 Before we get started here I wanted to mention a couple of things which I think this is mostly for Fernando because I think both Alan and I have heard this before but you can. I'm going to put a couple of links in the chat here in a minute. We have a couple of opportunities to stay in touch. And to help out with a conference one of them is a guest book. If you want to add your name to that your email to that, you can be on our mailing list for future events. We also have a place to do feedback and that link will be in the chat in a minute to and that is anonymous. The link just takes you straight to the survey and you can fill it out you can actually fill it out more than once if you want to. The information is helpful to future committees to be able to consider feedback it's totally anonymous and won't be shared or used any other place than just for the committee's work. And then I will have both of those in the, in the, in the chat in a couple of minutes here while we get started. And then the last thing is that the discussion that we're having here today, we can continue that discussion on the page for the web page for this session. And so be sure to visit that web page I'll put the link to that in the, in the chat as well. And that way, if we get into something really good and can't finish it before we need to move to the next session, we can continue the chat online with each other. So with that I'll turn it over to Alan. The discussion was conceived because really in, in the last 50 years, especially the last 20. There's been more a, an understanding of the dialectic between racing class, specifically, because in the past they tended to either. So social scientists tend to either dismiss class and take a class reductionist view. I'm sorry dismiss race and take a class reductionist view that all it really matters was income and class. And then counterposing that was another view which I think is one sided my, which basically mystified race ethnicity into identity politics. Another position emerged which I think does not solve the problem. And that's what's what's called intersectionality, where they say okay it's a mixture of the two. And I think that the idea that it's a mixture of the two still doesn't capture the dialectic the way that that they affect each other. The way that they penetrate each other the way that they shape shape and define each other. So, in that sense, the session was conceived up to get an understanding of the importance of particularly understanding how the dynamic of race and when I say class on including imperialism in a broader sense. The process is how they interact. So essentially was set up for that reason, and to kind of make sure or emphasize the role of ethnicity and class and race and variations on that, because the processes that began with the racist exploitation of labor on their early actually precap whether the, the, I guess the embryo capitalism is I guess is what I would call it has since been replicated those processes are replicated, not along strictly racial lines, but it's fundamentally the same process in terms of Muslims being mistreated in Myanmar, India, or areas being mistreated in Palestine, we can go on and on a hundred examples, ethnic groups being discriminated against in the Amazon, or in Southern Mexico. And what's key to understand is that we don't want to take an essential view on sort of a neo-vibrarian view that says that there's just something in the minds of some people that make some behave certain ways, which doesn't you don't want to take a class reduction if you that denies the role of consciousness, but there's no way to make that false choice. So that's what this was conceived of as to have those who are doing more research into this area. Make sure that this gets brought into the discussion, not in a condescending way or a missionary way but in a way that really understands the dynamic between how a class exploitation utilizes race and ethnic categories. That's all they are categories to sustain the system. I touched a bit about about class reductionism and I think it's more about as both combining both, both work together and both go together. So my research questions were, how does technological innovation impact racial inequality under capitalism? For example, the introduction of automation will reduce the number of low-skilled workers. This means that if there is a proportional representation of workers of color in this category, then this will lead to greater racial inequality as technology advances. And introducing new technologies to the economy leads to discrimination against race and other forms. How does it impact African American, Latino and other workers of color in particular? This is an American process. What is the relationship between the presence of immigrants and automation? Does having less immigrants increase automation? The result is that greater immigration could diminish incentives for increasing workers like technology. But of course, this is because of low wages. So they're getting paid less, so the technology is more expensive than paying the low wages to immigrants. Wait, are you on mute? Or are you just saying hello? No, I'm sorry. I was all over the place looking up the introduction and everything. So, yeah, I think technology and immigrants are a very interesting topic. You know, the findings are interesting because I think one of the things that I found in the US, I mean, in China, I guess it's because we talked about China yesterday a lot, you know. And Alan talked about China a little bit. But it was like 20 years ago, labor was so cheap. And so, so, you know, you just pick up the phone, you talk to people, you know, like, they answer your questions, they know their business and everything. But in the US, when I first came to the US in 2007, I went to a conference, I think 2008 or 2009, and then everything was automated. It's kind of like, you know, like it's convenient because it's 24 seven. On the other hand, it's kind of like, I want to talk to a person who can understand my questions, you know, I don't have to, you know, like repeat the same, you know, one to three for like 20 times to understand what's going on. So, so, so I think, you know, the, the, the, the relationship between the two. I mean, of course, you know, like there, the cost is a major concern, you know, in this people versus machine. So, so I think it's a very interesting finding. The issue is, I guess, you know, like, I guess I'm all of the place again. One of the things that about immigrants is not that they're not needed. Right. For example, in agriculture and everything. They are needed for the economy. But then, at the same time, there are lots. Also, very strong voice in some cases, which is against