 There we go. This is the Rex call for Wednesday, March 10, 2021. Seriously? How did the calendar roll all the way forward to there? Brad, awesome. Love to see you all. April will be joining us momentarily without video. It's just a little too early for her to be all put together and all that. What about Susan Stuckey? What's up with her? Is she still in London? She's back and she was on last month's call, so I don't know. I'm assuming she may join us. I'll do not man. It's so nice to see everybody. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to fell in the moment. Zoom allows us to convene in new and slightly non-greenhouse gas-worrying ways. I'm going to say a bit about how Mika called it and said, oh, we're not going to say there's a coup d'etat happening and then boom, January 6th. Mika, you were protecting us from the nightmare, but sorry that the nightmare still happened. But thanks, man. Came close, didn't it? Yeah. Came close. I remember before the election taking a straw poll in a couple places with a couple of conversations about will there be violence in the streets right at the election or after the election? And it's like, nope, that didn't happen. And they were just like waiting. The energy was just building up until before the inauguration. Yeah, no, they didn't shoot very many people there. I have a friend who lives in, up in the Catskills, very, very progressive person who has been living in this little town for a long time. And she said this fall was weird because it was quiet. Because normally you hear people out hunting and she thinks people were conserving their ammunition. Oh, seriously? No, that's precisely how I was appropriate. She's right. The hunting season. Screw the deer. We need to worry about the neighbors, honey. Sorry, Bo. Go ahead. I'll see you. Hello. Hello. Man, we're having a weird time in Portland because during the famous Portland protest season, the protests were sort of downtown, which is less than two miles away from where we are as walking distance. I went down and joined for an evening, but down by the courthouse in Southwest. The last three weekends, there have been an ANTIFA branded protest starting in the parks near us here in the Pearl District in Northwest. So the last two started in Fields Park, which is just east and north, like six, seven blocks that way. And there's one happening scheduled for this Friday at 8 p.m. It's got like a poster. And starting in Jameson Park, which is a sweet little park that's normally a little water fountain for kids in the summertime. And last season it wasn't because of lockdown. But they're just sort of going around and breaking shit. So there were broken windows on Lovejoy Street, which is the street right. I can sort of stare down on that street from our window. And we, April and I at least, we're not involved politically in that way here, but we can't figure out what... This is not Black Lives Matter. This is not... It's not even like Democrats aren't being radical enough. This is just like, we're going to meet and be angry and break things. And it's really dysfunctional. So I'd love to pop the hood on this and figure out what's going on. But it's just another sign that we're all doomed. But we're not doomed because there is hope, right? Longer hope. If we have a revolution. Wait, wait, wait. There's hope if we have a revolution? Yeah. You saw the video. But does that mean if we avoid the pitchforks in the streets? Or does that mean we should get pitchforks? Pitchforks are optional. Oh, okay. This is BYOP? Well, BYOFI, bring your own farm implement. It doesn't have to be a pitchfork. I thought the F was going to be something else there. And my cousin's in Iceland. There's a bunch of earthquakes and stuff and volcanoes rumbling in Iceland, FYI. The apocalypse. Full series of them. And same thing in Zeeland, I think. They're having a bunch. Hey, maybe Europe will be cut off by air travel again. And lots of fireballs and meteors, if you've noticed. Oh, I've not seen that. And the Gulf Stream has stopped. Oh, that. Yeah. Sherry, do you remember Bill Calvin talking about that in GBN back in like 96, 97? It's just a couple of decades too early. Yeah. So we had, so in open global mind, this thing I've sort of spawned during lockdown, we had a new participant come in and I think he's dropped out. I think he's a he I don't know. Actually, I do know he's a he. And he dropped in and basically started like peeing on everybody's arguments. And part of it was the Atlantic gyre and the Gulf, whatever he's like, that doesn't matter. This other thing is more important. And then a few things like that. And I ended up sort of interrupting like a list mom on the list going, hey, dude, if you approached us nicely, we're probably the right place. We're probably a good tribe for you because you're trying to convince people of some argument. And that's we're all about visualizing and arguing and trying to figure out causal, whatever's. But he, his emotional intelligence was like in the basement, like seriously in the basement. So on the other hand, I think his intention. And I totally agree that he approached the wrong way. But but I think the intention resonated a bit with the subtext of your video, John, which is kiss our asses goodbye. Or alternatively, we can say you guys are just rearranging deck chairs. And one of my questions back to him on the list was, okay, so I watched some of your stuff and read some of your stuff. So you seem to say that there's nothing we individually can do anyway. So so don't bother. So why are you here? Like, like wrecking the chairs instead of helping figure out how to take individual action and take collective action. So it was really interesting. Kind of missed the disruption. Jimmy, do you want to do you want to like go into a reverie and put yourself back in the place of the talk and take us into any part of it that you wish everybody could absorb somehow? Right. I think one of the there were several underlying themes for me. One is that moderation isn't enough. I had a throwaway line in there that if any plan seems politically feasible, it's probably not fast enough. But I think the most important theme of it was that what we're going to end up needing to do and in many ways what we'll end up doing in order to grapple with the climate emergency and all the ancillary aspect or elements of it, we'll have enormous repercussions for people who are the least able to deal with it. And the story I was trying to tell with that isn't that isn't just that we're going to have to do big things is that if we do big things and don't pay attention to the consequences, a lot of people are going to get hurt. You know, it's the move fast and break things. It becomes move fast and break people. I really liked that you both said that, Jamaica's, you know, we did free trade and we did the same thing. We didn't care that it broke the book of people. We destroyed them. Yeah, it's like, well, yeah, well, in a generation or two, it'll be fine. And I don't think that is, I don't think that's ethical, but I don't think that's sustainable in the most rudimentary way. That notion of, you know, we'll run over the next generation or two, but then it'll work itself out. And so the story I was trying to tell with this is that combination of this is going to take a lot of effort and some big changes will be necessary. But if we just focus on the climate, we just focus on this one problem, we're going to have so many cascading repercussions that will be harmful to everyone and ultimately harmful to our civilization. And so the scenario, the tips, items that I threw out there as being this is what a revolution could look like. I really went in with the notion of how do we do this in a way that is, that embraces humanity. How do we, how do we save the planet from that? There is the free hugs movement literally does that. You know, I have no objection to that, except for social distancing makes it difficult. Good point. But it does appear to not help with these problems. Yeah, yeah, Mika. No, Jame, I love the video and I've shared it around and one of the people I sent it to is the president of consumer reports whose board I sit on and she said she loved it. So just always nice. You could go to Yonkers. Yeah. I've been in their facility. I did one trip to Long, Long on a planet far, far away. Go ahead, sir. So I was going to ask about the activation of this sea change that you're arguing for and ask you if you've looked at Kim Stanley Robinson's book, The Ministry for the Future. And for folks who haven't read the book, I'll just give away the first part, which is that he sort of premises that we're in the scenario we're in. And then there's this horrible climate shock, a massive heat wave hits India and in a matter of days, 20 million people die. And that radicalizes a portion of Indian society as well as the government. So the government starts doing some things that are like off the table right now, like seeding the atmosphere to slow global warming temporarily. And some portion of the people become so radicalized that they start doing things like deliberately blowing up commercial airplanes to basically kill air traffic. You know, basically discontinuous change, but that triggers more political will to actually take more radical steps. And his key idea is the idea that the central bankers of the world create a new currency that rewards people for not using carbon. That could totally happen. Well, it's a really interesting idea. Though it's not going to happen because there's no political will to make it happen. So his theory is sooner