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to

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react

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to

2:54

it. Frankly, Amanda writes in my life partners trying to bypass my 40th to see you in Boston in January.

3:00

This is just getting out of hand.

3:03

She's talking about the big live January 16th in Boston at the Wilbur theater, January six teenth we already noticed that John Benjamin and Larry Murphy will be there.

3:18

She writes, this is just getting out of hand.

3:20

Yes, he's an early fan, a large contribution member, but it's my damn birthday because of COVID we'd been celebrate his 40th or our 20 year F a versary or countless other celebrations that for kids demand.

3:35

Now, here we are ready to celebrate.

3:37

I turned 40 on January 14th.

3:39

I decided months ago to run my first marathon in Bermuda.

3:41

Fortunately, that was canceled.

3:43

And we are now looking for an alternative to celebrate Caribbean all-inclusive adults only.

3:48

Yes, please. But no, it's a constant effort to redirect our celebrations to Boston, which we live 45 minutes from doesn't matter, playing or improv asylum is back in action.

4:00

He only keeps bringing it up because if you're a show playing live I'm over it.

4:04

I either invite him to watch your show on another weekend or I'm canceling your subscription.

4:09

This is beginning to be just too much.

4:12

And then she writes best regards.

4:14

Well thank you for that.

4:15

Yeah, look.

4:17

And she says, Mike's lover not taking second to you.

4:21

Listen, Mike, I don't know what to tell ya.

4:25

This is our only time that we're going to be in Boston.

4:27

You guys are going to have to work this out, but for other people who don't have this type of a dilemma tickets are selling out very quickly.

4:34

Head to majority live.com to get your ticket for the big live on January 16th.

4:45

Larry Murphy, John Benjamin, will you there?

4:47

We have one or two other guests to announce which we will do later in this week, but head over there now, I don't know if there's any more mezzanine seats at all, but balconies great at the Wilbur theater.

5:00

All right. Speaking of a live show, let's begin ours now.

5:03

It is Wednesday, December 1st, 2021.

5:14

My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award-winning majority report.

5:19

We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Guan us canal in the Heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn USA on the program today, economist Michael Albert author of his latest, no bosses, a new economy for a better world.

5:42

Meanwhile, the Supreme court holds oral arguments in a Mississippi case that seeks to overturn Roe V Wade.

5:52

And while the Republicans may shut down the government over vaccine mandates, student kills three injures eight at a Michigan school shooting.

6:06

Chris Cuomo was suspended indefinitely for plotting with his brother disgraced, a former governor of New York to smear sexual harassment accusers.

6:23

Meanwhile, Mark Meadows agrees to cooperate with the January 6th investigation and has new revelations in his book.

6:33

That detail how Trump knew he had COVID during his presidential debate.

6:38

Meanwhile, us looks so good, fine us looks to tough and COVID testing requirements for travelers, as it becomes clear that Omicron Omicron is a cat already out of the bag while FDA panel half-heartedly endorses the Merc COVID pill, Dr.

7:08

Oz, he have very dubious medical claims running for Senate in Pennsylvania as a Republican.

7:18

Meanwhile Dickens wins in Atlanta and a BLM organizers, social Democrat, her democratic socialists, I should say wins the mayor in a large Atlanta suburb left.

7:35

This is aroma Castro wins in Hondurans, a presidential election that is now official.

7:41

And lastly, a major anti-vaccine Christian broadcaster.

7:47

Marcus lamb dies at age 64 of COVID all this and more on today's majority report.

7:59

Thanks for joining us, ladies and gentlemen.

8:01

Glad you could make it here as always Emma Vigeland.

8:05

Hello, Emma. Hello Sam.

8:07

Happy hump day though.

8:10

There you go. I always forget.

8:12

I honestly, I always forget.

8:14

I forget the both that it's, that it's the hump day and that we call it hung time.

8:19

Right? Well, I mean get used to it.

8:21

No, I'm just do it. I just forget.

8:24

Okay. I'm still reeling from that email that we received where it's really, I feel we're responsible for breaking up a marriage potentially.

8:35

I mean, it seems like it or, or losing a subscriber.

8:38

I mean, I imagine we'll probably go with that first, right, but it's, it remains kind of 50 50.

8:45

I don't know, talking to I'm getting wind of what, like a John Benjamin Lee Murphy might be up to at the show and I may be worth like maybe worth just sort of risking it for that guy, but we'll see.

8:59

I, meanwhile, the government is scheduled to shut down in two days on Friday.

9:07

If there is not a continuing resolution passed, there doesn't seem to be any likelihood of a full year budget being passed.

9:16

Of course there are negotiations ongoing about passing a continuing resolution, but apparently there are major elements of the Republican party that are attempting to shut the government down and leverage the idea of vaccine mandates.

9:32

There's another federal judge.

9:34

This one I think, was in what Missouri was administer sippy Louisiana, Louisiana judge, which has enjoined the vaccine mandates in their circuit as well.