immigration. So I just wonder how you, how does immigration come into this picture. Thanks. That question was for Fernando, if you can, whether you have thought about this, or maybe, you know, everybody here after that. No, I haven't thought about it. So it gives me a perspective. Right. Yeah. So, you know, for example, like I, you know, I think I know a little bit about Chinese immigrants. So, when, when, when Chinese laborers came to the US to construct the cross country railroad, they were held as the model workers for some time. And once the construction was over, they were portrayed as opium users, you know, like, they are breaking the union, they're getting, you know, robbing jobs from from hardworking, working class families in the US, you know, who had to, you know, force their daughters to be prostitutes and things like that. You know, it's just like, they're low moral, these workers Chinese workers don't have moral morality and things like that, and their low price is just for competing people out of their business out of their property out of their family even. I think that's, that's, that's what it is, you know, it's not like they're not needed, they are, they are needed, and then there are certain times they're not needed and it's not only about the cost, and whether they're hardworking or not and things like that I think you know, in today's today's world. I don't know how true that that's do that still is the case. And, and so, yeah, I was going to say, I, when you were talking about that it reminded me of what happened in Arizona. I lived in Arizona from 2004 to 2006 and then moved to Nevada but when I was living in Arizona. And this is, you know, just anecdotal observation I don't know any research on this but when I was living in Arizona. There were a few like crazy people down on the border who were like, Oh, don't let them come in and talking about you know, the kind of rhetoric that we had later about building walls and all of that kind of stuff. But they were generally in Phoenix anyway regarded as like those crazy outliers down at the border. And then the 2008 crash happened. And, you know, before that there was just all kinds of construction work in Phoenix like houses were going up everywhere and there was always work for anybody who was coming up and a lot of the laborers that worked in the construction work, building houses and so forth. Have you ever been to Phoenix it's just one sprawling suburb is basically like six million people just spread out. And they were building all these houses and they had all of these labors coming up from Mexico and it was perfectly cool because you know it's hot, terrible work to do construction in the middle of a desert. And these were the people who were willing to do it and nobody talked. You know, it wasn't generally regarded as a problem except for a few, you know, crazy prejudice people. Then the crash happened right and immediately after that the politics in Arizona totally changed. They were, you know, there were accent laws you can't teach English with an accent which was probably the stupidest law that they did and it certainly got thrown out of court eventually but my husband used to make jokes about how to, you know, an Arizona accent sounds like John Wayne like that you got to teach English sounding like John Wayne I mean, what does that even mean you can't teach English with an accent. And, but there were other more serious laws that started, you know, putting people in, you know, the local police started enforcing immigration actions. And you had Sheriff Joe putting people in tents in the middle of the desert and, you know, people that I never heard prejudicial attitudes from before. We're suddenly talking about, oh, they're taking all our jobs and they're coming up here. And, you know, the politics turned ugly, everything and all of this in my estimation anyway, really started being a popular discourse after the crash. Like, there wasn't a need for having workers build houses anymore because houses were not being built anymore. So now they're just quote unquote dirty Mexicans, where before they were hardworking people who were, you know, coming to help us out so I think that that economic aspect of prejudice and prejudicial language anyway I mean it's a $64,000 question as to whether those prejudices existed before the economic reality, and just emerged because of it or if they were developed in response to the economic reality but I think that that's especially in light of the topic of this, of this session is an interesting aspect of how class and race interact with each other because you hear popularized racial tensions in hard economic times more than you hear it and, and boom times and times when things are going well. And of course, we're in a position now and that things have been not been going well for some time now you know that that working class people have been having it tough no for decades now so I think that we're seeing that kind of rhetoric emerge because of the capitalistic ideas of competition. There's this feeling that you got it, you know you got to take advantage of whatever you got to take advantage of racial language and racial prejudices are a way of distinguishing yourself within that, within that rhetoric, you know hire me because I'm white versus hire me because I'm skilled. I think you, you know, I think it relates very much to the Chinese experience of 100 years ago or more. Thank you. But this discussion I think is quite important. It's important to take a look at how racism and racialization is very much intertwined into the dynamics of capitalism and global capitalism. And that is not so much put forth so there's like stereotypes and stereotypes or whatever or prejudice, but how do these things, the manifestations of racialization of society really is very much in the integral to capitalism, the logic of capitalism, such as the constant search for cheap labor, both within the nation state, and on the global scale beyond the nation state, beyond borders. So if you take a look at building borders like oh we don't want the Mexicans to come here, there is the breaking down of borders when it comes to seeking and the social construction of cheap labor for profit. So, especially in the, in the dynamics if you take a look at racialization of American society, it is very much there. And the constitution saying that we want to promote the free enterprise it's already built in slavery in actually became very much promoted of capitalism. And, and so that's why we don't want to eliminate that there are new forms of slavery within capitalism. These are things that we need to research but I am interested in Fernando's discussion on technology. If we take a look at the pandemic. I was saying I