Pill Pod 208 - Prime Minister Mark Carney: Vibes Banker

We catch you up on Canadian politics by introducing you to our new Prime Minister via his book VALUE(S): Building A Better World For All (https://amzn.to/4dj1oYJ).  

Bono called it ‘A radical book that speaks out accessibly' (lol)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
So we're getting good.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
We gotta tell our audience we're actually this recording that
you're hearing was recorded seven days in your past. So
for us, about an hour ago the Pope got announced.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yeah, and American.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
I think they probably just picked an American so that
GD wouldn't kill him.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
I also read a tweet online that it's the Vatican
strategy to avoid tariffs.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, first American, first American Pope.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
I did like maybe two weeks ago, reading an article
about the front runners, and I think the article that
I read didn't even mention this guy. It might have
mentioned him as like an honorable mention at the end,
but like all the front runners, it seemed to be
between like the really progressive pick was this Filipino that
was kind of like seen as it would have been
a direct continuation and even more progressive than Francis. And

(01:00):
then there was like actually another American guy as well
as maybe an Italian who uh and like an African
that we're considered kind of like the very very conservative
front runners. And this guy, from what I've read, seems
to be like pretty middle of the road centrist, So
I feel like he's probably a compromise in the in
the conclave between like the progressives and like the one

(01:23):
piece of analysis that make kind of makes sense if
you're just thinking the Catholic Church is like a business,
it's like, well, where are we growing, right? We're growing
in all the most conservative places, right, And where's all
the pressure to be more progressive coming from the secular
world where people are stopping being Catholics. So it's like,
why would we pick a super progressive guy when like,

(01:44):
if we were, you know, in the global North becoming
like pushing for a Catholic, a progressive Catholic church, and
we were all becoming Catholic, Well, yeah, sure that that
would make sense. But we're not right, we're all fucking
getting we're all turning our backs on the shirt. So
I understand from the perspective of the church that they're like, well,
we can't really pick a super progressive guy because that's
just going to alienate everyone in Africa and Asia who

(02:04):
like is Catholic.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
We again, we haven't heard him speak yet, we haven't
heard his whatever address from the bound.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah he did, he spoke, Oh did you Okay, he
spoke right afterwards, he just spoke in Latin. And then
I think he spoke in Spanish a little bit and
just said a bunch of nonsense shit that you would
expect someone to say, like, h.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Didn't he get announced like two hours.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Ago though, Yeah, but when he gets announced he comes
out right away.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh okay.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
For me, it's just always funny to watch like all
these adults like wearing these costumes and I'm like, holy shit,
they're taking this shit so seriously, Like it's just look
at these fucking LARPers like it's this is crazy, Like
look how serious they're taking it.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
If you look at look at other institutions that have
roots in the Middle Ages, and you see the same
sorts of things. What do you see a graduation ceremonies,
for example, You see a.

Speaker 4 (02:49):
Lot of pomp and splendor.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
And gowns and outfits and ceremony.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
It just just shows you that the ruins of the
feudal world were used to construct the capitalist world.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
That's how it worked.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
All right, Well, why don't we transfer trans transfer.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
To other stuff that's going on the news.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
We'll move over to our topic du joure because there's
a lot to cover.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Which is related to a timely news event in Canada.
What is that getting a new prime minister.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Oh yeah, hey, everyone, a new leader.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
We asked Diego to bow out for this episode because
we didn't want any foreign influence. Yeah, discussion, this is,
this is in Canada. Business. Episodes about Canadian politics don't
do very well.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
I actually do kind of. I do kind of wish
Diego was here so that he could talk about the
lack of a material analysis in this book over and
over again.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
M M, well he's here in spirit, now I can
do that. We got a new prime minister, never never
been in politics before. He was the head of the
European or the UK, Bank of England, the.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Bank of England, the Bank of Canada before.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
That, and he just jumped in here and uh beaten
some sacks Wall Street experience or something too.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah Goldman Sachs, Yeah, Brookfield Capital. So we read his book,
it's six hundred.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Pages, cheerfully every word.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
It's six hundred pages long. We read part We've jumped
around in his book and sent clips to each other
and kind of got the vibes. But the reason that
we find Canadian politics so boring because they are just
objectively boring. Relatively speaking, it's like watching American politics, but
with the mute button on. So we have we have Poliev.

(04:41):
Polliev is just in likeness and speech, a copy of
Ron Decientists, but with the with the volume turned all
the way down.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
That's good. I like that.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Oh yeah, it's good.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
Some people try to say Polyev is like Trump. He's not.
I think a much more apt comparison. I think you're
exactly right. He is like a Ronda scientist. That's that's
exactly right.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Or like Himmler, you know, just like a dorky, evil
little nerd. But he got beaten by this piece of
white bread. You guys heard him talk yet?

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Who mar Kearney?

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, oh yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
I watched him. I watched his visit, he visited the
White House?

Speaker 2 (05:17):
And what did Trump think of him?

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Trump seems to really like him, and I think, which
is funny. And I think it's just because of his
finance bonafides, Like it's just the fact that this guy's
like been a banker that Trump seems to respect him.
And I will say, when they were having their little
press event sitting beside each other, I think Carney did
a really good job, like as good of a job
as you can do, considering the circumstances like he he
kind of he kind of like threw in little praises

(05:41):
that were actually kind of like backhanded compliments. Like I
think he said something like, oh, Trump, look, you've you've
totally reinvigorated the like the like global defense initue.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Importance of like national security all over the world.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Trump like it's true, it's true.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
Oh and starts with like a praise.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Yeah, And he got asked about like fifty first state thing,
and Trump like obviously went on to talk about why well,
He's like it's not really up to me. It takes
two to tango, but like it would beautiful, you know,
like seeing that one piece of land and it's got
a race that that line that's some guy with a
ruler just just cut across it. And then like Carney,
I think he had he had like lines ready, right,

(06:19):
and he said he's like yeah, He's like if I may,
you know, He's like, Trump, you're in real estate, like you,
so you understand that there are some things that are
not for sale. And Trump was like it's true. And
he's like we're sitting in one right now, the White House,
right can't be for sale. And he's like yeah, that's true.
That's true. And he's like, and I've talked to I've
talked to the owners of Canada when I was campaigning,

(06:39):
and you know, they made it very clear to me
that Canada is not for sale and it's not going
to be for sale ever.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
It's such a funny I noticed, that's such a funny
way to put it to I talked to the owners
in Canada. He's like, love, let me just put this
in another way you'll understand.