9:45

That was after the, The Missouri judge yesterday did the same.

9:49

This is part of like a 14 state lawsuit about the healthcare worker vaccine mandate.

9:54

Yeah. It's absurd to want your healthcare workers to have a vaccination against COVID there's data coming out of Israel.

10:05

It's very early. So you've got to take this with a grain of salt, but to the, there is data coming out of Israel, which shows that the vaccine does inhibit OMA chronic at the very least in terms of how serious getting infected with that variant is, I don't know that there's much.

10:27

You can, you can take from it.

10:29

It's better than early data showing the opposite.

10:32

That's the only thing I could tell you, it's not conclusive at this point.

10:35

We're going to need a couple more weeks to find out exactly just how effective the vaccine is, but we know that it's certainly effective against the daily Delta variant, both in terms of catching it and in, and, and, and the implications of it.

10:53

Is it 100% effective? No.

10:55

Is it 90% effective?

10:57

No. 60, 70%.

10:58

Maybe a little more.

11:00

Yes. Meanwhile in DC, the Republican party is it's it's I, I don't even know what to say about them going back and forth with each other.

11:16

I, you know, it's, it's really just sort of like the, the horrible people versus the marginally more horrible people, but so real Housewives of DC.

11:30

Exactly. However, there are implications for when people like Lauren Bovert, but really, I mean, this is the Republican party has been at this for a long time.

11:40

I mean, there's nothing new.

11:42

They have set the table and have defined, but really, I mean, the, you know, whether it's AOC, but in this instance, it's Ilhan Omar.

11:52

They have set the table to demonize, frankly, women of color who are, and, and certainly women who are Muslims in the democratic party.

12:08

And after Lauren most recent attack on Ilhan, Omar as being part of the jihad squad.

12:17

Apparently there's some implications and here's Ilhan Omar at a press conference explaining what those implications are.

12:26

And we should say warning, this is going to be a little bit disturbing because she got a voicemail, some language here.

12:37

I'm going to play you a voicemail that we received hours after I got off the phone with representative Bluebird, after she posted her video, I'm

12:57

saying that you're a bitch. We know what you're up to girl about her country.

13:02

Don't worry. There's plenty.

13:04

That will love the opportunity to take you off the faces.

13:10

Come get it.

13:14

But you fucking piece of shit.

13:16

You jihad us. We know what you are.

13:19

You're a fucking freighter.

13:22

You will not live much longer, bitch.

13:25

I can almost guarantee you that either people are rising up and you will be tried for a military tribunals, you will be found guilty For

13:40

those of you who did not hear it very well.

13:42

Let me meet you with the voicemail says, we see you sand N-word bitch.

13:50

We know what you are up to.

13:53

You are all about taking over our country.

13:57

Don't worry.

13:59

There is plenty that would love the opportunity to take you off the face of this earth.

14:08

Come get it.

14:10

But you are f-ing Muslim piece of shit.

14:17

You are jihadist.

14:19

We know what you are.

14:21

You are, I think trader and you will not live any longer condemning.

14:32

This should not be a partisan issue.

14:36

This is about our basic humanity and fundamental rights of religious freedom enshrined in our constitution.

14:47

You know, what's upsetting though, is that it's not really a partisan issue right Now

14:51

because Steny Hoyer said to actually just yesterday that they're still just quote, considering sanctioning It's

15:00

it's. So it's, They

15:03

were quicker to sanction Ilhan Omar for saying that the United States and Israel have committed war crimes in passing in one sentence in his statement than they have been likely.

15:13

I mean, not to obscure who, who the real villains are here, which are the Republicans, but the democratic leadership in the way that they tried to capitalize on villainizing Ilhan, Omar have created this environment and they are complicit in, in many ways.

15:28

And they're also complicit in not showing the American public, the, the seriousness of this type of stuff.

15:35

I mean, I don't understand how they think from a political standpoint, they're going to achieve anything with January 6th, if the, the, the, one of the problems with January six and one of the, sort of the predicate of why it was so problematic was because you've got people like this who are in that crowd.

15:55

And if you're Ilhan Omar, and you're getting these types of threats, you, you have reason to fear for your life.

16:03

In that instance, of course, Totally

16:05

justified people were feared for the life. I think it was gross that people who, the idea, yeah.

16:09

They make people who made fun of AOC. Like this is the type of people that they have to, I

16:13

worry about. Exactly. And you cannot communicate to the American public that there was any that you're taking this seriously.

16:19

If you don't take it seriously, they're not going to the American public is not going to get out ahead of the democratic leadership in responding to this.

16:29

It's just an absurd. It is it just, I mean, it, it, it's, it's shocking that they're not moving much quicker on this, and eventually, hopefully they will.

16:41

And not just not, as you say, tying it directly to the Republican party, they keep doing these like individual, oh, go, sorry.

