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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome back to Firewall. I'm your host, Bradley Tusk. Have a very special guest today, in part because he just emerged from winning his congressional primary, and for various reasons, I wasn't really allowed to speak to him for about six months for coordination concerns that were wildly overblown. But nonetheless, Michael Asher, who actually a lot of you probably know because your race got a lot of attention. I mean, probably even nationally. Weird first question, but what did it feel to be the subject of gambling? How did that feel?
- [00:39]
B
Well, of course, I ended up.
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A
How much did you make?
- [00:44]
B
I resisted the urge to bet. I mean, look, first of all, I think that these sites should be banned. Just to be clear. I think that these sites have absolutely no social value. I think these sites should be banned. Having said that, I was addicted to checking them. I will confess. And at one point in the race, I did think they might be being manipulated. And if there was one political cohort in America that would have had the wherewithal to manipulate the betting markets, it were some of the folks that were on the other side of me in this race.
- [01:20]
A
Yeah, I don't know.
- [01:21]
B
I have to sound like knowing how
- [01:23]
A
these things operate, I think that's pretty unlikely. I think it's more. It's interesting, which is that I would argue that in some ways, prediction markets now actually may be a better source of data than polling. Right. If there is a really wide electorate. Right. In the sense that it's a much bigger sample. People are telling you who they think the people they know will support as opposed to just how they feel. And they have skin in the game. But I think when people from some other part of the country or the world are betting on some race where all they're doing is having to rely on what they read, then effectively, whatever the narrative of the media is has a huge impact on that. So, like, Schlossberg at first. Right. Got all this attention and then it kind of fell back. But, like, give me overall, like the. You spent. I mean, you've run for office before. Obviously, you're a sitting member of the New York State Assembly. How was this different? What was it like?
- [02:18]
B
Oh, boy. It was much higher stakes, obviously. Yeah. Much higher levels of scrutiny. The spending was crazy. I think it will be the most expensive house primer in U.S. history.
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A
How much total?
- [02:30]
B
All in more than $50 million. Right. Which is bonkers. There was 20 plus million dollars in super PAC funding on behalf of my opponent. Ten and a little bit on behalf of me, another three and a half against me, another nine against him and then north of ten in hard money from all the candidates. So I think that adds up to north of 50.
- [02:56]
A
Yeah. And so, I mean, given that this is 100% safe Democratic seat, is it simply because this is the main Manhattan district and Manhattan sort of is kind of the center of the media universe and the finance universe and everything else, so therefore it just got wildly outsized attention.
- [03:13]
B
I think that's a piece of it. I think there were also just two very circumstance specific factors which. Which were? One, my opponent, Alex Boris, involvement in the AI proxy wars, where this race became a focal point of those proxy wars, and my relationship with Mike Bloomberg. And those two factors resulted in an unusual amount of outside spending.
- [03:38]
A
So you obviously were in Albany when the Raise act passed, right?
- [03:43]
B
Yes.
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A
Yeah. And you were, I think. So I assume you supported it, right?
- [03:46]
B
I was the first co sponsor of it. Right.
- [03:49]
A
So how surprised were you that this one New York bill all of a sudden triggered this massive amount of attention and money on both sides?
- [03:57]
B
You know, it didn't happen all at once. It kind of happened in phases. So there wasn't like a single moment where I was completely shocked. I think what was striking to me was sort of how much mythology was baked into what was happening in terms of the notion that the Raise act itself was going to have a massive impact on the industry, which I do not think it will, much as it was a worthy bill, and that this was a David versus Goliath fight, when in fact, at the end of the day, there was twice as much AI money spent in support of Alex as there was against him. And the credulousness with which the press treated that narrative. I think they wanted that David versus Goliath narrative. It was incredibly hard for us to communicate that the story was more complicated.
- [04:54]
A
So obviously you asked yourself this question. So OpenAI kind of unleashes all of this, Right. They decide to go after Boris and show the world that if you mess with us, we're going to take you out. Which backfired completely in the sense that both it propelled his campaign in many ways and then it generated all the spending on his behalf. What was that? Obviously you couldn't talk to him about it, but what was that like when they started doing this? Did you know, like, shit, this is actually not gonna be helpful, even though they think it will be.