have not listened to the to his tape. I didn't have time. There are cases where within the technology sector there's also hierarchy station. And there are workers within the capitalist system who are somewhere there and highly paid, but also low paid within the technological structure and making my new divisions of labor so that you can pay them. All of these, in many ways, was affected by the pandemic, which is the pandemic, and it's also partly if we, the way we handled it is also related to the crisis of capitalism. That's inherent in capitalism. It's not because there was the virus, but the way we responded to it somehow is also was also affected. And now it continues to respond. It's also affected by the logical capitalism. So even pandemics, right. People lost jobs and of course the people in the informal economy they were also they're not in technology, but they were also very much affected. And this is very complex and how do we analyze these so that we can make them simpler for people who are not in the academics because I find academics, not so much involved in social chains, but how do we package our research, so that we can influence and share knowledge, the knowledge we produce, and the sources of knowledge are the workers and yet we create we produce outcomes of research that's not really being disseminated and empowering them. I think to take a step back a little bit. Sometimes you say something obvious that people knew all the time, but at the same time, we don't always know we know it. So, in particular, how processes unfold, I'm going to get real abstract here for a minute, how processes unfold. There's a tendency to either to the extreme imagine conspiracy or plan, or to the other extreme imagine accident. And most of us who probably have a more progressive or left or, you know, Marxist or Marxian or whatever perspective. We see the patterns that emerge. And we spend a great deal of time battling against the struggling with the kind of mainstream people who insist things just happen. The ideology that underlies things just happen is that everybody is a free agent and there's no coercion in the world. Things don't just happen. But they're also not plotted and plan. I find myself and number of other people say critical thinkers if you want to laugh, who sometimes move a little bit too far in the other direction and begin to attribute intentionality to cohesion, if you will. In other words, why are there so many Serbs and Macedonians in the town of crown point Indiana. Well, it wasn't simply because the king of Serbia and the princes of Macedonia decided to send people here. But it also wasn't just accident. It was an accident that the steel mills were hiring at the time that they were economic and social upheavals in Central and Eastern Europe during the 1910s and 1920s. So there was some intentionality, because in point of fact, the, the companies recruited. There's one story where they went to a town in Mexico, and just put up signs that said jobs in Gary Indiana. And people got on board a train to go to Gary Indiana wherever that was to get a job. And the borders were, you know, relatively open then. So, there's some intentionality but a lot of it also is just once something happens other things stick to it. It's not the same as plotting and planning but it's also not the same as accident. And we know this I'm telling you anything here we don't already know trial and error is another way of saying it. Toad against the wall and see what sticks. There's a million expressions you have in our language. And I really do wish this is also the logic behind statistics by the way. It's the same thing statistics are not just numbers. There are a motive methodology where you look at things probabilistically and see what sticks with what, and then you try to find out which causes which, or whether there's a third thing that's causing both and you know, all the other ways to try to analyze things. So I think for myself, I just have to wake up in the morning and remind myself that the working class and the capitalist class doesn't sit down at the breakfast table every morning and say, how can I plan my day according to Alan social theory. But yeah, but yeah, I find myself sometimes getting into that mode. They don't capitalist themselves have their planning they have their club of growth that they have their rank corporation and they have the better business bureau and they have other associations bigger and more powerful than that caps on foreign relations, etc. They have those things, but in the end accident just like with evolution mutation is the genesis of all this and then certain things survive and certain things grow and thrive and certain things dissipate. And I think that's the way with a lot of this. And I was just trying to bring it back to the question of technology and labor. There are patterns, but I also think that on the individual level, each capitalist each enterprise is mainly preoccupied with protecting their own enterprise. So they'll go back and forth. If you look at clothing, for example, it's really interesting to me. If you look at clothing you might see very similar things in the same store over the course of the year. And one of them says made in Guatemala. And one of them says made in Thailand. One of them says made in Bangladesh. And one of them says made in Ethiopia. And another one says made in Mexico. And I think a lot of that has to do with, they just follow the money, not because of a plot, but because they have no choice. If they don't seek out cheaper labor, wherever they can. They'll provide a business to those who are better at doing it. The human species, we do not have to kill each other to survive. That's a capitalist myth to justify the fact that corporations have to kill each other in order to survive in a broader sense, because capitalism is unsustainable and so at a certain point it begins to contract. It's a fight over shrinking pie. Again, we know that that's not true for humanity outside of politics, but it is true for a monopoly game. You're all familiar with that. There's no way you're going to have more players, five hours into the game that you started with it can't happen. So I think that's how the handle technology. There are general patterns, the general process which even Marx talked about mechanization automation is a general process worldwide. But on the other hand that any given historical moment, if they can make something cheaper with quasi slave labor. They don't really have separate pockets here and there. They really have full on old fashioned slavery, because they're not housing and feeding the exploited workforce. They're basically semi enslaving them to debt, but they're not, it's not like they're providing, you