Shownotes Transcript
There is just this kind of person who is attracted to power, who likes to control people, who has likes to black. Being charge of shit you likes is like substitute teacher energy. And they are in charge of the critical infrastructure of every city in the country.
And IT is like a world, people of its crazy. I really do believe that scooters, for example, were banned because they just kind of bothered someone in charge of the government that was that they were like, there's too much clutters and they bandit. It's like, that's crazy.
You shouldn't get to make an thing like that. Welcome back to the pod. We've got branding back after a few weeks off on her, he was expLoring the amazon.
We can talk about that later. Um we've got some to here. They talk about a story um about self driving cars and the dragged same for cisco activists have well, I mean, that's my framing, not her.
What does let her tell the story in a second? And friend of the poddy Edwards general partner root B C and uh an investor in A I and or car tech. Um i've I don't i've not leave for a handful years now. Um we've I think that like I mean i'm not even sure now where we connected or how exactly I .
remember there is a there is an event where we are connecting L G B T Q, VC and media folks. And then IT was a lot of tension and a lot of, but like kind of a piece, a test piece until you started coming and blew the whole thing. And IT was.
there was pretty fun. Yeah, they came hard for me for no reason. I came friendly and they wanted to attack.
This was right after I launched the idea for heroically and they just went. They went in one in particular um an x docker person. But that's a little of the short of the time.
Li, sort of like I wanna reconnect. We never sort of fell out of connection. But I I think like where our friendship really became something else was over the on the topic of local politics of sanford ago.
These a handful people who are really involved that and duck, when I was still living in safety to go IT was IT was a journey to find just a group of people who cared about this and understood was important and also just knew a lot about IT lisa guy, which inevitably drew him to this podcast. We're going to explain why the second so self driving cars, we are talking about automation um of of the driver, I guess in the fallout of that. So I in safe this o this is like maybe a couple months ago and because it'll live their full time, I hadn't seen this for a while.
Um I hadn't seen this in person yet and uh come back from the gross store and very the self driving car just like driving towards me as I cross the road. It's of stops peacefully I I continue crossing IT Carries on its way and I thought that's it's crazy that we're not talking about this more. There's like a car without a driver just sort of doing loops around on the city that while that's the stuff of science fiction, that is the kind of thing. And I before we even get into the topic of the reaction to that and the labor connections and how the city, of course, is clonie sly, trying to destroy this thing for no reason whatsoever.
Um I think words you're sitting with like how maculate that is, like if you are a ten year old and you were watching cartoons about self, like and there was like a car without a driver that pulled up and you hoped in can went on its way that would have been that's why like that s to be a crazy exciting thing that we should all all of us, I think have something something positive to say um about and and we we really do it's like somehow not a part of the news. You don't see this. There are no specials on H B O.
Like getting the behind the scenes of the self driving car from you know utopia like I don't I don't know how we got to this place where something that maculate is not on the front page of every newspaper in the country but not only is IT not um and that that sort of like that's that's like doing in the back of my mind like wow, there's a real earth of information on this crazy miracle that's happening in sanford, cisco. Couple months go by, maybe a month goes by, month and half goes by um and people are coming the self driving cars and to let someone to getting that the second but basically you have all these people who extensively on behalf of like uncovering our roads or something, are going after your self driving cars. They they they do that if you put a traffic code on the hood of a car IT will stop IT.
Um it's like sort of the only thing that can stop the self driving car and we gotten into this long conversation, uh, power wires, H, Q, which is just a slack chanel actually and we got to talking about just like who is responsible for this actually. You know they're not I just I think someone I don't want to say who said, oh, I think it's you know, yeah they they seem to really care about traffic or something they didn't care about traffic like these are all communists. I know I don't have to even look too deep to know this.
And IT is like a question of who I wanted know and i'm you being joky here, right like this is my assumption is this, but I am like I wanted know who is paying for this um insurgents like let me let me take a crack of this uh and and let me let me find out, let me look into IT. And so began the sort of journey that he took to get us to the piece on pie wires, where we recover the whole topic, labor shadow war with self driving cars. And i'm just going to let some gei sof take us on the journey layout.
The facts we have on the one hand is incredibly ly technology. We've got an experiment. The city is running to see if they're safe.
We have a release less media coverage about why they are not and we have the strange activist class um fighting fighting back against them. Uh, who are they? What's going on? Just give us the story.
Yeah so I should say, mike, to your credit, when we first started talking about toning, I think I was the person who was like, there is no way that anyone's funding these people. I was like, these are just know tools who have too much time on their hands and are having fun like pinging the self driving cars um but when I actually started looking into IT, turns out there are people funding them.
Most of the the money funding IT is coming from unions um and it's actually a pretty systematic opposition to the cars. Um I think one thing you learn as soon as you start looking into self driving cars and sentences go is that all of the media headlines are terrifying. Like as soon as you look up self driving cars, you see headlines about like self driving cars are killing dogs and they're blocking access to for first responders to mass shootings and people are having near death experiences.
What playing? It's trial fear, right? I mean, it's a car without a driver. And so I I think automatically your first impulse as a regular human in the world is like that's gotta be not safe. So I think you like doesn't take much to wake up kind of terror.
It's because when I read that headline, my first reaction is a real Normal human. Was that a block from my office? Nine people shot but they say there was like, look at the car and i'm like, what about the that's .
so is no IT yeah I mean.
that's the thing is like I think you're totally right. There's there's this already there's this fear about AI taking over the world. And like us giving too much control to these computers.
