Loading summary
Transcript36 lines
- [00:00]
A
Monday, AI agents took over my work
- [00:03]
B
and I absolutely love it.
- [00:04]
A
Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind. Now they live inside Monday.com, so they see the full picture. My work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data. It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff. Knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com.
- [00:58]
B
Hostilities reignite in the Strait of Hormuz. The European Union proposes to exert greater control over our chats. And the US Vice President publishes a memoir of his religious conversion. I'm Jeff Schoellenberger in for Matthew Schmitz. This is the Compact Podcast. I'm joined by Ashley Frawley. So, Ashley, it looks like hostilities have recommenced between the United States and Iran. The ceasefire has broken down. Donald Trump was very proud of the ceasefire, but now is sort of dismissing it as a meaningless nothing burger. So he's also threatening to charge some sort of toll to ships to recognize the United States role in ensuring their safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which is precisely what he demanded Iran not attempt to do a couple months ago. So what do you make of the current seeming impasse in this conflict, which a few weeks ago seemed like it was perhaps winding down?
- [02:13]
C
Oh, I mean, I don't think it was winding down. I think Trump wants, anywhere knows. Trump wants to always to be able to say that he's had some great big success. And so this was a kind of stopgap to be able to claim some big success but was never going to hold. And I mean, there's no reason why anyone should have believed that it would. Trump keeps saying that, yeah, Iran is just desperate to talk. They're desperate to talk. And like the, the world is not stupid. Like, they know that the United States is desperate to have success here, but also they kind of know that the United States, I don't know, I could be wrong. Obviously I'm wildly speculating, but historically the United States has not been great in terms of its understanding of the countries that it gets mixed up in. Like with some quite famous failures in the past. And we've said before on the podcast how disturbing it was for the United States to have heightened hostilities with Iran at a, during a situation and with a regime that isn't very peace loving. Like these are. This is not a regime that wants to govern that is like extremely excited to get back to business as usual. In fact, that's part of the reason why its population was so angry that these were. That their government didn't seem to want to govern and be a normal country. Um, and this is what they wanted, that people wanted some kind of semblance of normality. So you have a situation where, like, internally things are, are volatile and there is this desperation for an outside, for they, they want to keep fighting. There's no reason. Trump seems to assume that everybody loves, like to engage in just everyday commerce and have the, you know, work toward buying their next flat or whatever it is. He wouldn't say flat, their next apartment and doing it, whatever. Like, he has this sense that that is who he's dealing with. He's not dealing with people like that. There isn't a desperation to get back to business as usual. Like, there are certain, obviously there are certain factors that make Iran want to not get blown up, want to not have hostilities go on for too long because they have a limited capacity to store oil and to stop oil production for, or slow oil production for any lengthy amount of time. So there are things going on there. But this assumption that Iran is just desperate to come to the table and they're going to make a deal any day now was always very silly. And I, I do wonder if it's a lack of, if it's a problem of intelligence, if it's a problem of not quite understanding the political situation. I mean, I, I doubt you'd think that that would be unlikely. But looking at the past, some of the controversies that developed because of a complete lack of awareness of the countries that they were going into, I wouldn't put it past them. It just seems really to beggar belief. But I mean, under. Underlying all of this is the United States just trying to avoid desperately having this crisis of American capitalism resolved through the devaluation of American capital, which is a story, a story as old as capitalist time. So it's trying to force the costs of unnecessary adjustment within the global economy onto other countries instead. And this is what's driving a lot of this desperate kind of run all around the planet. And so the United States is considerably more desperate. And I, I do wonder if Iran knows that. And to the extent that they're able to hold out, they will hold out.
- [05:59]
B
So one detail that struck me in the past few days is this point about Trump proposing at least posting. I'm not sure how official this proposal is, that countries whose ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz will be charged a toll by the United States, which again, is sort of a, it's as if he sort of stole the idea from the Iranians themselves to do this. But obviously it's quite a different thing if the United States is imposing a toll here. I mean, it does have a kind of interesting relationship to questions about what the nature of American empire is, because on some level there have been debates about to what extent American empire operates like a tribute system and whether Trump's sort of frequent attempt to kind of turn things into cold, hard cash calculation in some ways sort of undermines the legitimacy of the system by making it too kind of crude and obvious. But so this might be an example of that where, you know, on some level he's, he's making the United States, you know, there, there's a notion that the British Empire first and then the United States sort of post Second World War empire, one of its main functions was simply to use its naval power to allow global shipping to continue without any major disruptions. You know, in earlier eras and, you know, a little bit in recent decades, you've had problems with pirates and stuff like that. So if you have a strong imperial power with a navy that guarantees the safe passage of commercial vessels, then that's part of what kind of greases the wheels of global capitalism and keeps it, keeps it going. And there's some sense in which the United States had to seem as if it was doing this out of some kind of high minded commitment to some sort of ideals. And so in a certain sense, it was kind of making a sacrifice. It was magnanimously giving this gift to the world. But then in exchange, it kind of got all these other benefits. But this sort of exchange functioned in a more, more subtle way. And so here essentially, Trump is sort of saying, well, if our navy provides, say, you know, ensures safe passage of goods through the strait, then you have to pay us directly at toll for it, which is sort of a, a direct undercutting of this, you know, the sort of broader logic of sort of tribute and, and magnanimity that underlies a certain ideological vision of empire. And so the question is whether this, and we could find many other examples of how this kind of new version of American empire is being proposed. Obviously there's, you know, Trump demanding that European countries contribute more to their own defense and, and various other points we could, we could bring up. But, and, and obviously the, the tariff system, you know, basically the idea that other countries, if they want to do business with the United States, have to kind of pay, although it's debatable whether the countries themselves are actually paying this, this tariff. But nonetheless, you know, there are various ways that he's sort of making it into a much cruder kind of pay to play system as opposed to this more kind of glorified vision of universal empire where these questions of the idea that you would actually directly ask somebody to pay you a fee to enjoy the protection of your navy would be beneath the more high minded rhetoric of an earlier dispensation. So this kind of struck me and it just makes us look more like a kind of gangster regime. It's just basically functioning like a protection right racket. And obviously you can sort of see why people are like, well this is refreshingly honest. But there's also a question of how sustainable is this? If every country is deciding, okay, we're just going to operate like a protection racket. It seems like you end up with a lot of coordination problems. So I was curious what you thought about that, that particular proposal that's popped up in the last few days.