Speaker 4 (06:52):
Be a little little child.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Well that's you could tell that was deliberate, Like for
sure he thought of that. He's like, let me, let
me put it in those terms that he'll understand.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
He means the electorate presumably.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (07:04):
Think it was just like the owners.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
I'm talking to a real estate guy, so there's like
owners and tenants and that's all. Those are two types
of people. But yeah, you know, he I saw the
analysis like he stroked Trump's ego before he laid down
some idea that he wanted to put forward.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
He was well prepared.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
So the very few times he was allowed to speak,
he just said exactly what he wanted, which was to
push back on the fifty first state thing. And to
talk about Canada and the States coming to some kind
of agreement around the tariff situation.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
It's good. It shouldn't be that hard to handle Trump
because psychologically he's like nine years old, like he wants
Canada and America to be the same country just because
look look at how big.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
Exactly exactly, that's what you know.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
A lot of it comes back to different ways of
viewing Trump, like either as a child or as like
dangerous and at least least surrounded by people who know
what they're doing. Maybe if he just kind of has
a vague direction he goes in and then there's the
people around him who sort of know how to get

(08:10):
him there. And I saw that in the coverage. Again,
Oh look how Mark Karney like handles Trump. He's so
good at handling Trump. Stroke his ego first, and then
you know, deliver a blow.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Tell him he's a big boy. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
I mean, I think you kind of have to do that.
And I think he he towed the line well in
It was somewhere between Zelenski, which was a disaster, and
then and then here Starmer. I don't know if you
guys ever saw clips of when the British Prime minister visited,
but it was hilarious. He was like, he was like, Trump,
I have for you like an envelope. It's never been

(08:44):
done before. It's an invitation from the king. And he's
like this is unprecedented, and like he loves using all
his language and it was like really funny and he
was like oh wow, and like just yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Then Trump like congratulates Carney and like acts like he
gave him the election, which he kind of did, but
they did.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yeah, he said, he was like he was like I
think he said in the meeting. He was like he
was like, you know, some people might say I'm the
best thing that's ever happened to this guy.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, he doesn't care that the Conservatives lost. He just
cares that it was he was the cause of it.
That's all he wants. So yeah, I mean that's that's
the funny thing. That's the funny way to talk about Trump. Anyway.
So speaking of what he's dangerous.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Canada and big, big Canada, it's very big folks. Did
you know that this guy was born in the Northwest territories.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
I did know that.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Have you ever met someone from the any of the territories?

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yes, I have. I used to have a teacher who
is from the Yukon.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
I think, yeah, back when we were kids, there was
only two territories and now there are three. But how
do we how do we explain this to the international audience,
because they're the territories are like by land mass, like
half or a third of Canada, probably half, But they
have like the population of a suburb, like less than

(10:09):
less than two hundred thousand people. Because it's oh yeah,
because it's cool.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
I think I think each one has less than one
hundred thousand, and I think like only a couple tens
of thousands each. I don't know. They're just like territories.
They're very it's like mostly it's like a couple of small,
very very small cities of like ten to fifteen thousand people.
I think maybe like Yellowknife or white Horse, which are

(10:35):
the capitals of the Northwest Territories and Yukon respectively, have
like twenty or thirty thousand each, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Do we know why Mark Carney was up or his
parents were there where they are they.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
Well, he ended up being raised in Alberta, though.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Of course it's one degree right now in a white
Horse and here it's like nine, so it's it's not
that cold.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Well, it's the springtime.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
In the winter, it's probably like forty forty boys.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
White Horse has thirty five thousand people, so that's like
the biggest city.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Well, I think if you wanted to find a topic
more boring than Canadian politics, I think Canadian geography and
population distributions is so congratulations if that was your goal.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
I just.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
I just think that people would think that we would
like know or I don't know that we would know
more about this, but this is it might as well
be a different country.

Speaker 4 (11:28):
It's boring to us too.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
I mean, people who were raised in Ontario don't learn
French because we just don't have our pride until somebody
threatens to annex us and then we all get our
find our national pride once again and vote Liberal once again,
which is Canada's natural ruling party according to Wikipedia or
somewhere I read.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
That that truly is. We read his book, This is
a guy. This is a guy, Harvard educated, Oxford educated.
His book is very interesting title for fans of our
podcast because it's value bracket s bracket, so value and

(12:09):
values in one six hundred page book written by a banker.
But I thought, you know, values, values and value. I
think of Nietzsche for the first and Marx as a
as the value theorist par excellence. And Marx actually gets
a lengthy section in this in this book that I read,

(12:35):
it's kind of he finishes with the mark section and
then doesn't ever reference it again.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
I wouldn't call it lengthy.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
What is it? Uh?

Speaker 4 (12:44):
I would tell you, like, very obligatory.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
And dismissive is what it was. But you know, what
would you expect?

Speaker 2 (12:51):
It's about ten pages. He goes through Adam Smith, Daniel
Ricardo and then Marx and and basically just says, this
is what value you was in neoclassical thinking, and yeah,
doesn't doesn't ever mention it again. But uh, the book was.
It was much better than I expected. I have to

(13:11):
admit it's it's it's wrong in a kind of shocking
way that you that someone who's this well educated, who
is this important in the world, could be so naive,
Like how did how does someone this smart be this dumb?
And that's my view, So maybe I'm maybe I'm the

(13:33):
idiot here, but I would expect I would expect some
some better insights from the manager of a of a
national bank.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
If it were, this is exactly what I was expecting.
I mean, I like, with that pedigree, right, he was
at Oxford Harvard educated, he's he's center right or sorry,
center left. I you know, he was actually even more
like at least virtue signaling towards like left wing concerns
than I expected. So it's like, like, maybe that's what

(13:59):
you meant by it was like better than you expected.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
No, I just meant. I just meant the writing, like
the anecdotes were apt.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
That shouldn't be a surprise. With that education Oxford and Harvard,
I'm sure it would be well written. I mean, but
but I mean I think it's Yeah, but in terms
of its philosophical sophistication or like or just conceptual nuance,
it's yeah, it's pretty bad. It's just kind of hopeful,
hopeful nonsense that we can have capitalism with a more
friendly face, effectively putting it super simply, that's basically the

(14:26):
idea we can make capitalism nicer.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
I'm glad you. I'm glad you say that because I
wrote I wrote in my summary here, this is just
normal neoliberalism, but with a happy face drawn over.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
That's exactly what it is.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
And this is like he's I.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
Have to disagree with that assessment.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
He's naive in the way that like greenwashing campaigns would
work on this guy, Like he's a he's a kool
aid capitalist.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Oh, Eric disagrees with us.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Let's hear it.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Well, you know, just just because for me, neoliberalism is
like unready related capitalism, and to me, it seems like
Mark Carney's going back towards a more Chiusian kind of
semi regulatory model, right, like he believes like, well, we'll
get into the nuts and bolts of it, I guess

(15:15):
a little bit, but you know that there's value on
the one side, right, like market value what he manages
as a banker. And then there are values plural like
social subjective values, right, like the reason you enjoy wine
and what you like to do with wine versus like
what the actual economic value of wine is. That's like

(15:37):
more or less his distinction is drawn on that line, right,
And yeah, so you know, I it's maybe it's just
the definition of the term neoliberal, right he seems like yeah,
like Victor said too, right, Yeah, he's going to go
towards a more regulatory framework, so I don't know, I

(15:57):
wouldn't call it neoliberalism. You know, the article The Canadian
Dimension agrees with you, though, because it's titled you know,
I read Mark Carney's book, so you don't have to,
and then subtitled Carney's commitment to shoring up the neoliberal
status quo will only undermine Canada in the long term.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
So you know, no, Eric, you're right. I'm I'm I'm
impressed with your analysis, Eric, because I think that there
is what I think you're putting your thumb on is
that there is like a bit of a leftist tendency
or whatever to just like call anything that's defending capitalism
just neoliberalism. And I think that, like, you're right, that

(16:37):
there's actually a nuance there that like you know, you
can still you can be there's such a thing as
other forms of capitalism, and neoliberalism means something more specific.
So I applaud you for your nuance.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
I say, yeah, let's go for the precision here at
least right now. And I don't deny that like regulation
and deregulation kind of go hand in hand, and there's
like a bit of a blurry, there's a bit of
a blurriness there, but you can see the way he
writes is he's he's like celebrating the marginalist revolution and
economics and yeah, kind of reviving Keynesianism, but adding this

(17:13):
idea of like corporate responsibility and social.

