 Good evening, everyone, or maybe you're watching this early in the morning or the middle of the afternoon or listening to it then, whatever, regardless of what time it is, wherever you are. Thank you very much for tuning in. I'm Joseph Fortado. Joining me tonight is Luke Ford, and we are of no known relation, even though we have the same surname in our respective names, Luke. How's it going? Great, Joseph. It's good to talk to you again. It's very good to speak with you. It always is. The Ford family, of course, I'll just say this has an interesting history in the English originally from from Devon back then, way back when it was called Devonshire. And then they went out all over the place. My Ford's wound up going to what's now Northern Ireland from there to the Northeast. And your Ford's obviously left Devon for ultimately Australia. So yeah, the Fords are a very mobile Anglo-Saxon family. Yeah, you might know more about the Fords than I do. I've made it my business and they are Viking origin originally. The opposite name Ford is the Anglicization of Fjord. And in Devon, there are steep cliffs along the shoreline. So it's not surprising as to why Vikings who live there got the name Ford. Anyway, though, that is a very brief, interesting look at the Ford lineage. Now, talking about something much more contemporary, there are great winds of change, which are either blowing or somebody is trying to blow them in the economy, in the American economy. Joe Biden is trying to basically reorient America to a greener pasture in a manner of speaking. And he intends to use the federal government in order to get this done. And his plans were very well summarized in an article in The Economist, which I will get to momentarily. The article was published on the 2nd of February, which is today. That's a Thursday, obviously, 2023. Luke, I did send you the article. Anything to say about this before I get into it, because it's very interesting how there is this aggressive push from Uncle Sam to get something like this done. But at the same time, there's a lack of vision and foresight. Generally speaking, in federal politics today, a lot of partisanship, obviously, not a lot of people focusing on much grander than, you know, scoring points in the immediate sense, particularly in the age of social media. So this is sort of like a return to the 1960s style, you know, LBJ politicking that Biden has set out. And of course, the great society was no great success. And I doubt this would be either. But anyway, what are your views on this unique state of affairs? Well, one way that I'm trying to think about it is let's say none of this was done, like what would America's prospects look like if none of this was done and who would gain and who would lose if none of this legislation was passed? So if none of this legislation was passed, then ordinary Americans and ordinary entrepreneurs would be in much better shape. Obviously, this new legislation passed by the Biden administration is going to put more money and more power in the hands of experts. So non experts, right, people who aren't particularly politically connected, who aren't, you know, strongly connected to the, you know, the high grounds of culture and finance and academia and non governmental organizations, people who aren't connected would have done much better without any of this legislation being passed. But given that it's passed, it's putting more money and more resources and more prestige and more control over our lives into the hands of experts. Now, I'm not I'm not I'm not fully a populist because I don't believe that virtue lies with the people. At the same time, I don't believe that virtue inherently lies with the experts either. I am intermediate between the people and the experts. So sometimes I think the experts are right and the people are wrong. So generally speaking with regard to covid, I believe that the experts were more right than they were wrong. So we may have had an excessive number of block downs. We may have oversold the benefits of some of the promoted policies with with regard to covid. But overall, in my perception of things, the experts were more right than the the populace who have a certain ordinary courage that they refuse to go along with anything that they don't understand, such as vaccines. So now we're going to have, you know, enormous sums of money going to experts, so people who can network and who can establish consensus such as, you know, with the news media, with academics and with NGOs can have access to enormous funds of money. And who's going to hold them accountable? Because we're moving as the philosopher Stephen Turner puts it away from from democracy, where you get to vote for the rules that will govern your life to an era where we're increasingly ruled by experts. And ordinary people don't have the expertise, generally speaking, to challenge the experts. And so this is going to exacerbate this this trend. So it seems obvious to me that a lot of this money being poured into green energy is going to be wasted. It's going to go to the politically, socially connected to those who have ties to the to the elite. So if we didn't do any of this, then regular regular Americans would have, you know, more opportunities. So regular Americans are now going to have pure opportunities, except if they're willing to do what they're told. If they're willing to sign up for these programs, if they're willing to go along to get along to join the the gravy train, to join the the Green Revolution, then then they'll have highly regulated jobs where they have to bow the knee to experts. So ordinary Americans seem to have less power as a result of all this legislation. Experts seem to have more. It's not at all clear to me that this is bad for America. My inclination is this is not good for America, but my my leaning is like 75, 25. So I'm 75 percent sure that this Biden legislation overall is not good for America. But I'm 25 percent open that it may well be that may very well be a better thing to put trillions of dollars in the hands of experts rather than, you know, ordinary Americans. That's my first thought. Before I like I already said before I get into the article, but I just thought of something given what you were mentioning. This green scheme from Biden reminds me of Selindra. That name may sound familiar to some people. I'm going to read just a bit about it from an article at the Cato Institute published in 2015. It is titled Selindra, a case study in green energy cronyism and the failure of central planning was written by David Boas. Back in 2011, I wrote several times about the failure of Selindra, the solar panel company that was well connected to the Obama administration. Then, as with so many stories, the topic passed out of the headlines. And I lost touch with it. And then he quotes Washington Post articles. I'll read a bit from here. Top leaders of a troubled solar panel company that cost taxpayers a half billion dollars repeatedly misled federal officials and omitted information about the firm's financial prospects as they sought to win a major government loan according to a newly released federal investigative report. Selindra's leaders engaged in a, quote, pattern of false and misleading