- [05:22]
B
It was pretty clear pretty early on that it was not going to be helpful. I don't think it wasn't immediately clear what a disaster it was going to be.
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A
Right.
- [05:32]
B
But you know, one other thing that gets like lost in the narrative is day one, Alex announces his candidacy, raises some extraordinary sum of money before OpenAI says boo. And when the filing gets revealed a couple months later, it's. It shows that a ton of that money was Anthropic money. So that was another piece of the narrative that we never really were able to communicate, which was the notion that Anthropic's involvement in this race was entirely in reaction to OpenAI as opposed to from the jump. They were interested in it.
- [06:04]
A
So Anthropic is regulated by the Ray's act too, Although their position on it was different than OpenAI's, they were more open to it.
- [06:11]
B
Sure.
- [06:12]
A
Why do they care so much about having Alex Boris in Congress? What does it do for them?
- [06:18]
B
I think there are various. Look, I think to some extent they are just in a battle with OpenAI and they have a brand that is about some measure of self imposed regulation, whereas OpenAI certainly is not. So I think to some extent, if you're a hammer, everything's a nail. I think if you're anthropic, you're looking to kind of call the question on this fight in high profile ways. I think that was as much as anything about it. And look, every big company likes capture. I mean, that's one of the things I've talked about with voters. If there's one thing I know from experience, industry capture is everywhere you look in government. And I think that Anthropic was looking for some professionals.
- [07:05]
A
Yeah, I think this has to be more around, in my analysis, the proxy war with OpenAI and also just the media market that they were in here. Because you've worked in Congress, I've worked in Congress. It's a seniority system. Right. The reality, whoever wins this seat is a freshman member with virtually no.
- [07:25]
B
There's a lot of muscle, muscle flexing.
- [07:27]
A
So, like Alex Boris, even if he were to be a voice for Anthropic in Congress, and I understand that he could have a press conference, Manhattan and get attention for it, but he can't do anything. He has no actual power to move any. Like when Hakeem, assuming he's the speaker, by the way, are you supporting Hakeem for the Speaker? Yeah.
- [07:43]
B
Okay.
- [07:44]
A
When he is the speaker, presumably we'll get into that, move some AI regulatory bill. You know, if Boris actually tried to, like, here are my concerns, they'd be like, go fuck yourself, Eric. Alex, go back to your little corner. We don't care.
- [07:57]
B
Right.
- [07:58]
A
So, yeah, I mean, I think the captor thing is real. I don't. I think that if Anthropic truly believe that that's what they were doing, that was incredibly dumb. And even the dumber thing to me is I don't understand how OpenAI works in the sense that this seems so obvious, and yet they totally stepped in it. And even the bigger one would just be. And this is national, not just New York, the notion that they planned trillions of dollars in data center spending and building without any thought as to the political ramifications of asking consumers to just shoulder all the electricity costs of the hyperscalers. Like, how did they have some meeting? Like, oh, yeah, no, people won't mind spending 40% more on their energy bills to subsidize us. Right? Like, how is that. I can't even understand how that happened.
- [08:43]
B
Well, look, I mean, I think both of these, the smaller political sort of clusterfuck that was OpenAI's involvement in this race and the broader mishandling of issues like data centers. And look, you deal with this all the time. I think that a lot of these guys, particularly the super successful tech entrepreneurs, they're in a bubble and they're talking to each other and they have an enormous degree of confidence in their own views and their ability to bend the world to their will.
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A
Right.
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B
And they don't.
- [09:19]
A
They don't know what they don't know and. Right. Totally. I mean, this is. Oftentimes I only look at startups that are obviously highly regulated, and the surest way to get me to not want to be involved is, you know, the start of the founder. It's like, oh, I went to Stanford and I was a Y Combinator and Andreessen invested in my startup. And, you know, when those dumb regulators see how smart I am, they'll do whatever I want. And I was like, I'm out. Right? Like, forget it. Right. At the very least, I want them to know, like, okay, this is not my area of expertise. What do we need to do to make this thing work? And if they can't, the other thing I would say is an open AI And Chris Lehane, let's just call it what it is, is a guy who really knows Washington but doesn't really understand state or local government as much as he might think he does. And he was the one that chose to go after Boris and inadvertently propelled Boris's campaign.