And then you get these headlines about robot taxes, like out of control robot taxes that are running over dogs and stuff. So then I started looking into the actual anecdotes. And first of all, a lot of them are either complete lies or misrepresented. A dog did die, the rest in piece to that one dog that died. But IT was, IT was a small dog that ran out with .
a dog that was just a small dog.
There was a small dog that ran out from behind a parked car um the car the way o did detect IT, but I couldn't stop in time because the dog came out of nowhere. A human driver would not have been able to stop either and tragically the dog died but this is not an incident of like self driving .
cars are massively killing dogs so you should also mention that um there was a human driver that was monitoring ing the car in the driver seat so the human didn't stop in time basically.
Yeah yeah. I mean, again, so that that's a great point. And the the mass shooting thing, the thing about like a cruise car blocking a mass shooting that was completely fabricated, first responders actually came out afterward and they were like, no, this is not what happened.
The car, the cruise car, like, stopped when IT realized that there was an emergency happening. IT made A U turn and IT pulled over to the curb. This is completely fabricated um and a lot of the neutral experiences are also just misrepresented. I mean, this is like we talked about in the article, this twitter user jen proto saying that he was nearly .
jack nipped yeah. I mean, but my question is like how do .
we not always just immediately go to like just google these people? It's like j he he works, isn't he? Like he like da, he's a committed levering activist.
He hates tech. And it's like this is obviously, what's happening is like this is nothing to do with self driving cars or safety. This is a person staging a whole thing to go after this company because he has a problem with the concept of companies in general.
It's worker that he probably does hate type. But but if you also if you look at us like dying, he's down free full vesting periods that before .
five yeah that's some is also working on a piece on deep pressed. And it's like this is just it's kind of like the background of all of the antioch activists in the city. Um so so on the safety thing, it's like so you have this class of the Jason products of the world who are try read this crazy story of unsafe cars.
You have the media that's picking up immediately and disseminating information across twitter. You've mentioned a few the anecdotes like that, that show more popular anecdotes of why these things are not safe. Can you just like laid down what you found just in terms of safety period? like.
There have to be some accidents. So how many rights of their ban? How many accidents of their ban? How does that compared to accidents generally?
Yeah, so well, the crews, in the way, more cars, I should say, by any metric, the roller has been resulting success. So they've now driven over a million miles. I think conservation is go and there have been no fatalities um the way mo has been involved in two collisions, both of which were caused by the in this first million miles, both of which are are caused by humans um and the reise there I think there was only one collision that resulted in injury and IT was also caused by a human and basically a human I think the crew is making like an unprotected left turn and the human sort of into the the human driver ran into the the cruise car.
Um and you know we lay out like all of the numbers in our in our article, but IT really there have been like a vanishingly small number of of incidents. And when you look at the major ones of which they're been very few, they have all been caused by humans. Um and the real we found by looking at the data is that the real safety concern actually seems to be that sometimes these cars are blocking first responders. In certain instances, the mass shooting was a hoax. The last shooting response thing was a hoax.
but the shooting was real. Yes.
this is that kind of clear.
There was actually imagine that nobody seems to care about, but the color didn't buck up the they're .
the gang related mass shooting in the mission. Yes, that is real. The claim that a cruise car obstructed first responders at that mass shooting is false. Um and yeah so so we jack feel there who she's running .
for district nine absolutely and turns out and she's been endorsed by I guess what call the city family SHE does have .
chAllenges yeah um so I mean, we and we saw we found I mean, there was just massive amounts of of data manipulation on the part of the city in terms of assessing how dangerous these cars were. Um and I I don't know if we want to get into that right now .
or when we do. I do. I mean, what is IT? Yeah I do. I want to know why, like what could be so here we get the cars that seems like there seems like a success so far and that alone I mean, not only at the top of yeah I said this is a sort miro technology we should all be excited about IT. You would think that you think the people who run the city would be proud of this and you're the city where this is happening. This is A A paradigmatic sort of world changing technology um or paradise multi world changing technology and IT seems like every single seat in the house is every official seat in my house where by aman, like the port of soups and the mayor, the fire chief we got to get into in a minute I mean, ever was trying take these things down mayor especially I was surprised it's like this is supposed to be a moderate um what is going on there really one of you actually um we connected sungei mildly and this is like the sort of orientation of here's our local politics works and .
I believe he took something on the give us a local .
partial play c why is this happening? Why are these cars? They're definitely safe. Like they're pretty exciting. Like why are being targeted?
Yeah I think it's interesting to try to read into motivations, but maybe isn't so hard on. I think there is a handful of focus on the board of supervise um and I think chief among g them would be and pass kan and dean press and who who basically just hate tack at every turn like whatever of the excuse is gonna be is going to be a right. I these are people they they tweet about tech rows.
I mean, uh, gene pressed in like has a set of a couple times we would like. The underlying problem is actually capital as we need to change that. He calls himself the democratic social a speeds actually ecommerce.
You look at um what the D S A beliefs like. Look at the kind of book clubs and readings they do together um uh it's not social. I even have a dsa person said to me what you knew who he was.
He was like, I am, what do we call ourselves? I mean I metro a communist, but we call A O democratic socialists ah i'm like, yeah you d have to tell me that the market and off for a while um so yeah, they ate tech that that their goal, they think that tech people are responsible for the rise in the cost of housing, which actually we're responsible for record breaking tax revenue and they're responsible for not building any housing um they're responsible for the most expensive infrastructure, real projects that this country has ever seen um in terms of dollars per mile. And even when we managed to complete something like the china town uh muni stop, it's under utilized because it's not very useful um in charge of where connects to um and uh I so I think that's their motivation.