or later, there's going to be such a huge climate shock that there will be radicalization. And when you combine that with the democratization of violence, right? So people using things like drones to take out, you know, oil company executives or something. I'm very curious what you think of that. I assume you're familiar with his book. Oh, yeah. I don't want to say the exact same scenario that I've written before, but it maps to a lot of stuff that I've written scenarios before about what that kind of catalyst would be necessary. And unfortunately, the way our world works right now, we will need some kind of big seismic shock to get people to change their behavior. And I lament that. It's really, it's very frustrating to me. And as I said at the beginning of the talk, we know what to do. We have the means to do it. We just don't have the will. We're just not making ourselves do it. And I honestly, I haven't read the book yet, but I'm familiar with it. And I've met Stan a few times. And, you know, he and I see eye to eye on a number of things. And I have to say that the pieces of it that I've seen, it is one of the more optimistic scenarios, including, you know, mega deaths, you know, unfortunately. And, you know, this is, it could be a lot worse. Me and one of the things that really, one of the things about the, that particular scenario that worries me is that it's positing that essentially the Indian government will be, will ask, send me responsibly after this, as opposed to what we would expect from Modi, for example. Yeah. You know, and the potential heat wave that would that knocks that knocked down 20 million people in India is going to have, is not going to be limited just to those borders. So imagine that Bangladesh was always suffering and Pakistan would be hit, would be hit by something like that too. And the potential for nuclear conflict between the two, between Pakistan and India is a nightmare. And two thirds of Bangladesh is at sea level. Yeah. And has insane, that's where the population is. But yet they're persistently the happiest population survey. I thought it was Denmark. Well, I've read. It's also at sea level. Yeah. If you know life is finite, you're forced to be happier. Okay. I actually have to say, the scenarios that I've, the serious official scenarios that I've seen from various businesses and, you know, but I don't want to say it definitely shelled, but that kind of level organization, you know, I won't say it's a CIA, but that level of organization, they all pretty much write off Bangladesh as a climate victim. And whether they talk about it in terms of evacuating people or mourning them, this depends on the nature of the scenario. So what I, you know, trying to come up with what a good world, a good plausible, but revolutionary world could look like. As I was doing that, the phrase polymorphic thinking popped up. And as I tend to do with the women have an idea like that, I tend to throw it out there before it's fully flushed out just to see how people react, what ideas it spawns from other people. And so if the polymorphic thinking section seemed a little shoehorned in, it kind of was. But at the same time, I think it did illustrate the, it was an illustration of the fact that we can't just keep using the same tools we have been using, keep going on the same path we have been going on. And I want to apologize for the blah, blah, blah, one, one or two points and the miscaranagement. I thought you're misquoting more terms. Yes. Everyone in my family who saw the video pointed out miscaranagement. Nice of them. And Kelly, do you want to riff on what you just put in the chat? Please, please do. So I've been thinking a lot about, I'm listening to this conversation being like, we couldn't even look six months ahead this year, right? In terms of the framing of all the things that happened this last year, our, the story I think is that our overriding selfishness and just prevented us from doing things that really could actually have knocked down the pandemic in a much shorter period of time. And so I'm sitting here sort of like hyperventilating about the fact that, oh my God, this is just evidence that there is no hope, right? Like the idea of like, sure, there's long-term hope after the revolution and we had an opportunity to do that and didn't. We could have rebuilt a lot of different things this year and didn't. And so of course, I'm, I think, as maybe Jame's alter ego in terms of putting this positive spin on everything. I'm wondering if there are things that did go well this year that we could actually sort of start to shift the story about the things that we did in terms of this was a huge shock to the system, right? I mean, there, there are things that, that maybe we did do well and what are the things that we might want to keep in mind as we come into the next thing, right? There's going to be, there's going to be more shocks in the system. So, I mean, And I actually, I love the depiction of this last year as a dress rehearsal. Yeah, I think that's spot on. One thing I can say that I think that this last year has moved forward the emergence of a persistent basic income slash assets model by at least a decade. Because we're seeing that happening in a variety of places, you know, something, something that parallels a basic income and it works. It seems it very visibly works in a lot of places. In fact, just a report just came out about Stockton, the $500 a month basic income test in Stockton, California. Employment went up as a result. It did not cause people to stop working. It caused more people to get jobs because there was more money going into the economy. The end is really tiny on that study, but I agree that like the number of house it was one year with just a few like a couple hundred households so the end is really small but still the trend is good. Yeah, yeah. You know, point being that one of the responses we've seen globally, not in the United States, for the most part, but globally is this income support. And they did that in New Zealand. They did it to an extent in Canada. I think they were doing in the UK. And it doesn't it obviously you take the UK as an example it doesn't do much in terms of preventing the spread of pandemic, but it does help to keep the economy afloat. And so I think that we will probably see the normalization of basic income models happening much more quickly than we would have before. I suspect that we will ultimately end up with a in the United States with something closer to a universal healthcare model. And as a result, I swear I think I said this with you before Jerry that if if COVID had hit in like six months earlier. We probably would would have seen Sanders versus Trump for the 2020 election. You know, just because of that universal healthcare universal healthcare. I don't know what the result would have been that. Anyway, so I think the, what the pandemic as the pandemic dress rehearsal period has done is actually shifted the overturned window on a lot on a lot of issues that had seen semi radical in the past. So, yeah, but yeah, the fact that so many Americans, there are still so many people who refuse to accept that the code that COVID is real. Right still. Two quick observations on that one is you would think that a common enemy would drive everybody together. So a bug that's really tiny that's killing people, and it didn't it actually divided us and locked us up in ways that are like really dramatic and we're still sort of living through. The second thing is, one of my biggest hopes and I put a link to the thought in my brain is like was 2020 a tipping point this 2020 market tip a generational tipping point, because grid atonberg and the sunshine movement and the stone Marjorie stone Douglas school kids against you know guns and all of that. And if we, if we have the people of a certain age, could be helpful to those generations, and could help them link arms and not become one homogeneous massive thing but rather couple up and wipe out a generation of leadership that's busy like, you know, even down to Americans and Josh Holly's and all those kinds of people like who are, who are intentionally jamming the works because it works because it gains power and they get status and look at this, you know, look at me. And then they really have astonishingly little regard for what happens to humans it seems, but can we help the younger generation can we be of service and what does that mean and how does that work. And as a throw away I put in the in the chat I don't know if you thought of this before she may but you were positive alter ego should be called to do or Cassio. Yeah, it doesn't that seems sort of like an obvious thing and if I were you I'd buy the Twitter handle like now. I love this notion that 2020 was a dress rehearsal but I also think it was a dress rehearsal on the weaponization of Facebook and social media to make you believe anything. I think 2016 was addressed was address rehearsal 2020 was the implementation and it came really damn close to working. No, no, well it's still working I mean that's the point, right. So, could you leverage that same beautiful technology to have everybody become aware and focused on. What's a foot. Yeah. Susan has an observation here looks like. I'm just going to say I saw I'm sorry I sound like a whatever whatever that thing is that keeps repeating it broken record, broken record. Thank you. But yes, you could leverage that in fact that's how to do it. And I guess that to go to the point that I think Jimmy for so effusively several months ago was that the social dynamics for achieving good are