It Could Happen Here Weekly 10

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

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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. What they sing my books,

(00:34):
your grandmother, all of your grandmother's Wow Garrison, my grandmother's dad.
So that they're still facebooking in the grave, I mean,
thank god. No. I think my grandparents briefly got introduced
to my Space before being too sick to use the
internet anymore. They were on a o L for a

(00:55):
while though. Oh that's that's quaint. Yeah, they were on
a o L for a while. Um, you know it's uh,
it's what I don't often say, Thank goodness for Louis
body demanship. But at least it stopped them from from
knowing the horrors that were to come in the digital age.
They got they got right off the bus before things
got terrible. Yeah, that is so friends, Romans, countrymen, how

(01:24):
do you feel about meta, which is totally what we're
all gonna be calling Facebook for now on for forever.
My main thought, honestly is that like the word meta,
the past like two years, the word meta has been ruined,
both like pop culture thinking it's smart and then ship
like this, now that a once useful concept has now
been obliterated and we can't use it for anything anymore,

(01:47):
you can't be meta. And and the fact that Facebook
is attempting to use this as the name of their
company shows that Mark Zuckerberg hasn't had a conversation on
even footing in his entire adult life, Like everyone is
trying to get someone out of him every time he
talks to anybody, so nobody would say, like, you know, Mark,
met is a terrible name for a company. But anyway,
they did that, and they had a big event about

(02:08):
two weeks ago where they got up and talked for
an hour and twenty minutes about the future of the
Internet and what Facebook's vision of the metaverse was going
to be, all this all this very fun stuff. Okay,
so here's the thing. It's a bad idea, and normally,
like bad tech ideas are a dime a dozen, and
we don't cover them on our show because this is
a show. It could happen here about collapse, things falling apart,

(02:29):
and the future and what's going to come next. But
in this case, talking about meta is actually really worthwhile
because meta is one example of how the people who
are kind of in control, or at least in control
of the significant amount of the world that we live in,
particularly the digital spaces that we've all agreed to be
locked into, see the future. I think the thing that

(02:49):
like makes it clear why this is in our wheelhouse
is an article from Wired by Matthew Galt, who's a
buddy of mine. He's a great journalist. Um. And it's
titled Billionaires c VR is a Way to Avoid Radical
Social Change um. And that title does kind of get
to the get to the nut of it. But the
quotes in this thing are fucking wild. So before we

(03:09):
get into Mark Zuckerberg and his vision of the future
of the Internet and of humanity, UM, I want to
read some quotes from John Carmack. Um. So, John Carmack
is the guy. He made doom right, Like, you can't
overstate the the impact John Carmack had on gaming, Like
he invented the first, like first effectively the first popular
first person shooter. He was the CTO of Oculus for

(03:31):
a while. UM. And he's very familiar with like three
D digital spaces, Yes, and he's he's very bullish on VR.
UM and he gave a quote, well, not gave a code.
He talked to Joe Rogan during an interview in and
he said this. Some people read this the wrong way
and react in correctly to it. The promise of VR
is to make the world you wanted. It is not
possible on earth to give everyone all that they would want.

(03:53):
Not everyone can have Richard Branson's private island. People react
negatively to any talk of economics, but it is resource allocation.
You have to make decisions about where things go economically.
You can deliver a lot more value to a lot
of people in the digital in the virtual sense. UM.
And that's one of those things that you can see
how a guy like John Carmack, who was again a

(04:15):
smart guy who's been ahead of the curve on a
number of important things, could could convince himself this is true.
This is absurd, And I think what we see in
Facebook's video is going to make clear that it's absurd.
One of the reasons that it's absurd is that UM,
like everything else, the people who are building them metaverse
have done, like what they've done to the Internet. The
Internet before Facebook and and Twitter and these like these behemoths,

(04:39):
UM used to be weird in decentralized and primarily not
for profit. UM. There was there was a period of
time in which like the idea that you would actually
make money off the Internet, like really out of like
content or whatever was just silly because it was this
it was impossible to monetize. It was this weird, wild,
like creative nonsense pile UM. And you can only kind

(04:59):
of make money a around the edges of it, but
the core of it was just just far too strange
and uncontrollable UM, too wild and free. UM. And that's
not the Internet anymore because of the people. Because in
large part of the people who are trying to build
these metaverses and the idea that they would allow poor
people to have the same kind of resources as rich
people in the metaverse there, they can't let that happen.

(05:22):
They're not the kind of people who would let that happen.
They're going to monetize every aspect of this thing. If
it becomes real. We ever have like an all encompassing metaverse,
every every moment of it and everything you do in it,
everything you have in it is going to cost you money,
probably with some kind of bullshit subscription plus adding on,
you know, like randomized cashes and other like you know,
lootbox type mechanics. Selling gambling the children is the business

(05:46):
model of the future. By the future, I mean it's
been happening. Yeah, it's the business model they want for now.
I will state I think some sort of persistent virtual
reality thing will probably happen in some way someday. I
don't think any of these people. Part of why my
thesis of this is none of these people are capable
of making it. It's because they look at this the

(06:06):
same way like shitty app developer, shitty like game developers
for Facebook look at gaming, where it's like everything should
cost money, you should be able to pay to win,
and it's like, well, nobody likes that, like nobody nobody
likes those games. Those are not the things that are successful.
Like and it is one of the games that comes
up a lot when people talk about the metaverse is
Minecraft and what made Minecraft hugely successful and why you

(06:28):
can kind of plausibly see like, oh, this has elements
of a metaverse where you're everybody's building these gigantic, persistent
things that you can interact with and that you can
make these incredible and people mad like works of art.
In Minecraft, they did it for free, and they did
it because like nothing costs money really in Minecraft, if
I'm not mistaken, like you can make anything with nothing

(06:48):
just by the game, and then you have the game
and you can build whatever you want. Your equity is effort, right,
like yeah, yeah, And it's like you know, like what
what are my friends like learned computer science? So he
could like, okay, great circuits, right, he like he built
a like functioning computer in this game, just like you can.
You can like it's it's like it's pretty. It's pretty. Yeah,

(07:10):
if you're gonna tell me sometime in the future, virtual
reality in the Internet is going to get like so
good and so pervasive that eventually people will bootstrap together
some kind of metaverse. Yeah, maybe like that that could
happen if it comes from like a cyber like punk aspect,
where like emphasis on the punk, then so I can
see this being a thing. But the way tech companies
are talking about this. That's not how people use the

(07:33):
internet currently, specifically, like the mainstream people. There's no way, yeah,
and there's there's a few more. Like one of the
things that Matt brings up in this article is like
VR is a way to avoid radical social change. UM
is uh like kind of the one of the reasons
why he's number one, and I think where we should
all be kind of critical about how realistic it is

(07:53):
is is kind of the present state of virtual reality,
which is about one point seven percent of Steam users
have a VR headset. Steam being kind of the largest
app to try to monitor like how many people are
using VR right, Like, it's kind of your best that's
figuring out the big that's the biggest PC gaming UM headsets.
Sales of VR headsets did go up about during the

(08:15):
pandemic UM, but that was kind of alongside of surge
in video game sales. VR headsets were already We're already boosting,
and the pandemic definitely it empercies that because it's like, Hey,
I'm stuck at my house. What can I do? Well,
I'll buy like a two oculus so I can, you know,
walk around and fight Ninja's in my living room, and
VR is like real, like VRS cool, like it's I

(08:37):
have a VR headset for years. It can do. One
of the things that um I talked talking about, like
what it takes for technology, new technology to like go viral,
to become like endemic. It has some of that, which
is that as soon as you put one of these on,
most people, unless you're one of the people that it
makes sick. Most people, if you put them, put them
on and you show them the right thing, they're like, oh,

(08:57):
this is actually way cooler than I thought it was
going to be. Yeah. UM, So that is like I'm
not I'm not like has I'm not poo pooing the
entire idea of VR. UM. And there's there's there's been
some successes on like Half Life. Alex sold about two
million copies, which is huge for VR, but like also
nothing for a video game, Like that's like for a

(09:17):
big for a fucking Half Life game. That ship, which
just it just shows that it's still like fractional, which
I don't think any of these people are kind of
missing UM, but it is kind of point to again
the degree to which this technology would have to leap
up for anything like what Facebook where we're about to
talk like it for that to actually be popular. There's
a difference between developing VR gaming and developing this metaverse

(09:42):
concept which goes way beyond VR gaming. Yeah yeah, um,
but I so what I find what I find so
like doomed about this isn't the technology, even though I
think it's important to acknowledge, there's a long way to
go just in terms of like how heavy it is,
how much space you need, how not fully immersive it is.
You know, it's trying to remove lighthouses making it more mobile. Yeah,

(10:06):
there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff that control
schemes are still kind of jank, like, yeah, there's a
lot to be done, but all of that's I mean,
think about the first iPhone, right, it was like a
fucking brick compared to the ship today, all of that
gets better, and all the first VR headset compared to
the Oculus two, it's like a massive improvement and basically
every way. I don't think when people criticize this stuff

(10:27):
by pointing out like how primitive VR is today, I
don't think that means anything. Um, it is like worth noting,
you know, it's current level of adoption but it's not
people compare this to like three D TVs and stuff.
It's not that three D TVs were immediately obviously from
the beginning, nothing but a but a grift um because
there's nobody wanted what really wanted what three dtvs had.

(10:48):
Like VR, people do want what VR does, and eventually
the tech will get there. What's bullshit is the idea.
And this is why I think this article by Galt
is so good. The idea that VR is going to
allow the poor and downtrodden of the world to have
a slice of the good life. And this is something
Karmak is particularly bullish about. Quote not everyone can have
a mansion, Not everyone can have a home theater. These

(11:09):
are things we can simulate to some degree in virtual reality.
Now the simulation is not as good as the real thing.
If you are rich and you have your own home,
theater or mansion or in private island, good for you.
You're probably not the people who are going to benefit
the most. Most of the people in the world lived
in cramped quarters that are not what they would choose
if to be if they had unlimited resources. Incredibly deranged. Yeah,
it's out of its mind because that's not how VR

(11:32):
works like I have, Like I can put on my
headset and load up like a nice forest, and it's not.
It's not the feeling of being in a fort like, No,
that's not. That's not how our senses work. So until
we can hack our own brains the feeling things we
don't actually feel, then it's not a thing. And we're
nowhere close to that level of technology, even just to
the degree that he's talking about, Like yeah, you could

(11:52):
you if you don't have a big home theater, you
could just like put it on and have a huge TV.
And which is a thing that VR can do now,
like I've it's not it's not good. It's like Garrison,
you come over to three times a week and we
watch movies with all of our friends in my living room.
Like the good thing about it, Like it's nice to
have a large screen. I have a big TV, but

(12:13):
like your friends, you're watching them react, like you're eating
food together. You're doing all this stuff that will never
really be possible in VR. I have a lot of
respect for John Karmen. He made Doom right, Like that's
a third of my childhood. Um, he's out of his
mind now if he thinks that that's like what people want,
what poor people want, Like you've been rich for too long, sir,

(12:33):
you don't understand human beings. A particular type of escape,
like using VR as that type of escapism is totally
wrong because like VR can be escapism, but it's not
going to trick you into thinking you're living in a mansion.
That's not that's not how VR works because you're walking
around a tiny room in your house and you can't
feel anything. You can like walk through cupboards, which is
a great way to play VR games is you can

(12:54):
just like hack it by walking into stuff. And they're
working on so the article notes that Elon Musk is
working on a brain machine interface called new Link. Yeah,
and who knows what I will say, that's a little
bit like the how how realistic all of those dreams
are um is questionable. That said, something like what they're

(13:17):
claiming it is will eventually be figured out. I will,
and it should it will probably probably should be destroyed.
It probably should be destroyed. Not put the chip in
your brain is really bullish on that technology. Gabe Newell
is the guy we have half life for, like he
and he and John Karnak if there's a mount rushmore
of like gamer dudes, it's they make they make one

(13:39):
of the what they make one of the better headsets. Yeah. Again,
like we're about to talk about Mark Zuckerberg, who I
do not think is a visionary. Both Karmak and Newell
are visionaries. Doesn't mean they're right, because visionaries are wrong
all of the fucking time. It's part of their job.
But they're both really, really fucking bullish on this. Newell
is a big believer in like the promise of kind
of what the neural link the brain, inner face technology

(14:01):
and vr uh. He told I g NY were way
closer to the matrix than people realize, which I don't
think is the case. Um. And Newell is the person
who I've just talked about like how smart he is.
He is even more out of his mind than John
Karmack on this ship um. In an interview with New
Zealand's One News Um, he talked about his vision of

(14:23):
the near future, which is a world in which brains
and computers interface, and computers can make changes to the
human brain he called he called the human body a
meat peripheral Jesus Christ. Okay, so this is lost his
mind this is the this is the thing about like
VR and like the metaverse in generals is over like
emphasizing that we basically just live in the meat space,

(14:47):
and the meat space exists just to make content for
the online which is so and the online space is
the actual real space and we just have to operate
inside our meat space to make content for that. This
is like the way technology has been progressing, the way
tech companies want of things to go. And it's the
most dystopian thing that's going to give so many people
like disassociate of mental disorders because it's not horrible for
I'm going to be super interested to see people of

(15:10):
my generation, including myself, like how we developed mentally the
next you know, twenty years, based on how kind of
fake our lives have been because of how much we
exist and socialized within this like false network. It's gonna
be interesting to watch. I I used to be really
optimistic about aspects of VR. I actually when I was

(15:30):
in mosle I filmed not that like other people did
this before I did, but I was kind of one
of the early people filming like a a VR documentary
of some combat of like the Battle of mosle Um.
Aspects of which were aired as A three sixty and
a bunch of different like TV networks UM, and I
had this belief that, like, yeah, VR, because the visual

(15:52):
aspect of VR is so good, you know, you know,
even at that point Seen was already so good. I
disbelieve it, like well if you could, because the first
time I ever went into a war zone, it was
such an affecting experience, and I thought like, oh my god,
if you could somehow carve out this moment of experience
and like transmitted to other people, maybe that would mean something.
Maybe it would like have an impact on people. I

(16:14):
do think that is possible in the long Yeah, yeah,
I think maybe we'll like we'll see. The question is like,
can you give a sh if if you feel like
horror games, the level of like anxiety and some degrees
trauma of playing like a really well made horror VR
game is incredibly intense. UM, and that's something that be
done very well. So I feel like that type of

(16:34):
like surreal experience like a war zone could actually be
carried over to some degree in VR to like change
people's minds on like hey, maybe war is not good. Yeah,
I mean that's that's the dream I don't know how
much I still believe that, but reading people like Gabe
Newell and how they talk about this technology makes me
lose some hope and you want to throw all the
headsets in. Here's another thing, Game new Will said in

(16:57):
that view Garrison, after calling the human body and beat peripheral.
You're used to experiencing the world through eyes. But eyes
were created by this low cost bidder that didn't care
about failure rates in r m as, and if it
got broken, there was no way to repair anything effectively,
which totally makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, but it's
not at all reflective of consumer preferences of the human eye.

(17:23):
No like funck like like they There is some aspects
of trans humanism that I like. I like change like
body parts at will with like my mind. But this
type of stuff you ac you want to throw all technology.
I support the idea of Like it would be great
if when people lose their eyes completely from like shrapnel

(17:45):
or whatever, some sort of like degenerative disease, we just
pop new eyes in there. Absolutely we start cloning eyes.
I think that's a great thing. But eyes are amazing,
Like the most the most impressive camera ever were. No,
we're close to replicating the ability. It is not a
low cost bitter. It is like they're imperfect, like everything

(18:07):
that that is part of the human body. But like
the break down said that he can't monetize it. The
same day, that's problem he's also talking about, like, well
they break down. It's like, motherfucker, if you used a computer,
you're gave Newell. I've know you've used a computer, Like
you want to talk about breaking every computer I've ever owned.
I've used Steam before, Like, yeah, Steam, motherfucker. I'd like

(18:30):
I would rather have my eyes and I'm wearing glasses
right now. Go suck an egg and it goes on
because he he can't stop ship talking like reality. He
talks about like in the in the virtual world he
wants to build, the real world will seem flat, colorless,
blurry compared to the experiences you'll be able to create
in people's brains. Um And I want you to keep

(18:51):
that in mind, my, my, my dear friends and colleagues
as we leap now into the Facebook live stream. First
of all, I think would be worth like explaining to
and we've we've danced around what the metaverse is, but
for people who are totally unfamiliarly, do you think it
would be worth giving a general explanation Will that be
covered in the Facebook thing? That's kind of covered in
the because because this is Facebook building it. But I

(19:13):
think we should. You're probably right that we should give
a little bit of context about like where they got
this idea, because again, Mark Zuckerberg has never had an
original thought. It's not um and and gave Newell and
and um John Carmack have had original thoughts in their life,
but this is not an original thought from any of them,
all of them, everyone anywhere who talks about the metaverse
um is whether or not they know it. A fan

(19:34):
of Neil Stevenson who wrote who wrote a book called
Snow Crash, where the point was that in the future,
the world is a dystopian, corporatized nightmare. And because things are,
in part because things are so bad and incredibly highly
like advertised and monetized persistent internet called the metaverse that
exists all around us and it's totally immersive has come

(19:56):
to dominate everyday life. Um and it's a bad thing.
Like snow Crash, He's a story of like, wouldn't this
future be horrible. Yeah, it's not like, hey, this is
a cool thing, but these tech guys read this and
they're like, oh yeah, that seems like fun. But you
could do that. Neil Stevenson, who was yet another person
I respect, made one crucial flaw, which is he gave
the hero in his book a katana. And because the

(20:18):
hero in his book katana, everyone was like, wouldn't this
be rad if this were the future, Let's make this
be the entire future. It's a real trash. You need
to abolish katanas, like, we would save so many lives. Honestly,
you could probably make a strong case that the Katana
has a huge chunk of the cultural weight that it
has because if Neil Stevenson, um, he's a big part

(20:40):
of that, right, you know, you've got a lot of
movies and stuff too. But yeah, but like the Katanas,
i mean punk kind of melding. Yeah, and it's it's
a it's a it's a very I mean, it's it's
a bit dated now, but it's still like a good
book to read. Like there's a bunch of silly stuff
like that. It's replicating a lot of others cyberpunk art,
some better, some worse. Yes, some worse cough cough, Ready
Player one. Yeah, and every like every not every cyberpunk sense,

(21:03):
because there's people like Corey doctor Oh who do some
really cool shit. Um, but most cyberpunk senses to some
extent um borrowed from from Neil Stevenson's work, and Facebook's
entire idea is based on this. And so the idea
is that it is a persistent, fully immersive digital world
that interacts with the real world. So you can be
in VR hanging out with friends from around the world

(21:24):
and like a fake living room and then like call
someone and see like a video of them in the
real world, is they're like walking to a concert or whatever,
and like talk to them and like make plans. Like
that's the idea, right. Um. So this video, this face,
it opens with you know, you've got your your little
introduction music and stuff, and then we see Mark Zuckerberg
looking like a fucking gollum um. Yeah. And and the

(21:47):
first thing that I really noticed about this is that
he talks about how we're all going to do this together,
meaning invent the technologies and use cases that are going
to make the metaverse worthwhile. Um. And when he says
all of us. This is not an internal Facebook video.
This is a video. The meta video is heavily angled
towards developers UM and investors UM and it's been viewed

(22:08):
by a lot of people, like twelve million to date.
But he's talking about like a big part of what
he's saying is that like the technology for all of
the stuff that we've rendered, because most of what's rendered
in this isn't game footage so to speak, like it's
not a game or whatever. It's here's how it might
look if the technology has ever invented. Like nothing, nothing
is like in engine or anything close to it. It's

(22:29):
a it's all speculative. What's interesting about this to me
is that he's he is saying we're going to build
this together and and sort of acknowledging that like Facebook
does not have the capacity to make this thing they've
dreamed about, but Facebook is going to own it. So
he's a lot of like this is him tacitly admitting
I want to take your surplus value to make a
metaverse that I then control and monetize entirely at my

(22:51):
own discretion, which is cool, it's great, and it's also
like I think, you know, I think if if, if
you want a sign of where this is actually going
and like the real creativity behind this, Like okay, again,
everything in that video is a mock up, right. It
looks like dogshit. It's so ugly, it's hideous. It looks
like a fucking Connect game or like a fucking we game,

(23:13):
which is fine. I don't want to live there, like
it's always weird in cartoony. Um. Yeah, So he talks
about and kind of laying out why he thinks this
is the future. Zuckerberry talks about how text used to
be the basis of everything online, but now like photos
and videos dominate and that's yeah, as that change happened

(23:33):
from like text to video to photos to videos. The
next change, he kind of frames it like the the
the the obvious next evolution is to what he calls
an embodied Internet where you're part of the experience, and
that's the metaverse, which again that if you don't I
think that part has some true I agree. I don't
think he's entirely wrong there. Obviously that's not his idea.