- [10:48]
C
Well, I don't know a great deal about it. The what I've been trying to sort out is why go through, go into such incredibly risky kinds of operations and the idea that like it was the Jews, you know, doesn't seem to, to cut it. And so I've just been trying to think through, you know, what is it that the United States is trying to do here. And it's essentially seems to me when you are forced into a situation where profitability is in order to be restored or to require like basically an incredible destabilizing crisis of bankruptcies and asset price collapses and write down to tax on living standards and all of that, you know, if that's a situation that we're in right now, then the state's going to search for ways to improve its position at the expense of capital and labor elsewhere. And so this kind of imperialism, this attempt at imperial control manifests as one of the ways that or one of these sort of counter tendencies against that kind of domestic devaluation that's brewing at home. And so control over energy control becomes one of these ways where a kind of coercive guarantee behind a wider kind of set of financial claims on global production. So you. That, that seems to me what, what they're trying to do, the other thing is like if you can't manufacture, if you can't manufacture that it's too risky to manufacture for commerce, for like consumerism and that sort of thing, that you just have such an accumulation of capital, you're going to Go to the state. And the great way to get the state to buy things from you and to raise your profits is to produce weapons. And so that increasingly we're just seeing increasingly this kind of all of these tendencies pushing together to create an, an irresistible war machine that I don't see any real way out of. Because for a long time the powers that be or governments have been unwilling, nor, I mean, and nor should they be willing but unwilling to allow for the incredible collapse that's really quote, unquote, necessary to restore profitability under capitalism. So if it were, if it's not Iran, it's somewhere else. It will be somewhere else. It will be picking fights elsewhere because there's just nowhere for all this capital to, to go. We're in a really, so I just want to, you know, I think it's really important that we think about the deeper kind of political economy here, the deeper, bigger picture here, because you can say, it's very easy to say, oh, this is like Trump being a warmonger or a child throwing his toys out of the pram or whatever, and miss what is actually pushing behind all of this. Because then you can start to convince yourself, oh, we just need to get rid of Trump, or we can just like hold hands and sing Kumbaya and then everything will be okay. No, we're in a really, really bad situation globally at the moment. And the only quote, unquote solution to this over accumulation, this, this inability to find these profitable places, sources of investment, this teetering on the bread on the edge of a crisis is a war machine. And, you know, nobody wants, and right now the United States is trying to shirk off that devaluation elsewhere, raise the profit rate by, you know, making the inputs a little cheaper for Americans, get some income via tariffs and so on. And, but that's not, not enough. You know, it's, it's, you know, everybody's doing this. Nobody wants to bear the brunt of the devaluation. Nobody wants their capitals to be the one that, that get the ones that get destroyed by the high tariffs and so on. And so we're in a, it is a, you know, this is inter imperialist warfare territory. We're in big trouble. And it's really important not to turn it into like personalities thing or a situational mistake or whatever. Like, yes, within that there obviously there are choices and so on, there are mistakes and there are silly things that governments do, as we just discussed, but the larger situation is terrifying.