know, dungeons or like an ancient room or slave quarters like in the USA for people. And that keeps it flexible for them. And that's the case in point where it's in Detroit. The factories began to close because factories were opening up in Japan in particular and somewhere in Germany auto factories. But that wasn't just cheap labor. And also that the Japanese factories and steel mills the other plants were more modern. They were built after the war so they were built in the 1950s and 60s, and the ones in the US were built in the 1890s and 1920s. They were not as efficient. So it was a combination of cheap labor and mechanization. The response was to lower the cost of labor in the US. Here labor labor weight system. So that in a lot of the factories, one of the first things they did was they, much from a call they fragmented the labor force more. For example, the janitors custodians and the factories, who used to be in the auto workers union or the steel workers union were now all fired. And then replaced it either template or temporary labor or they had their own union. But they were no longer paid an equivalent pay scale. And the union leaders in most cases have rolled over with all this. So it's not a situation where in some of the factories. The workers will be making $28 to $30 an hour, which is comfortable, depending on what part of the country you live in, not really affluent, but it's certainly survivable. But the deal was that new hires were coming to $14 to $15 an hour. $14 to $15 hours not sustainable. It was just humorous that just a few years ago people were calling $15 an hour, a living wage, when in fact it isn't unless unless you have two people in the family working or something. And so, parts of the other one to come back again to Detroit with a combination of cheap labor and they also turned out some of the old factories. What they're looking at is they oscillate. They zig in these eggs. Now, in the course of the zigging and zagging, you know, all patterns are processes. But it's not necessarily that some person high up is saying, Okay, time to do this. That happened somewhat by the way, that also happened to regionally. There was a chronic twist that the public against who historically supported immigrants, more than Democrats did going back 80 or 100 years ago, because they own big factories and they're really wealthy and they wanted to achieve labor, and the Democrats tended to be concerned about the problem or concerned about getting votes by pandering to the problem. Because we also have to keep in mind that these that they don't believe it any other stuff. I mean, I would bet my entire house and my entire pension on the reality that the Trump has paid for at least two abortions, maybe 10. They don't believe any of this stuff. You know, Trump had undocumented workers working in his businesses, while he was screaming and he and they knew it, while he was screaming about undocumented workers coming over. So they're not driven by ideology, but they use it with respect to the foot soldiers again Trump is a good example and that he's anti Russian and pro Russia every other day. Depending on what will will play to his base, I think he would have become a liberal Democrat if he thought he could be president that way. I mean to pick on him I'm just using it as an example of sometimes the capitalism or flexible than we are in figuring out what they want to do and how they want to respond to events. It has a lot to do with it. I think they're a broader patterns that brought a pattern still the logic of it is to move towards more mechanization. In the end, but that within that are various bumps and zigzags, hiccups, whatever term we want to use, where at a given place in the given time, it's actually cheaper and easier. You know, Nazi Germany people have to remember that the death camps were labor, labor camps. They basically work people to death. They actually had scientists who figured out if you gave someone 700 calories a day. How many days of work could you get out of them before they died before they could no longer work and then you've been never killed. I think that explains the ambivalence of the suddenly the ruling class the capitalist class in America towards the question of immigration. Those businesses that benefit from it. Sort of turn a blind eye. Although actually in the ideal case. In the ideal case, you, you keep something illegal but you let it happen. Because if you make it illegal you don't get to use it. You let it happen you can't control it. So you keep it illegal but you let it happen. It happened if a lot of gun control laws were instituted, which I mean I don't like all these people wanting our guns. But as a side point, if they institute a strict gun control laws we know that it would be enforced unevenly. I mean even something is benign as seat belt laws are enforced unevenly, depending on the racing class of the driver of the car. So, I'm just throwing that out as a kind of a being a an airplane looking down on how these processes unfold. And, but I do believe the underlying process is it is a job for cheaper labor, because capitalism does have a falling rate of profit. So by definition it's not nothing Karl Marx dreamed up he got this from capitalist economists themselves themselves. The rate of profit drops and the more the rate of profit drops and more desperate. The system is. I think a lot of people really confused micro and macro it doesn't matter is the richest 1% of getting richer that doesn't mean the system is not in crisis. People who probably had the best meal their lives on the Titanic before it went down. But I suppose one could turn to another and say it's food it's really excellent, but you know then what. So, the fact that there is a systemic crisis, and it varies in some places. Wars are actually starting to kill off young people. We have a scholar friend from Ethiopia, who told me that the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. What that did was it was a pressure valve. Basically to kill off 10s and 10s of thousands of young men to easy unemployment crisis. And that that war ended in more or less a stalemate. I think that basically the overall pattern is a driver cheap labor, or rather cheaper production costs, and nothing is cheaper than a machine. Right. I'll take the last extreme example that which is one of the very most profitable industries now in the world is gambling, very, very profitable. You have a machine, a slot, especially the slot machines. You spend somebody building this machine, and then you don't have to pay it health insurance, you have to pay the wage, you have to pay it anything. And people go in there, and they put in the dollar, and they get 90 cents back. So because we're getting 90 cents