16:47

How could you tweet out that video and in the proceedings of century and go SAR.

16:52

That's when the initial jihad squad comment was made and then round and round, it goes, I'm sure there will be another Republican that backs up a bow bird here who, who then gets like springboard into some fundraising apparatus by having her back.

17:07

This is the whole of the Republican party.

17:09

And so like focusing on the interpersonal drama between the call that Bo made to Omar, it does a disservice to the entire thing that you're saying here, right?

17:17

Which is, this is the Republican base.

17:19

There's a reason this resonates with people.

17:21

And so the Democrats never get out in front of this, and then they're gonna, you know, fall in 20, 24 and wonder what happened.

17:31

I I'm an I, yeah, I couldn't agree more.

17:35

I be Giffords Was

17:36

like 500 Years ago. Yeah. It really is amazing Loss

17:41

there. Shit. When Sarah Huckabee Sanders was mildly heckled at a restaurant.

17:49

Yeah. Give me a Break.

17:49

All

17:52

right. We got some sponsors before we get to Michael Albert.

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23:43

When a welcome to the program, economist Michael Albert author of his latest, no bosses, a new economy for a better world.

23:54

We have them.

23:58

I can hear you. There you go.

24:01

Michael. Welcome to the program. I'm here with Emma Vigeland Thank

24:04

you very much for having me. Thanks

24:06

so much for coming. And so let's, this is, you know, I think some of, some of this might be a, you might have to explain some of the, the language of this is a, you know, this is, I don't know how well versed everyone is.

24:20

Listen to this program with, with, with some of the, the, the, the terms here.

24:26

But this is, this is essentially your blueprint from moving from the type of structure that we have with our economy.

24:36

Now to one that is far more participatory, which you call power con what is Paragon?

24:45

Well, first the word just stands for participatory economy.

24:47

So it's just shorthand for that.

24:49

It's a alternative economic model, I suppose you could call it or vision, which means to be an alternative to both what we endure here, capitalism and what used to call itself a 20th century socialism.

25:06

And it has it's, it's not really a blueprint.

25:10

It, it, it's more like a scaffold.

25:13

It is five key elements, which the argument says are needed.

25:20

If a new economy is gonna fulfill the values and the aspirations we have, but a great many of the details will emerge from practice and from experience.

25:31

So a scaffold on which details develop as we go along, if you want, I can, I can, you know, describe the features I

25:41

want to get to the features, but I first want to get to the undergirding values that, that, that set the table for this, that you go through.

25:49

I mean, you go through what you call it just in the first chapter alone values for a better world.

25:54

W what are the values that this, this scaffolding hopes to, I guess, Promote,

26:05

promote exactly, or maybe implement?

26:08

Sure. Well, people have enough people make decisions in any economy.

26:14

There are decisions to be made.

26:16

So the value regarding that, that we put forward is called self-management.

26:19

And the idea is that people should have a say in decisions roughly in proportion to the degree that they're affected by them.

26:28

So that means that everybody is participating in decision-making and, and with an influence proportionate to the impact on them.

26:36

A second value that we think makes sense is that people interact in economies.

26:43

And so what's our value for people interacting.

26:45

And the answer is solidarity, which is basically just means that people, that the economy should promote instead of anti sociality.

26:54

And instead of people getting ahead at the expense of others, a degree of solidarity, it should promote empathy.

27:02

It should create a context in which we have civilized relations, instead of what all too often, we do have another value bears upon the distribution of stuff.

27:14

How much income do you get?

27:17

Income is just a claim on the social product.

27:19

So how much of what society produces are you entitled to?

27:23

And the usual answer to that question is that you can get income for the property that you own.

27:29

We rule that out as having absolutely nothing to do with anything ethically valuable, or from the point of view of incentives.

27:39

Another answer is often that you get income, what you can take basically per bargaining power.

27:46

If you have more bargaining power, you get more income.

27:49

That's very typical in our own society.

27:50

Another version is that you get income for what you contribute to the social product, not what your own thing, you know, what you own contributes, but when you buy your own activity contribute, and that one has a lot of, of supporters who are critical of capitalism of left a support is I don't support it.

28:12

I don't believe that if you're born, for example, with, you know, incredible capacities, Adele's voice Chomsky's brain, whatever you should have showered on top of luck in the genetic lottery, a great amount of income.

28:31

I don't see any reason for that. There's no incentive reason and there's no ethical reason.

28:36

I believe so with the value that's put forward is equitable remuneration.

28:40

And what it means is is that we think people should be rewarded or remunerated for how long they work for how hard they work for the owners, this of the conditions under which they work.

28:52

If they're doing socially valued labor.

28:55

So you're not rewarded for wasting your time or wasting resources and such.

28:59

You're rewarded for doing things that are socially valued, but you're rewarded for duration, intensity, and onerous, and, you know, an overarching value, which somehow, which in some sense is necessary for those, or is made possible by those is class listeners.

