I don't know, has he said anything though.

because he can keep us now he did. He's got island before and elan has been extending olive renters because island has a business to run. And he like this man, this man has been bringing in the money.

We need rob back on the form. Um so he's been doing nothing but extending overtures and trumps not been biting. Um I think it'll see how I think will see how it'll depend how hard this election is.

And if if he's fifty, fifty, I think I think there's no keeping him move of twitter, but if he's winning overwhelmingly, I don't know. Um river um you have a crazy and story that you need to tell us about uh take us to the softer take us to the the heart of darkness um again back seventy years ago. Sorry to have sf uh week, but we have to about squatters .

get december this to come. Let me set IT up. So there has been squatting is the hot new craze taking over cities and various properties and various cities uh everybody's doing IT, mostly venezuelan and but everybody's .

doing IT by the way.

I got pull this off my landskip venezuela and migrants who got released, her an ice processing center and taxes went to the blocks and took over house and pull these people up because people, we're going to be like rivers being racist again. These are the latest Venus whelan i've ever seen in my life, black hair like heller .

yeah brand and says this all IT says it's only White people who squad and ever since he told me that every time I see a picture, it's like they are White it's like dir bag White buris to looking people.

right? Very national. Yeah, so you've got these White devils taken over a house and A T oc nights or hood.

A woman in queens, uh, we talk about her ago. We scared he was a after for changing the locks on her own house. He was like a house that he had inherited from her parents. Uh, insane tono. Even they heard the contractor and the contractor started squad, their house everybodys do IT if there is a venezia migrant who was like me.

And they like, I like telling Venus valan how the squad, all kinds are created the squatter are taking over the santis past the law that says that if you look before you can basically get the share of to come your house while you kick the square out. You don't have to go through the Normal addiction process uh and new bill and new york, uh, which is less, I guess, cover height sive than the one in florida, was also introduced to address this problem. Always goes back to the to seven to go.

And the tenant union, which has been shaping housing policy and every to go since the eighteen seventies, a couple decades ago, they formed a organisation in construction with food pounds, annoying August food bank. They do. So I mean, it's nice to feeding people whatever, but their their bags and their and they all claim to be straight ed for the along.

Coke, I know these people, they they formed this organza together called homes, not jails s, which is basically just a squatting organization. They recruit homeless people to take over buildings. The they, uh, tell you how to squad.

They connect you with resources. If you're squatting ads, you tried to kick you out and they are so deeply interconnected with service, go tennis union, like their hum's. A js shares a website with the same cesc tenas union and that that websites contains a link of vacant buildings. Vacant, which means just being nobody is there. I mean, this is the really that you can squirt.

The fact that they have a list of property is to go and take is I don't I I, I feel like i'm always saying things are crazy in this podcast. Crazy, fucking crazy. Think it's crazy.

I just 是 crazy。 But this is crazy. That's crazy. That is it's it's crazy to me that you have an organization just openly doing this. Um I don't even know what is the steel man for squatting rights because they seem something that seems so insane that there has to be and IT exists some version of this exist in all fifty states. So like what is the what is the thing that happens somewhere that made most people say, oh, we need to protect you .

this I I looked into this actually IT goes all the way back to medieval english comment law. It's not like in basically the deal was if you're in the middle ages in england, lane is very cultural society. So somebody goes on a crude and dies or like disappear for whatever reason.

This is not always a way to get a hold of film or to get a hold of like relatives or whatever. So they didn't want all this lane to go and used. And for people to importantly, people not to be aid, property taxes of crown.

And so if you were someone who was like all go into this farm and i'll worked the land, i'll pay the taxes or whatever, um they basically said, okay, if you do that for a certain amount of time, you can keep IT because this person abandoned in their property or there's no one to take care of IT. So it's yours now if you force the wad IT was it's a different like IT was formed by the material circumstances of literally the middle. So like IT doesn't really apply to what's going on the same for the school today, but it's been Carried out through through the centuries through common law and and that's basically the basis for for squatting on, you know, lately.

this is the still man that in cities across the U. S. They are just sorted, like buildings that have been vacant for years, and that will not you is like there are some buildings probably that have been vacant for ten years, fifteen years in.

We should allow if if if you could be a shelter for for a homeless person, then they should just be allowed to to go in and l and to sleep under that roof because there's there's like no end in sight to to the vacancy of this building. And um nobody's getting hurt because they're doing that. I think that I think I feel like that sort of the spirit of of squatting in amErica today. Yeah.

you can make that case, but that a lot time to stop. It's happening. They are taking over you vacant warehouses or whatever, they're taking over people's house.

The case that you cited in seven cisco with the people who were remodelling in their house that is messed up. Can you just that one tell the story?

Yeah, was a Young couple expecting a baby there, just found a house and severances go and you know, permits in the city, you're crazy. So they've the Operations to remodel the house that they can move into IT as a fixer upper. And as the remodeling is going on, squatters come in and they take over the house. And I was the article I cited, they still hadn't gotten their house back from the squatters .

that this was a drug.