(23:56):
Um oh, running out of time, Okay, thank you for
telling about the host and now because it's unlimited minutes. Great,
Thanks zoom um speaking of meta verses. Um like, Yeah,
I'm gonna I'm gonna flop onto a share screen and
I'm gonna show you guys a section from this from
this video, think about computers or phones today. Now, since

(24:20):
we're doing this remotely today, I figured let's make this special.
So we've put together something that I think is really
going to give you a feeling for what this future
could be like. We believe the metaverse will be the
successor to the mobile Internet. We'll be able to feel present,
like we're right there with people, no matter how far

(24:42):
apart we actually are. Okay, so I'm pausing it here
because I want you to watch this. The room that
Mark Zuckerberge is in, he's not in the metaverse yet,
he's in like a house. I think it's supposed to
be his house. It is clearly not a place human beings.
It has been set dressed. Um. One of the ways
you can tell is that all of the books and
picture frames on the bookcase are like the same flat tones,

(25:04):
because they're not meant to stand out there, meant to
blend in and very telling Lee this is what's interesting
to me. As soon as he steps into the frame
where he's going to announce this. The thing that is
directly next to his head is the only thing that's
not like the same kind of baige as everything. It's
a bottle of barbecue sauce that's being used as the
book ind to a bunch of books now Meta. Immediately
after this, like people joked about it online and Meta

(25:26):
started tweeting about it and like trying to make like
jokes about oh, Mark just loves his you know, his
his barbecue so much. Like they tried to turn it
into a meme because they think it's humanizing and and
and kind of one aspect of the meme they were
putting together is that like, oh, he just forgot to
you know, he just he's he's so into barbecue that
he leaves his saucer that was put there on someone's orders,

(25:47):
Like that was it was to create me. We're seeing
we're seeing marvels as well. They're releasing promotional images specifically
designed to be turned into memes, and it doesn't work
because it's so obvious, like because we'd be like, you know, yeah,
we're not going to use this because it's it's a
it's a dogshit horrible, it's like horrible cinematography, bad colors,
and it's not a fun meme. But people did follow

(26:07):
for the Mark Zuckerberg thing. Uh like, oh look at
the barbecue thoughts. But yeah, that was intentional to create
like a viral thing to trip. Yeah, anyway, I'm gonna
let Mark continue here after I made my little point.
When I send my parents a video of my kids,
they're gonna feel like they're right in the moment with us,
not peering through a little window. When you play a
game with your friends, you'll feel like you're right there

(26:29):
together in a different worlds, not just on your computer
by yourself. And when you're in a meeting in the metaverse,
it'll feel like you're right in the room together, making
eye contact, having a shared sense of space, and not
just looking at a grid of faces. So that's important
because a big aspect of what he's trying to sell here,
why he's he's trying to convince people that this is

(26:52):
a real thing, is that it's a bomb for loneliness. Right. Um,
he is, he is, and he's one of people who's
responsible for pushing our society to such an atomized and
isolated direction. Facebook propaganda has isolated huge numbers of people
from their families. It's um. And of course then there's
just the aspect of it that is the lockdown, which
has isolated people a number of a lot of which
ties back to disinformation spread on Facebook. But like, um,

(27:16):
he's he's, he's selling this, you know, as a this
will make you less lonely, will make you feel like
you're all together. Um, and it's it's He's specifically says
at one point, this isn't about spending more time on screens.
It's about making the time we spend on screens already better. Um,
which is horseshit because, as the Facebook papers make clear,
Facebook has repeatedly refused to do things that would have

(27:38):
reduced the harm of their platform because it would have
reduced the traffic that they've got. And I think those
are the kind of decisions you can Yeah, I mean
and still like technologically we're still not there, Like when
when when you're in VR you even if you're interacting
with other like three D like personas of people specifically,
like vr chat was very popular among like furries, and
I think they are Honestly the best example of what

(27:58):
the metaverse could actually be is how furries use vr
chat um. But even still that is very different um
than standing in a room with someone in a first suit, right, Like,
it's it's totally it's it's totally different. And metaverses and
this type of thing. I don't think we'll actually solve alienation.
I don't think it's because you're not actually touching anyone,

(28:20):
Like it's it's not if you're not. There's still that
that that digital fog between you and everything else. Do
I think there's some elements of it that could be developed,
specifically using a R that would make things a little
bit cool. Yeah, uh, but it's not going to solve
alienation as a concept. In fact, it could actually make
it worse. It could make it worse. Like again, there's
some use cases for I don't know, people who have

(28:40):
like a l S. Maybe you could develop some sort
of rig that would allow them to interact like more
with with people around them and like that could be
useful for those people. But like, it is not a
societal answer to loneliness. And I think one thing that
makes that clear is you look at their vision of
home spaces. So this is kind of the center of
the of the metaverse. They want to build is everybody
has their little digital home um that you can set

(29:01):
up and you can design to your liking, and you
can buy things like n f T s to decorate it.
This becomes a big part of the pitch that like
n f T s are going to be in it
and like that way you know that they have at
one point, like somebody buys like an autographed poster for
a Metaverse concert that's an n f T and they
get to put it in their room and know that
it's the only one of those posters or something, which

(29:22):
is the dumbest thing I can imagine. Um, maybe it'll work.
I don't know. I I don't really see how that's
any different from an n f T being revolutionary case
than like, you know, being able to buy something in
a fucking video game. No, it's it's just the way
people already hate to do. Yeah, it's it's just skins
or whatever bullshit cosmetic stuff I want. Number One of

(29:45):
the things that's in entertaining about this is how bad
a lot of the acting is for all of the
money and time they have. Like Mark Zuckerberg is a
ship presenter and and this bit where he tries to
explain why the home space is so cool? Um and
it shows you like their home space. It starts about
four thirty on the video of people at home when
a watch is just a perfect, perfect encapsulation of like

(30:06):
how inhuman this this world they want to build really
feels what even when they try to present it in
its best face? Okay, Mark, Hey, what's going on? We're
floating in space this place that's awesome, right, it's from
the creator I met in l Ah. This place is
amazing that you of course it's me. You know, I

(30:28):
had to do the robot man. I thought I was
supposed to be the robot. WHOA. I knew you were bluffing.
Where is Nai? Let's call her Naomi? Hey? Should we
deal you in? Sorry I'm running late, but you've got
to see what we're checking out. There's an artist going

(30:50):
around Soho hiding a r pieces for people to find.
Really street art, that's cool. So I wanted to stop
here because this is also part of like what's it's
this perfect? It's like n f T culture and all
this ship like the street art they show, this is
clearly them trying to be like, here's one of these
cool use cases for how the metaverse is going to

(31:11):
interact with and influence the real world. Like this artist
pastes this art on a wall that when you look
at it in the metaverse or when you you film
it and you send a video to people in the metaverse,
it becomes this big three D thing and it it
just looks like ship. It's just a bunch of like
squiggly lines and stuff. Like. It's not like there's good graffiti,
especially in San Francisco, there's incredible fucking graffiti. Um, this

(31:32):
is just like nonsense. It looks like it looks like
a fucking n f T. Like it's just this this
kind of shitty. It was obviously designed by a computer,
not an actual person. Yeah, and there's nothing like it
doesn't say anything. There's nothing cool about it. Um and
they haven't again because Mark Zuckerberg can't conceive of art.
There's nothing about this that like makes me think, oh
what a need futuristic thing. It was like, oh cool,

(31:54):
I can see squiggly lines in person and on my phone.
I mean, the big metaverse and like a R and
VR is like you know, making depth within actually making
two D space appear to be three D space. This
still looks too D like it doesn't. It's not. It's
not tricking my brain in any way whatsoever. Especially with
the concept of like filming it on your phone. We
have the technology now like that's not that's not the metaverse.

(32:16):
That's just filming it already on your little box, as said,
and we have the technology to do like that. A
r thing with fucking um with your Pokemon Go did
that like five years ago, and it's not what people want.
Um well, Pokemon long time, but we ever got to
world peace and it was a CIA. Pokemon Go is

(32:38):
the closest we ever got to like the metaverse, like realistically,
but people don't want People don't want to like take
photos of crappy street art that then becomes three D
but still isn't like it is. It is incredibly grim
that most of like the case uses for metaverse stuff.
The only thing they can imagine it being is like

(32:59):
fucking met This is like the biggest thing that they show.
He's like, oh, we can make virtual meetings. They've tried that.
The video that we just played. They're all in like
this spaceship and everybody's three D like one person. It
looks like kind of a hologram of their real bodies.
Some people are just like three D rendered cartoons of themselves.
One person is a big robot, and they're all like
floating in zero G and playing card sitting at a

(33:20):
table and playing virtual cards, and there's like a bed
in the background. But like, you can't go in the
bed because it's not a fake. It's a fake and
you're not floating in zero G because will never be
able to trick you into thinking you're sitting in a
in a in your chair in a room with some
ship on your face. You're you're fucking Carl Havoc and
trying to pretend that you're like having a good time

(33:41):
playing cards with your friends. It's like, yeah, if I
could have a space station house where my friends and
I could float around and play cards, that would be sick.
But you're not promising that. Are you doing that? Um?
Like there is there is games that simulate zero G.
They don't trick you. They make you nauseous. Sometimes it
can be fun, but like it's I'm not going to
be in the same way that eating Hawaiian baby woodrow

(34:03):
seeds can be fun. Um. Yeah, So he goes on
to talk about the avatars that you'll have, which are
basically he describes them as pro profile pictures, but much
richer because they're live, which I find unsettling and part
by thinking about what will happen when people die to
their digital avatars. But whatever. Um. At this point he
goes on to talking about how people he thinks people

(34:25):
are going to actually use these avatars, and it's, um,
it's very unhinged one for hanging out and maybe the
fantasy one for gaming. You're gonna have a wardrobe of
virtual clothes for different occasions, designed by different creators and
from different apps and experiences. So one of the things
he's talking about that is exciting is that like you'll
be able to have a different avatar for uh, like work,

(34:49):
if you're in a work meeting, or like hanging out
with your friends. Um. And to me, that says, like, oh,
so now I'm gonna be expected to like maintain and
keep up an avatar for like my job and like
dress that fucking thing, and then I'll have to like
switch to hang out with people, And like why why
does that? What does that provide me? Being able to
like sit in a room as an avatar that I

(35:10):
don't currently have like through zoom, Like why why is
in what world? Is that something people want? The only
only good use case for this is Furries. This is
the only way it worked because they that has almost
like a true representation of their own body. What what's
this is gonna do for regularly for like people who
are not Furries is it'll probade people a lot of

(35:32):
weird like dysmorphia. Yeah, or if you're or if your
trends and you make a female avatar, assuming like you know,
for me, if I was to make like an avatar
that's more feminine, that can be fun for me. Um,
But for a lot of people, these weird like digital
versions of themselves will probably they're just like Uncanny Valley
and it will probably make you feel weird. Yeah. Um.

(35:54):
And he's he's so focused on like this as a
way for people to work together while being remote, which
says a lot like It's seventh, like like about a
half minute after this point or a minute or so
after this point, he brags that your home space can
even have your own personal office where you work, which
is within the metaverse, within the metaverse, which is really

(36:15):
bleak to me, just like digitally ruin your eyes. You
can goggles that long, your eyes get rude because it's
blasting light into your re and it's it's also just
like I like sitting with a laptop, and I have
a laptop, and I have a second screen for my laptop,
and I sit at my comfortable living room table and

(36:36):
I write and browse the Internet and research and stuff.
And yeah, every now and then, like I hunch over
too much in my back gets a little bit sore,
but like it's not. It's it's pretty comfortable, and I
can get up and move and do stuff in the house.
Putting a bunch of ship on me and sitting still
and like being unable to perceive the world around me
and locked into this uncomfortable digital desk because it's later

(36:58):
on whenever they do there's this mix of you can
see the videos of the technology as it actually exists,
and they're aspirational and the aspirational version. It's like you're
in this gorgeous three dimensional office that looks so you're
playing basketball, both in real life and in the hologram,
which it first of all just impossible, like you're never
going to do, never ever going to happen, just physically impossible.

(37:19):
But when you see the clips of like what because
they do have aspects of this built. When you see
the clips of like the workspaces they have built, it's like, oh,
of my screen is the Microsoft word app or excel
um as it or or Outlook as it currently exists,
and it is like the edges of this little VR office.
So all I'm looking at is I'm seeing a full

(37:40):
eye version of like whatever apps I'm used. You can, yeah,
you can. You can get a air headset, you can
download virtual desktop, you can bring your desktop into your
v into a VR space. It's not useful, like it's
like it's it's it's novel for the first twenty minutes,
and then you get bored of it because you realized
that you can actually see your keyboard so you can't
type fast. There's a great joke about this in the
last season the Community, the best example of the metaverse,

(38:05):
where he's like because like the big part of like
Epic Games version of the metaverse is like interacting with
like brands and all your apps within a three three
D digital space, which is what the Dean does in Community. Yes,
like run to his email, which yeah, like this is
a great example of why this technology is never going
to actually catch on for regular people because that's not
how they use the Internet. That you don't want to

(38:25):
traverse a three D digital space to get to your email.
That's that's asinine. Yeah, and it's there's aspects of it
that are asinine, and there's aspects of that just thus
just impossible. So, like a big thing that he's hitting
on with this is interoperability, which is like you want
to be able to trans travel between different apps, between
different programs that different people have made, and you want

(38:46):
to be able to take like whatever items you buy,
whatever n f t s you have with you. Um,
And he's talking about like this will work in games.
This is a thing that like you've seen people talk
about with like the promise of n f t s
for gaming, like you could get an item that like
is yours so they can't nerve it or or whatever,
and like it will travel for you from game to game.
There's a developer I follow on on Twitter. He made

(39:08):
the game Audios, which is about like a guy who
disposes of bodies for the mob and tries to quit.
It's a it's a cool games. He's a good developer.
Doc something or other. He wrote a huge article about
like why none of this n f t's can't work
for gaming? Um that also hits on like why what
Zuckerberg saying is impossible? Which is that Like, so you're
saying that everyone who makes a game has to has

(39:30):
to build in like a way to handle every single
item that you could possibly get in the metaverse and
everything that you're having, Like it's it's an unthinkable challenge.
Um it's and and like why and what if a
game shuts down? Right, Like are you saying they have
to continue operating the game forever and updating it forever,
even once it's no longer profitable so that you can
keep using your eye Like no, it's just it's it's

(39:52):
functionally impossible. Um, but it's It's what's interesting to me
is he's talking about all this. He has to know
this is impossible when he does. There's all these scenes,
like you said, where people like playing basketball, and like
one of them is in the real world and one
of them is in VR, but they're both playing in
a real world. And so the person with a with
a virtual ball, and it's like number one, how is

(40:12):
the person the real world? How do they feel that ball?
He assistant vague shit about like haptic feedback, which doesn't
work that way. Um, maybe there's a way if you're
wearing like a glove that it could trick you into
believing you were hitting a ball or something, um like
like and not everyone's wearing headsets like we're just we'll
get to that in part two, the headset question. Um,

(40:33):
but what what what's interesting is that like a huge
amount of the coolest stuff, the stuff that you can
be like, well, that would be neat. Yeah, if I
could fucking if I could fucking play pool with my
friend in Germany and it would feel like we were
both in the same room, um, even though only one
of us is standing around a real pool table. Yeah,
that would be an amazing feat of technology. It's never
gonna happen. Um, certainly not in any kind of reasonable

(40:55):
time for him. Mark knows that all that is going
to happen. It most is like a digital prince sweet
that like is damages people's eyes and brains. Um. And
he knows that, but he's angry that Zoom beat him
to the to the punch when the pandemic hit. Um.
And this is his like that's kind of one of
the sinister things about it. Um, there's other sinister ship,
which we'll talk about in part two. But you know what, guys,

(41:19):
it's time to end to part one. This is enough
for part one. Well, we'll talk more about we'll talk
about what's really frightening about a lot of what Mark's
trying to build in part two, But for right now,
I want to talk about ending the episode which I
guess I just did Goodbye, Welcome Back. It could happen

(41:52):
here the show where we're talking right now about the
metaverse that a bunch of rich people think that you're
going to want to live in once ruin the regular world.
Um uh. And why it's dogshit and it is dogshit,
so it's just it's just it's just total dogshit. Um.
Everything about this, I don't know. It seems like a

(42:13):
waking nightmare to be to me so far if we're
actually talking about like what they are, what they are
immediately trying to because a bunch of this is aspirational
nonsense that as we've stayed at is like you are
never going to play a perfect game of basketball in
a mix of real and a R courts with your
friend in Hong Kong. Like that's never going to happen. Never,
That's not how physics works, that's not how electronics works.

(42:35):
Maybe when we find out how to literally hack the
human brain, we can like put you into a quasi
seizure state that that that that mimics that. But like
the closest, the closest thing we have to this right
now is actually uh VR board games is the best
is the best example of this. Or you can play
with you can play Settlers of Catan with your friend,
a classic across the Yeah, and there's some cool ship

(42:57):
you can do with haptics and haptic feedback is like
the base example of it is when you like touch
your phone and your phone like vibrates under your hand
to like let you know that you've you've touched like
a command. And there's there's people who think like at
some point we would be we may be able to
make using haptic feedback, like a virtual keyboard that feels
like a real keyboard. That might be possible. That's still

(43:18):
that's still like kind of like the idea of a
keyboard that isn't there but feels like a real keyboard
might be that that's still on the fringes of possibility
like this, The fucking ship they're showing in this video
is like nonsense. We will have laser cannons before we
have any of this bullshit, like we will be shooting
each other in space before we have this nonsense. Um,

(43:41):
And thank god for that because at least that sounds fun.
So the actual center of what they've built in terms
of the products that that Facebook is launching now for
the metaverse, UM, the core of it is Horizon Home
and Horizon World. And I think Horizon is kind of
the brand they're going with for all of their different
like meta programs. UM. Horizon Home is the home spaces

(44:01):
thing that they discussed earlier, where people can like make
their own like houses. And one of the things they
don't talk about in this they keep saying like you
can build whatever you want, you can make it look
like anything. They don't say a word about how like
decorating your digital home is going to be monetized versus
how much of it will be sweat equity. And again,
like the smart thing would be make it all sweat equity,
make it like minecraft, make be able to build anything

(44:23):
they can conceive of. If they're actually creative enough and
spend the time. They won't do that, um as they
talk about in that like in the video they played
like we're like, oh, this is a cool world. It
was made by a developer. Like yeah, you're gonna buy
the cool ship. Um I don't. I don't know what
you're gonna buy it. And it's gonna suck because all
you can do is sit at a table. Yeah, and
because like you can't go into bed, like you can't,

(44:44):
Like all of this stuff is just cosmetic, like it's
you're not gonna be tricked into thinking it's real. I've
I've been in cool VR like three D rooms and
like they're cool to look at for like ten minutes. Yeah,
any boring Yeah, like it's easy, like oh yeah, it's
like the real world, but I can't touch anything. And
when they show you the stuff that's closer to real,

(45:05):
like the different like people chatting in the metaverse and whatever,
it doesn't look fun. There's a there's a scene where
they like show people like watching a YouTube video together
in the metaverse and they're all like these disembodied upper
torsos because of course VR sets can't can't read your legs,
so it's like a bunch of torsos floating around a
maximized YouTube video window. And it's like I would rather

(45:27):
just show a friend my phone. I would even rather
text them a video and being in person with somebody
watching on a on a phone or even but even
even if without Like it's the kind I think that
they're expecting that, Like everyone's kind of bummed when they
send a friend video over signal or text and like
wait for them. No, I would rather do that than
this ship. I don't want to hang out as a

(45:48):
bunch of torsos around a YouTube. We don't want have
to schedule of VR session every time I want to
share of YouTube video. No, that sounds horrible, and it
sounds like I would constantly have to be in VR.
Like you talk about how we're not trying to expand
screen time, but like, am I just waiting around in
VR to like show friends YouTube? They are really unclear
about how often you need to be in a headset,

(46:11):
and it's it's kind of suspicious. It's almost like they
don't actually plan on doing anything. I want to play
another video that they claim to be a use case.
And the way this video starts is like this actual
person is in an actual real world concert for some
guy I've never heard of that Facebook. I think he's
he's some clearly some sort of musician with a following
the Facebook hired to do a concert for this video,