the same ones that are for saving bad we can't. It's, it's not and to, I don't know, Jeremy, Jerry I can't get your. Sorry, I haven't talked enough lately. This is funny. Anyway, what I was going to say to your point Jerry that you said well you thought that rational whatever I mean it's not a rational argument right. Yeah, it has to be appeal to emotions it has to appeal to. What was your second thing. I keep forgetting the other one you said it's emotion and. Oh, I say, membership. Membership. Yes. Membership Trump logic most of the time I've got a thought on that. It just is just the way things are, and we have to learn how to leverage that we don't have to I think oh maybe we do do all the nasty things that other people do and tell lies. But we do have to employ that because that's, that's the human condition. The neuroscience studies seem to point to fear and anger stimulation being more effective at changing minds than hope and empathy stimulation. So why don't we. Well, I go off on a rant but your your talk this morning made me reflect just a little bit on a question that I asked back in in the 80s when I started out at the Institute for research on learning, which was, how does learning actually have. You know, we keep wanting people to learn stuff that they don't want to learn it and they learn but they learn perfectly well all the time that was my, that was my, my line. And I think we made some progress in understanding the social dynamics of that, which have never been used properly in my view but they're the ones that we need to respect now. And so I asked the question, as you talked about transformation and I got completely sidetracked thinking about that while you were talking so I'll go back and listen again. But I asked myself the same kind of question which is, how does transformation actually take place. What, what kind of a phenomenon if we could see it happening to go to Kelly's point when it's happening what took place and I think I've used that example of cleaning up the, the Kyahoga in Ohio before with this group. And what it took was a long time, we don't have time. It did take a long time but the social dynamics of it are the same social dynamics that we need to kind of employ here. So, while I agree that we have we know what to do. I would say the one thing we're forgetting is that in any of these cases, and I don't, I'm happy to talk at any scale. I mean I think that I think the process is fractal. And that is, is that it has to include the social, the physical which we keep leaving out, and the technological. So just take those three things and are they present in any conversation, are they all are those things present and those things are going to have to change at once because no change takes place. There's not respect for the particular physical environment in which it's taking place. The scale is necessarily small but if you look at us, trying to talk about this we're employing the technical we're applying the social. We're not employing the physical so much deliberately we have to have it right there's all those servers out there, but I'm just thinking that it's got to be a way to bring those three things together and insist that we address them at the same time. And I spent years trying to get corporations to address the facilities, the analogy, the social of this all at once. And I had that horrible experience it at HP, which I'm sure was was a moment for me and I'm sure I've told you about it before but when I walked in and I got them all the BPs in the room at one point I thought oh shit now what. But I think it's something like that kind of social configuration has to be part of it somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, the how do we do it. Yeah, is the refrain that has no answer yet. Maybe maybe we'll never have a satisfying answer. Well, I think there's, there's a whole genre of lessons from history. There's also a literature about how we take the wrong lessons from history we tend to reach back to the nearest, most familiar historic reference and think oh this is just like the Great Depression, or like the you know whatever. And it's usually that that's a, those analogies usually bad but there's usually something else that's actually pretty good. And a piece of this for me is about how did how do large social movements start, whether it's the enclosure movements and the the beginnings of industrialization capitalism and what we now consider sort of like the water we live in is that everything has a price. And there's kind of markets for the idea that that water is free because you just get it from the creek and that your plants and whatever you just grow them back yard and you don't pay for food. And you exchange your the carrots you just dug up with your neighbors who just slaughtered a pig. Like, like those ideas have just vanished in a quaint way, but that was how we used to live until 250 years ago. Like, that was that was how life worked until only 250 years ago for, let's call it 40,000 years of human civilization. Right. And tending the landscape together, understanding what commons were all those kinds of things are buried really deep in indigenous traditions that we've managed to just cover over, light a match to, and try to stamp out really hard, which we are now like, Oh, it's kind of cool. They have some cool wisdom we should maybe let's bring him into the conversation but only just a little bit because what they say is always so heretical. Right. So, so, so how does that was not true for for dense urban populations as well. You say it up until 250 years ago. When your neighbor slaughtering slaughtering a pig, if you're in the middle of the city. So, I mean, that's, I mean, go to a slum in Bombay. Right. That happens all the time. I mean, those, those things, those things are still going on. I mean, to Kelly's point, you know, where are things where are things we want to shine a light on. And can we shine a light on a whole bunch of them. Because I think in the vaccine, my being in England was wonderful in the sense of being out of the US and out of our own immediate, you know, problems and emotional relief extraordinary emotional relief. And I see from what we got over there and then in the British press that, you know, that there were tons of things happening on a small scale all over the place. And just because Trump didn't, it took longer right in some sense. But in the end, I mean, and in the end Britain got good at vaccines only because Boris was going to lose his job. I don't know about the picture, but the implementation is terribly local. And it's copied. And if I had, you know, a million dollars or two. I think I think going into those situations, right and unpacking how they learned from each other which I know goes on. Right friends of friends talk and say, Well, you know what, we're, we're putting it in the pharmacies well how did you do that. That stuff is going on all the time otherwise this wouldn't have the big the big words that everybody has about how how you're achieving scale, you have to have that that local that that embedded stuff going on and it goes on it goes on all the time, never stopped. And just because we're talking on zoom doesn't mean that what we're talking about I mean what we're doing is very local. We're talking about people sitting here talking about grand huge things, but it's changing our minds and it's doing a lot of important things. So, yeah, and I don't understand why, well I guess I do understand why during the pandemic. We haven't seen a flurry of research projects that try to unpack that but I think it's because we don't unpack. Nobody said well but you know nobody will ever do it and say well wait a minute, it happens all the time how does that happen when it's working. You know, and having research techniques that actually uncover how it's working when it's working is a very different conversation, and having beaten my head against the wall for 40 years. I think it's still my question to ask. And it always turns up surprising things, except, except. And they don't. Well I'm going to give an example I'm not going to try to summarize that point. So Jerry put me in touch with another minute like whose name is love on Rimer. Okay, we've been having a great time. So, she, she's writing a book and I'm trying to be an ear or two. But she was telling me about something that she tried which we were trying to figure out what it was to be what would what it would be to be men and about these things how would we do things differently how do we do things that we how do we get in trouble because we're men and it's you know it's like all these good things but anyway. She was talking about a meeting that she finally got had all these people together from all the different and ethics meeting ethics training in company electronics I think it was. And she had all these people. Who were brought together, you know, the frontline workers with the HR people with the this and the that and they had everybody in the room right, and she could see the guys in the hard hats in the back sitting there with their arms folded. And her idea was that it. Her idea was that it wasn't that they weren't there dishing the whole thing. They were there because they were physically uncomfortable. She had them, she went through one of these stand up and whatever's and sort yourselves out. And gave them a case which you would all remember and I'm not going to go through it right now but a case in which you know you could decide to go over and help these people and give these people money or you could go back and do what you were doing