29:18

And the idea there is that the economy shouldn't demarcate constituencies, sectors of the population, such that some dominate others, such that, for example, in our own society, the owning class, roughly more than 2% dominates everything or in the thing called called 20th century socialism, such that a larger class, about 20% who monopolize empowering circumstances dominate 80% who, whose circumstances are basically disempowered.

29:54

That's ruled out.

29:57

Also, if you want to have class less than this.

30:00

So let me just, let me just go back over that a little bit, just so that folks can digest it because there's, you're, you're, you're essentially, you've been out, you've been outlining, you know, sort of circumstances as they exist now and some alternate, and then the, the alternate that you guys are promoting here, we should just be clear on that.

30:27

So, and I want to go back through these as, as, as we walk through the fun, let's start with the last one first.

30:33

So I think everyone understands right now that we do have a situation where we have a, a concentration of wealth and, and, and a concentration of power within the context of our economy.

30:45

And, and also to some extent, and also similarly with our politics and, and they're not really that distinct of, of an animal as it were.

30:54

And you're also saying that in the context of, of socialism, as it has been, I guess, practiced up to this point, or at least in theorized that having a, you know, workers, councils for instance, are also problematic because you're concentrating the power instead of one or two to percent of people, maybe in 20% of the people, I mean, roughly speaking, right?

31:21

Yeah. Okay. But there's a clear cut reason for that.

31:24

In other words, it's not that worker's council caused that it's, that the division of labor causes that.

31:30

So if you divide up every, every economy is always going to have jobs.

31:35

Okay. And the job is a collection of basically tasks.

31:39

Okay. So if you divide up tasks, so that about a fifth of the workforce is doing all of the tasks, which convey information, which gives you access to daily decision-making, which increases your confidence and your verbal skills and your connections to others.

31:55

And so on, which is empowering. And four-fifths do work.

32:00

Do tasks, do work that's composed of tasks, which are disempowering, which literally reduce the information at your disposal, which literally reduced confidence, reduced ties and connections to others, separate you from access to decision-making and so on.

32:17

Then the, the former group, even if you have democracy, so let's say you have workers councils, and let's say you have democracy in them, or you even try for self-management in them, right.

32:30

It doesn't matter in one sense that old division of labor, and this is how institutions work, that old division of labor by its very logic by its structure, by its implications, for the people in the economy, subverts your desire to be democratic.

32:48

It subverts your desire for self management and 20% start establishing and setting the agendas 20% start doing all the accurate, arguing about, you know, the issues and deliberating over them.

33:02

And 80% are bystanders and eventually they don't even go to the meetings.

33:05

And that's what happens in those circumstances.

33:08

It should sound familiar for political elections, but that's a different, Yeah.

33:13

And I mean, I think like, but, but any, you know, if you belong to a, co-op a supermarket, you can, you can sort of see the similar dynamic that's going on there.

33:22

Eh, you know, that there's a certain, I guess inevitability is the argument that that is going to happen, But

33:32

you see, I know, think it's inevitable at all.

33:34

Can I tell you a little story?

33:36

That is, that is the, that's the impression.

33:39

Yes. I agree. I don't know how much time we have.

33:45

I'd like to tell you. Okay, good.

33:48

So I'm in Argentina 20 years ago and there was an economic crisis and the economy wasn't great.

33:54

You know, it was in disarray and many workplaces were failing and the owners left and by and large, so did the, what I w so did the members of that 20%, I call that the coordinator class.

34:06

So sort of the coordinator workers took over workers instituted what you described, workers councils, they instituted democracy for decision-making.

34:15

They leveled the wages, right?

34:17

And so I'm in a room with about 50 representatives of workplaces who have done this, and it's about six months, seven months after they've done it.

34:25

And I'm there to give a talk and we're going around the room at the beginning.

34:29

And at the beginning, everybody's very excited, you know, enlivened by the fact that they're in a room with people like themselves.

34:37

And they can, you know, that who they haven't met because they're from around Argentina.

34:44

So we start going around the room and the, the mood begins to change as people describe where they're coming from and where they're at.

34:54

And by the time we get to the seventh person, and it was literally the seventh person, because this is imprinted in my mind, the person says, I thought, I would never say anything like this.

35:06

I can't believe I'm going to say this, but maybe Margaret Thatcher was right.

35:11

Maybe there is an alternative we took over, we have our councils, we, we implemented democracy.

35:18

We made the wages fair.

35:21

And now all the old crap is coming back.

35:27

And that's what he said. And so I, at this point, and I'm not exaggerating here, there was some people in the room who were sort of, because their experience was similar.

35:39

And so we stopped.

35:41

And I said, and that what you mean is the alienation and the sense of indignity and the, the, you know, the lack of control was all coming back.

35:55

Yes. I said, and you feel that's because of human nature and a number of them nodded.

