It Could Happen Here Weekly 11

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Executive producer Harris Hilton brings back the hit podcast How
Men Think, and that's good news for anyone that is
confused by men, which is basically everyone. It's real talk,
straight from the source. How Men Think podcast is exactly
what we need to figure them out. It's going to
be fun and formative and probably a bit scary at
times because we're literally going inside the minds of men.

(00:24):
Listen to How Men Think on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Gave us
the over attention we need. Everything you've got fast. Waiting
on Reparations would be the podcast. Tune in every Thursday
politics and wordplay. We fight for the people because they
got us in the worst way, from the Hill Cooper,
the Bomb Bay tot, from the left enclave to what

(00:45):
the neo kansee. Every Thursday the heavy conversation to break
us off with some break because we're waiting. Listen to
Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Look for your
children's eyes and you will discover the true magic of

(01:06):
a forest. Find a forest near you and start exploring it.
Discover the forest dot Org, brought to you by the
United States Forest Service and the AD Council. Hey, everybody,
Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know.
This is a compiletion episode. So every episode of the
week that just happened is here in one convenient and

(01:26):
with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to
in a long stretch if you want. If you've been
listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna
be nothing new here for you, but you can make
your own decisions. Hey, every buddy, America, Hey Americans, America,

(01:47):
How is American? That is the podcast? And that was
that was a horrible issue. That was maybe your talk
ted worst. This is it could happen here a podcast
where an incompat tent Rube Fox up starting the show
and then we talk about how things are falling apart
or how to make things not fall apart, or some

(02:10):
version of things in between those two facts. Yep, yep.
That's a kind of kind of not great time going
on right now. A lot of people are That was
our our second that was our b pitch for the name.
Kind of a great time going on right now. Actually,
not that far from what was say, Yeah. I mean

(02:35):
it's like, especially especially right now, there's there's a lot
of a lot of trials going on, m feet on stuff,
and the d our Very trial is happening, the one
about you know, un Unite the Right is going on,
and of course the kindn't have his trial as of
as of recording is um people, the jury is still
in um so no idea. What's going to be the

(02:59):
rest all. By the time that episode, I've actually been
like not commenting on it or neither to think about it.
There's nothing we can do about it. There's nothing you
can do. And like a lot of people, there's been
discussion about how much civil unrest there's going to be
depending on the result of the trial. I know there's
been a lot of like national guards sent to Wisconsin.

(03:19):
It's been you know, FBI door Knox and activists tombs
trying to scare people so they don't you know, go
out and ride or whatever. Discussion online the people you
know planning protests in response to in response to whatever
the result is. Um. I know just today there was
a post from I think the Ohio Proud Boys claiming
that they be sending like like uh was it hundreds

(03:40):
or thousands of like people armed with like a RS
to Wisconsin, or yeah, there's there's a fucking post. People
are saying, like, you should take it seriously because it's
from a Proud Boys internal chat, and it's like, we've
got three hundred guys heavily armed heading to and there's
already X number of guys there, and we're gonna kill
a lot more Communists than Kyle written House did. And YadA, YadA, YadA,

(04:02):
and ya. If I could give you one piece of
advice now, and who knows where the world is at
the point of which this episode drops, it's when people
talk about say when if you are at a protest
and someone starts talking about the Proud Boys and the
Proud Boys are coming or the Proud Boys are here,
if you don't immediately see uncontrovertible visual proof that they
have access to showing it, assume it's nonsense. Okay, Yeah,

(04:25):
that is my advice as someone who has heard a
thousand times people say versions of the Proud Boys are coming. Okay,
insist on evidence or ignore it. But you know, whenever
whenever these big civil you know, unrests and types of
stuff happens, there's always an increased chance that there'll be
some kind of protest related shooting. Especially people are definitely

(04:48):
absolutely may happened by the time this episode drops. Especially
people are bringing guns, people people bring a fire arms
under There's been a lot of the you know, for
like the demonstrations outside the courthouse, there's been you know,
guns there. Um there's been you know, an increasing uh
in the rate of shootings at protests on the West
Coast throughout the past few months. Um, So I'm gonna

(05:08):
be kind of talking about, you know, some things that
you can do if you're at home and you feel
competent enough in the aftermath of one of one of
these shootings. You know, if if if you know, if
a proud boy does bring a bring a gun and
shoot somebody at what you can actually do a video
If you're in a situation where you've been following something

(05:28):
happening all day, there's a shooting and like low quality
footage starts coming out of somebody killing someone or someone's else,
here's what to do next if you want to maybe
be a positive part of of that, of that process,
well not of that process, but of like the aftermath
of it. You know, and and because because the universe
is cruel. I I originally wrote this road right up

(05:52):
about the written House shooting, UM because the universe is
a cruel place, and it's gonna, you know, continue to
This particular incident is going to continue to be impactful.
Even though it's not the first, it's not gonna be
the last one of these. It is still impactful because
of how much of a symbol has been turned into
So I think a lot of people forget about how
how chaotic the night on the internet was the day

(06:15):
of the Kenosha shooting. UM like it was. It was
wild being online as that was going on. Uh No,
one had no idea what was going on. People could
not agree on who the shooter was beforehand. There was
a lot of pictures floating around. It was it was,
it was. It was a nightmare. Uh we know, we
knew that people were shot, we couldn't know how many

(06:38):
or who. Like it was, it was pretty bad and chaotic,
And it is always that way in the wake of
a shooting. UM, and it is the in any given shooting.
Always keep in mind when you're when you're online or
in person and there has been a shooting and people
are saying things about said shooting other than we should
take cover from the shooting. If they're saying anything else

(06:58):
about it, um, you have to assume they're probably not
either wrong or not entirely accurate. Um, because it's hard
to be. It happens constantly. I mean, that's not it's
something against any of them. I can remember a moment
when you and I were out last year Garrison and
there was a shooting I don't know, like forty ft away. Um.
Nobody hurt, thankfully, but like the the immediate report from

(07:19):
it was some guy had gotten pulled an a R
fifteen out of his car and uh, and I I
think the thing I said to you was, I'll bet
you right now it's a nine millimeter handgun. And sure enough,
within minutes there was a photo. Yeah. It's and it's
not that those people were like dumb or bad. It's that,
like shootings are scary, guns getting pulled is scary, and

(07:40):
people funk up um in in their recollections. Um. It's
the same way in which, like if a bear comes
after you, uh, you may exaggerate the size of that
bear in your head because you're scared as ship, because
it's a bear. Yeah. So, so I was home on
augustum just and I I was I was actually about

(08:01):
to go out to to uh cover a purchase in Portland,
but then I saw this happened on my phone on Twitter.
I was like, I cannot go out. I will be
more useful at home. Um. So, with with so much
uncertainty online or the details of the actual shooting it was,
it was clear that trying to provide concrete information would
be crucial in the hours to come. So I spowed

(08:21):
it up my computer and started to try to begin
to search for you know, information and and verifiable stuff. UM.
So I spent I spent all night looking looking for
details about the shooter you know, um, uncovering his supposed
identity um. Ultimately about an hour before the police announced
their investigation even started um and and twelve hours before

(08:42):
the police announced the shooters arrest um. And also to
my surprise at the time, I discovered that the shooter
was the same age as me. Um. Yeah, that was
that That was That was a night so um because
because I mainly used to titter and most of the
video of the instant was on Twitter, I started, uh

(09:03):
my my investigation by looking at Twitter. Uh my first
goal was to find as as many videos of of
the shooting that I could and collect pictures of all
of the alleged suspects, all all the people who were claiming, Hey, this,
this is this is the shooter. I think I think
I got a picture of the shooter who was Here's
what he is? Um. So, I I kept my eye
on trending terms. Uh So, I searched under the hashtags

(09:25):
like Kenosha, Kenosha shootings, Kanosha shooting, Kenosha protests, boogaloo was
trending a lot, A lot of people thought the shooter
was a boogaloo boy. Um was not um and also
hashtag militia. So the search has brought up a lot,
a lot of photos of of multiple young men, most

(09:45):
of whom were carrying long guns, and a lot of
unconfirmed reports that the shooter was a boogaloo boy was
trending on Twitter. This was the main the main thing
that night was boogloo boy shot. All the stuff that
that was the main, the main trending topic. A lot
of a lot of conflicting details, and I did not
want to kind of add the misinformation, so I decided
to not make any posts but whatsoever about the identity

(10:07):
of the shooter until I was one percent confident um
that I had the correct idea, which takes a while.
It's it's not you know, Twitter wants you to post
stuff quickly as soon as you find it out, and
it's way better to hold off your information and wait
until you are absolutely sure it's the right time to
post it. And because it's the correct, correct stuff. Because
mismismisidentifying a suspect, you can have a serious, serious consequences

(10:28):
for any individual um involved. It's when when the worst
things you can do is is miss misidentifying any any suspect.
So I was looking through all the videos that I
collected for kind of unique um or identifying clothing that
that the shooter may have been wearing. The first video
I found useful was from a right wing videographer named

(10:49):
Drew hernandez Um who a few months later called from
Bloodshed at the Capitol. He also testified at the Written
House trial. This video did not actually show any any
actual shooting. It had a wounded person on the ground
being treated by a medic and a man standing over
the scene with with with a gun. Um And wearing

(11:09):
a green shirt, a tan baseball cap, jeans, and like
purple latex gloves. He had, he had a he had
he had a black and orange bag. Um. The person
on the green shirt then runs towards the camera while
talking on the phone, and he says into the phone, UM,
I just shot somebody or I just killed somebody. It's
hard to tell where he's actually saying if it's it's

(11:29):
one of those things where if you think about it,
you can hear both ones. But but he he says
something like I just killed somebody on the phone, and
he runs past the camera. So this this, this, this
was the first kind of really important piece of information
personal that was brought up in the trial too. And
he he was like, I don't remember what I said.

(11:50):
Oh interesting, okay, Yeah. And to be honest, like, even
if if this was I don't think any of us
believed this was legitimate self defense. But like, even if
it was, either of those things would be perfectly acceptable
things to say. It's a surprising momentum, and you probably
wouldn't remember what you said. I don't necessarily think he's
lying about that. It turns out he he was. He

(12:11):
was on the phone with the person who bought him
the gun of a friend of his. UM. So, but
but that this was my first important piece of information,
you know, the the night of Right, this is before
anyone's analyzed any of this stuff. So this is the
first video that I can find it. Like, Okay, here's
a person admitting on camera that they shot somebody. Um,

(12:31):
and we're wearing a few potential identifiers, namely the green shirt,
baseball cap, and bag. Um. So now I can search
for all of those items together and the rest of
the footage collected throughout the night. Looking over the top
viral videos of the night showing multiple people getting shot. Uh,
this is from this is from later on. After the
first person gets killed, we can see someone in a

(12:52):
baseball cap, black and oaunch bag and what could be
a green shirt running through a street. Um. Somebody runs
over to the individual with the gun and kind of
punches them in the head, not knocking his hat off.
So now the person running with the gun does not
have a hat. Individual with the gun, he keeps running,
but trips and falls on the ground before people try
to disarm him. Uh. Four more shots are fired from

(13:14):
the suspect, and uh. One more person dies as a
result of this, other person gets their arm nearly blown off. Uh.
There is one continuous video of all of this happening.
Extremely useful having having one video of this whole shot. Yeah. Um,
So the shooter, who appears to be the same person
is the other video because of the green shirt and

(13:36):
the hat at the beginning, continues to get onto his
feet and runs off again. Uh. And the orange orangine orangine,
a black bag swings in front of him as he's running,
and a purple glove is also visible. Multiple vehicles drive past,
like police vehicles. Um. The shooter then walks up pretty
close to the police vehicle and he just he just

(13:58):
he just with with with the rife and nothing, nothing happens.
He he like he wait, he waves to the cops
and they just keep driving and he walks away. So
after finding watching these videos I had, I had no
reason to believe the shooter was in custody. Um, and
I had a good idea of his clothing and attire.
So it's time to you know, compare this information that
I gathered, uh two pictures of the supposed you know,

(14:20):
suspects circulating on Twitter. Um. But but first I think, uh,
now it's it's the time to listen to people selling
new stuff. You know who doesn't oh boy trampled to
another state to show up armed in a community to
threaten people. They don't do it. I'm saying they don't.

(14:41):
That's good, okay, all right? The products and services who
support Hello Fresh black Liffe p Actually, a number of
our sponsors will show up unwanted in your community armed.
I forgot the Washington State Highway and the I have
both dropped dads now well also, you know a highway

(15:04):
patrol to forget about those motherfuckers like Kyle Rittenhouse. A
number of our sponsors may show up in your home
neighborhood with another one also, Black Life Coffee, Kyle's favorite
brand of coffee. Remember, well it was until they disavowed him.
An here's here's the ads. Here's the ones that pay.
We're bad. So there was there was a lot of

(15:27):
pictures of suspects on Twitter, some of them who look
nothing like the person we now know who shot those people.
Um funny how that happens. It's uh, well, it's not funny.
It's it's pretty pretty pretty pretty bad. Yeah, yeah, it's
it's not great just to share stuff like like that
when these things happened. Um, which is why I said

(15:49):
I'm not gonna share anything until no. UM, I know
that it's it's it's actually worth posting about. So in uh,
I'm gonna go through go through some some some of
the pictures and stuff of of I'm going through at
least one of the pictures of one of the people
people claimed to be the shooter. So in one picture circulating,
you see someone in a green shirt, a baseball cap,

(16:11):
and big, big, big black rifle. But this man's also
wearing shorts of a black hat, not a tan. One
has no bag, appears to be wearing like a tactile
vest that is also green. So not the guy, even
though he's wearing a green shirt and hat, not the
same dude. Was be pretty easy to check not you
don't really don't need to share that kind of stuff.

(16:32):
Pretty sure, Pretty sure a lot of people own green shirts, yea.
So two other photos that were circulating, they were claiming
to be the guy. We had a green shirt, a
tan baseball cap put on backwards jeans. Um. One of
the one of the pictures has a bag in front
of which is an orange and black one. Where one
of them doesn't. One picture has purple gloves of the

(16:54):
picture doesn't. But these dudes look pretty similar despite the
same differences. I'm pretty sure this is this is this,
This is the same guy. But you know, I'm a
decision at the night, so this is probably the same dude.
Um And he does appear to match the shooter a
lot better. And there was a few few clear fixed
pictures of his face um here, But honestly, the face

(17:15):
of if if you look at all the pictures of
the Connection shooting that night, the pictures of the suspect
are really unclear because the way that the light hit
his face, he looks like an incredibly generic white boy.
Um like, extremely generic. It is hard to tell any
any I identifying features from his face because they look
like he looks like every every white every white boy.

(17:38):
It's really hard to say everyone you went to high
school with, who I don't know sniffed a girl's chair
when he likes that's that's Kyle Rittenhouse. Such a visual
Now that I decided that I have, like, I have
a decent collection of pictures of who I believe the
actual actual suspect is time time time to figure out

(18:00):
who the suspects like name actually is and this is
This is one of the one of the harder things,
but often you can have a lot of help in
ways that you might not expect. Um Often, once you
can get a good picture of someone you know, be like, yeah, yes,
this this is actually the dude. Once it gets shared enough,
often somebody knows who this is already. You know, the
internet is a pretty big place. I believe the first

(18:22):
I believe the first person to actually like like I
was I was the person to like prove online who
who d written that kuy Right knows was the shooter.
The first person to actually tie Kyle's name to the
shooter UM was a neighbor of his on Facebook. UM.
They they saw pictures of the shooter on on Facebook

(18:43):
and said, hey, I think this I think I recognized
this guy. I think I think this is my neighbor. UM.
So often, once you start, once you have like enough
pictures and those can spread, people will feel to find names.
It isn't as hard as you would think that. The
hard part is is finding out what personal connections are
making those links and finding out where where where those are.

(19:04):
But stuff, stuff spreads in a weird way and right
for this. You know, I find I was able to
prove that it was Kyle pretty quickly. Um, for a
few reasons. So after I was doing my my my
clothing comparisons to figure out this is to prove, like
he said, this is the actual person who who did
these things. Um. The other thing I I found that

(19:25):
was not it was not viral at all, um, but
just because I was digging through so much stuff, was
this meme shared by uh I by some like small
boogaloo account. Um. It was a picture of the shooter.
Uh compare right beside a collection of Blue Lives Matter

(19:47):
pictures of someone who looks kind of similar, linking to
a Facebook page or not not linking it was it
was it was screenshot from the Facebook page. And I
can tell because of the font. And it was, like
I said, like a written house is photos. So this
was the first This is the first thing I saw
on the like buried deep inside like Twitter's, Twitter's, Twitter's images.