back they don't feel like a complete loser. They get a jolt of happiness. They get a jolt of happiness once in a while, because they lost all the time they stopped playing. And these things make massive amounts of money with very little labor if you look, you look at the number of people that are being served on the floor of a casino, there might be 150. And look at the number of people that are taking care of them. And it's a few people going around giving free drinks, and then probably some people in a booth looking out for cheaters. And that's about it. So, it's that's mechanization to the extreme that's just like banking is another example that insurance is another example. These are all ways of extracting profit with the least costly labor as possible. And they can't they're also time lag issues so see that's where it gets even more complicated, because they'll promote a policy, and then things will change. And the old policy is now not the one that they need for the moment. You know, an example that again was immigration, where they encourage massive immigration into the 1920s. So by 1920 years old in the United States. You now had soldiers coming home from the war. And you did have massive industrialization which provided a lot of jobs, but you also had a huge influx of white and black workers coming from the south of the north. And you had this continuous influx of workers from your eastern and southern Europe, especially. In 1924, they had to start passing these and immigration laws, where just, you know, 10 years earlier, they were hanging up signs in Croatia saying come to the US for a job. So, you know, but I guess if I had to say what I think the long term processes I think it's the drive to sustain profit. And to sustain profit. When the pie is shrinking. Means you have to find cheaper labor. You know, they do other things too I plant obsolescence advertising especially that that is a major way that they sustain the system. But if anybody needed any proof that the system is in crisis just look at the debt. The people who would say it's not important what they're really saying is, it's not important for during my lifetime. But the fact that the entire national debt was $900 billion in 1980. And now is what 100 times that much something like that. I don't know 900 billion is the I guess 20 times that much, even so to multiply 20 full over. So that's not sustainable so they're also always looking for cheaper labor to look at how Amazon treats its workers it's just astounding. And these factories. I'm sure you're all familiar with what the sweatshop factories are in other countries do not like what we imagine it. If somebody puts up a tent. That's 100 feet long and 30 feet wide. And they have a dangerous wire running electricity under the tent. And they have 30 sewing machines. And usually young women sitting at them, working all day long. Not much capital investment. And if they need to, they could shut that thing down and open up another one in Bangladesh. And then, five months later, open up one in Guatemala, you know, or so anyway I don't know if that was helpful or not but that's kind of, you know, trying to get away from saying, you know, policymakers plan this long in advance, but also getting away with saying well it's just the free will of people in a pluralistic society, you know, bouncing around and things sort of happen that way. I put a link in the chat from an article that I read a few years ago that I come back to a lot because I think one of the things. I think you're exactly right Alan, it's not some evil cartel somewhere planning all of this and plotting it all. And it also isn't just happening. And I think that the systemic thing that that reproduces a lot of what you're talking about is borders. And that is some of what Legaia was talking about and about immigration that Fernando was talking about. And that is that labor, unlike capitalists can't move from one country to the other easily. And borders are a way of reinforcing the kinds of divisions that you were talking about locally as well. And this article came out in the Economist, the one I put in the chat, in which they showed that economically, and this is on a macro level obviously borders are costing wealth that it isn't, you know, that it's anti wealth generating now of course the Economist is talking about it. The article is talking about it from an economist point of view. But what I took from that was that this is the way theft works that this is wealth that could be in the hands of the workers. If the workers were allowed to move freely, like what you were describing was happening in the 1910s and 20s, where they could hear about jobs and another location in the world. If you were to move those jobs easily, then you would have them acquiring wealth them improving their life circumstances, but instead because the borders are there. Here's I think the figure was 78 billion note trillion dollars. And that is just being lost. And most of that is going to profit to a few people, because labor doesn't have a position in this. They don't have a form of negotiation. They're being pitted once again, you know against each other. So if I, you know, if you want to make a decent living in this location, I just pack up and go to another location and that's the incentive in the system. Whereas if we did a wave with these border restrictions, and labor could move freely than that wealth would be generated to the laborers and not just to the capitalist. Of course, you know, it's always going to be a game of now that that moves been made they're going to make a counter move and so forth so I'm not suggesting that this necessarily would cure everything but I think it's a certain place to do research and intervention and activism is to ask the question, why do we, you know, why are we, is it really security that we're talking about, or is it dividing laborers that we're talking about. And I think most of the time when countries set up rigid borders. It doesn't have anything to do with security it has to do with preventing those labor forces from moving it will to where the work is where the resources are. And I toss in a note of that pessimism is cynicism in that I think there are two things that prevent that. The first is obviously, um, when the larger structure say the imperialist structures, empires fragment. Lots of people come in to try to grab a piece of it. I mean doesn't want hungry to take over Romania, but he wants to own as much as he can in Hungary. So you begin to have metaphorical fiefdoms, if you will, where people grab what they can. It's, it's interesting I have a friend who studied gangs who knows she knows him from the inside inside and out. It was told to me 10 or 15 years ago that there's a