- [15:09]
B
Well, I mean, a few items in favor of that would be we had actually a more hostile approach to China under the Biden administration. And obviously we had the onset of the Ukraine war and the massive commitment of resources to the Ukraine war under the Biden administration. So this sort of new era of warfare, of global warfare, began before Trump's return to power. And you know, the other thing that's kind of interesting to me here in terms of what you're talking about, which is a little bit of a tangent, is that if you look at sort of the tech economy, which is what I'm mostly writing about and interested in, you have this huge crisis with the return of inflation, which sort of starves venture capital. It upsets the entire model that had existed for the previous 15 years. Right around 2022, where you don't have this kind of, with zero interest rate policy, you had this influx of money into venture capital which could then be pumped into these various kind of digital enterprises. And that's what gave us the peak era of social media and web 2.0. And then all of that kind of collapses right around 2022 because of the end of zero interest rates due to inflation. And so that's the point at which you see the tech industry kind of, and this supports your previous point, shifting a great deal of investment into new defense tech. So what's the new sort of area that we're going to invest in? Well, it's essentially sort of drones and various other kinds of new defense tech startups that are going to, as you said, basically become military contractors for the state. And so that creates a whole new kind of economy. And then the other interesting is if you look at how the AI revolution, I mean, the AI revolution is strange in various ways, but one thing that's striking about it is that unlike the previous phases of the digital revolution, which were sold in these kind of globalizing and globalist terms, that these technologies were for everyone. They were for connecting everyone in the world. They were about transcending national borders and creating a global village. And all of this, the AI revolution, there's no particular technical reason why it would be any different. It's just, you know, it's again, just the flow of bits across cyberspace. But nonetheless, it has been framed as a fundamentally geopolitical arena of conflict with China. And so, again, there's no particular reason why this has to be the case, given the nature of the technology. But it shows you that the new logic is one in which. And what are the major conflicts around these AI companies? Well, they're basically about which ones get to become the main defense contractor, which ones get the all valuable sort of Pentagon contracts versus which ones are designated national security risks, as anthropic was. And so again, just the logic of that whole economy, for reasons that I don't think have to do with the technical nature of the machines themselves or the algorithms themselves, is geared entirely towards geopolitical conflict. And the big prize is becoming the company that will be the sort of Boeing of LLMs, that will sort of be the premier provide, you know, Boeing or Northrop Grumman or whatever, that will be the premier kind of military defense contractor to the state. And, and so that's again, sort of the, the new logic by which these sectors of the economy are being, are being valued, which is strikingly different from an earlier era. And I think it does, as I would read what, what you were just saying, it does support this idea that, you know, war is functioning as a way of dealing with this deeper crisis of profitability and capitalism, that basically that the sort of zero interest rate approach that followed the 2008 crash, it managed to kind of kick the can down the road for a while until it didn't work anymore. And then you needed a new model. And that new model is you have constant geopolitical tension, sometimes escalating into war. And this creates the new, the basis for a new kind of sort of quasi wartime economy.
- [20:23]
C
And it's, you know, people talk about like, oh, World War 3 or whatever, but because of mutually assured Destruction, you're not going to have World War 3, but you can have like endless conflict kind of pushed all around the world. But that, of course, does nonetheless raise the possibility of enormous, possibly global destruction, regardless of the fact that nobody wants it. And the strategic outcome is just, well, it had been for a long time, like hiding behind citizens and not having state on state warfare, but now it's sort of these, like, localized conflicts that are just like these forever wars that move slightly around the world. And that's I. But even that I don't know is if it's enough. It's not enough. Like, I thought about this with COVID Like Covid was massive capital destruction as well, very opportunistic attempt to just like, you know, engage in regulatory capture and let the small capitals all die. And I was thinking at the time, because I had told my students in 2019, like, we're in a bad situation. I've said this on the podcast before, so not to kind of retread too much old territory, but that I had been looking at major banks and what they were saying in 2019, and I was like, oh, crap, they are preparing themselves for a massive crisis. And then all of a sudden we had Covid. And I thought, well, you know, that's better than a world war, like. And it seemed to me like that a lot of these sort of mechanisms that are incredibly politically unpalata, unpalatable were kind of unleashed during COVID But I thought, you know, it's not. They can't keep us like this for 10 years or something like that. And so it's just like one disaster after another. And that is kind of the. The future. But if I could kind of direct our attention, because you mentioned that, you know, you have this use of these large language models and these quote, unquote, AI technology. I don't like to call it AI, but anyway. And another thing that winds up happening is that you turn these apparatuses onto your own citizens. And so the other thing that I wanted to talk about was about the European Parliament passing. It's actually an extension of an emergency measure, but it's called chat control. So this was on July 9th, they greenlit a quote, unquote, I keep saying, quote, unquote, sorry. This sort of temporary regime.
- [22:41]
B
They. You mean the European.