I think the other thing that happened with them, there's been a market shift. Uh all of them kind of started coming out against these at the same time. And actually on the same day, just shortly after um union started really talking about this and there was a Victory at the state level um for h that they were above the board about they set up were standing with the unions. We're going to Mandate that all self driving trucks have a safety driver to um but for some .
reason so were truly i'm sorry, they're demanding the demand is that all self driving cars have .
a driver for free trucks on highways at at a state level. Yeah um by the way, like for people that want to get into the tech, the truck problem is dramatically easier than the city problem, like we solve the truck problem years ago. Um they they cited safety here and that's a lie.
I don't I don't think because it's because it's a different kind of program. I don't know that we have the data, but I mean, crashes per mild for a free truck or going to be dramatically safer within A D. But any case, they started after the team started started talking about this stuff and right after that book past, I started noticing the city folks, the city officials kind of talking about tom one came out against that.
He runs transportation here and um and then I mention jacky field, he's running in d nine um uh against driver chanler um who as far as I can tell, if not he's more concerned with bigger issues in the mission than jackie seems to be expected on attacking tech and travel once to improve the the distance um so I I know if if i'm going to be you know if if I want to gives them credit. I do think that a lot of what time when wants to do IT IT is his point of view on transportation. He wants to reduce car as he wants to move more people faster.
But at the same time, I think the very first thing he says in his mostly and podcasts, his exasperation when tech people come to him with these solutions and how we seen IT before and he's like you prove IT to me these tech guys he calls us so you know, I think he's relatively fair from time to time. But if that's your mentality, I don't understand where we go. Like, imagine going to mayor, friend, mayor, I have a technology table set fifty thousand american lives year.
And I want to started in. Think to go. I i've seen this before.
you know I I I think that he'll tweet about IT and then do nothing. This is not a real mayor, but that's another podcast for I would be generous.
But you're the one you're closing .
night is timlin the one that's doing the visions zero program that aims to produce a lot of them are fatalities to zero. Yes, they claim and depressed .
and all tweeted about IT recently. He said that we're revitalizing IT. We're bringing back and I replied and asked them where A S fit division's zero considering there the safest um regional and also traffic fatalities .
and conferences go at all time high last year and pretty sure um like the visions zero yeah plan is not is not succeeding at all what.
So let's I want to go back to I think we're kind of dancing around the I think the meat of the story here. You know it's like the clannish attack on the car is one thing. The media is inevitable um that you would have a handful people on the board to hate tag going after take you sort of you kind of expect all of these things um that they'll be connected.
You would expect you would expect the activist to actually working for this sort like deep pressed in youth group or whatever the hell was like at which is the fact like IT was like one of his little minions was out there one of the cities supervisor, this is a person, this you're legislature in the city. One of someone who worked with him is out there attacking these cars. Um you expect that in 3Frances o can you tell us more about the labor connections here and started to touch on IT， where you know, on the same day everyone sort of jumped out and and I started to spouting similar talking points IT was, I felt sort of coordinated, like, give me the give me the picture there.
All right. So I should say all of the politicians who have been most strange ously opposed to self driving cars, people like air resin, the impressed in um I mean jeffrey tomlin is is not a really but um even the fire chief she's come out and and said the cheese you know doesn't think A I A A V is ready for prime time. They all have been endorsed ed by either labor unions like the teamsters or theyve received um I mean they've been endorsed and received campaign from from teamsters and so we found a lot of very clear instances of teamster involvement in like entry, self driving car activism. So the most clear one of most clear things we found is um a twitter account that is clearly astro turfed by the teamsters and they are consulting called berlyn rosen and the twitter account is like dogs for autonomous vehicle education, whether y're basically pushing this narrative of self driving cars, a killing dogs and being unsafe for for dogs and so that's a clear example of of uh the teamsters being involved um you know they also you have people like iron peking and a rougher mandeleys en and impressing who came out in support of um the bill for safety drivers for self driving trucks and said we're standing with the teamsters so we've actually waited about this you know this is very fable information um where you have them saying thank you to the teamsters for standing uh against autonomists vehicles and protecting you know these these important jobs. Um and also say Jeffery tumblin in his recent podcast, which we will talk about in a bit um because he had to issue an apology basically and retracted some of his misled, misleading statements about self driving cars, said at one point that the self driving technology is not going to replace drivers because drivers do so much more than drive and so it's again.
he called them cruise cruise guide so that when I was he he said the people who drive the uni bus are if I were on the raise where the kind of ship that happens on muni happens, I would get a refund but.
Yeah and I mean, so so the labor connection is is really clear in these instances of astroturfing. And also just you know, it's clear that in the case of the trucks, they're actually saying this is because of the teamsters um and so.
是 a serve classic the serve classic fear of labor being replaced。 Is that actually what's motivating all of this?
Well, I think there's a lot of money probably behind a lot of this and brand. You can speak to the the weird seeming I don't want use the word malfeasance, but there's a lot of shady stuff that happened with the the fire chief basically being appointed by the unions and that comes on the head of like.
But before we get to the the fireship, I do I want to get into that for sure. I want to need to tell you here the whole fireship ap story is crazy, but but why what is the motivation for the unions to oppose this at all? And they're not IT would have to be late IT.