before. And the, the guys in the hard hats went started to walk over to where they knew she wanted them to go, and they stopped, and then they went back to where they were. Okay. And I mean she proved her point that it was, but it was a physically embodied thing. Right. And I think that that's going to be part of her point to that story but it was a. I think we have to use every trick in the books that we have for human engagement, and we're going to have to stop. You know we're going to have to stop dissing people. I mean that I think the movie. What was the name of that they these read the reunited states. The reunited states. Yeah, the reunited states. Yeah, because I was on jet lag I watched the thing in the middle of the night anyway was perfect. So, but that was, I went away hopeful. I came home just thinking I was, I just didn't want to be here anymore. And, and then I watched that myself. Oh, okay that can happen. And of course if you kept going at the end of the movie, the touching point, the really strong point to me was the woman who had lost her daughter in Charlotte, and, and the couple end up in Charlotte. It's not in the movie itself it's in the, it's in the, it's in the afterward things. And then she says, who lost her daughter Charlotte and was invited to dinner so the couple with the, with the, with the bus, you know, ends up in moving to Charlotte from Texas. And they invite her her name, I forget her name to dinner went along with another, another couple to have one of those conversations that they've been hosting. And the, the woman on the bus said, she wanted to just acknowledge how graceful the woman who lost her daughter was in, in the face of all this, and the woman was visibly distraught and she said, I wasn't. I was not. She said when you first started to do this and you invited me for dinner. She said, I'm not going. I hate you. I hated you. I had to tell myself that, you know, you did change your mind you started out to look for something and you found something else. So if that can happen. You know, but that's the, that's the mind shift. And, and also mind shifts don't happen you have to shift your identity which is the hard part. Susan I'm just really glad you got the speaking subsystems working properly. You're speaking subsystems working properly that like totally kicked in. That's great. And Kevin you're looking for. No, no, it's good. It's like hiding in the closet or something but you like rubbed it up and it's moving. All right. Well anyway, I don't know if this is helpful but I feel energized and sometimes I say I'm energized and then I don't do anything about it but this time I serve like, even my so my my Russian renter said to me what are you going to do why don't you do a policy I said everything about policy. And he's been pushing me and he gave me Bill Gates's book. So this has been a timely, you know, a timely conversation I just can't imagine what it's like to be Bill Gates but that doesn't matter. Well, I haven't been on these calls for a while, right, because I've been actively involved doing some of the pandemic research that you guys are talking about. Oh, good, good. We've been doing pandemic choice experiments. And we've been doing it in North Carolina and using cares act money in the state of Washington. We're designing a small and medium sized business. We have a COVID and pandemic experiment dashboard that brings in all of the community health data, economic data and quality of life information into a single little place that you can hold it in your hand. But for the to be able to wait it down to the county level. We've run best worth scaling experiments to be able to understand. So what would you pay like you know what would you pay for, you know, an object. We're substituting payment for behavior. So what is your willingness to behave relative to wearing a mask, social distancing cooperation with tracers, the ability to, you know, willingness to vaccinate. And that data flowing into the system to wait the ability to understand down to the county level, you know, what will your customers be willing to do if you make a decision as a small business owner. Right. And if you need something, all of the resources and links are also in your hand, right, you know, via the mobile phone or the tablet or whatever it is that you're using so. I'm deeply involved in this and the fact is that the data flows, and being able to sort this out part of this is just context is that it's too hard to put the puzzle together. So we're trying to solve the context problem first, and then make sure that we're also understanding the fact that, you know, rural the eastern part of Washington is not the same as the coastal, more urban part of Washington, and in fact, the U.S. and the same as Seattle. Right. So, you know, the, you know, the state of Washington Department of Commerce is, you know, the primary client. And I'll just say, it's been eye opening, you know what people are saying that they're willing to do on one level, but then what they actually disclose when we, you know, ask them in a discrete setting. The, it's, you know, it's unsettlingly different. Right. Shall we say so I'll just leave it at that. All right, I'm up to my hip boots right now and trying to deliver that product. Kevin, thank you for bringing that to the group that's that's, I love what you're doing. I hope that we're going to be able to take what we've learned and turn this into something that businesses can use when we start to pivot into climate choice experiments to understand risk and and so on so because that's next on the road. Please keep us in the loop for that. Please keep me in the loop for that. Yeah, the choice flows business has become a very interesting business for me. So have you has anyone in this project sort of taken this down to the streets to figure out how that might become a beginnings of conversations with people and the place I was going to maybe take the conversation was that my favorite change model for for changing the world is like when somebody who trust takes you by the hand to try something new. It's just like an incredible agent for change like things really change that way. And they can't be too different from you if they're too different from you, you're like, not sure I trust them don't know don't really want to hear it. They may be trying to teach me something don't know but somebody near you who takes you to try something new and then the success and then a couple leaps over but the success of deep canvassing in Georgia and other kinds of places. And I think that's a big difference and Mika would know much better than me. You know, that there's a sea change of foot in how campaigns and politics are perceived to work from the consumer mass marketing way of doing it which is like, we're just going to pour a lot of money into ads and like bombard people. Kind of like the Lincoln project was doing in part, you know, one sliver of a huge, the money that was sucked up by this last campaign cycle was record breaking I think they were it was double or more any previous political campaign it was huge. So, how, how to go back. How can the insights one, or even the visibility one by the work you're doing Kevin turn into more human more relevant more personal more local conversations about what the hell to do and whom to trust me. I will, I had a separate conversation with the head of innovation for the UN refugee agency about whether you know there wasn't a way to adapt this for people making decisions about population flows. And that goes a little bit back to climate but it also has a lot to do with political climate. You know, the, what you have to do is you have to find ways to understand and get to data feeds that are small enough. And I'm beginning to believe that the best source of this is data exhaust, but you have to be able to approach it in some ethical way. I recently got named to the Atlantic Council's geotech center that's focused on privacy and cybersecurity. And the problem is that, you know, just scraping it is probably not the right way to get it. You know, what is the right way to, you know, look at the patterns that you want to get down that are local, so that they're actionable, and that they have that relevance and context. And that's in a way that is visible. I heard a quote the other day that I like a lot. It came from my former employer, you know, design area in IBM design, which is invisible AI is unethical AI. The data training sets, right, that feed it. If they're invisible, it's equally unethical. You know, so, you know, I want to try to figure out how do you get people to want to opt into participating at a local level and that there's enough participation for it to be a good data training set. Yeah, thank you very much. Bill, you have feet on the street or eyes on the feet on the street. Any, any observations on this or what works it doesn't work. I can't hear you you're unmuted on zoom but your audio is not making it to us now you yes. Okay. I've been sort of like trying to follow or understand this great reset thing that the World Economic Forum seems to be coming up with because to an extent. If you remember years ago we talked about the book great transformations by Mark live. We're talking about how at a, not global but Bretton Woods would probably be the closest thing in terms of our history, where the powers that be do get together realize they've got a problem and come up with a solution, which is nothing that anything could ever happen at even a nation level. To the extent that the Biden is getting a little bit of criticism right now and not