assertions and, quote, that drew a rosy picture of their company enjoying robust sales while they lobbied to win the first clean energy loan the new administration awarded in 2009, a lengthy investigation uncovered. The Silicon Valley start-ups dramatic rise and then collapse into bankruptcy two years later became a rallying cry for critics of President Obama's signature program to create jobs by injecting billions of dollars into clean energy firms. That's all I'll read from the Waypo, Washington Post article or the Cato article. Now, Luke, obviously the Selindra example seems especially relevant here. I don't expect this the second time to prove the charm. What's your take on what's going on now relative to what happened with Selindra? Right. So that's that's the that's the easy response. That's the knee jerk response. Selindra kind of epitomizes the green energy of Boondoggle. But let's take the fossil fuel opposite of that. So fracking, so according to a New York Times article a few months ago, if you invested a dollar in fracking, on average, you earned a 70 cents back. You took a 30 percent loss between 2010 and 2020. According to this New York Times article, fracking lost 200 billion dollars in the United States. Now, there are many benefits from fracking. We we achieved energy independence, but it came at an enormous price. So I do think it is possible, but that the experts will spend this money, say in a more economically efficient way than with regard to fracking. My my gut sense is that the odds are about 75 percent that it won't be as successful as fracking and remember the success of fracking is, you know, the average dollar invested had a 30 percent loss. So if the average dollar invested in green energy has only a 30 percent loss, then I will be pleasantly surprised. And now getting to the article in the Economist is titled Joe Biden's effort to remake the economy is ambitious, risky and selfish. And then it says underneath the title, but America's plan to spend two trillion dollars could help save the planet. Once again, published on the second of February. I'll read a bit from the beginning. Get behind the wheel of an electric vehicle made in Detroit and drive south. The outline of a city that was once a byword for industrial decline fades in the rear view mirror headed to Ohio, where the battery under your feet was made, semi conductors that regulate its charging speed were made there, too, in a vast new factory that counts the Pentagon among its biggest customers, recharged with electricity transmitted from one of West Virginia's new nuclear plants, then start the long journey into the heartlands. After the endless wind farms of Kansas, you drive through Oklahoma's vast solar fields, then loop back to the Gulf Coast. The trip ends by the water, the bright sun glinting off a spanking new green hydrogen plant. This is America in 2023, if the Biden administration has its way. Now, obviously, this is very idealistic stuff. And it's something like this is something close to fantasy in terms of how can anything go quite so well? But I think it is a reasonably good approximation of what the Biden administration hopes to see. I think it's tremendously unlikely, however. Luke, anything to say about the beginning of this economist article? Right. So one thing about the news media, and you have to understand everything in its genre, so the news media is a genre that tends to stick to the same emotional tone to pretty much every major story, whether it comes from the economist or NBC News or LA Times. And so, obviously, there is tremendous news media enthusiasm for green energy. And there is tremendous news media alarm about the threat of global warming. Why is there so much news media reaction along these very predictable patterns? Because the news media are essentially the lap dogs, lap dogs of the experts. So for those who study climate change, there is a consensus that man made climate change is damaging the planet. And so the news media acts as the laptop of the experts. Now, climate change, there are just so many variables, so many complications that there are so many there are so many problems if you go against the consensus, you know, trying to make a living, trying to get published in the area. So the news media increasingly just dishes out what the experts tell them because expertise is increasingly going beyond what ordinary people can comprehend. So the media repeats what the experts tell them or the media repeats what bureaucrats tell them. And so maybe the experts are right, but given the number of moving pieces and given the news media's just inherent nature of adopting the same emotional tone to every major news story, it makes me skeptical. And I'm thinking, for example, when I was in Australia, there were all these atmospheric rivers hitting California and pretty much every major news story that I read about this said this was the result of global warming. And then about two weeks ago, there was this very brave L.A. Times story saying that these atmospheric rivers had nothing to do with global warming. So sometimes you do get these these brave stories in the mainstream media that go against the consensus. So if this lone L.A. Times story is accurate, then the the coverage by virtually every other media organization of California's atmospheric rivers was substantially false. All right, from the Times of London to the various the Guardian to newspapers, media organizations in France and Germany and Scandinavia and Central and South America, there's just overwhelming consensus that these atmospheric rivers were the result of climate change. But this L.A. Times article made a very strong argument that it had absolutely nothing to do with global warming and climate change. So you see here a stimulus. The media jumps on the stimulus of a lot of rain in California. And then, you know, unites around a similar emotional tone. Oh, this is this is the result of climate change. And it may well be that was just entirely fallacious. So that's why I'm so skeptical of the efficacy and the goodness of increasing rule by experts. Now, sometimes I think they absolutely are right rather than the populace. But overall, I'm highly skeptical of these forms of legislation. As am I, by the way, and I am not someone who necessarily prefers populism to expertise, to say the least. In most cases, I'm inclined to trust people who are learned in any given subject matter, so long as they're speaking about the subject matter that they're knowledgeable in. But of course, experts can and do mislead people all the time. And so one has to have a healthy dose of skepticism either way. There's the madness of crowds, and then there is the madness of so-called elites now talking about what is going on with the Biden administration over the last two years. There have been three bills passed by Congress. And one has to do with what they pertain to. I can get into each of them to take too long. But these bills pertain to infrastructure, chips for semi-conductor chips, and of course, various green matters. We'll just put it that way. It's a little complicated, but I think the oversimplification will do well enough for the purposes of this conversation. And the combined effect of these bills