Just seems to me I mean, the obvious the intuitive thing is just like it's labor, like it's it's it's the idea of what should be a job being automated by a robot. And this is a fear that we've seen forever, really, since the industrial revolution. I made the mistake of using the word look at as a majority, like the year ago or something.
And I got this crazy pilot from socialists, which I didn't see coming. Usually I quoted, I invite IT. I love IT.
This was not that I was like, wow, I didn't even know you guys cared about this. Like I thought. socialist.
I mean, i'm used to like communism, socialists like like the soviet union. They love to technology. They were all about automating staff and going to space.
And you look at some of the old pictures to picking soviet russia is like they have like moon colonies and should. It's like very science fiction. I was like, you know the flip side of amErica back them this was not dead.
There's like this rarely burial and strain of anti tech, anti technology sort of socialist labor sort of there's the that's the kind of thing this feels just IT feels like that IT feels like we're right back there. Um and at the time you know artificial intelligence IT seems like maybe this is gonna come a much bigger reaction. You know it's not just in sand for csco, it's gonna everywhere.
I mean one of the big unions sets against um the AV rollout is the S F T F P A, the taxi the taxi workers alliance. So that seems like an obvious I mean, I would expect them to be to be against the world of AV just because they wanted protect their own jobs and they are out that I think they actually had.
They've like protested and there's there's pictures of them online you know saying like basically we're going to lose their jobs if this AV really happens. But I think less obvious to me is why, for example, for example, the whole firefighters union is against A V rolled out. Um I don't know if it's just maybe the U S M inside into to the into the sort of relationships here bit is IT just A A matter of, you know, the labor just rides together type situation. If one union is again st something, they're all inst something for sure.
I mean, we're going this is just descriptive, but I actually personally have a lot of sympathy for the short term of spaceship of labor. You're singing IT in L A right now um with sag after an and hotel worker. The union is is is riding along with them. The point that the legended governs only after going to a Taylor swift concert a few weeks ago have now asked Taylor swiped to because um because of the hotel works strike so so they you bend together and and you can actually see there are now deleted tweets that I think have screen shots on of firefighters and police officer is the official accounts thanking way mo for the um training courses that they could design together because obviously if we want training for the firefighters, these problems that they're putting up are solvable the training right and and the software on their side so they they were working together and then the day that the firefighters union decided to tweet um you know just a few days after the teamster spoke at city oh um those streets were deleted um all at once so um added the relationship .
tween the .
which tweeted oh they had there literally there was A T there was a picture of away moon fire fighter thank you to the away team you know why would lead?
I don't why are I don't understand any of the strategy behind the labor stuff. It's like on the first, on the first, in the first place, if you were to just say your union person, you're like, I don't like this because they are going to take away jobs, right? That is I understand I don't agree with that.
I I but I understand, I completely understand, if they were to get mad about IT and be protesting in on those grounds, I think talk or carson has made similar arguments. H to this respect, I would actually know he has. He did IT in the debate with bench pio.
He talked about this like you'd have a lot of political support in the far ride and the far left and and maybe even a lot of people in middle who are like, I don't know about all this technology stuff, right? I I get all that one. They're hiding from IT two.
So it's like not a direct argument on on those grounds. Two, they're hiding the fact that they're even opposing IT. Like what why what is going on there?
Yeah I mean, we sort of discuss this at the end of the article. Um I just think that so I think that the luddy respond and again, lady is not a majority term in this case there was action open that was published in the the same scope, rony le, that hold at the end of the article. Um when I think the headline is something like people are calling anti AV activists let its and for them it's non insult. It's like I that's not the headline but it's something like it's identity it's an identity.
Yeah both a labor .
movement I mean, that article was sort of like he, you dummy, didn't you know the to a labor movement? I am quite well aware like yeah every student mr. Knows that was a labor, but I think the journalist.
Yeah.
but I think this a color journalist.
I think that the I think that the intuition is that people are going to recognize that the benefits of self driving cars, the fact that almost, I think it's over forty thousand people in the U. S die in car accidents every year, and millions die worldwide every year. The benefits of this technology are definitely, in the long run, going to outwit the downsides.
I mean, yes, AI is gna restructure our economy. And there are serious consideration, serious labor considerations to take into account, like it's not trivial that these self driving cars are eventually gonna rid of a lot of you know taxi jobs and bus driving jobs, all of these these jobs that currently exist in the economy. Um but people recognized that the benefits are going outweigh the cons. And I think that this the fact that they're using um you know safety and fear mongering arguments uh instead of the labor argument, is a recognition of the fact that people are gonna sort of see through on some level um this labor opposition to the technology because at the end of the day, I just don't think that you can sustainably oppose a powerful beneficial new technology on the grounds that we need to preserve old economic paradigm. Um I think that's why there they're not being up front about the labor concern.
That's a really good point. I mean and and even, I would say about half of the transit activists here, about half of them are communities to hate this crap. The other half that just they they literally like, hay, the streets are safer because the cyclist, if I ride t next to way a the way, I will never enter the bike lane.
I take a away almost every day, will not drop me off into a bike lane IT alerts me when someone's coming so I don't dore that and that you know that is uh IT can be program to obey y the laws which humans don't do. Humans are horrible writing is so half of them recognize that and so yeah, that's I really considered that maybe it's just because they know it's a losing argument. They're picking one that involves lies that they think .
is winning yeah I think if you just think about that for a second, it's like so gas lighting the the argument that they're making because I mean, when's the last time you were cut off by a crazy driver when you were driving IT was probably like yesterday.