- [10:07]
B
This is also this district. The voters, the primary voters in this district are so sophisticated. So when I ran for the assembly two years ago, there were rumors about potential super PACs and independent expenditures that might enter the race potentially in support of me and you can't coordinate. But I basically put the word out that I did not want that because I knew that voters in this district would react very negatively to that here. Obviously we were in a situation where it was an arms race and it was crazy. And frankly. And this is not in any way to defend it because I think all of it should end, but I think the practical reality is, I think two scenarios. If there's no super PAC spending in this race, I think I win by a bigger margin than I did. I think, however.
- [10:54]
A
Yeah. Oh, for sure.
- [10:54]
B
I think, however, if you.
- [10:55]
A
I've been saying that on TV and in podcasts the last week.
- [10:58]
B
Yeah, yeah, definitely. But on the other hand, if you just have the AI super PAC spending this race and Mayor Bloomberg doesn't get involved, I think it is a lot closer and potentially I drown in the AI space.
- [11:11]
A
Yeah. I don't think. And you know for sure, what's the point of diminishing returns with the money? Like, when does it get to a place where. And maybe 50 million wasn't that point? Like, if you take a lot of races where there's just endless, like for direct mail, for example, like, I truly believe that there's. Once you get past the second or third mail piece, at most every additional piece, in my view, is just a profit for political consultants at the expense of the candidate.
- [11:38]
B
We definitely reached that point in this race. Somebody tallied. I think there were like 50 mail pieces said. Because Alex had three or four different super PAC. He had four. Three positive and one anti mica.
- [11:51]
A
Right.
- [11:52]
B
So they were sending. They were all sending mail.
- [11:54]
A
Yeah. Because by the way, just for the listeners, this is the biggest profit center for consultants. Right. So they will push incredibly hard to do this thing.
- [12:02]
B
Yeah. So people were getting like five, six mail pieces in their mailboxes. So we definitely reached that point. Now the question is, again, what happens if you unilaterally disarm? So hard to know. I will say the anti mica super PAC that showed up about a month before the primary and it was, I think deliberately late so that their donors wouldn't have to be disclosed before the primary. I did. They. They sent out a lot of nasty mail and TV ads about me. They christened me Micah the Slasher Lasher, which really had elementary school vibes. And I did not feel much of an impact out there. I think people were like, this is a last. It felt over the top and last
- [12:44]
A
minute and not the so you're in the unusual position of 25 plus years ago. You were the co founder of a very successful consulting firm. Here you are as a candidate, 25 years later or so as a candidate for Congress because you sort of understand the business so much better than most candidates do. How do you think that impacted the campaign in terms of your choices around spending and activities and everything else, compared to an average person that runs for Congress, but they're easily conned by whatever consultant because they defer to them.
- [13:15]
B
Yeah, we. Look, I had an amazing team, and one of the benefits of being around as long as I have is that, you know, the people that I sort of work with on campaigns are very close friends of mine and there's real relationships of trust and all of that. So I don't know. And frankly, we were stretching our dollars on the campaign side. Like, I did not have an EA fundraising base. I had to do it one phone call at a time. And so we were stretching our dollars. So I don't know that what was happening on the other side really changed our choices. I will say I think if the experience was a benefit, it was that I was pretty unfazed by the negative advertising at the end. I just. It just. I didn't really pay attention to it. It didn't bother me much at all.
- [14:00]
A
Yeah, I mean, emotionally, what was the whole campaign like in terms of.
- [14:04]
B
It was miserable.
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A
Why?