Speaker 4 (17:16):
Values, which is all voting vague.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
It's what what's that word? It's like patristic or whatever
that word. I keep forgetting that frickin' word. But it's like,
you know, the benevolent overseers to make sure that our
markets are actually working towards the long term social good
by these benevolent overseers who are like semi government, semi
not because they're kind of central banks, so they have

(17:40):
their independence from the government as well. But you know,
they're not just aiming to maximize, you know, the markets,
whatever stock market value. They're trying to make it work
for society. So we got to have corporate responsibility and
the idea that we're all stakeholders, you know, like like
the song all the celebrities sent to us so kindly
during COVID, we're all in this together, right, and it

(18:03):
really that message really worked and brought us all together,
didn't it.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Well, this is not a huge disagreement, but I still
think it's neoliberal, Like, especially around chapter six, he's talked,
he praises Thatcher and Reagan and a lot of what
he thinks is gonna are he hopes happens is public
private partnerships. I would say so he wants. But again,
you're you're right that he says we need to rein

(18:29):
in the bad things, and then the bad things are
like he describes these in moral terms, which is kind
of weird for a banker, But he never says like
we're actually going to pass laws like closing tax loopholes
or anything. It's more, it's more, we're gonna if we
if we get our values correct.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
That's the thing that's the biggest flaw with this book.
It's nonsense.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, then Volkswagen and gold min Sacks, they're all gonna
fall in line because they're gonna see that this is
the better way. So if you were to to regulate
with a heavy hand, then I would that would be impressive.
But let's get back to we want to summarize the
title of this book, the layout, what's he hoping for?

(19:15):
It starts off with just philosophically, a massive mistake in
my view, which is to say that value there's something
called objective value and then subjective values. So values these
are just things that are randomly chosen apparently, and they

(19:36):
include here's his list, solidarity, fairness, responsibility, resilience, sustainability, dynamism,
and humility. So just the whole bunch of bullshit buzzwords basically.
But we need to bring these values back solidarity, fairness,
responsibility into value, and value is just you know, the

(19:58):
market doing mar get shit. Anything else you want guys
to add to that? Is that close enough to the split?

Speaker 3 (20:04):
I think that's that's that. I think that summarizes this
values distinction pretty well.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Because he kind of says yeah, and like we need
to bring back values and what did he say, like
and the and there are nine of them or something,
and he just then he lists all the values. It's like,
don't worry, we already know what the values are. They
just haven't been given enough attention yet. It's like, oh, okay,
so yeah, he's already he already knows the values.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
That's the part that I found. But it's true, like,
so he has these values and it is very much
one of these uh like vibes shifts books. It's like
we just got to shift the vibes or like the
values of people and then everything will be solved. Which
is so, which is like the most frustrating kind of
I mean I feel the same way about some of
like the more radical democratic theory that I read from

(20:51):
my dissertation that it's like, oh, like people will see
that they like actually want to be democratic and go
to meetings all the time. It's like a vibe shift.
And it's like, no, like that's not the way it works.
Like you're not just gonna get a vibe shift, and
just like you're not gonna get a vibe shift in
ordinary citizens where they're going to want to go and
like be anarchists all the time. You're not going to
get a vibe shift in corporations where they're gonna like

(21:12):
want to start you know, being nicer on their own.
You need some fucking you need some authority, You need
some coercive power to force people to do those things.
You can't you can't just like have vibes do it.
This is more just like we need to like rediscover
what matters to us and what markets are supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
For you can have capitalism and some sort of progressive
politics and they can go together because the firms will
realize that this is the best way because they will
read his book and then they'll all just fall in line.
This is exactly, this.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Is exactly what like I feel like I kept thinking
about Jijak's cultural capitalism, like from the back in the earth,
like late too, twenty tens or like yeah, or late
aughts where he was talking about uh oh, like capitalism
with a human face, you know, oh, you know, when
you buy this and it'll be real. And that's why,
like I think Carney talks about those kinds of corporate

(22:05):
corporations that have like a separate mission to them, right,
and like, yeah, that could be like yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
I think there's an instinct. I think your instinct here
is right too, because when actually around when this book
came out, the Jacobin did a review of it and
the title of it is Capitalists Can't Become Nicer, which
is like what you're saying, you know, putting just like
capitalism with a smile kind of thing, and then that
the sort of headline is Mark Carney ex government of

(22:33):
the Central Banks in Canada and Britain has written a
much hyped book about the problems with modern capitalism. But
this consummate insider can't trace the roots of those problems
back to their fundamental sources, which which of course is
pointing out something similar like oh yeah, we can just
sort of, you know, paper over these issues. There's no

(22:55):
fundamental nothing fundamentally wrong with capitalism. It just needs an
injection of those values we were talking about.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
I have a couple of short quotes from the intro
that just like encapsulate this whole thing. Quote, to build
a better tomorrow, we need companies imbued with purpose and
motivated by profit unquote. So they already are obviously motivated
by profit, but imbued with purpose. Is this kind of like,
so is this a policy here, Mark, Are you gonna

(23:25):
are you gonna force them to have purpose?

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Well, that's what I'm wondering.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Probably not, you know, I guess not.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
But so he insens behavior, Yeah, who knows.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
He says so much of this should and should, and
he speaks fondly of like, well he's not just like
he thinks he's he thinks he's doing the progressive thing here,
Like he praises the Canadian child benefit program or whatever,
which is just like if you have kids, the government
will give you money. He praises carbon tac I think

(24:01):
the car and he reversed that since writing this book.
But also these these incentive programs that may that give
companies a reason to do the right thing. That seems
to be like what his favorite his favorite arrangement between
politics and and companies is. But here's the real tell.