(20:08):
But by using all of like these a hashtag terms
was this meme and and and then the meme said
so y'all think he's still a boogaloo. No, No, he
wasn't but because because of all of the pro police stuff,
because boogleos generally are not not that fond fond of police.
Yeah so so yeah, um, given given. So you know,

(20:31):
if someone was to look at this, you know, look
at this meme itself, he's like, okay, you know, the
job was done. You know information, this dude looks vaguely
similar ish to the guy on this written house Facebook. Um,
the gun looks kind of similar because one of the
pictures of the Facebook was it was a guy holding
was a guy holding in a r um. But you know,

(20:54):
just something looking similar or even holding a similar gun
in one picture from a Facebook account. That's not enough
to be sure about publishing a positive I d that
there's there's there's no actual really, there's no like definitive
proof there because honestly, if I was to look at
these two guys faces, they don't look incredibly similar because
faces can distort it with lighting and compression that it's it's,

(21:15):
it's it's. It can be really difficult. And this is
where you know, trying to idea shooter is hard and
requires complex judgment. Calls and posting in accurate information or
like incomplete information, um can have you know, extremely harmful effects,
and there's there's a lot a lot of examples of
this happening in the past. You know, probably the biggest example,
or the most notorious one of false identification is the

(21:36):
Boston bombing incident. Um. So, you know, right after the
right after thirteen bombing, you know, thousands of users on
sites like Reddit and four chan became combing through footage
to try to identify potential suspects screen caps of the
people they deemed suspicious when viral online on on various
social media sites. Unfortunately, the slew thing work done on

(21:57):
four Chan and Reddit was incredibly shoddy um and seemingly
had way more to do with like racial paranoia than
actual detective work and evidence gathering. The New York Post
subsequently published a picture on front page that that originated
on Reddit, that users had declared that that was showing
the two suspects with without doing any further verification. So

(22:19):
it's it's it's real bad how stuff can spread from
Reddit like this that's completely unverified to you know, a newspaper,
even as one as unreputable as the Post, that's still
a very popular paper. The Post also claimed that the
law enforcement we're looking for those two to uh two
individuals in that picture. UM. One of the one of
the people identified by the post was harassed online. UM

(22:41):
police police later told him just to delete his social
media accounts entirely because there was no use at that point. UM.
When the FBI did officially release photos of the unnamed suspects,
Reddit users again false he identified these people on. One
of the people they false he identified went went missing
for weeks prior UM his his family received media inquiries

(23:01):
about the false and verified rumors of their son's involvement. UM,
and rumors of of of involvement were spread by reporters
from Politico News, Squeak Newsweek, NBC News, and BuzzFeed. UM.
Eight days after the bombing, this guy was actually the bombing.
This guy was actually found dead and his family said
it was a suicide. UM, it was not not one

(23:22):
of the shooters, not one of the bombers. UM. Again,
why even more than the tactics you could use to
try and you know, verify things online, the most useful
thing you can take out of this is if there
is a mass shooting or other active violence and people
on social media are saying it is this person, don't
share it. Don't just don't share it, just wait, especially

(23:44):
in sharing it if they have don't have anything to
verify this at all. So yeah, like I'm not gonna,
I'm not gonna don't again, that is the overwhelming thing.
We were not gonna you know. That's why you know
I'm not gonna share this Kyle Rittenhouse, um boogleoo me
because there's no proof for it. It's it's it's not
there now. Eventually, after digging, I would realize that this

(24:05):
meme cause comes from his neighbor saying that she thinks
the suspect is him. So that's that's what this meme
was created. Um. But still like there there there was
no no proof for it, so I don't I didn't
share it. So all the Boston bombing stuff was like
going through my mind as I know found this and
was trying to dig for dig for my details. So yeah,

(24:27):
I knew that I could not post a name on
any social media um or any info until I until
I could prove it like without a shadow, but doubt
that this is the same person because a lot a
lot of times it is possible. It just requires work
in time, you know, And a big part of doing
this on Twitter is like, you want to get it
out fast, so you're the first person to do it,
so that you know you can go vital on your
thread of identifying this killer, And like, no, that's not

(24:50):
the reason to do image verification. It's not to go
viral on a thread. It's because whenever that's your goal
you're gonna do, you're gonna do shitty fast work that
is gonna end up causing some kind of horrible consequence,
like in the case the Boston bombing. And to be
even extra clear, the primary use for this that kind
of what you're teaching people image verification, which is something
that like like Belling Cat, which has been like kind

(25:13):
of a part time employer of mine. Um is an
open source journalism collective that's broken some of the biggest
stories in the last couple of years. And in the classes,
we teach a class on image verification. And the point
is just whenever someone is sharing a piece of what
is like supposedly breaking news based on video or images
that have been taken at the side of a whatever,

(25:35):
image verification tactics can help you to know whether or
not it's whether or not either it's true or false.
But also just whether or not the image the information
they're presenting gives you any reason to believe it, Like
it's how you might be full of shit, Like that's
super important. Yeah, like that, there's there's a thing that

(25:56):
happens like and any time there's something that looks like
a war starting. There is like this video of a
bombing from two thousand fourteen and Gaza that goes around. Yeah,
it's like every time. Yeah. Um, there's there's actually five
or six different kinds of things that are like that Chris,
that are like, oh this is there's actually footage from
like a Russian video game that people keep keeps getting

(26:18):
like mistaken for action combat footage, and it's like, no,
it's fucking from a video game. This has been on,
this has been three wars. Now. There's this famous footage
of like a fucking um an air soft battle at
night with glowing with soft pellets, with the glowing pellets
and it it kind of it kind of looks because
it's black and white and not a great camera, it
kind of looks like tracer fire. And it's there's like

(26:40):
three Wars that people have said like look, this is
still combat footage from it happens all the time. And
again great account to follow is a hoax. I On Twitter,
they do really good work pointing out just like kind
of more like more like less high stakes kind of
image image verification stuff. Um So, but before I get
into the actual like verification work of like proving, Hey,

(27:03):
I can actually prove that that by by not just
someone's face, I can prove that this shooter is the
same guy from from from the Facebook page. Um, I'll
explain that next first short short ad break, and then
we will finish up with this actual proving section. Yeah
you know who is not Kyle? Wow? Do you have

(27:29):
really dropped the ball out all of the transitions today. Yeah.
I am not proud of myself or my place in
society at the moment. Um, here's the ads. We're back.
I feel terrible Garrison. And So, even even though the
boogloo meme was not hard evidence, uh it did, it

(27:50):
did provide a lead. So after seeing the meme, I
did the first most obvious thing that I could see
was compare the gun in the two frames. Uh they
do look similar. Uh they're not. They're not identical. Uh,
the optics are different for each rifle. Um. But the
rest of it. But the stock, the grip um, and

(28:11):
the barrel do do seem do seem to be? Do
seem to be, if not, if not identical, at least
extremely similar. Again, still not enough to make a positive
idea on an individual basis, Like this person is its person,
So that the next step is to scour the actual
Facebook account itself that is alluded to in this meme
and see what I can find there. The goal obviously

(28:33):
being to find statements or pictures that will tie this
person in the images of the shooter to the person
on the account. So that's you know, clothing, location, intention,
you know, all these types of things that could tie
the pictures of the shooter the pictures of person on
on on this account. Um So, Kyle houses old public
Facebook profile was mainly made up of Blue Lives Matter

(28:57):
and pro police images going back as far as twenty seventeen, UM,
with a few uh then recent pictures of him holding
his Air fifteen style rifle. Uh those the rifle pictures
were like from June. The shooting happened in late August. Um.
It appears I think it came out in the trial
that he got his rifle around like May um so yeah,

(29:19):
a lot of a lot of a lot of pro
police stuff, a lot of them blue lining, blue lives
matters type things. Um. His public his his public page
is is relatively sparse um and there was no public
friends list to look through. Um. One one noteworthy piece
of information was that he did he did list another
name for himself as Kyle Lewis believe his mother's maiden name.

(29:41):
Sure but uh but even so, even though I wasn't
able to view a friends list and there wasn't many
public posts, uh, this is his page is by no
means a dead end. I could still see everyone that
has commented on, shared, or liked his public posts. Because
like so, he did not have he he did not
many have any pictures himself himself on his page that
that that I could use for verification. He didn't have

(30:04):
like not nothing that I could tie to the shooting
besides the actual guns. So not not tons of useful
not tons of useful stuff. But there's perhaps there's still
other other leads to look through, like everyone who's liked, shared,
or uh commented on his posts. So I I opened
up new tabs for every single person that interacted with
Kyle's posts. While looking over their pages, I was searching

(30:26):
to see if any of them had listed Kyle as
a relative, with a focus on anyone with the last
name of written House or Lewis um and and you know,
ideally was looking forward to see if anyone had pictures
of Kyle or someone who seems to be Kyle. Uh.
One post from May eighteen eventually eventually proved useful. One

(30:47):
comment read, Kyle, you sure do look look like a Louis.
So there's the alternate last name. And two people had
liked that comment Kyle himself and and uh and someone
who is his mom? Would you or would would later
find out is his mom? Um? Uh? So she said
that lived She said that she lived in Uh. Is

(31:09):
it anatok Illinois? Antioch? Probably Antioch, Illinois, which matches uh
with Kyle's uh Illinois based pro police posts. He made
a lot of like Chicago Blue Lives Matter posts, so
I assumed that Kyle was from Illinois. And also, um,

(31:30):
uh Antioch is that you said whatever? Antioch to to
Wiscon's Antioch to Kenosha is only like three minute drive,
so that is also like okay, that's that's that's that's
pretty close. That is that is doable. Um, so it
was the next I went. I went through a lot
of the relatives pages, but I'm gonna focus just on

(31:52):
the person who I found out who was, um, Kyle's mom,
because they're the one that had the most useful information, right.
A lot of other information I looked through just turn
out to be useful, right, So I'm not not including
all of that here. Um Uh. One post from from
Wendy's mom uh featured a younger Kyle wearing a police outfit. Um.

(32:13):
I'm sure people have seen this picture online before. I
think I was probably I was. I was probably the
first person to share this photo of Kyle in this
in this younger Kyle wearing this this police this police costume,
an unbelievably cringe e photo like side of the fact
that he took two lives, like just yeah, I mean
we all have photos we took when while an r

(32:36):
OTC Like so yeah, ideally we would we would give
there There's actually there's actually a lot more of these photos.
There's photos of him touring so this is this stuff.
I also found that night photos of him like touring
a target with police as he's in a police uniform.
He was part of like a police young Cadets program.
He he was like twelve, um, so that that's where

(32:59):
he got this outfit. And he like tagged around with
police for like a day or something. And this photos
of him like in a target with police. Even when
I was like a shitty right winging kid, that sounded
like a nightmare. So so yeah, so Kyle's the person
who I figured out was Kyle's mom posted this this
photo of of her and Kyle, which which Kyle liked,

(33:22):
and then in another picture of another picture from from
Kyle's mom, I found, uh, it's a family picture including
Kyle wearing what I would say is like an army
green shirt kind of similar, but it's a green shirt
like I have. I have shirts that are pretty similar
to that. I'm not gonna that's not gonna be anything

(33:43):
so super definitive until we got there's one one picture
that that proved to be much much more, much more
useful of Kyle on or someone who assumed was Kyle,
you don't you don't you don't actually see his face,
but he is wearing a whole roably cringe e American
flag crocs, which which which which was so, and and

(34:09):
and on. On Kyle's page, there was also pictures of
him wearing those same crocs. So like, even even though
I can't see the person's face, the crocs the same,
probably the same guy. He's also wearing a tan baseball cap. Um.
And on this I can actually see that it has
an American flag on the front of the cap, which
I did not notice on anything else before. So that's,

(34:31):
you know, that's something different. But again not that that's
that's not that's not that's not like a red flag.
That's just you know, a thing to a thing of note.
Um because the baseball cap is tan um and it
has like white mesh on the sides. Um. The one.
The one thing I did, I did make one post
before I actually did any kind of I claiming to

(34:52):
do I identity stuff. I did ask my Twitter followers
if there's any pictures of the back of the Shooters
cap um, and I got them to to send me those,
and then I got one picture of of the back
that actually has uh I couldn't see, like, Okay, the
back of the Shooters cap also has the flag on it,
so I was able to actually show that. Okay, So

(35:15):
the baseball cap on the back of it. Uh, but
they're both tann baseball caps, they both have white mesh
in the side, they both have to have an American flag.
And then I got another picture that was even closer
that showed a tear on the brim of the hat.
And if you zoom in on one of the beach pictures,
you could also see a tear on the same position

(35:35):
on the hat. So this is this hat? Is the
hat is the same hat? The hat was definitely it
was definitely in both locations. So at this point, based
on the gun, based on the hat, based on the
location being very close to kenosha Um and being closed
on the rough facial similarities, um, there was there was

(35:58):
enough enough to enough to to um enough to put
put stuff together to be like, Okay, I I think
I think this is this is probably this is probably
fine in saying I think this is probably the dude. Um.
So at this point I wasn't. I wasn't. Again, I'm
not gonna post this immediately, and I'm not gonna post

(36:19):
something by saying this is who it is without providing
the evidence. So instead of like writting a thread tweet
by tweet, I read the whole thread out and then
tweet the whole thread at the same time. Um so,
so I put it on the thread documenting my relevant stuff.
Um I I wrote the first eight posts the same
time and posted them together with all the evidence of uploaded.
Um and then and then, Uh, as I was writing

(36:40):
the threat, I came across another piece of evidence. There
was one I was going through one of the live
streams of of that night from a channel called the
Rundown Live, which I've not heard anything of before or
since then. Um, but you know one of the many
streamers that were out, um, and you can see you
can see Kyle in the frame and then like pans away,

(37:02):
but the people are still talking. Um so, so Kyle
Kyle is actually off camera now, um but he I
think someone like asks him his name and he and
the person who I think is Kyle replies Kyle. Now,
of course it's off camera, so it's not you can't
be totally sure. There's there's enough context clues and that
plus only other evidence. I'm like, Okay, this is enough

(37:22):
to add to the thread because it again it's it's
not enough proof by itself, but it combined with everything
else completes a much fuller picture. So I posted my
like niner yeah like eight or nine thing thread on
being able to prove its Kyle via you know, comparing
stuff like the gun, uh, the hat, the shirt, and

(37:44):
demonstrating my work tracking across Facebook and how it's able
to like link these two people together. Um. Twenty two
minutes after I posted the threat identifying Kyle Kosha, police
announced that they were that they were starting an active investigation. UM.
I soon added a court document to my read about
a traffic violation UH by someone named cow written house,

(38:05):
filed a few days before the shooting. The traffic violation
thing also included stuff like address, which I I I
blacked out the addressed for that just because sharing the
sharing for reasons I'll explain, because again, if it's if
it's a it's a track of violation, if people really
want it, they can't find it themselves, right, it's it's
not making impossible to find it. And this was able

(38:25):
to confirm it. It was in the same location um
antioch um. And also this this proved that Kyle was
seventeen at the time. Uh. This is how we knew
that he was seventeen years old. At the time of
the shooting was because of this traffic violation document found online.
So the the address on the violation document was the

(38:47):
same one I had linked to Kyle's mom. By doing
other like ocean address work, I was able to find
out where what what her address was. UM. So so yeah,
that was that was most to my work that night. Uh.
It took about I don't know, like two sh maybe
you know, it's hard, it's hard to break up. Uh,

(39:10):
it's timing it. It took about half an hour to
get from the boogaloo meme to finding the matching baseball
cap on on Kyle's mom's Facebook page, about another half
hour to write out the thread, and you know, about
an hour of work previous to that about you know,
trying to find out the actual you know, footage and
categorize it. And Okay, this is the clothing he's wearing.