- [14:06]
B
It was miserable, but it wasn't miserable because of the attacks. It was miserable because we're in just a moment, I think, of enormous political upheaval. There's obviously enormous fear and anger at Trump and what's happening in Washington, but there's also enormous anger at the Democratic Party. The voters in this district are not all in the same place on questions of what direction the party should head in. The campaign begins before the mayoral election has even completed. The campaign begins beginning of September 2025. You have a mayoral election that was deeply divisive in this congressional district. The legacy of that lasts through the congressional campaign. It was just a very. And you're in a close election where you feel like on any given day, you say the wrong thing, you're stepping on a mine. And so just the level of. And you know me, I'm not. You know, it's funny, the picture of me that sort of emerged from this campaign is this sort of, you know, cautious kind of, you know, it's not me, but it. But. But I. I sort of. I sort of became someone in the campaign, not necessarily in a bad way, but that was not. Not really someone that I recognized particularly well. So.
- [15:26]
A
Okay, so now, since you're at least aware of that, you're going to go to Congress and you talked about how the hyperscalers are in their bubble, you're about to enter a bubble, too, right? How do you. If the people you're talking to all day are you other members, donors, advocacy organizations, reporters, how do you not get trapped in that bubble?
- [15:46]
B
I think it's a really good question. I think on a relative basis, I have been pretty good over the years, not really deliberately, but just by happenstance at having people that I talk to and trust in a bunch of different worlds. And it's, I think, one of the things that confuses people about me. You know, where do they. Where do they. Where do they pigeonhole me ideologically? Where do they pigeonhole me politically? Yeah, exactly right. And I think that's really healthy. And so I want to keep that going. I want to never make it super easy for people to guess where I'm going to land on a tough issue.
- [16:21]
A
And so. Okay, so now let's fast forward. Let's assume the Democrats won the House, which seems to be a reasonably safe assumption. Everyone assumes that your vote is a guaranteed or any Democratic thing. You don't like it, you don't agree with it, whatever it is, how do you decide when to tell the leadership no and piss everybody off? And how do you decide when to go along? And look, you were the only of the four contested races that didn't have sort of a major DSA presence or anything like that. But I imagine that, you know, you're totally immune to the risk of a primary challenge from the left in two years. So how much do you worry about protecting that flank?
- [17:01]
B
I think that. Look, I think I'm a good fit for this district. And so I think that my hope is that doing what I think is right will do the job of making reelection a high probability. I think certainly there are a host of economic issues, regulatory issues where I'm pretty far left, and I think that those are issues that the district and the voters will respond very positively to. In terms of the first question, look, I wrestle with this in the Assembly. I'm not one for quixotic missions. I'm not one for great acts of symbolism without impact.
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A
But you also don't wanna be a rubber stamp.
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B
Don't wanna be a rubber stamp. So the question of
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A
how you use
- [17:51]
B
your leverage without overplaying your hand, that's something I think I've done pretty well in the jobs that I've had, I'm gonna have to figure out what that looks like. As a freshman member of the House,
- [18:01]
A
how do you also think about. And obviously something we can talk through together. But anyone's ability to pass a law through Congress is exceptionally limited.
- [18:10]
B
Right.
- [18:11]
A
The Speaker's ability, the Senate Majority Leader's ability, let alone a freshman member. Right. In the House, there is an administrative bully pulpit, other path. Like when I worked for Chuck, we had a press conference every single day. And yet I don't know that a single thing we proposed in the two years that I did that ever became a law. Where Chuck I thought was effective was in knowing how to use the other pieces of government to try to impact things and have change. How are you thinking about your ability to actually do something meaningful from a legislative standpoint and a non legislative standpoint?
- [18:47]
B
I think a lot of the work of being a legislator is taking the steps necessary such that when the moment presents itself, you can seize the moment. Right. And so if we expect the Democrats will take the majority in the House, and let's say we don't in the Senate, although I think it's a possibility. But in any case we're going to have a president who's not going to sign any of this stuff into law, then I think a big chunk of the work of the first of what will be my first two years will be about building a legislative agenda and making as much progress as the system allows, such that at a moment when potentially we've got a trifecta after 28, you've got a whole bunch of stuff that you've built, support for, you refined, and you can get it over the line.