being, you know, totally transparent about where they're coming up with what they're selecting to do and not do it's like you know, why are you bothering him he's busy, working on answering those questions why does he have to vet them in front of you know Fox News, you know just going to trash them no matter what he says, all I'm saying is that. Again, I don't know enough about what they're talking about with respect to this global reset, but if the if the World Economic Forum which to an extent now is to me the equivalent of Bretton Woods is trying to come up with something to deal with a clearly problematic financial system. And clearly they're the 1% that would be most affected by it. That's the level at which they're going to address exactly these kind of things yes okay wipe out Bangladesh we're going to that that's that's acceptable but but they're going to save other places they're going to save Paris they're going to save, you know, San Francisco they're going to save whatever it is, but but I'm just thinking that, in a way, the doom and gloom assumes that none of that is either capable or already happening. I mean obviously Klaus. You know what I'm talking about before his name is the Schwab has actually been writing about this for years. And I haven't really got a sense as to whether or not that's really happening, or whether or not that you know there's a sense as to exactly what they're talking about and how they do it. Anybody know anything about that I mean I've just recently, you know, a couple days ago ordered the book so that I can try and understand what he's talking about. Before turning toward me I'll ask April, who's just a muted so how about that. Yeah. Just a brief comment here and I think it's still a little bit of a crystal ball, but on the one hand, you are right cloud Schwab. He is writing about stakeholder capitalism what you would think of as stakeholder capitalism today, back in 1972. Right, I mean, he actually does go way back in his thinking. And then if we think about how the World Economic Forum, which was founded in 1974, you know it's sort of trajectory which, depending on who you are and how you see these things. You know, got co opted by big business it's now the global elite it's private checks this that and the other. You're trying to not you feel but like one is trying to reconcile these really interesting dynamics as the world has now shifted, and we are looking at the mess we have created and trying to move forward. So again, I think, when it comes to the great reset my best understanding it is highly highly contingent on who you are and where you sit what you think the world needs how you see the great reset. And just in the spirit of kind of painting the spectrum. At one end you have people who are simply saying this is the latest branding marketing stick of West. That's like, and I part of my speech but that is shit scared about its own future, because it is under increasing pressure and whatever year on year about how elite it is. And even, and it is your, you know it's own business model depends on seven figure check written annually by companies worldwide. You know there's so much of what is constructed that has served it really well over the last few decades. But, you know, what is West look like moving forward it clearly knows that needs to be more inclusive. But how does it make that happen when it's, you know, it's built its business model. A lot on, you know, crystal and champagne and, and, and fancy heat looks. So we've got that on one hand and then on the other hand you have I mean you've got many different things at play here, then you've got of course class is legacy, right this guy is 80. He's in his late 80s. And he's just going strong, but everyone knows close does not have forever to leave this organization. And, and this is just a little bit of inside West scoop. There has been an ongoing I don't know chaos like crisis about succession. What happens when close dies. They brought in a couple of people they thought would be a successor neither of them worked out. So anyway, I bring this up because think of this that think of the great reset also as possibly close legacy. And then I think in the middle you have all of the stakeholders who are part of weapon trying to participate and trying to make a name for themselves and trying to try I think more and more to do good. But whether you know will they do that without class, hard to say is class very much I think concerned about the future of the planet and the future of business and all of that very much so. But I think he's also trying to reconcile with the fact that, you know, a lot of West members have been the ones who have done a lot of damage over the last years, and to get all of them to shift at once is going to be I think almost an incredible feat, but the great reset kind of puts out his initial framework for where to start what to do. I would argue that the vast majority of what's part of the great reset it's not new. It's just a repackaging of stuff that we've seen, I shouldn't say repackaging. It's, it's new in terms of the urgency, but I think a lot of the pieces, many of us have already seen before. Anyway, that's a little bit of scoop. And yeah, those of you who don't know just final footnote. So Davos was going to be in January then no can't do it, but they refuse to go virtual so they had this Davos dialogue, which was opened everybody in this, you know, week long of events. Then they moved Davos to Singapore in May, then they bumped it to August, what I'm trying to get at is even something that you know tickets to Davos are not cheap and not hard to get not easy to get. The company cannot bring itself to like, if they change Davos that it signals this huge change in their business model and they simply don't seem to be able to do that, which I think is a kind of canary in the coal mine or whatever for the bigger shift they may have to undertake in a year to come. Thanks, April. In August. Yeah, exactly what a great time to be there. And everybody who's in Singapore is like, are you insane. I think that is the worst month of the whole year. So, but I think, obviously, interestingly, I don't know if others of you have experienced this. I think they really have to have another Davos in January next year. So, they have to have one this year, and they don't care that the weather is horrible but they can't have it too close to next January. They have a year in which they have no conference and members have a very strong case for like, why are they paying membership and then, you know, things start to crack. It's just crazy. I'm sorry, but when you get into kind of digging into the weeds of it it just it makes it makes very little sense in some ways. Mika, I was curious just how, how you're seeing the things we're talking about here. So I have just two comments about the 2020 is the, what did we call it the practice year the training rehearsal, the dress rehearsal. And did, did anything good happen I did want to flag that you know getting many working vaccines. Faster than any of the experts thought possible is kind of a big deal and you know so maybe that's there there's a little glimmer of hope there. But the thing that I'm currently mulling is the fact that I believe at some point today if it hasn't happened already, the government has just decided to spend $1.9 trillion. Has anybody looked at the details of what they're doing. I mean, it's astounding. And while some of it is clearly related to pandemic relief. There are other things in there that are just like, it's been years since the Democrats had sufficient control of Congress to do anything big. And we really should recognize what a sea change this is in the current conventional wisdom around government spending. There is, you know, when Obama came in his team, the economic advisors were like, you know, the economy's in the toilet and we've got to spend at least 1.5 trillioners. And the political people are like, are you kidding we're not going to go anywhere over 800 billion. Thank you, Rahm Emanuel. And as a result that the recovery was a weak recovery and it hurt Obama two years later. It hurt everybody. We went into hospital. Yeah, we are not seeing that now we are seeing unbelievable levels of spending. And they're not done. And so, you know, I don't think this has really sunk in yet. And it won't for a while because it'll take a while until we, you know, start to see. I was looking at the spreadsheet that the Senate put out with like all the literally down to the town and county and city name. The $350 billion that's being distributed to state and local governments as one time relief. And it's, it's huge. So, it's true that some of this money will get wasted, or reinforce existing systems rather than transforming them but it is still a huge, huge change. And I'm hoping that they can, you know, for once do a good job of explaining that this is what government can do. It can actually dramatically make a difference in your life for the better. And we can do more. And so who was it who said earlier that fear is what changes people more than hope. What I've observed about politics is that when people are more hopeful, they make bigger demands when they're cynical, they withdraw. And I don't think any of our movements have done have been very successful when they try to mobilize people by scaring the shit out of them. Yeah. We have to give people a hopeful vision, not a fearful one if you just tell them that climate disaster is coming. I don't think it mobilizes that many people to be think about the collective good. It's more like