It Could Happen Here Weekly 40

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and 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. Number what podcast is this for? Uh? Moira,

(00:30):
That's a perfect way to open this episode because it's
it could happen here, the podcast about things falling apart
um and putting them back together. Sometimes not often enough
because I'm a hack and a fraud. Um. But um,
this is Robert Evans and my guest today is Moira

(00:50):
Meltzer Cohen. Moira, you are my lawyer and you are
my editor. You edited after the Revolution book in stores now,
so you're you're you're many many things to me, um,
and today you're gonna help me understand the Supreme Court.
Well that's let me be a little more specific about

(01:14):
why we're chatting today on for the internet sake. Um.
The Supreme Court last week issued a ruling and there
may have been another ruling by the time you hear this,
but this specific ruling was about a case that had
to do with what's called a Bivens action. Um. If
you have seen people talking about this Supreme Court ruling online,

(01:36):
it has probably been with them sharing an image of
the United States that shows the hundred mile zone where
border patrol is able to operate. UM, and being like, now,
because of this ruling, border patrol can come into your
house with impunity and do whatever they want to you. Um.
There's been a lot of like stuff said about this ruling,

(01:58):
and as is often the case when people are getting
really up in arms about the niche aspects of a
court ruling, they're not entirely correct about what the ruling does. Um.
The hundred mile zone is absolutely a real thing, and
the Feds can do all sorts of funked up shipped
to you in your house. But that is UM, let's

(02:20):
talk about this, yeah, UM sure, So. I think the
first place to start is people are always asking me,
when can the Feds kick in my door? My girlfriend
always says when it's closed, But I say is whenever
they want to? Uh, what might change from case to cases.

(02:45):
They rationalize it in court later. Um. And so this
is this is really a case that further reinforces the
fact that for many, many years, UM, federal agents h

(03:06):
in particular border control have been able, have had a
lot of power to conduct searches if they rationalize those
searches with respect to immigration or in this case the

(03:26):
even more hype term national security. So, um, this is
not new. The federal statute outlining the powers and duties
of border officers was past I think in ninety two,
and I believe always said that border agents can conduct

(03:51):
searches within quote a reasonable distance of the border. I
think case law has determined that that reasonable distance is
a hundred miles. Yeah, we're not really looking at anything
particularly new here. Um. So that one of the things
about this hundred miles, As people keep saying, oh, the

(04:15):
Fourth Amendment doesn't exist within a hundred miles of the border, Um,
it does. This is not considered to be a violation
of the Fourth Amendment because a search within a reasonable
distance of the border is considered a reasonable search right.
The Fourth Amendment protects you from unreasonable searching, and this
is statutorily considered a reasonable search right. So I feel

(04:40):
like a lot of the media around this particular case
is kind of an exercise and extreme point missing. It's
both an overreaction to some things that are outrageous but
are in no way new. Um, everyone's sharing these maps,
like you said, Um, and again it's one of those
things where it's like we're not saying there's not a

(05:02):
lot of that, this is not a problem. That there
aren't problems with the there's that the hundred mile zone
isn't a problem the border patrol. There's not a lot
of messed up stuff that they do. It's it's the
idea that like this ruling came out and suddenly there's
no more Fourth Amendment, right like, which is how some
people have interpreted it. Because the Internet is a machine
that devours context, that's right, social media, I should say, Yeah, sure.

(05:26):
So so this case is is called Egbert v. Bull,
which I just think it's a marvelous case name, and
these are all incredible. The original Bivens case is Bivens
versus six unknown named agents, which I also elect a
lot six unknown narcotics agents. Yeah. Well, I mean there's

(05:46):
a lot of sort of wonderful case names. Um. My favorite,
of course is Alien v. Predator. Um, Yeah, you see
what I did there? I did, I did. I just
showed Garrison Aliens last weekend, so I was, oh, for
the first time, Yes, marvelous. Uh. So, I don't know.

(06:12):
I think what's happening here is that even among people
who kind of have a sense of history or an analysis,
there's maybe this lingering belief that the legal system is
supposed to protect us, or that maybe at some time
it did protect us, and it just like persists like
a vestigial tale of of like hope. Yeah, but I

(06:32):
kind of love this case. I did read this case
and um, at least as Clarence Thomas describes him. The
plaintiff in this case whose bool is basically the viewpoint
character from a Steely Dance song like he like appears
to have sort of spring fully for him from the
head of Donald Fagan, and he drove off with his

(06:53):
vanity plate that says smuggler. Honestly, I'm sure going to
tell me it was something problematic, but sounds like a
cool dude to me. He spent years playing both sides
of this game. He would get paid by people to
smuggle them across the Canadian border and he'd make them,
he'd like extort money from them. He'd make them buy

(07:15):
a room at his hotel, even if they weren't going
to stay at his hotel, and then he'd charge them
money for every hour that he spent driving to pick
them up and take them across to Canada. And then
he would turn around and get paid by the Feds
to snitch on the people who had just paid him
to smuggle them across the border. Cheez, yeah, all right,

(07:36):
now I don't think this guy's cool. Yeah, So he
basically ends up getting in an altercation with a federal
agent and he's back to being cool, okay, And then
when he makes an administrative complaint to the agency, the
agent six the i R S on him. This is,
I mean, alright, not good behavior, right right. But now,

(08:02):
after years of doing dirty work for the Feds, Bool
is outraged because he never thought tigers would eat his face.
So he assues the agent under Bivens, which is a
case that sort of a little bit maybe sometimes gives

(08:23):
individuals a very narrowly tenuous, circumscribed opportunity to sue federal
agents for certain civil rights violations. And um, it's not
a very strong right and it has been getting ever
more eviscerated since. Yeah. Um, And really, what Bivens does

(08:44):
is it gives you, uh, you know, in the very
unlikely event that you win a Bivens claim, it gives
you money, damages. It doesn't give you a better a law.
It doesn't give you better police practices, it doesn't make
you safer. It's not nothing. But it's not like it's

(09:05):
it's money justically what the law can give you. Right, So,
unless you're harboring the delusion that there is a sort
of direct connection between being allowed to try, usually unsuccessfully,
to recover money from the federal government and the self
control or good behavior of federal agents, Vivons is not

(09:29):
actually a particularly useful mechanism for pursuing anything that resembles
like a well developed vision of justice. Right, It's not nothing.
I don't I don't want to dismiss the utility of
Vivian's but it's you know, it's not like it's not
a strong right. It's not a reliable right you know,

(09:54):
to sue. Um, it's not very effective. One of my
loved colleagues uh described it. He said, Bivens is such
a bad doctrine that it's taking other doctrines down with it. Right,
It's just it's um, it's just such a weak case

(10:16):
at this point that it trying to trying to use
it and trying to invoke it can actually end up
just being counterproductive, as it is in this case. Right. Yeah,
we have a very unsympathetic plaintiff and we have a
really weak doctrine, so he sues under Bivens. It goes

(10:38):
up and down the chords. It winds up in the
Supreme Court, which issues a sort of a bunch of
sort of fragmented opinions, but ultimately all the justices mostly
agree this is not a super controversial um question, at
least within the context of the court itself. Yeah. So

(11:01):
the first thing is they all say, you don't there's
no right to sue for money damages under the theory
of First Amendment retaliation. Meaning um wool had sued the
agent for basically for punishing him for making a complaint.
He's saying, I exercise my First Amendment right to make

(11:22):
a complaint to the agency you work for, and then
you punished me by sicking the I R S on me. Right,
I see why that's questionable in the actual like legal documentation. Yeah, so, um,
you know, the justice to say no, that that's not

(11:43):
a right that exists. And then they have some different
thoughts on whether or not you can sue for excessive force. Um.
But ultimately, the big decision that is made here isn't
about the border. It's not about the relative impunity of
order Patrol, which has long operated with relative impunity, just

(12:07):
like the rest of the federal government. Yes, I remember
that impunity when they were firing tear gas at us.
Yeah you know. Uh, they decide you can't sue them, um,
which if you, if you ever could have sued them,

(12:28):
I guess in a successful or effective way, and if
suing them had ever had a meaningful impact on their behavior,
I guess this opinion would be a real loss. But
all this o Hinian really does as far as I
can tell, And I've spoken with my colleagues and we
all agreed that the sort of uproar over this particular

(12:53):
case is a little baffling because all it really does
is further remove what was already a really inaccessible and
pretty weak remedy. And yeah, sorry sir, well you know,
and then everyone lost their minds and started sharing the
a c L S a c L used map of

(13:15):
the hundred miles of border looks like and getting really
mad on Twitter. Yeah, and again the hundred mile border zone.
I think it's fair to say that that's a problem.
I don't like that's that's a bad way for things
to work. The border patrol, as we talked about in
our two part are on the border patrol, is a
lot of massive issues with it. But um, I feel
like kind of what's happening here is some of this

(13:38):
is like a little bit of collective PTSD because of
the shock of the imminent kind of demise of Row.
And so I think maybe there's this kind of expectation
that every ruling issued by the Supreme Court because Funckett
is going to be UM this kind of like earth
shattering like end of a fundamental right. And in this

(13:58):
case it's really just like, no, this is more or
less like this is not a massive see change. Yeah,
I like to say about this kind of thing. It's appalling,
but it's not surprising. I do want to note, just
for your listeners, this case does not in any way
touch our right to sue state level police um because

(14:23):
there is federal legislation called sec that gives us permission
to sue the police, and UM, for some strange reason,
the federal government has not passed similar legislation allowing us
to sue them. That's really surprising. I wonder why. So
In any case, one of the things the Court says

(14:44):
in the Bool opinion is that if the Feds wanted
to be constrained by the citizen, RECongress would have given
us the right to constrain them. So so I think
this particular case that people have been doing out about
is a great sort of example of the way that UM,

(15:08):
the sort of the zeitgeist moves inexplicably to make much
of things that are maybe not all that much, and
will also kind of failing to notice things that are
really significant. And so I'd like to sort of highlight
some of those things. UM. I think there actually are

(15:30):
real reasons to breathe and prepare and gather our courage, UM,
based on what the Supreme Court has done this term, UH,
and I love to talk to you about some of
those things. So I do think there are real reasons
like that to breathe and prepare, and some of the
always about getting too in the weed. UM. I guess

(15:53):
I want to talk both about the shadow adopt it
which sat adopt it is a is a kind of
a more recently point term. Um. What it means is
what it's referring to are the cases that are often heard,
they're not heard. They're decided by the Supreme Court on

(16:13):
the basis of the record below, often without oral argument,
and they're often issued as holding decisions without written opinions,
so they're often not justified or rationalized or you know,
the reasoning for the decisions that are made is often
not made transparent to the public. Okay. Yeah, And these

(16:39):
are cases that are sort of highly procedural or there
not super complicated questions, or they're questions of law where
there's maybe a circuit what it um, and they just
need to resolve you know, what might otherwise be repugnant
views of the law. Yeah. And the shadow docket has

(17:03):
refinently include a jet pinaltycation. Yeah, the decided something of
such grave import with decisions that are not explained by
an opinion where the justice is not makes clear the reasoning. Um,
this is I mean, in my opinion, MH problematic. Um.

(17:29):
And it's you know, to the amount of power that
can be exercised by the superin court. To me, I
think requires a really intense degree of transparency. If you're
I think that like the amount of transparency that is
it's incumbent upon you to have is sort of inversely

(17:51):
proportionate to the amount of power you exercise. Yeah, that
makes sense, um, And so the Supreme Court has just
I mean literally life with it powers here, and so
for them to be making decisions on the shadow dotet
about death penalty cases and death penalty juristic um is
just wild. Um, It's troubling, it's frightening. You know, I

(18:16):
think I can't remember if I talked to you before
about how about the injuries? Yeah, maybe the show about it,
but I certainly talked to you about it. We might
need to do it. It's probably a good idea at
some point to do a show about it. But yeah, Um,
one of the things that makes br injuries so anomalous

(18:39):
is that they aren't public, right, and that to me,
like this is a mathema. Well not to me, it
is in terms of the sort of um received wisdom
about the American legal system. To have secret proceedings is
a mathema. Who you are their own principles of due process,

(19:02):
which you know, which involves uh well noticed and adhering.
But really there's um a commitment to publicity right in
the American legal system that is undermined and trampled upon
by federal granturity, and that there is a similar thing

(19:24):
happening here with the shadow docket. We know at least
what the cases are, we know what these opinions are,
what the holdings end up being, UM. But to have
these kinds of cases being decided without oral argument, to
have these cases being decided UM without written opinions, is troubling.
So that's a move toward an exercise of power that

(19:46):
I need characterize as a politarian, and that I find
days concerning UM. One of the things that we're seeing,
and I think it's sort of not unrelated to that,
is that they're they seem to be dispensing the bat
when it is very decisive, which is precedent right that
the idea that previously decided cases are binding, and you know,

(20:10):
if you overturn one, you really have to be very
clear that that's what you're doing, and you have to
explain why. And we see that with the leaf Rose Grasp,
where they they have, you know, if indeed they issue it.
Sure because and this is like an originalism thing, right,
Like you can throw out precedent if you're saying all

(20:31):
that matters is this interpretation. You're saying that's based on
the original intent of like some dead dudes. Is that
more or less an accurate way to say it? Or
you can overturn DESI UM, you know, or turned precedent.
We would have that. I think the just outcome or

(20:55):
whatever is UM. Yeah, but I think there there's many
reasons that he can overturn President UM. But they seem
to be doing it for subsilential right. They're not. They're
not always the leak road rap didn't was pretty clear
and parent about it. But I think there are some

(21:16):
other things that are going on. Um. There was a
sixth Amendment case where UM they just just sort of
didn't mention all of the countervailing precedents. Yeah, you know
they there's some stuff happening. There is UM a case

(21:38):
in Texas. There was a fishermendent case work the courts.
The Supreme Court sent it back down to UM either
the district as the Court of Appeals. I don't I
don't remember UM or either the district or the circuit uh,
and said, look at the side is on death road

(22:00):
did absolutely with thee in effective asistence of council whether
the as prejudice and the technic court just ignored them. Yeah,
and that's one of those ones that people freaked out about.
That was like, yeah, I think folks should be very
unsettled by this right. And then the court was like,