process happening in Chicago, that the 1980s stereotype of the crypts in the bloods or the gangsters and the disciples, where they each had like, you know, 10,000 members in the gang. She said that's not what's happening now. What's happening now is that any a kids that control a two block area. That's the gang. There isn't particularly a head to it. And we see that happening worldwide. It's not just the US competing with what you might call it with with Russia, or China, we see countries like the Philippines playing both sides. One minute threatening to go to China if the US does this and the other minute really concerned about China because of the battle over territory in the South China seas. We see a lot of the allies of the US willing to break away and, you know, sort of declare independence from that. So this fragmentation, which comes back to the ease up fable of who will build a cat, which needs to be read to the people who put out the economist in foreign policy, and all these other journals. The fable of who will build a cat is on all the mice get together and realize someone needs to put a bell on the cat and then the questions who will do it. So I would say to the capitalists agree that you guys need to do something about this. And they say that's absolutely 100% right, you guys need to do something about this. So that's the first problem. That's how the borders spring up. Basically, it's people grabbing territory. They don't fully believe in these borders, by the way, you know, Russia certainly doesn't believe in the border. The US hasn't believed in borders at all ever since probably the 1890s. You know, so that's just wrong me for the master so to speak. But there's a second point to even if somehow or some way. That was achieved. That labor could move freely, which is that kind of happen but if it did happen, the system will collapse. It wouldn't be sustainable period because capitalism has this endemic problem of the, I call the crisis of misproduction, or it's called a crisis of overproduction, we don't have too much of everything we have too many of some things. I hear people say, Well, you know a planned economy doesn't work you have bureaucrats 1000 miles away making decisions. How can they know what kind of shoes people in Tucson need when they're living in Washington, and therefore planned economy doesn't work. My reply is granted. That's, that's a real issue. Now does an unplanned economy work better. In fact, there's no such thing as an unplanned economy because an unplanned economy simply means the biggest bully plans that their own, their own purposes, they decided where to build a highway where to build an airport, whose property to take, which, which farmers to give money to to not grow food. So I think that I think that that is absolutely worth fighting for the dissolving of orders, the right of labor to move freely. I don't think it's going to run up against to brick walls, the smaller brick wall ID is the kingdom building by the, all the locals. And again it's interesting because even. The rise of so many of these petty dictators now around the world, whether talking about Brazil are talking about the Philippines are talking about, well India the guy isn't petty. He's pretty big, but it's sort of the same thing still the hyper nationalism the ethno religious nationalism. But even beyond that is somehow that was transcended. Then the system would collapse. The wages of every black worker in the US, not even counting Hispanic workers, just if every black worker in the US had heard his wages raised to be equal to the wages of the capitalism would collapse. It could not sustain itself no one would make a profit. You know, by the way capitalism is run today. I think, you know, we have a responsibility to operate with two hands at the same time. You know, we have to keep our eye on the ball as people who do have a deeper broader analysis about what how the pattern is unfolding. So we also have to immerse ourselves in the daily lives of people who, you know, we're struggling to survive, because it's only in the process of those struggles that the lessons that we think we are so smart about can be illuminated exposed and understood. Otherwise, you end up, you know, with ideas that sound good, but they don't mean true. You know, I had a student once say to me you need to talk to my cousin, because you explained things well. And I said no. Why not I said, your cousin doesn't know me. It doesn't matter if it sounds good. All kind of things sounds good my mom used to say to your food 100 times, get the vitamins. Why I don't know we have 10 fingers who knows what the origin of the myth was sounds logical though you could make anything sound logical if you say it in a certain tone of voice. You know, doesn't the government sometimes spy on people yeah. So therefore, all the covert measures were part of a government plan to spy. You see anything in sound logical I said the guy doesn't know me. He doesn't. Why should he trust I'd be scared if he didn't trust me, just because I explained things a certain way. I said you learn this, and then you go out and you talk to him and he'll trust you. But, but then to go back to the first one if you just do that you end up immersing yourself in in reform movements, and you end up making excuses. You know well Bernie is better than this and then well Biden is better than that. Well, we have to keep mentioned in, you know, cinema and office because of this and this and pretty soon. You almost want to choke when they say things like George W Bush heroically stood up to Trump it's like, you know, so you can't drown yourself in the liberal reformism. But we do have to find a way to relate to that seems to me, I don't know I'm going on too long but I just feel a lot of times. Again, I, my mind thinks about dichotomies and the false dichotomy of reformism as an ism versus preaching. And actually, London actually had an interesting thing we talked about trade unions. He said there's schools for revolution. And I like the concept putting London aside and unions aside schools as a way of saying look, the schools don't produce anything, but they make you smarter and the reform struggles. They can take it away tomorrow I mean who would have imagined to be fighting over voting rights and abortion. Who could even have conceived of that 10 years ago. They can take anything away, but it's hard to take away to change the people's consciousness. And young people are not buying it that much. Said there's an obsession yesterday unfortunately they're not buying much of anything, but they're sort of passively passively really really rejecting this drive to the right, and some actually actively we saw the summer of 2020. But I think I think this is all