how do I protect my family. So, I'm, you know, moderately more hopeful at the moment, because of this and I was, I was on an organizing call with my local indivisible group last night and we are exhausted. Everybody is just like, you know, I mean, it's, it's been a year. And, and, you know, and we have a monthly meeting and 150 people come but it's doesn't feel like you're really connecting in the way that we used to connect because we can't see each other. So something has been drained out of us but I was trying to lift people and just say, Hey folks, we got problems sure but we just did something really big, you know we all worked really hard. We didn't get the ball over the finish line just barely, but power shifted, and now results. And so see, right, let's see if we can't build on that. Go ahead Brad. Well I was just going to say in the other goodness is democracy survived for another two years, which was a near miracle. I'm certain that if Trump had not left office he would be the next president for the next 15 to 20 years. Yeah, we're headed right, right that way. Exactly. And do you think his heart would hold out. Not a young man. Does not have one does not have one doesn't have to worry about that. I was just pondering sort of, we may be at a turning point which is the end of the era that Reagan inaugurated with a hopeful mission, a hopeful vision of that shining city on the hill and morning in America, right, he was selling hope. Very much. And yet the thing he gave us was, government isn't the solution to the problem government is the problem, which is, which has been like the thing that everybody, every conservative has been pushing super hard. And, and, and at this very moment, when Trump spoke at CPAC. So Democrats are destroying our country is the trope is the meme and he will repeat it, like every day. And there's a whole bunch of people who are not absorbing any of any other news other than what conservative media is telling them so they're pretty convinced that the country is on its way right down the tubes straight into the hellhole and this is going to be awful so one of the things I admire about Biden's approach to governing right now is ignore the troll don't be the troll. Focus on policy and just try to do a bunch of good shit for humans in the country who've been hurt and treat them with dignity and address them, treat them with respect, and just try to fix their problems and if they individually in small clusters kind of the way we were talking about earlier in this conversation, perceive that changes in fact got to them and caused some rise or some some improvement in the situation that may actually be a huge tide. That shifts and we may see a bend. Otherwise, otherwise we've got bumping straight down this lousy path to one. One slight corrective, which is the place where I think the Democrats and the liberal left etc is is weakest is in that last mile of communication to people. Yes, that there that when you you know you can look on Facebook and see you know the top 10 most shared, you know, posts every day and they're all right wing news sites. And the assumption that people are getting the message team everybody is the weak point is at the delivery of the message down at the local level. We've had you know we have news deserts we have people are definitely not all reading the New York Times to get you know their their version of reality. And I think that's where you know we're seeing some investment. There was so much money put into fighting disinformation the last four years that were about everything but that. You know, there's a little bit going to local, you know, strengthening quality local media, but nowhere near enough. So one of my critiques of the system the political system is that it got eaten by consumer mass marketing over the last 34 years. And what should have been relationships and actual help and actual listening and participating turned into we're just going to bombard you with messages on your media, which is stupid expensive not credible and in fact a breach of trust in lots of ways, because it's an invasion of privacy and it's like, not actually listening and responding and it's only looking for somebody's attention when they can vote and then going you know walking away and doing something else. And so I think that crippled entirely that the governance apparatus which had turned into a political apparatus. So I'm really interested in separating politics from governance and helping helping us get back to, you know, functioning governance, which requires bridging these divides. I mean, and it's not that there's divides everywhere because you take, you go five miles out of where we live right now into slightly rural Oregon, and you are in red territory, you are, you know, if you look at the precinct by precinct voting in it's very red. Like, there's there's Portland, there's there's Salem there's a couple cities that are that are like blue, the place is red. So it's not that there's a political divide 10 miles out of town. It's unified just on the opposite side of the fence. Right, so how do we how do we do that I think is hugely important. Very red was like 74% in the next county over. Yeah, are you are you familiar with the greater Idaho movement. No, are they trying to take over Montana. No, they're trying to take over a big parts of Oregon. Oh, shoot, I was just kidding. No, they're trying to take a big parts of Oregon, potentially a chunk of Northern California and a chunk of Southeast Washington. Look, a greater Idaho. And we have Cascadia to combat greater Idaho. So, yeah. I mean, I'm not familiar with this. This is this is dispiriting in some in some way. Thank you Kelly for looking on the positive side of this picture. Yeah, exactly. We just need to get on Cascadia. And to sure would you like to step back in. Step back in with your with your uplifting perspective on what might actually happen. Yeah, I was a bridge too far. I tossed a comment in the in the comment chat. Destructing that a lot of the pathologies that we're that we're discussing are a consequence of the mismatch between the scale of the population, and the functional scale of the, the available tools that basically the only ways that we had available to reach to large numbers of people were these kinds of blunt mass media instruments. Actually, that has changed. I'm sorry. Conversation has always been available there have always been small meetings and churches and everything else. The idea that the only way to communicate was through mass media is a fiction. The only way to communicate to 350 million people or seven billion people. Bullshit Jerry absolutely bullshit up until up until recently, the ability to communicate for small numbers of people to communicate with people outside of their immediate area, and have that in a persistent and deep way. Those tools were limited to mass media were limited to one to many formats that has changed, but the our behaviors haven't. If you mean everybody listening to Roosevelt's fireside chat. I'm agreed, like in the first radio, you know the first nationwide radio broadcast was Hoover I think. And so yes, everybody hearing the same boys, but if you mean touching everybody in the country with something that's relevant to them that could make its way through tons and tons of communities Susan go ahead. I'm just going to reinforce that Jerry which is that. And Kelly will recognize this too but if you subscribe to, you know, service dominant logic which I do, then, then to understand that it value is created value and worth not being the same thing value is created right in, in interaction then that's why it has to be conversation that's why there has to be interaction that has to be, you know, and now we do have some interaction, but it's not at scale. As much as you think it is right it's between all these little, little kingdoms. That's, you know, I've got multiple family members who are very active on Facebook and all they do is share right wing media posts, they don't comment on anything they don't talk. Yeah, just on autopilot. Well, one of one of my rhetorical questions which could be a piece of a remedy but probably is too late is what if Zuckerberg had been designing a platform for citizens not consumers. What affordances would have been different what would have been different about identity and privacy. How might it have created persistent memories and the ability to have to hold civic discourse. There's like 15 things that sort of perk up immediately as interesting things that Facebook could have had could have been might have done. The open question at this moment that is, might it be retrofit to do those kinds of things might there we might there be a way to spin out a public benefit organization platform out of Facebook and separate that from the consumery part of the business I don't know that because, because the remedies that that happened for the Microsoft antitrust suit were stupid and didn't work and the remedies that happened for the, you know, bell, breaking up my bell into the hands that didn't work out of these were, these were, as far as I can tell non functioning remedies to really bad sort of monopolist solutions problems. So, so how could we delay or this and inject a piece that's actually going to be helpful to the discourse we're looking for so that people aren't doing what Brad just described, which is simply simply forward you know share media objects that half of which are probably created on purpose for their shareability and have no bearing in reality. A stock market transaction micro tax. The Tobin tax. Yeah, yeah, love