(24:22):
So he says that he worked at the Bank of
England and this is the second quote to heal quote
heal the malignant culture at the heart of finance capitalism unquote.
So I don't I don't know what normal people think
when they hear that, like we should, we should maybe
like call up our dads or something. What do you

(24:42):
what does this what does this phrase mean to you,
to heal the heart of financial capitalism because to us
and to me, like, there's no malignant culture at the
heart of finance capitalism. Finance capitalism is the malignance and
the only way that it's not malignant is when it's
heavily regulated.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
But he wants to well, that's the thing. You need
coercive force to channel those energies because right now the
incentive structure is just incentivizes those and like just having
like you're not going to solve that with vibes. You
need to bring in some policy to do something concrete
and I and you know, maybe there's parts of the
book that we didn't read or that I didn't read
where he gets a bit more concrete about But as

(25:22):
far as I could tell, his proposal really is focused
on changing these values and not on like what do
you want to bring in, Like do you want to
bring in laws that prevent billionaires from creating like taking
advantage of tax loopholes? Like do you want to bring
in like some kind of wealth taxes, Like that's what
you need if you want to like you need some

(25:43):
some actual uh, you know you need to stick here.
You know, you need some some coercive force. I don't understand,
like why anyone would think that that just just trying
to convince them that to be nice would do that.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
And maybe yeah, like his last chapters and I mean,
in part three look like he starts to get into
more of this territory. Like one's called values based leadership,
how purposeful companies create value? Next one investing for value
s and the asses and brackets his title thing again

(26:22):
and then the last one is how Canada can build
value for all. And you know some of the ways
he talks about this is like to rebalance value and values,
we must develop and embed comprehensive and transparent approaches to
measuring stakeholder value creation by companies. Right, So he wants

(26:45):
companies to see themselves as value as stakeholders, and yeah,
investors in companies to see themselves as stakeholders as well.
So that's that stakeholder capitalism thing, which, yeah, mostly a
rhetorical product project, like convince the companies first of all,

(27:05):
try to convince the companies that they have social responsibility.
If they will not listen to you, which many of
them won't, then you can start trying to financially incentivize
them to make better choices, which seems like what we
already do, right, like public private partnerships, right, private investments
backed by public dollars, because then the government can attach

(27:28):
strings to it and say, well, it needs to be
invested in this way and have these sorts of checks.
Like I can't see Carne doing anything fundamentally different. I
could see him doing the same things differently since he
has this experience, maybe he'll come up with innovative ways
to incentivize companies to do this or that, whatever issue

(27:49):
he decides to tackle first, probably not climate change, but
he's talked about that a lot before. He's probably going
to start looking at Canada's mineral wealth in the northern areas,
which are disputed. That seems like he's he's seems like
he's a natural resource focused guy as well on top

(28:12):
of all of this. Is so channeling those investments in
some kind of innovative way. That's the best I can get. Yeah,
I can see how it's just neoliberalism wrapped up in
some nice rhetoric and maybe with some more interventional style ideas.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
We're going to see, right, we're going to see exactly
in the next two years, which is probably how long
this government will last. But we're going to see in
the next two years how this actually cashes out and
what he does with it. So I'm looking forward to that.
But again, his understanding of causality, I mean, he doesn't

(28:49):
understand causality frankly, because he says, like, Okay, it's proven,
we can prove the companies have to have to acknowledge this.
We can prove that well, equality or more equal wealth
equality is better for society, and then just moves on
from that, but he's like, the companies should realize this,

(29:10):
and they should thus take an interest in uh within
within their structures, have have good, solid paying jobs for
the workers, not give too many bonuses to the the CEOs,
and the companies should just realize this because the evidence
is there. But then the causality thing comes in, like,

(29:33):
if it's so good, Mark, why are they not doing
that already? Why is there this wealth inequality? And again
he says to other things like well, companies should be
invested in the lifelong education of their employees, make sure
that they have transferable skills. Should, should, should, he keep

(29:53):
saying over and over again.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
But then you ask them anything better?

Speaker 2 (29:59):
So the revolution Now they've been asked. Now they're going
to realize this is good for Canada or something, and
now they're going to change. But he never explains why
they haven't done these things already, and I think the
reasons for that are are obvious. And then again, as
we've been saying, he also doesn't explain the stick that
he's going to use to change exactly. The carrot is, Hey, companies,

(30:23):
this is going to be good for all you guys,
if you help, if you pay your employees more, and
then never addresses they why they haven't been doing.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
That exactly exactly, I think. In the Canadian Dimensions review
of the book, the author James Hardwick says near the end,
he's quoting from the book, and it's like, to build
a better tomorrow, we need companies imbued with purpose and
motivated by profit. Their activities will produce a shared value

(30:50):
that accrues to the shareholders as well as to employees, customers, suppliers,
and the wider community unquote. And then the author of
the review goes on right after to say this is
both inadequate and impossible, which I found kind of funny
because then he goes on to list a bunch of
stuff that should be done, and some of them, I guess,

(31:10):
seems like similarly high falutint for example, and the ownership
of our media by hedge funds and billionaires, nationalized corporate wrongdoers,
insist on the public ownership of key industries and resources.
I mean, I mean, those things seem like. I think
the issue with the Carne quote, though, is that he's
not specific about like what the outcome is, so like, Okay,

(31:33):
you want companies to be imbued with purpose, and like
you could. I mean, I guess in my mind, it's
not necessarily impossible if you make a policy that says
that if companies don't, you know, spend a certain amount
of their money towards X thing, or like, you could
make a law to do that, just like you can
make a law to nationalize corporate wrongdoers, right, Like, I mean,

(31:55):
you know, it's just the question is what are you
going to do to actually achieve that? Right? And I
guess maybe you know, I mean, I think that's a
problem with both what the author suggests and what Carne
is suggesting. Is like okay, like I mean you could,
you could, but you have to be specific about how
you're going to do it.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Wait, did you just say that Carney is pushing for
state ownership of industries.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
No, No, that's what the reviewer of the book says.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Oh, I was like, if I miss that, I missed.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
I'm just I'm just highlighting it because the reviewer like
quotes Carney and then says that is both inadequate and impossible, right,
and then right after that he literally says Canada needs
a prime minister capable of doing, and then he goes
through a bunch of lists, and I guess in my
mind I was kind of like, well, those things seem
similarly implausible to me. Also, like I don't know why

(32:44):
you're just saying that's impossible. Like, I agree, it's all
pretty hard. Uh, they're all you need. You need difficult
policies with trade ops that are going to piss people
off to achieve any of those things.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, And and it seems to rely on this really
tiresome assumption, you know, like arising tied you know, floats
all ships or trickle down economics. Right, you know, wealth
wealth produced for the country is wealth for all kind
of shit, right, which we know isn't a thing you

(33:17):
know that's that doesn't happen.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
We know.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
The problem is, you know, the markets are doing fine,
the markets are growing, and yet the average share of
wealth is going to fewer and fewer people. So as
the market does well, people do worse. How do you
fix that fucking problem? Right, you don't do that. The
whole neoliberal solution was to that kind of issue right

(33:41):
as it develops in the eighties, But the strategy was
completely deregulate. So we're gonna go back to a you know,
a Kinesian economics that thrived probably mostly in like mid
century Golden Age conditions, in today's conditions where where the
market value and people's well being are just completely at

(34:04):
opposite ends of the spectrum. And he thinks he's just
going to go back to this old system that worked
under completely different conditions, except not like pure government intervention
and demand side economics like in Keensian economy. But he's
also has this sort of social values argument, which is

(34:24):
basically like, you know what I'm gonna do Keynesian, but
I'm also going to ask them nicely to do better.
Has anyone thought of doing that yet? If we just
asked that, hey, guys, do better, Oh my god, I
wish we thought of that sooner. But no, Like, how
many companies are going to be incentivized to care about
long term social values when the investors and owners don't

(34:47):
even know if that company is going to be around
for another one to five ten years, right, how many
companies survive that long? They get bought out, they get
the ownership changes, mergers happen, splits happen. Yet he thinks
it's like, there's just this stable basis that's going to
be there, and all he has to do is just
is just like convince the companies that this is in

(35:10):
their best interest, which is not. Why would it be,
So he's going to incentivize it. Okay, well that's going
to good luck with those.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Good luck with that.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
I don't think he's the first one to think of that.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
I didn't disagree that it would be good if companies
did these things, right, Like, I mean, that would be
better than what we have now. It's just but the
solution to just like show them that they should just
be nicer is just kind of laughable. We need something,
like you need to be concrete and specific about like

(35:41):
how you're going to redistribute power, right, Like, don't just
tell them to be nicer, Like, how are you actually
going to make them be nicer?