(46:32):
and she like calls her friend on the metaverse, and
her friend digitally hops into the concert and they're like,
the digital girl and the real girl are like dancing
together at the show, which I don't know whatever, Like
that is more possible than the basketball shit. Um, I
mean yeah, watching having a like a VR version of
standing in a room where musician plays. Sure, I mean
it's not. Yeah, yeah, I would debate like whether or

(46:56):
not it's doable. But then after that they see, like
during the concert, this like digital thing pops up. That's like,
do you want to go to a free after party? Um?
And first off, all of these after parties will cost
money and they'll all be dogshit, But um, that's the
same with most real after parties. So I guess that's
that's at least Facebook accurately delivering on the promise of

(47:16):
the real world. Um, but I want to play like
what happens in this metaverse after party that these two
both hop into digitally after one of them. So like,
as this starts, the lady who was actually at the
concert like sits down at home and gets into the metaverse.
Imagine your best friend is at a concert somewhere across

(47:39):
the world. Uh oh, what if you could be there
with her? Yeah? Real? Yeah, real, real and clear? How
that works? Yeah? Real quick? That the concert? See the

(48:00):
holographic version? How the person see that? Yeah? Is she
wearing all that while she's dancing? Everyone wearing VR and
seeing the world through VR. Because I'll tell you about
Like right now, I'm I in our put put on
I put on Oculus as a joke, and right now
I have it on the pass through mode, which means
I can see the real world through my cameras in

(48:20):
the oculus. And you know what it looks like? Shit, Yeah,
it's black and white. It's super grainy. I can't there
has it has no like exposure range. Everything is like
it's it's like you look like you're wearing a sunglasses
case in your look like the world. But like I
can't do anything because it all is like a horrible
digital like like I can't like it's not really like

(48:43):
I can't do anything aspects of this one, like at
some point passed through mode will be in color and
the latency will be notice right, like and there won't
be late and seeing like yeah, but it'll but it's
not gonna be still be with your human eyeball. It'll
it'll still be a thing. So that girl is going
to have to be at a concert dancing getting super
sweaty and like she's wearing something, even if it's as

(49:05):
small as like regular glasses and she's not Like I
guess better, but it's more to the end. But like,
if people are actually gonna developed this technology, the real
way to do it is with a R, not not VR,
because with a R, yeah, you could have put on
like actual glasses and have like a person show up
on the thing and make it look like they're there,
well actually still seeing the real world. That's gonna be

(49:27):
the way to do it. Yeah, And I think that
there's what to do it. Yeah, I think that's what
they're like claiming here, but it's really unclear how it's
all going to interface. How the a R is going
to interface with like the full VR stuff, Like are
we going to have two separate sets of gear, one
for when we're in the real world and we can't
be fully immersive and one for when we want to
dive into the metaverse as turn it around? Do we
always carry it around wherever we go? Yeah, but I

(49:50):
want to play the section. I sorry, I played the
video where they were at the concert just because it
it looks very silly. I want to play the section
where they're at the after party because it's it's dystopian
as fun. So here's the all all metaverse after party
that looks like a bunch of fucking connect avatars standing
around and like a room made out of glowing neon
digital room. Yeah, nobody's drinking, which is the only good

(50:10):
thing to do with an afterparty that's not cocaine. So
from from the jump, I'm like, well, what is the
only good thing about an afterparty is if you want
more drugs and all of the drugs places are closed. Party,
maybe at the end you can hook up with a
digital avatar. Yeah it's anyway, I'm I'm just gonna play
this dog shit where they were. This is wild, is it?

(50:34):
They're just slowly Dancy's a giraffeman. Check this out. Charity
action for n f T party that looks like ships
of your favorite song. Yeah, it looks dogs. Yeah. So

(50:57):
it's like it's it's a it's a horrible three D chat.
We are already have these, These already exist, and they're
not tons of fun. They're fun is when you're in
first suits and you're walking around a fake city destroying it.
That's the only fun way to do this. And the
thing they're showing in this is that like an autographed
poster for the concert um is an n f T

(51:17):
that you can buy for a charity auction, and like
as they're looking at it, the actual musician walks by
and tells them it looks cool, and so they buy
it and they have the musician come in for that
number one to like try to make this kind of like, yeah,
you'll be able to do these digital events where you
can meet actual celebrities, which like, no, I'm sure celebrities
will agree to do Q Q and as in the
multiverse like they do anywhere else. But they're not going

(51:38):
to just walk around in some dogshit virtual party because
they have money and they can do actual fun things
in the actual real world. They're gonna be fucking supermodels
while skiing down a mountain in Lake Tahoe. Because they're rich. Um,
they're going to be like flying in their private jets
or driving in a fucking yacht and eating lobster that's
been tortured. So it tastes better because they're rich, Like

(52:02):
they're they're not going to be hanging out in a
digital lobby telling you that a fucking dogshit poster in
f t is cool and that you should buy it. Um,
unless you're a millionaire and they want your money because
they're Nicolas Cage and they have an addiction to buying
Tarrannosaurus parts. I don't know, it's it's silly, it's it's ridiculous. Um. Yeah.

(52:22):
So one of the things that I thought about when
I was watching this is like the concept of metaverse culture. Um,
So like at some point, if this is a thing,
there's going to be like like if there ever is
a metaverse, people will develop a culture for it, just
like they've developed a culture for Twitter, a culture for Reddit,
a culture for Facebook, just as there were like internet
culture or was fantasy. Yeah, it happens with every community

(52:46):
you make online. Um. And and that's the thing, Like
there's no I see no space in this thing that
Mark Zuckerberg has envisioned as he is presenting it for
organic evolution of a None of the things that here
are gonna make people want to form a culture around it,
because it's all it looks like, it looks like boring
yuppie ship, all of it, but none of it is

(53:07):
actually looks cool or fun, and none of it, none
of it is he's not talking about any of it
with like the there's no there's no openness in it,
like there's no I don't see where a culture could evolve,
and if one does, it's going to be directly like
in opposition to Facebook moderation, um like yeah, um well yeah,
and I mean and there's there's an extense to which

(53:28):
like they can't write because like if you actually let
people just like do things, like imagine the griefing that's
going to happen in one of these spaces, right Like
every person's avatar is going to be like sixteen thousand dogs,
like this is That's literally this all it's going to be, like,
this is this is this is what Twitch looks like,
right Like every twitch chat is a guy posting a
hydramatee of dogs. Like it's like none of none of

(53:50):
this can actually work if you let people do literally anything.
If you don't let people do anything, like why would
you know I'm gonna want to do it? Yeah? Yeah,
Like how how are you going to sell them this crap?
Like once upon a time there was a game called
Second Life. I guess it still exists, but we're talking
people talked about it the way they're talking about the
metaverse now, and that became just like it was never that.
But there was like this beautiful moment where this I

(54:12):
think and she Chung was her name, Um, this like
culture writer, kind of expert lady was like doing a
Q and A and Second Life that was like build
as being this like big event for the platform that
was going to like make people take it seriously. And
a bunch of like users showed up and made a
bunch of floating dicks like float through the room during

(54:33):
the interview, so that like while this person was trying
to talk seriously about Second Life, just like floating cocks
we zooming past her head the entire time, and it
was extremely funny and it's it's exactly the kind of
thing like, yeah, Mark, that's what all of this is
going to look like. Any mass event is going people
will find a way to grief it. Um, and that
will in fact be the thing they most want to do.
Is that will be the actual culture. Part is fucking

(54:54):
with Facebook. Yeah you know, but that's the part about
that that sucks. It's like, yeah, you know. It was
like you're universal reality thing, right, So like, okay, what
are people going to do in a virtual reality? It's well, okay,
you're gonna get You're gonna get a bunch of neo
Nazis like figuring out a way to like show you
just like the worst ship you've ever seen in your life.
Like it's it's gonna it's gonna be all the stuff
from the two thousands were like half of the Internet

(55:16):
was just like a video. Why this is the thousand
tends to like half of Twitter is just heading videos,
And now it's in VR. It's like, yeahs in the metaverse,
it's going to be amazing. Some of that's even already
happening in like VR social media apps. I know of
a few specific Nazis involved in January six who networked
and met with people via of specifically VR chat. So like,

(55:38):
this is this is already a thing, um And making
it more broad than like this small, you know, because
the VR right now is mostly just a small subsect
of like gaming culture right and people are into it
because there is VR games that are cool, like like
Beat Saber is fun, right people game Um. In order

(55:59):
for them to break this through into the mainstream, they
need to make it appealing some way. And the only
way they're making appealing right now is by doing meetings
and like concerts. So the next part I Want to
Play doesn't say a lot about the future marks trying
to build, but it's very funny because it's him sitting
down with a woman who works in his gaming department
and she's walking him through like what games are going
to be integrated into the metaverse? And it fucking reads

(56:22):
like and I think you should leave sketch, Like it
feels like a sketch where the joke is that everyone
is awkward and not talking the way human beings talk.
And in case you can't watch this chunk of the
video and it starts at about like nineteen thirty four. UM.
In the actual Facebook video, all of the video games
they're talking about, like look Dogship, they look like the
Kirkland brand of like popular like fighting games and fps

(56:44):
s and stuff. None of them look very good. Um,
so I'm gonna play a clip from this because it's
very funny. Bailed out active communities be Saver has a
passionate community and a million dollars and less pressed around
a great example of the games releasing fresh content. They've

(57:07):
actually been working on involving the way that you inter
wrap with the tracks and feel the music, the way
he's nodding in this, like his digital avatar looks more
like a person. Here's some beat saber yeaheah, it looks
like regular beat saber. Yeah, but it's it's VR. It's
a it's already as VR. Yeah, it's already a VR game.

(57:29):
You can't wait to play this, and you can already
play with incredible artists to release new music puts all
the time. You can do this a little more than
question been working more of this metaverse prison take, Oh God,
every scene where she's talking to him and he's just
like Bobblehead nodding just a little bit, but not like
it's he looks. Mark actually will benefit from the metaverse,

(57:53):
like outside of a financial thing, because a a sculpted
three D representation of him will be a thousand times better,
more human than he looks like, more of a person. Yeah,
it's I mean, it's just like he's scripted it badly
and he's a narcissist, so he has to be the
one to present it. Again a small number one, if
Steve Jobs were doing this, Number one, he wouldn't because

(58:14):
he understood what people wanted from technology. But if he
were doing something like this, he would introduce like little
chunks of it, and then he would have a famous
person who's charismatic introduced the rest of it, like, yeah,
that's the like it wouldn't be it wouldn't introduce how
I'm sitting like a bobblehead listening, and he would introduce
VR and a R into a way that actually integrets
how people use the Internet, all right, because there is

(58:35):
ways that there is ways of doing it. It's not
this like super monetized n f T like bullshit holographic
fake stuff. Yeah, and there's there's aspects of this, like
he goes through after this, like there's a bunch of
gaming stuff, which is impossible for the reasons we've talked about,
and then there's aspects of it that seemed cool, like
there's a scene where like an architect gets onto his

(58:56):
digital office and like somebody sends him, uh, schematics too
of a building they're making, and he's able to generate
a three D and walk around the building like, Okay,
that actually seems it seems like useful, Like you've developed
a use case for the all of the architects out there.
It's it's I'm still not convinced that CAD would actually
be better in three D than it would be like, sure,

(59:18):
it's I I think it may someday. I think it
could be. Like if you are one of the concreasingly
small number of people who can afford to like build
a house of your own, I can see why it
would be neat to be like, Okay, well let's do
a three D render of the house and I can
walk through it and I could maybe make changes at
the last moment. As I'm kind of experiencing that is
definitely useful where a window is like yeah, I can that.

(59:40):
That seems like something number one Technologically you could do
that more or less. Now, Um, I don't think it's
it's not gonna be as instantaneous as this, but if
you give it time to render it could be done,
and it it's something that a number of people might
find useful. But again that's a niche product because like
eighteen people in our generation are rying homes. I mean
also it's it's it's expensive to develop because you would

(01:00:02):
have just modeling an actual real life location is a
lot of work. Yum. Now there is there is a
lot of a lot of technology that's getting way better
at it by machine cameras um and like basically filming
a space and and the community can reconstruct it pretty accurately.
Um that that that is a growing field. But still
it is is it's a very niche you know area

(01:00:23):
at least at a yeah, so I the thing that
is so anyway, there's aspects of this that are ridiculous,
aspects of this that seemed neat, But the longer you
watch it, the thing that comes becomes really clear is
that all he's really advertising is mass surveillance. Yea. Yeah,
there's a point in this video where they're showing you
how they can like map a real world location so

(01:00:45):
you can be in your actual house, put on your
VR glasses, um and it can map the your actual
home digitally in real time and as you and as
you pick up real things in your house, you you
see them being picked up in VR and presume the
other people in the VR could see it, which we
are not quite there yet. I stay pretty here in
VR technology, we're getting close to this, but we're not.

(01:01:07):
We're not quite there. I mean we're we're we're actually
we actually are where what they show in the video.
And I'm gonna play you a second from it because
i want to show you something here at least, I mean,
like like consumer products. We're not We're not at this
point yet. Yeah, and I want to show you, uh
where we are because this video they're showing like actual footage.
So they have built this thing. But there's a catch,

(01:01:28):
and so I'm just gonna play it right now, right
out the researcher. So what's critical here is that this
is all happening in real time. So if you I've
just paused it, well you've got here. On one side,
there's a woman in a real like house, sitting and
picking up like a toy home on her couch. And
then on the left you see the VR version of
her house, which looks close to photo realistic and like

(01:01:50):
the house that she's holding in the real world is
floating in the same way that she's holding it, Like
her body isn't there, like the stuff she's interacting with is.
But if you look at the house she's holding. The
reason that they're able to do this and it really
does work is it's covered in sensors. And and actually
every single thing in the real house is covered in
sensors because that's the only way for this to worverything
that's moving is covered in sensors. Yeah, yeah, and it

(01:02:10):
it is impressive, like as a proof of concept, like this,
this is here, we can do this, but like it's
still light years away from practical and more to the point,
when you look at this, you realize that, like, well,
if this is ever going to work, the only way
to make it work is for Facebook, through this service,
to map your entire home in real time, every hour

(01:02:32):
of all day. And they also go on to talk
about like how you're gonna have just your commands and
like you'll be able to like make an expression or
like a hand gesture and that will do things, which
means that like this service isn't just learning what's in
your home and what you do with the things in
your home. It's it's learning your facial expressions and your
gestures and like what they mean and interpreting those at

(01:02:52):
all times. I can kind of explain where oculus which
is over Facebook. I think they're technically renaming oculus yea
spring to just calling it the metic quest but what
wait wait wait, the medical quest that that that's that's
what they're calling it instead of instead of oculus UM.
So where where that right now? Is basically, uh, the

(01:03:16):
only kind of real world interactivity that they have for
their VR headsets. Again for like the consumer models, I
don't know, it's in link development. UM is hand tracking.
This this is the thing they've been working on for
a long time. Is that you put on the headset
and the camera like the cameras and depth sensors built
into the headset can see your hands and like you said,
you have like gesture controls where you can do certain

(01:03:37):
things in your hand and it will make certain things happen.
This is the only interactivity that that we have. It's okay,
it's not perfect, like it's it is. It is better
than a lot of the other hand tracking systems from
other companies, but like it's it's it is very much
a work in progress, UM. And the way to make
this work is by is very good depth sensing cameras,
which I think Apple makes some of the best ones

(01:03:59):
right now that they put into the iPhone. Uh. The
other way of doing this is with lighthouses. So this
is like separate um separate like uh, separate cameras that
you set up around the corners of your house that
project different like wavelengths of light and they get it
received back, so they can map your house UM with
not just cameras but also like like in like infrared

(01:04:22):
sensors and that kind of thing. So these are these
are like the two methods of doing it. Facebook is
really trying to go full on, full on to the
everything is built into the headset thing. So no, so no,
like lighthouses. Everything is just depth depth sensing cameras. So
that's why they're working on hand tracking so much because
that's something you can actually do. But like, I can't
pick up anything, um, Like the only thing I can

(01:04:44):
pick up is my controllers, which because they they have
sensors built in, they can be rendered in the actual
game the same way like my hand can be, so
that that that's where they're at for that for the
consumer products get more than it's getting developed. Again where
they're at you think about what Facebook has already done
with the formation you provided, and how so much of
their money comes from selling your data. Um. The only

(01:05:05):
way for this to work that they've they've passed always
watching everything, every moment of your existence, including like your
micro expressions, which is why oulan in the tiny little
box here. And here's the thing. If they were to
actually develop the technology, which I don't think is impossible,
although it's not particularly close. Um, it's not going to

(01:05:28):
be cheap to store all that. So in order to
make it a tile outside, well, it's going to be
cloud based. But in order to make it like cloud
isn't free um in a subscription probably I think you'll
pay some, but I think in order to make it affordable, um,
so that more people are on it, they're just going
to sell your data in a way that has never

(01:05:50):
been in a and and the government will have access
to it. Like is it's actually like the thing that
he is actually proposing here is I want to build
a machine gun odd that knows your sins, like that
knows when your hearts in your house, like before you smile.
That can predict like when you're about to make a
gesture or laugh because it is so accurately mapped your

(01:06:14):
body and motions. Um, it's actually a nightmare. Like when
you really think about what he is trying to build
here and it's like, well, what, what's what what's the
actual use case for this? And it's like, well, okay,
so you have you have a bunch of spustal forces guys.
You put them in a VR thing and then you
know you can you can, you can you can have
them drill on knowing exactly where all the rooms in
the houses, where everyone is in, where everyone is in

(01:06:35):
a house any given time. It's like, oh, hey this
this is gonna be great. This is yeah, it's it's great. Yeah,
it's it's really cool. Um, they have a So there
is a little bit here briefly about where like Mark
talks about how the last year or so has been
um fucking uh. The term he uses is humbling for them.

(01:06:57):
Oh god yeah, and you you kind of think that
like he's about to say that, like, oh, because we
we made life dramatically worse and our service was integral
in several ethnic cleansings and a couple of civil wars
and like hate crimes on a scale that was unimaginable
before it really came into being, or that we thought

(01:07:18):
had been at least we thought had been consigned to
a century or so ago before Facebook came into being.
But no, that's not why it's humbling. Why he says
it's been humbling is that Facebook has been developing services
for other platforms like the App Store, where they don't
have total control, and that sucks. And that's like the
thing that that's the that's him admitting a little bit
that like a big part of this is they're trying
to build a service the entire Internet gets filtered through

(01:07:40):
that they completely control, so that they are never in
anyone else's wheelhouse, Like everything is done through Facebook. And
with Facebook's approval as opposed to them, they want to
get face Facebook. Facebook is going to become the state. Yeah,
And that's the thing that it says so much about
Mark that he's like, what's humbling? Isn't all of them
a stake? Because I've made It's that periodically I have

(01:08:02):
not had total control. Um, it's great. Um. He then,
from immediately from this says that if we all work
at it, all of us. The metaverse can reach a
billion people by the next decade um, which is very funny.
Um that he thinks that that's like an enticing fucking thing.
So one of the use cases they try to present

(01:08:25):
is they have a beauty influencer who like made like
a fucking candle line or something, uh, that she's sold
on Instagram and she's she's very successful in Instagram. They
bring this lady in and number one as soon as
they started interviewing her, it's it's it's what I was
saying about. You have a higher a celebrity to do this, Mark,
You're not charismatic. She's immediately the most engaging person in
the entire presentation because she's a successful Like she's someone

(01:08:46):
who understands how she appears on camera, Um, how to
make herself seem likable on camera, how to like interact
with the world on a camera, and nobody else in
this video understands that, Um, which is just funny. It's
not particularly like say anything other and that, like, you
have professionals do difficult things, Mark, don't don't hire your
weird gawky engineering staff to like be the faces of

(01:09:07):
this thing. They're not good at this, and neither are you.
I just want to point out, so he said that
like he can get one billion people the next decade.
So far there's only been sixteen million vir headsets sold ever. Yeah,
so getting that to the point of a billion, it
seems like quite quite the challenge. I mean, it is
a challenge, but you could look at like how quickly

(01:09:29):
smartphones went from Yeah, except smartphones were useful in improving
the world in very obvious ways, whereas the metaverse and
even VR in general doesn't improve the world from us
people in obvious ways. Yeah, but that that's kind of
what I'm saying, is that, like, the thing that is
stupid and doomed about this isn't like, oh, you would
have to sell so many headsets. If it was legitimately
something every single person wanted on their head, they would

(01:09:51):
sell a billion. They would sell a billion in a
couple of years, you know. Um, but they haven't made
that look like like so this, this beauty influencer thing
is an example of the trying to like explain here's
something that people will find cool about the metaverse, um,
and the way they do it is like talking about
how you can have a digital storefront where like people
can't just buy products, but they can interact with you. Um.