the Tobin tax. If you do, if you do something that that is a, well as you mean to find this or, you know, we could just add it would be sort of an interested in making sure that it one. It wasn't what it is. Well, if we, why is it that BC's RV are the determining factor here you know why is it that the stock market that hedge fund managers, you know that Wall Street that's on Reddit are all, you know the determining factors here. What can we do to dissuade without destroying the system. Rather than doing, having the solution be something that is directly directly related to the, you know, the intricacies and nuances of Facebook, or even more broadly to the tech industry in general. Why don't we look at the, we should be looking at the underlying factors. Yeah, get rid of Cuomo just fucking Cuomo. Damn. Just briefly, Tom Bo, you want to jump in like where, where are your hearts and minds this moment. Go for Tom. Hello everybody I'm sorry I'm being so quiet it's it's been forever since I've been in one of these so it's good to see all some old faces here. It's hard for me like Susan I'm trying to figure out if my words are going to work because I've been so isolated for so long. But everything that that you've all been talking about some of the stuff I've been reading about would be, you know this concept of identity and membership Jerry. I'm trying to frame it in terms of like what Jane Meyer and Kurt Anderson in Applebaum all those folks have been writing about how the political economy is really set up so that we are stressing a lot of people in this country. And so, but their reaction is masterfully crafted through these, you know, pass along the right wing media things that you're talking about, they're not going to be dissuaded through argument because their identity is so tied up in this. And then you add the racial component to it where it's such an emotional component. And if you can pull, you know the fact that there's such a large percentage of people who have erroneously blaming their problems on these scapegoats these other reasons versus the fact that if they did how the tax policy and the political economy was structured, they would realize that other countries do a much better job of not creating this precarious that we have that's just expanding so greatly. And if you have this precarious instead of helping them you harness their, their anger their fear, you have a very powerful weapon in a weapon that's going to allow you to go against the demographic tide shift that's going on right now right The Republican Party is hanging on to gerrymandering they're hanging on to voter suppression, they were hanging on to be very blunt about it. Yeah, the filibuster and the and the fact that you know if you look at the divide of red states versus blue states, how many the Senate is so overwhelmingly shifted toward, you know, giving more power to the red side. These are things I'm thinking about I'm just swirling around with those and trying to figure out how do we, how do we help because honestly I've had friends that I left in Georgia I'm now living in Colorado. At these people in Georgia I'm just getting I'm realizing I'm getting more and more distance from them. And I'm cutting off relationships because we've grown to become so polarized people that I used to, you know, hang out with. Anyway, that's where my head is right now. I mean, there's this uncanny psychology that I've encountered with close friends and personal family members most of all live in Florida now that I live in California. I'd rather be right. I don't care the benefits of your argument. I don't care what's in it for me. I don't care my economic status could change. I don't care that we have a better future for my kids. I'd rather be right. I enjoy being. Wow. Well, that's identity, Brad. Yeah, you're right. It's identity. Yeah, I do have relatives like you that I get to see the sewer and Facebook be republished all the time. It's my turn to talk. Can I go? Yeah, yeah, please. So I've history rhymes doesn't necessarily repeat culturally and politically I feel this this I feel like I'm living in a by my republic America style. And I'm very serious. This is very by my republic. This is a liminal period that you know three years from now, or two years from now, this could be real bad. And there's a lot of forces going on and this is a very treacherous time. Brief, brief, brief interjection here. There was a really nice article that was talking about how Orban and a couple other of the far right populist people who are busy turning their countries into dictatorships. One an election back in the 80s 90s then we're out of power for five to 10 years, then came back in and kind of did it right and got all the mechanisms working to the point where they may be, you know, prime ministers for life right now. But but that was part of that was part of the fear of sort of this might be Trump's time in the wilderness and then he or one of his offspring could end up coming back in the way I think you're referring to Bo. Yes, and let's not forget that our the Senate is by with the Vice President it's not like we have this crushing political mandate no we do not. We better do something and do it right in these two years. And I'm really glad because the party is definitely acting like that. They know like all these wonderful work tax credits for children and everything they're really helping to work in class out I mean it's for real. They're really doing it. I'm so relieved. Anyway, okay so by my republic, but economically we are living in the 1940s if you look at the debt levels we have it's it's 1940s. And what just happened this last year in the dress rehearsal was one that oppression happened, we had deflation which is very, very hard to stop. And we decided in her Herbert Hoover we just couldn't get our head around. People didn't deserve it. So the depression. We were out of about a year and a half and I remember Jim a really was shocked one day when I said, the depression happened because of policy it was very easy to fix. And in fact, we almost fixed the depression several times, but then we had to keep going back to blaming people and back to austerity and you can actually see like three times in the 30s, we were coming out and then they balanced the budget went back and austerity went back. And the group of the time was all that we're not saving the banks there was always somebody's scapegoat. And we went right back into the toilet. I love that somebody today mentioned Bretton Woods, because what happened to Bretton Woods was that the world elites were worried that as soon as we came out of the war, we're going to go back into depression. And they they'd already lived through the chaos of depression and World War, and they were determined not to let it happen again. So, back to the 1940s so we're in the 1940s we are all going to have with tremendous resources being spent. And I remember when I've said here before when I was I was joking but I was trying to be really clear. The economy is really just what you decide to do with your resources. And if you're Egypt you build cities for the dead. It really is that simple what are you going to do with the resources. And what this last year was a dress rehearsal us is, we can do with whatever we want with our resources, and nobody has to really suffer unnecessarily, and yes, it's possible. In the 40s, you realize we got out of the pressure because war, we could all get behind. Okay, we can get behind war, and we inflated, and we debased our currency and you couldn't old gold and couldn't old silver. And by the way, we shifted money from rich to poor. In fact, we rebalance the system and I could go through how financial oppression works. We actually readjusted wealth in this country. In fact, the Federal Reserve is going to be doing the exact same thing again. So this is a very liminal time, and we can get a lot done. And it's almost like the perfect time to have it done it's just a 40s except we're not in a world war. And so there's, there's a lot of hope in that yet. Yeah, yeah, agree. You could you could say this is a time of flux or something like that. Yeah, it's a very risky liminal time. And yeah, anyway, so that those are my thoughts. So, we've made a grand tour of many, many things. Are there things with me trying to be hopeful and we end up with Bob just bringing us all down. He didn't bring us down. There's hope. I'm blaming Susan. She was the one like, well, not yet. That's okay. Sorry about that. We have the resources and we're working and we're not, we can do it. We can do whatever we want. We can do what we want. We know what we need to do. We know that we can do it. We have the tools we have the means we have the resources. So it's just a question of, can we do it? Will we do it? And will we do it fast enough? Yeah, and to me, the question behind that is like, we must dissolve in some sense, the political divide, the great lockup, we must figure out how not to be half the world's population against half the world's population, basically frozen in our ability to collaborate to solve these things. Well, one thing I heard the other day, which I really found fascinating with regarding the Republicans and the gerrymandering and everything is like, they are this party which their membership, they can't win without cheating. Yes. They're essentially a rural fringe party that they're not even centrist. So I mean, we could be seeing their death. We could be seeing the end of that party. That's why this is very by my republic. This could be their end, or this could be a horrible re rising of them. But