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Right?

Speaker 3 (35:48):
You can't just expect them to be You have to
make them do it?

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Is I think the problem, Yeah, because I think modern
mainstream economics, which is what he is mostly just rehashing
in the first half of this book, is basically designed
to I mean, one of its effects is to completely
absolve the capitalist of any social responsibility whatsoever. That's the
whole point he quotes the invisible hand thing a couple times.

(36:16):
But look what Adam Smith says. You know, he is
in this, as in many other cases, led by an
invisible hand to promote an end which was no part
of his intention. If we all operate with you know,
self interest in the marketplace, the invisible hand will guide
the outcomes of our behavior towards with socially goods, because

(36:39):
Adam Smith says, you know, people who actually like make
changes and intend to do things that are in the
social good actually usually fuck things up. It's when you
operate with self interest in the marketplace that's when the
invisible hand works its best. But Carney kind of interprets
this in a modern economic way to say, like the

(37:00):
optimal functioning under competitive conditions of the market, which is
kind of the same thing. Okay, optimal competitive conditions with
no monopolies or oligopolies versus everyone acting in self interest. Okay,
they're kind of the same. But the problem is we
do have those olagopolies and monopolies and enormous concentrations of ownership.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
So what the fuck is he.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
Talking about with this invisible hands stuff. It doesn't I
don't want to do the mark the Marx hater thing
to Adam Smith and say it doesn't apply anymore, but
you know conditions have changed.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah, it's uh. I mean, let's we've we've we've completed
this critique, I think, which is, what are you actually
going to do about it? Maybe maybe he wrote this
book so that he could get elected, so that he could,
you know, bring a heavy hand to market regulation. I
doubt it, but it could be true.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
That's a good point, though, Pills. That's a good point
because I actually think like that might explain some of it.
That's because imagine he had been really concrete and he's like,
I'm going to bring in a wealth tax, I'm going
to bring in no So I'm not saying that he's
going to do those things. But I do think that
there's a chance that he knew that he couldn't write
a book that was too concrete because it could damage
his chances, right if he says that, if he's actually

(38:16):
says admits that he's going to have a super heavy hand.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
I noticed that this book was like, yeah, this it
already looks like he's thinking of running for office.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
In this it does it does exactly, And he was
he's been so when when Justin Trudeau was first running
for like the liberal leadership back in I guess it
was twenty twenty fourteen or something twenty fifteen, there was
talk about Carnie like he didn't actually enter the race,
but it had been like taught, like he'd been raised
as a possibility for a long time.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
That's interesting because that would make sense of how this
book is so stupid. On that front, it seems like smart, smart, smart,
except you missed the elephant that you're sitting on with
your laptop typing out this book because it makes no
sense otherwise.

Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
But if we can turn maybe exactly to I want
to do a philosophical analysis, and that's of this distinction
between value and values. Now value I think he understands
quite well. He goes through labor theory of value, he
goes through marks. He explains that money is like a

(39:22):
measure of value, but not value itself, so he doesn't
make any of those like basic errors. But with values,
I don't know where he's just getting this from except
his own his own brain, because values are random, arbitrary, subjective.
Beauty is in the eye of beholder. That's how he
explains what subjective is as opposed to objective, Whereas we've
been talking for like months here about the objectivity of

(39:47):
those the things that he's calling values, which are like fairness,
personal responsibility, how you act out the ideology of personal
responsibility in public. So I just wanted to draw attention
to that and get your your takes on it, because, yeah,
from my perspective, at least the plastic pills theory of value,

(40:10):
I place a similar amount of importance onto value as
he does. But I think that values are also value,
Like belief in society is a sort of valuing, and
that's the thing that keeps societies together. You your belief
in the society as a social project dries up, then

(40:31):
you see society turn in on itself or factions or collapse.
But if you if you read this guy, you'd think
that fairness was like just something arbitrarily decided. Beauty is
in the eye of the beholder. So people said, hey,
fairness looks good, let's let's do that because it looks good.
Instead of we chose fairness as a as a social

(40:55):
value because that makes societies stable, and the ones that
weren't stable didn't last that long, you know. And he
doesn't make any connection between values disappearing and capitalism. That's
another huge frustration of this book because if you read
someone not even a pro capitalist, but like uh, Max Weber,

(41:16):
this this the drawing up of different forms of social cohesion, religion,
church unions, all of that stuff is dried up because
of the market, not not not just one is chosen
and concrete and objective and one is uh subjective and

(41:37):
just arbitrary. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
So anyway, sorry, that's my take on this split between
objective value and subjective values. What did you guys think
of that theme? Okay?

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Values with an S these are the principles or standards
of behavior, judgments of what is important in life. That's
values with an S. You without an S is the
regard that someone is that something is held to deserve,
the importance, worth, or usefulness of something. So values decides

(42:14):
whether or not something is important, and value is like
the regard that something is held to deserve. I'm not
I'm not sure what that even means. Really, it deserves
some level of regard or some level of importance. It
seems like He's trying to say magnitude of value here,
but he doesn't want to it just like values and

(42:34):
then quantitatively regarded values are a magnitude and that's the value.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Of a thing. Yeah, that's what I thought value is
is like is like a measure, Right, it's kind of
like a like a.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
It is, it's it's something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
The second chapter subjective value, right, that's what he's talking
about there. Subjective value is marginalist value. Right, like that
question he keeps asking, why is water so abundant but
it's so well, No, that gives it away. Why is
water so useful but so cheap? And diamonds are so
useless but so expensive?

Speaker 2 (43:11):
Why is that?

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Only marginalism can tell us why. It's because we always
think on the margins. It's that you buy a bottle
of water because you're only willing to pay for it
a certain amount. You subjectively determine the value of a thing.
When you look at a diamond, you think, oh, it's like,
I don't know, it's scarcity is part of the answer
to It's kind of weird, but yeah, this is that

(43:33):
subjective values is what I was saying. It's demand side economics.
Kinsy and economics. It's to say what you will pay
for that thing is what its value is, and what
you actually pay for that thing is what you actually
pay for that thing, and the gap between what you
actually pay and what you're willing to pay, Like if

(43:54):
you're willing to pay it gives the example of shoes.
If you're willing to pay one hundred dollars for these
shoes with the price is in fact sixty dollars, it's
like you've saved forty dollars. Oh my god, that's the
consumer surplus. It's like, oh great, yeah, I go into
a grocery store. This piece of meat is ten million dollars,
but today it's on sale for one dollar. We're saving
you nine hundred and nine to nine, Like, oh my god,

(44:15):
get give me a fucking break with that. That that's
mainstream eponomics. I can't understand it.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Where does that come from? Like what economists devised this
as the measure of value?