- [22:43]
C
The European Union greenlit this temporary regime. That's until 2028. And they did it in this very kind of. They did it in this very kind of underhanded way because a lot of the lawmakers were on holiday. And so they pushed through this extremely controversial legislation using a number of quite shady, underhanded measures. But ostensibly. So the idea is like the sort of banner of it is that it's supposed to scan all of your photos, your private messages, your emails for child abuse materials. That's the headline. That's what it's about. And that's a very obvious framing. But for those who are not familiar with how the rhetoric of policy works, perhaps that sounds quite uncontroversial, you know, if you're going to. And that's. That's why it works, you know, that's why they use it. You can push through extraordinarily controversial legislation and gradually chip away at privacy and so on and bring in new forms of surveillance, because under the banner of protecting children, because only a monster would say that we shouldn't protect children. And I remember years ago, there was that dystopian novel, is it David Eggers, the Circle, where they, like, you know, you have this horrible dystopian tech society. And they were like, well, you know, so great. You know, we all started wearing these tracking devices because now there will never be another missing child, you know, and so he, he really had his finger on the pulse of how they do these things. And this is exactly it. Because if you go through the genealogy of chat control and you go back through the different kinds of iterations of these policies, interestingly enough, a lot of it is American. A lot of the impetus for chat control and the surveillance of messages, emails and photos comes from American tech companies, American civil society organizations that were not able to have, and this is very common, they're not able to have as much of a powerful impact on the United States because of the Constitution. And so Europe and the rest of the world, in particular Australia and New Zealand, become laboratories for things that American lobbyists and claims makers and enterprises would like to have in the United States. But will you use all over the world first and before they're kind of brought home? But yes, yeah. So the idea is that you scan everybody's photos and so on, but in the original genealogy of the, of the policy they talk about, and it still pops up every now and then when policymakers aren't careful with what they're saying. They're saying, yes, it's about child abuse materials, blah, blah, blah, and in the future, potentially other crimes, you know, so the big fear is, you know, you give a government or you give, in this case, a supernational organization, this extraordinary power and you're like, no, it's fine, don't worry about it. I'm sure they'll use it fine. Like, sure, we can trust them with it. They're, they're good people, they've got our best interests in mind. But we know that they are extremely fearful of the freedom of speech that goes on on the Internet. The offensive stuff that happens on the Internet, the criticism that they get that they don't like that is very difficult to control, how difficult it is to control a message. And so there's a lot of fear among proponents of free speech that these measures could easily be used to target so called disinformation because they say, oh, other serious crimes. Well, what is a serious crime according to the eu, right? Like hate, Hate for them is a serious crime. So, and what is hate, you know, misgendering and all this stuff. So it's very easy to see how your right to dissent, your ability to speak with your, your, your colleagues, your friends, your comrades, whatever, is very much at threat. But I mean, even on a sort of basic level, the level of kind of false positives that tend to turn up because they're using AI technologies and algorithms and so on to identify supposed child abuse materials. Like a lot of parents have photos of their kids in bathtubs, you know, and you have this potential for extraordinary disruption in people's lives because of false positives. You've got teenagers who don't realize, like, when they're sending each other, they shouldn't do it, but, you know, they do. They send each other certain messages, and they are not yet 18. Again, huge, huge, huge potential for, for issues there. So this is now, these temporary measures are now extended to 2028 through extraordinarily underhanded means. And it's something that we should really, really be worried about. And I'd like to, I'm trying at the moment to have something in the magazine that looks in compact, that looks a little bit more deeply at the origins of some of these things, because I was quite surprised to find, I assumed, going through the, as I said, the, the background of this policy, I thought, oh, wow, you know, the Trump administration must have thrown, thrown a spanner in the works here, because, you know, they, ostensibly, they are very much against this sort of thing. And then I found that actually a lot of the infrastructure, a lot of the, the first steps toward chat control happened during the Trump administration, and that a lot of this has actually American origins. So. So stay tuned for that. Hopefully we'll be able to figure out what's going on there beyond just these kinds of elites who would like to control more and more of everyday life in the US but are not able to because of the Constitution. Maybe there's a deeper story here that there's some kind of contradiction between perhaps the surveillance necessary of a military regime and the freedom enjoyed by a democratic society. And perhaps these things are coming into contradiction even within the Trump administration. I don't know.
- [29:05]
B
Well, I think it also goes back to this point about how if you go back to all kinds of documents from the 1990s, both from the tech companies themselves, but also from various state and state associated entities, they all talk about the borderlessness of cyberspace, that it's fundamentally a space that transcends national boundaries. And so I think this is part of the. And obviously that that whole vision has been coming apart in various ways for a while. But, and you see it in relation to the AI technologies, as I mentioned before, that, you know, for example, this, this statement that, well, this new anthropic model cannot be licensed for use by foreign entities. So basically, anthropic had to withdraw the model from circulation. Because it doesn't have the means to distinguish between us and non US Users. Because that's just the nature of how the Internet is set up. And the thing that's kind of interesting to me here is you can connect this to various other things and going back to the point about the sort of contradictory stance of the Trump administration here. So, you know, one thing that you've seen, and this has sort of been also there, there's been a lot of like, manufacturing consent on the part of right wing influencers and pundits for this kind of thing is to say, well, you know, free speech is really just for US Citizens. So if you're a, if, if you're a non citizen, it's perfectly legitimate for the State Department to trawl through all of your Internet output and deport you based on your social media posts. And so this kind of argument that, well, you know, whether you enjoy any of these kind of speech protections depends whether you are a US Citizen or not. And even if you're here on a visa, if you're a, you know, legal resident or whatever, it's perfectly fine for the government to deport you if they don't like your posts. So this is an argument that people in the Trump administration have made and that people, again, kind of manufacturing consent on their behalf have made. And you know, what I think is interesting here is not to point out the sort of hypocrisy or, you know, problematic nature of this argument. I do think, you know, Greg Conti wrote a piece about the Mahmoud Khalil case where I believe he discussed this, that, you know, there's long been an understanding that people who are not citizens on US Territory have to enjoy firsthand amendment rights because otherwise you already have a massive erosion of what those protections even amount to. If you have to check someone's papers to determine whether they're, you know, entitled to speak their mind freely or not. Just seems obvious that that's not something you can actually sustain in a, in an actually free society. But the point is, you know, that is what, what people are trying to maintain. And the thing that I think is interesting goes back to what I said previously, that the whole model of the Internet has been that we have to, you know, that, that it can only function in this kind of fluid, borderless world. But now we're seeing all these attempts to, to end that and to introduce another kind of regime, and it's not exactly clear what that's going to look like, but I would sort of fit that, that into this that basically the sort of desire for states to be able to exert control over speech taking place within their borders is already coming into serious conflict with this kind of. And that is going to be the case, especially in an era of heightened geopolitical conflict. If we're all in this globalization kumbaya moment, and we can imagine that, you know, we're. We're moving into the seamless, borderless world, you know, that's one thing. But if we're not in that, then the inherent contradiction between the architecture of cyberspace, which is designed for this seamless, borderless world, and the imperatives of states attempting to exert control, or in the case of the eu, sort of super state entities trying to exert control, is just going to come into conflict with this and that. You know, I don't exactly know where that's going to go, but it's certainly a massive shift from where we were 10 or 15 years ago.