(22:23):
m they didn't the court. There's Supreme Court that didn't.
They just let them get away with it. Um. And
so there's just sort of weird um push and full
happening not only between this court interpreting the last court

(22:44):
opinions and deciding basically not to enforce them, but but
there's a interesting power struggle where the opinion Court seems
to be strategically feeding power to certain uh certain lower
courts in a way that unusual. You know. So you know,

(23:07):
they're not they're not being transparent, they are not following precedence,
they are not um enforcing the hierarchy of the courts,
which it does sound like an odd thing. I can
put you need to complain about um. But one of
one of the things that we want to know is
that you know, One of the ways that we can

(23:29):
anticipate what the law is or make reliable legal arguments
is that the law has to be consistent with you know,
the law and the lower court that's to be consistent
with what the Supreme Court has said. And if we
can no longer rely on that, UM, it's um, you know, chaotic. Potentially,

(23:49):
it's really bad. It's really bad for our clients, apparently,
particularly clients who are facing the death penalty, which is
a particular concerns. UM. This court does seems pretty intent
on knocking over the Empire sist Amendment. UM. And then
I think yesterday or the day before, they issued a
really important immigration case on the class actions that were

(24:12):
brought UM by around behalf of people who were detained
an immigration detention for like months and months and months
without hearing, without vant hearing. And essentially what the court
held was UM that lower courts don't have any authority
to UM lower coach stuff. So many authorities to UM

(24:38):
demand that the federal government do or not do certain
things because they're they're playing as as the Immigration Naturalization
Act does not give them that authority UM. And so
it's there there's a lot I think the big trend
there is there's a lot of protecting the federals of

(25:00):
this from any kind of accountability. Um, accountability that's being
imposed by lower general courts who are concerned the States, right.
They have a cool way of showing it. I don't
know what else to say about it, because it is
one of those things where when we talk about, or

(25:20):
when I talk about, like the frustration at people kind
of sharing information about stuff the Court is doing, or
about changes to how our rights are being interpreted by
courts that are incorrect. It's not because like there's not
a problem. It's because it's really important to be aware
of like the it's really important to like see the

(25:43):
problem accurately, um, and to see it like it's this
it's this broad assault. Like like you said, the fact
that the fact that you have this kind of high
level attack on the Fifth Amendment is really frightening because
that's one of like theoretically our primary protections. Yeah, there's
also I think there's going to be a mirandic case.

(26:05):
Okay already, Oh boy, I'm not looking forward to that.
That's a little bit anxious about that. Um, Yeah, I
don't know. I mean I think that the general thing. So,
you know, I think the thing that I would like

(26:28):
to highlight your paying attention to what writes just the
Freme Court is trampling on It's obviously pretty important, but
it's pretty likely to be kind of more of the same,
particularly for quality targeted groups of people. I like the

(26:48):
lot is in certain respects fictional, right, Like the lies
an abstract concept. Sure, absolutely, yes, your real impact it's
not you know, like I don't want to get all
post modern here. It's not like a lot of fictional
things have have real impacts, um exactly, Like, uh, it

(27:16):
has real impact obviously, but I think that the impact
of the import ruling, you know, it's very serious, it's
very important. Um, but it's also sort of immediately transformed
the world. I think it just sort of changes what
kinds of solutions we look to, right, And like, I'm

(27:40):
not particularly inclined to look to the court to protect
me for anyone, um and not particularly I don't trust
the law or spurts enough to really want them to
be the arbiter of things place free, siege or Yeah,

(28:04):
absolutely not. I mean, obviously I want very council, but um,
you know, my hope is that we can take carib
ease whether or not to make the course they're relevant
will realize the dead type dream. But um, I guess

(28:26):
this thing, you know, especially with roads, and I was
I was talking to Margaret, a mutual friend, about this.
The thing that's going to change if we're always overturned. Uh,
it's really going to be what delusions are available to
us and how much courage will it take to pursue

(28:46):
them and what are the potential consequencely right, Yeah, what
kind of resources it do you need? Um? I think
in the space of these Supreme Court decisions, some of
which are genuinely terrible, um, and some of which are

(29:10):
just reinforcing things that have belonged in the two Yeah,
you know, our grief and our outraged and are bitter
popes are not practiced. Um, they're not necessarily useful, right,
and and even getting super in the leaves of you know,

(29:33):
what does this opinion actually say? I mean, I think
that's an interesting but it's and it's good to know
and to at least have somebody around you know. Um.
But instead of spending so much time focusing on the

(29:54):
real knit, picky language was being used by the unelected
God things of the United States. Maybe we start thinking
a little bit more about what are the material impacts
that might have and what are ways, what are tools
that maybe aren't legal tools or at least that are

(30:17):
only legal tools, UM, that might be useful in UM
picturing the things that we value. And I think that's
both an important note and a good one to end on.
Moira Um, I will run one thing by you real quick.

(30:38):
So I have a plan and I want to I
want your advice in the constitutionality of this. I would
like to acquire Fort Bragg. So I'm thinking what I
do is I go in a Third Amendment case right
and say that, well, I mean if look, you can't
what if we just extended the Quartering Act right like
in the you know, could we could we push it

(31:00):
even further so that nobody can host soldiers and then
all those military bases are gonna be there's gonna be
a fire sale. You can't keep soldiers on them, Government's
not going to keep running them. And then I get
to own Fort Bragg. How are we doing? Is that
is that legal? It's the whole end popole that you
own Fort Bragg. That is one of the end goals.

(31:20):
I think you should probably cost context that rating. Okay, okay,
because yeah, you're right, they're probably gonna outbid me anyway, Okay,
But constitutionally, I'm on solid grounds with the third Right.
That's bulletproof, you know. Like like many of the questions

(31:41):
you asked me, the legal questions you asked me, I
think the answers. Nobody knows, nobody knows. Okay, I'm gonna
I'm gonna do what the n r A did with
the second but with the Third Amendment. It's going to
take a couple of decades, but I feel I feel
good about this course of action. Thank you for putting
up with me. More you had some stuff you wanted
to plug at the end of this episode, Here I do.

(32:03):
I would like us the rep Legal Defense Fund of
if when how because if we're going to talk about
row at all, the oh boy, yeah, a fund fund
which can be found at repro Legal Defense Fund dot org.
They have a donate page. They're doing amazing work. I'm

(32:25):
um just incredibly impressed with um. They are also at
RECRO Legal Defense Funds on Instagram and probably also on Twitter. UM,
but I don't really understand Twitter, so I'm not going
to swear to it. That's for the best. We'll check
that out dot com retro legal fund, So please donate

(32:48):
to the Reproductive Legal Fund Twitter dot com repro legal Fund.
By the time this episode drops, we may have the
row thing. So I know everybody's gearing up, but you
know this is definitely uh, it's it's it's good to

(33:10):
help out. We all need to be like Poland because
we're not going to yank this back on course through
just hoping that eventually Supreme Court gets better. Well, we're
gonna wish really hard. It would be nice, it would
be nice, but I think organizing is probably a more
effective thing to do in the immediate term. Um, so yeah,

(33:34):
I thank you, Moira, and um that's the episode. Oh

(33:55):
it could happen here? Which is the podcast that can say?
Is I'm Robert Evans with me? Are other people hello?
Other people? Hi? Hello? Uh so this podcast? Thanks falling
about part putting back together? YadA, YadA, YadA. Today our guest,

(34:16):
well not our guest. Our host is uh the inimitable
Andrew Andrew. Hey, Hey, how's it going? What are we
talking about today? What are we learning? I'm good? I'm good?
Um today open to tackle another book kind of Um,
this one's not fictional like the past two. UM. So
I do hope to like explore some of those in

(34:37):
the future because I think some good conversations come out
to those. This week, we're gonna be talking about Paulo
Freire and the pedagogy of the oppressed. Oh yes, for
those who don't know, Paulo Freire is Brazilian educator and
one of the leading advocates of Well was Brazilian educator

(34:58):
and leading advocates of critical pedagogy. Pedagogy is basically like
the study of education, philosophy of education UM. He was
born in nine and his experiences kind of led him
to that path because during his childhood and ad lessons,
he was falling behind in school because he was poor.

(35:22):
His poverty and his hunger affected his ability to learn.
And so as he got older and he got opportunities
and he was able to study and so on, and
he basically realized he needs to do more to uplift
the lives of the poor, improved lives of the poor, UM,
in order to facilitate better educational outcomes. As he says,

(35:45):
and were cold, I didn't understand anything because of my hunger.
I wasn't dumb, it wasn't a lack of interest. My
social condition just didn't allow me to have an education.
Experience showed me once again the relationship between social class
us and knowledge. So as he progressed in his studies

(36:05):
and his writing and stuff, he eventually contributed to a
philosophy of education which blended classical approaches coming from Plato
and modern Marxist and post Marxist and anti clonial thinkers.
When I was reading the book, it really sort of
struck me. I've got a lot of UM and a

(36:25):
lot of France found on vibes from his work. He
died in um r I p um. But his greatest
contribution UM to me at least and to most people,
is his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In the book,
he sort of explores a detailed Marxist class analysis UM

(36:50):
in the relationship between like the colonize and colonize, the
oppressed and the oppressed, And he talks about the banking
model of education that traditional pedagogy spouses because it treats
the students as like this bank, this empty vessel to
be filled with knowledge. Instead, he argues for a form

(37:12):
of education, of pedagogy that treats the lunar as a
co creator in knowledge as far as I'm aware, um,
and I guess it's kind of is illustrated in the
book itself. But as far as I know, there wasn't
an anarchist or libertarian socialist of any variety, but he

(37:32):
still ended up coming to some anarchic conclusions with regard
to the education system and learning and stuff. I mean,
anarchists have been writing about, you know, like youth liberation
and the school system and even experimenting with new models
of schooling for a long time. Um. The Forever Movement,

(37:53):
for example, experimented with implementing modern schools in UM in
the US and Spain, and a Goldman was very much
involved in that process. And UM, I don't think that
the experiments were necessarily free of error, but I think
they did a good job of trying something new, trying
something with more liberatory in the spare of education, because

(38:16):
I mean, for the past several hundred years now, UM,
we've kind of been going with this sort of um.
Prussian model of education is very strict, very regimented, very
divided model of education. The rules UM to sort of ferment,
nationalism and division, class divisions and stuff within the populace.

(38:41):
So I think that any experimentation in mo libitary and
direction is a positive. In the preface, um Fair sort
of goes into why this book came about. He's talking
about his experience as a teacher in Brazil, the times,
the observations he made well in political exile, and so

(39:03):
what he realized as a teacher when he was teaching
students is that they had a sort of a fair
of freedom. It's not like a real fair of freedom.
It's more of a fair of the risks associated with
freedom because of the experiences and stuff that they've had.
Um What he considers the most vital, however, to the
education system, it's sort of just establishing conscientious out or

(39:27):
critical consciousness within students, a consciousness that commits to social
change and human liberation. According to for, the educational model
can only really be successful if people are radicalized through it,
if people are able to see the issues in their

(39:49):
current society, think about them, stew upon them, criticize them,
compare them, and look at ways to solve them. And
if they don't about with that sort of critical consciousness,
then as well, for not. Basically, the education system is
kind of spinning on top in mud. I find it
especially interesting that I ended up reading this when I did, because,

(40:13):
as we've seen in the US, a lot of conversations
are now attacking anything even approaching critical consciousness. But this,
you know, who all debate going on about critical race
theory and this sort of even though critical race theories
are being taught in primary or secondary education, this attack,

(40:35):
this full front of attack on anything that resembles critical
thinking and critical study of history and of the present.
So in chapter one for makes a case for why
the pedagogy the press is necessary. He says, a human
kind central problem is how we a fir more identity

(40:59):
as human beings. Everyone is trying to reach that sort
of affirmation, that sort of human identity, that sort of
human nous um. But oppression and systems of oppression interrupt
that process. They prevent people from expressing and establishing their
full humanity. Where they're talking about racism keeping people from

(41:19):
reaching their full potential, or sexism preventing people or you know,
sa patriarchy with the whole limitations and such puts upon
people's sexuality and gender expression and gender identification. One of
these systems of oppression are put in place to restrict
and confine and bound us below you know, our full potential,

(41:46):
and so a lot of that and a lot of
the you know, cultivation and forging of one's awareness of
you know, the systems around them and how to operate
within them. To explain in the education system, and so
the education system is should be one of the critical

(42:07):
junctures in which we which our fight for oppressed people.
There's a sort of dehumanization that it could as a
result of oppression, whether it be in the form of
comparing people to animals, as racists offten do, whether it

(42:32):
be in the form of decreating people to this sort
of childlike status, which itself is a is a form
of oppression because the fact that you know, childlikeness and
youth is considered to be something less than It's just

(42:53):
another way they where people are oppressed and another way
in which people are prevented from as certain they're tatomy
and their humanity oppressors. They tend to treat people as
objects to be possessed, see freedom as threatening, and in turn,
oppressed people end up becoming alienated from each other through

(43:16):
oppressure and begin to see their oppressors as something to
strive towards for It talks about how they oppressed. The
whole vision and the whole understanding of what being human
is is being like oppressors, and so a lot of
people and you see that even today. You know, um,
when they strive for freedom, they strive to become entrepreneurs.

(43:40):
You know, they strive to become business owners. They strive
to become billionaires and CEOs and all these sort of
images of what, you know, what being human looks like.
Because people are striving to be free, and if the
only way you can get a measure of freedom is
by becoming an oppress yourself, and it makes sense a

(44:02):
lot of oppressive looking to try to do that. Of course,
as Fair himself says, and the oppresses themselves are not
fully free either, because by denying the oppressed people their humanity,
they robbed themselves of humanity. The fight for liberation, as

(44:23):
Fair argues, must consist of two stages. Reflection on the
nature of oppression and the concrete action needed to change it,
and that sort of reading that that that line are paraphrasing,
but it it reminds me of the process of prefigurative politics,

(44:44):
where not only are you bringing about the consciousness of
people to recognize these systems of oppression and understand how
they operate, but the concrete action to change it is
one that is intended to liked the society that we
wish to establish in the future. Fare does one um that,

(45:08):
you know, leaders and stuff must engage in dialogue with
oppressed people rather than becoming like oppressors. But as the
book goes on, I think he relies a bit too
much on this concept of leaders as well. He wants
against them existing above the people, but he's still sort
of upholds that distinction between the leaders and the people.