(01:10:12):
She talks about how it will be good for letting
her interact with their fans, but like bringing them into
my home, which sounds like a fucking we love our fans,
but like, no, I do not want anyone from anybody
goddamn home. I barely want my friends in my home
half the time. Like absolutely not. Um, they didn't present

(01:10:32):
us with a use case of how a brand, in
this case, this candle company this lady made that's big
on Instagram could release like a new candle flavor and
launch a digital experience with it so you can buy
both real and digital products. It's kind of unclear in
the video whether or not you're paying for the digital
experience or is it like free when you buy the candle. Um. Yeah,
it's like I don't games is like developing. It's like

(01:10:53):
you know, dropping products at the same time in the
real world in the digital world, but like the digital
version is free because it's like because it's like an
add right, you could try something out virtually before you
buy it physically, and that's what like Epic Games is doing.
And honestly, I think epics version of the Metavors is
slightly more hinged. They understand more what people actually want. Yeah,
because like all the stuff they're trying with Fortnite again,

(01:11:15):
it doesn't seem fun for me. But at least it's
like an extension of how people use the Internet already,
whereas Facebook's is not that. Yeah. And and Mark never
really understood what people wanted. He he accidentally did basically
to make something else, Like he wanted a place to
share pictures of ladies he thought was hot. Um, and
he accidentally built a thing that like gave people something

(01:11:37):
they did one, which was a way to stay in
contact with their friends from high school in college as
they grew older. Right, Like that was the thing about
Facebook that made it get huge originally. Um. And he
hasn't learned anything since. He's just been smart. He's he's
hired people who are smart enough to be like, hey,
Instagram is probably going to be a big deal by that,
you know, um like that that, but I haven't seen
anything that's made me think like Mark gets what people want.

(01:12:01):
And this has just made it clear that like he
absolutely doesn't. So I want to play this video of
like this is the digital experience to go with this
fucking candle that they're they're framing is like a piece
of art that everybody's gonna want to interact with candles.
It's it's incredible because it again feels like a nightmare.
I am. I am a big candle fan, so same here.

(01:12:21):
What if I effect to transports us something to magic
It's like a shitty arboretum. I don't do what it
has to do with candles. It's Jackie. As we walk
in this amazing world, I just feel like this is
like endless possibilities of my imaginations. I can't even begin

(01:12:45):
to imagine. But I don't understand what has that to
do with candles. Yeah, like they have again like there's
I can walk around, like why can't begin to imagine
all the things people are going to I can walk
around digital spaces and like quest it's again it's fun
for like thirty seconds, and then you see everything You're like, well,
I can't touch it or smell it or actually feel
it or do anything. So I'm gonna go back and

(01:13:06):
have a soda and yeah play and like read a
book or something like. And they've brought in this influencer
who like used one of their other services in a
way they hadn't initially intended and was successful in that,
which is not a bad idea in its surface, Like yeah,
bring in creative people and let them play around and
make something new to show people how exciting this is, right,

(01:13:27):
that's the smart thing to do. But all they've presented
is like, look, it's a tiny little weird arboretum. You
can walk around and after buying a candle, and it's like, well,
I like candles, but that's not fun. That doesn't sound
like a fun. Addition, part of the metaverse is like
making like interactivity more like be able to interact with
with digital things, and like that's not interacting, that's just

(01:13:48):
walking around like unless I can like take of like
a bazooka and blow up our like the candle, you know,
like that's like you have to do something. Like all
of the V are games that are fun, like like
like like like a super hot or like something. It's about,
you know, picking up objects in VR and throwing them
at people. That's fun and you likes, unless I can

(01:14:10):
pick up this candle and it's all people with it
in the game, I don't see what really the dry
like what's what's exciting about this? You were saying something, Chris, Oh,
I guess you know. The thing I keep coming back
to with this is it the only way this and this,
literally any of this makes any sense if it's just
like a chip in your brain, just because all of it,
all of it is built around that. But it's but
it's not like it can't be like we don't the

(01:14:31):
technology for that won't exist for like ages and so
there it's like it's it's like they're they're selling some
of it definitely is headset based, like that arboretum thing.
But even yeah, but like I mean I think even that, right,
like okay, so why would you want Like yeah, you're
if you're saying, like why would you It's like, Okay,
it's interesting for like ten minutes, right, Yeah. The only
way that would be like the only way that would

(01:14:53):
be an actually interesting experience is if you could get
all the full century experience you can smell and feel, yeah, right,
and that that's that's that's like, that's that's the thing
where like think only makes sense if it's like a
brain ship. Well, I mean there's there's two versions. There's
one it's a brain ship or two it's a video game,
and Epic Games is doing the thing where it's a
video game, and and that's slightly yes, yeah, yeah, but
like they don't you know, but they're they're trying to
sell like and I think part of what's going on

(01:15:15):
here is also just like this is this is designed
to like like, this is designed to like trick Silicon
Valley investors. Yes, that is like yeah, and those people
I think are just gonna be like, oh, well, we'll
have brain ships eventually, and so we'll just we'll talk
about probably talk about that part more at the end,
because yeah, this is just a scam. This is just
a scam, and it is like again to talk about

(01:15:38):
like the dystopian aspects of this, Chris, as you brought up,
one of the aspects is that like it's a complete
panopticon of perfect surveillance. If they actually make this thing
a number two is the only way to do most
of what they're talking about that's cool is to give
Mark Zuckerberg physical control over human beings brain chemistry on
a global scale, which I think it is a bad
idea for that. I don't I don't want to walk

(01:16:01):
around in a weird candle room that badly, Like to
your point, Chris about like how it's you know, there's
no sensory stuff. Is like like the most popular VR games,
the reason why they work so well, there's why that
they don't, like Break the Uncanny Valley is because you're
in like a barren land, like you know, like the Saber.
You're not in a place you know you're in the
in the game interface for like for Super Hot, you're

(01:16:23):
in like whitewashed, abstract like concrete spaces, right, so like
there's nothing, there is nothing to smell or feels like
you don't feel like you're missing anything because you're in
a very like stripped down version of reality. There is
a really good of VR game, I forget what it's called,
but it's it's based on like an office and you're
like fighting robots to break out of like this capitalist
office room. And it's cool because like, yeah, it's miserable

(01:16:44):
because it's like it's like an office space. You feel
like you're in an office because it's nothing about it's exciting. Right,
video games that are in like lush worlds feel so
much more like disconnected because you have like a weird
like you have you have like you have like an
uncanny valley thing, but instead of like a face or
a person, it's like environment. We're running a long time.
I want to move to something that I think is
important here, which is there is one moment in this

(01:17:06):
video where they try to address the fact that they've
done a tremendous amount of damage to the world and
they have repeatedly failed to like uh anticipate dangers that
their services have, so they need to like deal with
that at some point. And this is like, well, what
about if like what about bad things that could happen?
What if like what about like unintended things? What about
like ways in which this could be harmful to society
that you haven't foreseen. So, because they're not completely stupid,

(01:17:29):
in order to address that, they bring on a well
dressed uh or not well dressed, but they bring on
like a friendly British man um who kind of kind
of reads as like a like a scientific kind of
expert guy. They bring on a charming British person to
like talk about how they're going to not not destroy
the world. And this is very telling so far. It's

(01:17:49):
it's such visionary stuff. But as you mentioned early on
with all big technological advances that are inevitably going to
be in all sorts of challenges and uncertainties. And I
know you talked about this a bit already, but people
want to know how we're going to do all this
in a responsible way, and especially that we play our
part in helping to keep people safe and protect their

(01:18:10):
privacy online. Yeah, that's right, This is incredibly important. The
way I look at it is that in the past,
the speed that new technologies emerged sometimes left policy makers
and regulators playing catch up. So on the one hand,
companies get accused of charging your head too quickly, and
on the other, tech people feel that progress can't afford

(01:18:30):
to wait for the slower pace of regulation. And I
really think that it doesn't have to be the case
this time around, because we have years until the metaverse
we envision is fully realized. So this is the start
of the journey, not the end. So that's telling UH
that he's like, we don't need to worry about like

(01:18:50):
we don't need it, Like it'll be regulated properly, it'll
be safe enough, because it's going to take so long
to figure all this out that surely we will anticipate
and deal with all of the potentially toxic side effects
of this technology ahead of time. Um. And if you
believe that, I would say, take a look at Facebook's
track record with that kind of thing. Um. But they

(01:19:12):
are smart and having a charming British man do it,
that's the right guy to have in the only aspect
of good casting in this that is the right guy
to have come on and try to allay people's fears
that this will destroy society. You bring you bring a
charming British man in, you know, that's how you do
that kind of thing. Um, that's when I get canceled
for the things I've been doing overseas. Um, I'm going

(01:19:33):
to hire a British person to defend myself. Do they
make any more comments about like a R glasses or
VR quite a few. I wanted to move on to that. Um,
even though yeah, we're so um they talk about they
have a whole section where they're they're talking about the
actual glasses they have. So they announced the number one
they have a project. The goal, as he repeatedly says,

(01:19:55):
is to make a quote normal, good looking pair of
glasses that do all this stuff, which that is yeah. Um,
and he he does in order as like a proof
of concept, he shows us these a R ray bands
that actually look legitimately rad They look like normal at
least the privn't touched a pair of these in my hands,
but the the the videos that are supposed to be
these real products show a pair of what looked like

(01:20:16):
normal ray bands that you can take pictures and videos with,
you can answer phone calls on, you can do like
video phone calls on them, and actually that they seem
neat and like they look like normal glasses. Um, and
that is pretty cool. Um. They go kind of pivot
from that to announcing that like they have this new thing,
Project nizar Um, which oh I looked up what nazarre

(01:20:37):
means a little bit ago. It's probably dystopian. Uh No,
I think it was just yeah, uh, it's a town
or it's a surf spot, right, it's a place and
I think Portugal where there's like great waves and Mark
Zuckerberg is really into surfing. He plays a surfing game
at one point in this That is one of the
most um embarrassing things, embarrassing thing as I've seen in
my entire fucking life. Um. But yeah, so project is

(01:21:00):
are is that they're supposed to be like the first
true like VR glasses. So they do the good thing,
which is like here's the real technology these ray bands,
and look, these are pretty neat. Obviously that doesn't come
close to what they're promising. Um, and this whole thing
where they talk about what the glasses, which they say
they're making good progress on, are going to do, we
don't ever see any fucking glasses. Yeah, yeah, And and

(01:21:23):
that's because they're not really close uh to to working yet.
That's the air glasses are gonna be the way to act.
Like if the goal is to integrate digital spaces into
the physical space, I think I think it's a good
goal because what that's gonna do, that's gonna make the
digital space less fake, right, it's injecting that into the
actual real world. So I think that will actually really

(01:21:45):
help with like disassociate of stuff is because it's actually
in it's actually in the real world as well. I
think that's gonna be wonderful when that gets developed. And
I think the glasses are are definitely going to be
a thing within the next ten to twenty years. There
ways of like figure illuminating last on the side to
make like like what it looks like an image. This
is definitely gonna be a thing that's going to be possible.

(01:22:07):
Like surveillance of privacy is like the big, big fears
for that because we're nowhere close to hacking the brain
enough to feel sensations. And like, the only thing I've
played a lot of VR, the only thing that you
can feel in VR is fear. That's the only thing
that VR is capable of replicating as as a feeling.
It's like, you can feel terrified in VR. That's that's

(01:22:28):
that's it. You can't ever feel like there's one thing
you can feel exhausted game. And I was doing like
bow draws for like four hours, and I was like,
we've we've developed the way to make you frightened and tired.
That is what r's best will. By the way, what
Twitter does normally all true, all of like all of
like the resident Evil VR games. Yeah, they're gonna making

(01:22:50):
you tired and terrified, and that's kind of it. So
we we have to close out. But I want to
do that by playing Mark Zuckerberg lamenting the Internet that
he played a major role in building, as a way
to talk about why we need a metaverse because it's
kind of funny because we're allowed to build and use,
are more tightly controlled than ever, and high taxes on
creative new ideas are stifling. This is not the way

(01:23:14):
that we were met to use technology. The metaverse gives
us an opportunity to choose well, but it's going to
take all of us creators, developers, companies of all sizes together.
We can finally put people at the center of our
technology and deliver an experience where we are present with

(01:23:35):
each other. Yeah, what what a Google? Like? All of
that nonsense every when you're not you're one of the
people who has turned the Internet into an expensive walled garden.
It didn't used to be this way. Then Facebook swooped
in made themselves for free um like integral to all content,
and then started charging those content creators and like sucking

(01:23:56):
them around and lying to them, which led to the
destruction of a huge number of websites and a triman.
This amount of digital culture, like your Wyatt, feels like
a dead waled garden, and everything you've presented in this
video makes the metaverse feel like a dead waled garden.
But I want to play his last lines in the
in this video because this is him kind of summing
up his vision for the future via the metaverse, and

(01:24:17):
now it is time to take everything that we've learned
and help build the next chapter. I am dedicating our
energy to this more than any other company in the world,
And if this is the future that you want to see,
then I hope that you will join us, because the
future is going to be beyond anything we can imagine.
I agree with that part mark. The future is going

(01:24:39):
to be beyond what you can imagine. What a gool, Yeah,
because you have no imagination. It's just it's just using
trendy tech terms to trick investors into giving them billions
of dollars. That's like the right, That's that's all it is.
Because all of this, like this like haptic feedback replicating
like human feelings and stuff, that we're nowhere close to that,
and when we do, it's going to be dystopian. But

(01:25:00):
we're not close to it, and it's going to be dystopian,
or it's going to be better in ways that like
we can't yet conceive of um and then eventually it
will be destroyed for profit if it actually gets cool
like the old Internet was. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's yeah,
but I think but both this and even a lot
like a lot of the epic stuff just seems ah,

(01:25:23):
it's just the new way that tech companies, that's where
they think the money vault is is by using these terms,
and they think using these terms is going to get
them lots of extra investor money because the actual technology
is nowhere really close to this and it's not what
people wanted out of the Internet anyway, it absolutely is not.
But I don't know, I think this was important. I think, yeah,

(01:25:44):
Facebook is important and has a major impact on the
way the Internet is continuing to evolve um usually in
negative ways. But this is how these people who are
doing a lot of damage view the future. So you
should know what they're looking at and what they anticipate.
But I think I think that there's a kind of
optimistic note to this though, right was just like Okay,

(01:26:04):
so we've we've reached the point where like even like
Boris Johnson is going like, oh god, climate change is coming, right,
and this is the best they've got, right, they have
they have nothing, They have nothing, And you know what,
I think, like, what are the only ways we can win?

(01:26:25):
Is if we're facing a uniquely incompetent ruling class. And
if it if the rule, if the if the guy were,
if a guy we have to deal with in order
to like not drown every single whale and like have
half of the world's city is consumed, but the ocean
is Mark Zuckerberg, like, we got a shot some smarter
people that aren't that obviously behind the scenes, right like yeah, yeah, um,

(01:26:52):
but I I don't think I think that's a nice
note to end on, because it is, it is worth
The nice thing about this is how clearly they don't
under stand what the future is going to look like online. Um,
they have ways in which they're trying to direct the future,
and aspects of that will come true, like their VR
will succeed in some form at some point and it
will be potentially an unprecedented surveillance breakthrough has some unsettling implications,

(01:27:17):
and bet of our stuff is getting developed a lot
of other stuff. I think the move by Twitter to
create like this, like it's called like like Twitter spaces
where it's like this, like you know, basically like voice
chat room. Like a lot of people are moving towards
this concept where we try to like inject more like
in person interactivity into this virtual framework, right, which how
this with like with like a clubhouse last year during

(01:27:39):
during the pandemic, where people like watching like Netflix in
the quote same room, right, Like, we're seeing people try
to do this with varying mix mixed success. But this
is the way tech is is inching. So it is
a good idea to keep your eye on it because, yeah,
it's a lot of implications for like clevacy and advertising
and all that kind of stuff. Will continue to cover
aspects of this. Talk about the technology, talk about the
surveillance implications, talk about the visions these people have. But

(01:28:02):
I think that this has been these episodes have been useful,
and like here's what Mark thinks is coming. Here's what
Facebook is pouring like ten billion dollars into it's dumbest shit,
have a nice day podcast. All right, Well I've done

(01:28:29):
my job for the day. Wow, you've even by our standards.
That's a that's an intro, that's actually thank you. This
is of course it could happen here a show about
how things aren't going so great, kind of falling apart,
crumbling a bit, but also maybe things could be better.

(01:28:50):
That would be nice. Let's try and do that. Today
is one of the maybe things could be better episodes.
And we are talking about the ongoing wave of strikes.
We had Strike Ober last month with John Dear strikes
and and and strikes uh and like what it a
couple of different food companies, a bunch of strikes um.
And today we would like to get an update on

(01:29:12):
all the motherfucker's who were out there striking for better
conditions UM and and better treatment UM. And today, for
that purpose, we've brought on the Great Kim Kelly. Kim.
You are a journalist who focuses a hell of a
lot on labor. You've been up and down to some
of the coal strikes that have been going on. You
were there for the Amazon attempt to form the union

(01:29:35):
in um O GS was that Arizona, um Alabama, Alabama?
UM And you're writing a book on the history of
labor um in the United States. So I'd like to
just kind of turn the floor over to you. There's
a four. There's okay, there's a four. It is filthy,
just as it AADs up. You know, we're doing our best,

(01:29:55):
aren't we. Yeah? Weird, Yeah you are, we are not.
I am I'm trying to keep up with all this
labor action. It's exciting action, hot labor action, some hot
labor action stories. So, as you mentioned, we're just kind
of coasting off of the peak of Striketober, which was
such a fun thing to kind of see explode in

(01:30:17):
the mainstream consciousness. Like usually labor stories, they are a
big deal with the people that are involved in them
and people in the labor world who are watching and
like rooting for them, but they don't necessarily end up
on like you know, the mainstream like that. Theyn't end
up on the TV. They don't end up with like
fancy old guys talking about it on dateline or whatever.
But that's something that happened, and I think there's been

(01:30:39):
a real shifting consciousness that is the company that And
of course you know, it's like Strictober is fun. There's
all these these big strikes happening at the same time.
But we of course need to remember that that didn't
happen in a vacuum. There's people on strike now who
have been on strikes since before, since before it was cool, right,
since much earlier. Like shout out to the st Vincent
nurses in Massachusetts and to the coal miners in Brooke

(01:31:03):
with Alabama Warrior Men who have both don on strike
for over eight months and then kind of right so
literally like they're like they're in the middle of their
tour drives for their children because they've been on strike
for so long, and they kind of got a little
bit left out of the conversation around strike Tober and
I think that just kind of shows that we need
to be paying attention even when it's not as flashy

(01:31:23):
or new or exciting. I mean, strikes were was exciting,
but you know, there's a lot going on and one
of the things I think is interesting and important, especially
as we head into strikes giving, which I guess we're doing. Yeah,
strikes giving strike Smiths, strike in time, thank you, Ary.
I guess to day forth strike you Lily, Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:31:51):
it's it gets worse really until we get to Labor
Day and by then Striker's Day. That one works pretty well.
I'm also a fan of strike and Town's Day, um
strike and tized Day. That's cute. Rage baby, keep this going, Yeah,
strike strike, there's a missed opportunity there. Although that that

(01:32:14):
frightens me Garrison that the band ween might go on
strike and I don't know society we do, we wouldn't
have our we would we would be completely out of ween,
our reserves if we aren't going to last long if
they stop friends. Yeah, there's been a tragic shortage of
ween for years now. I don't know that we can
handle a stripe. You can. I mean, I didn't realize

(01:32:35):
you were a nerd, Robert. This is kind of throw
some things into question. Yeah, yeah, I mean, as a
heavy metal dirtbag, I'm like contractually obligated to make say
things like that. But as I was pontificating a minute ago, right, So,
as we go into strikes giving, there are still more

(01:32:56):
big strikes on the horizon and potentially strikes in the horizon.
But part of the story that I think is also
very energizing and important is the organizing that's happening in
the new unions that are hopefully gonna end up being formed,
not necessarily as a result of this wave of attention,
but they're kind of caught up in the tide. I mean,
we look at the Starbucks workers in Buffalo who have