Speaker 1 (44:26):
William Stanley Jevins is one of the classic names in that,
like they're the they're postmark, like they're after marks.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
I mean they're not.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Post Marxists, they're after marks, and Marx didn't address them.
But they came around in like the eighteen seventies or eighties,
and that's when the marginalist revolution happened, which thinks of
things like this.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
I found this so strange because he goes through Adam Smith,
Ricardo and Marx, explains that they're they're all Smith and
Ricardo labor theory of value. Marx who also has a
labor theory of value but not.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Vaguely lumped in there with the classics.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
But not the labor theory of value. But he's they
say that, you know, in some way value arises from
the labor that is in the commodity and.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
The objective, because there's a there's a correct price for something,
there's a fair price, and it's the cost of the
inputs that's called that's called supply side, and that's not
what's important anymore according to him.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
But what's weird is that he goes through this, presents
it like more or less accurately, not not the Marx bit,
but Ricardo and Smith more or less accurately, and then
just moves on to this other thing that is about
paying for stuff. He never like defeats the argument. He
never says that the labor theory of value is wrong.
He just presents the labor theory of value and then

(45:46):
presents this other theory of value, which is about you know,
paying for things that or you you make money when
things are cheaper than you expect.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
You have identified exactly what every economics textbook and course
us they just it's like psychology too. They'll they'll give
you a chapter on Freud and then they'll just stop
talking about it and move on to the real stuff.
Basically is the is the implication there. It's like this
these cute, quaint guys like got Us started on the

(46:16):
path of like talking about value and all that stuff,
and it was so cute and like these guys were
so brilliant and oh my god, I just love these guys.
But but they were all wrong obviously, completely fucking wrong
and backwards.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah. They treat like Marx, Ricardo and Smith like they
are doing Aristotelian physics and then we discovered Newtonian physics
like you can, we can, we can say everything that
they said, but we know that it's wrong just because
it's old.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
Yeah, Like Marx is like tall of me here and
doing some kind of geocentric economics.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
Yeah, yeah, I know. For I mean, I agree with
everything you guys were saying. I think it's it might
be worth also clarifying, uh, like where like kind of
the core thesis and like why the book is called
values and where his kind of argument for this change
in vibes come from comes from. And I guess I
did see it as being like it seems like his
main argument is, you know, we have this quantitative account

(47:14):
of value of things and like what they're worth, and
then that's been conflated with like values like moral value,
meaning that like our society, like the way in which
it's been corrupted is that people are like, oh if
the market it says it's good, like it is good
in like the moral sense and like the value sense,
and he's like, we need to it seems like, you know,

(47:37):
separate those things apart. And I guess, like the one
way in which I found that, like I found that
kind of I don't want to quite say like convincing
or like, I mean, in a way it's obvious. It's
just like an obvious point, like yes, that happens, but
it like reminds me of something that I notice a
lot in some of the trash debates that I consume
online about like Trump trump stuff is like the way

(48:00):
that people conflate legal rightness with moral rightness, and I
feel like maybe in this book he's pointing to something
similar where people will say, well, the market dictated it,
and like if that's what the market wants, and then
kind of sidestepping that question of like, well, what actually
like matters. I guess I don't know if that analogy
exactly works, but I just thought it was like worth

(48:21):
meant like kind of flagging that that was kind of
what I saw as the sort of central kind of
philosophical insight that he's trying to advance in the book.
And with the as it relates to the title, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
I was thinking along the same lines, thinking that it's
almost like value and values is almost like what like
justice in law, like that kind of distinction like what
is just versus what is legal? And you exflate the
two often, and we want to conflate the two because
it's easier, right, Like, well, if the law was also
just automatically just in all situations, then oh my god,

(48:55):
what a burden that would fucking take off. And the
same thing with the market, right, if everything was valued correctly,
what does that mean, that's a distributional thing, right, Values,
like the market is what distributes and allocates resources. Right,
So if if we didn't have to worry about that,
if it's value was always its value, like as if

(49:18):
laws were always just, then we wouldn't have anything to
worry about. So he's like kind of saying, like, no,
that's not the case. So let's make this distinction between
like values and value, and they're kind of different in
the same way that justice and law is different, Like
law is created by humans, but but value is created

(49:40):
by the gods of the marketplace that we're not supposed
to tamper with, right, because if you intervene, like too deeply,
you'll fuck up the market's ability to do what it does,
which is allocate resources and come to the perfect price.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
And you will have people say things that are analogous
to the legal analogy. Because I remember a long time
ago I had a conversation with some girl at a party,
and she was a lawyer, and she was like a
corporate lawyer, and I kind of just like asked her
what I thought was like just kind of an innocent question,
which was like, oh, like do you ever feel like
because I feel like the kind of work she was doing.

(50:16):
She was defending corporations that like have a lot of power,
and I was kind of like, oh, do you ever
like feel a little bit like weird about helping these
And she's like, well, I never do anything illegal. I'm like, yeah,
I know, obviously you don't do anything illegal. And I'm
like that's not what I'm asking you. I'm like, I'm
just curious, like, do you ever feel like, you know,
a little bit like of moral And she's like, no,
I would obviously never do anything illegal. And she got

(50:37):
really defensive and mad at me, and she's just like
didn't understand that there was a difference between And I
feel like in some sometimes CEOs sort of do the
same thing where they'll be like, well, you know, I'm
just doing what the market. I'm just I'm just selling
people what they want, like this is what the market dictates,
like you know. And it's like, but do you ever
feel like you're maybe influencing And they'll be like, you know, no,
but like this is what people want, this is the market,

(50:58):
you know. And it's like, well, though, well.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
Do you guys like if that's if that's the thesis
that law is to justice. What what is it? The
market is to value, value is to values. Yeah, that's stupid,
Like that's not even correct. Like if if, if, just
if laws were just, you wouldn't need judges or lawyers.

(51:22):
You wouldn't you wouldn't need law, You wouldn't need any
legal system at all, because those are the those are
the those decisions made by judges in particular, are the
things that make the law the law, which is the
entire legal system, which is decisions, net decision my ney decisions.
You don't need justice at all to even be a concept.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Yeah, No, I think I think what we're saying is is, yeah,
those two often get conflated, and I say, it'd be
nice if they were the same thing. But we don't
think Mark Carney isn't making that conflation. He's making a
point of distinguishing between those two things, right, right, saying
you know, we haven't balanced, we haven't balanced these two things. Right,

(52:04):
value is heavier, so better values is like down here
and whatever the better one is. Yeah, they're out of balance.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Yeah, if I can, if I can finish my point.
It's just this is an illusion, right, It's an illusion
to say that. Uh, well, he's he's quite certain that
value is like concrete value doesn't have to do with
people's personal decisions except in the in fact, like they
were willing to buy buy things. But value itself has

(52:34):
this concrete, almost sacredness that's determined by the market, and
there's nothing, like nothing can touch it. So the thing
that we have to do is also give values. Some
do because they've been drowned out by the market and
they don't have necessarily any place in the market. But
these are not real things, Like he can't make a
compelling argument for subjective values because he's already said that