related. Actually, because this question of automation. When people said 50 years ago that I'm safe. I have a white collar job, these computers are going to create robots, they're going to take away the jobs of blue collar people. I wasn't a sociologist and I'm not sure I'm much of one now 50 years. I said, well I don't understand can computers replace accountants even more easily than workers online. They don't even have to build a machine to screw the ball in place. You know, accountants and insurance estimators and all these things, you know, can be very rapid and now we're seeing with professors right. But what what percentage of instruction is now done by people that get paid one fifth of what regular professors make. And that's a combination getting back to what Fernando said it's a combination of mechanization and cheap labor. It's not sustainable. Unless there's a movement, a serious movement that doesn't shoot itself on the feet all the time. I mean, this is the price we're paying. To put a marchers undertone to this. With all of its dribs and dribs and ups and downs and experiments, because it really was just a grand, it's been a grand experiment for 150 years actually, you know, how long going to take feudalism to triumph over ancient slavery. So 10,000 years, they take capitalism to triumph over feudalism 700 years. So why in the world imagine that the most profound change of all, it somehow happened within a course of two or three lifetimes. But with all that what Marx is a represented to a lot of people wasn't just, Oh, we get to share the food. We all get to have medicine. It really meant that that it was the highest expression of the notion of human progress, which capitalism was one useful thing I won't say it was good. I'll say it was useful was, you know, developing the notion of human progress capitalism was healthy now it's, it's taken the opposite tack, but the notion of human progress. And by the time we get to 1950. It was like, with all of its problems the Soviet Union did defeat the Nazis and lift a lot of people out of poverty. And look at what happened in China, which it's true in the short term, you can make gains to bribery. And so China clearly in the short term by grabbing a sector of the population with capitalism. It's a standard of living since the late 1970s, but important fact the greatest boost to the Chinese standard of living was between 1949 in the middle 70s. The interesting study done comparing China and India. And they said that if you look at the number of years of life loss, even taking into account the huge famines in China. I lost more because of the infant mortality and all these other things. So, with the decline of socialism the Soviet Union, which had been going on for decades, but probably the Apple finally job from the tree in the mid 50s. Although the apple was already, you know, deteriorating before that nothing happens that are nothing, but the apple probably dropped the 1950s when who's just said you know, let's be friends with America. And then there was still residuals, especially in Latin America in Africa, some of these places. And then China. The apple again dropped there probably in the middle 70s. And this whole notion of pro not just socialism or communism is possible, but the human progress is possible the notion that was embraced in different forms by everybody from, you know, John Steinbeck to Pante Corvo the Italian movie director to Picasso to Paul Sarcher to Robert Ryan the movie star and a whole bunch of other directors of it. It was just embraced that oh well you know we're on an upward move and the shattering of that has put us in a backwater. Like when part of a river pulls backwards into a swamp and rocks her while. You know, maybe that's the stage we're in but there's no point in self pity. We don't have the right to do that that's self pity is a middle class luxury working for people don't have the, the timer ability to philosophize about how said life is, you know they do but they also have to get up and work. I think that's related to this. You know when people say what's the difference between a Marxist view and all the other radical views. And I say well understand there are many different definitions of Marxism, at least as many as our Christianity. But I think a core view is Marxism doesn't think the system is sustainable. So it separated Marx and all the utopian socialism commons of the day. It was a combination of having a vision of a better world but also of analyzing the mechanics of capitalism to see how the friction, you know, created the self destruction. How do you see the future unfolding with respect to the dialectic for cheap labor between automation and immigration. Yeah, so cheap. I think cheap labor will be the, that's all over the world and the, the, the looking for cheap labor so they can maximize the profits accompanies. So, wherever this, this is exploitation. You know, we'll complain when the jobs are heading to Mexico. And so they say that the, that they're not paying the workers right here in the US so they're heading down for that cheap labor. So, not the internet and before people complain about it about the guy you have any thoughts about how this might unfold in the future. What I'm saying is that the advancement in technology really took place within the context of capitalism, the logic of capitalism. And it has penetrated it seems almost all segments of society we are not talking about AI. And I'm afraid this is going to change the way educational system will be operating. And Indiana University, for example, as a whole department and brides itself that we will be in the forefront of AI research and advancement. On the other hand, there are also those who are saying what are the ethical issues of AI. So I think it's important at this point that we are trying to see a new social order. How can we assess the current advancement of technology in and its impact on humanity, humanization, ethical issues that we need to consider. And who are in control of these technology, and even in warfare, you know, suddenly in the war on Ukraine. Suddenly you just said, oh, these are new weapons that we never heard about and we spent a lot of money on weapons to destroy, rather than and take how many how much money do we spend on technology to build and technology to bring people together. So a new challenge for scholars and scholar activists and I think Fernando has done a really good contribution to this. Because show this particularly, we cannot comprehend this very much. So there's the need to have teamwork with other people in disciplines. Let's bring, for example, engineers into our fold of research. We learn from each other. And I'm not very much in technology and I don't have probably the