(01:33:17):
scared the ship out of their employers to the point
where they're flying executives in to follow them. Around the
store and be like, please don't vote for reunion. We
need all of our billions of dollars we can't share.
Or you know, even workers at wire Cutter who are
threatening to strike on Black Friday and their whole thing
is telling people what's stuff to buy, you know, and

(01:33:39):
McDonald's workers, and I think ten different these are ten
different cities or ten different states, ten different locations just
went out on like a one day strike over sexual
harassment in the workplace. Kroger workers are taking a strike
authorization vote in Texas. We have multiple Amazon organizing attempts
happening in Staten Island, and a rerun of the election
coming up in Best for Alabama, and there's just so

(01:34:01):
much happening that, you know, I hope that the novelty
idea of the strikes wild word strikes giving. I hope
like that was fun. But I hope now that people
are paying attention, that they stay interested and realize that,
you know, labor stories. Maybe it's not necessarily always like
a big strike or like a cool picket line to
look at, but there's a lot going on. Like every

(01:34:21):
story is a work story, every story is a labor story,
and people seem like they're finally catching on the fact
that you know, we're all workers and wow, cool things
happen when we come together. Yeah. I I hope that too,
and I hope that, um, you know the word on
everybody's lips, who's I don't know. Coming at this from
kind of a little bit of a more uh, either

(01:34:42):
radical or desperate point of view, depending on how you
want to frame it. Is like general strike, general strike,
and you know, there's there's been some there's been people
online who keep saying like, Okay, well we're all just
gonna go on on Black Friday, everybody general strike And
it's like, yeah, well you don't. You don't set that
up on Twitter. Like the unions that are striking now
have strike funds and put a lot of thought into

(01:35:03):
it and have like had to take there's things you
have to do in order to not irresponsibly like just
screw over a bunch of working people. Um. But it
is like, I'm a believer in the potential of something
like a general strike to to force significant concessions. I mean,
if we did it right, Yeah, I think if. I

(01:35:27):
mean it's a huge if because it's never really effectively
been like there's been pieces of it done, like we saw.
I think the closest we've gotten in like my lifetime
has been when the the airline workers threatened to go
on strike over the over the budget thing, and you
just saw the federal government go, oh fuck, nope, you
know what, we can actually pass this thing. I mean,

(01:35:49):
that's the thing like that threat that I think that
was Sara Nelson said that even like hinted towards that
in twenty nineteen when the government shutdown. That's sort of
that was a tipping point. I think that's the first
time people, well really was probab the first time in
many people's lifetimes that an actual labor leader with that
platform had even mentioned those words. Because general like general
strikes historically kind of are more situated in that late

(01:36:11):
nineteenth century, early twentieth century like labor swinging its stick
around era, and we've been kneecapped so much that that
doesn't feel as as possible. But I mean the fact
that she said, and she was part of the airline industry,
if we're ever going to actually you know, bring capital
to its knees, we're gonna need the transportation workers. We're
gonna need the dock workers. We're gonna need to like

(01:36:33):
actually analyze who is moving things around the country, who's
making sure things work, and how can we get them
to put down to down their tools and be like, Okay,
we're gonna do something about this. You know, the whole
general strike idea, I mean, I mean and arguably, like
one of the first ones was you know, Black reconstruction.
They the book, there's uh this argument that the first

(01:36:56):
general strike was enslaved enslaved people leaving the plantations and
withdrawing their labor from that situation, like that was a
form of striking. And I think the general strike is
kind of a morphous idea, especially online as more people
learn about labor and learn about it. But there's also
like kind of a specific thing like yeah, you can't

(01:37:17):
just declare like Okay, we're all not going to go
to work tomorrow, like cool, But there's so much planning
that goes into it to make sure that people are
able to do that and sustain that. And the people
that are traditionally you know, already left out or the
most vulnerable and marginalize like that their needs are prioritized
because the people that can afford to declare general strike

(01:37:38):
and not show up for a week, Like that's all
well and good for them, but what about everyone else
who can barely afford to go to work at all. Yeah,
I've had these arguments with people online, and it's often like, well,
you're saying we shouldn't be like, if we just do it,
people will figure it out, like the infrastructure will be
build after the fact. And I'm like, that's I'm glad
that you're in a situation where you feel like you

(01:38:00):
could you could handle that kind of uncertainty. But like
a single mother of four who relies on her job
to keep them fed and alive, isn't going to be
like someone will figure out how to feed my kids, Like, well,
that's not how people work, you know. Yeah, this is
where having like a robust commitment to mutual aid and
strike funds and like an actual fabric, like having the

(01:38:22):
fabric of community where you can depend on your neighbors
instead of never talking to them, Like a general strike
would have a huge impact, but on who, Like who
would it hurt more if you didn't plan it properly,
if you didn't have if you didn't have an actual
grassroots network of people ready to help if you didn't
need to understanding that not everyone can just go run

(01:38:43):
off in the streets. Some people like have mobility issues,
some people have children, some people are older or sicker. Like,
there's so much that goes into it. Yeah, it's like
your car is fucked up and you know you need
to take it in to get some stuff fixed, or
it's eventually going to break down entirely. But that doesn't
mean the right solution to just get in there and
start hitting ship with a hammer like you need there

(01:39:03):
needs to be like some systemic way you approach it right,
Like there's a proper way to fix an engine, right,
and we can do that, Like we can start building
those networks. We can start you can organize your workplace
and plug into the into like the organized labor framework,
which obviously has many flaws, not as radical as I
would and many other people like it to be, but
they know how to do this ship. Like, there's a

(01:39:27):
lot of different pieces that can be pulled together, different
organizations and populations that need to work together if we're
actually going to accomplish something like this, And I don't
know if people are ready to put in all that
work because it's more fun to tweet. Yeah, but I'm wondering,
as they say in Alabama, bless their hearts. You're you're
spending a tremendous m emman, as you just noted, You're

(01:39:49):
spending a tremendous amount of time on the ground with
a lot of these people talking with them. Are you
are you seeing kind of how how are you hearing
them talk about the other strike efforts you know, in
other industries that are going on right now, because it
has been more in the news than it's been at
any point I can recall on the recent past, And
I'm wondering how in places like Bessemer, you know, in

(01:40:10):
places like um you know that coal miners strike you've
been at, like, how are they being are to what
extent are they talking about other strike efforts? Like is
that does that seem to be something that there's a
lot of kind of consciousness and discussion about or is
it just kind of in the background. I mean, it
really depends. I like you said, I've spent I spent
most of my time with the coal miners over the
past years. I've been writing a book and that's been

(01:40:30):
my one, my one fun thing. But I've been I mean,
I talked to them every single day. And I've been
to Alabama lots of times, and I you know, I'm
in a group chaut with the wives, Like I know,
I have a decent grasp what's going on. And honestly,
the thing about is that some there, there are some
folks who are very engaged and who have made twitters
and they have their Facebook groups and they do pay
attention is happening, and I do think they feel that

(01:40:50):
kind of excitement and that wide spread says its solidarity.
But one thing there that's important to remember, especially for
workers who are already disadvantaged or the dealing with low
wage labor, is like it's really hard to go on strike,
Like there's a lot of ship they have to figure out,
Like there's kids, there's health issues, there's how am I
going to pay my rent? Like like funds are great,

(01:41:12):
but they don't cover everything. Like I think that's one
of the realities that maybe it gets sort of glossed
over because we're also online and we like to you
and me, it feels like, oh, everyone's fucking stoked about
these strikes. But for someone in rural Alabama who is
just hoping this strike is over soon, so they can
go back to work and have some financial stability. They're
not necessarily reading your tweets or like signing up for

(01:41:35):
webinars or even paying attention to like cool other strike efforts.
I'm sure some some folks are aware and they find
have that time to plug in, but most people are
just trying to get by. And these are folks who
are spend like eight hours a day on the picket
lines and there's no cell phone service out where their
picket lines are, Like, there's only so much that a
normal regular worker on the picket line can do to

(01:41:58):
keep up. Yeah, and um, you came into this, I
think unlike a lot of the people who are who
are actually striking, you came into this with a lifelong
history of the like of interest in kind of uh
labor justice movements and whatnot, which I don't think most
people who are in unions necessarily spend a ton of
time studying the last hundred years of labor relations. Um,

(01:42:21):
what has surprised you? Like? What what have what? What
is like been a new realization that you've gotten since
you started covering the stuff on the ground in this
most recent period. So the thing that's really sticks with me,
and I'm going past my minors again because that's you know,
my where where the most familiarity. But something that I
think has so much potential, and I'm not going to

(01:42:42):
entirely sure how to articulate what that potential is. But
so something I have seen is when this strike began,
most not all, but the majority of the folks involved
in this particular strike, or conservative Christian people who were
a lot of voted for Trump, but a lot of
them were like just in that world, maybe not like
you know, wild mega people, but that's just what was

(01:43:03):
the norm where they are in their community, and they
will think about that much. But there are some people
that I've seen, especially those were involved in the mutual
aid efforts or have been who have seen Birmingham DSA
come out, who have kind of taken this kind of
like wider review of what's happening, how they fit in.
I've seen their politics and their perspective shift, Like there

(01:43:23):
are some people who are like straight up socialists now
that seven months ago would have probably spit in your
face or at least given you a hell of a
look if you wouldn't even suggested such a thing. And
this is a small sample size, and this is a
unique situation, but I think it really speaks to the
potential there to like reach people who are very ideologically

(01:43:45):
politically different from what we maybe think of as labor,
people as progressive, radical whatever people on like our team, right,
But the power of the strike and the power of
labor is that there is so much there. There's kind
of an inherent calm and ground because so many people,
most people, a lot of people, most people have a job,
a lot of people hate their boss. You can kind

(01:44:07):
of build from that very very low baseline and find
more common ground and kind of you can you can
work towards a better understanding. Like maybe you're not going
to be best friends, but you can potentially shift someone's
harmful worldview by exposing them to new ideas once they
trust that you're not just there to tell them they're
wrong and stupid and bad. Were like, look, we were

(01:44:30):
coming at this like I'm going to talk to you
like a person. I understand we see the world differently,
but like you know, I'm here to support you. I'm
here listening to you. Maybe you could listen to what
I have to say too, Maybe it might change how
you see things. And sometimes it works. Yeah. Yeah, um
you know what else works kim blowing shut up? Well

(01:44:53):
okay allegedly um minecraft. Yeah. I was gonna say cap ads,
cap adalisms, ads and services. Um, but I like your
answer better. So let's just let's just let's just roll
out with that material support, right. Like another concrete example there,

(01:45:14):
the Birmingham DSA has been very active in fundraising and
showing up and just providing support for the miners and
and the people on strike. And this is not necessarily
a population of people that like the idea of socialism,
whatever idea of it is that they hold, because Fox
News and russal In Barre are big cultural stand bias there,

(01:45:35):
like whatever they think socialism is. And then have a
bunch of socialists show up and just practice solidarity and
mutual aiding practice socialism, and they're like, oh, these guys
are great, thank you for coming out and things like that,
where it's like, I feel like so much of radical
politics in various, you know, various tendencies. There's just like
a branding problem and there's a propaganda problem on the

(01:45:58):
right wing, and the mainstre media is tell anybody what
anything means, Like, yeah, it's a broader conversation, right, But
I felt for a while like one of the things
that leftist organizers need to get better at doing is
being willing to like drop names when they're not productive. Like, Okay,
maybe these people because of the media environment, they've grown

(01:46:20):
up and are never gonna want to consider themselves socialists.
But if they are willing to organize together and support
the efforts of other working people to organize together against
the capital holding class, like then okay, Like what is it?
Why do you need them to like start quoting Karl
Marx or is it just cool that you've you've got
them doing what they like? Yeah? I I that makes

(01:46:42):
a lot of sense to me that, like, yes, some
that you can get a lot of these people on
board with again, pretty radical things if you're if you're
kind of approaching it from within their world, from within,
like I'm not trying to talk to you about burning
down the system. I'm trying to talk to you about
how you get what you need. And it just so
happens that how you get what you need um is

(01:47:02):
taking the system on in a very direct way. I Mean,
so many ideas that are painted as radical just like
aren't like that's normal people caring for him, like it
is like community care and common sense. It's just been
politicized to this insane extent. And even it's like I'm
just like even like a lot a lot of the

(01:47:23):
tenants of mutual aid you can even see pop up
in a lot of like church communities as well, at
least like at least like smaller, you know, closer knit
like communities that are actually based around helping each other.
At least I was I've observed that and a lot
of my time traveling across the States. Yeah, absolutely, that's
a huge part of it. Like the church is the
only mutual aid option in so many like smaller and
more icely rural communities or just communities where the church

(01:47:45):
is a big deal. Like there's always ways to chip
away these institutions and eventually hopefully burned them down right
without alienating people and making them feel like you're coming
in and telling them everything you believe is wrong and
actually and I'm making a mistakes. And of these folks,
I'm sure they believe things that are absolute garbage. And
I would never do everybody, you know, like there's you know,

(01:48:08):
but there's there's just covering this strike in particular has
really just taught me a lot about the gray areas
in between, not in like I wish you watched a
liberal way, but just in a way of like, how
do you relate to normal fucking people who see the
world differently but are in ultimately the same struggle as you? Like,
maybe I could, I mean going down there on the

(01:48:30):
only time I've been around that many Trump supporters was
like at protests where I was yelling at them, or
like at my family dinners. So I wasn't you know,
I wasn't expecting to make friends, but then I did,
and I think hopefully we've we've shifted each other's perspectives
a little bit in a way that's beneficial. I don't know,
it's been, It's been interesting. Yes, talking to people really

(01:48:54):
is a lot different than tweeting at them. Yeah, as
a rule, don't tweet would be my recommendation to people.
Never never, Yeah, talk to your neighbors and be nice
to people when you buy coffee or food from them,
and amaze what happens. And yeah, tell your neighbors, Hey,
I'm taking my phone down to the river to throw

(01:49:15):
it in. Can I take your phone with me? Can
we just all throw our phones in the river? Um, yeah,
if you want to. If you're gonna start at being
the weird neighbor, it's a strong start. We've already killed
the water system, so it's fine, like just right in
the river with the car batteries. You know, they're good
for the eels. The thing I love about our show

(01:49:35):
is just the hope, is the incredibly hope injected optimism
that we start an end every episode with. But no,
I mean like me, like, yeah, the more people you
know in your community, especially people who are like working class,
you know, when bad stuff starts happening, the more people
you know the better, because that's a lot of guessing.
A lot of a lot of these people who are

(01:49:56):
like you know, like like like like old like old
union workers. They have a lot of like physical skills,
like like they know how to do a whole bunch
of stuff. And it might be worth getting to know
some of those people, even if you know, depending where
you live, like yeah, they'll probably say something not great
at least for you know, the first bit, but once
you know, I have a lot of family and like

(01:50:17):
a rural area of Alberta, and like yeah, my, my
family is like pretty gay. Um. So you know, once
you're in close to those people, yeah, they're they're gonna
say something that's maybe not great. But once they get
to like know, you would really be like, oh, like
you're another person. They like people actually, you know, people
want to be around other people, and they'll even change
the way they talk to be like, oh, yeah, maybe

(01:50:39):
this isn't the best way to hang out around people
because it's going to drive people away. So yeah, I'll
change the way I say some things because like it
turns out people actually, like a lot of a lot
of folks just kind of want to make their lives
a bit better and that's really their main focus. Yeah,
it's hard to know to do that. And it's it's

(01:50:59):
it's just this man or of like so much of
what um, so much of what kind of the way
that discourse happens online has poisoned aspects of activism is
in like making it difficult for people to relate in
that way without feeling like, well, okay, but if I
can't get them on board with all of these other things,

(01:51:20):
like I can't talk with them or whatever, like because
they're because they don't agree with this and this like
we can't organize like the purity of ideology. Yeah, Like
I feel like most people who aren't terminally online don't
even necessarily have like a specific ideology not yeah yeah right,
Like there's just stuff that they have learned or they

(01:51:41):
have decided that is true about the world. They just
kind of go with it and interrogated all the time,
and you can like those are people you can talk
to and maybe ship, like I've done it with my dad,
Like I've seen it happen with some of these conservative
coal minor folks. Like even something as small as being
able to humanize, like like okay, if you're talking about
something like, well the thing you said, like that really

(01:52:02):
upset Joey and you like Joey, so like maybe think
about that, and they'll probably be chiller because like, oh,
well that's yeah, it's Joey. I can't I don't want
to be a dick to them. If we can just
find a way to enact that on a very broad scale,
life would be a lot better for a lot of people. Yeah,
it's this, It's this dichotomy between a lot people want

(01:52:22):
to own the folks they see as like being against
them or being on the other side. But also people
don't want to be a dick to people that like
they like, you don't want to feel like you're a dick.
So if you if you lean more into the weird
in opposition, then you're going to trigger the well I
wanna I want to make the person who disagrees with

(01:52:44):
me angry side of the brain. But if you can
lean into the like, hey, like we can get along,
like and I and and maybe you don't want to
feel like an asshole if we get along, then I
don't know, that's a productive place to to continue conversations
from and a good way to shift people. And then
when you're then when your area floods because of severe
rain and storms, that we have people that can help. Yeah,

(01:53:07):
it's the importance of interacting with people in person, like offline,
which is like obviously more difficult to do because we're
still tried to depend. Yeah, they're like their caveat, caveat caveat,
but like it's so much easier to talk to someone
and kind of like see the world you shift or
even just humanize yourself to someone who is inclined to
not thinking of you as someone worth talking to. Like, yeah,

(01:53:29):
as long as it's not you're not putting yourself in danger,
like there's yeah, obviously I'm a blond lady, you know.
But yeah, still we're not talking about like, oh, you
have to go be friendly to people who want to
murder you because your trance. No, it's about No, we're
not saying that. But most of these people don't think that.
Maybe they have some regressive attitude or or they'll use

(01:53:51):
the word gay to mean something, you know, not cool,
and you'd be like, hey, you don't have to be like, hey,
you know, I'm you know, I'm actually gay jan or
maybe don't hope with that. Maybe you depending on the situation,
to be like yeah, maybe maybe there's other words that
we can use for this, because yeah whatever, Yeah, And
and you can shift people into a closer alliance, um,

(01:54:11):
just by becoming a human in their eyes and also
letting them become a human in your eyes, um, which
is necessary. The other option is not a pleasant one.
So I would prefer the option where more people grow
to see each other as human and worth supporting. Right,
I know there is better tactic to me. Yeah, I
know there's this argument where like no one is like

(01:54:32):
I shouldn't have to educate you. I shouldn't have to
put the time into to shift you, and like that
is valid, that's fair, Like you shouldn't have to but
ideally know, yeah, but if you want to that change
to happen, it's probably not going to happen unless she
puts an effort in because they're probably not gone acual.
They think they're fine, And I don't know, there's a

(01:54:53):
bunch of ship that you shouldn't have to do that
we're also all gonna have to do Like I shouldn't
we I shouldn't have to say, hey, guys, maybe we
don't kill the ocean. Maybe killing the ocean is a
bad idea, like I shouldn't have to No one should
have to say that, but we do not please the

(01:55:13):
fact that you shouldn't have to do something also doesn't
mean that like the thing doesn't need to be done.
And obviously I don't think that the primary onus on
speaking to let's say, the kind of increasingly radicalized white,
lower middle and middle class, I don't think that falls
primarily on people of color, on on the LGBT community.