(52:59):
they don't matter, Like we have to brute force values
back into the market because it's not going to operate
based on them. And those values again are solidarity, fairness, responsibility, resilience, sustainability,
blah blah blah. These things are obviously not within the
purview of self interest. But he also doesn't think that
they're real, Like they don't they don't have value. I

(53:23):
was gonna say value, which would screw up the whole thing.
They don't have any weight value for him. Still he
wants to put on this balancing act, as Eric said,
but value is the only thing that's real. And if
we go back to, you know, our theory of habit
and our theory of what religion should actually look like,
those things are objectively real, even for materialists, in a

(53:45):
way that he hasn't acknowledged here. But I don't understand
what he's trying to do. If this value values thing
is like telling people you have to believe in this
illusion that I just created for you, while admitting that
it's an illusion, like there's no there's no moral demand
or moral urgency because he said, I just made these

(54:05):
things up, or they used to be real and they're
no longer real. But we have to all believe in
the illusion. Guys, let's all go into the cave again together.
I don't know how that could be convincing. I don't
know how he sits in his office writing this and goes, yeah,
I have to I have to tell them that this
is fake, or I have to tell them this is subjective,
just decided in the eye of the beholder. But then

(54:27):
we also all have to agree to do this together
as Canadians.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
Well, he's trying to be Prime minister, bro, that's why.
That's why he's keeping it.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
His card's close to his chest, but you can't say, hey,
I'm loe, Hey, this is untrue, but you should believe
it anyway.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Yeah, you pointed out earlier, and I think it's very
telling that Mark Carney praised the carbon tax in this
book but like immediately slashed it, like that's gone, because
it presumably it's because of this confusion, right, because on
the one end, like I'm seeing him here talking about

(55:04):
the difference between subjective and intrinsic value. Now, so you
can always just value as such a polysemic term. You
can just take any two meanings of it and say
these are opposed. Now to make this point, but whatever.
So like carbon tax is like valuing something that has
no market value, right, Like that's one of these sort
of liberal environmentalist strategies. It's like, okay, well, what we

(55:28):
need to do is just bring these things like forests
and trees and oxygen capacities and carbon budgets whatever. We
need to just bring these into the market, give them value,
and then people will sort of trade them up and
the market will like sort that out too, because that's
what the market is best at doing, right, distributing resources
in a condition of scarcity or limitedness, Right, that's like

(55:52):
what the market is supposed to do according to mainstream economy.
So that's the idea, right, But now that he's sort
of so he seemed to be endorsing that by praising
carbon tax, right, oh, by putting a price on carbon
right now we're putting Now the invisible hand gets to
play around with carbon too. But now he's rejected that.
He's flipped around, he's seemed because I think the obvious

(56:15):
answer to why is because it's very, very unpopular and
very associated with the Trudeau previous government. So he gets
rid of it. But then what does that say about.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
Well, we're worried about Alberta separation now too. If we
take away their oil they're going to cry and leave
Canada also. But that's a whole other story.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
I guess.

Speaker 4 (56:32):
But what does that say about his values?

Speaker 1 (56:34):
He can just change his perspective on something if this
doesn't lay out like a view where oh, in this condition,
carbon tax is bad, like when I'm trying to be
prime minister, but under these other conditions, when I'm just
an objective outside observer, they're good.

Speaker 4 (56:51):
Then oh, what other things is he going.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
To be able to look at from whichever's point of
view serves him in the moment. I mean classic politician stuff,
I guess, haha.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
But you know, can we explain real quick the carbon tax.
It's a very hot button issue in Canada because conservatives
it's their boogeyman. Their conservatives are obsessed with this thing.
And it's basically just companies have to pay for carbon emissions,
which is like taxing pollution. Basically.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
The States is familiar with it, isn't it called cap
and trade everywhere and stuff too.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
But well there's different forms there, just cap and trade,
and then there's also just like taxing it like regardless.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
But it's especially what I said is giving value on
the market to things that don't have value. So trading
your carbon budget, it's like offsetting your fucking carbon budget
when you go on a plane and you pay that
extra amount to offset your carbon and then you get
to go around saying I produce zero carbon when I
travel because apparently money cancels out carbon dioxide. The scientists

(57:57):
found that out. Apparent Bill Gates is telling us all.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
But that's that's kind of signaling to the conservatives. Hey,
the era, the woke Trudeau era is over.

Speaker 4 (58:07):
I often go over and.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
Look at you know, marginalism and try to like figure
out I'm not good at it, but trying to figure
out what mainstream economics is kind of all about since Marx,
and just to at least just to read it so
I know it, so I and it is and then
I know, okay, this is very convincing stuff, Like you
look at it like of course something is worth whatever,

(58:29):
someone will pay for it. And like Marx actually addresses
questions like that, and also the utility thing, right, like
he's explains, you know, the marginalists go back not to
a kind of John Stuart Mill welfare version of the economy,
but like a Bentham utility version, right, So marginal utility,

(58:51):
that's the utility part.

Speaker 4 (58:52):
Things are useful.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
And I'm like, oh yeah, there's this concept in Marx.

Speaker 4 (58:56):
What's it called?

Speaker 1 (58:56):
Oh yeah, fucking use value. That's like very essentral to everything. Yeah,
isn't Marx going on all the time about people conflating
use value in exchange value, use value in exchange value,
always getting fucking conflated. And then when he passes over
you know, objective value to get to subjective values where
he wants to be, he says, ah, utility, such a

(59:16):
revolutionary idea. Nobody's thought of this before. And he doesn't
say that, but I'm being sarcastic. But anyway, Yeah, looking
at this stuff alongside Marx is both interesting and very
frustrating because they're different. But yeah, he brings it all
up just to dismiss it. Marx is classical economists.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
We moved on.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
That's the thing. Though he doesn't. He doesn't dismiss Marx
while he's explaining Marx, right, he just he just never
talks about it again, like I control I just control ft.
And it's like the section on Marx and he never
brings it up again except for the Communist Manifesto.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
So I say it was perfunctory. It was an obligatory
you know, nods to the classics and then you move on.
That's like it's a it's just you know, omission by
by by just mentioning it and then moving on.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Now he does bring it up. This is this is
like the funniest uh. It's in the end he's talking
about how companies need to take interest in their employees' lives,
you know, in a way to give them transferable skills,
in a way to make them happy. With their jobs,
because a happy workforce is a happy country. Blah blah
blah ah this shit. And he says if education is

(01:00:31):
unable to keep pace with the changing demand for skills,
those who already have them will earn even higher premiums,
and job polarization will increase the supply of labor competing
for lower skilled jobs. Now, this is obviously what we see.
And then he says, finally, greater global interconnectedness will reinforce
these dynamics. Of course we see that too, And then

(01:00:51):
he says, this is my favorite line of the book.
If this he's he's a he's a secret maoist. By
the way, if this world of surplus labor comes to pass,
Marx and Angeles could again become relevant. Is he predicting revolution?
There on the.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Basis of like a misunderstanding of something, I think.