training, but I'm very willing, for example, to take a look at AI, for example, how this is transforming the way we educate the way we learn. And the way we produce knowledge and the way we relate should this be the way we should be learning. We talk to technology, we learn from technology and sometimes the vision is made so cheap so that you just depend on it. Like my son, who's an engineer, and would pay only $20 for updating his engineering skills and say how much do you pay I pay only $20 for this particular package of learning. How do you, how do they evaluate the fluid or I just do some, I do this and then they look at it, and all the lectures already there, the ones, the instructor who made the lectures, you do not even need, you just look at the machine. So no interaction. And so this is something that we could explore further as a source of social problems and the way we interact. In fact, some arguments I have read in the literature is if you are doing automation, it is also because partly that we could easily control labor. We could easily divide labor because they're not anymore coming into places. That's very easy to do in education, you don't need teachers to come together and you can control them as well. And capitalism has also penetrated education as a way, way back, the kinds of theories and ideas that we teach, we just accept. And business schools, we teach them how to be capitalists, remember, there's no, no course at all, where we say, okay, now let's have cooperatives train entrepreneurs train people to set up operatives. It has to be better capitalism, or being a corporate manager of transnational corporations, so it is, it is, I see these as a crisis, the crisis of capitalism, that's also affecting our minds and the way we produce knowledge and the way we educate. Let me, I guess we sort of have to close out. I'm going to close out being roundabout, like I often am. Before I get to the point. So, I was in college it was just sort of cynical movie called the servant. You know, because it was talking about the 1960s. So the servant was a story about a very rich man. It was a movie, Dirk Bogard, I forget who was in it. Anyway, really, really rich guy who had the servant, and he bossed servant around constantly. He had the servant do this, he had the servant do that. And by the end of the movie, the servant was doing everything. And that's sort of a take on the Hagel had a metaphor also of the master and the servant. Whereas if you have the servant brush your teeth for you and comb your hair for you and put your shoes on and carry you around from place to place and feed you at a certain point the question is who is really in has power in the situation. I think the same thing is true with respect to technology. There are so many doomsayers who say that all these machines will eliminate the working class. And I don't mean to minimize what will be decades of pain. There's no question, hopefully not centuries of pain, but suddenly decades of pain for people all over the world who died unnecessarily of everything from cancer to auto crashes to war, the hunger. COVID. It's a long way to understand that it's a eliminate the whole working class and only had one big machine doing everything. It only takes one person to pull the plug out from the wall and all machine breaks down complex structures on the one hand provided massive amount of power to whoever controls it. But the other hand complex structures are very vulnerable. As we see now with the supply chain crisis, for example, going on worldwide so you know when the doomsayers talked about how the working class ultimately is going to be obsolete it because the capitalist will have all power. Remember the more concentrated power is. Well, to quote a 50 year old. That Chinese philosopher capitalism is a paper tiger and an iron tiger. It's estimated it's an iron tiger. The tremendous damage and destruction and that they can cause, but understand that at its core. It's, it's weak. And they couldn't do anything. They couldn't tie their shoes. If there wasn't a worker in Oman, who, who allowed oil to flow to a ship that took it to a factory that refunded in the US that turned it into plastic that ended up creating a tip of the shoelace. That the capitalist needs to tie his shoes. And we have to keep that in mind because I think, as, as critics, we sometimes, you know, only see the negative of the dialectic, that is, this will be transcended by that. And we don't see that actually the great majority of species that ever existed on earth died. But those that remain were more complex. And I think we have to have the same optimistic view in the long run, but realistic view in the short run about what we face. So anyway, you know, we can do this all day but I think people have other responsibilities so wrap up comments anybody. Well, yeah. Yeah, it's, I think it's a very interesting conversation I was thinking about automation and, you know, how powerful it is at the same time, I mean, you know, like it's, you know, like, like, like you said, it can be unplugged and controlled. So, you know, it can control people when it's running but you know you just need to empower, you know unplug it. So in terms of, I think about an example of, I can't remember it's, I think it's Facebook or something. You know, that's the taxation issue in other countries and things like that. I think technology sometimes can be used to serve the purpose of people for example like, you know, for for maybe it the physical border is difficult to cross. But the virtual border probably it's easier you know if you've like millions of workers, you know, work together and and build a kind of like working system online and things like that. You know, if you know facilitates the flow of workers across, you know, borders physical borders. So yeah that's that's, yeah, that's just a thought. It's a wonderful session. Thank you. Well, I guess we're going to call it a wrap. And thanks everybody for coming. And I thought it was a really good discussion to a lot of insights here and I. So for sparking a lot of thinking about automation and immigration. And so, next session is in 40 minutes I hope some of you will join there. And I will shut things down and stop the recording now so don't forget. We can continue talking online on the web page. So if you have some other ideas or want to throw some things out there please do so. Yeah, thanks Cynthia, and Tandy legia and and Fernando for providing a framework. Otherwise we would be talking about philosophy. Well, the difference between philosophy and sociology is that we have data. And what you did was help provide us with a framework for discussion would be grounded. So thank you for that. And thank you for all. Thanks. Goodbye.