It's not right.
I mean, like every time you go out in a car, some crazy person, you see somebody be acting crazy in in in their car and putting your life at danger you know and it's it's it's I feel like it's a powerful meme to to you know that click the dog me, write the dead dog me or um I think many .
dogs have been killed since that story came out actually killed by cars .
yeah they don't want to pay.
are to bed, right? They never compared. Well, we can get into that if we did end. You know if if you compared to the baseline, these cars are incredible.
So I guess so you have I mean immediate, obvious. It's like you have the whole whatever. So I, what is your name? I, so so I hoo, so so I hoo is just socialist.
And that's why she's in the back for the stuff you know hard core labor activist she's running for the chronic. It's insane. I don't know why they allow IT, but that explains why SHE sort of on board there you have pressed in and you have um passing in.
These people are huge voter bases for them. That explains that um kind of understand why they are doing IT even if everyone is sort of lying about the fact they are doing IT. What is time about the fire sheet like paint paint the picture for me of the sort like the .
cloud is all so her appointment, I i'll say just to be generous, looks strange the way that SHE got her job 的。 Um and by the way, I should mention that uh so first offered names is Jenny nicholson and SHE is a she's an impressive woman.
Um she's a twenty five year veteran of the fire department um has been on the front lined fighting fighting fires uh he was a paramedic at one point during her during her tenure breast cancer or survivor um and most recently before her appointment as fire chief was the deputy chief administration so like all do you respect to je nickell son but the way that SHE ga again elected to her position was a bit strange so i'll try to like explain IT and hopefully listeners can understand the connections that are making. Um so in twenty nine uh the previous fire tube for tired her name was uh joan, his White and apparently like what they do to to replace a fire chief as they put a fire commission together. So this fire commission is in charge of creating a short list of candidates to then give to the mayor who picks who who chooses from that at list, who's going to be the next fire achieve.
And the mayor at that time is london breed. Okay, who who also was A A former fire commissions, which I didn't know before today, which is kind of cool. Um so this fire commission considers an initial thirty six candidates, each of whom has to answer this uh eight page questionnaire uh on everything from their management style budget issues uh how to do emergency medical uh procedures, high high rise fire procedure so like a super in depth application process. Um they selected the far commission, selected seven eleven of these people to interview and then sent uh three to five names from those eleven told to mar breed .
okay so .
sometime after breed gets these names and before he can pick a name uh firefighters union local seven ninety eight, which represents the department's workforce, sends a letter to breed saying they don't like anyone on that list because none of them have enough experience I think was the reason okay.
So previous to getting elected breed a sorry local seven eighty eight spent eight hundred thousand dollars and independent expendable money on electing breed okay, so seven ninety eight supports breed here um so after break gets the letter from seven ninety eight SHE tells the fire commission you have to reopen the selection process basically to redo the whole thing okay? Fire commission comes back with three new names. One of them is gene nicholson, breathe a points.
Nicholson, okay, that and seven, ninety eight immediately comes out backing nicholson, praising breed for the decision. And again, like we talked about earlier today, seven and eight is on record coming out against the AV roll out. And much of the anta v reporting has been based on comments that nicholle son has said, saying that the A V S aren't ready for prime time.
So I mean, these are a lot of different connections. And you know, I don't I don't want to make two strong statements here, but I can add up to a picture of a union with leverage over a mayor who enough leverage over the mayor, who then installs their pic for the fire chief, then goes out and does what they want. So just say.
I mean, you know, one thing, one thing i've found is, as i've been tweet about unions, people get in my replies and said I should be careful talking about them.
So I feel talking about and it's just like very clear that they have an enormous amount of power and I think I dad, this is the next big well will see. I mean, my sense is that that this should be the next big political fight in america. And each should start with the teacher's 演员。
You have a few public sector union that shut down like whole segments of the economy over covered. But I guess we're entering this sort of like memory holding of COVID era in america. I'm not even sure for ever to deal with that.
Um but but that was I think when americans first started talking a little bit more about unions and the power of unions. And in safran, cc IT seems like the they control the whole thing um from the up up to and including like the police officers unit, right? Like it's like every sensor of one of these unions has has a lot of power.
You have unions controlling construction, you have unions controlling education, you have unions controlling policing. And then in these situations like worsening with the ab car source situation, it's like they work in tandem for strange reasons that that don't seem to matter much the average person, but matter a lot sort of whatever special interest um happens to be attached to the alliance. And it's it's crazy yeah that doesn't you know it's like IT seems a little bit nerve asking these would go have a lot of power um they control sort of every element of the country and it's like maybe you don't want to want to speak out to heart against that.
There's a valid thread of violence like like you know just to put IT out there and I have people but yeah, i've had folks in government tell me some of the weird intime .
to me no, you can say tell me an give me an example of the weird of the weird violence, the weird intuition of the word information of violence or, uh, the threat of violence. What was IT? Tell me the story. I would say information.
but I I don't think that in share the stories is not mind to share. I wouldn't want so slightly. I worried about this. I don't I don't want you to resurface and have this go after and began. I'm practiced.