36:01

And he said, yes. And I said, I want to ask you a question when you took over and you instituted democracy in your level, the wages, did you change the definition of the jobs at all?

36:13

And at first he didn't understand the question.

36:16

And I said, well, did you change the way the jobs were defined?

36:20

What people were doing? He said, of course not.

36:22

You know, we have to get the work done. We have to, we have to do what we're here to do.

36:27

And our various workplaces.

36:28

And I said, well, I don't think it was human nature.

36:32

That cause the problem, I think it was that you maintain the old division of labor and the old division of labor by its very nature.

36:41

Right. Sort of impose the subsequent results.

36:44

And so we talked about it and I do think that's the case.

36:49

I do think that that old division of labor caused the people who took the jobs that were before the empowered people's jobs were empowered.

37:00

And one last element of this, I'm in a factory again, Argentina, same time, it's a glass factory and I'm talking to a woman and she's now the chief financial officer, so to speak of this glass factory.

37:15

And I asked, what, what were you doing before?

37:18

What were you doing before the, you know, the owner left and you took over, she says, I was working at, and she tells me that the open furnace that she was working on and it was just incredible.

37:29

And she described what she was doing.

37:31

I probably would have lasted a day. Right.

37:33

And she's doing a day in and day out for years.

37:35

And but now she was doing this empowered job.

37:40

So I said, well, what was the hardest thing to learn in this, in this switch?

37:47

Right. And she didn't want to tell me she was a little embarrassed.

37:50

I think, I don't know. And so I said, well, was it, was it to learn accounting concepts?

37:56

No. Was it to learn how to use the computer?

37:59

No. Was it to learn how to use spreadsheets?

38:02

No. And I think I came up with one or two other things to ask her, and then I just gave up and I said, well, please, you got to tell me.

38:08

And she said, well, first I had to learn to read.

38:14

Yeah. So there's, so that's one answer to the question of, are people not doing empowering things because they're incapable of it or is it a social?

38:27

The other way I answered the question.

38:28

As I say, think back 50 or 60 years, imagine a big stadium in the United States.

38:34

Imagine all the surgeons in the United States are in that stadium, look around, what do you see?

38:40

And everybody tells me, I see white men.

38:44

And I say, so you don't see that many women, you see very few women's.

38:48

Yes. See very few blacks. Yes. And I say, what was the explanation?

38:51

And they say, the explanation will, all the surgeons would tell you that it's because the women and the blacks couldn't do it.

38:56

And I said in what would the lot of the women in the box, outside the stadium say, and they said, one of them would have said the same thing, you know, not happily, but they might've said the same thing.

39:10

And I said, and could that have been the explanation?

39:13

In other words, if it was true that women were incapable of doing empowering things from some genetic reason or blacks red cake, would it explain the situation?

39:23

Answer? Yes, it would. But it wasn't the case.

39:26

It wasn't true and everybody knows it and now everybody knows it.

39:31

And it's exactly the same thing in class.

39:34

People are denied and have crushed just like women and blacks have crushed the capacities that, that needs to be evidenced and welcomed in order for people to participate forward.

39:50

In, in that instance, in, in Argentina.

39:52

I mean, because I see, because it's, it's, it's much clearer.

39:55

Like, you know, what would happen if everyone's was emancipated in terms of pursuing what they want in that stadium with the surgeons, you'd have a far greater sort of diversity of who's who's a surgeon in that instance, but in those, in those companies in Argentina, like what does that look like?

40:16

In terms of an, I understand the concept of you are you're working with a structure of the division of labor, which is a, which has been designed in many respects to disempower people.

40:29

So that, so that the, the managerial structure can also be employed.

40:34

But what would that look like? Like what is, if you're slicing up the labor in a different way, does every one of those workers who are feeling disempowered, are they doing different tasks?

40:47

Or how does that, how is that new structure imposed?

40:51

If it is like, w w what, what generates that?

40:57

There's two, two parts to this question.

40:58

I think both very good. One part is, well, what's the end result?

41:01

What does it look like to have a workplace, which is classless basically.

41:06

And that's what we're asking. Right? So that's one, it, and then the second question, which is actually much harder is what, what's the transition?

41:13

What is it? How do you get from where we are to there?

41:16

But until you have the, there in there, you, you can't really ask the transition question very sensibly.

41:24

I don't think so.

41:26

Well, let me just, let me, you couldn't, you couldn't, the end could be a function of the process versus, okay.

41:33

So it is very much because if the process that is the process of doing what of opposing current economics of opposing capitalism, of trying for a new system.

41:44

So that's the process we're talking about. If that process is blind to the possibility, or even the even seen that there could be a class that is not owners, that is the new ruling class, a new boss in place of the old boss.

42:02

If it's blind to that, if it says, look, there's only workers and owners.

42:07

And so if we get rid of owners, we win, then, then it's almost inexhaustible.