(01:55:34):
It falls on people like you and make Kim. You know, yeah,
but it's still has to be done. Like it's a
thing that needs to be done. And I'm not saying, hey,
you out there, who you know, left where you grew
up in rural Alabama because someone was going to fucking
murder you and you had to get to a place
where you could not deal with that. I'm not saying
you need to go rolling back to Alabama. Um, but

(01:55:58):
it's good that people are talking and working with and
trying to build connections with folks out there and change
the nature of kind of aspects of the culture and
make things better because that needs to be done. We
can't just be like, well fuck some of those people. Yeah,
and we get that that is definitely easier if you
are like one of the bros. If you are you know,

(01:56:19):
a bigger SIS adjacent dude, that is that is of
course going to make things easier. Yeah, I mean what
you think about like that's kind of the text, that's
the right word. But the fact that you do feel
comfortable and you're you're safe and you're not under a
threat in those spaces because of who you are, like
as like a white SIS or even a white says

(01:56:41):
lady like you like the price you pay for that
is making it easier for everyone else to feel that too,
Like exactly, like that's your job, other people's jobs to survive,
and you can be the one that pushes the boundaries
on these things. So when someone says something not great,
you can kind of call them out in like a
browish way, and they can respond to that a lot
better than, you know, than a lot of other people

(01:57:01):
who they don't know, you know, screaming at them in
a no context scenario. We're like, oh, like, oh, you don't.
I'm like, I'm a pretty lady. You don't want to
make me upset by being rude, that's exactly, yeah, Like
you shouldn't. You should see this thing as rude and
not okay, like the amount of men who have apologized
me down there for swearing it's so funny. Yeah, man,

(01:57:22):
my dude, I live in Philadelphia, But that's cute. But
if I could dis harness any of that, like chivalrous
whatever patriarchal viewpoint, like, hey, apply this to being cool
to my trans friends, are like not being rude to
anyone else, Like sure, I'm down. Yeah, we don't take
kindly to miss gendering around these parts. Yeah, for a

(01:57:46):
lot of people at least, like you know, when I
worked at like smaller workplaces, you know, where it's like
a small business where I know the owner. Even if
I mean, if some other employees want to unilize, the
prospect is always kind of more weird or challenging because
you know, it's a smaller business. Maybe it's like connected
to like a larger you know, larger overall industry. You know,
like when I was like when I when I was
like a park or instructor, right, I had discussions with

(01:58:07):
other with other like employees about doing you know, like
a park or instructors union type thing. But but it's
it's it's hard when there's there's like not many of
you or like you know the owner. What would you
say is like good good ways to at least get
get that conversation going among other employees and then you know,
like similar similar examples from other stuff for people who
deal with like smaller workplaces that aren't you know, like

(01:58:27):
a coworker. They're not working for the Amazon or anything.
You know, it's it's more like small local stuff, right. So,
like the most important basic building block of of all
this is one on one conversation that's organizing, right, and
even if you just work with like three or four
other people and maybe unionizing and a formal structure doesn't
necessarily make sense or it seems like it might be

(01:58:47):
too much of a headache, you're still you know, like
a group of workers coming together. It's still a union.
It doesn't matter what n l r B has to
say about it. And you you have shared interests and
share challenges, and there's things that work you probably want
to change, so even coming together and discussing that with
your coworkers, like, there's no law that says you have
to be in a union. If you want to get
some ship done, you can march on your boss at

(01:59:07):
WW style and make them and demand a meeting. You
can make a petition, you can do public pressure campaigns
like all of the things, not all of them, but
a lot of the tools that we see organized labor
engaging in and unions engaging in those are those are
available to everyone else too. It's easier if you're within
that framework because you have that firepower behind you, and
you have maybe some legal protections, but just as workers,

(01:59:31):
you know, I guess it's more like the IWW solidarity
uneuse a multiply where like we didn't like, we don't
need to do no stink ad badges, like we're a
union because we say we're a union, we're going to
take control of things in our own way. Like you
see this in UM. I'm trying to say, I think
what's it called diversity threast there's a there's a thrift
shopping I think Richmond, Virginia where workers just like they

(01:59:53):
weren't being treated properly. I think it was like a
like a queer community space that wasn't living up to
its values due to actions by management, and so they
just put a letter on the doors that we're not
coming to work until you fix this. Here are clear demands,
here's what we need here, you go figure it out.
Like I don't think they're in a formal union, but
they're acting collectively, and that's something that is totally available

(02:00:15):
that to everyone as long as you're in a workplace.
If you're independent contractor like me and probably some of you,
that sucks and it's harder, but you can always find
your people and you can always there's always options, right,
Like you don't have to just join at union. You
don't have to be a teamster to get shipped done. Yeah,
I think you know, when you were saying that, I
was going through my past experience as a place like that.

(02:00:36):
I'm like, yeah, we we kind of did do some
of that stuff to varying degrees of success. Sometimes it
works out well, sometimes it doesn't work out so well. Um,
but yeah, I mean there was definitely a while where
we did that did definitely makes them make some decent
changes kind of based on on that model. Yeah, it's
kind of a shift of perception where like you were
just doing this because this is because you're a worker,

(02:00:57):
and like we need to do this. But if you
just take a step back and think, but it's like
this is a labor action, We're a union of workers.
Like even just that little shift where it's like it's
it's always us against them, but look as us as
a little as a group, as a collective against this manager,
against this exploitative practice. I think that has a little
bit of power and a little bit of energy because

(02:01:17):
your religion now and I'm still I think maybe it
makes you feel a little less alone. And also and
like you know, concerned activity is a legally protective regard too,
so like there are some busin pieces of labor law
that are useful in these situations too, if you have
a nerdy friend who would like to read about them
for you. All right, well I think that's going to

(02:01:42):
do it for us here and it could happen here.
Um until next time, remember, um, you fuck it organized?
And where can people find Kim Kelly online? If we
want to send angry tweets? Oh well just try me
buddy at grim Kim because my college radio DJ name

(02:02:04):
will never die. And uh you can if you are
thus inclined, you can pre order my book. But like hell,
the Untold History of American Labor on the internet hopefully
not Amazon, hopefully not. Yeah. I mean if you do, like,
thank you, But there's other places that are better. You
Do you want people to send you a bunch of
random knives Kim knives? I mean I wouldn't. We've had

(02:02:28):
a lot of luck with that in the past. I
like nice that, like skincare, I like loose leaf tea.
I contain multitudes. Really, send Kim a loose leaf t
skincare knife, one of those one of those exfoliating knives
with a with a t infuser in the in the hilt.
Somebody make that great. Sounds like that, sounds like the

(02:02:49):
next behind the Bastards merch. Yeah, the t Knife. Yeah, well,
we'll put that out after we get finished where We've
got a very exciting Black Friday product this year, which
is a male to mail uh an adapter. People say
you shouldn't do it, They say it causes electrocution and
fires and death, And I think those people are cuts

(02:03:09):
um by our mail to mail adapter show the the
woke establishment that you won't be you won't be changed. Hey, everybody,

(02:03:30):
Robert Evans here, this is it could happen here to
show about how things are falling apart and how maybe
they could be made a bit better. Right now, today
we're doing an episode that is based on a I
don't know essay Garrison wrote and I edited that we
think you'll find interesting. So here it goes. Green capitalism

(02:03:50):
promises to deliver us all the same luxuries and commodities
that we enjoy today, but without doing net harm to
the biosphere. It's the message liberal elites try to hold
on when they make their case for being better stewards
of the environment than Republicans. This is not untrue, but
it's also not true enough to stop your house from
flooding or your town from being incinerated in a hell storm.

(02:04:12):
When it comes to the methods green capitalism posits by
which we might reverse course without changing the direction of
the ship, one term you'll here often is energy efficiency.
I want to read a statement I found on white
House dot gov, a fact sheet on the new US
government commitment to reduce carbon emissions by fifty to fifty

(02:04:33):
I should note that's fifty of the two thousand five levels,
which were like fiftcent high or something like that. Anyway,
here's the quote. The United States can create good paying
jobs and cut emissions and energy costs for families by
supporting efficiency upgrades and electrification and buildings. Through support for
job creating retrofit programs and sustainable affordable housing, wider use

(02:04:55):
of heat pumps and induction stoves, adoption of modern energy
codes for new buildings. The United it States will also
invest in new technologies to reduce emissions associated with construction,
including for high performance electrified buildings. Now, energy efficiency is
in fact a fine goal, and trying to reduce emissions
is broadly good. But the sad and kind of weird

(02:05:15):
fact is that increasing efficiency can sometimes mean increasing pollution
through what's known as the efficiency paradox, which is of
course the title of the episode, because what you want
you want us to think of a second title, of
a separate title from that. Come on. So, first off,
what does energy efficiency mean? In general terms? Energy efficiency

(02:05:36):
refers to the amount of output that can be produced
with a given input of energy. Output being stuff that
energy is used to do, like like your house, or
wash your clothing, or power your wall mounted twenty volt
vibrator that requires as much electricity as an arc welder
in order to use. Energy savings are the reduction of
energy use without the loss of output produced. Improved energy

(02:05:59):
efficiency is exped to bring a number of benefits. First
of all, reducing energy usage should result in lower energy bills. Ideally,
reduced energy demand also means that energy imports can be decreased.
The International Energy Agency has estimated that strict efficiency policies
could allow the world to achieve more than forty of
the greenhouse gas emissions cuts needed to reach its climate

(02:06:20):
goals even without new technology. So there is considerable wiggle
room within the existing structures of global society to reduce
emissions a lot without fancy space technology but despite substantial
energy efficiency gains in the past few decades and decreases
an output from places like the United States, we as
a species are using more energy than we have pretty

(02:06:42):
much forever, and emissions wildly surpass are or the Earth's
ability to handle them. Quoting from the Global Carbon Project quote,
global energy growth is outpacing decarbonization. Despite positive progress in
twenty countries whose economies have grown over the last decade
and their emissions have declined, growth and energy from fossil
fuel sources is still outpacing the rise of low carbon

(02:07:03):
sources and activities. A robust global economy in sufficient emission
reductions and developed countries in a need for increased energy
use in developing countries where per capita emissions remain far
below those of wealthier nations, will continue to put upward
pressure on CEO two emissions. They use the term developing
UM and developed We don't prefer those. But obviously population

(02:07:24):
growth contributes to all that, the growth and the use
of energy and the emissions of carbon um. You know,
more people, more cars in the road, whatever, But it's
not really the primary factor that's adding onto the increase
in energy use for the human race. We'll talk about
that later, though for now, it's important to note that
the full potential energy savings, like in these kind of

(02:07:44):
hypotheticals about how much could be saved by improving efficiency,
are usually estimated by assuming that demand for energy services
will remain unchanged after energy efficiency gains. So when they
say that we can get the greenhouse emissions, gases gas
reductions we need by increasing efficiency, they're doing that assuming
that nothing will change about our overall energy use when

(02:08:06):
we make things more efficient. But time and time again
we see that once products are made more energy efficient,
people often end up consuming, producing, or even using more
of the thing, which makes the potential savings less meaningful
in a net result. Doesn't mean that it's not a
net good, but it's not as much as is often
calculated in these climate proposals. You can see this demonstrated

(02:08:27):
on the job. If you're in say food services, if
you happen to figure out how to do a task faster,
your boss probably isn't gonna let you use that extra
time to just chill out and do stuff on your phone. Um.
What is the phrase, if you can lean, you can clean? Um?
So if you do something faster, now, You're just expected
to do it faster all the time and output more
total work for your boss. This is the paradox of efficiency,

(02:08:49):
and it applies to energy as well. On a societal level,
Increased energy efficiency is a double edged sword, having the
potential to help cut emissions by a significant factor um
and having the potential to increase our total energy use
depending on what is made more efficient and how people
react to it. The idea that energy efficiency improvements can
actually lead to more overall energy use goes all the

(02:09:11):
way back to the start of the Industrial Revolution. In
eighteen sixty five, economist William Stanley Jeevens published a book
called The Coal Question, in which he argued that innovation
and efficiency, particularly in the case of the coal powered
steam engine, would actually increase the overall consumption of coal,
rather than reducing it as it had been intended to do.
His prediction that efficiency improvements on steam engines would lead

(02:09:34):
to massive economic expansion accelerating coal consumption was very much correct.
This idea, then dubbed the Jeevens paradox, is still very
much worth considering when we discuss efficiency gains and policies
that are meant to reduce energy consumption and thereby fight
climate change. In modern terms, we described the process by
which potential energy savings can be cut by greater use

(02:09:57):
of the energy efficient product as the re bound effect.
There are two different kinds of rebound effects observed, the
most obvious of which is dubbed the direct rebound effect.
Direct rebounds are observed when improvements and energy efficiency for
a particular energy service reduces the effective price of that
service and thus provides incentives to increase its demand. This

(02:10:18):
leads to the overall increased efficiency, not equaling to a
reduction energy use as as you might think. Direct rebounds
are observed when improvements and energy efficiency for a particular
energy service reduces the effective price of that enough that
it provides incentives to increase its demand. You may upgrade
to a more energy efficient appliance, but because of the
lower energy costs, you'll use the appliance more often and

(02:10:40):
thus use more total energy. Or in some cases, energy
efficiency gains are cut by the fact that more efficient
products allow people to use more of that product. For example,
someone may get a more efficient fridge that's also much larger,
and so even though it cools more efficiently, it's also
consuming overall, more energy, transportation has a lot of direct rebounds.

(02:11:02):
Despite massive fuel efficiency gains in recent years, transportation is
still responsible for twent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Transportations
contribution to global warming is quickly increasing, with travel producing
greater and greater percentages of the planet's carbon footprint. Private
automobile tailpipes will drive this phenomenon for the foreseeable future,

(02:11:22):
as the number of active vehicles on the road is
projected to grow from seven hundred million in the year
two thousand to two billion byt So, even though cars
are a lot more efficient, vastly more cars are being used.
And of course that's not entirely. It doesn't mean that, like,
more efficient cars cause people to buy more cars, but
it does make it more affordable for more people to
own cars and to drive them further, which drives up,

(02:11:45):
you know, fuel use and drives up emissions. And you
see how the whole problem works. And it's not just cars.
When planes became more fuel efficient, ticket prices decrease and
more people started to travel by plane. As cost per
mile dropped, more miles were flown. The fact that airplane
has got more fuel efficient didn't reduce general pollution by
the air travel industry quite to the contrary. In fact,

(02:12:06):
the decreased emissions led to an increase in air travel,
which shot a hell of a lot more poison out
into the sky and also gave us eat pray love.
So the other kinds of rebounds are indirect rebound effects.
This refers to when energy efficiency leads to monetary savings
for a producer or consumer, who then can spend those
extra savings on other carbon emitting goods and services that

(02:12:27):
otherwise they couldn't afford. For example, you buy a more
fuel efficient car, you save money on fuel, and you
went up with extra funds in your bank account that
you can use on a vacation, and maybe you take
a flight on that vacation. So in the end, you
emit more c O two despite the fact that you're
emitting less c O two through your car. You've got
five bucks extra in the bank and you fly to
Mexico on it. Right, that's an indirect rebound effect. So

(02:12:49):
even if a product is replaced by a more efficient
one with similar spects, lower energy bills can mean that
more consumers will have more money to spend on goods
and services. This is generally seen as desirable from a
social and economic standpoint, and probably from an individual standpoint.
Having more money is always useful UM, but it involves
additional energy consumption means that you're consuming more, you're emitting

(02:13:10):
more UM, and so the savings and whatnot have it
actually led to a savings in terms of you know,
from an environmental perspective. An analysis of EU data shows
that out of twenty nine EU countries, eleven experienced rebound
effects of over fifty, which means more than half of
the gains in energy efficiency were consumed by increases in
energy use. Six of those countries, including Denmark in Finland,

(02:13:34):
reached over rebound effects. This is called a backfire, and
it means that in those six countries, extra energy spending
overtook all of the efficiency gains achieved. Air Conditioning and
heating are large contributors to both direct and indirect rebounds.
A rebound effect as large as sixty has been shown
in increased improvements and efficiency in the residential heating sector,

(02:13:55):
which is something that the White House specifically quote about
in their paper. In China, long term rebound effects ranging
from forty six percent to fifty six percent for residential
electricity consumption in Beijing have been estimated. All of this
data casts doubt on the wisdom of relying on energy
efficiency policies to reduce energy demand. I'm gonna quote here
from a report by the Copenhagen School of Energy Infrastructure.

(02:14:17):
In recent decades, large increases in demand for energy services
have globally driven energy consumption. As a counterbalance, energy efficiency
has become a key energy policy mechanism to tackle higher
energy consumption and emissions, and countries and regions have adopted
different targets and policies to achieve energy and environmental objectives.
The main goals of these policies are to minimize the
dependence on fossil fuels and mitigate local air pollution and

(02:14:41):
g h G emissions. This has been particularly relevant for
the energy intensive sectors. The development and deployment of more
efficient technologies are, along with more technology management, the main
channel to achieve these environmental and energy objectives. However, energy
efficiency improvements can lead to changes in the demand for
energy services, changes that offsets of the expected energy savings. Consequently,

(02:15:02):
forecasts of energy consumption reductions may be overstated, as evidenced
by the empirical literature. Rebound effects can be a non
negligible issue. Therefore, ignoring them can imply an overestimation of
the benefits coming from energy efficiency improvements. This can in
turn lead to decisions such as the overallocation of public
funds to ineffective environmental and energy policies. Policy Makers need

(02:15:23):
to take rebound effects into account for air quality, energy security,
and climate change policy reasons. A rebound effect different from
zero implies that the expected proportional reductions and emissions from
fuel efficiency improvements might not be achieved. Therefore, the policy
goals to reach specific levels of emissions through fuel efficiency
enhancements may need to be adjusted accordingly. Again, we have

(02:15:44):
nothing against the idea of making more efficient devices. The
point is that energy efficiency can't be pursued in a vacuum.
It has to coincide with changes to a less extract
of cancerous mindset regarding the Earth's resources and carrying capacity.
Just telling someone you can drive more for less money,
or you can afford to keep your TV on all
the time doesn't really help anything. My fear is that

(02:16:06):
governments and corporations the neoliberal leviathan, as we've come to
call it on this show, will focus almost overwhelmingly on
energy efficiency to maintain economic growth and obscure the overall
lack of action on stopping carbon emissions. Think Joe Biden
doing donuts in an electric jeep through such a lens
as the Biden administration. Energy efficiency is a foil to

(02:16:26):
climate change is a charade being used to keep relentless
economic growth. Feud is a net good. It plays into
the myth that will be able to mitigate, adapt, and
survive the effects of climate change with little to no
change to our current lifestyles. What we need to do
is decouple human well being from energy consumption and consumption
in general to effectively combat climate change. This needs to

(02:16:47):
happen at such a scale that advocating for individual changes
in lifestyle will never be enough, but that is still
a significant part of the puzzle. The trick comes and
getting people to accept the fact that their life will
need to change without them telling them and buying this
product instead of that product is how you do it.
That said, populations of people can and do change their
behaviors in pretty profound ways. In nineteen fifty, abortion was

(02:17:10):
not at all an issue for the religious right. Resistance
to abortion might make some Protestants distrust you because that
was seen as a Catholic concern. Now abortion is the
defining political issue of the ascendant right. Their promise to
destroy it is the rock upon which their titanic power
is based. In a less calamitous sense, since two thousand seven,
we've gone from a time in which smartphones were expensive

(02:17:31):
trash for rich people to buy, to today when they're
expensive trash that every human being who can afford to
has to carry at all times because they're so utterly
integrated to our daily life. So yes, people can change.
A bigger challenge, though, will be to change the mindset
of industry, which is not entirely or even often driven
by consumer demand. As we've seen with the release of

(02:17:52):
papers proving Chevron and other oil and gas companies knew
about and deliberately hid research on climate change for decades.
Big capital will put its thumb on the scale every
step of the way. In other words, if you come
at the behemoth that is the integrated industrial economy, you'd
best come correct. How do we do that? Well, if
anybody really knew, they would have, you know, done it

(02:18:13):
by now. The human infrastructure of extract of capitalism is
deep and vast and tightly woven into the structure of
every government with any real power. So, with the full
understanding and admission that we aren't claiming to have solutions
to that problem, let's talk about something that will at
least be part of any real solution to the problem.
D growth. This is a term will explain in more

(02:18:34):
detail later, but we mean it's simply as a holistic
approach to encouraging reduction and energy consumption and global environmental justice.
A paper on the Jeevens paradox and the Link between Innovation,
efficiency and sustainability for the Frontiers and Energy Research concluded
quote the Jevens paradox and tales that sustainability problems cannot
be solved by technological innovations alone. They must be solved

(02:18:57):
through institutional and behavioral changes. While there are still differences
of opinion about the scale every bound effects and ongoing
arguments about the macro and micro and longer and shorter
term consequences of efficiency, our interest in this topic today
is driven by the goal of improving how we use
energy rather than totally overhauling or abandoning efficiency. One example

(02:19:17):
would be the current fight in Europe over smartphone chargers.
Most of the rest of the smartphone industry worldwide has
jumped onto USBC. Is the right kind of port for charging,
etcetera with your device. Before this point, those of you
have been using smartphones for a decade or we'll remember,
there were tons of different charges and thus a tons
of different waste. Every phone had to come with a
new charger. A lot of them wound up in the

(02:19:38):
trash that has been reduced by everyone jumping onto USBC.
But Apple continues to use their own special charger, and
now the EU was promising to make a law to
mandate USBC for charging new phones in an attempt to
reduce waste. This isn't again a bad thing, but if
someone's really concerned with waste among the smartphone industry, planned

(02:19:58):
obsolescence is the thing to go after. Now. Targeting planned
obsolescence stopping it includes a number of things, and for
one thing, you have to fight for the right to
repair devices, which is something that a number of corporations,
not just in the smartphone industry, have lobbied to in
some cases make illegal. More than that, it's stopping somehow
these companies from making the conscious decision to brick old

(02:20:20):
technology to increase profits, and that aspect of it is
the bigger enemy than even the right to repair. As
electronic device has become common and more sectors of daily
life via the Internet of Things, the overall share of
global energy use that goes to making new versions of
old products that could still be working but are designed
to break is is really quite depressing. For one example

(02:20:41):
of how large it must be, I haven't found any
solid information on the total size of this industry things
that you have to repeatedly re buy because they're meant
to break, But the mobile phone industry and two thousand
nineteen alone was four point six percent of global GDP,
So that's close to five percent of global GDP just
from making owns that are designed to break so you

(02:21:01):
have to buy a new phone. This is an example
of an area in which people's perspectives have to be changed.
And I think actually that digital fatigue, the fact that
we're also fucking exhausted with these devices these days, may
provide somewhat of an inroad for convincing people that they
need to buy new gadgets less often. But because these
gadgets are so crucial to daily life, the industry actually

(02:21:22):
also has to be forced to change. And again, rite
repair is one part of this, but that doesn't stop
Apple from just deciding to throttle their old devices whenever
they need to add a new layer to the money pile.
Our overall point with all this is that solutions to
climate change have to be cultural and not just based
in some version of will invent a better version and
that will solve the problem. Hybrid gas burning cars and

(02:21:42):
standardized charging chords are nibbling around the edges of the problem.
Relying on technological advances pacifies us in the present, and
it reinforces the need for certain types of human material codependence,
and that kind of codependence leads to increased dependency and
more extraction. By no means am I trying to say
that innovation is bad. I love gadgets as much as
the next person. Innovation also has the capacity to heavily

(02:22:05):
decreased resource extraction. It just has to be tailored with
something more than just will make this device more efficient
so we can use it more or sell more of them.
The capitalist mode of mass resource extraction and grind for
efficiency are intertwined, and if we are to limit the
most catastrophic effects of climate change. We as a culture
need to rethink how we view efficiency and energy use.