Um the thing that's weird to me, the public sector versus private sector thing is the the purpose of the union is to help the employee is negotiate against the employer, right? And the weird thing about public sector unions is where the employer they worked for us. Like when when the police, when P O A circles the wagons over some bad news story and kind of covers up um makes that happen or sort of defend um against bad actor is like that. That's them negotiating against us but it's funny they are negotiating .
but they are negotiating with us, right? So that's the real in city is part of IT is like not only should you not be able to negotiate against taxpayers um but there they're negotiating with other agents of the state so it's like you are people negotiating against each other, I may all agree. And so that negotiation goes one way uh, the unions get whatever they want. And now where the situation california of these massive, these crazy pensions that can ever pay back and um and just incredible mouse of power in the hands of like the domus people alive in the case of the teachers union, and look what IT overly us just like sort of again and again um is going to get worse because we're sort of entering this this new union era. So the funny .
thing is even that make parents, this is like quickly I giving my friends who are very defined, the police um when I talk to them about the policy. There they don't want to touch IT because they're worried that attacking one union kind of hit s the other approach, teachers union, that proprie by the union for labor unions. And i'm like, but if you if you care about the, defund the police, if you care about police violence, um i'm surprised the P A gets to pass.
What's you read on the the what why is the S F M T A ht A V, though the ones that released that bogus data about that included a six fold increase, an absolute number of collisions over the course of twenty twenty two um right out qualify in the fact that there was a huge increase, the number of driverless hours and a big increase in the fleet size. why? Why are they? Why are they opposing IT?
I think the generous read is you they're looking to kind of remake the city to be less car dependent. I think that's that's maybe fair. I do think that's part of IT. I have to think there's some job security involved are Frankly right like this sort of blaming um in the in the tumblings most recent interview he kind of talks about um how uber and let so promised to uh reduce car readership and like reduce traffic I ride share and things like that and he says with the other direction, I think it's kind of deflecting responsibility though because if the reason people don't write muni like they write the mt in new york is because muni sucks and mta in new york is awesome.
Um in the M T A mike blumberg de the M T A he could take helicopter of because it's amazing convenience as fast fully it's all is available and um you know munca garbage um so I mean I take IT I take IT all the time. Um but you know it's only because I happen to live in service areas that the service area coverage is bad when they kind of launch into their ranks without equity. I'd love to get an equity aly sis that where mini lines railed media for rail is is late um and you know I think yeah he is a good way to if like responsibility, they can always wake up to the problem instead of accountability.
Tell about this the two one thing you've offers a few times branding uh what .
what was I want um I don't have anything on timlin. I think sanjoy looked into the podcast where he yeah apparently misrepresented some of the facts behind isn't .
like rather he works for the the M T A.
He's the head of of 3 times goes M T A municipal transportation agency um and he was on a podcast a couple of weeks ago where the as you ve been saying， he really misrepresented of the situation with a vy um and he made some statements. It's not I listen to the podcast and it's not clear which statements he's now issue because all of IT .
was like I don't know he .
he said at one point I have a quote from him um but he said that he talked about the cars complete inability to respond to the predictability which is causing systematic failure or systemic failure um which doesn't make any sense of anyone whose whose seen the cars knows that they're very capable of responding to unpredictable circumstances and you know scooters coming over in and scores.
Urban environment is just about one of the biggest, like you can get much more unpredictably on the road than the streets and sentences go. Um and so he was on this podcast and he issued he was basically the podcast issued a statement two days ago. This podcast came out two weeks ago, but they just issued a statement two days ago. They said we've been informed that some of the statements made by jeff tumblin this pot in this episode were not factual and misrepresented some practices of B A V companies, including prior engagement with S F M T A um and then they said they don't specify what the the most representations are there everywhere in the podcast um but they say that Geoffrey tumblin is gonna on the podcast again in late August to issue like he's basically given a dender and say what what he got wrong um weird that is happening in late August um but yeah that's that's the tumblin the lowdown on tumbling.
We could go a line by line on that. But I think the one thing that sort you know is part of this bigger narrative. I think one thing that was really interesting about how much he talked about, you know, these tech guys are going to come to me and they're gonna need them to pitch me and the one thing I care about is we move more people um you know in in because there makes some sense here, like the size of the roads, he really is going to change. We kind of push more people through them.
And then he also talks about everybody and he talks about environmental considerations, and then he talks about their business model and how the uber and uber business one also are working, by the way, check lovers last and support um if you think that the narrative of the do per business is fAiling is kind of problem now. But um but what I sort of IT reminded me of um dean present said in his first tweet about ideas that he's like what are they doing for our city? What are they do? Why are they here? What are they doing for us?
And is he doing for city?
That's that's a even Better .
question that I have but sorry, continue.
Yes, my room my nothing good at the answer but my response to book someone is like, it's not your job. I don't care what your business strategic assessment of these businesses like that. I don't I don't care like too is talking about the sustainability of the business model. And i'm like I like does no, no.
you're here to focus on public transit and you're doing a terrible job of IT, please just like stay in that lane and fixed that and when you're doll with that, you can come and talk to us about business. Um I agree IT, so it's really IT IT is a weird why IT is a weird sort of ownership and for present that makes sense because present a communist and it's like his impulse is that he should just own every business that exists.
He should be running at all. He's he was elected a supervisor in in in hate asbury that should become naturally in charge of all the industry in the city. Um like I understand where he's coming from, from the rest I really don't.
It's like you guys seem to have a quite a big plate. We have like endemic homelessness. We have no working transportation. We've education that you can get your kids into. I like a safe, healthy, good school um like we have I mean, IT seems like the problem of human shit in the street has been taken care of but as anyone else noticed that I don't know like it's when you're in the city, it's like not quite as bad as I used to be. So I don't know whoever got on that you there's someone out in city government somewhere who's response that thank to you.