is to place two trillion dollars out there for use by Uncle Sam in order to reorient America's economy. And it's this notion that Uncle Sam can, through his own sheer might, reshape how America does business for the sake of a green future. The idea is to have a reindustrialization phenomenon that somehow also makes national security more robust. It will help out areas that have been economically devastated, particularly in the Rust Belt and some in some way. Blue collar workers who have been voting more Republican lately will benefit from this and presumably come back to the Democratic Party as such. So then, of course, there's the idea that carbon emissions will be drastically reduced at somehow this two trillion dollar. These two trillion dollars are going to get the job done. It's strange, a sort of a centrally planned policy of industry, because like I said, this is going back to the days of the LBJ base, but the idea that central planning would eliminate poverty in America, that obviously didn't happen. But this is really, really something else, especially at a time when inflation is such a big deal, the two trillion dollars are not going to cut down on inflation, that is for certain. So it's it's it this comes at an odd time chronologically in that, you know, something of this nature really is from the past, as I've been saying, the great society. It also comes at an odd time in terms of where the economy is at, because inflation is such a hot button issue. Luke, anything to say about what I've brought up? Right. So inflation, inflation surprised me. So this is one area where I was wrong and on my chat was right. They saw inflation problems coming much more quickly than I did. I was skeptical and I was wrong. I had kind of more, I guess, of a Paul Krugman, you know, skeptical of the inflation scenario and it arrived. And one would think that this would just prime the pump for more inflation. Now, one thing that Biden is doing is that he is walking away largely from globalism, this this legislation, as the economist points out, is highly selfish, all right? It's very much America first. So Joe Biden is more nationalist, more protectionist than Donald Trump. At least you can make an argument in that direction. So we are steadily walking away from globalism. America is no longer trying to maintain freedom of the the sea so that globalism can keep going this very way. We are and have been for approximately five years in the midst of a reshoring revolution. So many companies finding that, particularly with automation, it's cheaper to build things in the United States. So tens of thousands of jobs are moving back to the United States. And I think this will only continue that trend. And so much of this legislation is a big bet on the power of computer chips, which, you know, from where I stand in February 2023 does seem like a reasonable bet. So this this legislative agenda, it is, you know, broadly populist aiming at restoring jobs to working class Americans. It is nationalistic because it is very much America first and everyone else can do do whatever they want. But this is legislation is all about the interests of what Biden and companies see as the interests of America. So it's nationalist, it's populist, it's protectionist. And so this is fortress America. And it's in many ways a continuation of Donald Trump's agenda. Just just with with more legislative successes, I mean, success in the terms of getting legislation passed, not necessarily success in the terms of the legislation is going to do good. So it is interesting as I think Peter Zein has made the point over the last 30 years, the least globalist American presidential candidate is always one. So H.W. Bush was more, you know, globally oriented than Bill Clinton. Robert Dole more than Bill Clinton in 1996. Al Gore was more globalist than George W. Bush in 2000. George W. Bush was less globalist than John Kerry in 2004. John McCain was much more of an interventionist and a globalist, probably than Barack Obama in 2012. So this is a continuation of a protectionist America first trend that has been building fairly steadily over the past 30 years as America is steadily disengaging from globalism and reshoring tens of thousands of jobs. Now, in terms of what the infrastructure act of one of these legislation will do, it has 1.2 trillion dollars that's set out for funding over the span of a decade. The idea is that roadways, cables, bridges and a green electrical grid will all be constructed. Then, of course, there's the CHIPS Act and the idea behind that is the American production of semiconductors and that has associated with it, I believe, 280 billion dollars. Then, of course, there's the Inflation Reduction Act, which it is claimed to see admittedly by some of the Democrats who support it. It's not going to reduce inflation, but you know, whatever it's just a name. It includes four hundred billion dollars worth of subsidies that are designed for utilization by green tech also over the span of a decade. There's a bit of debate over whether or not it's going to be four hundred billion or eight hundred billion dollars ultimately. So the legislation is so cloudy that people can't even figure out exactly how much money there is being set aside. Go figure definitely does not instill confidence. So it's the fact of the matter is that it's very complicated situation of many different moving parts. There's also a rule that batteries have to be have to be produced in North America. And there are limitations on the importation of technical goods. And there's also a set of limitations on the exports of the excuse me, on technical goods being exported purportedly due to national security reasons. It's really it's kind of it's very confusing to even talk about this. Like I said, there's so many moving parts between these these these bills. And you try to figure out as you're talking about each of them. How does this relate to the other? What's the outcome of this relationship going to be? And it's really it is almost overwhelming. But the fact of the matter is it's so much so much in terms of just all the stuff there, so much in terms of all the money associated with this stuff and so much in terms of all of the interlocking connections, relationships, whatever, that are going to have to take place in order to make these three bills work with each other to achieve the White House's desired outcome, that it's this to me sounds the idea that this will be successful. It's quite fanciful to say at least typically what happens when such a ambitious thing is set out such an ambitious course of action is that it all goes to hell because nothing works as intended, because you could lay something out on a piece of paper or in this case several volumes of paper. And you say this is the eighty five thousand point plan, A to Z to the power of a thousand. And this is the way it's going to be. But of course, reality, particularly when you're talking about economic planning over a decade, does not agree with what people theorized over. So it's it's it's I think this is definitely setting setting America's economy up for some real problems, but mildly. It sure sounds like if anything could be the prospect of another cylinder, this would be