- [19:34]
A
All right, it's January 25th. Whatever date you have a bill that you've put in, you get a call from the White House. We like this bill. We want to work with you. What do you do?
- [19:45]
B
I'll work with anyone to get stuff done that I want to get done. I mean, I don't know that I'm going to have too many legislative priorities that are going to be particularly appealing to the current occupant of the White House. Understood. But if by chance lightning strikes. Absolutely.
- [19:58]
A
Do you have a sense of what kind of committees you're going to ask to be on?
- [20:01]
B
You know, I very much would like to be on transportation infrastructure. This district probably has more significant transportation infrastructure projects.
- [20:09]
A
Plus you have all the sidewalk background in that too.
- [20:11]
B
Yeah. And I care about it. Yeah. And you know, for a very long time, actually that was A. That was. That was Jerry's. One of Jerry's two significant. Yeah, yeah.
- [20:19]
A
The tunnel. Yeah. So that fight for the tunnel.
- [20:22]
B
What's that?
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A
Are you gonna fight for the tunnel?
- [20:24]
B
Look, the tunnel happens to be a great idea. I don't know whether at this point it is in the cards, but it is. I will say this history will prove Jerry Nadler right on the rail freight tunnel. And I had been talking a lot about financial services, in part because housing policy runs through financial services. And I think there's no issue.
- [20:44]
A
And the vast majority of the world's biggest banks are in your district.
- [20:49]
B
But I gather a. I think that's a tough get for a freshman. And I had conversely been sort of under the impression that oversight was a very tough get for freshmen. And I think it actually may be more of a possibility than I. But again, I have to check myself because these are the musings of a unelected, presumptuous Democratic nominee.
- [21:09]
A
How do you think it changes the fact that you already have a relationship with Hakeem? Right. So not that many freshmen are coming in with a long standing relationship with the speaker, assuming he is the Speaker. And we'll talk about that in a
- [21:20]
B
second, you know, how does it. I think there will be a whole bunch of factors that are gonna influence committee assignments. I'm in a safe seat. That's not a help. So I'll put in my asks and do my best. Right.
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A
Speaker. Obviously the DSA is gonna try to leverage as much as they can from Hakeem. Do you see a world where he's not the speaker? Or you just think they will just get whatever commitments they can from him on committee assignments and calling bills and things like that.
- [21:53]
B
I think at the end of the day, everybody's. My hope is that people will be rational and practical about this. I think that what we don't want, what is not going to be constructive is to. For the Democratic. For the. For a Democratic majority to follow the example of the Republicans and what they did to McCarthy and weaken the leadership structure and weaken the speaker such that progress in the House and moving together with unity, it becomes very hard.
- [22:27]
A
And also, by the way, you know, you talked about the hope of in 28 having a trifecta. The more that there's just international warfare within the Democrats in the House and the more that America thinks that the Democrats are just captive of a very far left wing of the party, the more that that's going to reduce your ability to have the trifecta.
- [22:46]
B
We've got to the party has got to focus on the. What I. You know, the 80% of stuff that we agree upon, which is what I. What I talk about and, you know, and I think will be. It'll be to our great detriment if
- [22:59]
A
we can't do that. So the challenge is. Now, you've been good about this, but I think that you're not the norm. The 80% stuff may be the things that are actually politically smart or substantially more important. They don't generate nearly as much attention. Right. And the way to get attention is to focus on that 20% that you get tons of reinforcement from a specific group who's incredibly active online, and they're incredibly active, like people lean into people run for office, as you know, in my view, and I don't think you're the typical politician, but because they desperately need affirmation and validation. And the way to get that tends to be to kind of play to the base and play to the extremes as opposed to, say, here are thoughtful, nuanced ideas that require compromise and consensus and everything else that's a lot harder to get across in 280 characters or whatever. Whatever it is. So I don't doubt that you'll do it because I know you, obviously, for decades, but, like, I don't like. My concern is that what you're saying is right and it's not going to happen because the personality type of those in office are designed to play to the 20%. And the 20% only wants to vote in their fucking primary. So even if they want to win the presidency or the chambers writ large, they're starting with thinking about themselves and their own needs are different.