(39:31):
Here's the clothes I I need to look for on
social media right see see see see if I can
find these shoes, these pants, this, this shirt, this hat,
this bag, that kind of stuff. Um, and I was
able to find enough of those items to make it
pretty pretty clear that it was it was you know,
linked Um and that makes you, Garrison, one of the
first people in the world to get to no way

(39:55):
more about Kyle Rittenhouse than you ever wanted to know. Yeah,
a lot more. This nightmare has been going on longer
for you than yeah. And so I want to know
a few other ways to do image verifications, specifically on
Kyle that that I didn't do, but other people did
after after I after I said, hey, this is part

(40:17):
of the guy. So afterwards people found other kind of
evidence on Kyle's TikTok um and snapchat. So it turns
out Kyle was snapchatting his night in Wisconsin, um, which
we would find out later, So he was that he
was snapchatting from kenosha Um and Garrison. First off, I
do feel as the representative of zoomers in in this call.

(40:41):
Why are you Why are you guys all using the snapchats? Huh?
I don't use I don't use the snapchats. Um. Well,
I'm making you answer for the crimes of your generation,
the crimes like the snap Now. Well, technically speaking, I
have one friend who I only talked to you through snapchat,
and we both only use it for that and we
don't know why we use Snapchat. Yeah, there's a few

(41:02):
people who are like Snapchat, people who only text or snapchat,
and I don't. I don't get it. Yeah, except neither
of us are like that. We just specifically I just
got a signal anyway, So yeah, Snapchat. There's also uh
TikTok Um. There was a footage of of Kyle attending
a Trump rally at TikTok also him like assembling and

(41:23):
testing out his gun was on a Snapchat. I believe
eclips that it were also shared on TikTok so I
could have got a lot more closer details of the
gun if if I looked on if if on Snapchat
or our TikTok Um, and I think, if this is
this is a good advice that I've taken since then,
and for other people looking to do this stuff. If
if a suspect looks as young, um, you know, Snapchat

(41:46):
and TikTok might be or and and Instagram might be
apps that are worth are worth checking out for information
as opposed to like Facebook. Right, lucky, lucky enough, there
was enough stuff on Facebook on this instance, typically probably
because no, Kyle's family was come servative so and he
was conservative, so higher chance of being on Facebook there.
But you know, in general, if someone's younger and maybe

(42:06):
look on younger apps. Um but yeah, UM, so you know,
good thing to think about. You know, whenever these like
chaotic panics moments happen, you know, missifferation can spread very
very quickly. UM. Cannot stress enough how dangerous and irresponsible
it is when a suspect is named without proper verification. UM.

(42:26):
You know. Uh, last last September, uh Ean Miles Chung
falsely identified a suspect in the shooting of two l
A police officers. Of this resulted in the falsely accused
got a man and receiving many death threats online. I
think emails Chonging did this like again a few months later.
He he was doing this a lot last year he
was doing it. He was really bad about trying to

(42:48):
identify people. Um. But you know, doing solid solidarification work
is possible, but extreme caution needs to be taken. UM.
I need to be very mindful of the consequences of
your actions when when you're doing this work. Yeah, I
want to put out Garrison is very good at this
that that's why it took two hours and a half hours.
It's going to take it takes a lot longer. Yeah,
Like honestly, like I was like it. Finding Kyle was

(43:10):
just the right mix of things in one moment. Often
it doesn't. Often it doesn't go that fast, and it
doesn't need to be right like A big big of
the problem is that if people think about it needing
to be like a fast paced thing, that's where that
that's where the mistakes happen. I was just lucky to
have enough like dominoes follow in the right place too.
I identify how the night of having having his neighbor say, hey,

(43:31):
this guy looks similar to my neighbor, extremely useful in
in in in the long run, right like that that
happened faster than that happens in a lot of cases,
So that really accelerated things. Sometimes it will be easy
sometimes like a good example of when it's harder. We
have a decent amount of footage about the individual who
placed bombs outside of the Capital Bomber before the sixth

(43:52):
um That person has not been identified and the FBI
seems to have no goddamn clue. But also what they
were way more intentional. They were very smart whoever they are,
they're very capable. They were the only thing on them
is their shoes. Basically those are those are kind of
the polls of this right on one. Like that with
with Rittenhouse, you've got this situation where it's like all

(44:13):
of the information you need to identify them is there
openly online. UM. And part of ops sex if you're
doing things that are crimes UM is to make sure
that is to limit that that that whatever it is
you are going to to the to the crimes in UM.
There nothing exists on the internet that connects that to
your name and face, and that that doesn't That doesn't

(44:35):
always mean black block, that can mean other clothing, especially
if you've been photographed in black block of books. I
think like if you look at if you look at um,
the guy who dropped off bombs at January six, he's
not wearing black block because black block draws attention. He's
wearing like grays. He's he's wearing like that guy that well,
that individual person is either a former FED or former

(44:59):
special for they were very capable, leaning towards FED, who
showed up in clothing they had never weren't worn before
and paid for used in cash, probably from a variety
of places. UM. That clothing was burned as soon as
they got away. They were out of the state as
early as it was possible to do so, plant them

(45:19):
and then immediately get out like um. And you know,
by the time the capitol, right by the time their
bombs had been found, they were they were if they
were smartly gone, you know, like that's how anyway whatever,
like like oftentimes they can be if someone knows what
they're doing, this this process could be a lot harder,
like in the case of the people of of the

(45:39):
guy who left the bombs at the capitol. Um. You know, Kyle,
it was not you know, wasn't wearing much identified clothing,
wasn't even wearing a mask because COVID was for cox um.
So you know, there's a lot of these things that
that made this process, um, you know, easier than a
lot of a lot of other verifications. But like I said,
there still was a lot of false ideas going round

(46:00):
that night. Um kind of still happens. I'm kind of
on the fence myself as to whether or not it
would have been safer like for our country or the
society or whatever you want to call it. If um,
like how much more damnage or less damage would have
been done if Kyle Rittenhouse had been someone who showed
up in impeccable like clothing that he could not be

(46:22):
identified from, fucking ran off and was never caught, and
we just knew there was the shooting of protesters in
Kenosha um by somebody. UM, Like, I don't know how
much better or worse that is for society if that happens.
I don't know. I'm thinking about terrible things. But sorry,
first off, I want to apologize. Sometimes talking about this

(46:42):
stuff winds up seeming like advice for how to commit crimes.
That's not the intent. It's just when you talk about
what makes something difficult to identify, your kind of by
default talking about like here's how to here's how to
get commit a crime and get away with it, um.
And it's the kind of thing like if you're doing
verification work, one of the things that helps is to
kind of put yourself in the mindset of somebody who, Okay,

(47:04):
if I'm in this situation and I do this, um,
what are the decisions that I might make afterwards? Um?
And you can kind of try to uh think through
this person like it can be helpful, especially if you're
trying to like track someone through a day. So you know,
someone was at this point at a protest at x
hour because they shot somebody. Um, you know, think through. Okay,

(47:25):
what else happened that day? Where there other protests? Where
there other gatherings like or is this one in a
series of events? Can I go look for you know,
videos from other things in the area that this person
might have also been at and might have warned the
same clothing. Um, there's anyway. Image verification is fun, catch
the fever. It is. It is a fun thing to do.

(47:45):
It's good to if if if you're not able to
attend in person demos for like like physical reasons or whatever,
or like mental reasons, doing the stuff from home is
is another way of getting involved, especially already not tracking
down bad people after the after they do bad things. Yeah,
so you can, you know, if you want to learn
more about this with you know, the benefit of also

(48:09):
visual aids um belling cat has if you just type
image verification belling cat. There's beginners and advanced guides to verification. Um,
there's talk about like manual reverse image search tools and
like how well they work. There's quizzes, So go go
there if you if you find this interesting, um, it

(48:30):
can be quite a hoot. UM. But you know what
else is quite a hoot ending a goddamn podcast, which
I'm doing. Now we're done, goodbye. I call the Union
Hall as his male life and death. I think these

(48:51):
people of planning to kill Dr King. On April four,
Dr Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis.
A petty criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. He
pled guilty to the crime and spent the rest of
his life in prison. Case closed right, James L. Ray
was a pond for the official story the authorities would

(49:14):
parade at all We found a gun the James L.
Ray bought in Birmingham that killed Dr King, Except it
wasn't the gun that killed Dr King. One of the
problems that came out when I got the Ray case
was that some of the evidence, as far as I
was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This is the

(49:35):
MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Hay Lee, the listeners take here. Last
season on Lethal Lit, you might remember I came to
Hollow Falls on a mission clearing my aunt best name

(49:55):
and making sure justice was finally served. But I hadn't
counted on a rash of new murders tearing apart the town.
My mission put myself and my friends in danger, though
it wasn't all bad. I'm going to be real. If
you tig I like you. But now all signs point

(50:15):
to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls. If this
game is just starting, you better believe I'm gonna win.
I'm tig Torres and this is Lethal Lit. Catch up
on season one of the hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit,
a tig Torre's mystery out now, and then tune in
for all new thrills in season two, dropping weekly starting

(50:37):
February nine. Subscribe now to never miss an episode. Listen
to Leave the Lit on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm
Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're the hosts
of the science podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind, where
every week we get to explore some of the weirdest
questions in the universe, like if sci fi teleportation was possible,

(50:59):
how would it square with the multitudes of organisms that
inhabit our human bodies. Can we find evidence of emotions
in animals like bees, ants, and crayfish? How would it
interplanetary civilization function? Just free will exist. Stuff to Blow
Your Mind examines neurological quandaries, cosmic mysteries, evolutionary marvels, and

(51:19):
the wonders of techno history. Basically, this show is the
altar where we worship the weirdness of reality. If anybody
ever told you you ask the weirdest questions, it is
time to come join us in the place where you belong.
The Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast New episodes publish
every Tuesday and Thursday, with bonus episodes on Saturdays. Listen

(51:39):
to Stuff to Blow Your Mind on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to America. That's not great here podcast is here

(52:00):
a podcast? Welcome it is. If you're an international listener
and you're not American, that was really get the fuck
off of our podcast. Just like left people all like,
are you going to do one for every other country?
I think they're being rude for barging in the Internet
is clearly American soil. I would pay good money for
a wacko things. But with Robert saying all the all

(52:21):
the countries of the world, well, you know what you
need to do in order to be able to pay
good money for something, Garrison. You need to you need to.
You need to get money by by working well to
be born rich. But if you're not born rich, you
have to work. And a lot of people are saying
what if we did, what if we didn't? And now

(52:44):
they have a subreddit and that's what we're talking about
today anti work. Uh, not just the subreddit, but that's
why we're talking about it today, because the anti work
subreddit has grown hugely um and it's got like a
milli it's or it's it's like doubled. It's been around
for years. It's more than bold, it's it's almost it's almost. Yeah,
it's it's it's great. Well, well I'll I'll have the

(53:05):
numbers for later. Yeah, yeah, okay, great. Um, So, Garrison,
why don't you kick us off now that I've let
everyone know what to expect, will stop working um in
solidarity with the anti work movement. Thanks Robert, Um, You're welcome.
So yeah, if the past few months, if you're anything
like us, um and and if you're online in the
same ways that we are, you've you've probably seen like

(53:26):
a flurry of posts and screenshots depicting text conversations between
like an employee and their boss. Typically, the boss like
asks them to come in when they said they were
going to have to be have to have having to
have time off or something. The employee objects, the boston
gets mad and makes threats and demands the employee be
a better team player or some bullshit like that, um

(53:48):
and and then like the employee said something like, well,
you know what, actually I quit, good luck filling the
shift now buy and then the boss like pleads that
the now former employee comes back and offers like concessions
and end of screenshots. So pretty soon this type of
like screenshotted text conversation became like a meme format with
with people joking and obviously like staging fake ones as well.

(54:11):
Uh you know, similar to the scene I just described
but but but by all accounts, this trend started incredibly
like sincerely with with genuine text conversations showcasing like worker
abuse um and and uh, you know, bosses being unreasonable
and cruel um and some people putting their jobs just
to stand up for themselves. And um, all the stuff

(54:31):
is kind of tied up in the worker shortage kind
of miss the great resignation as a as a lot
of pundits, yes, yeah, people of people resigning. And then
you know a lot of like big companies complaining about
worker shortages. Um. And and central to this like text conversation,
online kind of meme trend thing and and employee resignations

(54:52):
is a sub credit called anti work. So the antiwork
stub breddit has has been a growing place specifically the
past year. UM. Their motto is unemployment for all, not
just for the rich. Uh. It's a it's a good mode.
Good it is. It is a solid it's a solid
botto of their their their own like a description is

(55:14):
uh a subundit for those who want to end work,
are curious about ending work, want to get the most
out of a work free life, want more information on
anti work ideas, and want personal help with their own
jobs slash work related struggles. So back in back in February,
um it only the subwart it's been around, but back
in February it had like two hundred and thirty five

(55:36):
thousand UM subs and now it has over one point
one million um it's grown. Most of that growth has
been in the past two months. Uh. It's in his
kind of kind of exploded in popularity. Um And actually
it got it got so big, and there's so many
posts on it that they have to they have they
have now they have to like restrict text message conversation

(55:57):
screenshots to only being allowed to be post to, like
on one day a week, just because of the intense
influx of of these posts, you know, some of them genuine,
others maybe not so much. Um And And even though
the suburn it may not be the biggest in terms
of like subscribers, um, it's it has more like daily
posts than something like the Wall Street Bets suburb it has,

(56:21):
so even though it doesn't have as many subscribers, the
amount of actual like posting on it is higher than
a lot of other suburates as well. So it is
it is growing in popularity, like in in in multiple ways.
It feels a little bit right now, like the social
media equivalent of at of a sort of damole. It's
like Wall Street Bets made a not insignificant uh splash

(56:45):
earlier this year. It was it was quite a thing
for the national economy for a little while there. UM
and Anti Work hasn't had that moment, but I kind
of feel like it might be getting close to critical mass,
Like something, something might come out of this UM which
I think would be rad For for the record, I
think would be rad absolutely, And you know, it may

(57:05):
not be one big thing, but it could be a
lot of smaller things, right. You know, sometimes it's harder
to see bigger change when you're like having more anarchist
adjacent ideas and and and the and the anti works
that when it does, does try to keep itself being
a radical subred and does trying to fight off neoliberal
sentiments and stuff. And there have been there have been

(57:28):
some complaints I've seen of people being like ah, the
liberals have gotten in and and people are talking about like, well,
I just really want a life that's like I'm not
stressed all the time, and I have enough money for
for bills and stuff. Like people have been talking about
like oh, this job, Like I I left my old
job and I got into a better situation that's good.
And there's complaints about that. And I think it is
important to like push against de radicalizing the subredit. But

(57:51):
I don't think it's bad that you're getting a lot
of liberals in there who are not turned off by
the name anti work UM. And I think that's I
think it's positive that that there, even if they're you know,
they're not coming at it from kind of a revolutionary perspective.
But hey, it's okay to quit my job if if
the conditions your shipped and try to find a place

(58:12):
where I'm treated better. If that's their in road to
this kind of thought, I still think that's pretty pretty awesome. Yeah, absolutely, yeah,
because I mean, it's not realistic for every single person.
Well and actually it is realistic for every single person
to quit their job, but it's it's not realistic for
only a few people to write and sometimes if if not,

(58:33):
if if everyone's not going to do it, like literally everyone,
then he knows, some people can't can't afford to quit
their job UM right now because they have like kids,
defeat or whatever um for themselves or you know, there's
a lot there's a lot of reasons, which I'll kind
of talk a little bit more about later. So and
so the term anti work does does not does not
come from the sub credit um and anti work has

(58:54):
been like a post left term for a while now
and kind of kind of applies to a broad spectrum
of like anarchist adjacent kind of thought around. Hey, if
we're gonna if we're gonna question like capitalism, uh and
the state, we should probably also question just the idea
of work itself and how it functions, and how the

(59:15):
state kind of works only possible with the state, And
it's that specific line line of thinking. UM. A few
examples of like of like you know, seminal anti work
books um is. One of them is Bob Blacks The
Abolition of Work. UM. Crime Think has a really good
book just called work, which is another another one that

(59:37):
gets referenced a lot, even even in the subredit and
also Bullshit Jobs by David Graber, and uh, Bullshit Jobs
was also kind of partially inspired by Bob Blacks The
The Abolition of Work. Um. All of those are are
great resources and uh specifically like Bullshit Jobs is great
and like a like a for a modern outlook on this,
like Bob Black's book was written was written a while ago,