anything to say about what I brought up, Luke. Well, not directly. So let me just move to the side and ask you a question. Do you think that overall our federal government and our state governments and our local governments did a better than average job with regard to covid an average job or a below average job? That's very hard to answer, because there are so many radical differences from state to state, in some cases, locality to locality. I think that the federal government under Trump with warp speed did an outstanding job. Unfortunately, it got politicized to hell. And today, then the federal government during both the Trump and Biden administrations, whereas overselling the vaccine and basically making promises that can never be kept with regard to what would happen with covid, this I would seem though, started under Trump. These unfortunate things certainly accelerated under Biden. And that only adds to the politicization of it. I think that it's hard to say in any general sense how state and local governments did, because it's just too disparate what happened from place to place and Uncle Sam, I would say he started off on a very high note. And then he sort of screwed himself up by basically talking too much. Well, would you say that more often than not, the experts, including Anthony Fauci, were more right than wrong with regard to covid? Oh, I would certainly say he was more right than wrong. But I would also say that he made certain statements that absolutely undermined his overall narrative. It's sort of like talking about the facts 95 percent of the time. But saying, well, then five percent of what you say is untrue or if not absolutely untrue, it's said in a way that could easily be interpreted to be something other than what the facts are. And obviously this five percent sideline the other 95 percent. OK, so I think that the experts did did better than average with with regard to to covid. And this is applicable because during during the first two years of covid, in particular, we had rule by experts like ordinary rights were frequently taken away or substantially reduced and we had rule by experts. And I look back on that and I think they did a better than average job. So I am open that it's possible that Joe Biden's experts who are going to be the recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars, it is possible that they're going to do an above average job. It's not like the experts are always wrong. I mean, think about the United States developing the nuclear bomb. We threw billions of dollars at it and we we pulled it off. We threw, I don't know, approximately 40 billion dollars on Operation Warp Speed and we produced a covid vaccine in absolutely record time. So it's it's not like the experts are always wrong. You know, they they may well they may well use much of this money effectively and efficiently. And then the other thing that always comes into this is events. My dear boy events is Harold Macmillan answer the reporter asking why it's going to determine the success of your administration. So it's entirely possible that in all these, you know, tens of billions of dollars being thrown around that it may cushion America from external shocks or unexpected problems that come our way. So we live in an incredibly complicated, you know, topsy turvy world. And the idea of America becoming a little more self-sufficient and reshoring more jobs is not one that I have a violent reaction against. It seems like the world's becoming a more dangerous place than it has been for the past 30 years. And so moving in the direction of making America more self-sufficient, that that has a certain logic to me. I don't know, I don't reject it. And I don't think it's bad just because the government is having a big role in determining industrial policy. I think it's entirely possible that having an industrial policy such as computer chips, reshoring jobs and reducing our dependence on China. That all makes logical sense to me. So I'm not I'm not I'm not stuck in doom and gloom about all this legislation. I think, you know, much of it may very well be down to America's benefit. One thing is certainly clear. We're going to have much more rule by experts. The experts will have more money, more power, more prestige, and the people who are connected to experts will benefit more than ordinary Americans. Pass. I think that if once the first of the development of the atomic bomb or operation warp speed, that was a massive amount of governmental money in power directed in a specific objective in a shorter period of time as possible. This is talking about us going on with these three articles of legislation. They basically call for economic planning over a decade. And the planning relates to so many different things that as with, you know, before, it's hard to even to even summarize them by it's almost madness. Whenever the government tries to do anything like this throughout history, whether it's a new deal or the great society or there are many other things to get into them here, what takes place is that events, as Macmillan said, sideline intentions and this is just human nature. The more complex a plan is, the longer it takes to unfold, the more people that have to be involved with implementing it, the higher the likelihood of failure is. Obviously, this is why in business, the most clear, direct and easy to follow with plans and the plans that don't take the longest amount of time to implement are the ones which tend to be the most successful. And with the government, it's a very different ballgame than the private sector. However, looking at how public policy goes, there's no question that between issues of one party controlling Congress, one party controlling the Oval Office, the Supreme Court now being quite conservative, this 10-year economic plan is not destined to meet ideals. I would say it's basically impossible. So, you know, I mean, we'll see what happens. But I think that what the Biden administration has done is basically bake a pie in the sky. And that sort of thing is very, very often. It's something that is done in squandering time and money. Now, getting back to the article, skipping way down, it talks about the nature of the plan. A giant plan that has so many disparate objectives does not simply succeed or fail. Its full consequences may not become clear for many years. However, you do not have to be iron rams to question whether the government is up to managing such an ambitious set of projects. For example, because American environmentalism has put preservation first, it takes more than a decade to obtain the necessary permit to connect a renewable project in Wyoming to California's grip. Likewise, if industries are encouraged to focus on lobbying rather than innovating and competing, then costs will rise. And some of the aims are contradictory. Requiring jobs to be in America would be good for some workers, no doubt. But if green projects such as wind turbines become more expensive, then the green transition will become more expensive too. And just skipping down a bit more, it is said that the entire enterprise may be hard to pull off for lack of affordable workers. The plan would never create lots of solid working class jobs. In today's