it could be their end, too. Is that a truism, or do you buy that? Sorry, that the Republican Party currently could not win without voter suppression. It's winning in plenty of states. I'm not sure without voter suppression. If voting, if they have now or the or what they've already got. Are they a valuable national party without gerrymandering and suppression. If we were to do statistical redistricting, everybody got to vote immediately, mail in voting everywhere or whatever. If we were to wipe this like clean and make sure everybody's friend, everybody was in a franchise with lots of time to vote. Would Republicans be winning elections. Not these Republicans know. But, you know, they'd probably regroup. I mean, I don't know that we would, you know, see them disappear. But it's a great party. But yeah, this particular, you know, white Christian nationalist collection. They figured out a model that works pretty well for them right now and they're trying to keep it. Yeah. I think you want to jump in. Yeah, it's just the conversation just now remind me of Heather McGee's new book I've just got it and it's just just getting into it. Because I still believe that there's a lot of great many people whose identity is so tied up in the Republican Party, it's hard to get them to change they still will be a viable party for quite a while. I'm wondering how helpful books like this because she's trying to point out in a very if you read the book it starts she has a very good voice she hasn't have a I'm right you're wrong kind of a mentality. Rosa Brooks her latest book has that same kind of a feel to it, but it's still a I'm trying to persuade you kind of an argument right you're voting against your own interest. I don't know how we get that argument to stick when people's identity is so caught up in. I don't want an American government that's helping all the black people so I'm going to vote against all those Democrats. When in truth she's got data showing that by voting in that way you're actually hurting yourself. So how do we work together to change how people see this concept of, I am a loyal Republican and we can take that identity and still keep it and still make it a more useful identity, but not one that is so knee jerk polarized against almost everything that is a government back solution. Is the book you just mentioned the some of us. Yes. That's why I like what the Democrats are doing right now and helping the child expert. They've got to really help the working class and do it now whether they're voting for you or not. And if you don't do it. God help you between now and the next election it's got to be a priority. I put a link a little while ago to a washroom post article from yesterday that broke down the, the differences between the Trump tax cuts and the, the Biden plan, just in terms of who gets helped, and it's, it's staggering. And they were talking really is. No, they're mirrors of each other in many ways. Yeah, where did you put that. It's in the chat. It's just scroll chat. Oh, there we go. Oh no I know it's not mine. Oh, it should be in everybody's it's a Washington Post. It was a 1014. Sorry, that was, that was the repost please. Yeah, may please repost. Yep. Cool. The key thing is will people recognize that this is the difference between Democrats and Republicans and I did spend some time looking at this as recline there are a bunch of people who have written about the problem of hidden government that people don't know. Number one, when they're using a government service. So when you survey people and ask them when was the last government benefit. Many of them have no idea. And that isn't only because they don't think of Medicare or Social Security as a government program, but they don't think of the highway that they're driving on either. So, you know, how people come to understand what is happening is pretty important. As a product of the people who want to make government work for you those are the Democrats. I, some Democrats actually make that happen. They're we're trying to get them to do that there's a, you know, the wonks versus the, you know, the organizers and to some degree. You know, I think some of the good, the good news is that Biden seems to intuitively understand he tried to get Obama in 2009 to do more to take a victory lap and Obama it was like beneath him it wasn't something he was going to do and I think Biden is definitely planning to do that. The other thing which may just be temporary is the division in the Republican Party and the degree to which they're completely distracted by Trump has worked to the Democrats benefit. There was like no meaningful opposition they they never put together a successful attack on on this bill from the Republican side and that was really striking. It's also quite popular. Doctors who's helped the situation, you know, yeah. If they were distracted by Mr potato head and doctors is all of which is totally fine they can have no problem. I have to remind everyone that, you know, getting the employment and everything back when we're out of this is really hard. Well it involves rethinking what employment even is this is not like there's a whole bunch of full time employment full time jobs that are going to come back there's a bunch of work that will exist and it needs to be picked up and used in different ways. And that's going to that's going to highlight our lack of nationalized self care, because once once you're in, you know, once you're in optional work that's got small chunks, and you have no, no, you know, there's something in the bill increases government subsidies for Cobra to 100%, which I haven't had the time to unpack but if that if I'm reading that right it seems to sound like if you lose your job and need to buy into Cobra the government will just pay for it. That's crazy. Oh wow. So one of my questions long time questions has been why do businesses still want to be responsible for insurance. Why do they want to have anything to do. And the only the only answer I can find is that it's sticky, like, you're going to have to stay my employee even though you don't want to because you can't leave because you'll lose your benefits and it's an artifact of World War two when we don't know if it's in order because prices, because wages were frozen. I get that so the World War two changed every country's health care system in a different way. I would submit a bill to basically get business out of the business of healthcare entirely, and then see what happens. You're looking my wife as an area that we, we, we negotiate with the healthcare people over here for company. Oh, it's horrible stuff. And the numbers are always going up and it's always works. Yeah, I want to add another thing you know Janet Yellen former head of Federal Reserve who studied inequality. And that's where her academic studies and economics were. We have an unprecedented cooperation between the Fed and the Treasury, which is exactly what happened in World War two. I mean, we do have a dream team right now in the White House. We have a dream team. We have climate especially what he's doing with climate and energy is amazing. Far more than I expected. Not crazy about agriculture same guy who oversaw the crappy system we have now. But I don't know enough to be really critical but we really need rethinking of how agricultural subsidies happen that the farm bill needs to be like thrown up in the year and broken. And I don't think. Pinata the farm bill is what I would say and like, yeah, the whole that whole system is really dysfunctional. In many ways, and I don't think. A new verb. I don't think you'll second is up to the job to actually change it at all. We're at the end of our, our call time. It has been lovely to see everybody again on the month mark. It's too bad nothing's happened over the last year. It's great to keep us in conversation. And, and, and, and you just heard Jermay signing a cattle be optimistic it's great. He's going to rename himself to be too sure. Thanks to me that was a wonderful video I just want to say it was great. It was thank you. Thank you. Yes, thank you. And happy birthday. Yes. Oh my God, I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. It's all right. Happy birthday. I have a different song. I we can't do the funeral dirge it goes like this. Oh, I love your birthday song. It is a very long hey. Love it. Oh the birthday dirge that I heard was you've heard the birthday dirge. It's a different one right. It's the usual one when everybody sings at this speed. There's a different while you're singing it. There's a different happy birthday. Pain and sorrow everywhere people dying in the air something like that. Which feels to me like a like a Mr. Doom kind of birthday song doesn't it. It is. And it's to the sound to the tune of the song of the Volga boatman. Yes, it's perfect. I just have to say that that's the ideal birthday song. Actually, for those of you who are of the right age altered images happy birthday is actually my favorite birthday song. Okay. I don't know if any of you remember that song. I like this TV wonder version but okay. So happy birthday Jamay. Thank you all for being here. Kelly thank you for remembering that. Thank you for coming ahead. No worries and thank you. Mostly thank you for for actually taking the time to watch the video. I always feels like I'm throwing these things out into the void. And it's really, it's really ratifying to get a response, you know, and then that it's a good response is even better but just simply hearing back is it's very meaningful for me so thank you. Awesome. Thanks everyone. Thank you.