(59:59):
and Buship Jobs is definitely very timely and even even
even Crimes Things Work book also also addresses stuff or
even though it wasn't not written within the past. I
think it is maybe slightly older than than a decade,
but I think that they are updating it with more
information about like the gig economy and stuff like that. Yeah,
and it's it's not as it's characterized and as as

(01:00:22):
anti work is often characterised by critics. It's not saying
like nobody should have to do anything in a way.
It's not Actually we'll talk about Diogenes later, um, but
it's not everyone should just like lay around and do nothing.
It's people shouldn't have to do the thing that we
call work, which is destroy your body or your mind
or both, uh, most of your waking hours, most of

(01:00:45):
your life in the hope that you'll get ten years
as an old person to not do that, like and
and and and a little bit that that that's bad.
That's a bad way to be a person, like a
bad way to have to be And it's not bad
to do that, it's it's bad that you have to
do that. Yeah, Yeah, And I mean and there is
a there is a little bit of it that is
about finding time to chill out, which which it was

(01:01:06):
just gonna apply a lot of you know, a lot
of the ways if you have to keep a job,
you know, the different ways you can you can go
about that job that does that makes it so it
doesn't like kill you. One of my favorite ways to
think about anti work is just like anti capitalism put
into actual practice. So it's sort of you know, just
debating online about anti capitalism as some you know, future
things like no, like what can you do to actually

(01:01:27):
you know, make capitalism less important part of how you
live your life every day, which means you know, not
obsessing over careers and all these kind of other things.
So I think I think, first of all, it might
be useful to kind of think about, like what do
we actually mean by work? Because works kind of a
works like a it's it has a lot of definitions,
depend depending on what's like you depend depending on like

(01:01:47):
what you mean by it? Right? Is it just like
wage labor? Is it just forced labor? Um? You know,
is cooking for yourself or your family considered work? But
not always? But you know, like at times when I
when when I where I'm like relaxed, I quite enjoy
cooking for friends and family. But but certainly, but certainly
it can feel like work sometimes, especially if you especially
if you just got home from like a work shift,

(01:02:09):
so in a way like work creates more work. Um,
And it's it's not it's it's it kind of it doesn't.
It isn't just it isn't just about like wage labor
or something. It can kind of apply to a lot
of ways about how you live your life. You know,
there's a lot of looking laying down wood chips or sad.
If that's like your job, every day can be like

(01:02:29):
a miserable, backbreaking process. If you actually have a huge
yard or like own a little bit of land and
you're making your own garden, that can be an intensely
like the best part of your week. It can be
a great Yeah. Yeah, it's it's not. The problem is
not the individual tasks necessarily, it's what work is as
a as a a platonic kind of concept in our society. Yeah.

(01:02:53):
Not And and again one of the things, and I
think this is one of the things speaking of you
talked about David Graber earlier, who's an anarchist anthropologist and
widely seen to be like one of the most brilliant
anthropologists of his generation. He did he recently deceased, but
a book that he wrote before he died with another
and another fellow came out recently called The Dawn of

(01:03:13):
Everything that talks a lot about how, yeah, these ideas,
that kind of capitalism has a vested interest in you
believing that the world was always hard in the way
that it's hard, by which I mean like, in order
to get basic necessities, you have to make somebody else
rich um or find some grift of your own. And

(01:03:35):
as opposed to like, yeah, life is always hard, but
life wasn't didn't always involve labor the way we think
about it. Labor has not been a constant in human civilization.
In fact, most of human civilization people have not done
a thing that we would recognize as labor. And I
think also even if you go towards things that like
look more like labor to us, right, like I don't know,

(01:03:55):
like look look like if you look at like feudal levies, right,
you're a peasant, you have to get some amount of
graintier lord. But like, okay, we work way longer than
medieval peasist did. And not only do we work longer,
is something Greater and David talk about in that book
is like yeah, like, not only do we work much longer,
Like the amount that we work would have been considered absolutely,
Like even even a feudal lord would look at that

(01:04:18):
much work and go no, like this is this is
this is like and you know, and I think there's
there's another great hasn't. As another point, um, he wrote
a piece called Turning Modes of Production inside Out where
he has this argument that like, okay, so if if
you take you know, if you take like Plato, right,
you're like, you take any of the Greek philosophers, even
the conservative ones, and you show them this the thing,

(01:04:43):
the thing that we do every day. Right, you're you know,
you have you're you're completely under the command of another
person for like at least a third, probably more of
your day. Yeah, I monitor you and Garrison's bathroom breaks.
I look at your texts with family and friends. Um,
it's it's really the situation. Yeah, it's an incredibly strict
surveillance state. From Robert Evans. Yeah, yeah, this is like like,

(01:05:06):
you know, if you show a Greek person that this
is like this is the apocalypse to them, this is
this is the worst thing that could possibly happen. It's
every single person in society has like essentially been reduced
to a slave, and you know that's bad and it
doesn't have to be like it's not that they've been
because I want to push back on that terminology because

(01:05:28):
it can go to some uncomfortable places. It's not that
they are treated as a slave. It's that in the
hours in which they are expected to labor, there's a
societal expectation that they act as the property of whoever
owns the business or manages them. Right. The idea of
like if it if it like that attitude from like
like working in a kitchen or or working at a

(01:05:50):
fast food restaurant, like if you lean, if you're if
you can lean, you can clean. Like that attitude is
saying you do not have any autonomy when you are
at work. You are the pretty of the of the
employer while you are at work. Um, I think, yeah,
and I think and I think you know, but I
think that's a specific thing with Greece is that, like,
you know, you the only way you could do that
to someone in Greece is if you owned them. Yeah,

(01:06:12):
Like you know, I'm like the grease has wage labor, right,
but the only people who like it has wage labor,
but it has wage labor for slaves. And that's like
it right, like this, you know, and this is this
isn't like obviously not to say that, like you know,
we're like having a job is the same thing as slavery,
But it's just to say that, like the kinds of
things that we think of as normal, like are things

(01:06:33):
that like the people who you know that the people
who run the system and the people who you know
get cited all the time to justify stuff would have
looked at as like the worst thing that could possibly
have happened to a society. Yeah, sure, Like daily life
for a very substantial chunk of of the American workforce
is that would be a nightmare to large percentages of

(01:06:56):
the human population prior to the modern period. It like
it's it's and and if you think about it that way,
Like one of the things Greab does a good job
of going into UM is like the way in which
uh and this is also something that comes up in
in in Tribe by Younger, the way in which, like,

(01:07:17):
during the early period of colonization of North America, UM,
it was very common for you know, Europeans to leave
the cities and in towns being established behind um and
and join up with indigen the tribes. The reverse never happened,
like like, not willingly, not without kidnapping being a part

(01:07:38):
of it. Um And it's because like their attitude was,
they were looking at the lives these people were living
in these cities and like, well, why would you agree
to do that? And um, this is turning anyway, Garrison.
You should you should take us back on the rails.
This is getting more. But first, you know what has
nothing to do with the fact that human beings are

(01:08:02):
forced to labor for basic necessities in order to keep
up a system that steals the freedom of the many
in order to provide impossible liberty to the few. You
know what isn't related to that, the advertise industrial complex
not has nothing to do with it, totally unrelated. Why
would you say that, Garrison? By the way, did you

(01:08:23):
know that McDonald's EEG muffin is turning fifty years old
and it's giving the breakfast they're they're they're they're selling
it for its original price of sixty three cents during
breakfast hour six a m. To ten thirty am, exclusively
on the McDonald's app. I can't. I can't do you guys?
Do you guys want to mcmuffins for sixty three cents?
That's the original price. I wonder what else the McDonald's

(01:08:44):
app is looking at on my phone. Anyway, here's some mats.
Oh we're back and we're talking about anti work. We're
talking about how works kind of bullshit for our jobs.
Um yeah, yeah, sure are we sure are? So you know,
like there is there there's a lot of people who

(01:09:06):
like enjoy stuff like gardening, fishing, carpentry, cooking, and even
like you know, just fighting this fighting computer programming just
for their own sake. Like a lot of the stuff
that we like, quote unquote needs to need for uh
society to function, A lot lot of those things people
like doing as hobbies in their spirits. For for example,
if you're a police officer, gunning down a man in

(01:09:26):
cold blood might be kind of like your day job
and like frustrating, and there's a lot of ship you
have to deal with. If you're a mash shooter, though,
you just love it. You know, you're just doing It's
that is that is exactly what the cow writtenhouse thing
is though like like like like like actually like literally
that that that is what it is. This is we

(01:09:47):
I mean, we're not going to get the verdict today.
It doesn't look like not today, which is a bad sign.
But by the time this airs, it may already be done. Um.
But anyway, like a lot a lot of people like
doing those things without getting paid. And sometimes you know,
often like cast sing themselves money, right, A lot of
these hobbies are you know, are costly in their own
in their own right, um. And I think it's interesting

(01:10:07):
to you know, think, think of a society where you're
where you're free to do those things when you feel
like it, and you don't need to drag yourself out
of bed at you know, early in the morning to work,
to work a ten hour shift as a cash register.
And it's not just even when you feel like it,
because there will be things that you have to do,
even if I will discuss this letter to get yeah, yeah, yeah,
in any like yeah, but it's not it's it's not

(01:10:28):
work if you're if you're going out and harvesting food
that feeds you in your community, that's not like work
in the sense that we talk about modern work. The
amount of extra energy we have by not having ten
hour horrible shifts that drain ourselves mentally and physically and
more in with you know, the amount of most of
the work that we people do, as shown in David

(01:10:49):
Graper's bull bullshit Jobs, is like not necessary, like a
lot of like a lot of the work that we
do as a whole is not There's there's some squibbling
about because the book was based off of a study,
like a survey that kind of showed a lot of
very significant chunk of the workforce thinks their job is
like pointless and doesn't do anything. And there's been some
criticisms of that, but it is undoubted that a very

(01:11:11):
significant amount of total labor time spent is stuff that
isn't necessary for really like reason of like making people's
lives better. And another part of like anti work theories
is looking is looking at our society as it's built,
you know, because it is it is hid to anarchism,
and be like how much of this is actually necessary?
Like how do we do we really need a mac rib?

(01:11:33):
Like do we do we do? What do you what
do you Garrison? We do not? Well, hr need a macrib?
We do not. I did the company training and they
the company training says you can't attack someone for their religion,

(01:11:53):
and Garrison just attacked the McRib So that actually is
you know, it is a religion for a lot of people.
Did you see that there there they they they did
sell a MicroB n ft a few weeks ago. Um
and tell me that ship that is so upsetting thank god. Yeah, yeah,
just saying society with no money would not so gosh.

(01:12:19):
But you know, think thinking of like anti work as
as the theory. You know, it's about cutting down those
those unnecessary things that fill people's time. Um. And you
know and for a more you know, forward forward looking sense.
It's it's a general kind of like like abolition of
the producer and consumer based society um. So you know,
life is not dedicated to the production and consumption of

(01:12:41):
goods and commodities. So you know this this applies not
not just a capitalism, but also to you know, like
state socialism um, where you know, work is still you
know a big part of state socialism UM. And I
think you know it's humans. It's it's it posits the
future that humans can be way way way more free
when you know, can reclaim their time from jobs and employment, um,

(01:13:03):
instead of you know, spending a lot of their time
doing that than spending spending a lot of like not
not just time, but also just like their energy. Right
because even if you work, you know, eight hours a day,
you still have a majority of the day to yourself.
But you're exhausted. You can't do man, you can't do
much right. It's it drains you of everything. So, you know,
the main point one of the main points of like

(01:13:23):
of the abolition of work, I say by Bob Black
is but like there's no one should work because because
work is as defined as like as like as like
a forced labor practice. Um is. You can kind of
track this to being the source of most of the
mystery in the world from you know, in in individual people, um,

(01:13:43):
who are forced to do this Like this is where
a lot of a lot of their pain comes from.
Um is this idea is this is this forced labor concept?
Um I think I think a good a good way
you know, there is you know, the point that Robert
brought up earlier is like, you know, what about the
tasks that aren't fun? You know, what about what about
the stuff that isn't isn't maybe as as enjoyable. Um,

(01:14:06):
you know, there's, there's there's there's a list of list
of things that the standard who's going to clean up
the poop? That's that's the thing. So you know, I
I kind of I I kind of I kind of
look at this as like the I kind of kind
of look at this as like, whenever I have to
like turn the compost, which is not my favorite thing
to do. I I don't look forward to having to

(01:14:27):
turn over our massive, shitty, rotting compost pile. Not not
my favorite thing. Um. But no, but now like if
there's if if there's like friends around and we're playing
music and we're all we have like some like have
I have have like an iced tea or a dr pepper,

(01:14:48):
and we're like talking as we're turning the compost, it's
a lot more doable, you know. It's there's there's it's
it's it's one task that's going to help all of
us in the future. Um and I'm not getting watched
over by a boss to fill a certain quote so
I can pay my rent. Right. It's it's this. It's this,
it's this thing that helps everybody and I and I

(01:15:09):
do it because I want I want the goal of
it to succeed. So there's there's there's gonna there's always
gonna be tasks that are less pleasant than others. You know,
what we can do is, you know, imagine a world
where the amount of work actually needed to be done
is greatly reduced so that the tasks that are necessary
and some of them unpleasant, can be spread out, um

(01:15:29):
and among more people, because less people will be wasting
upwards of eight hours a day, five days a week
doing mostly pointless time filling work. Because yeah, there's there's
there's gonna be things that sucked, and we'll be able
to do those a lot better if there's more people
and we don't have to waste our times doing stuff
that is is honestly a lot more bullshit than actually

(01:15:51):
scooping bullshit. Wow, what a good joke. Speaking, it's it's
time to scoop up some more ads. Wait, really, haven't
we done too? No, we only only did one. All right,
we went a while without doing one. Guys, listen to

(01:16:12):
the products because everyone loves a service. It's not like
the thing we're talking about is bad. It's different than that.
So it's fine. Yep, we're back, and we're still still
talking about anti work, Um, I do. This is something
that the Crime Think workbook points out, and you know,
it's a pretty it's pretty obvious thing I've I've certainly
thought of this before, is that you know, we've been

(01:16:34):
told that the like technological progress will soon liberate humanity
from the need to do work or from you know,
having to do work as much um. And today we
have the capabilities that you know, our ancestors couldn't have
even imagined for free, the amount of work that we
could get done. Um. But these predictions still like aren't true.
We're still working more than ever. Even though we have
developed so much um technologically, we're still working more than ever.