(45:35):
As the book progresses, um he begins to compare the
concept of the banking model to the concept of the
problem posing model of education, as he calls it. In
the banking model um quote, he the teacher talks about
reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable.

(45:57):
Where Else he expands upon a topic completely aliens existential
experience to the students. His task is to fill the
students with the contents of his narration, contents which are
detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them,
I could give them significance. Words are emptied of their
concreteness and become a hollow, alienated and alienating verbocity areny

(46:24):
being that sentence is quite proposed. But on the contrary,
banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction to the
following attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole.
The teacher teachers, and the students are taught. The teacher
knows everything and the student knows nothing. Teacher thinks and

(46:47):
the students are thought about. Teacher talks and the students
listen meekly. The teacher disciplines, and the students are disciplined.
Teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply.
The teacher acts, and the students have the illusion of
acting through the action of the teacher. Teacher chooses the
program content and the students, who were not consulted, adapt

(47:09):
to it. The teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with
his or her own professional authority, which they set in
opposition to the freedom of the students. The teachers the
subjective the learning process, while the pupils on their objects.
I think um Flaire needed to incorporate some more gender
neutral language and that so I had to kind of
correct him there. Um. But that quote, that that quote

(47:35):
in full, it really reminds me, um of my schooling experience. Um.
As some people may knew, I was actually home schooled
for the majority of my learning experience, I actually didn't
know that. Oh well, now you know, Yeah, so I was.
I was home schooled, um for I would say, the
majority of my education experience. And then after I went

(47:58):
into college and stuff. But before then, I did, um
make it through the school system. And even though it
was a really long time ago, my memories are still
crystal clear of that process. You know. Um, I remember
seeing students being disciplined. Um. I myself was kind of
a teacher's pet. But that doesn't surprise me. And the

(48:25):
best possible way, I'm not sure I to take it,
but I'll take it in a good way because Andrew
not me. That doesn't surprise me. Teachers or cops. Yeah,

(48:46):
this is my pre anarchist days. I wasn't you know,
I didn't. I wasn't jumping out the booth canal with
a black flag, you know. Unfortunately, a cab includes the
person who tried to get me to read Catcher in
the Rye. The Rye was a book and it was
perfectly fine book. I'm just being an asshole. But but like, Andrew,

(49:06):
what are you alluding here? Is that, like stoicism is
something that is weaponized in the education system. Stoicism, stoicism
being like no emotion delivering like right right, right, because
I was thinking the philosophy, but because yeah, you're like

(49:28):
a vessel for quote unquote facts and knowledge to be
like injected into you for you to like hold as
as Yeah, it's we're seeing a resurgence in this type
of saying all the albeit probably a little bit less
eloquently stated in some of the anti schooling anarchist literature
that's been coming out in the past few years, or

(49:49):
at least has been gaining more traction the past few years.
M Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because this and that's kind
of that's kind of the funny thing about it, because
most people in their school and experience can recall it
being in some ways negative, even if they look at
it in a positive light, we can at least even

(50:10):
if they don't go in that fully radical direction. Most
people can look at some of the elements to their schooling,
of their education, and so that that wasn't right. You know,
there's something messed up about that. Even something as simple
as having to like ask, you know, the teacher to
go on and use the toilet. It's just this is
those sorts of little ways of control. So, like as

(50:32):
I was saying, in my school and experience back when
I was in primary school, I was very adorable. I'm
sure I could guess, but I remember seeing these students
being disciplined. They had the bell had wrung for you know,
the end of break, and he's supposed to, you know,
fire back into class. But I think there was a

(50:55):
school next door that was having some kind of event
and they're playing like music, and so a bunch of
students in my class, not me, but a bunch of
students in my class were you know, um, dancing at
the side of the school, enjoying the music, having a
good time or whatever. Um they heard the bell and
they didn't go because they were, you know, they were
having a good time. They were like six seven eight um.

(51:19):
But then afterwards the teacher, after you know, I sit
down and stuff, leacher goes and finds them and brings
them in and this is prior to, at least of
my knowledge, prior to the corporal punishment being phased out
of school. So I just remember seeing them having to,

(51:40):
you know, like lay out their hands and receive punishment
for daring to have joy after hours, you know, daring
to enjoy themselves. Um what it was supposed to be
class time and they're supposed to be in class. I'm
sure people have similar experiences, at least of a kind

(52:01):
of punishment uncontroul I mean, this is not the same
kind of punishment, but I think to your point of
being controlled, like even just like not even being aware
of it, just like being forced to stand up and
say the pledge of allegiance. In America, for example, it
becomes this like repetitive culty thing every morning that you're
expected to do, and if you don't do it, um

(52:24):
personal experience, if you refuse to do that, you have
to go to the principal's office and explain why. And
it happens over and over again. And I think it's
like you're you're questioned and you're punished even for like thinking,
not like differently, or questioning not even thinking, just questioning reality.
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And in Syria when I was

(52:49):
I went to school in Syria when I was really small,
and me and my sister ate really slow and we
would get hit with a ruler on our hands because
we didn't we didn't finish lunch fast enough. Um, so yeah,
mine isn't that intense. But the school I went to
when I was a little kid in Oklahoma, number one
day paddled us. That was legal as a public school.

(53:11):
But my first grade teacher was obsessed with the fact
that like it was bad to be left handed, and
you know, she couldn't. She couldn't do the ship that
they used to do right. They used to like funk
kids up for using their left hands. But she would
every single day like chide me and tell me that
I should use my right hand to write and stuff,
that it wasn't like proper, that it was like bad
that I could if you if you if you're not aware,

(53:33):
if you're not left handed, when you're like do stuff
with a pencil and you're left handed, you get a
bunch of like pencil stuff on your on the side
of your hand. Right. It's just like because of the
way that unless you're using like those weird left handed
notebooks and ship, which no one ever has UM and
she would like she gave me so much ship for
being dirty because like I would get stuff on my hand.

(53:53):
It was just like when I tell people that, it's
like really, this was like the nineties. Yeah, there's there's
a few of those folks left. I think she was
extremely Catholic um and I know none seems to go
on that stuff. I didn't know that Catholic people cared
about the left handed thing. Catholic Catholic schools. You yeah, yeah, yeah,

(54:15):
I wouldn't say that, like it's I don't think there's anything.
And like the Catechism about not being left handed right right,
I mean like in some very strict Muslim culture, a
lot of it is like phased out. But for example,
your left hand isn't meant to be used as the
primary hand because it's like a dirty hand, like the
one you wipe yourself with. Yea, yeah, there's a lot.

(54:37):
But like I know you were left handed though, yikes.
Oh yes, yeah, yikes, thank you, thank you. You should
be concerned. I have to makes a number of things frustrating,
like shearing sheep anyway, whatever, M well, everything is designed
for right handed people, for sure like it has everything

(54:57):
it is you try to but you are the master, right, Okay, sorry,
speaking of hands just how the curiosity? Did you all
have the hand up hand out experience? Hand out? What's
hand out? Basically? Um, it's just sort of a tool
you su just sort of a sort of repetitive kind
of follow instructions kind of thing. So like if the

(55:21):
class getting too rowdies, like hands up, hands out, hands up,
hands out, and the teacher does not stop saying it
until everyone is quiet down, and it's just like like
a robot. Just reason and where I don't think I've
experienced that. I mean you did, Um, I wasn't an
assistant teacher at one point, and for very very young children.

(55:45):
I'm talking like four to five year olds, And I
understand the frustration of like you're just trying to get
something done and everyone's going a while now. They just
had snacks or whatever, and everyone's kind of while now.
But I think that says about like the methods we're
using than about the showering themselves. You know, it's all
about like you have to you should adjust more to

(56:07):
like their cycles and their needs, their stage, rather than
trying to force and shove them into this sort of
like robotic Yeah, yeah, totally. It's yeah, they're allowed to
actually develop naturally or like be themselves in a setting
like that exactly. I think what happens that kind of

(56:29):
throws me is that h people have these experiences, you know,
traumatic and not as traumatic in the education system a
lot of people, but some people they come out radicalized
by it, and other people end up being the like
most stringe and most passionate advocates of it. Like even

(56:52):
like this Catholic school teacher you're talking about, Robert, Like,
at some point she was also in the education system,
and it really makes me wonder, like what she went
through to have to come up with that kind of mindset. Yeah,
I mean I think she'd grown up in Oklahoma too,
so it must have been a nightmare like everything in
that state. Yeah, Like why does it have a panhandle anyway? Um,

(57:21):
I mean, the there is a reason for that, and
it's not fun, but okay, I'm assuming it's slavery, any
fucked up geographic thing going on in the South. The
reason is generally slavery. Yeah, right, right, right right, And
so she spends a lot of time talking about this

(57:41):
banking model and we could go on and on about it.
I spent a lot of time just talking about the
education system and all my problems with it, and at
some point I would like to do an episode about
differ rare schools and out of how those sort of transpired.
But what FIR proposes um as an alternative is the

(58:04):
problem posing model, which is basically, through dialogue, the teacher
and the students ceased to exist. The teacher of the
students and the students of the teachers ceased to exist.
So instead of there being these two separate categories, they

(58:24):
are teacher, students and student teachers. There's no separation anymore
between the one who teaches and the one who has taught. Rather,
there's a dialogue between the two as they become part
of this process where all of them can grow. You know,
you let go of this sort of authoritarian arrangements and

(58:51):
allow people to teach and be taught, two learn and
be learned to a really draw out what it is
that we have to gain from each other. Rather than
being sort of docile listeners, the students and the teachers,

(59:14):
the student teachers teacher students, they become co investigators in dialogue.
They become critics. They become radicals who are able to
open up and depathologize the way that reality works with

(59:36):
human beings exist in the world. Banking education tends to
inhibit creativity and try to domesticate our consciousness through after
when I was talking about human investigation the other day, um,
But in contrast, in the problem posing model tries to

(59:59):
it really bases itself on creativity and stimulates, rather than domestication,
a sort of a full flourishing of what someone could
be unbound and unshackled. So, in summary, banking theory is immobilizing.
It's it's fixating. It doesn't acknowledge people as people but

(01:00:22):
rather objects, whereas the problem posing model it takes people's historicity,
it takes people's humanity as their starting point upon which
they can grow and learn from each other. I think
that's what frustrated me the most about the education system
in the time that I was in it, and even
when I got back in it in college, even though

(01:00:44):
it's not as bad in some ways, because you know,
in college they tend to emphasize dialogue a bit more
on certain classes. But I find the issue is that
there's this assumption in you know, the earlier sections of school,
in the secondary school and primary school and even preschool

(01:01:06):
that the children, the youth, you know, they're not there
to have anything to add. They're just there to regurgitate,
to to study and to repeat what they've studied for approval,
not just something I definitely did back in the day.
If what's lacking is dialogue, a dialogue that requires you know,

(01:01:30):
hoop and trust and critical thinking, then liberation, you would
also be lacking. They can't be dialogue without love for
the world and for people, and for knowledge and for
bring that knowledge out to people. So as for our says,

(01:01:53):
you know, love is at the same time the foundation
of dialogue and dialogue itself. On the other hand, that
kind of exists without humility. The naming of the world
through which people constantly recreate that world cannot be an
act of arrogance. I remember incountering a lot of arrogance
teachers and lecturers and stuff in my time. To the

(01:02:17):
education system, um are being condescended to multiple occasions, and
that's the thing nobody likes being condescended to. But condescension
is kind of the default way in which we engage
with young people. Just sort of there's this projected ignorance

(01:02:43):
upon them, is that they have nothing of value to
add or to share. Another contrary, you know, we all
have something to contribute. If we all closed off, and
if we are closed off to the contributions of others,
we can't engage in dialogue with them. If we are fearful,
if we are um considering people to be like inferior

(01:03:07):
in some ways, if we cannot embrace people as equals,
and how can we engage in dialogue with them? I
think there's a beauty in the way that he reflects
on dialogue, and he goes on and on about it
for quite a while. At one point, he says that
dialogue requires an intense faith in humankind, faith in their

(01:03:28):
power to make and remake, to create and recreate, faith
in their vocation to be more fully human, which is
not the privilege of an elite, but the birth right
of all. And so, finally, when he's talking about action
and how um this sort of change is brought about,
he divides cultural action into two kinds, dialogical action and

(01:03:53):
anti dieological action. While the pressers use antideological action to
protect their power and to separate people, radicals can use
dialogical action to bring people together in the struggle for
freedom as a different methods of anticheological action. Through conquest,
through divide and rule, through manipulation, through cultural invasion, oppressors

(01:04:17):
were able to put the oppressed in the predicament of
there in. You know, the oppressed wouldn't be the oppressed
if not for the oppressors oppressing them. That's kind of
self explanatory. Um. But in contrast, radicals from among the oppressed,
using biological action, using cooperation, unity, organization, and cultural synthesis

(01:04:43):
are able to rise above and push back against this
oppression and to allow education to flourish among all as.
I think that's the beauty of the text, um the
who that it did abuse in people to really bring

(01:05:04):
about these changes. And I think it was a good read,
five outs of five excellent. And it's not very long, right,
it's like under two from what I yes, yes, it's
like four short chapters. Rely sure. I know back when
you were talking about how um people are sectors of

(01:05:28):
the right specifically are so set on attacking like anything
related to like critical theory or critical race theory. Um. I.
The the book was was banned like like a decade
and like over a decade ago from the Arizona Schools
for teaching students that they are oppressed. Uh yeah, that's

(01:05:48):
that's how you know, that's to be expected. It's a
good book. Yeah yeah, so that's anyway, just just a
fun fun fact there. We can't we can't have kids
knowing that, uh, they have shared interests as a group, um,
and that adults are mistreating them comprehensively. That's good. Yeah.