manufacturing robots, staff, the assembly lines and skipping down even further, it is said that the administration has an answer for its critics. It says that if America can develop new technologies, build supply chains that are less dependent on China and drive down the cost of clean sources of energy, everyone will be better off. And I'll just skip down to read the last bit of the article here that I'll get to for better or worse, Mr. Biden's blueprint for making the economy will change America profoundly. There's a skipping down a bit more, but there but be under no illusions. It is audacious to believe that the way to cope with three problems, which are too hard to tackle separately, is to deal with them all at once. And that's obviously very true. And it's it's it did three problems were China and, you know, it's present political situation, but the economist calls voters coming around to radical and counterproductive political positions and obviously climate change. So those are the three three things that the economist viewed as problematic. It's it's it's really it's really interesting because you one would imagine that if the government wants to tackle something rather than have such a hodgepodge lodge, basically, it would have targeted legislation that does not require all these interlocking parts. It would be it would not be these three pieces of legislation that cover so much and do so over the span of a decade. It would be targeted legislation at, you know, problem A. And then another piece of legislation to deal with problem B or an executive order to this effect of legislation can't get through Congress. So it's really something that my administration has done this. I really I have I have no belief whatsoever that things are going to be as rosy as the administration predicts they will be just because I've seen how the government operates in the past and, you know, human nature over the span of a decade, it could not even be shaped by the Soviets. So I can hardly believe that it'll be shaped successfully by Uncle Sam. It's really interesting what Biden has done. I say interesting in a bad way, although I think that a lot of this may not even be despite claims of his administration, it may not even be intended to have that big of a positive economic effect. It could just be something that was done to titillate parts of the Democratic base and potentially hand out governing contracts to various companies that are reliable donors to the Democratic Party and obviously Democrats in Congress. So it's it's it's very interesting. I think there could be many different reasons as to why these three bills came about and looking at them from 30,000 feet, so to speak, I am not confident that they will that they will achieve their objectives, but mildly. Well, think about the medium that we're speaking on right now. This was not created by people who failed to graduate high school. This was the Internet was a medium that was created by the Defense Department and those who were doing doing its bidding. And it was the creation of experts and YouTube and Twitter. Again, the creation of experts. Now, you have to be very smart to create technologies such as what's allowing us to communicate right now. Now, when you are that smart, you will tend to do the things that you enjoy, which will be largely living in an abstract world. When you largely live in an abstract world, you will be particularly prone to all sorts of stupidities that you would not be prone to if you were not living primarily in an abstract world. So there are tremendous advantages, tremendous advances that come from very smart people living in an abstract world and also comes with tremendous downsides like the the transsexual craze and same sex marriage and work culture, etc. So so expertise and brilliance and people living in abstract world. They make very powerful contributions. I would not want to live in a world without these contributions. At the same time, I recognize that there are tremendous downsides. But just because some experts say transsexual developments are a great thing doesn't mean that I deny the value of expertise. I'd simply recognize the humanity of experts and I recognize the tremendous vulnerability that comes with living in an abstract world. And there's something fairly vulnerable about Joe Biden's agenda in that in large part it is a venture into the unknown. And so there will very probably be a massive misallocation of resources, there will be all sorts of announcements and predictions that will not come true, that many parts of green energy simply cannot be massively expanded in an efficient way such as car batteries. They're very complicated to make. We have no reason to believe that car batteries will become twice as powerful and half as heavy in the next 10 years. So much of what this agenda is going to is definitely not going to work out. But there is a point, there is a hope that some of it will incentivize high level research that does come up with some good things such as the internet. It wasn't private entrepreneurs who developed the the internet, the federal highway system that wasn't libertarians getting together and building roads that came from big government nuclear bombs that ended World War Two came from massive expenditure by government. Now, I think the odds that we will have a breakthrough with green energy akin to the development of nuclear weapons, I would say the odds are well under one percent. So, you know, that's that's highly unlikely. But there may be some positive payoffs to all this. I don't think we should become overly discouraged. We should we should keep our eye on the ever increasing powerful rule by experts and those who play the game and the the coalition of experts and their deals with the media and their deals with other parts of society. So the the experts could not rule without making coalitions, all right, without making effective coalitions, they wouldn't rule. So who do they make the coalitions with? You know, currently it's a high, low coalition. You know, the the most educated and the least educated, you know, team up to vote for the Democrats and Republicans are basically the party of the middle. So I'll be keeping an eye on the the coalitions that form around this money, the deals that they make, the claims that are being made, the claims are going to be way beyond the expertise of me and you. But, you know, I hope that there will be some people with the expertise to challenge. And in the final analysis, that which cannot continue will not. So even if we spend, say, one hundred million dollars and it is useless at a certain point of failure, it will be abandoned and will be forced by reality to shift in a more productive direction. So in the final analysis, Joe Biden is not the boss and Donald Trump is not the boss. The situation is the boss. The situation is constantly changing. But the situation is ironclad in that that which cannot continue will not. So for example, I don't believe that the explosion of violent crime we've had in this country since 2014 will continue. I believe that there will be blowback against it from from the left as well as the center and the right because just regular Americans are simply not going to be at ease with