42:12

I think that when you get rid of owners, you'll get the new boss in place of the old boss.

42:16

But suppose instead, you're sensitive to this possibility.

42:20

And so you think that, well, how do you solve it?

42:24

You solve it by having jobs, each of which is comparably empowering to the rest.

42:32

And what does that mean?

42:34

It doesn't mean everybody does everything. That's ridiculous.

42:37

Okay. So it doesn't mean that, but it does mean, I don't know, people like to use the hospital as an example, I guess, because everybody's been in one at one time or another.

42:45

So it doesn't mean that people don't only do surgery and people don't only clean bed pans.

42:52

Instead, people do a mix of things.

42:56

Can you do this overnight?

42:57

No, but over time, can you attain a situation where your workforce is by its daily activities, all prepared to be confident enough and aware enough and have enough information to participate effectively in decision-making instead of 80% going home, we call that bounce job complexes.

43:21

And that's one institutional feature of this thing called participatory economics.

43:27

How do you attain that?

43:29

I mean, I'm just thinking about, I mean, obviously not everybody is capable of doing surgery.

43:35

That's fine because are plenty of other things in the hospital that needs to be done that can be empowering besides the surgery.

43:42

But how do you, how is the, how is that?

43:49

I mean, is it a signed, I mean, or is it developed from, You

43:55

know, I mean, like, you know, it's, it's one thing to, I mean, and th this is, you know, sort of the difficulty here is the limited imagination that we have, because we're, we're coming out of this, this type of, of system, like, is it, every worker sort of says like, oh, here's five choices for me.

44:13

I'm going to do this one. And this one, that one, or how does it work?

44:16

No, I imagine a workplace. So in the current version of that workplace, you could almost ask the same question that is in the current version of that workplace.

44:24

You acquire, you apply for a job, right?

44:27

That's what you do, and you get hired and you have the job.

44:32

Now, the fact is you can't apply for a job that is about job.

44:38

There's no such thing in the workplace each and every job is either on the coordinator class, side powered or in the working class side disempowered.

44:49

So what's the difference. The difference is that in a new workplace, the jobs that you apply for are all balanced, right?

44:58

So in a, and, and who sets, who the, who divides up the tasks into the jobs, the workers council, that the answer to every question we can short circuit the answer to every question about who decides what's going on in the workplace is the worker's council, of course, in context of the desires of the whole population, but it's basically the workers council.

45:20

So the workers council is deciding.

45:22

So I was in a workplace called south end press, where basically what we did, and this was even before participatory economics was well-defined right.

45:32

But we sat around and we realized if you had, you know, somebody who was in charge of the finances and somebody who had the best contacts with the authors, they'd run the show, whatever else you did, even if they didn't own the business.

45:51

Right. Cause we weren't, we were non-profit nobody's going to own it.

45:54

So we decided that we had to figure out a way to apportion the tasks in south end press so that they would not cause even against our will, somebody to be elevated to dominance is a relatively small group.

46:08

And so we, we had everybody doing editorial work and that took care of that part of the problem.

46:15

We had everybody sharing and things like, you know, taking the mail, answering the phone, et cetera, et cetera.

46:21

And we had people all doing a particular kind of work, like for instance, keeping the books or dealing with fulfillment.

46:34

In other words, fulfilling orders for books, dealing with the design of things, dealing with promotion.

46:40

So on and to certain extent that that would change over time.

46:44

But, but what we didn't have is, you know, people cleaning for other people ruling, it's not easy to do that inside capitalism.

46:55

You have to have a whole lot of commitment to it.

46:58

And you have to have, you have to buck the pressure of the market and book the pressure of banks that want to deal with the boss and so on and so forth.

47:09

But you can do it it's possible, but in a full, fully transformed society.

47:14

And we haven't talked about other elements of this, but in a fully transformed society, it becomes natural right now.

47:21

You don't go into a workplace and apply for a job and ask how come it's not balanced.

47:26

Normally no one expects any such thing, right?

47:31

In a participatory economy, you go into a workforce place.

47:35

And if, if you were given a list of jobs and one of them was unbalanced, you would say, what the hell is this?

47:42

Well, then this essentially vision eliminate the manager, the managerial class that has emerged in our iteration of global.

47:55

Yeah. I call it the coordinator class.

47:57

It was originally called you're right?

48:00

The professional managerial class, Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich a long time ago.

48:05

And that south end press, we publish their famous essay.

48:10

And that's what got the ball rolling.

48:11

In some ways, it's, you don't eliminate all the tasks.

48:16

I mean, some of them you eliminate because they're disgusting and worthless, but tons of empowering tasks are necessary and essential.

48:23

So you don't eliminate the tasks. You just disperse them a little bit more than before so that everybody has an empowering situation.

48:31

I look at one immediate implication right now with 20% doing empowering and 80% doing disempowering.