- [24:18]
B
Yeah. Look, the one thing I would say, I'd say two things. Number one, you know, what's in that 80%? And I think that there are some really big economic questions around tax fairness and how we're dealing with wealth in America that have, you know, gotten the most attention on the left. But that I really think are of. Of a growing concern for Democrats, Republicans, independents across the country.
- [24:46]
A
And there's massive, as you know, I don't think government's necessarily the right vehicle to tax and distribute it. I'd rather something like upi. But in a weird way, the best thing for New York would be a national tax increase, because regulatory arbitrage is terrible for New York. Right.
- [25:04]
B
We're getting. The whole reason, jurisdictional arbitrage. The whole reason we are having these increasingly difficult debates around fiscal policy at this state and local level is because we are in the second Trump administration of fiscal violence to New York. Right. And going back to the salt repeal to OB3. And it's just putting us in a
- [25:25]
A
tougher and tougher time. Yeah, I just know so many people who are leaving. I mean I know that the left likes to pretend this isn't the case, but it is the case. Like I went to a Mets game on Saturday with a friend of mine who's worth a lot of money and he just switched his restaurants to Miami. Cause he was like, I'm gonna lose. You know, it was like eight figures. And he's like, I don't want to.
- [25:41]
B
Yeah, we need to have it. On the list of substack pieces that I want to write between now and the end of the year is a thoughtful discussion about the issues of federal versus state and local tax and out migration, which I would say is not as bad as the New York Post will tell you it is and not non existent.
- [26:02]
A
I mean the fact that we have, for example 127,000 fewer kids in the New York State school system since before COVID or the fact that unless you think the Citizens Budget Commission is full of shit, and I don't, I think their work's pretty solid. They argue that by New York City losing its share of millionaires in America by a meaningful percentage in 2012, there's $13 billion annually less in city and state tax revenue as a result of it. So if you believe that their analysis is legit, then the math is clearly there. So then the question becomes how do you do it? I think New York kind of keeps putting itself deeper and deeper in the hole because it keeps doing things. I mean I had this issue with the was small but with the QSBS when Albany went to 130 couple and the conversation I had with him with the governor's office, everyone was like listen, we don't have a Stanford or mit, right. Cornell Tech hasn't really worked out in my view. And there's nothing to anchor the tech sector to New York. No one has to be here. People are making sacrifices to be here because they like it here. But if you know, you already do nothing to recognized the contributions they make to New York and now if you just start excoriating them on top of it, they're gonna leave.
- [27:12]
B
I mean this is for a future podcast, I would say. I think the CBC's work is pretty solid. The catch of it or the complexity of it is that that revenue that they talk about sort of us not getting assumes, I think, assumes that the tax increases that got made remain in place. There's no question that the tax increases that got passed generated more revenue net out than was lost by people leaving the states. No question. We're definitely revenue positive. And in fact we're not at what is known as the revenue maximizing tax rate for the state and city. So it's, it's tricky.
- [27:53]
A
Yeah, except that those are the people who also create jobs. No, I'm not arguing that we have more tax revenue.
- [27:59]
B
I don't think, I don't think it's responsible to say, let's jump to the revenue maximizing tax rate.
- [28:04]
A
I will say this. I do believe that the city and the state are so clueless as to the role that the tech sector plays in the local economy that they risk potentially just, just, even if it's just through neglect, not building on the, the, the biggest way to diversify the tax base and the economy simply because they just, they. It's all about like, oh, we'll throw some tax policy to get someone to build something in western New York. No, it's all like, no likes a shit about that.
- [28:33]
B
I would just say this and we should, we should do it, we should do another at greater length on this topic because it's a good topic. But I do. This has always been, New York has always been a very expensive place to live. And the question I think is do people feel like they're getting great value for the cost of housing, the taxes they're paying? Are the streets safe? Are the schools great? Are the parks well kept? And do they have confidence that their tax dollars are being spent wisely? And I certainly think we've got some
- [29:02]
A
work to do for sure. And also just like basic blocking. I mean, I've had a discussion with the mayor, I've had a discussion with the deputy mayor for pains me to say it, justice. And I've said like, let's just have you guys talk to tech leaders and just at least make them feel like you give a shit.