(01:16:57):
And if I think it's silly to think that well,
well will reach like a magic threshold where somehow now
we have less work to do because we'll have like
I don't like robots being a server Adam Adam McDonald's
or whatever. Right where there's still there, there's still is
forcing people into this thing because this is the only
way that we can live. Right. This is we've we've
built our whole society around getting work for money. So

(01:17:20):
this is the only the only thing that we can do. Yeah,
David creeper. One of the things he's argues in Bullshit
Jobs is that basically, you know, okay, so so if
if you have like you have the Soviet economy, right, okay,
so the Soviet economy has has a policy of of
full employment. And for a little bit they were like, okay,
what if we make everyone work less? And then they

(01:17:41):
stopped and then like everything went to ship. So you know, okay,
but if if if you can't make people work less
hours and everyone has to work, what do you do?
It was like, okay, well you pay a bunch of
people to like stand at a doorway. Right now, we
also do this And then one of the gres like
the funniest points that he brings up is that the
the total number of bureaucrats in the x USS are

(01:18:02):
like increased dramatically after the sr fell, which is incredible.
And you know what what Ap points to is that, like, yeah,
you know, Grebar called this total bureaucratization, which is that
you know what, what we did, instead of like giving
ourselves more free time, is created this just like endless, enormous,
incredibly violent bureaucracy that all of us have to spend
all of our time, like dealing with bullshit from our

(01:18:25):
insurance companies and like fighting with like the Comcast service
person and all of this just like you know, incredibly
violent to humanizing stuff that you know, it's it's it's
a make work program, right, it's but it's a make
work program that just the work that it makes everyone
is making everyone's lives miserable. And we could just not

(01:18:48):
do this. Mh yeah, I mean we could. It's always
more complicated than that, right, because the thing that is
when we talk about anti work, I think that's the
other side of this is like Okay, well, what if
you get a kid, how are you going to feed
that kid? Like what if? Like yeah, how are you
going to keep him in a house? Like how this
is not even just if you have a kid, but like, yeah,

(01:19:10):
you people die in our society when they do not
have access to adequate resources. And the only way to
have access to adequate resources is to be born rich
or to work. Those are your options. Yeah, that is
why without without robust mutual aid and the commitment by
a lot of people to try to make sure that
a lifestyle is sustainable outside of you know, this system,

(01:19:30):
Like it's not impossible, but it's somewhere along the line
there has to be input. I mean, yeah, like we've
been talking about Yeah, we've been talking about antiwork as
like as kind of like a broad hopeful like future
goal in some other you know, post scarcity. Well not
not post scarcity, but like it's post like a post crumbling,
post kind of collapse future. But I think you know,

(01:19:52):
for us now, as you know, the antiworks is about
people now, right, the antiworks it is not about a
future world. I think the anti work now is like
an alternative to the obsession with living your life with
the goal of a career. Yes, it's about true, you know,
it's it's like a project to radically reframe the how
we think of work and leisure. Um, it's like like

(01:20:15):
like like a cognitive antidote to like the like this
culture of like hustle and hard work, which is like
taken over our minds and and and our time. So
it's like for for those who can't just resign from
their job for whatever reason, whatever moment, the anti work
is about like thinking of this movement as like the
antithesis to the mainstream capitalist hustle culture. You know that

(01:20:37):
that includes like slacking off more finding ways to waste time,
possibly even finding ways to steal or scam your boss.
I I've I've read certain certain alleged ways of doing
this inside the Anti Work for Days where they got
it from. But yeah no, but like you no, like
there is you know, like ways to like scam scam

(01:20:58):
whatever corporation you work for. Right that that there's has
been examples shared in the anti right in the anti works.
So you know, it's about actually like finding, you know,
making sure that you hate your work because you should,
and then figuring out how to live your life with
that in mind. And I think, what, what are the
really hard parts about this? Is for people who like
kind of like their job, people people who are like
you think who like either like their job or think

(01:21:19):
it's like kind of important or like they're special to
have it, right, it's like, oh, you're like, I'm lucky
to have such a good job, because like, when you're
stuck in that mindset, you can often put in like
a lot of extra unpaid labor because you think it's
important because you're like, oh, no, this is worth doing
because it's gonna have some like benefits to the world.
So you end up like putting in actually more work
that you don't actually get paid for, and like it's

(01:21:40):
about trying to like kill that instinct as well. So
that's a whole, a whole way to think about like working,
because like we're gonna be stuck, A lot of people
are gonna be stuck doing it for for for a while.
So how can you kind of reframe what we do
on the job and how kind of jobs live in
our minds when we are at home. And I think
the best thing about what you've said, in my opinion,

(01:22:01):
is the idea that like this is not the importance
is not on whether or not this this causes everyone
to stop having to work immediately, like whether or not
it leads to you know, directly to like the measure
of success of this movement isn't that nobody ever has
to work again. That's a that's a long term goal.
The measure of the success of this movement is that

(01:22:22):
people accept in mass that no, the American dream as
it's sold to people is not a good thing too.
It's not a thing. To aspire to work is bullshit,
and we should aspire to a society that doesn't do it.
It's getting back honestly, Like it's getting back to some
of the ship that people were talking about in like
when The Jetsons was on TV, the idea that like, well,
with labor saving devices, the like a hard work week

(01:22:45):
will be four hours and like that's the way life
will be for everybody, and like, um, and the it's
the acceptance that like, no, a better future involves me
not having it. Mouls no one having to spend forty
hours a week of their limited human life working at
a fucking sonic or like listening to some middle manager
brate them for not answering phones fast enough. Um, that

(01:23:07):
doesn't exist for any human being in a world that
is achievable and better than the one that we live in.
Like convincing people of that and getting that to be
widely accepted is I think? What I think? What is
what I would consider the terms of victory in in
this particular struggle. Yeah, kind of moving on from this
side of things into like the Great Resignation and the

(01:23:28):
other kind of things that people are doing so um.
In August alone, four point three million Americans voluntarily left
their jobs um, and the rate of people quitting increased
to a a decent A decent record high of like
a two point nine percent according to the Bureau of
Labor and Statistics. So and this this, this, this has

(01:23:50):
been a growing trend. You can look at like I
think June was like a like a little under four million.
August was four point three. It's like it was you know,
it's it's ramping. I don't know what if. I don't
know if we have data for September or October. Yet
this was the most recent one I could find. Um, So, yeah,
like it's stuff. Stuff is, stuff is going up. People
are because because people are like a big part of

(01:24:11):
the antiborks. It's like, yeah, if your job sucks, you
can quit it and probably find another one that pays
better in decent time, especially especially especially right now, like
right now, if your job is really terrible, you have
a decent chance of finding a better one. Um. This
wasn't the case like two years ago. Um it is
the case that at this moment, so a lot of
the antiporksbre and it's like, yeah, quit your job, like

(01:24:32):
say fuck you to your boss and leave because if
they're being shitty then they don't deserve to have you. Um.
So resigning has it has been been a big part
of this, and there has there has been attempts at
other kind of organized stuff, and this kind of falls
into In my opinion, this kind of falls into the
same kind of traps as sole internet organizing kind of

(01:24:53):
always does. So the big thing that they're organizing for
is called Black Friday Blackout, which is about kind of
trying to get everyone to as many people as possible
to not work Black Friday, um and not buy anything
on Black Friday. UM. So, like a post from the
suburb of here is like spread the word call in sick.
If you're forced to work black on Black Friday, spend

(01:25:14):
time with your family instead, remain at home and participate
in your favorite activity on Friday November. Talk to your
family and friends about about your work life struggles. Pass
up flyers, join our slash anti work UM. So this
is you know, I think this kind of falls into
this seem like you know, general strike organized online stuff
that we talked about before, how kind of like a
lack of like real like in person solidarity and like

(01:25:35):
non internet you know, networking and organizing results and stuff
like this just you know, like proposed like one day
strikes or actions that are ultimately kind of non effectual, right,
Like they can be like a good symbol sometimes, but
like you know, they're not. It's it's it's not, it's
not really gonna matter that much, even even if it works. Well,
what I think it'd be cool if literally no store
was open on Black Friday because everyone quit. Yeah, that

(01:25:57):
would be rad. But that's that's not I don't that's
not gonna really happen. Um. It would be fun if
it did, but like, realistically, it's it's not, it's not
gonna happen. And there is people on the subred who
also point this out there there there there was there
was a reply to this post that was like, oh,
look another online call for a general strike with no
union support whatsoever. Don't worry y'all. This one's this one
is definitely gonna work. Um. So it's like, yeah, like

(01:26:19):
there's a lot of people in the sub also recognize that,
like without like actual like organizing support um and in
person stuff and you know networks to support people on
like you know, lengthy strikes. These types of things are
kind of are mostly symbolic actions that will have, you know,
in the end, little little impact. Um. They may make

(01:26:41):
you feel powerful as you're doing them, which is you know,
which is good. That is a lot of activism is
actually just just about you feeling powerful in that moment um.
But you know, as as an end goals, remember it's
important to be remember to think like it's not it's
that this isn't you know, this isn't gonna reach whatever
anti work utopia, which I I know people people organizing

(01:27:01):
it aren't thinking that, but you know, it's it's it's
important to keep this within context of like the limits
of even of of online organizing. You know, so a
lot a lot of people like recommend you know, focusing
on organizing your own workplace and community, um, discussing you know,
discussing having discussions with with unions kind of in in
your area. Um and yeah, a part of part of,

(01:27:24):
part of kind of the part of the reply to
to this original like a Black Friday blackout post that
that someone that someone wrote was was seriously though, I
would love for an actual general strike to kick off,
but these online calls for general strikes with no union involvement,
no demands, no supports for strikers of any kind, no
nothing whatsoever beyond social media hashtags don't do anything focus

(01:27:46):
on organizing or workplace any community discussed with unions which
might be sympathetic to what criteria, uh, what criteria they
might need from such a drastic action. There's a lot
of unions on strike right now, so if there ever
was the time to kick one off, it's now. Most
general strikes in the past and started off with specific
strikes that started pulling in other union the Neians and
solidarity than anything else. Focus on that and we might

(01:28:07):
get somewhere. I think it is it's a decent is
a decent advice for the people who are really dedicated
onto this kind of like general strike thing is Yeah,
that is that is that is um pretty pretty good
advice in in my opinion, I want to see something
kind of briefly just in general about general strikes because
I think we've talked about it a lot on here,

(01:28:28):
but they're really really hard. I mean there there, there's
there's an example, like and like just to just to
get a picture of like how how actually hard it
is to pull off. There was there was one in
Sudan in in summer nineteen and you know, I mean
this is this is in the middle of the revolution, right,
the like Sudan is incredibly highly organized, as incredibly built,

(01:28:48):
and people have been like you know, I mean, people
like the like the chance in the street is like,
you cannot kill us, were already dead, like you know
they and you know, and and it's the whole revolution
is being led by the Student Professional Association, which is
an association of like seventeen trade unions. Right, so this
this is a population that is enormously better organized than

(01:29:11):
like anything really that exists in the US. And you know,
in in the middle of the summer of the army
opens fire and starts killing protesters, and so they call
general strike, and you know, the turnout is massive, right,
they have millions, millions upon millions of people show up
to the strike, and on day one it's successful. And
then on day two of the strike, people start having
to pull out, especially people in the in formal sector,

(01:29:32):
because even with the level of organization they have, they
can't support everyone. And by about day three, most of
the strike is collapsed because even even with levels of
organization they had, even with you know, the coordination, even
with the fact that they're in the middle of the revolution,
they just they couldn't support particularly people in the informal sector.
So this stuff is really really really hard, and yeah,

(01:29:55):
it is even it is definitely hard. Yeah, Like even
even highly organized, highly motivated people who are you know,
like literally willing to fight to the death will lose.
And that's that's something that you have to sort of
keep in minds, I think when you're talking about this,
because a lot of people are more focused on the
kind of their individual resignations, finding other ways of making money,

(01:30:16):
and just slacking off at work in general, because those
are a lot a lot easier than trying to organize
a general a mass general strike right now. And I
think one of the really optimistic things about this whole
anti work thing, including including the subreun is that it
has made some big executives kind of nervous. Um. There
was a fantastic article by Yahoo Finance. Now by fantastic,

(01:30:36):
I mean funny for me. You know, they did not
think it was as funny um about They talked with
like the Golden Sacks CEO of and uh and they
pointed to the anti work separated of being what was
the what was the phrase, um, A long run risk

(01:30:57):
to to labor force participation good. This is see that
that when I first read that in the article, I
just like flashed to my head in my head to
that scene from Starship Troopers where Neil Patrick Harris puts
his hand on the brain bug, it goes, it's afraid,
It's afraid. Yeah, yeah, he said, Uh, we see some

(01:31:21):
risk that workers were elected will elect to maintain out
of the workforce for longer, provided they can afford to
do so. Of pretty pretty good stuff and and and
everything that's worth mentioning that hasn't been talked about very
much is that So this is actually kind of working
in some sense, Like the last few months general, last
few months particular have seen basically like the highest levels

(01:31:44):
of wage increases that we've seen in decades. So you know, like, yeah,
we haven't overthrown capitalism yet, but like if you can
keep quitting your job, keep quitting your job at at
your regular job, work less, keep doing it, it's working. Yeah,
this is stuff wish we need to in the future.
I would like us to be focusing more on stuff

(01:32:05):
like that like this. That is legitimately, as you point out, Chris,
there's a lot of reasons to be very optimistic about
about some of the numbers that we're getting from what
is happening to labor right now? UM, and it is
important as we all like right now we're all miserable
because we're sweating through the rittenhouse case, it is important
to talk about stuff like that that like, yeah, some

(01:32:25):
ship people is doing is hitting a home. Some motherfucker's
have found the glowy vulnerable spot on the Boss Monster
and it's it's yeah, it's just not working. Yeah. Like again,
as we started the series with, like yeah, General Strike
is is kind of the best available solution um or
a path to a solution that I can find. Um

(01:32:49):
But anyway, uh what what what what? What? What else?
I think that that does it for us today? I
know special special like sequel stuff happening. Uh so tune
in tomorrow for our list work in China, and like
like all of the best sequels, this one will be

(01:33:10):
directed by James Cameron. UM. So we're all very excited
to bring our pal James onto the pod, to bring
our pal James and the reanimated corpse of Stan Winston.
Um it's going to be amazing. So check it out
by everybody. I'm Eve Rodsky, author of the New York

(01:33:35):
Times bestseller fair Play and find your Unicorn space activists
on the gender division of labor, attorney and family mediator.
And I'm Dr adding A Rucar, a Harvard physician and
medical correspondent with an expertise and the science of stress, resilience,
mental health and burnout. We're so excited to share our
podcast Time Out, a production of I Heart Podcasts and

(01:33:56):
Hello Sunshine. We're uncovering why society makes it so hard
for women to treat their time with the value it deserves.
So take this time out with us. Listen to Time Out,
a fair play podcast on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. After thirty years,

(01:34:17):
it's time to return to the halls of West Beverly
High and hang out at the peach pit. On the
podcast nine O two one OMG joined Jenny Garth and
Tori Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly
Hills nine O two one oh. From the very beginning,
we get to tell the fans all of the behind
the scenes stories to actually happen, so they know what
happened on camera obviously, but we can tell them all

(01:34:39):
the good stuff that happened off camera. Get all the
juicy details of every episode that you've been wondering about
for decades. As nine O two one oh, super fan
and radio host Sissany sits in with Jenny and Tory
two reminisce, reflect and relive each moment, from Brandon and
Kelly's first kiss to shouting Donna Martin graduates, you have
an amazing memory. You remember everything about the entire ten

(01:35:01):
years that we filmed that show, and you remember absolutely
nothing of the ten years that we filmed that show.
Listen to nine O two one OMG on the I
Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The art world it is essentially a money laundering business.
The best fakes are still hanging off people's walls. You

(01:35:22):
know they don't even know or suspect that they're fakes.
I'm at like Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed,
and forgery in the art world. You knew that the
painting was fake. Um Listen to Art Fraud starting February
one on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or

(01:35:45):
wherever you get your podcasts. Fuck work, work, Hey, hey, hey, hey,
good introduction. I'm Robert Evans. This is it could happen here.