(01:06:12):
God just reminded me of so many just moments that
mean teachers like really got into it or like your
teachers that were condescending that I hated. I have to
really go through the role decks and try to vent
this out. Now after we finished recording, Well, listen, if
you're a child, why are you listening to this? Rise

(01:06:33):
up in rebellion? Uh? Destroy the adults. Their joints are terrible.
Hit him in the knees. They won't recover. My joints
are terrible. Exactly, some fucking nine year old whack you
in the knee with like down, You're out of the game. No,
I know my kids, my kne would break. Yeah, embrace

(01:06:54):
the ancient traditions, make les, and go for the fucking joints. Yeah,
children of the world, you have nothing to lose, which
your bed times. That's that's the episode. Andrew, should we

(01:07:25):
record this episode? Sure, let's start. I'm sure. I'm sure
we can use some of that is the opening. Hi,
welcome to It could happen here the podcast that is
about medical ethics in the eighteen sixties, not today but
fair Yeah, no to today today. It's it's me because

(01:07:45):
we're long and we're doing an episode about inflation and
speaking of medical ethics while speaking of kinks. Actually, the
moment I said that, I was like, I have opened
myself up for that was some of the phil outside
That was from some of the first weird interport Internet
point I came apart. It was specifically the cast of
duck Tails being like, okay, let's get to the topic

(01:08:09):
of the episode. That is, this episode is now about
duck Tails, inflation, fetish pornography. That is enough, pre rebel Christopher,
what do you have for us today? Yeah, so we're
talking about inflation. Um, we're talking about economic inflation. To
be fair, this is somebody was making money off of

(01:08:31):
that inflation. I'll tell you that much. God, I mean
the one thing duct Tails actually does crossover because of
Scrooge McDuck and his giant and his giant and that
actually it does. That's right, I can tell you right
now that's not the only thing about him that was inflated.
Oh boy, talking about is dick. Okay, let's let's keep it,

(01:08:59):
keep it on tracked. Okay, So all right, all right,
if people are inflation, it's not good. It's pretty high.
It's I probably should have looked up the inflation rate,
isn't it, Like, yeah, I think it's it keeps point six. Yeah. Yeah.
But every time someone says it's this or it's that,
people are like, well no, but they also changed these

(01:09:20):
these and these indicators five years ago and these other
ones ten years ago, so really it would be this,
and there's judging who's securate about that? This? This is
the thing. I didn't put this in the episode, but
there's a thing that if you study economics you will
realize pretty quickly is that all of the like basically
all of the aconstancy. So we have our fucking bullshit
and they're like are basically they're they're they're really really fake,

(01:09:43):
Like yeah, like we we don't like what one of
one of the big ones that you know. Is like
one of the underlying things that makes all economics fake
is that no one knows how to actually calculate the
value of of just like a factory. Like like if
if you have like a bundle of goods, right, and
they're not the same thing, so I don't know, you
have two factories they make different things. Actually figuring out

(01:10:04):
what the value of that is is like fucking impossible,
and the like the way that it's done in like
if if you look at like like there are these
like the um producer statistical animals, right, and the values
that are in the like the un statistical animals are
literally them guessing because because the thing is like the
value depending on like the actual value of the thing

(01:10:25):
changes right depending on where it is, unlike a supply demanker,
blah blah blah blah. And so they literally just tell
the people who are doing the econometrics, you just like
pick a pick a random like price that they that
that that they think is equilibrium. So it's it's completely bullshit.
It's it's it's bullshit like literally all the way down.
It's nonsense. All of the indexes are wrong. Uh yeah, Unfortunately,

(01:10:50):
the field of economics doesn't really care about this that much,
so we're gonna have to sort of take them seriously.
And the thing I specifically want to talk about today
was that there was a really interesting paper that was
produced by two economists at the DC Federal Reserve UM,
David Rattner and j sim about why inflation happens, which
is called Who Killed the Phillips Curve and Murder Mystery,

(01:11:12):
and which we're talking about this for two reasons. One
one because it's funny, because I what is going to
happen over the course of this paper is that the
Federal Reserve has combat Federal Reserve has discovered Marxism, and
they are going to attempt to solve mystery of inflation
by by applying by by by applying marks. And the

(01:11:34):
second thing, the second meason I want to talk about
this is that it reveals something that's very very important
about the current political situation, which is that both economists
and like the rest of the ruling class in general,
do not understand what inflation is or what they sort
of under kind of understand what it is, they don't
know what causes it. UM. And before we go on here,
I should like explain what inflation is because most people

(01:11:59):
I don't know the the way I gott talked about
I talked about about this with Garrison like a few
days ago about like like the way people get taught
about inflation is that inflation is when like your money
is worth less. Yeah, when when the government prints more
money so to each individual dollar is worth less because
it's more of them circulating. Yeah. Yeah, and and this
is like this is this is propaganda. Um, that is

(01:12:24):
not what inflation is. Inflation is literally just when prices
go up. And if you think about it, like, okay,
that that's kind of the same thing sort of because
if prices go up, like your your you know, your
your dollars are worth less money, right, But mostly inflation
isn't about the amount of money becoming less. Mostly it's
about something happens that makes things cost more. Um, and

(01:12:48):
you know and and likely yeah, like the it is
possible for you to get inflation because the government printing
too much money, but like mostly are like symbiotic, right,
government with more money because prices are going up so
that people need more money in circulation to buy things. Um,
you saw this happen a lot with the COVID pandemic. Um.
So it's it's that both these things kind of feed

(01:13:08):
off each other and contributes of But but I think
something that's important to understand about this is that if
if you look into the actual econ stuff, like the
supply of money, like how much money there is in
the world, has very very little to do with inflation.
It only really has effects inflation when you're doing with
like I don't like nineteen thirties twenties Germany or like
China after World War Two, where just there's literally just

(01:13:29):
like you know, the government prints so much money that
like like my my I have my family has a
bunch of stories about like literally carrying out baskets full
of money in China to like buy a train ticket
because but like everybody knows about buy maur Germany too
is like the weird arrows full of cash and stuff. Yeah,
but this stuff that's actually it's really rare, and it's
like the reason everyone knows. But when it happens is

(01:13:50):
that it's only happened. It's happened like four or five times,
and mostly that's not that's not what why inflation happens.
And if you look at inflation right now. For example,
there's the prices of like a whole bunch of stuff,
from like food to like microprocessors are going up because
a it's harder to produce things because of COVID b
our Supply chains are collapsing, and see because Russian invaded
Ukraine and like absolutely annihilated an enormous portion of the

(01:14:13):
global food supply. And this that stuff causes prices to
go up, right because now it's harder to make a thing,
And because it's harder to make the thing, that thing
costs more. And this has you know, this has literally
nothing to do with with the money supply, right, Like
it doesn't have anything to do with how much money
there is in a circulation. UM. And there's another reason
that that that will get into kind of at the

(01:14:35):
end that inflation happens that is not also has nothing
to do with money, which is that corporations just do
price markups because they know people will pay for it.
And that's that's happening to UM. But having an explanation
of like why inflation is happening is really really politically important,
even even if the explanation that you have is completely wrong,

(01:14:56):
it it allows you you do really powerful things politically.
On Like, one of the ways that neoliberalism sort of
took power is that in in in the in the
seventies and eighties, especially in sort of sort of the
the seventies in particular, both both in academia and a
sort of politics written large. There's this problem where you

(01:15:19):
have a bunch of these old Keynesian economists who are
like Kensians are like they're big on like using government
spending to keep the economy running, and like you get
a lot of welfare programs. But yeah, it was like, okay,
you can avoid crises by having the government spending. But
the problem is that like they couldn't explain why inflation
was happening in the seventies. Um, And this was because
the Kenyans working the Kensians are working out something called

(01:15:40):
the Phillips curve. And we have to do a little
bit of econ bullshit. But it's not that complicated. I
promise I survived it, so it'll be fine. So the
Phillips curve says that like the closer you get to
full employment, and like the lower the unemployment rate gets,
the higher inflation rigettes. And this this sort of really
starts to kick in around from like five percent unemployment

(01:16:01):
to like four percent to three percent unemployment. Uh, the
the inflation rate like spikes. And you know that the
reason this is supposed to happen is because the lower
the lower the unemployment rate is, Uh, wages start to
rise because as there's lots of people who' unemployed, you
have to pay them more money to get them to work.
And yeah, so this is and and the theory behind this,

(01:16:24):
right is that like what wages increasing is what is
what causes inflation happened because it makes everything costs more.
Now there's a simple and obvious this is like, this
is a very simple and obvious solutions. So the problem
of why like inflation happens and like all simple and
obvious solutions, it is also wrong. The Philips curve does
not explain inflation. I'm gonna I'm gonna refer everyone in

(01:16:45):
the chat to this tweet that I made, and I
want you to look at exhibit A, which is the
Phillips curve, And then I want you to look at
Exhibit B, which is I actually plotted unemployment versus inflation
in the US from like now seen, and I want
to get a description of what the second graph looks like,

(01:17:07):
because it's supposed to look like a curve. Well, so
the first, the first graph we have we have an
excite an X Y graph of the Phillips curve starting
at eight percent closer to the y axis and then
swooping down and then flattening out at on the X
axis for the unemployment rate versus the inflation right. And

(01:17:31):
then for the next graph, we have, Um, what's not
a curve? What is instead inflation and unemployment graphed um,
except it's zig zagging everywhere like dark sides omega beams. Um,
it is not, in fact doing a curve. My my,

(01:17:52):
my favorite thing about this is that um, like multiple
multiple like, and this us with both unemployment and inflation. Uh,
there are multiple unemployment rates that are associated with different
inflation rates and multiple inflation rates that that are all
that that generate two different rates of unemployment. It's it's incredible.

(01:18:12):
It is it is, it is it is a it
is an is an absolute sort of monument to how
much this stuff doesn't work. And there's a really good
reply to your graft tweet that says economists of the
modern day court astrologers, it's basically true, like, which is
funny astrologers, though we're probably right more often that's true. Well,

(01:18:39):
I mean they're simply guessing, is it a good idea
to invade this country or not? Fifty fifty odds it
works out for you, right if you're if you're trying
to predict, like I don't know the SMP five D,
there's a lot more variables. Yeah, and and this is
this is one of the things that like, okay, if
if you can be the person who like walks into

(01:19:00):
a lecture and goes the emperor has no clothes, you
can like attain immediate ultimate power because again this stuff
is like so it's so it's so trivially and easily
like falsifiable that like I you know, like built in
Friedman is able to do this, and you know, okay,

(01:19:21):
so I actually about false curve, the Phillips curve that
like I showed you that it's like a curve. It's
like a very simple one. There's all of these really
convoluted like modifications to it. Um there's you know, if
you look like the new the new kynesi En Phillips
curve or whatever they they've done, they've got a bunch
of math to it to try to like make it
kind of work. Um, the problem is that it doesn't work. Uh,

(01:19:42):
there's there there's a there's another Phillips curve that's been
that was like modified, but the NEI by the new
classical economists and the new classical economists were like, this
thing doesn't work. Okay, here's some modifications you have to
put in, but that curve also doesn't work. Uh. And
you know, and this is a real problem, right because Okay,
so if if if this inflation explanation of why inflation

(01:20:03):
happens doesn't work, like what is actually happening. Um. Milton Friedman,
who sort of like takes the the economic scene by
storm by like predicting a lot of the inflation in
the seventies and like sort of having an answer to it.
Is his his argument is that inflation is they print
too much money in there's inflation. And this is kind
of a gross oversimplification of of what his actual point is.

(01:20:27):
But it's it's it's it's more true than any of
like Freedman's over simplifications. So I'm just I'm just gonna
believe it at that And this is what the federal
reserve and like pull Fulker used to try to try
to fight inflation nineteen seventy nine. Uh. He Volker does
is he just tries to massively reduce the money supply.
The problem is that this didn't work like inflation in

(01:20:49):
like inflation is still like above temper time. I think
it's bikes to like like fift percent or something like
into like nineteen four so and and just based on
how much larger Huey, Dewey and Louis got sometimes two
or three. Do you know who else wants? Oh boy,

(01:21:13):
that's right, Garrison. All of our sponsors are into duck
Tales inflation fetish pornography. This is it could happen here
a podcast sponsored by the concept of masturbating to the
cast of duck tails getting inflated by bicycle pumps. Oh
we're back. Well I've done my part. Yeah, so okay,

(01:21:35):
So so we're left off right. There's there's a bunch
of inflation happening. Some of it is happening to DuckTales characters,
most of it is happening to the economy. Uh. Paul
Volker has tried to stop the inflation by like making
there be less money and this has done nothing other
than like dramatically increasing unemployment rate. Now, the problem with
again freeman sort of explanation of of inflation is that

(01:21:59):
inflation assistance to the eighties and it only stops after
insert foreshadowing noise here. Uh, Reagan crushes the unions and
were is to solve inflation, we should stop all unions.
That is your official position. No wow, okay, but this,
this is this is part of the position of the
Federal of the Marxist Federal Reserve. So well, we will

(01:22:22):
get there a second. So alright, alright. So, so the
thing I've been describing that that Freeman is pushing about
the money's way. This is called monitorism, and monitorism is
like the fakest theory of inflation, like it's it's a
it's a theory of inflation so fake that like even
other like even other like neo classical economists don't accept it,
like none of the other different neoliberal schools of economics,
like every single one of them look at this and

(01:22:43):
was like this is nonsense, Like what what are you doing?
But you know, so okay. So though it's like it's
like the TikTok astrology compared to the neoliberal court astrology. Yeah,
it's it's it's all. It's like, it's it's it's somehow
an even faker x when they of this. But you
know this, this brings us back to like where we started,

(01:23:03):
which is that like, okay, so if the monitorist stuff
doesn't work, and the Phillips curve also doesn't work, Uh,
what is causing inflation? And the answer from inside of
the like the actual field of economics is that nobody knows. Um,
here's Daniel k Rollo, who was the former Federal was
a former Federal Reserve Bank governor, and was a member

(01:23:23):
of the Federal Reserve Board. So he's a he's a
very very high ranking like guy inside the sphere of
people who try to apply econ ship and uh, here's
here's the quote that he gave about it. In quote,
the substantive point is that we do not at present
have a theory of inflation dynamics that works sufficiently well
to be of use for the business of real time