Well done. There was a dog that went to the hospital recently from a no, we were all the dog's eating with drugs and that is not true, but I just keeps actually happening yet a fed.
no problem. So it's just like they seem have a lot of problems and I would like for them to focus on just one or two of those before they move into business. I will say like I do understand if you if your job is to like you're responsible for your sit, I understand I understand being serious about like interested in the topic generally.
And um and I will also say that I don't know that uber did necessarily what we thought I was going to do IT. Maybe it's a good business, but there is why not ask the question of whether or not these things are good for the city? And um I I will say I I think glad IT exists.
It's definitely like an onya bii was good in my life. Um love being able to call a car into the important things like this. I could never find a taxi late at night. I think that probably uber save a lot of lives from drunk driving, things like this.
All of that I love um I I will to say though that when uber emerged, my expectation of uber was that he was going to be um like people we're going to own car less cars and that I guess there will be because they're not going to be parked like in front of my house. They're be like less congested in things like this. This was certainly ten years ago in narrative that um that we told ourselves and I believed.
And it's not true. It's like actually just increased bit demand for for rides. Um taxes were so bad that people weren't taking them. They've found other ways to sort of get around the city or get where are going or do they travelled less things like this.
We were increased the demand because of and so you know you created a new market for something that didn't exist before IT actually increased congestion in a lot of these cities, something like self driving cars like you know, I were expecting IT to be Better. But it's not really does not really how these things work. I think that the end sort of result will be probably a little bit unpredictable.
Um and IT just comes down to the question of whether or not we should be lowed to make choices about what we want to use or or or we should not. I think one very easy example. This is the scooter where like I don't know what was the great public good of having these scooters.
I can think of some stuff. I consider her make arguments. But at the end of the day, I just fuck and like that.
I like the screw ter. I like driving the scooter. I am in miami. They ban them here like, I loved hoping a scooter and scooting off to win wood IT was an easy ride.
IT was cheaper than left and uber and, uh, I was working fun and they're gone now. And like, why? Why are they gone? And it's like, that's my it's my right. I have a right .
to a spear to prove their right to exist. To the, to the ruler decide. The supervisors must decide.
You have this, like many, the separate from the labor things sepp ate from the power thing, separate from the money thing. There is just this kind of person who was attracted to power, who likes to control people who has likes to like being charge of shit. You likes it's like substitute teacher energy.
And they are in charge of the critical infrastructure of every city in the country. And there's like a worst people of it's crazy. I really do believe that scooters, for example, were banned because they just kind of bothered someone in charge of the government that was that they were like there's too much cluttered and they banded. It's like, that's crazy. you.
The present also had to tweet about the bike are that he thought I was crazy that some of these private companies were making money off these bike shirts, and he wanted to remove the private one.
It's a nice thing. You, as a communist, think that business is crazy, but it's like not what you're here for. You're here. You're here to like basically make sure the trains are running on time. And guess what, they're not so like let's stay in our lane, please.
IT seems also like a sort of territory issue like you have these companies like line and bird, which I think bird is not doing so well anymore. But who just I think they didn't ask for permission. I think they just put their suddenly like there were square everywhere there a way to get permission yeah and as a as a person to charge a transit in a city, I could see you know you being like weight you know nobody asked me here and there's S A bunch of people using A A type of transit that I didn't approve of so I don't like that and you but if .
they make IT so difficult to get approval.
then you know and and .
they do and they will, it's like you're you're never going to get the approval. And also, there are all sorts of things like, I mean, there we ride bikes, we have to get approval for that. You know, roller blades, we need approval.
Skateboards still know, like una cycle. I saw riding down the street the other day. I think you got a permit for that.
Like what is IT about scooters? I guess it's specifically like their park on the side of the sidewalk. I don't understand why that matters. Um I think that japanese .
I think it's .
like a public also IT seems like a public good in a way, but it's actually a private business.
So I want to do something for everyone, but yes, for everyone. So what happens when you have a ten city on the side walk at that seems like why is that allowed and not a fucking in scooter? That's crazy to me like that is is a public space. Someone's living on IT right now. So who's taking care of that?
There is someone suing um and I having done given this this there seems to be someone who is taking an ada complaint they called three one one about attent that was completely blocking the sidewalk and she's vision impaired I was kind of wondering when news was going to happen right because ada in the city nuts we use ada to like stop new affordable housing for being constructed. We we use A D A for everything and and I look at the sidewalks and i'm like law I really glad i'm not a wilsher user because I would have a hard time have to go on to the street was finally I think they they just tweet a couple days again so we'll see what happens.
Yeah, someone blocking access to a beach the other day, there was no other way on. I was a public access thing in the cater to savery. IT was in L A .
you know um uh there's a venture capitalist to win all the way to the supreme court for a similar .
thing um so for a beach and .
how do you touch my bleaker reference?
I don't want to get trouble. Yeah anybody he going was not going .
to to block the beach. He wanted the right to block to me and the supreme court told him ipod.
So today i'm on inside for the record property. I believe property believe .
that what happened was the night circuit ruled against him in the supreme court. Used to care.
They're like, we have gotten wage too much trouble right now. Like come back in a few years. We like can handle the press at this point. We have taken on the cause of the nodes. Private beach, like next year, perhaps we're busy planning abortion and interactive marriage .
potentially spot .
gets get over every .
topic really.