48:38

What is the, what does the educational system has to do?

48:41

Well, the public school system, the school system literally has to graduate 20% who expect to be dominant, right?

48:52

And 80% who are prepared to take orders and endure boredom.

48:56

And that's what school does for 80% of the students.

49:00

It basically, We're kind of sorting a sorting process as opposed to fully educated.

49:06

Yes. And, and, and it isn't even, it's a debilitating process.

49:10

I mean, the idea that the school system is to educate, it's not, it's not to educate the 80% it's to deliver the 80% to the economy prepared to fit.

49:22

And that means prepared to take orders into indoor boredom and w how far fields you want to go.

49:30

But after the sixties, this became a very conscious policy.

49:34

Well, in, in, in, in, how did it manifest itself as a, as a I'm happy?

49:40

Sure. Okay. After, after the sixties, the other side, not my side looked and said, good Lord.

49:49

This was a horror show.

49:51

And we have to figure out what happened and prevent it from happening.

49:55

And they established something called the Carnegie commission that basically was investigating.

50:00

I mean, it's not basically, it was investigating to discern the causes of the sixties and it wasn't entirely stupid.

50:09

They came up with one that was quite smart.

50:12

I think they said, you know, I mean, it's hard to even voice it.

50:17

It's so embarrassing. They said we were over educating people, right.

50:22

We were creating a set of people graduating from high school and entering college who expected to have a life.

50:29

And when they encountered the world outside, there were more or less horrified and alienated by it.

50:39

And many of them did what we saw them do.

50:42

And I think there's a lot of truth to that.

50:46

It's not the whole story by any means, but there's a lot of truth to it.

50:49

But regardless of how true it was, the lesson that they took is that we should Jack up the cost of higher education to keep, you know, the rabble out.

51:01

There's no more describe the situation Jack up the cost to keep the rabble out and, and much more, even more so a portion of educational resources to communities in a manner which favored the communities whose family situation was favoring, this kind of confidence in this kind of expectation.

51:26

And they did it.

51:28

And now in the United States, we have higher education.

51:31

I mean, it's incredible graduate school education in the United States is still very good.

51:36

I mean the better schools internationally, it's still very good, but there's an interesting situation, which is that students who graduate from undergraduate education in the United States have a hard time dealing with it.

51:54

And a growing proportion of the attendance at the better graduate programs in the United States is actually from overseas.

52:03

And the reason for that is because so many people are stunted by education rather than flourishing.

52:10

And even in the 20%, you have the problem of simultaneously giving people some tools and some confidence, but making sure that they, that they're disinclined to use those tools and that confidence to challenge the system.

52:25

So you want them to be ready to try and socially climb, not be critics, Let's

52:33

go through some of the other sort of, I guess, aspects of, of both of our economy that would, would change or that, that, that, and, and, and, and let's start with, with private ownership and okay.

52:53

And when you write and, but will you also define that for us not, I can't own my car.

53:02

It wasn't right. It doesn't mean that you can't own the shirt that you're wearing.

53:06

Of course you own that. And it is not the case that I, because I am in a vowed advocate of participatory economics could come into your house and take your shirt.

53:15

That's nonsense. What it means is society has stuff that is, we can call it productive assets.

53:24

It's the stuff with which society produces the social product.

53:29

And so what does that, what is that?

53:31

Well, it's equipment, lots of equipment of various kinds venues like, like buildings, natural resources.

53:40

It's also the talents and the knowledge that have accumulated over Jake and, you know, the technology.

53:48

It's also that. So instead of having this stuff owned by visa, us, and company who then use that ownership to dominate outcomes and to accrue gargantuan unheard of wealth, instead of that, we think of that material, that stuff, as part of a commons, a productive comments and that productive comments is there for society to use.

54:14

However, to use elements of that productive commons, you have to effectively, I mean, we'd have to go further to do, to do this, but effectively have to make a case that you're going to use it sensibly.

54:27

In other words, you're not going to waste it.

54:29

You're not going to take natural resources and waste them.

54:31

You're not going to take equipment and factories and so on and waste them.

54:37

And you're not going to produce gargantuan amounts that offset the value you're going to do socially valued activity.

54:45

And so what we've done is we've said let's replace private ownership.

54:53

Yeah. Bezos doesn't own anything anymore.

54:54

And so on, let's replace that, not with a simple idea that, you know, the state owns it, but with an idea that it's, it's there to be used when it is a responsible, socially valuable use.

55:17

And that would leave us having to explain, well, how do we determine that?

55:21

But anyway, that's the criteria and that's the replacement for a private ownership.

55:27

One last time, final thing.

55:31

Remember you asked me about the values.

55:33

Why, how does the values relate to this?

55:36

Well, when we were doing this, having settled on self-management and solidarity and diversity and equity, we then simply asked ourselves, what's the implication of private ownership for those and the answer is it obliterates them, right?