- [33:51]
D
Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh, my gosh, they're so fast.
- [34:06]
B
And breathe.
- [34:08]
D
Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order.
- [34:13]
C
Oh, sorry.
- [34:14]
D
Namaste.
- [34:15]
C
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order, 1-800-contacts.
- [34:22]
B
So, Ashley, you recently read a book by the current sitting Vice President of the United States, J.D. vance, and you have some things to say about it. I have not read the book myself. I did read Vance's prior memoir, which launched his public career a decade or so ago, Hillbilly Elegy. So I could say a little bit about that. I know that the book has obviously been compared to that one as a sort of continuing installment in his spiritual autobiography. So I'm curious, what led you to pick up this book and what was your reaction to it?
- [35:06]
C
Yeah, I think I was planning to write something. I've always got like eight different ideas in my head for things that I'm writing were like two thirds through writing at any given time. And then so I was like, oh, I should probably read Hillbilly Elegy, which I hadn't read. And so I read that and then I saw that Vance's memoir was coming out as soon as I finished Hillbilly Elegy. So I bought that and I read that. And, um, there was a reason, which is lost to me now, but I have a new reason because I found this. I. I actually wanted to suggest that we do an episode of Blame Theory on this. But we're here now, so let's do it. One thing that I found really well, I'll say generally about the, the book and the books is that, you know, Vance strikes me, perhaps just me, I don't know, as a likable guy. I like him, I want to like him. And our childhoods are freakishly similar, like very weirdly similar and even. And I started to wonder, like, oh, is this just what it's like to be like a poor white trash kind of person? But even like among native people, I don't know. Anyway, so I thought it was just so bizarre, you know, I really understood where he was coming from, even down to like his older sister, kind of like taking over when his parents were having their own issues, let's say. It was just so bizarre how, how similar our childhoods were. So I was kind of on Vance's side, you know. And then I get to a chapter in his new book released last month, Communion Finding My Way Back to Faith, where, you know, I was sympathetic. I thought, you know, people are searching for meaning and this is an ongoing quest that, you know, there's this gap in meaning that's produced by modern societies, et cetera, et cetera. And it's been filled by like the wisdom of the east and all these sorts of things for several decades. And. And it's interesting that people are starting to come home in a way to Catholicism and Christianity. And then I realized suddenly that's not what's going on here because he has a chapter where he starts talking about economic growth. And I think I mentioned this before on the podcast that I was at a conference recently and I was sitting next to Ed David, Ed Davies, Ed Davis from Center for Social Justice. Lovely guy, what a great guy. Super nice. Poor thing. He starts mentioning what we really need to do is not focus so much on economic growth, but meaning. And I looked at him in shock and I thought,
- [37:37]
B
that's the Ashley Frawley bat signal.
- [37:41]
C
I wrote my first book on that, but it wasn't meaning. It was happiness then. And poor guy, he just wanted to have a drink and some dinner. And I then gave him an hour long lecture where I saw his soul slowly leaving his body. I apologize. I really liked you. You're a nice guy. Sorry, but no. So that was. Yeah, that's the bat signal there. But so he. It's just so interesting how you. He comes to a realization. I started thinking, my God, jd, you're communist. And you don't even realize that you've just been so indoctrinated against communism for actually, for good reason, because what is communism now is psychotic, that you just can't come to terms with it. And then all of a sudden, after realizing that there are these, like, deep economic problems in society, he goes, well, you know, they really ought not to focus so much on economic growth. As though it's like, as though people just didn't know it was an accident, it was a mistake. They're just making a lifestyle choice and it's the wrong one. And if only we could get them to refocus on what really matters, life, everything would be just fine. So that he immediately does this trick, and this is what, I'm sorry, Ed did too, where he recognizes a serious economic problem at the heart of society, and he transforms it into a psychology, psychological one, because we can't solve the economic problems, but we can solve them in imagination. And this is what, this is what Bant is trying to do here. And it's interesting because this little trick has a very long lineage that I examined in my first book. But it's, it's this kind of end of history kind of logic you come up against what you realize suddenly is an impasse. And because we've not been able to move beyond it materially, we transform it into a question of, of psychology, of meaning, of happiness, of this, of that. So if only we could just refocus on what really matters in life, everything would be fine. No, no, no. The question is why we cannot do that. We cannot do that even if you are a nice capitalist, even if you're good to your workers. You've got a. You're. You got kids and a wife and pets, and you're very nice to them and you treat them all well. You are forced. You are forced to make a profit. You are forced to put profit above everything else. Because then if you don't do that, you will not be a capitalist anymore. You will go out of business, your workers will lose their jobs, and you will have to go and join the dole line yourself. You will have to go to whatever the contemporary equivalent, equivalent of that would be. You know, go, go fill out your cv, your resume, along with everybody else. You have to, because you have to make a profit.