(01:23:45):
monetary policy making. So what are you saying there is
like if you translate that out of econs beak, and
you don't even really have to translate that out of
econs much what he's saying is that he no one
has any idea why inflation works, and none on the
models work well enough to let you like try to
deal with inflation if you're you know, the people who
control the money supply, like the Fed. Now economists like

(01:24:06):
we we we've seen in the past, if you've been
following this off in the past like ten years issue,
especially in the last five, economists have been getting like
increasingly desperate to explain what the fund is happening, and
they're getting increasingly increasingly desperate right now because you know, hey,
inflation is back, and that that brings us to the
paper I mentioned at the top of the episode, which
who who killed the Phillips Curve and Murder Mystery, which

(01:24:27):
opens talking about two sort of massive recent failures of
the like new Kensie and we fixed we we we
added variables to the Phillips curve until like sort of
kind of works ish maybe, but you know, the only
thing they're talking about two of its sort of like
incredibly massive failures. The first is in two thousand eight,
where there's you know, there's a recession. Oh really what

(01:24:49):
happened economically? A re session? But what's interesting about this right,
is that? Okay? So if you think about this, there's
an inflation, is there's there's a recession, unemployment skyrockets, this
should cause deflation. Well, you know, because you know what
else happened to us in night the official Duct Hills
video game came out. So I think we are through

(01:25:09):
the looking glass people, you know, I mean this, this
this is not any more bullshit than any of the
other stuff they're doing. So like, but you know, okay,
but there's there's this there's this thing that happens. We're like, okay,
the like the inflation that the inflation rate should have
been decreasing and it just stays the same. And economist
are like what and this is this is called the

(01:25:29):
missing deflation ary period. There's there's a second thing where
dream this sort of like quote unquote economic recovery and
the last like ten years ish until basically until before
the pandemic, employment rates dropped really really low, and this
should have started this year of triggered inflation, but it doesn't.
And you know, okay, And so the people who run

(01:25:53):
the Philip Philips group, like the economist are looking at
this and they're like, okay, what do we do? And
the Fed economists. Solution is again and I share you,
not Marxism, and more specifically, the solution is neo Marxism.
M Mary. Yeah, yeah, this is this is this is
this is something else I'm sort of excited about, which
is that I finally get to tell the world what
a neo Marxist is, because this is technically a thing.
It's just that none of the people who talked about

(01:26:15):
neo Marxists have any idea what it is. The most
modern neo marx Actually really well, I mean I guess
you could have okay, what what once we explain it,
I will, I will talk about how you could theoretically
have a post modern neo Marxist. But I don't think
I ever met whoa how welcome Welltory terms. Okay, so

(01:26:35):
I'm excited to hear this. Yeah yeah, all right. So
what what is happening here is that there's an old
joke in Marxist circles that like, the most advanced Pushei
economists is fifty years behind the most vulgar Marxist. And
this is this coming true. The Federal Reserve economists are developing,
They're trying to make a new Phillips curve and the
new Phillips curve is what they call a colleci In
Phillips curve because it's based for the guys. New curve

(01:26:56):
just drops. Yeah, it literally is except this this this
is this is this is the neo Marxist curve. And
it's based on the works it's kind of loosely based
on him, but it's just based on the work of
a Polish Marxist economist named Mikhail Collecki. And Clucky is
a he's a very very weird Marxist, like by Marxist standards,
is extremely weird. And to explain why this is were

(01:27:18):
we have to we have to speed We're gonna have
to speed run Marxism one oh one. So I'm going
to attempt to explain Marxism in one page. All right,
let's okay, okay, mark mark markism one oh one. Right.
You have a worker, she has to go find a
job and sell her labor to like get food to eat,
because otherwise you can't support herself. Um, so she goes
to work at a factory that makes like hospital stretchers.

(01:27:40):
Now under capitalism, and this is this is this is
this is one thing I'm explaining this is this is
like the this is the orthodox Marxist interpretation. So the
people who are about to scream at me for a
million years about how this is wrong, I'm explaining the
orthodox position. Damnit uh Marxism here? Yeah no, okay, yeah, Chris,
quick question what what what? What? What was Marx? So

(01:28:05):
Marx was a experiment is psychological experiment run by the
by Harvard University that was concluded in but he wrote,
he wrote a bunch of books, and one of those
books is Capital and and in Capital. So okay, so
you have you have your worker, right, and she she

(01:28:26):
she works to make hospel stretchers. And the thing that
makes the hospital stretcher have value is the amount of
time that it takes a worker to make it. So
under under this this sort of understanding of what Marxism is,
value is just labor time. Right, The value of an
object is how many hours of work it takes to
make a thing. Now this labor time or you know,

(01:28:48):
like like and like how how long it takes to
make the thing? Uh, the value of it it isn't
measured by like how long it takes them like like
an individual cot, Right, It's measured by like how long
on average it takes society to make so for you know,
for example, like you said, this is in Finland, right,
it's based on how long, on average it takes to
make a hospital stretcher in Finland, not like you know,
how long it takes to make him like Olivia or something.

(01:29:13):
Um and this is the technical term for the for like,
this thing is socially necessary labor time. UM. So, our
worker like works for through her day and after six hours,
she's produced enough value to support herself. She can buy food,
she can pay her rent, she can like I don't
know if you buy a car or something. But she
still also worked two more hours of the day and
during that time, the labor that she's doing just goes

(01:29:34):
to the boss. And this is called this is called
surplus value, like the amount of time that you're working
where you're working for the boss and not to like
support yourself. Uh. This this, this is called surplus value.
It is the objective route of exploitation and Marxism. I yeah,
it's it's it's it's it's the value that goes directly
to your boss. That and the reason that like your

(01:29:57):
boss can just steal this from muse because they have
the factor and don't. So if you want to produce
something for them to survive, you have to go to him.
And this is this is called the ownership of the
means of production. Now, the price in theory of of
this hospital structure, right is based on value on its
value or how many hours it takes to produce it
um and how precisely you get from dollars as a

(01:30:20):
unit of measurement from two dollars from time is a
subject of an absolutely interminable debate called transformation problem. If
you want to go read more about it. I have
wasted probably four years of my life reading about it.
I don't recommend it. But the answer is you can
sort of kind of get it to work if you
funk with the numbers a lot. Uh. But it's if

(01:30:40):
you do what's unclear if they mean anything. You can
also bypass it entirely by arguing that only works in
the level of the entire world economy. Blah blah, blah
blah blah. I don't care. If you do care about this,
don't yell at me. Go read chapter six of Pickler
and Needson's Capitalist power Palmatics. Theory is critique Fred Moseley's
Money in Totality and kill Mini mcglare is a temporal
those system interpretation of Marx's theory of value of Marxist

(01:31:03):
value theory. And then google ducktails, go big jennu Wine
and then send all of that, all of your notes
on both the texts and the duck tails, send all
that to I write okay on Twitter, um and they
get back to please you. You will probably come out
of like you will come out of the duck yell

(01:31:24):
stuff like more saying than you wire doing the Marxism stuff.
So yeah, but I've I've now covered my basis. This
is this is this is orthodox Marxism, which is the
stuff we've been talking about is based on another There's
another assumption here that's important kind of technically, which is that,
like so orthodox marks assumed that, like, so you have
a bunch of sectors of the economy, right, there are
people who like make different stuff, and the assumption to

(01:31:45):
do who make hospital guarantees, people who do more important
work like make podcasts, yeah, yeah, and and everything in between.
And the assumption is that, Okay, so you have a
person who makes like podcasts, right, and then and the
other people who make costel structures figured out that making
podcast is more profitable than making hospital stretchers, so they
start moving all their capital into making podcasts. But then
because there's too many podcasts, the rate of profit goes down,

(01:32:07):
and eventually, like eventually the rate of profit across all
sectors is supposed to equalize. Yes, yeah, so and and
this means that, like in the combination of this and
competition means that prices is supposed to tend towards value
or like the how much something cost in money is
supposed to tend towards the labor time socially necessary to

(01:32:28):
produce a commodity in a given place. Um, this is
like the basic thesis of like what you call orthodox
Marxist like orthodox Marxist political economy, you would probably the
Marksian political economy, whatever the fun you want to call it. UM. Now,
in in starting in about the ninet inwenties, there was
a new Marxism, and this is called neo Marxism. Neo

(01:32:51):
Marxism is basic Like I heard about that from Dr
Jordan B. Peters. Yeah yeah, right now. Now, now we're
gonna get the inside scoop on on neo mark Exism.
So Neo Marxism. Their basic thesis is like, what if
profit rates don't equalize across like betwetween different parts of
the economy that make things, and you know, and because
they don't do that, what what if what if you

(01:33:12):
don't get competition? Because instead of people being able to
just freely move capital between like sectors, what if you
have monopolies? And if you have monopolies, instead of sort
of price being like a price is just value blah
blah blah blah, because theyone can keep moving their money around,
price is now a price. Price is now derived from
the power of a corporation because if you know, if

(01:33:34):
if if you if you're a powerful enough corporation to
like have a monopoly and stop anyone else in producing
the thing that you do. Now you can now you
can charge word called markups. And this is where Michail
Collecky like enters from stage left um Collecy like he
probably should have been the father father of like modern
macroeconomics in the sense that like he invents a bunch

(01:33:56):
of the ship that like Caynes does before Kanes did.
But the problem is that he's writing a lot of
this Polish and so the sort of like anglophone like
economists are not reading it because he's in Poland and
he's a Marxist and he's writing in polo circles. But
he invents a bunch of the stuff that like Canes
invents slightly earlier, and he starts like looking at like
monopoly and oligarchy theory and he starts trying to apply

(01:34:17):
it to Marxism, and it's what you know, his inclusion
is that monopolies are powerful enough that they can charge
these markups, which is just like additional price increase over
like what the like value determined price is supposed to be,
because they can prevent anyone else from selling a thing.
And then you know, one what what once you have
a monopoly in the market, you can force people to
just like fucking suck it up and pay it because

(01:34:38):
they can't get it from anywhere else. And this is
actually this is like pretty similar in some ways to
like a bourgeois economic like theory of how this stuff works,
which is like, oh yeah, in in bourgeois economics, like
monopolies can increase the price over We're they're supposed to
be in a perfectly competitive market because they have power
blah blah blah blah blah. But there's something very different

(01:34:58):
in Coluckties work that is not in the normal Bushwa stuff,
which is that what what he argues is that trade unions, Okay,
so you have a trade union, right, they represented the
workers who work at a company, and these that these
trade unions are fighting over the over the product of
the markup and this keeps the size of markups. Are

(01:35:19):
these sort of like these price increases that monopolies are
doing down because the larger the markup these companies apply,
the more incentive there are there is for unions to
sort of like fight for pay increases, right, because okay, well,
the more expective the goods are, the more money they're
like very clearly is on hand. And so the larger
the demands you get from organized labor. And this is

(01:35:39):
the insight that who killed the Phillips curve the paper
I was talking about jumps on that unions fight over
markups and thus that the strength of unions is part
of what helps determine inflation. And they point out that
you know, unions want lower prices and for for goods,
and the reason they want lower prices for goods is
that the higher the price is of something, right, the

(01:36:00):
less people buy of it, and the less people like
buy of the thing, the less has to be produced.
And that means that there's less people being employed. And
so if you're a union, you want like the most
number of people being employed as you can. And so
that means that means that you want you want prices
to be low, because yeah, that because because lower prices

(01:36:21):
means more of the more of the good being produced,
and more the good being produced means more jobs. And
this is where we get to sort of the fundamental
assumption behind the regular Philips drip. And this is also
true for this sort of like new like pseudo neo
Marxist one, right, Um, their assumption is that inflation is
driven by rising wages. And you know, even though the

(01:36:44):
unions are trying to sort of like reduce the markup
and like and reduce markups, reduce prices to increase the
number of workers, firms are trying to increase prices so
they can make back the money they're paying out in widges.
Now when when unemployment is like high, this doesn't matter
because wages don't rise very fast because there's you know,
there's this gnormous pool of people who are incredibly desert
for job, and you can pay them sort of like nothing,

(01:37:06):
and they'll they'll come work for you because the al
turnative is you know, starving or getting evicted. But when
when unemployment is low, the bargaining power of workers increases,
and that's that that's that's where the class war starts. Yeah,
I mean this. You see this in ninety one with
the screen Cartoonists strike that Scrooge McDuck brutally cracked down
on um and eventually had to seed seed ground to

(01:37:29):
the guild. But Scrooge, Scrooge McDuck was was brutal during
during this time period post the thirties rise of unions.
That's right, Garrison, and that's a big part of why Huey,
Dewey and Louie had to track him down in his
money room and stick a bicycle pump into his mouth
while he was sleeping and begin to inflate him largely
while touching themselves critical support. Louis my boy. So as

(01:38:01):
as as as with I don't, I can't. I don't
even know how to transition that I can't do it,
but nobody does. I mean, really, the main thing is
that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a
small number of individuals will inevitably lead to inflation. Which
is true. And and this is one of the things
that um that that that the economist are sort of

(01:38:23):
talking about here, which is that like, okay, so once
once you get an actual sort of once you once
you get like a real class work going on right
where you're you're you're getting a class work to the
extent that like the bargaining power of workers into bargaining
power of of like capitalist firms are essentially like very
close to being equal. Um, you get inflation. Now, what's

(01:38:45):
interesting about this is that when you have strong unions,
like when you have strong unions, you get high rates
of inflation during periods of sort of inflation shocks, right,
because the unions are sort of like propping up wages
in this theory. But and this is the interesting part, right,
you get way lower rates of unemployment. And so it's okay,
it's just step back for a second. So what's happening
here is, right, if you have if you have strong

(01:39:06):
unions and there's something else in the supply chain that
increases costs, say to to to to pick a completely
random example that never happened. Uh, say, for example, you're
in the nineteen seventies and the price of oil is
quadrupled in one year, and that increases the price of everything.
Now when when when you have a strong but but
this never happens, don't google the oil shocks. Actually, literally

(01:39:28):
don't google the oil shocks because almost everything written online
about the oil shocks is a lie. I yeah, I
think I've talked about that before on the the other bills.
Never so, but yeah, it's it's all lie. But but basically,
like one of the what you know, okay, what what
What happens here is if you if you have strong unions,
you get a bunch of inflation, but people don't get fired.