Then yeah the is came everybody is .

doing what gets you two ways. So there are a lot of vacant buildings. Um so I think it's interesting that again, like these laws have always been around and everywhere and as river mentioned, they go back you forever so I don't think it's like it's this very specific modern thing is maybe not why the laws exist, but is how being justified today. But why are there so many vacant homes uh or or places, let's say in san Francisco um part of this is foreign yers in people holding investment property.

But the problem is there's a fear of renting your place because once someone enters your house in a really liberal city um or outside to say liver was say a really blue city um you can get them out if they start paying IT takes I might I wish I knew the exact number, but it's it's in an obsolete ly long period of time. I think it's got to be at least a year before but not paying or something like this. And that's only if they don't have kids, uh, what's they have kids? It's a whole other complicated situation, but it's it's just hard to get people out.

And it's like all of the this sort of anti i'm going to say we're to defend landor's for a second. They got a raw deal in in in these big blue cities. And this is one of the things so you can straight up just you can enter a house and brother, almost not leave.

And so of course, I mean, if that's what you're up against, you're sitting on a house, you're maybe going to sell IT in a year, two years, three years, whatever is IT worth taking on the risk that you're gna get somebody who screws you to that degree? And I think a lot of people and sympathies go think not. This is also why you keeps seeing a push from the board supervisors to introduce attacks on vacant homes.

They think they can well, is the homes are vacant. So if we just tax, it'll force them to let people in. But of course, that policy is not going to help because the reason the houses are waking is because of other policies they've already passed to make IT really not smart to rent in a lot of circumstances. So is something that you've cross IT all yeah.

Well, I mean, I think saver's sco has a sitting supervisor has declared his district in eviction freezing mean this is still present his literally said you on my watch, I don't want any Victory ending um and he was responsible for getting the city has a permanent eviction morritt um on non payment of due to non payment of rent dn covered so like you, you were unable to pay I don't exactly know what time period they used to define cover but if you were like if you didn't pay rent um at any point throughout that you can you can be victim I mean and .

I do think deep present oh sorry, I was just like deep present and the esco tenants union the about Peter a 呃 he they endorsed him and they worked with him and he did a uh workshop with them at the tender like a very close yeah yeah .

and dean started tents together， which is an organization that does, you know, this kind of similar tenants rights advocacy that gets really extreme. I mean, I think like the funny thing about all of this is you look at the people who involved in this, like activism. Lot of them live in the hate.

They are you know they come from money um many of them kind of like you know they either have inherited properties themselves like dean ah, or they you know opt into these like cocos or live collectively and that kind of thing. But they have no sense of like they have this totally infantilizing view also of homeless people because there's they're like entirely disconnected from the reality of like who the homeless and services go actually are. It's like the homeless and 3Francisco are not people who have been Priced out of homes that they were already paying for in 3Francisco。

These are drug tourists, many of whom are like actively psychotic, who, you know, you put them in the S R O S. They have ways to get rooms here and they just destroy them like it's I don't know. I think there's there's a lot of levels at which people who are advocating for squad here are like completely disconnected from, even though like poor and dispossessed people they claim to be trying to empower.

I think that the squadding thing does have the potential to to become a major national story, especially with an election year. It's an easy thing to talk about and it's a hard thing to go after. If you're on the left in biden is um you you're gonna SE.

He's already having trouble with this base on the palace. Stuff like you take away squatting. I mean you lose the breasts as forever and I don't know that the democrats can handle that because who is left as river? You measured only theyve lots.

The working class. What is left in that party? They really need, they really need the coalition.

Um I don't know what what do do you think? Because I mean, they said is already making in an issue by going after IT. Um I can see this becoming something that every state sort of passed to address. Also, the more the people exposed that these laws exist, I think the more squatting is going to happen. I think probably will see a Spike of this in places like new ork conferences go because a lot of losers are just learning for the first time that you can literally just take .

someones house and it's fine yeah the emphasis at union website even tells you kind of how to do IT and the. Tell people to lie and to say that whenever they try to evict you, to say that you have a verbal agreement with the lander ard uh to least the house and that you're leasing good and didn't you have to go through like a whole core process.

Boa, and the thing is, is that if you stay at the building long enough under like certain circumstances, you can actually like get the d like you could really literally permanently still house. And I don't I don't know. They done that with individual houses, with home, some jewels, but they've definitely done IT. They've even brag about on their website with with like vacuum uh, industrial buildings where they've gotten homeless people in the buildings, got them to say they're ever thought of evictions and eventually just literally took over the house.

That would be crazy to be sort of Venus well in like border hopper who hears about on tiktok you're hearing about like this strange american laws where it's like finders keepers if you see the empty house you can just walk in and they really I mean, what I don't know like if you're not from the country and you hear that you're like is that and IT is the land of milk and honey.

We got to get there as fast as we can um and then they get here and it's like, I don't know, I guess that sort of true but maybe found upon certainly I am founding upon IT now i'm excited to see other story players out. Um great talking about IT with you guys today. Thanks for talking about IT in the comments section. Tell everybody about this podcast rate review subscribe or I talking next week.