(01:36:08):
That was Chris Garrison's also here, so is Sophie, who
is changing her name to Sophie. What is your new name,
Sophie dot Com Arena, Sophie dot Com Arena. She's doing
this to deal with the trauma of the fact that
Los Angeles just agreed to change the name of the
Chase Bank Arena to Crypto dot Com st Center, Oh,
Staples Center, Sorry, I'm getting my arena's named after venal

(01:36:30):
brands mixed up. Speaking of the pointlessness of work, there
are people laboring right now who worked at Staples so
that Staples would have enough money to name a place
where people go do sports after a place where people
get fucking pencils um And now Staples has declined enough

(01:36:54):
that it's just crypto dot com. Fucking Crypto dot com
book upon look up on the worst cryptocurrency e formerly
Mighty Staples in despair, fucking the Osmond Dius of the
office supply world. I don't know whatever, what are we
talking about. We're going to no comes in the middle,

(01:37:19):
but right now we're gonna go to a place where
they banned crypto mining for the most part, so and
that that places China, and I wanted to talk about
specifically a lot of us been going on the Chinese Internet,
what's been going on in Chinese labor because so Garrison
Garrison told me we're doing an at work episode, and
I went, oh, yeah, there's a there's you know, there's

(01:37:40):
a version of this in China. And then I realized
that like a almost no one has heard of lying
flat and be it rules and see that nobody really
know in the US knows what's going on in the
Chinese Internet because it's effectively siloed. And I mean, you know,
there's there's, there's there's there's lots different ways to silo.
I mean there's there's literally the Great Firewall. There's factors
and different languages, people, different apps, and you know, the

(01:38:00):
Internet has become this sort of like you know, it's
it's it's it's a bubbles don't interact with each other. Yeah,
the wald Garden thing, and it's you know, the sort
of national level world Garden stuff is I think in
a lot of ways, way more dangerous than the stuff
you know that like people complaining about it was sucking
audio logical bubble and like that's bad. But the fact
that we have bubbles like this where it's like you know,

(01:38:24):
the like with with like actual they basically borders but
online Yeah yeah, because they're enforced by governments with force. Yeah. Yeah,
the place it was always going to go. Um, once
we decided not to be rad with the internet, which
everyone collectively decided in I'm going to say one thousand
four Okay, yeah, do you think do you think do

(01:38:47):
do you think? Do you think that was eleven fault?
Nine eleven played a role. Nine eleven did play a role. Um,
the dot com boom played another role. Um, there were
there there, There were a number of factors. Um, but
we can all blame it on let's blame it on
low tax and continue. So anti work in China before

(01:39:09):
we get into lying flat, which is China's version of
anti work, isn't the right word because this actually started
a few months before sort of anti work blew up
in the US. But before we fully get into that,
to understand what's going on here, we need to talk
about something called involution. And did you say that again?
Like inval involution? Involution? Yeah, So this this, this is

(01:39:34):
this is originally this is a very obscure anthropological term
developed by my old nemesis Clifford Geertz, who's one of
the most famous and most important anthropologists in history, who
also sucks ass, and I hate him. I thought your
nemesis was Noam Chomsky. Yes, also, but for different reasons.
Should I cancel the hit sub sub nemesis something? I

(01:39:57):
have many I have many nemesses that I have on
the side. God here Jody Dean episode at some point. Now,
thank you. I appreciate allies in my one person intellectual wars,
although this does seem to be a pretty boring intellectual war, yeah,
said most of them. Yeah yeah, but what what what

(01:40:21):
Gears was describing? Basically, so he does his field work
in Java, and what are you describing? What what involution means?
It's the system where people keep working harder and harder
for there's no increase in output, and so that there's
no there's no rewards for working harder. And so you know,
in Java you'd have these plantations, right, and the plantations
would get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. But
because each new person was only like harvesting just enough

(01:40:42):
to feed themselves, you never actually got any productivity increases.
And so you know, Yeah, there's no there's no output
increases and in not really the case in America in
a lot of ways. Yeah, and what's interesting, Well, okay,
so the reason I want to talk about this also
is because based like everyone who's been writing about this inmation,

(01:41:03):
NEUWS outlets has missed about half of the story of
how how this like incredibly obscure anthropological term that like
I don't like Again, I was an anthropology major. I
don't think I ever ran into involution while like while
I was studying anthropology. Yeah, and no one has ever
heard of this, Like fucking everyone in China has like
like a treatise they can spout at you about this now. Um. Yeah,

(01:41:25):
and and you know, I want to talk a bit
about how to emerge. And part of this is because,
you know, in the last about two years, people will
be getting increasingly piste off at you know, just the
sort of incredibly competitive nature of Chinese society and particularly work.
And you know, a lot of this is because everyone's
working what's what's called, which is nine am to nine pm,

(01:41:46):
six days a week. And she actually, do you make
this good? When I say everyone that's like an average schedule.
The schedules get a lot worse than that, But the
nine six is the one that sort of gets the
attention because a lot of people work in especially in
the tech industry. This is you know, we do, but
you know, everyone focused on the tech industry, everyone ignores
a bunch of myrket workers who also do this and worse.
And you know, there's just a normal societal pressure to

(01:42:08):
sort of keep moving and keep competing and keep working.
And simultaneously, you know, people in China today are working
like basically as hard as anyone's worked in China since
like people would literally collapse and missastion in the fields
and the great leap forward Like that's lots of people
are working this hard. And but but instead of you know,
getting rewards for this, Chinese growth rates have been collapsing

(01:42:31):
for a decade. And yeah, this is you know, this
is this is the thing that you get. In the
U s too, was like, well, okay, people were like, well,
if you work out to get into the middle class,
but then you know, everyone's working nine six. No one's
getting into the widdle class. The like, China has incredibly
low rates of social ability, and you know it into
this comes involution But the weird part of what what's

(01:42:54):
happening here is that involution doesn't enter the Chinese disc
course through like people complaining about work. It's it's actually
a product of a bunch of middle class people complaining
about Chinese industrial policy. And this is the hardest story
that nobody really talks about, even though I think it's
it's really interesting because again like this, you know, anti

(01:43:14):
anti work in the U s RS and the left
right involution, which is the thing that's going to bring
about sort of the Chinese version of anti work is
the right way is originally right wing discourse, um and
and And it's interesting, it's it's it's a right wing,
very nationalist discourse that gets you know, the right wing
part of it gets essentially expunged and it gets pulled left.
So originally, you know, China is I don't have a

(01:43:39):
more elegant way of saying this than China's leaders, and
more online than ours, like significantly more like they Actually
that's hard, that's hard to abash it. It's people people
like like local government offices right have like they they
have these like internal sites that like show them what
people are posting this. This goes from the from the

(01:44:01):
bottom levels, it goes away to the top. Like people
actually listen to bloggers like like that they're there, you know,
some of them, some of the people we're about to
talk about it are incredibly influential. And there's a bunch
of arguments in the early two thousands about how China
is going to industrialize and these are basically online arguments. UM,
and the guys who win that argument r she shimping

(01:44:22):
basically takes their industrial policy and implements it which is
you know, which is which is scales? Like how online
these people are that? Like, yeah, people are taking econot
policy from like literally, I mean, you know, it's it's
not solely up. I don't take a policy people arguing
on the internet, right, this is this is an incredibly
online society and it you know, but the worst part
is that for a while it works. You know that
the echonart policy basically is they're gonna increases size of

(01:44:44):
the Chinese economy by investing in sort of high tech
industry and moving up the value chain. This is this
has been very standards or Chinese second on policy for
a while. Um. The problem is in the last about
decade it's it's it's stopped working. And you know, the
CCPs response was to do more financialization, and this piste
off the like the the online they were they were
called like the Industrial Party. This this this is off those guys,
because you know, the whole thing was don't financialize, just

(01:45:06):
keep investing in like building airplanes and stuff, and the
Chinese economies will work itself out. And but eventually even
they can't keep making this argument because you know, I
mean like like he doesn't tend right, Like the Chinese
GDP growth rate was ten percent and now it's like
maybe five and last year, I mean last year twenties,
so you know it was really low. But I mean,

(01:45:27):
the Chinese growth rate has been imploding. And so what
you get out of this is is this group of
people called the Paoists based on this guy named Cow. Okay. So,
so Cow is the guy who who who essentially introduces
the concept of involution and he's arguing that this is
happening because I'm gonna quote him here, people can't get

(01:45:50):
quote a peaceful life, get a pretty girl, live in
a big house because of the US. And so there's
the solution to this, basically is is to deal with
like to destroy America as a jem on. And then
once you do that, you know you can get all
of these things. And as you can tell, like you know, okay,
peaceful life, get a pretty girl, live in a big house.
This this is like a very conservative framing of this. Yeah, yeah,

(01:46:11):
I mean this is this is the Chinese equivalent of
two point five kids in a white picket fence. And
it has all of this sort of associated gender politics
and class politics to go along with that. And you know,
and when when cow and the cows are talking about involution,
what they're talking about is they literally they literally mean
Chinese dignated economy, right, so that they're talking about, okay,
that you have more inputs, you have labor, technology inputs,
but the output for input is declining, and the only

(01:46:32):
way to restore economic growth the chief prosperity is by
solving a decline output by defeating the Americans. But you know,
and and this this is kind of a big deal.
And for a while, in sort of like twenty this
this is, this is going places, but very quickly people
are like, my life fucking sucks, Like I don't care
about this econ ship or this, like grand national struggle

(01:46:54):
against the world hedgemon, Like I care about the fact that,
like my life is this incredibly pointless, ever escalating rat
race with like literally no rewards. Yeah, that would that
would concern me too, if that were a thing that
we were capable of feeling in our country. Yeah, it's there.
There's been some really funny stuff with involution where like
you read accounts of it and you'll get like anthropologists

(01:47:16):
going like, oh, yeah, this is this is the thing
that this is the thing that's unique to China, and
it's like have have you worked a job in in
the US? Like, but you know involution, you know what
happens to it over over the course of sort of
it goes from being the general you know, it goes
it goes from being this thing that's about like very

(01:47:37):
specific like technical industrial arguments about industrial policy too. Is
when one anthropologists put it, quote the experience of being
locked in competition that one ultimately knows as meaningless. And
so people are, yeah, we could we couldn't imagine that
this is yeah, and it's you know, and people people

(01:47:57):
start talking about finding individual solutions to of this, and
so you know, then this is things like working last
moving to lower tier city is getting less protgious jobs. Um,
but you know, and I want to think about this
again because this this is a really interesting thing where
you have a very incredibly right wing, nationalistic and sort

(01:48:18):
of like like middle class like nostalgia kind of like
you know, like Milt aggressive foreign policy thing and then
it just flips. And and part of how it flips
and this is a part of the story that is
almost completely ignored, But I think it's really important. Do
you guys know about this? The YouTuber named leads It.

(01:48:40):
She she's the biggest Chinese YouTuber. She has sixteen million followers,
and most of her followers are not on YouTube because
you know, YouTube like blocked by the firewall. But she
has she has fifty five million followers on the sort
of Chinese version of TikTok, and yeah, she has across
the world. She has a hundred million followers, right. She
she's she's one of the biggest media stars in the world.

(01:49:02):
And her origins are kind of unclear. The like official
biography basically says that like when she was twelve, instead
of going to high school, she's being a waitress and
then she had to like you know, but she she
she'd gone to the city and then she had to
return to Revels to take care of her grandma. And
she makes these videos that are these like very soft
and calming videos or like calming music of her going
into the woods and like harvesting materials and making fires

(01:49:25):
out of logs and like cooking things. Okay, and it's
it's it's just like it's you know, it's it's very
much this this really utopianism. There's there's basically no industrial
technology like Cottage Corp returned to Nature. Yeah. Yeah, I
know a lot of people who watched it like that
just to like soothe them after a day of work.
Like see somebody like dig a cave and turn it

(01:49:46):
into like a bath or something using just hand tools
or whatever. Yeah, And there's it's interesting that this kind
of it's almost like turned into a sub genre. But
she's by far the biggest like version of this. And
you know, so she she gets picked up by a
media company and from goes viral. And you know it's

(01:50:06):
interesting because so she's doing this because so she she
has to go back to take care of her grandma,
and so she like opens a store and she's trying
to support herself but and like her grandma by opening
this store, and so the videos were like a way
to promote the store. And then you know, now she
has a hundred million followers and she she gets adopted
as this kind of like like national culture ambassador, I
guess by the state. Sure, And and it's just you know,

(01:50:29):
so there's nothing overtly political about these videos at all, right,
which is especially offering and like trying to sell is
this you know, this like fantasy of retreat from industrial
majority into world life. And I think it's really easy
to look at that esthetic and go like this is
basically fascist, Like this is rejecting majority embraced here issues.
Some people online when they see that immediately sees after
I was like, oh no, it's eco fascist, Yes that yeah,

(01:50:51):
And I think, you know, and I think like that
interpretation I think is actually a lot of y I
got picked up by the Chinese, by Chinese media companies
and then like sort of by the Chinese state because
you know, like having an actual positive utopian image of
rural life is politically useul with them, and something that's
like not hasn't been true since like we've had this
for a long time. Yeah, well no, and I think

(01:51:13):
I would say this this. I think this is the
thing that's different in China is that there hasn't been
like a positive conception of rural life really since I
guess the greatly forwards and then are like there there
were some people in the Cultural Revolution, but then they
actually went there and we're like, oh god, this sucks,
and so you know, so they need a new one.
They come up with this. But you know, the thing
that's different about China than the US is that China's

(01:51:37):
maket worker population like is almost the entire size of
the population of the US. I mean it's it's like
two seventy million people, right, I mean it's it's enormous
and a huge number of these people, you know, I'm
some of these people are going from like city to city.
You're like town of town, but a lot of these
people are coming from from rural villages into cities. And
you know, I mean these are this is this is
the background of the Chinese workforce. And like these people
like they see their family once a year because you know,

(01:52:00):
like they can't afford to go home, so they go
home once a year for New Year's because they get
some time, often they come back and and this is
where you know, like these videos are obvious fantasy, but
you know, they suggest an alternative to work in the
capitalist city that's sort of plausible, you know, especially if
you come from rural village. And this is where this
whole thing completely backfires on the Chinese ruling class. And

(01:52:23):
you know, because this this, this this cowisted involution discourse
is about diffuse with this style of rural rural utopianism
into a movement that is going to shake the foundation
of work itself. But first, but first, ads again also
not connecting to anything. We're talking Conever, why Garrison, don't
even bring that up. There's no needs, there's no reason

(01:52:44):
for people to think about about the fact that about that.
Don't think anyway, here's about ads. Yeah, think about the
Washington State Highway Patrol primary sponsors off it could happen here.
If it happens to you, you'll want the Washington State
Highway Patrol the border. It's so funny. Anyway, we're trying

(01:53:08):
to but I think it's we're working on it. People.
I think it's hilarious. Yeah, please don't please don't join
the Washington State Highway Patrol. Ah, we're back, and I
don't know about y'all, but I thought I knew what
I was talking about, and I after those ads, I
am fully Washington State Highway Patrol build. I'm on board.

(01:53:30):
Let's do it. Yeah. In April, a guy in Chinese
social media makes a post and I'm just gonna so, Yeah,
I'm just gonna read this post because it's kind of
short and it rules. I haven't been working for two years.
I have just been hanging around, and I don't see
anything wrong with This pressure mainly comes from the generation

(01:53:50):
with your peers and the values of the older generation.
These pressures keep popping up, but we don't have to
abide by these norms. I can live like Diogenes and
sleep in a wooden bucket week so I can live
like Heracletus in a cave thinking about logos. Since this
land has never had a school thought that upholds human subjectivity,
I can develop one of my own. Lying down is
my philosophical movements. Only through lying flat can humans become

(01:54:13):
the measure of all things based. Oh my god, that's
the best. I love that. Can I talk about Diogenes now?
So my my man, Diogenes is he's from this trend
in Greek philosophical thought during kind of the high period
of Greek civilization, where a bunch of things come out

(01:54:35):
of it. You kind of get anarchism, Western anarchism out
of it, You kind of get you get elements of
like Puritan culture from it, because there are a lot
of them are very much anti like the pleasures of
sex and like anything pleasing, and like you don't you
don't do anything that feels good because then you become
dependent on it. Like there's a whole bunch of ship
going on um. And Diogenes was like one of the
one of the first motherfucker's who were kind of playing

(01:54:57):
around in this in this philosoph tropical space. And when
he gets into so his early life is his dad
is uh kind of a grifter. It sounds like we
know that he got in trouble. He and his dad
got exiled for debasing currency, which could be as simple
as they were watering down for lack of a better term,

(01:55:19):
like the gold or silver and currency with less precious
metals and hiding it in order to make a profit,
right and like keep the extra gold that could be
what they were doing it also could have been like
it could have been political, because some people who were
doing this in Sinope, I think is the city which
is now in Turkey, we're doing it for political reasons.
We don't really know why. But there's actual documented archaeological

(01:55:39):
evidence of this, including right around the time he would
have been a child, we found from that period a
cash of debased gold and silver coins that had been destroyed,
so someone had like realized they've been debased and destroyed
them so they couldn't be used. So there's evidence. Anyway,
he and his dad get exiled, which means from an
early stage he goes from being somewhat of means, if
your dad's making the currency, you're not probably not like

(01:56:02):
a poor family um. And then they get kicked out
of their city state and they're like kind of stateless,
and so Diogenes evolves over time and like gets into philosophy.
He tries to there's this I always forget the name
of the guy that he he loved it first, but
there's this philosopher who's like, you know, this cynical like
that's the school of thought he comes from. He's like

(01:56:22):
a cynic um that Diogenes really wants to study from,
and the guy like assaults him as as Diogenes is like, hey, man,
I want to learn from you. Like he like hits
him or something. This keeps happening, and eventually he's like
this guy is like why do you keep doing this?
And Diogenes is like, you have something I can learn from? Uh,
And so I don't really care what you do to me.
I'm gonna I'm gonna keep persisting. And so he becomes

(01:56:43):
this guy's student, YadA YadA. And the guy who he
becomes the student of is like kind of a poser
because he's talking about like we need to give up
you know, these kind of like pleasures of of like
civilized life and and return to a more simple time
and like not enjoy all of these, you know, the
benefits of wealth. But he like he's also a rich
guy and he doesn't give up his money, and Diogenes
is like poor as hell um and stays that way um.