- [29:18]
B
Nothing.
- [29:18]
A
Right. Total incompetence, total lack of follow through, total, you know, separate discussion about the mayor. But I just think zero ability or interest in ever going outside their comfort zone of they're in their own bubble. Right. And I understand that it's working politically right now, but it's not good leadership in my view. All right, so real fast, top three things you want to try to get done in the next couple of years.
- [29:42]
B
I would like to. I mean, look, we're, we've, we've just seen progress on a Big housing bill. So I'd like to figure out what, you know, what the next steps on that are. And.
- [29:53]
A
And it's an area of. There is bipartisanship.
- [29:55]
B
There is bipartisan. Sure. And so I'd like to be part of building on that progress. We need a lot more housing both in New York and this country.
- [30:02]
A
Yep.
- [30:03]
B
Likewise childcare and paid family leave. The federal investment in childcare has basically been flat for years. And I think. Talk about a cost of living in this city. Yeah, for sure. That we need help on. And I talked a lot during the campaign about a first job guarantee as part of a program of paid national service. Basically say to young people, you know, the idea of paid national service has been kicking around a long time. That's not necessarily a new idea, but I think structuring it as a first job guarantee for young people. Say to people coming out of school, you want to work?
- [30:35]
A
I think that takes two important. Again, we'll talk these things more. But it's funny because I couldn't talk to you much.
- [30:41]
B
I know.
- [30:41]
A
I actually don't even know all the positions you took in the campaign. But I believe in national service as a way to deal with the happiness gap in America because we have a society where, if the full, logical conclusion of capitalism is that you can only be happy if you're successful, and you could be successful if you maximize wealth and status, then you kind of miss the things that actually make human beings happy, which are meaning and purpose and relationships and all of that. And so the reason I've always wanted to do national service is not even like, let's have kids picking up trash in the park.
- [31:09]
B
Right.
- [31:09]
A
It's not that the Parks Department even necessarily needs that. It's that you learn that these are the things that actually make you feel good, and it allows you to have different values in your life that will give you a greater chance of personal happiness. Look, Israel, the US for people under the age of 25 or 62nd in happiness by the world happy. His report standard. Israel's number two. And I understand Israel is a time bomb, separately, politically, right now. But the reason it's number two is because despite being under this existential threat, everyone has to serve in the military. And I think that that does generate a shared sense of belief and purpose and meaning that makes people happier. Forget about anything else. Right. So if you could combine that, which I think is like, ultimately, what's the fucking point of all this, that people are miserable with all of the very real anxiety around AI and the job market. I think that's really fascinating.
- [31:59]
B
Yeah. Look, we've both got teenagers. I worry about what jobs are available.
- [32:02]
A
Yeah. I mean, I talked to Lyle and my Uber is waiting for me there. But the other day, and I said to him, just like, what's your greatest societal concern? Because all we ever talk about is sports. And I thought he'd be like, climate change or tyranny? He was like, finding a job. In the era of AI, this is a rich kid that goes to an elite Manhattan private school, that will go to an elite college, will kind of always have a safety net, and yet
- [32:24]
B
he's worried about it.
- [32:25]
A
So imagine how everyone else must fucking feel.
- [32:26]
B
We've got to deal with that.
- [32:27]
A
All right, Micah, congratulations.
- [32:29]
B
Thanks, Brad.
- [32:29]
A
Thanks for joining us. Firewall is recorded at my bookstore, PNT Netware, located at 180 Orchard street on the lower east side of Manhattan. We'd love to hear from you with questions, feedbacks, or idea for a guest. Just email me at Bradleyirewall Media or find me on LinkedIn. And to keep up with what's on my mind and my latest writing, please follow my new substack@bradleytus.substack.com thanks again for listening.