(01:39:48):
And when when corporations are strong and you don't have unions,
you know, you get these shocks and the inflation rate
is much lower, but everyone gets fired. Unemployment rate goes
up to like ten percent. Uh. It's you know, it's
an absolute disaster. So that's that's one thing to note
about about the way the sort of the Philips curve,
the sort of Marxian Phillips curve, like analyze the situation, right,

(01:40:08):
But there's another consequence here, which comes back to like
what inflation is under a Phillips curve, Right, Inflation in
Phillips curve is literally just wage increases. Right, So when
when union power is weak, inflation stuff. But like, what
does this actually mean? What it means is that wages
aren't growing, sure, aren't. Yeah, And and this brings us

(01:40:30):
back to like the sort of weirdness we saw in
the earlier part of the episode, right right after two
thousand eight, right where there should have been deflation because
the unemployment rate was really high, and also like junior
recovery period where ninflation rate is unemployment rate is super low.
But and there should have been inflation, but there wasn't.
And the answer is why why wasn't their inflation? It's well, okay,
because no one had a union and so everyone's wages

(01:40:51):
just stayed the same the whole time. I have another
explanation for this. And when I previously when I previously
said the Ducktails game came out into that to night,
I was actually incorrect. Uh. Two thousand and eight was
when Nintendo Power listed the Duck Tails game as the
thirteenth best Nintendo Entertainment System game. Um, there was it
was voted that into thousand night. Now it's important that
thirteen is very unlucky number. So by voting the duck

(01:41:14):
Tails game best game from the NS into thousand eight,
and they could have basically caused a psychic rift in
the fabric of the universe, creating the financial crash. That's
fascinating Garrison, because I was thirteen in two thousand one
when I came across that angel Fire website with home
drawn Ducktails inflation pornography. Wait, so this I think in

(01:41:37):
a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, that's all connected. You
know who else may have been a contributing factor to
nine eleven the products and services that support this podcast.
I think that's right, that's right. We do not accept
a sponsor unless it gets the explicit sign off of
the King of Saudi Arabia. Um who, if you'll remember,

(01:41:59):
did nine eleven and all right, yeah, I'm I'm not
getting I'm i I am not getting paid tough to
properly transition this, so I'm not going to. Uh So
it turns out that, yeah, so the reason there hasn't
been inflation is that there's no unions. Because we don't
have unions. Are wages all suck and uh, this means
that you know, wages, wages are stagnant low, and it
means that they're not a drive. The unions aren't a

(01:42:20):
driver of inflation. And also low wages are driver inflation
because they you know, like unions aren't around to increase wages. Now. Meanwhile,
the other thing that this suggests is that monetary policy
and they okay, I think they're they're in exact analysis
was like I think like eighty four percent of like
inflation shocks can be explained by looking at like union density. Um.

(01:42:43):
But this also means it means what like monetary policy,
like how much money there is like in the economy
has like basically no role inflation whatsoever. And and this
is you know, okay, so like like this has all
been sort of one perspective from some economists of the
Federal Reserve, And we can ask the question, like why
does this matter? Right? Like why why why? Why does
like sort of one like group of people on the
Fed like their response this matters And partly it matters

(01:43:06):
because it's again extremely funny to watch the Federal Reserve
turning to neo Marxists too, like try to explain why
inflation happens. But it also matters because theories of inflation
dictate inflation policy. Um. Jerome Powell, who's the chairman the
Federal Reserve, has had a press conference on May fourth,
and it's too long to play the whole thing, but
he has the speech, and he lays out a few

(01:43:26):
things that are interesting. So he talks about a bunch
of stuff that's causing inflation, rights production bottlenecks, increasing crude
oil prices, concreasing commodity prices from like Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Like he's lockdowns and shin another keeping factory like clothes,
and like, yeah, okay, those are all like reasonable things
that cause inflation. But then when you get to like
what the Fed is actually going to do, he starts

(01:43:48):
talking about how the job market is too good for
workers right now and unemployment is too low and that's
what driving wages up. So he's planning he's going to
tinker around with monetary policy to reduce wages and decrease
the demand for jobs. And this brings us back to
like two things. The first part is just the class
war part of inflation. Right, Prices are rising right now
because someone inside, like prices are rising right now, and

(01:44:11):
someone inside if if you want them to not to
like cease to continue rising somewhat some part of like
the company is going to have to take a hit
to like the their percentage of like the sort of
the markup, right, like their their percentage of like the
price increase of the corporations do above like cost and okay,
so someone has to do this, And the Federal Reserve

(01:44:33):
like absolutely wants to make sure that the person paying
for that is you, the worker. And the second part
is something you might have picked up on if you're
paying close attention. And this has been something that's been
true of of both like the FED chairman and the
FED economists do this too, which is they do this
they talk about inflation. They do this kind of two steps, right.
They talk about a shock or something that causes prices

(01:44:54):
to increase, like you know, a bunch of Ukrainian wheat
like suddenly being on harvest will because the Russian army
is squatting on it, or like Chinese factory shutting down
us the amount of weeder price electronics or sorry reduces
the amount of wheat or the amount of electronics being
produced that drives out prices. Right, they talk about like
there's an inflationary shock, and then they start talking and
instead of talking about that anymore, they start talking about
unemployment levels and the job market and monetary policy being

(01:45:16):
what drives inflation. And I think this is this is
a very important piece of ideology because if you look
at what's going on here, right if if you know,
if you go back to the seventies, it's not like
inflation in the seventies is not the Union's fault, like
you know, the the the in the inflation in the
seventies was like in large part the original price increases
because the price of oil country country pulled in one year.

(01:45:37):
But you know, but the Fed instead focuses on wage
increases is what drives inflation, even even if they're sort
of like using like Marxists to do it. And what
they're doing here is shifting the focus from the actual
shock that is like the thing, the immediate thing that
is increasing prices, and they're shifting the focus from the
shock to the people who are reacting to it. And

(01:45:57):
from there the question stops being about like d link
with the shock itself and starts being about who's going
to pay for these price increases, and in the nineteen eighties,
like Reagan's Reagan solution, this iss well, okay, she's just
gonna make organized labor pay for it. And so she
just annihilates the annihilist the unions. He uses the state
to do it, just crushes the unions completely. And price increases,
you know, prices stop increasing, right, And they stop increasing

(01:46:18):
because the production costs of all of these goods like
decrease because workers are no longer getting paid and they
lose all their benefits. But this is the thing they
never dealt with the actual source of the problem, right,
Oil prices are still really high to this day, and
we've never transitioned off oil. And so to look at
sort of that problem, I want to briefly look at

(01:46:40):
another theory of inflation, which is one presented by Steve Mann,
who I think I've actually had on the show before.
He's one of the people at Strange Matters, and he
wrote he wrote this article called Notes towards the Theory
of Inflation, which is based on the work of a
heterodox economist named Frederick Lee, who is he's a cool
guy and all of his stuff is like completely out
there from the compens from decomperspective of but it it

(01:47:01):
makes more sense than most regularly kind of stuff. So
the sort of like founding observation of like that like
project Lys basing his stuff on is that like, okay,
prices are not set by like an abstract market. Right,
the price of something in a grocery store is set
by a guy like that there there there was a
specific guy or they are like several specific guys whose

(01:47:21):
job it is to set the prices for the firm. Um.
This this this theory of like what it's not even
a theory, like the fact that this is how prices
are formed by just a guy who sits there with
a notebook or like a computer. Is this is what
the price is going to be. This is called administered prices.
And Lee like very confestently argues that like this is
how firm This is how both large and small firms
actually set their prices. Right, a guy calculates his expenses,

(01:47:43):
he adds a mark up, and he sets the price. Now,
Steve Man argues that these prices don't generally tend to
increase naturally because the price setters don't generally want to
just increase the price randomly, because if you if you
increase the price randomly, you will piss off your customers.
And the customers, you know, okay, they'll they'll tolerate like

(01:48:04):
some small increases, but if if you raise the price enough,
they lose your goodwill towards your brand, and they'll like
they'll go off and try to find another brand. And
this is disastrous because even if you reduce the prices
back down again, like the good will is lost. And
that's sort of like you know, the sort of like
happy association that like you have in your brain between
like I don't know, like Nestly chocolate or something, or
like whatever brand of things you're buying, like you get

(01:48:25):
piste off of them because the price is now like
way higher. So you know, you don't go back to
the same like grocery store because that they've increased their prices.
Now obviously this is like there's like this subject constraints, right, Like,
if if you need insulin and the monopoly that controls
insulin production, just jack's the price, You're screwed, right, there's
no sort of like there's no other place you can
get insulin unless you're gonna try to make it so

(01:48:46):
your your your solutions are you either try to ration
it and you die, or you pay for the price increases.
And this this is bad and it does happen. But
most goods aren't like this, and so price increases, when
they happen, tend to be small and fairly infrequent, unless
unless the person that the reason this doesn't this wouldn't
happen is if the person setting the price has no choice.

(01:49:08):
And the main reason that if you're a person setting
a price, that you would have no choice but to
increase like the price that that that that you're setting.
The main reason you would do this because something happened
to your supply chain. UM, I don't I don't know
if you all see that. There was a TikTok going
around from a farmer in Iowa who was talking about
like why why food prices are gonna keep increasing? The woman, honestly,

(01:49:29):
I bless her heart, honestly thinks that food prices are
not going to go up. She thinks that this is
the highest they're going to go. I tried to explain
to her that that was not the case, that they're
absolutely going to go up even more. Um, And I
told her there are things that like we have to buy.
There's something we had to buy that two years ago
cost is four dollars. Last year was about forty six.
This year it is costing US nineties six dollars. Okay,

(01:49:51):
local farmer fifty had a cattle. It's costing him eight
thousand dollars a month to feed them. Please understand, food
prices are going to go, yeah, and so and so
you can see here what's happening. Is it like at
some point down the supply chain, prices are increasing either
because of like climate change, because of the word Ukraine,
because of COVID, because of like any thousands sort of
other factors. And eventually the like the farmers who are

(01:50:13):
setting the prices, right, they have to increase their prices
because they don't they don't have a choice, right, because
because the each person further back in the suppyline as
a charity, right, like they have to be able to
pay a bunch of ship builds. Yeah, and and this
this sort you know that this is the Steve calls
it like that. He calls it the supply chain theory
of inflation. Right, and you know in this model, like

(01:50:35):
this is what's causing inflation, right, Each person successively down
the line has to eat has to increase their mark
up because they have to cover them, They have to
cover the new, newly increased production costs. And this is
important because unlike most models of inflation, inflation isn't being
caused by like some kind of like giant macroeconomic thing,
like it's not being caused by like unemployment or like
monetary policy, but it's being caused by very very specific

(01:50:59):
micro recon like forces that you know, there are literally
specific people who as a reaction to a specific thing
happening that makes production harder or increasing their prices. And
this is a very different sort of you know that
this is a very very different theory of inflation than
like any of the like seventeen mainstream ones, all of
which are bad in various ways. And yeah, and there's

(01:51:23):
there's one other thing I want to mention though that
kind of isn't talked about in this model, that is
absolutely happening right now, and that's um And then something
that is really one of the drivers of inflation, which
is that corporations are raising prices because they think they
can get away with it, and they're just pocketing the
costs and and this isn't So this isn't like a
sort of speculative thing. Uh. Companies, when you ask them

(01:51:45):
about it, are very very open about it. Here here's
from a Business Insider article. What we are very good
at is pricing. Colgate Palm of Oil CEO Noah Wallace said,
whether it's foreign exchange inflation or raw unpacking material areo inflation,
we have found ways over time to recover that in
our margin line. We've been we've been very comfortable with

(01:52:06):
our ability to pass on the increases that we've seen
at this point, said Croker CFO Gary Miller Chip in October.
And we would expect that to continue to be the case.
And here here's from here's from the Wall Street Journal,
where more people talk about doing this. We have not
seen any material reaction from consumers, Procter and Gamble finance
chief Andre Sholton said last week, referring to a string

(01:52:26):
of price increases that went into effect in September. So
that makes us feel good about our relative position. Now,
those two articles, like, just those two articles alone talk
about prices raising, Like talk about companies that are just
raising prices because they know consumers will pay for it.
Because I think there's inflation happening. And those companies just
from those two articles alone include Procter and Gamble, nest LEA, Verizon, Unilever, Colgate,

(01:52:50):
Palm of Oil, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Gillette, Chipotle, A, T
and T, Verizon, Kimberly, Clark Corp, Clarox, Reynolds, Kroeger's, and
Albertson and like that. That's that's just like the corporations
in the article that are like specifically named as talking
about having done this right. And they can get away
with this because normally, normally write price increases to piss
people off, they go to go free for brands. But

(01:53:12):
if if prices across the board are already increasing, you
can you can just like do basically like a price
gouge increase, and you can do and you can increase
your markup and it doesn't it doesn't affect your goodwill
because people just assume that inflation is already happening, and
that inflation happens sort of naturally. Is either because the
wage like wages are too high, there's too much money
in circulation, so oh, there's just like inflation happening. Is
this like abstract thing instead of what is actually happening,

(01:53:35):
which there are very specific like they're individual people with
with names and addresses who specifically increase the price in
order to screw you. And that that that's that's what's
actually at stake here, and having explanation for why inflation happens,
it tells you who to blame for it. Like right now,
Larry Summers, who was the former Treasury secretary who was
responsible for arguably responsible for two thousand directly responsible for

(01:54:01):
two thousand eight h one of people who completely annihilated
the entire Russian economy in the nineties. Uh, he is
has apparently been on the phone with Joe Biden, and
he is going around saying that in order to solve inflation,
we have to cut wages, in rage the unemployment rate
to five percent, like for five years, like on average
five percent for five years. And so this means either
five percent of five percent, five years of five percent inflation,

(01:54:23):
two years of inflation at seven point five percent, or
like one year of teen percent unemployment. And again unemployment
right now is it like three percent? So she's talking
about millions, potentially tens of millions of people losing their
jobs in in order to in order to solve inflation,
because Summers, again, Summers is going back on the sort
of Phillips model ship, right, where inflation is caused by
you know, it doesn't even matter what's actually causing the inflation,