(01:57:06):
And so he becomes famous for he goes to Athens
and he becomes famous for a bunch of like troll
ship we don't actually have. He wrote like ten books,
we don't have any of them, so we don't actually
like know what he actually wrote in his philosophy. We
just have stories from other philosophers and it's all Diogenes
being a fucking troll. So like um on one occasion,
he one of his big things was he believed that

(01:57:29):
people that if if something was an acceptable behavior, it
was an acceptable behavior everywhere, right, And so the start
of this was in in Athens, you were supposed to
go buy your food in the market, but you weren't
supposed to eat it there. That was like considered rude,
like like like like kind of obscene almost, and Diogenes
would like get food and then usually by begging, because

(01:57:49):
he was that was the way he got everything. He
had no money. He would like get food and he
would eat it right in the middle of the market,
and everybody was like, that's disgusting, and Diogenes would be like, well,
if it's okay for me to eat, it must be
okay for me to eat here. That's great. Diogenes took
it a little bit further than that, because yeah, I
can yeah, I can see a few ways you can
take this. He extended that too, if it's fine for
me to urinator ship, it's fine for me to do

(01:58:12):
and he defended himself masturbating and well we can get
people in public as if this is okay for me
to do in my bedroom, why can't I do this here? Right? Um,
it's very like he's he's he's a troll um Diogenes,
and he's also like again, the stories we have him
is he is like uber an aesthetic, so like at

(01:58:34):
one point, for a long time, the only thing he
owns is a wooden bowl that's his cup and and
for his food. And then according to you know legend,
he sees this poor peasant child drinking from like cupped
hands and he throws away his bowl and he's really
angry and he's like, god, damn it, I spent all
this effort carrying around something useless, like I said, ship
in my hands. He's he's a very entertaining character and

(01:58:58):
a very like yeah, he's absolutely an eugle um and
he's yeah, he's just kind of like an endearing piece
of shit, is like his the idea you get, but
also like smarter than I mean, because because fundamentally what
Diogenes is doing is he's he's saying, like, hey, all
this stuff that we think is important and good about

(01:59:20):
our culture and and like valuable. What if it wasn't,
what if none of it matters. He's like he's provoking
the thick and he's he's big into like one of
his his Like the things he comes back to a
lot is that like dogs are clearly happier than us
and like better creatures than us, so we should just
seek to be like dogs. Um. And one of the
ways he might have died is getting bitten by a

(01:59:41):
dog and his bike kidding infected. We don't really know
how he died. Um. You ever thing about Theogenese, This
guy fucking hates rich people. Oh he's he's and he's
very funny about it. So Alexander the Great apocryphal lee
Maybe that's probably never happened. But the story is that
Alexander the Great comes to Athens, you know, while he's

(02:00:03):
on his his blitz through conquering the known world, and
finds Diogenes. Alexander the Great was like raised by Aristotle, right,
so he knows his philosophy. Guys, like he's he's he's
seeking Diogenes out because he's a fan of this dude,
probably through stories that were told to him. In the
same way that like I'm telling them to you now.
So he like comes up to Diogenes and he's like,

(02:00:23):
oh my god, I'm Alexander the Great. I'm a big fan.
If I couldn't be Alexander the Great, I would want
to be Diogenes um. And Diogenes response, well, if I
couldn't be Diogenes, I would just want to be Diogenes,
which is a fucking flex again but probably never happened.
But like, I want to, I want to read this
meme that Garrison sent me because it happens. It's absolutely

(02:00:46):
the perfect Ryptian of what what this whole thing is
sort of about. So okay, this is me. The philosopher
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was
seen by the philosopher or a process gust name Aristippus,
who he doesn't matter, some dead Greek guy who's about
to get absolutely destroyed. He's living comfortably like flattering the king.

(02:01:07):
Aristipis says, if you would learn to be subservient to
the king, you would not have to live on lentils.
Diogenes should flied, learn to live on lentils, and you
will not have to be subservient to the king. Oh,
all sorts of based ship like that. My favorite So
our guy Plato is like is like trying to determine,

(02:01:28):
trying to define like a human in the simplest way possible. Yes, yeah,
like the Platonic idea. And he was, so he comes
to the inclusion that like, well, it's a it's a
it's a it's an unwinged biped um, and Diogenes supposedly
goes grabs a plucked chicken and says, behold a man,
like I found a dude. Rules um. He would he

(02:01:50):
would famously walk around town in broad daylight with like
a what do you call it, like a lantern, like
looking around and people like, what are you looking for?
It's like I'm looking for a man? He like, look
at a dude, and you're like, I'm looking for a man.
And as it is to say, like, none of you
motherfucker's are people like you all think that you're human beings,
but you're really just pieces of ship. It's just an
amazing asshole. Sorry that that we should move back to

(02:02:12):
anti work, but that's yeah, yeah, but and this is
this is the funny that both both both American and
Chinese like anti work people. Both fucking love Diogenes. Yeah,
you know, very popular on our slash anti work. Yeah,
and you know, and the thing I was reading about

(02:02:32):
the like, you know, learn to live on lentils and
you'll never like after such a game by King that
that's a lot of what lying down becomes. So very rapidly,
this whole thing spreads into this like really it's a
sort of astounding, you know, it starts out of the
me and it spreads incredibly quickly, and the CCP gets

(02:02:55):
like really really mad about this. Um so, so it's
like it's this. This starts in April, right, and in
May there's they have this like enormous media blitz where
like like the party is like outlet basically, and Guandong
publishes like a four page long attack on the concept
of lying down, like the cc the end of the
newspapers everywhere published this stuff. Like the CCP like bands

(02:03:17):
term la wee chat. Yeah, and it's funny because it's
like if they do this, but it's too late, like
it's yeah, and you know, so, so part part of
a lying down is is about, you know, you have
this incredibly fast paced, intense work culture, you have involution,
you're working more and more and you're getting nothing out
of it. The lion flat is just going no, like
you just lie down, you refuse to work. But it's

(02:03:40):
it's it's also it's more than that. And I think
this is this goes back to the sort of broader
conception of anti work. So on one of the slogans
of this movement is don't bribe property, don't buy a car,
don't get married, don't have children, and don't consume. And
you know that the the last part of this is implied
is don't work. And you know, there's a lot sort
of going on here. I mean, you have you know,

(02:04:02):
it's not just sort of a critique of like we
work too hard. It's about you know, it's about the
sort of fall system. It's about the sort of patriarchy
involved in this. It's about this sort of like force
capitalist consumption. It's about like, you know, the fact that
like literally a quarter of Chinese of China's economy or
Chinese GDP is like all this real estate bullshit that

(02:04:22):
everyone knows who is going to collapse and even when
it gets built like sucks. Thank god we don't have
anything like that here. Yeah, I know, it's great It's
one of one of the fun things about learned histories.
You can just watch every country do exactly the same
thing with their housing market, like Japan do it. It's
like it's great, It's just like you also you think
this will work? What what what extra fun thing is
you get to watch every country do the same thing

(02:04:44):
with farms and it always ended the same anyway. Yes,
So there's there's a lot of you know, in order
to sort of like facilitate this, you know, you get
back to the Diogenes, So a lot of it what's
happening is people sharing tips about how to make the
cheapest food you can possibly survive on so you don't

(02:05:04):
have to work, and so you know, and people the
guy who wrote the Diogenes post like he spends thirty
dollars a month and he does this by only eating
dried ramen and eggs and like rice. Yeah, yeah, on
the way to do it. This is like the most

(02:05:25):
extreme example. I actually, I don't even think it is
the most atreme example. A lot of people. One of
the things that happens a lot is a bunch of
people just like have left their jobs to become monks.
This this is like a whole thing Buddhist, like honestly,
like absolutely, And I used to live in a place

(02:05:45):
in the middle of fucking nowhere, one of the most
like isolated places I've ever lived that like had power
um and one of the people who was like by neighbor,
they were within several miles of us, was a monastery.
This is in the United States, and like I went
there once too because I heard they made good wine
to try and get some of their wine, and like
none of them would answer the door. I could see

(02:06:06):
them inside all staring at me. They didn't do ship
and my my overwhelming thought was like, yeah, that seems
like a pretty good way to do it. Yeah, I
see why you guys have picked this life. It was
also during the election back from the r n C
and the d n C and was like, yeah, that
seems smarter than what I'm doing. Yeah. So there's a

(02:06:30):
lot of you know, yeah, that'd be the stream example,
like if people going to become monks. But like one
of the things that's happening a lot is again, you know,
China hasn't known its macrotworker population, and people are just
like fuck this, I'm going back to my village, and
so and you know, and this is you know, this
this this, this is where they really screwed up with
the YouTube stuff because you know, people were people, you know,
they were gambling that that you know, you could just

(02:06:52):
sell this as an aesthetic, and you know, you can't
sell it as an aesthetic like Chinese TikTok has this
integrated thing in it. Were like, if if you plug
like something to buy it, like you can like click
it and it'll just it'll take you like to a
link like to to to to the thing it's selling,
you know. And so yeah, they don't make a norse
amount of money on this, but you know, the the

(02:07:13):
the other side of that sword is a bunch of
people were like, I don't have to work this Like
I don't have to work in a city. I can
just go home. Yeah, and you know, and you know,
and you know, so you know, as you're talking about
the antiwork stuff, it's not actually possible for a lot
of people to leave their jobs. So the solution to

(02:07:34):
this was there there's a culture that developed called petting fish,
which and but but before you talking about petting fish,
you said something about uh, plugging things on TikTok, and
you know, who you know, you know, like plugging like advertisements,
and you know who also plugs plugs advertisements? Chris, Oh no,
is it us? But our new sponsor is the Joe

(02:07:58):
Rogan Experience, brought to you by Honda Honda Drive a Car,
Do Fascism? Honda? Really? Yeah, Honda Garrison. Look, we don't
We're not nearly a big enough podcast to get fucking
to get a Toyota ad Are you crazy? Yeah? That's
what we can dream big. Yeah, I mean that is

(02:08:19):
the dream to sell Toyota's. I mean we could become
used car salesman in the valley. All right, here's that
ah back, cut that head and fish handle it. Keep

(02:08:41):
it all in baby. Yeah. So there's there's all this
thing called the petting fish, which is like Chinese slack
off culture, and you know, somt of people sharing tips
ab how to slack off at work, and it's it's
kind of the equivalent like I love that it's called
petting fish. And then also yeah, it's it's kind of
the Chinese equivalent of like boss makes a dollar, I
make a dime. That's why should company time. So people

(02:09:02):
do just a lot of like they have a lot
of like genuinely fun things they do. Like people people
started putting like fake beatings on their calendars. People wouldn't
bother them. They like they just like like, that's that's
also that's that's that's also what I do. Yeah, yeah,
I mean the if you want to make I love
the term petting fish as well, but if you want
to like make it sound cool. They're waging an insurgency

(02:09:23):
from within capitalism by by by trying to take resources
away from their employers, um without being spotted. Yeah, there's
a there's a thing in volume one of Capital about
this that I was like, oh, I could pull this up,
and then I was like, that is too much work.
I'm not going to do it. So I don't have
the thing in volume one where he talks about struggling
between about labor time. But instead you get a bunch

(02:09:45):
of people like the Smike smuggling whiskey into work, taking
through our lunch breaks. My favorite one actually work drink
at work, especially if your nurse, oh boy, you probably
killed about fifty people. This is gonna be crossed fingers crossed.
So you know how like companies all have these like

(02:10:05):
these really annoying like mindfulness fitness things. So one of
these people started doing was okay, so you know, thinking
like you have to drink eight hour, eight times a day.
So they would set these alarms that's like, oh, I
have to go drink my water. And so like every
like every like fifty minutes or something, they just go
up and like spend twenty minutes getting water and they
sit back down. It's like you've just eviscerated and enormous

(02:10:27):
part of your work day. And and the product of this,
you know, this CP is really piste off about this.
And you know, you get these giant billboards to say
no lying flat, no petting fish on them or something.
It would have been literally incomprehensible like a year ago.
It's amazing. And you know, and I think this is
something you know in the U s anti work, like

(02:10:48):
the actual political class kind of has been ignoring it.
I mean, you see a couple of acial antists in China.
She Jing Ping like made a speech. It was like,
you know, you have a private speech to a bunch
of hoigh people in the party, and so a part
of it a printage like a month ago or something
I've I've lost track of all time. But like like,
like specifically in this speech that chess and Ping is

(02:11:09):
making that is published in the official like theoretical journal,
he's like explicitly saying like don't lie flat and saying
quote happy life is earned through heart, hard work, and yeah,
and he also has this this he has his ranch.
But like denouncing welfare ism, which is great the communist
vanguard there, Yeah, yeah, preaching the immortal science. Yeah, socialism

(02:11:33):
with Chinese characteristics. Motherfucker's don't be a welfare queen. Follow
It's great, you know, but it's interesting people. This is
the one people are really freaked out about. Like I
saw I saw like an American writer about this, who
you know, They wrote like an article about this whole thing,
and then they were like this is gonna this is
gonna cause inflation. It's like, this is gonna be the

(02:11:54):
driver of what people just use the word inflation to
mean whatever scary thing they want. Yeah, well they're they're like, oh,
this will this will increase wages and that will lead
to inflation and we'll get the seventies again. And I'm like, God,
maybe get a tallow disco again. Did you ever think
of that guy that we that were are reserves of

(02:12:14):
a tallow disco are critically low. Do you wonder what
a tallow disco is? No idea, that's a shame. All right,
let's continue what what what type of like is there
is there like any like you said, this kind of
stuff started to like move leftwards. Is there any like
actual like leftist organizing in these types of places. So
so this is the thing I was getting to, which
is that, like, you know, people are starting to do

(02:12:35):
reading groups. But the problem, the problem with leftist organizing
in China is that, you know, so state policy in
the past three years has been like if you poke
your head above ground, you get arrested. So you know,
I mean, for example, there was there was a strike
at Jasick and you know, a bunch of student groups
who've been organizing for a long time like try to
do alldrety with it, and they all got arrested. The

(02:12:55):
people who are people who let the strike got arrested.
All that the students who are doing is ald already
got arrested. People like people got arrested for like like
dancing with like university students got arrested for like dancing
with the people who were like cleaning the floors. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
like the yeah, like it's it's incredible and like, you know,

(02:13:19):
and the other thing that you can see about this
was so so for example, there was there was a
guy doing like delivery driver organizing. It was kind of weird.
He was like kind of an entrepreneur kind of doing
delivery driver organizing. Like he got arrested. And then you know,
like a couple of weeks later this people like, oh,
we're gonna like do things to improve the conditions of
of of delivery drivers, and you know, who knows if

(02:13:39):
that's going to happen. But like, you know, basically like
any anyone out for some reason that the people in
the tech sector have been able to get away with
more for reasons that are probably class based, and I
think then take them seriously in the way they do
with students to factory workers. But you know, and actually
I mean the fact that the tech workers like kind

(02:13:59):
of recently like that there's a tech worker thing calling
for like like democratic control of production, which is wild.
But other than those guys like you can't you know,
you can't stick your head up, you get flattened. So
this has sort of been the result of this, which
is this, like you know, the sort of the like
lying flat is this. You know, it's this mass decentralized
movements that you know, there's there's no one to hit

(02:14:21):
with a hammer, and you know, and and I think, like, okay,
so one of one of the other quotes that's that's
been going around about lying flat is it's it's a poem.
It doesn't poem as well in English, but this, this
is the best we've got. Lying flat is to not
bow down. Lying flat is to not kneel. Lying flat
is to stand up horizontally. Lying flat is a straight spine.