this massive devaluation of the quality of life in this country. There will be more effective policing and criminal justice measures passed that will will reign in our explosion of crime, I would expect this decade. Now, here's an interesting question. Getting into politics. The Democratic Party's membership is very much on the left, comprehensively speaking, now more than it has been. But economic issues have sort of taken a backseat, unless you're talking about some very young progressives who talk about it a lot, to social issues. And that's something because economics affect everyone perpetually. There's never a time when people are not affected by the economy. But at the same time, the Democrats emphasize social issues. And when they do something about economics, it's like this, you know, central planning green stuff. But this is sort of, like I said, an aberration because it goes back to the new deal of sort of an anachronism, it goes back to the great society as well. You're still in anachronism. But the Democrats today are much more focused on stuff like transgender rights and now increasingly hate speech laws, this sort of thing. Why do you think that the Democrats have shied away from economics so much, even though, like I said, economics are perpetually relevant? Great question. And it would depend on which Democrats. So I think you're talking about hyper-educated people with the people who run the party. Yeah, who who are focused on the work agenda, meaning the sacredization of blacks and gays and transsexuals and Jews. I think for for Democrats who don't have graduate degrees, who don't even have college degrees, I think the primary emphasis is on the economy. And I am somewhat heartened for the first time in my lifetime. I think I am seeing the halting of left wing cultural advance success. And even some rollback, such as what Rhonda Santis is effectively doing at times, it appears in Florida. I don't think work is on the Ascendant. I think work is moving ahead in some ways. It's being rolled back in other ways. But I think regular Americans are not really on board with work. So I think there's there's substantial pushback to the to the work agenda. And I think the only winning formula for Democrats is not to run on work, but to run on policies similar to this Joe Biden legislation, you know, promising better results for working Americans. So I am heartened that I don't believe work ism is a winning political agenda for Democrats. And I think it's much better for Democrats to focus on these kind of working class, populist, nationalist, protectionist agendas that the Biden is focused on compared to the work agenda. I think that wokeness is on the rise in pop culture. It's cementing its dominance, which is different than a true national culture, needless to say, and it is in certain states through the administrative bureaucracy, definitely on the rise in places like Florida. It's being combated heavily in other states and localities as well. So wokeness is it is some of a mixed bag, even though I still think it's gaining steam because the folks who who who who make the big decisions have decided to throw in with wokeness, whether it's because they believe in it or they're just using this vehicle to attain power. The Democratic Party is changing. It's become much more hostile toward, for instance, Israel and much cooler about the Jewish community than it has been in the past. And that's obviously because it is trying to. How do I say this? It is trying to appeal to newer communities of immigrants and others that are are are either pro anti-Semitism or anti-Syanism. And this is something one sees in the left across the Western world. It's it's really interesting. So the Democrats are in transition and a host of ways. That say, away from away from their traditional focus on lunch, pale economic issues, they're certainly becoming less welcoming with regard to Jews, and they are also becoming much more militant in their opinions. There are far less moderate Democrats, however much wish to define a moderate Democrat today than there were 10 years ago and vastly less than there were 20 years ago. I need to get into like 30 years ago, which by now I mean, it's almost been 30 years since the 1994 midterms, which arguably began the present era of American. Well, not not quite the present era, but it certainly was was as an event that had massive consequences for the present era of American politics. And somehow it always ends up with with more power in the hands of experts. I'm just thinking about my experience in education, Joseph. I started attending regular school in second grade and I had this kind of weird sense that I couldn't articulate at the time, but there was always some new fad flowing through with regard to education. One consistent part of my childhood was that competition was heavily discouraged. As a result, that boys like me, you know, lost almost any interest in school because, you know, we live to fight and to compete. But think about it over the past century, almost every year, there's some new educational fad blowing through and none of them have, say, closed the black, white educational attainment gap, right? Almost 100 years of educational fads have been absolutely useless. And so to the extent that this money goes to people with a similar outlook to those in the education profession, always pushing new useless fads, then it will be probably worse than worthless because we'll be rewarding destructive members of society. And so the other problem will be that a lot of this money is definitely going to be wasted, but we won't even know because there will be such a lockstep agenda on the part of experts in power, along with their enablers in the news media and in non-governmental organizations and in politics. I mean, just think about normal academic research. The editor-in-chief of Lancet said, you know, much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. We're reflected by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance as science has taken a turn toward darkness. And science now is rarely undertaken by the individual gentleman. Science is a huge business, right? It requires committees and consensus. And if you don't get on board with the consensus, you don't get funded. So, yeah, I have a tremendous concern about the growing power of expertise with the accompanying reduction in the power of ordinary Americans to shape their own fates and even to, you know, to vote for the people who will rule them because more and more power is simply being devolved to experts who are beyond the reach of ordinary Americans. Now, here's something else that's interesting. Looking at science and how it has become politicized, there's actually a report that I feel stupid for not being able to cite the source. But it was a report that I read, I think, about in December or early last month. And it indicated that in recent years, there has been effectively no new innovation coming out of the, if you could call it this, scientific community over the last several years. It's really astounding. But I wasn't terribly surprised when I read this. Now, obviously, smartphones get their updates. Grids, electrical grids get repairs. But what this report referred