Speaker 4 (01:01:12):
Well, he's predicting revolution.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
But then he says there are policy choices we can
make and actions we can take to help shape this future.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
So then doesn't tell us what those are.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
No, but you know, he could be he's a their TBD.
He could be a secret revolutionary based on that line.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
Oh, we'll find out. It's always the answer there, I guess,
but yeah, it will be interesting to see if he
does anything different, which I have very little hope for
because he's a banker.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
Yeah, at least it's not pure polyeff Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Always always a bright side.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
It's kind of like you can just drop in out
of nowhere and just get elected. You parachute in. You're
not even in politics at your life. Yeah, the party
I did. I don't have any idea how the leadership
race went for this guy, but uh, oh it was.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
It was overwhelming for him, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Is he a compelling I haven't heard him speak, Is
he compelling a speaker? Or do people just go, oh, holy,
you're a banker, You're a genius.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
Everyone's Yeah, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
Just that in comparison to Trump, he's just so normal
in milk toast and like and like competent that people
like competent seeming that people are just like, okay, like yes,
this guy just feels like a politician from like the
nineties and early two thousands, just like a normal, a
normal elitist politician. And I guess there's maybe a hunger
for that.

Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
And look like I think it's we're impressed with how
he dealt with Trump.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
Him being a banker, like I like like like Eric,
I was kind of like, ugh, like it's just going
to be. But you know, in the very context we're
in right now with Trump and watching them together, I
kind of realized, I was like, God, it's good that
he's a banker because Trump. It's like a class of
person that Trump is going to like look up to
and see as like as like as like legit.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
You know, you know that's interesting because I looked up
some of that and I thought, okay, banker. He's the
first prime minister ever in Canada to have a banking background.
Nobody else has had that. And I even looked at Europe,
how many prime ministers or presidents have had banking backgrounds?

Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
Very few. You never see them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
The only times you see them are during crisis times
like the Greek like the Greek financial crisis right then
they had I think it was an EU banker and
Vera Faucus was involved somehow in that. He has some stories.
But yeah, you'd never see bankers in power until like
these crisis points happen and everybody starts to then think,

(01:03:46):
like Victor, like glad we have a banker in there.
For various reasons not just impressed Trump, but that's one thing,
but also, you know, he's going to know that all
the levers that he can pull to navigate us out
of this problem, right, and like all those things we
were talking about, well, he's going to do at least
if he's doing neoliberalism or some kind of modified Keenesianism,

(01:04:07):
he's going to do the best fucking version of it possible.
And if it still fails, then maybe we should finally
give this shit up and go back and look at
Marks again. No, I'm just kidding, but it'll be an
experiment for him to see how a banker runs a country,
and we haven't seen many of those.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
To be fair, I'm not happy that he's a banker
for any reason other than the fact that I think
Trump will just like be more cooperative with him. All
the other stuff I'm not happy about.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Well, the downside is if he fails utterly, which I
think should be our expectation. But if he fails utterly
to a reverse course, the next prime minister is going
to be a Nazi.

Speaker 4 (01:04:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
Maybe it'll be hard to blame though, because you know,
crisis prime ministers can always you know, the easiest thing
to blame on someone else. It's like I took over
during a crisis.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
Australia just had an election in the Labor Party one
overwhelmingly because they're Conservative party. Leader was basically like a
populist fascist, and even the previous prime minister, I think
it was the previous for the one before who was
a part of the Liberal Party, which there is their
Conservative party. He like, he was interviewed recently and it
was an amazing clip and he was like, what do

(01:05:16):
you think about it? I think the guy's name is
Tim Dutton or something, the kind of populist far right flavor,
you know. And the former leader of the same party,
the Liberal Party, was asked like, what do you think
about this Dutton guy becoming prime minister and he said,
I think it would be a catastrophe for a multicultural
country like Australia to elect a guy like that guy

(01:05:37):
from his own party.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
And then he got trounced our Liberal Party.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
I mean, our Labor Party got absolutely eviscerated. So if
he fails, maybe they.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
But their Labor Party is a different place on the spectrum.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Yeah, their Labor Party is are Liberal Party.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
I see.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Yeah, they're pretty equivalent. But no, it's like a bit
of a Trump wave, right, a Trump a Trump reaction.
There's still a swing to the right happening. But then
there's these little Canada, Australia, a little little reactions.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
Just once you see what it's like to have a
clown like Trump, you're kind of like, shit, I don't
want that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
Yeah, but if he fails, right, if he fails with
his like finger wagging at the corporations, and if they
don't do it, inequality increases. Like you, you have to
do something different, you have to. So I'm not sure
it's going to be a Nazi, but it has to
be something different.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Well, we're gonna get hopefully we'll get a new leader
of the NDP Our Liberal our Labor Party, and maybe
that'll that'll be like an interesting you know. I look
forward to seeing that. It was time for that Jag
Meet Sing guy to go. I was sick of them. Somehow,
I'm happy that they're they're going to get some new
blood in there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
It's uh, yeah, it could be, could be.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
I think this is the new political spectrum. Forget the
left and right, It's going to be the clown the
Nazi clowns. Versus the bankers. From here on, that's it.
There's no more, no more of those fucking lawyer politicians,
no more of those career politicians. Clowns and bankers.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
Clowns and bankers. That's that's good.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Clowns and bankers, our new political spectrum. Stuck in the
middle with you. I just I don't understand how smart
people are also just so stupid. Maybe I'm like said,
maybe I'm the stupid one, but like.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
I think I like your theory though, Pills. I think
I think it might have been a self conscious choice
to write something kind of milk toast because he wants
to be prime minister one day.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Well he he, He wants to avoid the revolution, and
he thinks we can avoid the revolution with policy, which
is true, you know, but it has to be some
some pretty heavy handed policy. We'll see, we'll see what happens.
It's exciting times.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
That's right, that's right, don't violate market integrity, but do.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
Anything else quick aside. I'm enjoying on Twitter, like all
the like far right reactionaries are like kind of being
are a bit disappointed about the pope, like like I
saw mill in like Michael Miller and for example, says
he doesn't seem like much of a conservative or reactionary,
which I suppose is a disappointment for many of you.

(01:08:08):
But we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Oh good, maybe that'll distract him from the clear gazzo references.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
In and or in this, and Alex Jones was just saying,
was tweeting about how this pope is going to be
like used by the deep state to undermine Trump.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
Oh well, they're gonna have to send JD to kill him.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
This in the bond market is the deep state anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
So there are a lot of these tweets emerging of
the actual the new pope when he was just whatever,
a cardinal and his last retweet was actually like lambasting
the Trump administration. And also he wrote a tweet like
saying that j. D Man's is wrong about Jesus Christ,
so oh perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
The group of bishops or whomever said, like JD is
is wrong about his interpretation of Catholicism. Isn't that a
big deal for the Catholics, Like if the church denounces you,
you have a problem. Yeah, I guess the far right
wing of the Catholic Church didn't really recognize Francis as
the true pope or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
We know, that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
And I think thought this was really like a serious
part of their religion is like to have the picture
of the pope.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
Well, that's why they were hoping for someone like really
like out there, like like a hardcore traditionalist, and I
don't think they did. That guy came.

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Well, the option that they had was an African guy
who is hardcore. But he's also African.

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):
So there's another American who's also pretty hard core. Who
is who is who is being talked about? A different American? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
Well, we live in fun times.

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
We do live in fun times.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
Next week we will get back to Merlo Pontian Buddhism. Yeah,
all right, take care of you guys, see ye till
next time.