(01:54:45):
which is a bunch of a combination of price gouging
and like, uh, supply chage distructions. Right, She's going, Okay,
who His theory isn't about what is causing inflation. His
theory is about who's way to pay for it. And
his solution is, fuck you. You are going to pay
for it. You're going to pay for both the price increases,
which the prices won't fucking come back down. That's the
other part of this, right, Once, once you get inflation,

(01:55:05):
and once the prices rise, they're sticky, they don't fucking fall.
And what he's saying is, yeah, fuck you, you are
going to pay for it. You're going to continue to
pay these prices. You're also going to pay for it
by reducing your wages. You're going to pay for it
by getting fired. And you know, and this is this
is the sort of the choice that we have, right.
It's either we let the ruling class tell exactly the
same stories about why inflation happens. They've been telling fifty

(01:55:28):
years that they know we're wrong, that they that they
know are so wrong they are desperate enough to turn
to fucking Marxism to try to find explanations for it.
Or we find it, we find a new like explanation
of why fucking inflation happens, and we go back, we
take the stuff that they've stolen from us, and then
we appropriate the bastards so they don't do it again.
And that is that that that that is what I

(01:55:48):
have to say about inflation. Yeah, I mean again, what
what we need to do is if we organize as
a people and as the people become the vacuum tube
that we need to shove down the esophagus of Summers

(01:56:09):
and other members of the ruling class in order to
inflate their organs so that their asshole widens and we
can collectively fuck them until they deflate. Is that more
or less accurate? Chris? Would you say? Economically? Sure? I mean,

(01:56:29):
you know this is honestly okay, I would say, like
this is the thing that this is the thing about
having an explation for wine inflation happens. Right, It doesn't
matter if it's true or not. You can. As long
as long as you have a compelling enough explanation for
inflation to cause people to do something, you can, you can.
I mean, and this this is one of the things,
for example, like this is one of the things that
caused tenement to happen, is that there was skywalketing inflation

(01:56:51):
and the like workers had an explanation of inflation. It
wasn't right, like yeah, I mean that their explation for
inflation had to do with like the like China was
taking in a bunch of owns and the CCP was
spending all their money on sports cars and it's like
it's it's kind of marginal whether it was like true
or not, but it doesn't matter, right infla inflation could
be caused by the fact that we haven't fucking inflated

(01:57:15):
right on that point. And this is this is this
is true. You can look this up online. Um So,
the original Ducktails game from nine was remastered in two
thousand thirteen, and it was real. It was released on
August thirteen, two thousand thirteen. The remaster of the Duct

(01:57:38):
Tails game thirteen thirteen, both on Lucky Never. I think
that could have just just as much to do with
our current economic problem around inflation as basically anything else
Chris has said here um because August two thousand thirteen
Ducktails getting released Scrooge McDuck main character. That is too
much to be a coincidence. Yeah, we are through the

(01:57:59):
looking glass. I can see the nords like there's there's
there's no getting away from this one. Look you all
you have to do is you just gotta go. You
gotta show up to the room with the fucking money
is and you gotta take it from them. Do you
guys shop up to you kind of show up to
the factories and inflate your bosses and you will inflation

(01:58:20):
will come down. Yeah, it would work. Everybody, welcome to

(01:58:44):
it could happen here the podcast about stuff falling apart
and perhaps how we could begin to put them back together. Today,
I'm your host, Garrison Davis. We've had a lot of
doom and gloom the past few weeks here on the pod,
so this episode we more folks used on the putting
stuff back together side of the spectrum. We'll be talking

(01:59:05):
with Elizabeth Blackburn of the First Collective, a group of volunteers, organizers,
and activists in Columbus, Ohio focused on direct grassroots action
and mutual aid, but we'll be specifically talking about a
volunteer run homeless encampment that's currently serving around people in
the near east side of Columbus. Here's some of the

(01:59:28):
history from Elizabeth. The project started as a warming station
at the end of January UM and has morphed into
a autonomous encampment that's largely self governed and managed by
a loose network of mutual aid organizations that came together

(01:59:49):
during the risings. This is this is as flatting organization
as we can make it, and we're you know, we're
trying to make it flatter, and I just think it's
important that the people recognize, you know, going out with
resources is great, but going out and finding out what
resources people need is better. There are so many groups

(02:00:12):
in our city that are supposed to be doing this
work that are not, and they're being paid to do
this work, and it's ineffective. And all I want is
for for more people to try and do it their
own way, to try and do what their community wants,

(02:00:34):
you know, to the best of their abilities. We've seen
lots of projects grow out of the mutual a networks
that were established. It's been interesting to see how people
in the wake of the George Floyd uprising have built
off things that started two years ago, what's changed in
their practice, and how it's evolved since then. This past

(02:00:54):
winter in this area of Columbus, Ohio, there was community
needs not being at people having to be out in
the cold and not having a place to stay. This
problem was recognized by people, but unfortunately, far too many
people just look at problems and just be like, oh, yes,
here's the thing that sucks. Well, that's too bad. But

(02:01:15):
today we'll be talking about how a collective of people
didn't simply acknowledge a problem, but actually went past that
point and decided that even with limited resources, they have
the capacity to actually figure out how to solve this
themselves and provide a solution for the community. I think
the first time I really tried something like that was
in December. A friend of mine had reached out about

(02:01:40):
a camp on the south side of Columbus that was
being swept by the city and they had needs. They
needed new tents so they could set up elsewhere, They
needed food and water like they always did, and they
needed people to be there. Um to keep, you know,
to prevent violence from occurring as much as possible. UM. So,

(02:02:00):
hearing about that, I started a I set up on
my street in a bougie part of Columbus um with
a little sign and collected goods whatever people dropped off.
I collected money. Um. I raised about two thousand dollars
and uh, I think we ended up buying around twenty

(02:02:21):
two tenths. UM got other people there as well, and
tried to make sure everybody had what they needed so
they could get set up elsewhere. But that was my first,
like my first experience with that, doing it hands on
and seeing that that worked, that encouraged me to do more.
So that. How has it grown and changed since then?
There's still a need for people to stay. Um it

(02:02:43):
still gets pretty cold at night. Um So how throughout
throughout winter? How did the project kind of morphin change?
How do you go about finding like places to actually
like set up the physical spot, right, Like, that's that's
a whole it's a whole other problem. Um is all
like the is all like the logistical side of things, Yeah, exactly. Um, Well,
we happened to have a space late last fall. I

(02:03:06):
was invited to join a collective at first, collective that
was operating out of a church that largely um falling
into disrepair, but still operating as a church, and because
we had that space, a couple of members of the
collective encountered some folks in the neighborhood who needed a

(02:03:27):
place to sleep. They were sleeping in a bus stop
on a snowy night, and we just decided to start
giving them a place to stay because we had a place.
It wasn't a super popular decision, but um, we had
community back in. Conflicts from some people in the neighborhood
who were more nimby minded did obviously come up, along

(02:03:48):
with the complaints from the church that the first collective
was operating out of. For the community's part, when we
were at the church, we were in a part of
the neighborhood that had largely been gentrified, and so there
was some some resistance, some concern about the changing face
of the community and about the safety of kids and

(02:04:11):
so on and so forth. But we didn't have any
real safety concerns, not not in our not inside beyond
a couple encounters that we had to deescalate um and
a few people that we had to remove for based
on their behavior UM, but from inside the church, from
the church organization UM. The conflict started pretty early on.

(02:04:36):
They didn't really like how we operated, and we got
a reputation as a warming space with no rules, and
so they felt like because couples could sleep next to
each other, UM, because people could go outside for a
cigarette at night, because they weren't locked in the building,
that we were running a space that was out of control.

(02:04:57):
Well until we were kicked out of the church on
March twenty nine. I think it was the physical infrastructure
was there. It was just a matter of getting caughts
and blankets and making sure that people had food. Most
of that was either through just one off donations to
my cash app or I bought it with my own

(02:05:19):
funds UM. Once we were forced to move outside, it
got a lot more complicated UM because at that point
we didn't have any tents UM. We had to go
out that night and purchase. The day that we were removed,
we had to go out and purchase I believed ten
tents to start and then had a couple dropped off UM.

(02:05:39):
We now held around twenty tents UM. A lot of
those were purchased by by me or by donations that
we received UM or had been dropped off by by
friends or people in the neighborhood. UM that has been
you know, the physical infrastructure is mostly tents and canopies,
and most of them are being held up by pieces

(02:06:04):
of old tents or large tree limbs or whatever we
can to survive the wind, because it's been nothing but
windstorms for the past well since we got here. Our
first camp site was set up on a lot that
was connected to the farm four Seasons City Farm UM.
Several of the members of the collective are former paid

(02:06:27):
employees of the farm or multi year volunteers. It's a
it's a large organization on this part in this part
of the town UM Old Town East UM, with about
fifteen I believe years of history and goodwill UM. So
we set up next to their lot. But because they're
on land bank land, we we didn't want to interfere

(02:06:49):
with their lease with the city. So rather than risk
the farm getting fined or UM having having their least broken,
we we look next door to a lot on the
other side of a chain length fence m two lots actually,
one is owned by the city. That's the one where

(02:07:10):
most of our tents are and then one is owned
by a private owner who's a rather wealthy person in
the neighborhood. UM. We've done our best to stay on
the city lot and that has been good for us.
But we're also maintaining both lots and doing our best
to keep the trash to a minimum UM to make

(02:07:32):
sure that we're not tearying up the ground as much
as we can, though it's hard with all this rain,
h and and just do our best to be good
neighbors UM and I think that has helped us a lot.
In recent years, lower class Columbus area residents lost twenty
thousand units of housing due to unaffordable spiking rent prices

(02:07:54):
and annual point in time tally this year organized by
the Community Shelter Board on the number of homeless people
in official Columbus and Franklin County emergency shelters increased by
more than two hundred people since one and online data
from the Shelter Board of a nonprofit organization that receives
funding from the City of Columbus and other organizations, indicates

(02:08:17):
that as of March, there was a seven percent drop
in the rate of people exiting their program and moving
into stable housing as compared to last year, going from
thirty three percent to twenty six A lot of times
more formalized shelters are not ideal for people to stay in.
There's many issues with the formalized shelters regarding the specific

(02:08:39):
rules of when you can get inside, how long you
can be inside, whether you're locked inside the building, what
stuff you can bring with you. At best, they are
challenging to navigate. At worst, they're simply hostile to people
looking for shelter. I asked Elizabeth what her take on
the homeless shelter situation is like in Columbus and the

(02:09:00):
ways their encampment is different from the more official shelters.
We have limited beds, and then the beds that are
available are mostly under the governance of the Shelter Board,
and the shelter Board wasn't too fond of us either
because we weren't following all their rules. And there are

(02:09:22):
a lot of concerns about the way the shelters run.
The people that stay with us, the people that come through,
they feel safer here. Um there's considerably less drug use.
There's basically no distribution. We try to keep a handle
on that because it you know, would bring problems to
the camp should it happen there. Um, we are a

(02:09:45):
safe use space. We do have harm reduction materials and
they know that, UM, and we we do our best
to you know, just make sure that people have the
care and the safety that they need. And that is
kind of a dirty word. While all of those are
kind of dirty words. And the shelter organizing community, I guess,

(02:10:05):
UM care and and you know, making people comfortable, it's
just not really the goal. Next I asked about what
types of connections the encampment and First Collective have been
making with various organizations for infrastructural support or daily needs,
as well as inquiring about the relations the camp has

(02:10:28):
with the city government. Here is Elizabeth's response. Really reached
out to the different you know, harm reduction groups, the
different houselessness groups that the emergency action groups, UH, different
serve groups, and we just asked them to bring what

(02:10:49):
they could or to send people if they could, just
you know, whatever they could spare. And and it's worked. UM.
People show up with whatever they have to offer. UM
from all over the city and and just from around
the corner, which has been wonderful that the grassroots community
support is just blowing my mind. I thought they were

(02:11:11):
going to hate us, and here we are like making
friends with everybody. Our first goal is to make sure
that we've met people's needs as best we can. Um.
You know that that involves right now, UM, keeping propane
on site so that they can cook some of the
food that's brought. Um. We get a lot of prepared meals,

(02:11:31):
but we also get a lot of ingredients, and there
are quite a few people here that cook and have
done pretty miraculous things with a couple of propane girls. Um.
We try and have meals prepared every day, but it
doesn't doesn't always work out, and sometimes we fill the
gaps with little Caesar's or or something else, um whatever

(02:11:53):
whatever it can be scraunged up at the last minute.
Some of our biggest allies so far have been and um,
the local food not bombs. Uh, they've been wonderful, as
well as some different church groups that that run nonprofits
like Community Kitchen. We got our meals provided six days

(02:12:14):
a week by church that's basically down the street and
around the corner. But as far as the city goes.
For the first couple of days, there were a lot
of roll bys um, a lot of city officials taking pictures,
no one really talking to us, but you know, there
was clearly concern. It wasn't until a man who works

(02:12:37):
for the city and outreach under the Safety and Security Department,
Sean Stevenson, came out and talked to us. Uh that
we really started to see the possibilities of working with
the city and in so much as they let us.
He brought a city attorney, Steve Dunbar, and a gentleman

(02:12:57):
from the mayor's office, UM, Jason jim Ends by Q
talk to our folks, and they listened. They listened to
the people at the camp, who explained to them why
they were here, explained to them why the resources that
are available didn't work for them. You know, it was
a it was a tearful conversation and since then they've

(02:13:22):
largely left us alone. UM. We wish that they would
provide some of the resources that they talked about, like
a couple of porta potties and a dumpster, but you know,
we we do our best or their composting toilet and
the good grace of some very kind neighbors. Police raids
and sweeps are always an existential fear for those living

(02:13:44):
in diway encampments. Here's what Elizabeth had to say about
sweeps and police interactions. What we've been told is that
they are They've been told to leave us alone. We've
heard this from the cops themselves. We heard this from
people who have talked to them. UM. But the precinct
that is in this area has been told not to