to is that there was no real wide-ranging dynamism in science in recent years, things have been sort of stagnant. And obviously, that relates to what you were talking about, where science has become much more bureaucratic, it's become a business. It's not so much the gentleman scholar anymore, going out there and discovering new things. It's not Thomas Edison in his bowtie, working in his laboratory. So it's really interesting. What do you think, Luke, about the the downfall of modern science? Well, I mean, first of all, we have to, I think, recognize the good things that it does, such as operation, warp speed, for example. And I love my iPhone and I love internet streaming technology. So there are a lot of good things going on. But there are a great deal of wasted resources and power is heavily concentrated by people who watch each other's backs and they line up for each other and you get funding and you get power by playing the game. And essentially, you know, throwing in with whatever is the dominant expertise of the moment, you know, however, remove that is from from reality. So yeah, it's been politicized science ruthlessly. And it's a damn shame. But obviously, this affects a lot of things, including, and most especially, research on the importance of biological heredity, which can be very politically incorrect to say the absolute least. But there shouldn't be any politics associated because we're talking about the study of human biology, which exists independently of any political ideology. But, you know, if this continues, it will stymie research into cures for cancer. It will stymie research into anti-aging maneuvers. It will stymie research into genetic mutations that could somehow lead to people not even getting a disease, which they otherwise would have. It's really it's really it's really something else. Luke, what's your take on the on the on the situation with politicized science? Well, it's it's always been this way in a sense in that there have always been certain basic truths that you cannot say out loud in any society. So to knowing that the Trinity, for example, would get you burned at the stake in John Calvin's Zurich and, you know, noting that the different groups have different gifts that will also get you metaphorically burnt at the stake. But there are there are brave scientists doing great work like Nathan Coffness, he's got a position at the University of Cambridge, J. Michael Bailey, so an important scientific work with regard to the the transsexual craze. So there is good work being done and we need we need brilliant people going out there who are not just brilliant, but also strong and courageous and willing to to buck the consensus and willing to sacrifice, right? You can't be you can't play the role of a hero and do it on the cheap, right? It's going to come with with a tremendous price. So we need good strong people who are both wise and brilliant and have the strong internal stuff to be able to hold up under tremendous criticism and yet not become better, not become angry, resentful, lashing out and therefore alienating people who could possibly support them. So Amy Wax, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and their law scores being tremendously brave. So we have some some good people doing some some good things and they deserve our support. Absolutely correct. Just ashamed that due to circumstances being what they are right now, good scientists are not incentivized, I will say, to to actualize their full potential politics gets into it and that's a truly terrible thing. But you know, what else is near? We live in an intensely polarized age, politically speaking, polarized in other respects as well. Now, Luke, talking about covid, which we we did get into a bit. Why do you suppose what took place obviously in 2020s at the left, including Biden and Harris were saying, who's going to trust the vaccine? Are you going to take the vaccine, the Trump vaccine? And then once Biden was inaugurated, people on the right, despite Trump encouraging them to not be negative about the vaccine, they start saying the vaccine is evil, this that and some people say this has something to do with some way, shape or form with Trump's influence on them. But that's just nonsense. Even now he's getting booed by many sectors of his base who don't like that. He's saying that the vaccine is not, you know, poison or something like that. So why do you think that this vaccine has engendered such a bizarrely politicized response? And it's not in the sense of mindless Trumpism either, because obviously people who voted for Trump are bucking him and people who said, I'm never going to get the vaccine when he was president became absolutely fanatical to vote ease of it to the point of encouraging federal mandates. I think part of it is people who see the country going in what they regard as a negative direction are going to be strongly incentivized to lash out at further cultural, social changes, particularly when they're mandated by big government. And so they may very easily lash out inappropriately. So I do not, generally speaking, agree with Republicans on the right with regard to COVID, generally speaking, I guess I agree more with Democrats in that now I'm pro vaccine. I am open to the lockdowns being possibly more beneficial than negative. I think that there are certain situations where a big government response is the most appropriate one. So I'm not sure that the the libertarian response of, you know, let everyone do their own thing with regard to COVID would have been wise. In fact, I don't believe it would be. But when when you're losing, when you feel like the culture is turning against you, when you feel like you're losing your own country, you're going to be strongly incentivized to just lash out wildly. And so I think this this is one reason why I think there are just so many brain dead perspectives on on the right and with regard to Republicans with with COVID, which was, you know, one example of where a big government response was largely a good idea. It's why do you suppose then that today a lot of Trump's supporters are angry at him for not turning against the vaccine? They basically love to think that's going to kill everyone who took the vaccine and they're angry at him for not sharing their point of view. It's not devotion to Trump per se. And I don't know how much it would have to do with the culture war because this really isn't cultural that I could tell any idea about this, because it really is fascinating. Yeah, well, I think it's people who feel like the country is being pulled away from them, that the America that they grew up and loved is being destroyed. And part of their part of their anger is against a big government and intrusive government and the way that government funded the vaccines and they push the vaccines. And in some cases mandated the vaccines, it rubs them rubs them the wrong way, even though I, generally speaking, agree with with supporting vaccination for COVID and for other things. So I think it's like OK, it's like dating. All right, let's say you the typical bloke, right, gets rejected probably nine times for every girl who says yes to him. And so many blokes after they get rejected by five girls, they