Uh last thoughts, uh, on the self driving car. What do we missed on the self driving car? That the war, labor's war, secret war on cell driving cars in severances code?
I mean, I feel like we have to talk about a the the tweet response from uh street safe rebel .
to our to our .
article they to did in response to our article. You all good with indigenous land being deseret for lithium mining, entire world pollution killing all the salmon. Is that your definition of safety? And it's hard to know whether not this is, I mean, IT almost seems like this account is run by a troll.
this in response. So basically someone says self driving cars are perfectly safe. Or I was like A R tweet not talking about the safety of self driving cars are article because of um this person says, you know what about the the lithium mining I will say that like that's quite a bed tweet like IT like there is something to that like we do this is a broader there's a, there is a is is all the really complicated text up.
So anything any smart refrigeration, smart devices and then certainly anything battery technology, all this step requires lining of rare metals and um that then requires processing. A none of which takes place in amErica because our mental regulation won't allow IT. So most of IT takes place for the processing in china. Um a lot of is done by I mean, we suspect at this point there's slave labor involved in that. And I did like a pretty it's A A nari situation.
So when an environment when an environment list comes at you and is like, you know we need more email is not something like this but when you need more, uh you know we need more solar power cars and uh in self driving technology is like this, like they are solar specifically. This is focus on the environmental impact. Like it's not actually clear that solar is Better for the environment.
Then something like natural gas, like there is their huge downsides to IT that no one really wants to face and add scale. A world of self driving solar powered vehicles seems like the future and and IT seems utopia in his hell and I want to live in that world. But also, who's going to fix them? Certainly not.
You're not. You're no long going to day you're dad getting outside and ten kern around with your car fixing IT just got to go off not to a regular guy to fix IT. It's going to be some specialists going to cost a lot of money, and it's going to be mind by by, by made from metals, mind by slaves and processed in a country we are potentially award with. IT seems like there are complications there. I will just grant that strange .
person .
in our comments here.
What about salmon? Are you going to comment on the salmon?
Why I love cement and and I did anything that improves the same in population.
I'm sort of in favor of. I think he was confused here SHE. Because he he said tire where pollution killing all the salmon and that reminds me of something that we found sunday.
Um one one of I think that maybe was S F M T A uh or IT maybe was like that the office of disability had an equity concern with A V S. And their specific equity concern was that there was tire ware pollution from these A V S, and they were disproportionate impact disadvantaged communities. The four special words .
there they draw like this, is driving cars especially bad for black people? Yeah, what did you just like? You can just say something like that that's crazy, like you have to be on that's in this one .
of the think up or down of that like a present um bike tires would also create pollution.
So they say because of the way the E V, yeah, so the way the E V is way more and the crazy, I mean, if doesn't, why everyone should be forced to build? Because there is no, there is nothing in engineering that isn't a trade off, right? And so we're trying to get emissions down.
Everyone's like emissions, emissions, emissions, emissions, carbon, carbon, carbon. And then you say, oh, but you know the vehicle be well, you can do that then, you know. So the on the equity thing, this is one of the things I have put in our way.
I think this this is such an interesting microcosm. M, for the way that the board of supervisors chill things they don't like. When you look at process, we need an equity city, environmental city fire study.
Here is a fire study. Oh, well, I don't like. And the ship, the goal post, to change what they're measuring. And delay, delay, delay, delay. So one of the things are asking for us in actually study B A B.
And um like I said, i'd love to I i'd love to know the baseline what what's the equity study of the muni? Do we think the muni is going to for our nebber ods and disadvantages igher ods? Or do we think it's mainly supporting people that are going up and down market for work? So um uh and and key thing here is tumbling said that he needed to have improved that and in the um the host uh the protest and ability protesters credit said, well why would you be any worse and he was like, IT doesn't matter at the same IT needs to be Better um so so like I know needs to solve racism in order to get a permit. Um so so is this .
positive complaint that that people in disadvantaged ties will be able to download the right helling APP on the front?
Might this always will we get to these conversations about improving marginalized communities? They're implicated. Extremely bigoted is like the idea that what like a black person doesn't know how to download an APP like that does not have a phone.
Like, would you have you met a black person? This is crazy like you just don't know what you're talking about and it's like insulting and racist actually. And this is the piece of the people in charge of the critical infrastructure of the entire country. IT is like this all the way down. There is not a there's nowhere in this country where important critical infrastructures is not controlled by this exact kind of person.
And by the way, the ag, just like most things, software is awesome. Like there is a decent argument for yellow cabs in new york. If you talk to black people live in york off and say hate a yellow cable scope for me, particularly if I like in harm and an african, an the cabinet stop.
Guess what? The AV doesn't give up fuck the AV doesn't know. I mean IT could know, but there is no reason that I would mean to know. Um so I don't know, man. It's like a lot of these things are actually going to get IT improved by the A S. And they're not really like they're just gasoline ating us a hundred percent gasoline ating shifting the goal posts you know, rap fucking i'm just i'm so tired of this. Well, you Better rests .
up because it's not going anywhere, and we are still just in our authorities. Um got a whole life of this guys. Thank you for joining me.
Um um well, again, breaded in sage didn't have a choice you had. Enjoy me lee. Thank you for joining us.
The pie where is fod talk goes about the fucked up the city government um and its war on self driving cars. Uh, that's off today, please. I yes guys definitely have to subscribe rate review comment.
Tell us we all look good in the comments, please. I have a very fragile ego. Okay, talk guys later.