(02:22:28):
For the past few hundred years, economic growth has been
the road that has led to our current ecological dilemma.
The fantasy of switching over to nuclear and renewable energy
with a perfectly efficient electric grid to just sidestep climate
collapse is it's a fantasy. We missed our chance to
do that. Even if we stop all carbon emissions right now,
all of them, the carbon already in the atmosphere would

(02:22:50):
push us past two degrees celsius of warming in about
fifty years. So what besides carbon capture can we do
about this? We as in both you, the regular listener,
and the goals with power and real influence. Well. The
two thousand eighteen International Panel and Climate Change Special WORKPORT
indicated that in the absence of speculative negative emissions technologies,

(02:23:10):
the only feasible way to remain within safe carbon budgets
was for high incombinations to actively slow down the pace
of material production and consumption. D growth is the planned
reduction of energy use, corporate profits over production, and excess
consumption designed to bring the economy back into balance with
the living world in a way that reduces inequality while

(02:23:30):
focusing on human and ecological well being. This isn't just
some sort of utopian Marxist thinking, and in fact, a
lot of Marxists have critiques of deep growth, and deep
growth could be applied to a number of different economic
and governmental systems. There are even some weirdo capitalist advocates
of de growth. Discussion about solving climate change can get
into uncomfortable eugenics e territory if you aren't careful, So

(02:23:51):
I should emphasize here that d growth is primarily about
already wealthy countries limiting their economic growth. When aggregated in
terms of income, the richest half of the world, high
in upper middle income countries, amid eighty six percent of
global CO two emissions, the bottom half lower and middle
income countries amid only fourteen percent. With very few exceptions,

(02:24:14):
the richer than nation is, the more it emits. It's
all part of the resource extraction infinite growth lie we
tell ourselves to keep going. Wealth is so much more
of a factor in emissions than population. North America is
home to only five percent of the world population, but
amids nearly eighteen percent of c O two. Asia is
home to sixty percent of the world's population, but AMIDST

(02:24:35):
just forty nine percent of CO two. Africa has sixteen
percent of the population, but emids just four percent of
its c O two. This is reflected in per capita emissions.
The average North American AMIDST seventeen times more than the
average African. This inequality in global emissions lies at the
heart of why international agreement on climate change has and

(02:24:55):
continues to be so contentious. The richest countries in the
world are home to half the world pop relation and
emit eighty six percent of c O two. We want
global incomes and living standards, especially for those of the
poorest half of the world, to rise. The only way
to do that while limiting climate change is to shrink
the emissions of high income countries. Even several billion additional

(02:25:15):
people in low income nations would leave global emissions almost unchanged.
Three or four billion poor individuals would only account for
a few percent of global c O two. At the
other end of the distribution, however, adding only one billion
high income individuals to the wealthiest parts of the world
would increase global emissions by almost a third. A programmer
in the United States has a higher c O two

(02:25:36):
footprint than fifty farmers in Uganda. A decent chunk of
this is just due to meet consumption. Meet consumption per
capita in the richest fifteen countries is seven fifty percent
higher than in the poorest twenty four countries. Lowering the
population of say Uruguay won't do much for emissions. This
is not the case when you talk about wealthy nations.
In fact, if you live and say the United States,

(02:25:58):
possibly the biggest thing you was an individual could do
to reduce emissions is to have fewer or no children.
It's estimated that dedicated recycling curbs about point three metric
tons of c O two emissions per year, while having
one fewer child is equivalent to preventing over fifty eight
tons of c O two emissions a year. Better sex, said,
and free access to contraceptives could also go a shockingly

(02:26:20):
long way to curbing individual emission in wealthy countries, these
numbers are averaged across a whole nation, and just like
the case in less wealthy countries, the impact on emissions
by having one fewer kid will be far lesser if
your middle class or poor than it would be if
your upper middle class are rich, but of course, none
of that is going to be enough if industrial production
keeps chugging along and advising people not to have children,

(02:26:41):
one of the singular driving motivations for human beings across
history isn't exactly a vote getter of a proposition. D
Growth is critical, but the question of how to get
there is thorny as hell. There are a few easy answers.
Abolishing planned obsolescence could be pretty easily pitched to the
average person. Cutting down on the number of people who
have to commute could have a significant impact on toxic

(02:27:01):
car culture, and again you can sell that to people.
The obvious solutions are good places to start, but they
should be seen as opening incisions, meant to clear the
way to make deeper, more expansive cuts and eventually Hugh
Away at the cancer we've planted in the heart of
our civilization. Uh, it's could it's happened? Could hear? Robert

(02:27:36):
Evans the podcast that is now begun? Um, this is
a show about how things are falling apart and occasionally
how to hot to maybe deal with that, maybe you
try to steer things in a better direction. We talk
about a bunch of stuff today. We're gonna be talking
about more supply line um um stuff. And and in
order to kind of introduce this episode, we wanted to

(02:27:57):
bring in Alexis, who posted a right on Twitter about
some of their experiences in the industry in which they
work that that we all found very interesting. And so
we just wanted to bring Alexis on and uh and
and first off, have you kind of go over what
what you went over in that threat and then um
kind of zero win and talk about that. So Alexis,
welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Um. Yeah,

(02:28:21):
I'm gonna let you take it from here and then
we'll we'll drill in once you once you get through
your your piece, all right, So I'm just going to
go ahead and read the thread that I posted and
then yeah, we'll go from there. Uh. So, labor shortage
discourse time. I work for a food manufacturing company, specifically
bottling and canning various beverages, and we are desperately understaffed.

(02:28:41):
The wages are competitive, but they can't keep anyone on
after they hire them. Why, because we're short on people.
As soon as someone is trained, they start throwing massive
amounts of mandatory over time on them to try and
cover the missing pieces while they look for more people
to hire in. Folks get burned out and quit. And
this is where my hate of justin time manufacturing comes in. Obviously,

(02:29:02):
in food manufacturing, you can't just stock a warehouse with
stuff and let it sit for a year, but you
can keep a couple of weeks worth stock rotating at
all times if you devote the warehouse space, employees, et
cetera to doing so. This would give you some flex
time to train your new people without having to run
everyone into the dirt. So, even with a place that
is offering decent money and benefits, because this is a

(02:29:23):
union shop, we can't keep people because we're making a
conscious decision to only ever have one to two days
of stock on hand to increase profits. Meanwhile, thanks to
lean manufacturing, we don't keep a ton of spare parts
for our equipment on hand. Thanks to the supply chain
just disruption, We've got packaging equipment that's been waiting on
replacement parts for six months, which further fox our productivity

(02:29:44):
doomed to downtime, which makes the company's schedule even more
overtime to try and make up for the lost cases
from equipment downtime, which burns out more employees, which puts
us in an even deeper labor hole. I've been warning
about justin time being a time bomb in the making
for over a decade now. When it works perfectly, you're fine.
A single interruption causes cascade effects. And since everyone has

(02:30:04):
been doing the just in time thing, there's zero slack
anywhere in the system. Grocery stores don't have any extrasoda
in the back, they get behind demand builds up. Distribution
doesn't have any pallets in the warehouse what warehouse, so
they can't answer the surgeon demand from grocery stores. Manufacturing
doesn't have spare parts for aging equipment, so we can't
boost production. Spare parts makers don't have stock build up,

(02:30:25):
so on and on it goes. The actual approximate cause
of this is deregulation of capitalism that is incentivized quarterly
profits and made long term thinking anathema to CEOs. But
share conservatives blame California for not letting old trucks offload
at the ports. That's it, and that's that's the essence
of my thread. I then plug my podcast at the end. Yeah,

(02:30:47):
so I wanted to. I'm curious as to kind of like,
uh to what I'm trying to understand, Like what the
solution is. Like we've talked a bit about Okay, justin
tie manufacturing is is problematic for a lot of reasons. Um,
keeping more like on the shelves is going to allow
you to avoid these crunches, and it's going to like

(02:31:08):
make supply line issues like the ones we've experiencing since
the start of the COVID pandemic less severe and less common. Um,
But how do you actually how do you actually make
that happen? Because I guess the traditional free market thing
is that like, well, because this has been such a
problem for companies, um, you know, they'll naturally change the
system in order to avoid this in the future. I

(02:31:29):
don't feel like that's likely to happen. Um, And I'm wondering,
like what do we uh what what what do you
think is the way forward here? Well, because some of
the problem is right now, like most most companies, you
will pay taxes on stuff that you have stored in
a warehouse things like that. UM, So no company is
going to voluntarily lower their profit margins if the other

(02:31:52):
companies don't do it themselves as well. So really there's
going to have to be some sort of forcing of
companies to uh have that on hand. And I don't
see just being able to write a law that says, oh, well,
you're required to have this much backstock on hand, as
as being a functional way to work. And really, as

(02:32:14):
I'm sure you know, Robert, I know you're well aware,
the capitalism itself is kind of the problem. But as
far as I guess, a solution to this sort of thing, um,
you would have to disincentivize the quarterly profits above all
in order to force companies back into long term thinking. Now,

(02:32:35):
from a purely like mechanical standpoint, um, I guess if
you if you did something to incentivize companies having backstock
or flex stock on on hand, that might help. But um,
I mean, I'm just I'm just a cog in the
machine getting ground up. So as far as like big solutions,

(02:32:57):
that's I mean. I've been looking at it every since
I worked in a freaking casket factory and we started
doing just in time there, and just every time that
I've been in a place, a manufacturing place and seen
it happen, I'm just like, oh, this is gonna go wrong,
because you can't. You can do just in time if
all of your suppliers are local, but having it stretched

(02:33:17):
across the global supply chain, it just it it's inevitably
going to collapse in on itself. I'm sorry that I'm
not more helpful. No, no, but I mean this is
this is like the problem because there's a lot of
reasons why the supply chain is global. Some of them
are like labor related reasons, some of them are cost cunning,
some of them are just like pure pragmatism. Um. But

(02:33:38):
it's trying to like I I don't I feel like
it's it's one thing to say, like, well, part of
the problem is that like all of these different pieces
come from different countries, um. And there's a number of
shady reasons for aspects of that, UM. But it makes
for greater problems when there's a piline shortage and then
like okay, well what are we what are we gonna?
Are you suggesting that we make everything domestically because I

(02:34:00):
don't feel like that's a realistic solution. Um. Yeah. And
it's like it's just it's I'm trying to get a
handle on there's a couple of angles on this there's
there's what we think is going to happen, um, And
then there's a question of like, is there a way
that the system as it exists could make this whole
thing less vulnerable? And and a lot of ways that's

(02:34:20):
going to be separate from the question of what would
be better for everyone to happen, because a lot of
what would be better for everyone to happen is a
white A significant chunk of these things that we have
constantly stocked on the shelves are no longer parts of
our life, right. Um, there's a lot of things that
are made that we do not need and that are
there's an environmental cost and a show social cost and
YadA YadA, YadA um. But I guess first I'm kind

(02:34:43):
of curious to drilling in, like how realistic do you
think it is that the system as it exists is
going to like mitigate this and come up with better
ways to to do this that render us less vulnerable
to the supply crunches? Like is there I don't see
a great financial incentive in it for them yet, um,
because they don't seem to be hurting, right, Like that's

(02:35:03):
that's the thing? Well actually, and and again, please keep
in mind this is limited anecdotal evidence. Yeah, because it's
gonna be definitely John Deer, I know, was making record
profits before all the this union stuff happened. But like,
that's not everyone, right. So again, I work for a
soda manufacturer. So every time you're in you know, enjoying

(02:35:23):
your your Schmetzy Schmola or your or your Schmago whatever whatever,
I'm not going to explain which company I work for
because I don't want to get in trouble um. And
we're we're actually a captive bottler, which means that it's
a separate company, but we work for the big soda corporation.
I think that in certain instances those things will change, because,

(02:35:46):
for example, just last week, we had one of our
four lines go down of our production capacity went down
because we had a motor burnout on the rollers that
would move a full palette out to be picked up
by a forklift, and there was no replacement motor in stock,
and so we had I think forty eight hours of

(02:36:07):
downtime on this. Now, all the way up at the
top the company executive, you know, we're one of thirty
some plants. They don't care about why it was down,
just that it was down. So in our position here, um,
the people a little higher up the food chain than
me are insisting like, hey, we've been after you guys
for months that we need spares like this. And I

(02:36:30):
think that as that sort of stuff happens, as it
cuts into potential future profits, you know, it's not dropping
their profits, but it's keeping them from being even higher,
maybe certain certain companies are going to be like, Okay,
maybe we do need a couple more spares on the shelves.
As far as on the production side of it, I
don't see that happening. I think we're still going to

(02:36:51):
be shipping out palletts of you know, pallets of corn
syrup infected carbonated water as fast as we can make them,
which you and you were talking about the environmental costs,
like you do not want to know how much water
it takes to make a single leader of soda. You
really don't. Um. But on this on the production, like

(02:37:13):
input side, I think that companies are going to start
stocking spare parts because it has been and I still
have friends who work for other companies that I used
to work for. It has been all throughout the system.
And I live in the Midwest. Every company is going
through this where they're having huge amounts of downtime because
they things as small as a gasket or an O

(02:37:36):
ring are not on the shelf, and they're finally companies
are finally going to listen to what their maintenance people
have been screaming at them, that we can't just stagger
along and then oh, well it's next day delivery. Yeah,
and then you freak out that this line was down
for twenty four hours now that it's not even next
day delivery, it's next week delivery. I think that side
of it they're going to probably try and fix. But

(02:37:57):
the other side, shipping to the consumer, I really don't
see that they're going to change that. Yeah, I mean
that makes that makes sense, and I we are you're
kind of lad thinking about this inevitably to like two conclusions.
One of them is that I have my I'm sure
parts of this the system will adapt, as it already

(02:38:18):
has been in fact, which is why I, like you
haven't seen toilet paper run out as bad as it
did at the start of the pandemic. Again, right, there
is a degree to which the system is capable of adjustment,
but kind of in a larger sense. Um, this is
number one. I'm kind of left with the feeling that
because of the way the system was set up and

(02:38:39):
the fact that it was disrupted so severely, it's kind
of impossible to get a percent back on track, especially
considering the disruptions are going to continue, not just waves
of COVID, but you know, in natural disasters and whatnot,
shortages of things like truck drivers, Like these different little
hits are going to keep coming, and I just don't
know that wherever going to like catch everywhere enough that

(02:39:02):
like shortages of some sort aren't an aspect of our
lives kind of forever. And this is one of those
things that if you've spent a lot of time outside
of the United States, that's something a lot of people
have been dealing with for years. It's just not something
Americans are used to dealing with. And I think I
kind of feel like that's just where it is now.
Like I don't feel like every aspect of our our

(02:39:22):
production and consumption system is going to get back where
it to where it was February. I think maybe that's
never happening again. No, absolutely, it will not ever happen.
You were saying earlier that you know, there's some practical
reasons for the global supply chain. Like one of the
things that we've had such hard time getting in is
any of our concentrates that contain real vanilla. Obviously, we

(02:39:45):
can't grow vanilla in the United States. Yeah, that's the
thing you have to I mean, that's part of why
colonialism exists, right, you need to go get vanilla. Yeah.
So yeah, So, like there are certain things that are
going to be stay have to stay globe if we're
going to continue to make the things that we make.
And just from my side of it, being able to see, oh, well,

(02:40:07):
why can't we get this concentrate in, Oh because it
has vanilla as an ingredient, and there's been a bunch
of draughts and ship and so vanilla is in a crunch,
you know that sort of thing. So I just, um,
you're right in that. Yeah, we're going to have shortages.
There's it's you know, and it's not just the mechanical
side on ours. It's like we can't get cans in,
we can't get concentrated in, we can't you know, whatever

(02:40:29):
it is that we can't get in is going to
slow us down and demand will build up. I did
have somebody in that thread respond and say, I don't
see how demand for soda will build up. And I'm like, now,
I have a friend who's like a diet Dr. Pepper fiend,
and as soon as diet Dr. Pepper shows up, now
she buys like packs. Demand will absolutely build up for
stuff when people feel like they're being deprived of something

(02:40:51):
that when it becomes available, they are going to hoard
it as best they can. Yeah. And that's again with soda,
just kind of an annoyance. And so although that can
because individual people can react in extreme ways, can snowball.
I'm not gonna be surprised if one of these days
we have somebody shoot up a fucking grocery store because
they're whatever was out. Um. But that's also not a necessity.