just turn nasty for absolutely no reason to some totally innocent woman. Now, think about the rage against women by many incels or many men who've been humiliated by women and then they take it out on women who don't deserve it. And so I think in a similar way for many Republicans, they take their rage out of a country that they feel is getting away from them. They take their rage against big government. They take the rage against the power of unelected experts. And frequently, particularly in this case, they misapply their rage. There are far better targets for their rage than Anthony Fauci. It's I guess the fervor that some Republicans feel over abortion also relates to this. It's it's really something else to say the absolute least. Because when it comes to abortion, it benefits the Republicans demographically. You have a lot of Republicans that even in the face of abortion costing them so much in the midterms have just doubled down on, you know, opposing it, despite the fact that it's clear that the public is not on their side. Generally speaking, with regard to this issue, the issue is not going to go away in succeeding election cycles. Yeah, so political responses are in large part hardwired and sometimes they're adaptive and sometimes they're maladaptive, meaning in some circumstances, the right wing approach of having more skepticism of social innovations in building families and community. Frequently, that's adapted to be highly skeptical of any innovations. But sometimes there are innovations in building families and community that are probably a good idea. So to fear of strangers, frequently, that's highly adaptive, but there are going to be some circumstances where more openness to strangers is is going to be more productive and adaptive. So both left and right have all sorts of adaptations to reality that are hardwired into them. And one one approach is going to work in one circumstance, then circumstances change and that approach stops working. So many species have walked the earth and then got extinct. So they had adaptations that work for a while and then they stop working. And so both of the left and the right, they have adaptations to reality that may triumph one day and then lead to absolute destruction the next day. So you can just see rampant self-destruction on both the left and the right. I mean, the the circle of firing squad nature of the left wing Democratic coalition, where anything they have in common is white people. And then the the dumbing down of Republican politics to just this knee jerk hatred of experts such as embodied by Anthony Fauci is also seems to be pretty stupid and maladaptive. It's it's an interesting situation to say the absolute least. There's no question that each party has staked out a position where they reactionarily oppose whatever the other is up to for the sake of basically virtue signally, which is what one finds in societies that are crumbling. Anyway, I was going to to say as we do begin to unfortunately, very unfortunately, why things down now, getting back to the economy itself. Do you think that inflation will be a presuming that inflation does not end anytime soon, that it keeps, you know, being rather high? Do you think that it will be a political issue in 2024? Let's just say that the inflation crisis is not ended by that stage. And they generally speaking, American politics are more or less the same place they are now. Do you think that inflation would be on the minds of voters? People thought it would be in twenty twenty two in the midterms. And that only turned out to be partially true. Obviously, abortion was much more of a deal that a lot of folks said. And I was one of the folks who's a Republican that said, no, it's going to be a big deal. But a lot of folks, you know, basically spat at that. And then I had, I was going to say I had the last laugh, but I wasn't laughing about all the Democrats who won. So I certainly wasn't laughing that much. But all the same. Do you think that inflation will be a big political issue? All things being equal in 2024, do you think it'll be something that gets easily eclipsed, as was the case in twenty twenty two? Eclipse or or or kept or something gets to be on par with it. I think it will be a significant issue for the next decade. I don't see any chance that we're going to have less than four percent inflation per year for the rest of the decade, meaning we'll have inflation five, six, seven percent for the years to come. Now, I don't think it will necessarily be the number one issue, but certainly be in the top five. Now, unfortunately, I am unexpectedly just completely running out of energy. So I do need to wrap things up, say, in the next five minutes. Understood entirely. Well, I was going to say for somebody who's running out of energy, you do a very good job of barreling through all the same. So I hope you take that as a high compliment. Now, yes, so we are, unfortunately, going to going to close out the show tonight, Luke, anything to say at all about the state of the American economy before we go. Anything that you didn't get to say, please feel free to say it now. Yeah, the words are far more complicated place than we can possibly comprehend. So a knee-jerk assumption that the experts are always right or usually right or usually wrong just does not serve you a knee-jerk assumption that democratic economics is inevitably bad or inevitably good or that Republican economics are inevitably good or inevitably bad also doesn't serve you. The world is so complicated and we should just be alive to to changing situations and to be be open to where our assumptions about reality aren't working very well so that we can continually develop and embrace more sophisticated, top-down models of how the world works, how the economy works, how our politics work, as well as being open to ever more sophisticated and accurate models of from the bottom up, from inside ourselves, you know, how we work, we should be humble that reality is infinitely more complex that we can possibly comprehend or we can at best do is the equivalent of seeing shadows dancing on a cave. And and so therefore we don't have to put as much of our self-worth into being right about political or economic trends. It's it's a fun game. But we are just tiny, vulnerable individuals in a complicated, constantly changing and infinitely complex world. And so it's it's it's good to to be open to where our expectations are getting, say, more certainly out of touch with reality. And then if that happens, we need to refine our understanding of the world around us so that we have more sophisticated and accurate, you know, top-down models about what's, you know, buzzing on in politics and economics. Very, very interesting words to ponder. Luke, thank you for sharing them and thank you very much for tuning in tonight. Everyone, I hope you've enjoyed this discussion as much as I have. Luke, even though you're a bit tired, I hope you enjoyed stopping by tonight. Yes, very much. I always enjoy talking to you, Joseph. Thank you. Same here, Luke and I cheers. I look forward to chatting with you again very soon. Absolutely. Take care. Let's thank you. Have a great night, everyone. Stay safe. Be well. Thanks again for tuning.