- [40:21]
B
LinkedIn.
- [40:21]
C
Yeah, LinkedIn. Sorry. God, you can tell how long it's been anyway, so, you know, you're going to have to go on LinkedIn like everybody else. And you have to make a profit because you need to be able to reinvest back into production because of competition to the. If you have a monopoly or something like that, you might be resistant to that for a short period of time, but you're never going to have that forever. And monopolies themselves create their own problems. And so this is the situation. We must recognize that it is not a problem that can be solved by thinking about it in a different way. And that is what Vance was trying to do in this book, trying to resuscitate that old little trick because he, I think himself can't bring himself to recognize this is a severe and deep economic problem. And if that is the case, then the solutions are also severe and deep. And unfortunately we live at the end of history. There is no alternative. And so I think we will, we will endlessly cycle through these aimless psychological solutions to deep material economic problems. And their solutions will bubble up elsewhere in the places that we've already talked about in the Strait of Hormuz, you know, and people are not finding themselves in these global conflicts mowing people down because they made an accidental life, lifestyle choice. You know, the deeper economic drives are pushing them to do these things. You know, most people don't really want to kill other people, like the vast majority of people. In fact, it's actually really hard to get people to kill people. You have to have like religion and all sorts of things to push people into these, these kinds of situations or like drones or computer programs that, that create distance between people. You know, it's not an accident. People are not out there like searching for meaning. In fact, that's one of the problems that they have in the military, that people are not searching for meaning by the military in ways that they used to. It is a deeper economic drive. And we've got to recognize that, that Vance can't get away with it by saying, yeah, we have these deep decompressions, deep economic problems. And the next sentence is like, so we've got to figure out a way for however we organize things for it to be for people. And then that means something really, really big. And contra the movement that I'm currently part of, yes, to recognize that that is kind of what he needs to say if he really means what he's saying, which he'll never do, of course. But if you really care about the things that you say, then you've got to understand that you, it can't be solved through a self help book or a new guru or if only we could Teach people to really search for meaning or whatever the new fad is. And apparently it's meaning, which is sad because I used to say that, and I didn't mean for, you know, man's search for meaning to become the new prosperity paradox, which is the name of that little sleight of hand that he was doing. Um, but that appears to be where we are now. And are we just doomed to this forever? Is this the purgatory that we live in because we failed? So we failed in 18, 19, 48, or we failed in 1917 in the long run, or whatever it is.
- [43:34]
B
So would you describe it as a kind of. Because something I've found sort of interesting in Trump 2.0 is the rise of a kind of. Which I mean, is an entirely. It makes complete sense that this would exist. In fact, it makes more sense than the alternative is kind of right wing degrowth or kind of. Because you saw versions of this weirdly, in relation to the tariffs that, you know, originally the idea of these protectionist policies and so on was just gonna, you know, supercharge American manufacturing and stuff, but then you sort of saw this, this different rationale, you know, whereas, like, oh, it's just gonna make everything more expensive. And then the, I mean, Trump himself and various of his, his surrogates and, and defenders would sort of say, well, you know, maybe you just don't need so much stuff. You need to be happier with less. You know, so like, suddenly, you know, Trump, I think had this monologue that was about, well, you know, maybe you only, maybe you don't need 40 dolls. You only need two. Like, just get your kid two dolls. Why do you need 40? And there were various other right wingers who were suddenly like, well, you know, this is just an opportunity. Yeah, things are going to be more expensive, but it's an opportunity for us to, to learn to live with less and, you know, learn the virtues of
- [44:53]
C
a kind of frugality 2007 again.
- [44:57]
B
And so it was really interesting. I mean, I think you've seen this emerge in a kind of organic, like, accidental way. And they're obviously the sort of RFK version of it, which is like, you know, we need to do away with the industrialized food system and like, have our own, you know, vegetable gardens and, I don't know, slaughter our own animals and stuff like that. And it's like, okay, so you're, you're kind of reinventing these trends that, you know, you saw the right sort of reinvent these things that were very trendy in sort of progressive urban enclaves 10 or 15 years ago. You know, sort of get some chickens for your backyard and stuff like this. And it's like whatever, you know, I have friends who did that who still have chickens. I was just taking care of my friends quails recently. But you know, so fine, but you know that. But it was really fascinating to see that and other of these kind of degrowth type, you know, back to the land sort of ideas suddenly become part of the MAGA ethos in the past year or two. So it sounds sort of like what you're saying is that this book is part of that turn which is in turn reflective of just while we're in this larger crisis. So whichever faction becomes hegemonic is just going to reinvent certain versions of this, this set of dogmas.