(02:41:15):
And I think that like the concern is that especially
when you you look at stuff, like you know, there's
a couple of states that had like their wheat harvests
and corn harvest that were like half or less than
half of normal in big chunks of a rack. It
was like down by I think like seventy um. Like
these massive shortages of growing basic food stuffs. Um, And

(02:41:37):
that's all that's all tight into this, Like it's not
the same business that you're on, but it's all tied
into aspects of this, and it's all tied into like
a lot of our ability to get that food out
of the field is reliant upon different kinds of mechanical
harvesting equipment. The materials to which to like fix and
replace it are often like caught up in this whole
just in time problem because they don't make enough of

(02:41:58):
them and sometimes they don't have them in store is
and then there's like a strike at John Deer and
so more aren't getting made and so there's not what
you need to repair the equipment in time to get
stuff out of the field everywhere, and in a year
when you already have a reduction of harvests, like that
cuts down on it further. Um Like I I think,
I don't know, it's it's this. There's always a couple
of things to look at, which is like number one,

(02:42:19):
as we've talked about, like how is the system going
to try to handle this? What ways are they going
to be successful, what ways are they going to fail?
What things are you going to have to endure? And
what things I think what I want to talk about
next is like what things do we need to change, uh,
in order to like, as communities be more resilient to
this stuff, which you know, has less to do with soda,
which again is not a necessity, but more to do

(02:42:41):
with figuring out how to anticipate and endure supply line disruptions.
Right absolutely. And and while I'm currently in soda, I
have been in everything from automotive too, I think as
or casket manufacturer. So you know, when I can go
through a casket a week, you know, especially when you're

(02:43:02):
driving your well, yeah, when I'm drunk a boy right
right through a trailer park, I mean you're you're I
mean your casket order has got to be through the roof.
It is it is a lot a lot of people. Yeah,
I mean I I do actually wonder how fuck um,
I mean like, I do actually wonder how much like
the casket industry and something that has been affected by

(02:43:23):
the by like by the pandemic with the you know,
an influx of dead people, and how that's how how
that's affective thinks that That's something I've been wondering about,
But I have not actually spent a time looking into
I can't speak to the pandemic specifically. I quit. I
quit the casket industry in two thousand and eight, but
I do recall my boss, the owner at the time,

(02:43:44):
being very very upset that Hurricane Katrina had a lower
death toll than he anticipated because she had over ordered
the sheet metal to make the caskets, and he was
very piste off about having all that extra stock because
they were to society. Yes, yeah, that's that's good to hear. Yeah, great.
He was in a bad mood for like a month

(02:44:05):
after Katrina because it hadn't reached his expectations. Well, sure,
that's a real problem for for absolutely, he's got that's
all the sympathy, critical support. That job was grim. I'm
just gonna say that that sounds like it. I I
have a through a through a loved one, a connection

(02:44:25):
to somebody who is like works for a company that
makes body bags and was amazing for them. They did
incredible in um. I didn't hear any ghoulish stories. It's
just like, yeah, of course you guys made a bunch
of extra money. Sounds like that was great for you,

(02:44:45):
putting it putting in a mental note to go through
a bunch of the campaign contributions of people who make
body bags and check if they're supporting anti mess Yes. Yeah,
see if Big Corpse got into this at all. Yeah,
I mean, honestly, the thing that the thing to do is,
you know, I'm not a big fan the stock market
in general, but next time, the next time that there's
a pandemic, find out which companies make body begs on

(02:45:06):
the stock market and invest in those as soon as
as soon as the pandemic starts. I mean, I can
tell you what I'm I'm putting money into big corps
as soon as uh as soon as the next pandemic hits.
That's absolutely gonna happen. Oh boy, all right, Yeah that's Graham. Yeah,
I think it's fine. There's a reason why after after

(02:45:26):
I started working there, I immediately told my husband, Hey,
make sure if I die before you, I'm cremated. So yeah, yeah,
I don't want to give these monsters any of my money.
What I what I'm looking into is just full full
body stuffing that people can pose me around it. But
that's a set for a topic. Yeah, you talk about
that a lot, Garrison. What I did want to mention

(02:45:48):
is like, actually, when you were talking about how they
hire in a lot of employees and they make them
more horrible hours and then they you know, they quitness
is kind of a constant kind of process and like
this isn't exclusive to that industry at all. Think one
of the worst defenders of this is actually the Postal Service. UM.
I think the Postal Service has like the lowest employee
satisfaction out of any shipping company. UM. And like my my,

(02:46:12):
my father, I work for the Postal Service for a bit.
And when you first join up, you join as like
you join as a on like a non career employee path,
and then you can get promoted to a career employee
path after a few years. But the turnaround for the
non career employee paths is massive, Like local branches can
stay after like people who start working at the Postal

(02:46:32):
Service will end up quitting within the year. Now that
number can be different based on nationally and for based
on like you know, based on what states you're in,
but but across the board, it's it's always around at
least fifty for employee turnaround for people who join up
the Postal Service on these like a city carrier assistant positions,
it's fascinating, Yeah, because because when when you when you're

(02:46:54):
a non career employee path you have to work seven
days a week and you can be called into work
basically any time usually working around tend to all our days,
all of the career employees, so all of the sounds,
but like all of all, all of like all of
the regular carriers get to work like their specific route
and that's it. That's their whole day. For the for
the people who are new to the job, they're forced

(02:47:14):
to work tons of routes um fill in whenever someone
else can't, and we constantly be doing over time um
and working like basically NonStop, NonStop, with only like two
like only two holidays off a year or something. It's
it's pretty intense, um, which is why you know, when
the postal service comes have problems and because and and
because there's so few there's generally not tons of employees,

(02:47:37):
I mean like there is lots like comparedly like like
the Postal Services one of the bigger employers in the
whole country. But for people when when when employees drop off,
filling those positions can be really hard in times of
like crisis, So like you know last year when there's
all these problems with the postal service, all of these
kind of issues around the supply chain and how people
treat their workers. All of them like like you know,
compound to create one like much bigger problem which we

(02:48:00):
saw last year with the postal service and like late
in like the late summer. Um. So I've just spent
an interesting how it's like, you know, these same issues
around like how we treat workers is adding on to
this problem of like supply chains and getting stuff delivered
and all this kind of stuff. And so what what
I find interesting there is so you're you know, we're
talking about the employee issue and yeah, it's sure. So

(02:48:22):
I've been Uh, the plant I was working in, which
is twenty minutes from my house, closed down, and now
I'm working ninety miles away literally an hour, and I
am i am working four twelves a week, and I'm
crashing at my parents house, which they live about sixty
miles away. So it's a little bit better, um, but

(02:48:43):
also suck. Yeah, and my parents are hard right evangelicals
who do not agree with you know, so that's fun.
But um, the plant that I was in was a
non union plant, and the one I'm in now is
a union plant, and one of the things that I've
noticed that actually kind of different is for once in

(02:49:03):
the non union plant, things were actually better because what
we could do what what what could be done is,
all right, we're all working seven days a week. We
have enough staffing that if nobody calls in, we have
one spare person who normally goes around and gives breaks
and stuff like that. Well we could, you know, basically
all take turns taking a day off during that seven
day week. At the union plant that I'm at now, though,

(02:49:26):
it's all seniority based, so any time that they force
over time, they go from the bottom of the seniority
list on up. So the people the people who are
being forced into those which I described in the thread,
I think it was it was split off in the thread.
But the people who were being forced to stay over

(02:49:46):
four hours and then come in four hours early, where
you oh, you were working six to two, now you're working,
you know, six to six, and then you're coming in
at two in the mo runing instead of six in
the morning the next day are always the people who
are the lowest on the seniority list, which is same thing,

(02:50:07):
same same thing with the Postal Service. Yeah, yeah, I
mean it's not there's a number of different I mean
I've heard that complaint from a couple of different union gigs, um,
and it's yeah, it's a problem. Yeah, and it's that's
why we get these new people and they get trained up,
and now they're trained and they're signed off, and then
they immediately go from because when you're training, you're not

(02:50:27):
you can't train on overtime or whatever. But now it's oh, okay,
well now you're working every weekend, you're being forced over,
you're being forced in early, just NonStop. And so yeah,
they get trained for a month and then a month
after that they quit because they went from working a
relatively sane amount to aunt. We went fifty eight days

(02:50:51):
at one point without a day off. My dad went
like almost I think like three hundred days without with
without a day off when he started the Postal Service.
Like kind of funny thing is like when you hear
the Postal Service talking with this like from the in
their own reports and on their own website, what they
find a problem with is not not the turnaround in
and of itself, but how they're basically wasting money on

(02:51:11):
trainings for people that don't end up working. It's like
that is their main concern is that they're spending all
this money on like training for people that don't stick
around often. Um, and like, yeah, well maybe you should
address why they don't stick around often. That's that seems
to be kind of the actual issue here. Yeah, And
what I've been pushing for, and I know this is
more on the labor side than on the on the

(02:51:33):
supply chain side that we were focusing on. I've been
pushing for instead of three shifts where we keep just
getting just hammered with this stuff, I want us to
do four shifts, twelve hour days and do like a
two on two off, three on three off type swing
shift where you have like one shift that works. You know,

(02:51:53):
you work three days one week, four days the next week,
and you work twelve hour days, but really you wind
up getting a bunch of days off, you know, Like
that's if you're gonna work seven days a week, that's
the best way to do it in my opinion. I mean, like,
you know, it's there's a lot of resistance to well,
well then we have to hire these extra people. Well
you're hiring those people anyway. And then they're quitting. I mean,
like you're not even getting your value out of them

(02:52:16):
slave drivers. I mean, like you said, this is more,
this is more than labor side than the supply chain side.
But honestly, these are these are like the same side, right,
because if you don't have employee like this is you know,
this is a fundamental you know thing, and like how
capitalism works, right, you need to have you know, workers
to make there have be any value at all. Right,
So if there's if there isn't any people to working,
then there is no supply chain. It's gone. Because if

(02:52:37):
we need people to do it, both on the production
side and both in like the transportation side. That's like
you know ups um usps, you know FedEx, you know,
so like the mail carriers and stuff is very important
to all of this because you you you need in
order to for for there to be a supply chain,
there needs to be the chain part right where you
carry it from one place to to another. So it's
both it's both on the production side and on the

(02:52:58):
transportation side. For all these problems, you know. Yeah, And
one of them one of the things that I in
the replies to my thread, which I got into was
that part of the the only slack in just in
Time manufacturing is the employees. They've pulled all of the

(02:53:20):
slack out of the system on the mechanical side and
on the production side of it, on all the physical side.
The only slack left is people, and they have stretched
us all to the absolute breaking point. Now I'm lucky,
relatively speaking in that I'm salary so like I'm more
on the inventory side of things, so I'm not doing

(02:53:41):
the hourly production, seven day a week thing. Like I said,
I work four twelves um. But I can still you know,
and that that's this job, every other previous job not
the same thing. But I can still see where they've
taken out. Like once again, we used to have spares
on the shelf so that when something broke down we
could fix the machine and keep running. Now instead of

(02:54:03):
the spare, the spare is people working weekends. That's the
spare part. And that makes total sense, right, You're you're
the capitalist. A better spare that is a part on
the shelf costs you money in terms of like you
need to have that space, that's extra rent you're paying.
You need to have bought that part. Having your people
just killed themselves is much cheaper. You can sort of

(02:54:26):
misuse the marks here, right, or like one of Mark's
things is like, okay, well, you know you have you
have this increased machinery. You have this increased machinery, but
that means you're producing less value because you know, you've
you put more people out of work. Was like, okay, well,
what if what if we just we re extend the
work day again and sort of you know, reverse all
of the gains that have been happening. Well, okay, I
say have been happening, reverse all the gains that happened

(02:54:48):
between about nineteen thirty and like nineteen seventy, and just
oh well, what if we just make everyone for a
twelve hour days again? And that that was you know,
one of that was the thing that would struck me
both listening to this and reading threat, was that it's
it's not even just wages, it's just it's it's it's
it's just the fundamental power rebalance. And then it's a
fundamental power and balance. It's gotten so bad that even

(02:55:11):
like you know, the the like sometimes the remains of
the union system, it's like it's not even you know,
the the unions like in this particure case like this
is they're not even it's not even really helping. It's
just creating, like you have a small labor aristocracy that
you have everyone else could be getting just like ground down.
In this case, it's that we've got we've got a
small core of people who have been there twenty or
thirty years. And and whereas before, maybe even ten years ago,

(02:55:36):
they might have viewed the union as a vehicle to
help everybody, things have gotten so bad that now it's
just okay, I'm going to use this system as much
as i can to cover my own ass because things
have gotten so damn bad. And obviously, you know, Reagan
destroying the unions and stuff like that help with that.
But yeah, it's that I and I feel like the

(02:55:59):
union in in my job could be very helpful, um,
but it would require certain people in it too, instead
of looking out for just their own interest, because hey,
I've been here twenty five years, so I'm in the clear.
Like actually, go, okay, maybe I should you know, sacrifice

(02:56:19):
a little bit of of that power or that privilege
to help the people who are just hiring in so
that we can keep them, so that that this doesn't
have to keep happening. Yeah, and it's you know, this
is one of the things that has made the John
Dear strike, that made it so powerful, was these those
older workers who I mean that they had a tiered system, right,
So you have workers hired I think before like ninety

(02:56:41):
seven got a full pension, and then like after ninety
seven was like a third of that, and then workers
hired in the last couple of years weren't getting any
pension at all. And a big part of the strike
is like all of the workers saying that's not acceptable, um,
including the ones who had a full pension, who had
some of a pension, like saying that, like the fact
that the newer people are getting screwed over is an acceptable.
And I've heard different reasons for why that happened, because

(02:57:03):
this is this tactic what you're talking about, and kind
of like what happened to John Deere, it was a
common tactic. You know. It's the thing we talked about
in colonialism all the time. You want to divide the
population against you know, each other, each other one way
or the other. Give them like make make them feel
as if their interests are not necessarily aligned, you know,
so the people who um, and there's reasons. I've heard

(02:57:23):
different reasons for why John Deere was different, including the
idea that like a lot of these are family jobs,
so it was not people. It was people being like, well,
my kid's not going to get a pension, and that's bullshit. Um. Anyway, Yeah,
I just it's it's it's important to talk about like
that as a problem, and also to highlight different strikes
where that seems to have been overcome by the workers,

(02:57:44):
like this fact that they were attempted to be played
against each other didn't really work out, and where in
my case it very much is like another another example
being so we'll have people who are are lower on
the seniority list and like let's say, for example, well
one weekend we're running lines three and five and not
the other two. The newer people might only know stuff

(02:58:09):
online four. But if the new people don't get scheduled
to do something, even if they're just being forced in
to sweep the floor, the people who have the higher
seniority will throw a fit saying, well, they're lower seniority,
why aren't they in here as opposed to well, because
they can't run that machine. And then they don't want
to train them to run that machine. It's it's very

(02:58:31):
they've managed to succeed where the John Deer capitalists might
have failed in making this all about like all right working.
And I don't blame the people who have the higher
seniority on this because if my you know, if if
you're working, conditions are hell and you have the option
of okay, well, on a short term scale, I can

(02:58:51):
screw over this other person and actually see my family
once in a while. Most people are gonna do it,
especially if that person is somebody who just hired in
that you don't know, we'll screre that guy. And that's
where once again, if unions were stronger, if there was
more than what is it right now, like to three

(02:59:11):
of jobs or a union job. But unions have been
so like just weakened that this sort of situation is
allowed to happen, I guess you could say, and I think, yeah,
that comes back to just like the solute, the solution
to the supply chain problem isn't really like it's it's
it's it's not it's not a logistical solution. It's not

(02:59:33):
even really like a capital gained solution, like a tax solution.
The solution is that you know, you have to fundamentally
change the balance of power between capital and labor, and
you know, I mean that and that and that that
can be like you know, I think things will get
better if it's if it's more unions, but like things
are going to continue to suck until like the capitalists

(02:59:54):
ceased to exist as a class. Yeah, And I think
that's like that that's because yeah, that's always the and
it's one of those like we get we get critiqued
on the internets sometimes because I think people will will say, like, well,
you know, is your only solution to this? You keep
talking about like mutual aid and anarchism, and like I
just don't feel like that's a big scale solutions. Like yeah,

(03:00:17):
but the current system isn't going to work very well
on a big scale. Part of what we're always talking
about is like how to how to get your how
to get yourself and your people through the situation, because
that's also important, and it's the same thing with like
a union, right unionizing you and your fellow laborers and
your factory, or or making your union more effective and
more able to like advocate for everyone. That's not going

(03:00:38):
to fix the bigger problem. That's not going to deal
with the the issues that like, that's not going to
stop climate change, that's not going to stop supply line
crunches in a grand scale, it's not going to stop
creeping authoritarianism. But it can make life more bearable for
you and the people around you. And that's that's also
part of like getting by in a crumbling world about yeah,

(03:00:58):
and yep, it's it requires a bit of more foresight,
which I think was one of the other purposes behind
working us as many hours as they do. Is when
you're so fucking tired all the time from working what
you're working, you don't have time to stop and think
about the larger implications of things. M hm and yeah,

(03:01:22):
And that's part of what they're going for. Yep. Yeah.
So I don't know anyone else get anything. Well, I
guess just the clear solution of this is that I
need to just stuck up on Bang, right, I just
need to buy all I can because I love Bang I.
I can't stop drinking Bang I will I'm scared of

(03:01:44):
how much Bag I drink. I will say. One of
one of the wonderful mutual aid solutions is if you're very,
very nice to the syrup mixing people. They will be
kind to you if you are working a double and
they will give you a shot of the energy drink
syrup before it been mixed. Oh my god, oh boy.

(03:02:04):
You should you should not have told Garrison that a problem.
Garrison's going to quit his job podcasting just to be
able to get just gonna shooting up energy drink here
on out. That's all I'm doing with my time. I'm
I'm leaving, leaving the call right now, finding the nearest factory.

(03:02:25):
And my second day on the on the job in
the soda manufacturing thing, I had a twenty four pack
of energy drink explode all over me change of clothes,
and that's when I learned that caffeine and touring can
soak through your skin. Oh yes, I mean basically was
seeing sound? Okay. So I I've just been looking up

(03:02:47):
inflatable hot tubs and I feel like if I could
order enough pure energy drink syrup in an inflatable hot tub,
I could build basically the equivalent of Baron Harconan's rejuvenation bath,
but with like Peter Bang syrup. That is that is,
that is my plan. Just twelve caffeine and Tori, it's
just gonna be we're all gonna quit our jobs. We're
just gonna have the same amount of money. They get

(03:03:08):
slower over time because we're again spending it all on banks. Obviously,
you need you need the inside person to supply you
with the syrup. So we'll just have sort of an
Ocean's eleven situation where you guys pull up to the
loading dock and with a tanker and I'm just hooking
the truck up. You know, it's gonna be like Scarface,
but we're selling pure syrup. And then Garrison loses his

(03:03:31):
mind and winds up in a machine gun fight in
a mansion, and when instead of burying his face into
a mountain of cocaine, he's instead got just a little
he's just sticking his hand into a bowl of syrup
to absorb the caffeinated nutrients. When I when I p
it's just gonna be straight syrup. Now that is yeah. Anyway,

(03:03:53):
Well that's the episode where if people want to find
you a lot where and they find you? So I
host along with my husband and our friend Justin, we
host a trans comedy and pop culture podcast where we
also interview interesting people. Um it's called the Violet Wanderers.

(03:04:14):
So you can find us on Twitter at violet Wanderers
or the Violet Wanderers dot com or email the Violet
wanders at gmail dot com. And that's basically that's my
Twitter handle. And I just slowly got sucked into the
Twitter hellscape where yeah that happens. Originally one on just
like oh, I'm gonna just promote my show, and then
I started responding to people and before you know what,

(03:04:35):
I'm writing twenty tweet rants about just in time on
my stupid gay podcast account. I got into Twitter to
converse with a young Justice podcast and that's why I
created my Twitter accounts. And here I am now So
I was trying to get a planet side to Beta
Key and I got it. But the consequences where I
am now here, Yeah Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, and it's consequences

(03:04:58):
disaster for your you're this, You're such a child. I
remember the first Planet Side Betaday, Chris. It was an
age and dreamed of. Oh Chris, and you all are
welcome to come on the show anytime. I will. I
will bother you to come on my show sometime. Excellent. Yeah,
plugs plugs probably. Yeah. Yeah, Like I said, the Violet

(03:05:22):
Wanderers were on Apple, were on Spotify, were on podcast Addict, whatever,
you know, it's all your major podcast platforms. Uh. The
tagline of the show is made for no one, So, um,
expect a lot of queer humor, a lot of me
calling my husband a slut, and us talking about video games,

(03:05:44):
comic books, movies, and then occasionally just randomly interviewing really
interesting people who I harassed into coming on the show,
like which Robert I know, you know Daniel Harper from
I Don't speak German. He's been on a few times. Um,
we've had him on and had some fun talking about Nazis,
which ye teams kind of you know, counterintuitive, but there's

(03:06:06):
a lot of humor that can be found in Nazis
if you know the right places to look. And yeah,
I you know what, I just watched a German language
movie about Hitler that was made in two thousand seven
by a Jewish German comedian that includes I've watched a
lot of Hitler movies, you know, periodically, I just get
on Netflix and Hulu type and Hitler just kind of
watch whatever is there. This is the first time I

(03:06:28):
have seen Hitler fucking in a movie. I've never seen
anybody who had the courage to do that. And he
is just yeah, he's it's it's uncoming as one ball
just swinging in the land. It is. It is an
uncomfortable scene, but not the most uncomfortable scene in that
particular movie. Um, it's quite a film, that's asn't say,
that's pretty amazing. But yeah, come on, come on sometime

(03:06:50):
we'll play around vin Selmageddon, which is a game that
I've created, and uh, you know, if you guys don't
want to kill yourselves afterwards, then hey, you survived the game.
As long as I can get some start up out
of the deal, that's that's all I want. I will,
I will, I will smuggle you some syrup out and
mail it to you. Okay, alright, that's that's gonna do
it for all of us here today that it could
happen here until next time. I don't know. Go go read,

(03:07:14):
Go read The Dawn of Everything. It's good, it's worth reading.
Check it out. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more
episodes every week from now until the heat Death of

(03:07:35):
the Universe. It could happen here is a production of
cool zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources
for It could happen here, updated monthly at cool zone
media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.