(02:14:44):
And so you know what was basically happening here is
is it's a combination of the tendencies you see in
the US, where you know, a bunch of people terrible jobs,
realizing that everything is pointless. And then also this is
a way you can, like, this is the way you
can like your boss without like the police showing up. Yeah,

(02:15:04):
and so there's there's some interesting like political stuff. So there,
there's there, there's there's there's if if you look at
the doc, there's there's a bunch of memes here because
they're great. So there's there's been a thing with these
people talking about how people are leaks, which they're like
their leaks, they're harvested over and over again and they're
being exploited and like the plants, yeah, like like leaks

(02:15:24):
like yeah, you eat. And so they have this thing.
It's a leaks that life flat cannot be so easily
harvested and it's just like a knife go like try
like a machette, like trying to swing at a bunch
of leaks, but leaks are flats, so they can't hit them.
And see what I like, I like all of this. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's it's you know, and so and so
what the product of this is that yeah, like this this, this,

(02:15:45):
this has this stuff has actually been effective enough that
the CCP, like you know, I mean the CCP is
is taking it seriously, but you know, there's not much
they can do about it because like if someone's just like, oh,
I'm going to go from a job that's really high
stress to one that's less high stress, like what are
you're gonna are you just gonna arrest them? Like what
what are you gonna do? And so this yeah, this,

(02:16:07):
this has been building for a while now, and I
don't know who who knows exactly like where it's going
to go, but it's it's it's already you know. It's
something that people can do as an individual in a
place where organized political action is impossible in a way
such that you know that their individual actions have a

(02:16:28):
collective effect, but one that can't be just you know,
pounded down. Yeah, I mean, it is certainly interesting to
see two completely separate, like anti work style movements around
basically around the same same exact time, with the same
exact points, if you're totally different languages. If you're someone
who's interested in massive global revolutionary change, this should probably

(02:16:51):
be a thing that you are looking at and studying
and thinking a lot about. Because perhaps while we're arguing
about ship that people started talking about in the eighteen seventies, this,
this might be a better thing to do than than that, uh,
because because it's it seems like there's some potential here. Yeah,
And I think, yeah, I mean, you know, if if

(02:17:12):
if you if you know, any any any any actual
revolutionary project that makes the world better is going to
have to be international. And that's been you know, that
that that that that's been the bane of all revolutionary
movements forever but you know, okay, so we have you
know that we we have something to Chinese. The American
working class agrees on, which is Diogenes is based in

(02:17:33):
work sucks. Yeah, So as you go forward into your
life this week, um, take a page from Diogenes as
his book and got on the people ship on the
floor of a free people or yeah, if free people
are in h and M go walk into one and
just just just go absolutely ruin that tile. I mean,

(02:17:59):
fuck it. This is why my my my biggest political
advice to friends who has always been learned to run fast,
because if you learn to run fast, you can do
so many more fun things in a store and then
run fast that it's done right. The problem is that
a lot of people like who who want to do
this can't run fast enough. So learn to run fast

(02:18:22):
to do this. There, It's like Mouse said, all political
power comes from being able to ship really fast and
the doors of a free people. Just get that out
of there. The immortal science. Look, I think I think
I think we should leave with with the real immortal science,
the the immortal words of a skeleton from the share zone.

(02:18:45):
Just walk out. You can leave work, social things, movie
home class dentist, close shops to fancy weed store cops.
If you're quick, friendships, if it sucks, hit the bricks,
yeah yeah, as as some comedian who I can't remember
now said, always have an exit plan like that, that

(02:19:08):
that should be your thought for everything everything in the world.
Hit the fucking bricks, Get out anyway, Get out of
this podcast episode Now from Calvary Audio comes the new
true crime podcast, The Shadow Girls. I always wanted to

(02:19:28):
know what it felt like. He killed somebody and he
started laughing. Prosecutors described him as a serial killer survant,
kicking up these girls, getting him in a position of vulnerability.
When he got a hold of their neck, that was it.
I'm Caroline Asia, a journalist and lifelong resident at the
Pacific Northwest. I grew up near the banks of the
Green River and in the shadow of the killer that

(02:19:50):
bears its name. Time did you bring the camera? Time?
Just want He started fantasizing about having sex with his mother,
and he fantasized about killing her. But this podcast isn't
only about tracking down the killer. It's about the victims.
We stayed in the woods. He always liked to go
in the woods. It's just all of the kind of strange.

(02:20:12):
You know how it feels about prostitutes. Listen to the
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podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Give us the attention.
We need everything you've got Fast Waiting on Reparations we
beat the podcast Tune in every Thursday politics and wordplay.
We fight for the people because they got us in

(02:20:33):
the worst way from the Hill Cooper, the Bomb Bay.
To cut from the left enclave to what the neo
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off with some break because we wait in the reparations.
Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app,
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(02:20:58):
Dick It Happen Here, podcast about things falling apart from
what you can do about it. My name is Christopher Wong,
and today I'm gonna be talking about sabotage. But this
is not the episode on sabotage that you expect. I
will not be discussing, for example, the destruction of machinery,
throwing monkey wrenches, slow down strikes, to the myriad of

(02:21:19):
other tactics that workers have used since time immemorium to
strike back at their bosses. No. Instead, I'm going to
be talking about a four more common and infinitely more
dangerous form of sabotage, corporate sabotage. Now, the most conficuous
form of corporate sabotage is the mass destruction of a
corporation's own products. The fashion company Burberry, for example, destroyed

(02:21:41):
three hundred and seventy million dollars off its own product
in one year alone. Louis Vutton and Chanel also systematically
destroy their own sold stock every year, joining H and
M and literally lighting their own sold products on fire
in order to prevent anyone from using them. Quote business insider, Rieschamont,
the owner of Cadley vont Blanc, destroyed more than four

(02:22:02):
million pounds of watches over a two year period after
an excess in goods in the Asian markets. Nicki has
also admitted that a New York store slashed unsold trainers
before throwing them away, and last year, an Urban Outfits
employee said he was instructed to pour green paints on
the unsold stock. These, of course, are only the stories
that evaded into the press, and this behavior is by

(02:22:24):
no means limited to high fashion grocery stores routinely throw
away enormous quantities of unsold goods, and when communities realized
they could feed people in need by taking the still
good products from grocery store dumpstairs, the stories began to
destroy their food intentionally. But these acts of destruction, as
callous and horrifically greedy as they are, are by no

(02:22:45):
means the extent of corporate sabotage. To explain I turned
to the work of the economist Thorston Veblen. Feblin is
perhaps best known today for the theory of conspicuous consumption,
but he wrote extensively on corporate sabotage in the first
part of The Engineers and the Price System, a work
that isn't broadly ignored even by his followers. Feblen rode

(02:23:08):
a section called on the Nature and Uses of Sabotage
from that work. Writers and speakers who dilate on the
militarious exploits of the nation's businessmen will not commonly allude
to this voluminous, running administration of sabotage, this conscientious withdrawal
of efficiency that goes into their ordinary day's work. We

(02:23:28):
are not used to thinking of the ordinary work of
a corporation being sabotage. But for Veblen there was no
other explanation from what he was seeing. In the wake
of World War One, there was an enormous explosion and unemployment,
an enormous need on half of the population. But even
as the unemployed begged to be let in to create
the products that could build the needs of their fellow humans,

(02:23:51):
business owners steadfastly refused to open their factories. As Veblen explained,
but for reasons of business expediency, it is impossible to
let these idle plants and idle workmen go to work,
that is to say, for reasons of insufficient profit to
the businessmen interested, or in other words, for reasons of
insufficient income to the vested interests which controlled the staple

(02:24:11):
industries and so regulate the output of product. Feblun was
not alone in observing these are similar conditions. John Maynard Keynes,
writing during the depression, observed newly precisely the same thing.
For Canes, the solution simply was to have the government
step into increased demand. But for Veblen dismissed the core

(02:24:31):
of the problem. The real problem was at a core
of absentee owners had the ability to shut down the
factories in the first place by simple virtue of their ownership,
Feblen argued, was simply sabotage, no different from the hated
strikes of the I w W that's so racked and
perturbed the capitalist ruling class of his time. At least
the workers could argue that they were simply fighting for

(02:24:52):
a better share of what they had created. Absentee owners,
on the other hand, who had no actual involvement in
the production process whatsoever, simply carried out sabotage on an
enormous scale in order to secure their own returns, and
this was true even in times they weren't marked by
massive depressions. In order to make payments to capitalists, Febuin argued,

(02:25:13):
who expect a certain rate of return on their investment,
corporations must maintain prices at such a level that they
can meet their returns, and the only way they can
do this is sabotage. For the good of business, it
is necessary to curtail production of the means of life
on pain of unprofitable prices, at the same time that
the increasing need of all sorts of necessities of life
must be met. In some passable fashion on pain of

(02:25:36):
popular disturbances, as it will always come of popular distrust
when they passed a limit of tolerance. The sabotage, Feblan argue,
was simply the product of the price system. Any production
that was too efficient would simply and inevitably be sabotaged
for private gain, because in order to maintain prices that
would maintain the returns of investors, it was necessary when

(02:25:57):
sure that production never became too efficient to produce too
many goods. Feplin used as his example the twentieth century
post Office, but we could just as easily point to
Trump sabotaging the post office in a dual bid to
privatize the service by causing it to collapse and prevent
mail and votes from being counted, as part of his
attempt to win the two thousand twenty election. In their

(02:26:17):
book Capitalist Power, Condis Shimshawan Bickler, and Jonathan Needson take
Feplin's argument and expand on it, noting that capitalism, far
from encouraging productivity at large, makes things inefficient on purpose.
They used the example of public transportation, which is by
bay essentially any measure, a significantly more efficient way of

(02:26:38):
moving people around the US. As an example, in the
US and the nineteen forties, a hundred electric rail lines
were brought up and destroyed by car companies. Those same companies,
likewise twice destroyed incredibly efficient and popular electric cars, once
in the nineteen thirties and again in the nineteen eighties
because the profit rate was lower than that of gas ours.

(02:27:01):
They then set out to cause everyone to forget that
they had actually done this until Elon Musk figured out
a way to sell electric cars that was profitable, namely
by selling himself as a brad and not the cars themselves. Now,
if capitalism was simply destroying its own products in order
to create Elon Musks, you could argue that the system
at least produced advancements before it stopped them. But the
most violent forms of sabotage are reserved for productive systems

(02:27:25):
that are simultaneously efficient and outside of capitalist control together.
Perhaps the best known example of this is the East
British East India companies. The industrialization of the Indian textile industry,
not to be outmatched by the British forebearers, American settlers
and their allies in the American military sterminated the Buffalo
herds of the Great Plains in an attempt to starve

(02:27:48):
out the indigenous tribes that lived there. In doing so,
they destroyed an enormously productive and sustainable agricultural system. It
did so precisely because the system was efficient, So efficient,
in fact, that it allowed indigenous tribes to repeatedly defeat
the American army and defence of their lands. We are
used to thinking of capitalism as the system of production,

(02:28:11):
but here, amidst the fields of buffalo corpses something else
entirely capitalism appearing in its true form, a system of
organized sabotage. To fully untangle what this means, let us
return to Veeblin. Feblin divided capitalism into two separate processes.
The first he called industry. Industry, Feblin argued, has existed

(02:28:35):
long before capitalism and will continue to exist long after
it has bit clear and nietzs and put it quote
when considered an isolation from contemporary business institutions. The principal
goal of industry it's raison, according to Veblen, is the
efficient production of quality goods and services for the betterment
of human life. Industry is an inherently collective undertaking basis

(02:28:59):
is cooperation, integration, the creation of communal knowledge that allows
production and scientific advance to occur, and coordination and cooperation
between people to create things for each other. Left to
its own devices, industry would simply produce goods for people.
It has no concern for profitability, rates of returns, or capitalization. Unfortunately,

(02:29:19):
capitalism is defined by private ownership. This is what Veblen
calls business. Business is a system of power that extracts
wealth from industry by means of sabotage production to serve
human need. The basis of industry is useless to business
unless it can be turned into a revenue stream. It
does this by taking control of industry and as products

(02:29:39):
and the restricting access to it particular and niches input it.
The most important feature of private ownership is not that
it enables those who own, but that it disables those
who do not. Technically, anyone can get in someone else's
car and drive away, but give in order to sell
all of Warren Buffet shares in Berkshire hathaway. The purpose

(02:30:00):
of private ownership is wholly and only an institution of exclusion.
An institutional exclusion is a matter of organized power. As
we can see from the genocide on the Plans. This
power is no abstract force. Beblin tends to focus on
the power of absentee owners to stop production, and for
good reason, but business stands in the way of industry

(02:30:22):
in more immediate ways too. After all, the purpose of
cooperative industry is to make goods to improve our lives.
And yet in between us and the proceeds that industry
creates to slerve our needs, there is a cash register
in a cop Even the creators of a Louis Vuitton bag,
or for that matter, a tomato, have no claim on

(02:30:43):
it once business takes over, and business would rather destroy
it than see it fall into their hands. The famous
Russian anarchist theorist Peter Kirpopkin was writing along similar lines
to Feblyn just a few years before Feblen, it seems,
have been exposed to anarchist ideas through its association with
the industrial workers of the world. In early nineteen hundreds,
it was not altogether unusual for economists to move in

(02:31:05):
radical circles. The great Italian economist Piero's Raffles smuggled pens
and papers to Antonio Gramsey, while Grumsey the head of
the Italian Communist Party, was a prisoner with the Italian
fascist regime. Grapha would later extract the writings that Crumpsy
had written in prison, unleashing Grumsey's prison notebooks onto the world.

(02:31:26):
But Feblin was unique even among these economists for the
extent that he incorporated radical theories directly into his work.
As you've seen, was his adoption of sabotage as a
way of thinking about capitalism. This led Veblin to call
the end of the system of what he described as
vested interests and absentee owners. Febulin solution, however, which he

(02:31:48):
described as a quote Soviet if technicians that would manage
production for all society, leaves a lot to be desired for.
So let us return to the source Perscrapotkin and the
Conquest of Bread. The minds, so they represent the labor
of several generations and derive their sole value from the
requirements of the industry of a nation and the density

(02:32:10):
of the population. The minds also belonged to the few,
and these few restrict the output of coal are prevented
entirely if they find more profitable investments for their capital.
Machinery too, has become the exclusive property of the few.
And even when a machine incontestedly represents an improvements added

(02:32:32):
to the original rough invention by three or four generations
of workers, it nonetheless belongs to a few honors. And
if the descendants of the very inventor who constructed the
first machine for lace building a century ago were to
present themselves today at a lace factory and bail or
Nottingham and demand their rights, they would be told hands off,

(02:32:54):
this machine is not yours, and they would be shot
down if they attempted to take possession of it. Here
we see the competition between two different kinds of rights.
On the one hand, the right of industry, the right
of creativity, the right of those who produce and care
for each other to be able to determine where are
the proceeds of their labor go. From industry's point of view,

(02:33:17):
this is to each other, to those in need, into
society as a whole. On the other hand, there is
the right of property, the right of men with guns
to throw oysters into the ocean because it's not profitable
for anyone to eat them. Capitalism has developed a myriad
of iterations precisely the same principle, and the world is
now infested by them. Patent trolls haunt They already fraught

(02:33:40):
waters of intellectual property, buying up patents for cheap or
on rare occasions, creating something themselves for the sole purpose,
or preventing anyone else from using it, making money by
suing anyone who dares try. Large corporations, of course, to
precisely the same thing, see for example Disney's War and
the concept of an anything, anything at all, falling into

(02:34:02):
the public domain. The sabotage, and on this all four
of our interlocutors, Veblin, Kropotkin clear needs a degree as
long as private ownership exists, because sabotage is all private
ownership really is. But it is not simply enough to
answer corporate sabotage with their own sabotage. As Veblin pointed out,

(02:34:24):
this is simply the ordinary state of affairs, enter capitalism.
For Capotkin, the answer was simple. This rich endowments, painfully
one builded, fashioned, or invented by our ancestors, must become
common property, so that the collective interests of men may
gain forbid the greatest good for all. There must be
appropriation the well being of all the end expropriation. The

(02:34:47):
means how precisely to go about doing such a thing
as been the subject of endless debate for nearly two
hundred years. And I am not arrogant enough to propose
to solve the problem here, But a system where a
company and prevent even the US government from attempting to
produce ventilators by simply buying up the company that won
the contract and refusing to fill the order to maintain

(02:35:09):
the value of the ventilators it was already producing. Is
a system based on nothing less than ensuring that people
will die for or five percent rate of return. If
we are to have any hope of stopping the ravages
that climate change promises for our future, we cannot afford
to be sabotaged at every step. Hey, we'll be back

(02:35:33):
Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
heat death of the universe. It could happen. Here is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for it could happen here, updated monthly at
cool Zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

(02:35:57):
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