- [46:27]
C
It's exactly, that's exactly what it is. So. And I noticed it too in like post liberal circles, this kind of like degrow stuff coming back and why don't we refocus on, on. And then they like start saying happiness or well being and they go oh no, I mean meaning so you know, this is coming. And it's interesting because in my second book I, I noticed and I said, I've said this in a few papers as well, like the whole literature in academic circles criticizing the well being movement, which was the last iteration of this, they were calling it neoliberal. They were like, oh, this is like neoliberal responsibilization for the self and social problems and so on. I said no, it is not neoliberal, it is post liberal because it is like, it is a symptom of the exhaustion of the liberal project. And, and that was an important thing to say at the time because this stuff was passing itself off as leftist and anti capitalist. And I find it. And I was like, no, it's not, it's just like it's post liberal, it's, it's conservative, it's powerfully conservative. So in a way it actually belongs there. Like it, it has traveled home. And I've noticed this kind of realignment happening. Well, I mean the things that used that were on the left that were actually conservative have found their way back to conservatism. Because the things that you mentioned, those are all conservative things like oh yeah, go outside, put your hands in the soil and all this kind of stuff. It's like very powerfully kind of conservative. And it had no place on the left. And for a long time I was yelling at the left, this, this stuff is not leftist. Stop. And now it's on the right, which is kind of where it belongs. But the left hasn't actually traveled either. And so it's simply becoming more and more obvious that, as I've said many, many times that the old left, going back to the French Revolution, what that represented has collapsed and it's gone. That kind of movement, that forward movement through history and like pushing the revolution forward, is utterly exhausted. And all that we have left is the right. All we have is different brands of conservatism that are, you know, calling themselves and they are left and right wings of the old right. You know, like the left is kind of close to the center of the old spectrum, but they're still on the right, they're still fundamentally conservative. And that's, you know, that's just become much more obvious now. So it is in some ways like slightly comforting in an odd way to see things that I hate back where they're meant to be, which is in conservatism, which means that they're sort of properly labeled. But the left is utterly, has collapsed. And so there's no space for a reckoning there and understanding what exactly that means, that there is that the political contestation has got to be material or it is useless and nothing and just us freeing ourselves in imagination.
- [49:08]
B
So, yeah, I was just thinking of how one of the most influential figures in American conservative thought in the 20th century, Russell Kirk, I believe, referred to the automobile as a mechanical Jacobin. And he lived in a small town, refused to drive a car, refused to get in a car, I think, whenever he could. So, you know, there was kind of that, that you know, earlier version of conservatism. But then, you know, the interesting thing here is that this prior generation of conservatives in the middle of the 20th century, you know, they weren't unaware of these sorts of problems. And this is sort of something, I find I'm probably going to write something about this later this year. I think the dismissal of the sort of fusionist synthesis that, you know, defined American conservatism in the 20th century, like on, from the post liberal side, it's sort of become too easy because I think on some level these, these people, you know, whether Kirk or sort of Frank Meyer or William Buckley, I mean, these people understood that there was a kind of problem and contradiction in the fact that they, you know, both idealized these, you know, sort of pre industrial forms of life and life ways and, and so on, and in, in many cases actually attempted to live that way themselves and that they were sort of wedding themselves to the interests of big capital. And you know, in the middle of the 20th century that you know, just meant sort of the behemoths of American industrial capitalism. And so, you know, they, they weren't unaware of these problems when they developed this sort of synthesis. And so I think in some ways the post liberal dismissal of it is like, well of course the attempts to preserve traditional life ways in the context of this sort of embracing the interests of big capital is not going to work. And it's like, well, I'm not sure that the people who are sort of spelling out the alternatives are actually,
- [51:19]
A
are
- [51:19]
B
actually producing anything that's superior or more sophisticated than what the fusionists came up with in their time. In some sense they're, they're sort of not even acknowledging the, the difficulties of the, the choice. And I also find it weird that, you know, Vance, you know, I've written about this a little bit, but he's one of these figures who kind of bridges the sort of tr, you know, this kind of, I don't know, like Wendell Berry, post liberal communitarian kind of way of thinking and also is, you know, friends with all of these big tech people and previously worked in Silicon Valley. And so that's kind of a bizarre. But I mean there are ways that, that makes sense in terms of the history of Silicon Valley which always had this kind of odd connection to like the commune movement and various kinds of back to the land projects, the whole earth catalog. So this isn't entirely novel, but it's kind of a new right, more kind of overtly right wing coded iteration of that, that sort of form of fusionism. So I guess what I'm sort of trying to suggest here is that the novelty of the current right is maybe somewhat exaggerated because the previous fusionists also, you know, openly embrace kind of creating this somewhat self contradictory alliance. And the other thing that kind of interests me here is that this other figure who I think is interesting in this regard, who I'm not sure if you've read much of Ashley, but is Paul Kingsnorth, who in some ways is even more striking to me because he's a former kind of radical environmentalist, sort of degrowther, but then he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and lives in this kind of back to the land situation in rural Ireland. And the thing that's interesting to me about him is that he's not only, you know, he's kind of less directly right wing coded because he's on some level just anti political. But you know, he at the same Time is kind of seemingly embraced by these very mainstream figures. Like, he's been given prominent placing in, like, Bari Weiss's the Free Press, which is a publication that, again, has connections to all these prominent Silicon Valley figures. And so there is this kind of odd new. You know, this is. I suppose what I'm getting at that I might write about is like, there is this kind of odd new fusionism, which, again, I think the original fusionism where you had sort of Russell Kirk as a, you know, this kind of traditional pastoralist, like, denouncing mechanical Jacobins, but then articulating this philosophy that was about how you needed to sort of protect big business from the rapacious state that you're. You're coming up with a new synthesis which it. It's. It has a somewhat different flavor, but it's. It re. Reconfigures the same basic set of kind of contradictions and internal tensions as the previous one.