(02:14:07):
mess with us unless there is a violent conflict. The
thing to do prop stuff at. There are a lot
of sweeps that have been threatened around the city of
different camps. UM. They've received notice or notice of notice,
so they don't know exactly when, but it's supposed to
happen sometime. UM. But as far as we're concerned, we

(02:14:31):
haven't really had that problem. UM crops have come through.
There are a couple of times when they've been called
by by people disgruntled residents or um by neighbors, but
for the most part, they talked to us and then
they leave. We we do our best as volunteers to

(02:14:51):
get between the police and other other groups that come
out UM, even even the outreach groups that we know
are are here to help, just because those interactions can
can quickly get volatile. If you know if people aren't
sure about other people's intentions. So I would say that

(02:15:12):
one of the best interactions I've had with the cops
is they did come through here once and talk to
a few folks, and a sergeant from the police department said, um,
roughly that they couldn't make us leave because this was
city land and they didn't have anywhere else to send us.
So okay, I'll take it. I've got it. I've got

(02:15:34):
the dr assaultation. Elizabeth does hope that one day the
relations between the church that first Collective was previously operating
out of could be mended and once again work to
utilize the space to serve the Wedder community. She also
discussed the possibility of moving into vacant buildings and hoping
to restore them while also having a place to provide

(02:15:57):
more stable housing. So where the church is concerned, UM,
I haven't given apprope. We we aren't in the building now.
I don't have a key, but I got a church
every Sunday. Um I'm not I'm not a Christian. I
don't believe in God, but I do like the messages

(02:16:17):
that I get there, and I I want to continue
to use this really wonderful building as a part of
the community, you know it's there. There are a lot
of goals that that we as a camp have and
some of them include the church and we we'd love
to get back into that space and fix the two

(02:16:39):
bathrooms in the basement that are just sitting there, build
some showers, laundry facilities, a free store, kitchen. There's there's
so much that we could do if we could utilize
that building in addition to the the infrastructure that we
have here um. But when it comes to two buildings

(02:17:00):
something more. We're currently working on a proposal for the
city for some of the relief funds that have been
received but not dispersed with the goals of ideally building
little cabins on platforms on the lot that we're on now,
just to start to get people out of tents, to

(02:17:21):
start meeting some of the code requirements to improve the
sanitary and living conditions, and then from there we'll ask
them to give us a building to restore. There's a
lot of really skilled people out here and they want
to work, and they want to work on all of
these old buildings that have been allowed to fall apart
all over the city. There are so many rooms available.

(02:17:44):
There's so many units that they could work on that
they could live in, and I think that's what they
want to do, So that's what we're going to try
and help them do. The camp functions under a sort
of direct democracy with residents and first collective volunteers, some
of whom are all residents, hold regular community meetings where
camp occupants vote to make decisions about camp guidelines. There

(02:18:08):
has been a couple instances of violence, UM, a couple
particularly scary moments that we had to try and de escalate.
And there's sometimes that we didn't handle things as best
we could UM, but we we try, and we tried
to talk through the way that the way that it

(02:18:29):
goes down with the residents, among the volunteers. UM. We
try to be transparent about you know, why why we
make some of the decisions that we do, and for
the most part, we leave it to the community. UM.
There have been some really great community meetings go so long, UM,
but they talk about everything they talk about, you know,

(02:18:52):
shared concerns about safety, concerns about how they want to
live together and what would make and feel safer, and
established guidelines and occasionally vote to remove people. So UM,
we've managed to resolve some of those conflicts before they

(02:19:13):
went that far. I initially talked with Elizabeth in May two,
but I was able to catch up with her a
few weeks ago to hear about what's been going on
the past month. UM. I just wanted to kind of
fill you in on what we've been up to UM
over the past month or so. It's it's been busy. UM.
We've been to a lot of Area Commission meetings for

(02:19:35):
the different areas of the city to try and make
some allies and talk to people about what we think
is a solution to a problem they don't know how
to solve, but to get some unwanted attention. A local station,
Tim TB came through with a bit of an agenda.

(02:19:55):
Right now, the city of Columbus has a problem and
it has to do with homelessness. I can't set up
on city property along East Mound Street in the middle
of the Near East Side neighborhood, is raising questions tonight
about whether the twenty people who live there should be
allowed to stay are forced to go to Kevin Landers
has been working the story all day. Today. He went
to the camp and spoke to those who lived there

(02:20:16):
and got answers from city leaders about addressing concerns from
neighbors who say that camp it's got to go. This
on Housing community is located on East Mound Street. The
people who live here, the city says, are technically trespassing.
The city says they're going to let them stay here
until they can find housing, but not everybody wants them here.

(02:20:37):
They wanted to talk specifically about our sanitation situation and
nothing else. Um. I told them we've been waiting on
the city since abol fifteen for the dumpster the Port
of John's if they'd offered, but um, they were still
looking into it. So we took it into our own hands.
All that attention, we needed to do something, So we

(02:21:00):
contracted a porta john company who is currently donating to
porta John's and servicing it once a week. Um, which
is great. Uh. We had a compost toilet before and
this is so much better. Um. And we went out
of pocket to pay for the trash service. So we're
getting our own trash service. Trash service now once a week. Um.

(02:21:23):
It's not quite enough, but it certainly helps you see
code enforcement go by all the time. Um, they've been
driving by. I've seen them at least five or six times.
Today people are waiting for something that they can latch onto,
But so far, so good. With Columbus facing one hundred
degree heat waves, what started as a warming station in

(02:21:45):
winter now serves as a cooling station this summer for
its few dozen residents, as gears shift and new seasonal
materials are required. The camp has been exploring alternative methods
of funding to sustain the level of resources and services
they've been able to provide the past few months. We
did launch a go fund me and we've had pretty

(02:22:07):
good luks so far. We've raised seven thousand, five UM.
This is just for operating funds um. There's a lot
that we would like to do here. It's a lot
we'd like to do with the land, but for now
we just need We're just fundraising to keep going. The
camp still serves around twenty five people, so resources end

(02:22:29):
up getting distributed across a large collection of individuals. All
the donations received have been used to provide necessities to survive,
including but not limited to, shelters like tents, food, water,
medical supplies, bedding, clothes, bus passes, medical services and prescriptions,
hard production supplies, Funds for individuals immediate needs, and assistance

(02:22:52):
to pay with residents phone bills. Sometimes funds are also
used to compensate residents for extra labor put towards maintaining
the camp, like cleaning up the campsite, cutting up firewood,
and providing extra services like haircuts. The response has been
really good. I think people understand what we're trying to
do and are are being really receptive to it. UM.

(02:23:16):
I can't say the same about the city though. We UH.
We met with Councilwoman shale A Favor from the city
on Monday and presented a proposal. We asked for eighty
five dollars over the next six months to continue operation,

(02:23:36):
to pay a small salary to the three volunteers that
are here all the time, UM for healthcare, for a
small stipend to give to each resident of the camp
every every week, UM additional operating funds. Just we came
to them with this ask and they didn't really seem

(02:24:00):
to get it UM, so we're gonna keep trying. They
they felt like they can't really support a tent city
in their minds, like they couldn't give money to support
people who were residing in tents because tents are inadequate shelter.
But I mean I can test that not having a

(02:24:23):
tent is also an adequate shelter. The City of Columbus
relies almost completely on the Community Shelter Board to manage
its problem with homelessness. Community Shelter Board has a revenue
of around forty four million dollars a year. They pay
their director half a million dollars just under UM and

(02:24:46):
a few other executives received ample compensation. But their success
rate for the entire county is label at you go
through their data. They have managed to get pent of
the people who come through their shelter into some sort
of housing. For the zip code that we're serving at seven,

(02:25:08):
which equates to eight people over the past year. So
what they're doing is not working at all, and they
know it, but they don't know what else to do.
Whenever we talk to the city, someone tells us to
talk to this one particular person. Her name has Emerald
her nand as Para. She is the assistant director of

(02:25:30):
Special Projects for the Department of Development. If you have
a problem with a homeless camp in the city, she
is the person that the city wants you to talk to,
no matter what UM if if you're homeless, that's who
that's who they want you to talk to. She's under
the Department of Development. Her her main focus is economic development.

(02:25:55):
She's just special projects, which means she helps clear the
way by getting camps out of the way for development projects.
That's that's her role, and she is the city's liaison.
No matter who we talked to, she's the one that
we keep coming back to. So I think it's pretty

(02:26:17):
um cynical and upsetting that this isn't under the purview
of the Department of Health, you know, and any any
other department would be a little bit better than the
Department of Development to show so much we care. We're
planning to go back to the city, uh, regardless of
what they say about this initial proposal, because there's a

(02:26:39):
lot that we'd like to build here and and we
think they'd be amenable if they understood. We're drafting a
second round proposal taking inspiration from Dignity Village in Portland.
It's an autonomous village of fun housed people that's existed
since two thousand and I think there's a lot of

(02:27:00):
we can learn from them for modeling this in a
way that the city might better understand. We believe that
what we're doing here is transitional housing, and the people
who are here want to be involved in building that
transitional housing for themselves and then for the people to
come after. So that's that's what we're hoping to get

(02:27:21):
the city to sign off on. Whom we met with.
We met with the councilwoman. One of the things that
she said was they at the city they don't have
a model for serving the population that we're serving. Um,
they don't. They don't know how to handle people who

(02:27:43):
don't want to move inside, who don't want to move
into the shelter system for whatever reason, and so all
they can really do is move them around. Um, we're
trying to tell them that we do have a model
and we think we think that we can help the
city as long as they stay pretty hands off and

(02:28:04):
give us money for it. So fingers crossed. I'm not
going to hold my breath, but fingers crossed. The city
of Columbus has been much more openly hostile to some
other encampments providing cooling and shelter in parts of the city.
We're not the only on house encampment in Columbus. Um.

(02:28:25):
There there are a lot more, and there's one that
is at it's called Here Park on the south side.
We have a lot of friends there. UM. Our organization
works with their organization. UH. They were served a fourteen
day eviction notice UM on the first and they have
until to move out. UM. So we're doing whatever we

(02:28:49):
can to support them. But UM, it very much feels
like we're being treated like the good camp and they're
the bad camp right now. So we're trying our best
to make sure that the city knows that we're with them.
You know, I I'm whatever they think about us. We

(02:29:10):
we support those people no matter what, and we'll see
whatever we can to help. UM. We're trying to give
them advice about the things that have worked for us
to keep the city away and hopefully if they do
have to move on the fourteenth, they'll be able to
set up somewhere over the city or give them a break.
Here is some audio of a press conference given at

(02:29:32):
the Here Park camp just last week. The city is
not out here giving out water. The city is not
out here making sure that UH people don't get heat
exhaustion or heat stroke. Right, They're nowhere to be found.
So we are here to remind them they have a
hundred and thirty five million dollars in American Rescue Plan funds.

(02:29:54):
Where is this money going? Why do we not have housing?
This weather is just a little taste for many of
us of the conditions that our unhoused neighbors out here
can look forward to enduring for the entire summer. The
City of Columbus was planning on evicting our people today
June fourteenth. They delayed that eviction. It is a human right,

(02:30:17):
so we are here to assert our human rights. Two housing.
They're hoping that we're going to get hot and tired
and we're out. Are we gonna let up? The Here
Park Camp eviction was pushed back to June twenty one
due to a massive heat wave, and by June one,
the temperature was still in the upper nineties, but the

(02:30:40):
city followed through on their threat and swept the camp.
At least twenty Columbus police cruisers, city attorneys, people from
the Department of Development, and other city employees were on
site for the eviction. Bulldozers and massive machinery crushed people's
tents and personal belongings. Some folks, forcibly displaced have lived

(02:31:00):
in the here Park for nearly a decade. For wrapping
up this episode, I had just one more question for
Elizabeth for people who would be interested in trying to
create similar projects or hopeful smilar similar projects in their area,
how will it would be some advice to give to
people who who are want to try something similar. What's

(02:31:21):
the kind of stuff that you've learned the past few
months that you were kind of surprised by UM and
and you know, if if you could do anything different,
what's what's like what's the kind of stuff that you
would uh that you would approach UM to make the
processes like smoother or slightly more improved. Well, I would
have looked for more funders first. Um. The one of

(02:31:43):
the most painful parts for me has, like just personally
has been holding the purse UM, being the person that
everyone knows to ask for for cash if they needed
for something UM It. It is a it is a
real strain on compassion sometimes, you know, on compassion fatigue

(02:32:08):
is real, and it can be really hard day and
day out having to field requests from people who you
know need these resources, but you can't always give everything.
It's it's hard to say no. Learning to say no
has um has helped, but ah, diversifying our funding sources

(02:32:30):
is also helping a lot. Um. I've learned that I
can't do at all and that I need to take breaks,
and that being here is is what I want to do.
But it doesn't mean I need to always always do it.

(02:32:51):
Sometimes you've got to step away. UM. I I wish
that I had spent a little more time with my family, um,
rather than you know, throwing myself completely into this U.
But two months ago my fiance, my ex fiance, asked

(02:33:12):
me to leave. So I have been living at the
camp too. UM. So I it's it's been a pretty
stark jump to go from having a big house and
some retirement funds to living in a tent and having none.
But I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't change it, and

(02:33:32):
I'm going to keep doing it. It's because I can,
because I could, And that's that's really what I want
people to see is that if they can do something,
they should. Um. It's the best job I've ever had. Um.
You know, nothing is more rewarding than going to work

(02:33:53):
and hanging out with your friends all day, like helping
them get jobs and find apartments and meet friends like,
all right, there's so many wonderful people here, and like
me and the other volunteers, we love all of them
and you want nothing more than to see them succeed.

(02:34:14):
So yeah, I just I just advised people to do
what they can, to ask for what they need and
try and provide it. Anyone who wants to know more
about the First Collective and what they're doing, you can
go to First hyphen Collective dot org. You can find
links on Elizabeth's Twitter account at an Optimist. And even

(02:34:35):
if you disagree with some of the organizational or structural choices,
I hope you at least learned something or got something
productive out of this example of people putting in effort
to fill in the gaps in their local community that
isn't for us today. See you on the other side. Hey,

(02:34:56):
We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
now until we the death of the universe. It could
happen here as 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
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Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com slash Sources,

(02:35:18):
Thanks for listening.