- [54:35]
C
Yeah, I mean, we're all living in the. Like, in the. The abyss. The. What do you. What did somebody get? The void. That's what it was. The void. You know, the. That's the. I take it from someone else, but, you know, I wrote this book such a long time ago now, was. It came out in 2024. But, yeah, in my book, I call it like the void that we're just living in this abyss between what is and what was promised to us. What. The world as it is and the world as it has been promised to be, which we know is possible, but we've not really been able to get there. You know, we're. You know, we have, like. We're surrounded by, like, overwhelming wealth and abundance and so on, and we're. And then you have, like, Trump being like, well, why do you even want it? Like, you know, so we're kind of like, you're. It's there. And then you're, like, kind of told, oh, no, don't go there. Hands off. And we have just a thousand different philosophies of, like, how to live happily in the void. Oh, it's not a bad void. You can put down a prayer mat. You can have some curtains and, you know, maybe a garden in the void. And that's it. That's. That's how we've accepted history. But history will pull forward regardless. And the question is, will humans come with it or not? And it seems to me that we're, as I. As I wrote in a world without people. We are kind of resolving this contradiction, this, this, this. This impasse which has, like, A powerful pull back backward into the past and forward into the future into a humanist kind of future or like a wasteland of, you know, like what the 20th century was of. And we're kind of resolving it in that anti human direction. We're sort of degrading and devaluing the human. And even, even the, the right which has taken up that kind of torch, that of like freedom of speech and something like a humanism, when pressed, they leave it behind. You know, they're immediately, oh, well, it's just human nature, isn't it? Oh, it's just. I mean humans do this and that and then you start getting into all the pop psychology and so on. So it's a very tenuous grip that we have on the necessary kind of humanism to see us through, to resolve the contradiction for a human future. I'm not at this point super optimistic, but I mean one, I mean that's all there is, right? It's just humans. That's the, that's the whole meaning of life. Because humans are the ones that give life meaning. You know, it's just us, you know, that's what else, how else will we resolve the contradiction? Capitals whole purpose supposedly is for humans. If it's no longer for humans, we have to leave it behind. I'm sorry, we're gonna have to cross that bridge at some point or else
- [57:20]
B
it'll get blown up, shocked by this anthropocentrism. Such a passe worldview.
- [57:28]
C
It's like the most ridiculous thing. Even my children understand it. I read the Martin Haglins this life when they were like 5 and 7 and even my children understood this. Like, oh yeah, yeah. What's the point of anything if not for humans? You know, we're the, we're the ones who can take care of nature. A lion doesn't care if it kills the last antelope. Human does. You know, that's we, we have choice. We have free will. We have to make judgments and choose. Choose a future for humanity, which also means the planet, because humans need the planet. Okay? It's not like a stupid anthropocentric like blow everything up and leave humans behind. That doesn't happen. It's not possible. So that's what I mean by that. It is an anthropocentric view. But it also means that it's like stewardship as well, because obviously we need that for humans.
- [58:17]
B
On that rousing note, thanks Ashley. Thanks listeners. Please subscribe to Compact compactmag.com sale will get you a discount if you're a new subscriber. Quite a significant one. The biggest discount we've ever given. Please also subscribe to this podcast and rate and review it if you enjoy it. We'll be back next week. Thanks again.
- [59:06]
D
Summer is here at Orderly Meds. We know this time is a reminder that life is full of new beginnings. Whether you're celebrating the nice weather, starting a new chapter, planning a vacation, or simply looking ahead to what's next, this season can be the perfect time to invest in yourself and your health. If you've struggled with weight loss and are curious about GLP1 medications, orderly meds can help you learn about your options through a simple Through a simple virtual process, you can connect with licensed medical professionals who can determine whether treatment may be appropriate for you. Getting started is fast, convenient, and happens online from the comfort of home. This summer, consider a new approach to feeling your best. Visit orderlymeds.com podcast to learn more. That's orderlymeds.com podcast orderlymeds.com podcast because every new season is an opportunity to take the next step forward, compounded medications are not FDA approved, eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.