55:53

It isn't just that it's a slight problem.

55:55

Private ownership, obliterate self-management obliterates equity and obliterate solidarity and literates diversity.

56:03

So, so the answer in less, we can't come up with something.

56:07

We should get rid of that.

56:09

And so we came up with something and the thing that we came up with is common.

56:14

That's not an unusual, that's not unique to participatory economics.

56:19

What do we do with, let's say, just like restaurants.

56:21

I mean, I'm just, I'm trying to this down to like the most practical A

56:27

restaurant is a workplace, right? If you don't have the owner, then who runs the workplace.

56:33

And so the workforce, right?

56:36

So the workers council and the workplace, and there's an industry council and industry of restaurants.

56:41

But anyway, the workers council in the workplace does it.

56:45

If you don't get rid of the old division of labor, let's make it a big restaurant.

56:50

So it's more interesting if you don't get rid of a big of the old division of labor, some of those workers are going to dominate the rest that does away with self-management equity, et cetera.

57:01

So we don't want that. So we have to figure out an alternative to the division of labor.

57:05

And so that now we got bounced jobs that we need, if we're serious about our values.

57:10

I mean, if we don't care, okay, but if we're serious, then you can't retain something that violates them.

57:17

So horrifically. So you get rid of that division of labor.

57:20

So a, a restaurant or an auto plant electric auto presumably anyway, a restaurant or plant, same thing, workers, council probably work teams, divisions, and so on making decisions via a self-managed forms of deliberation and tallying of preferences, remuneration for how long you work, how hard you work and the owners, this is the conditions under which you work.

57:50

And that is a big change, very big change.

57:52

And then, you know, we, we, the most complicated part, I suppose, as the allocation system, I

58:02

want it to talk about that and sort of the, the, the, there is a, an ability, I mean, there's in your, in this scenario, I guess this, this economy, there aren't necessarily markets, but there are products.

58:18

And, and if I want a product that I have the ability to, to make more money by not necessarily being super skilled at something, but in terms of like exerting a easily, relatively quantifiable, more effort or less effort, right?

58:45

I mean, that's basically through that.

58:48

I mean, so First

58:51

off the main competitor to that, so to speak is the view that you should get back in income, that's correlated to proportionate, to what you contribute to the social product.

59:04

That's the main competitor.

59:05

Most people who are progressive are not going to say, you know, you should get profits and they're not going to say you should get what you can take.

59:13

You know, that's Al Capone's economy.

59:14

That's what we have by the way. Anyway, you're not going to say that.

59:17

So should you get back essentially what you contribute?

59:23

And when some socialists tell me that they believe that I say to them, do you think that, you know, LeBron James or Steph Curry only $40 million a year is overpaid or underpaid, or they of course say way overpaid.

59:41

Absolutely. This is ridiculous. And I say, well, no, he's underpaid by the norm that you just gave us.

59:47

They're underpaid. Nike takes some of it.

59:50

The owner of the team takes some of the TV networks.

59:54

Take some of it. They're not getting all of it because they don't have enough bargaining power.

59:58

They're getting what they have the power to take.

1:00:00

And so that makes the person think somewhat.

1:00:04

And then it would add, well, why should the brand James get such a high income or Steph Curry, because they were born with these attributes, right?

1:00:12

Why, why are we showering wealth upon them on top of that?

1:00:16

And these are values, you know, they're not, it's not a mathematical proof.

1:00:24

I don't like that notion. So we come to this notion that you get for duration, intensity, and the way that looks, I mean, you're asking really good questions and they take us steadily deeper.

1:00:37

And so let's assume for a minute that in the economy, as a whole institutions say that our workplace should get a certain amount to a portion among its workforce, as income and income is just, I mean, that's the same concept is now, right?

1:00:59

You get an income and that income, you use that to get stuff you want from the social, just like now, but you're not operating in a market because there aren't buyers and sellers who are competing there.

1:01:13

Aren't, I don't know how much time you want to spend on markets.

1:01:19

Markets are rejected because they producing it by sociality.

1:01:22

They violate solidarity because they literally produce, this is a harder argument.

1:01:28

The coordinator class working class distinction, even without owners and because they mispriced virtually everything that is to say, markets is supposed to be this fantastic vehicle for societies to sensibly allocate because they're evaluating things well.

1:01:50

Well, the truth is, and no economists would deny this.

1:01:53

This is an irony here. That markets don't evaluate things.

1:01:57

Well, markets take into account the will of the buyer and the will of the seller, but they don't take into account.

1:02:04

For example, if I'm buying a car, the people who are going to breathe the fumes from the car, externalities, externalities ignored.

1:02:11

They also, by and large, they don't take into account.

1:02:15

For example, unless I have the power to force my health as a worker, right.

1:02:21

It's irrelevant, right?

1:02:23

No, no. That, that only comes into play if a union kind of force it into place.

1:02:28

So it's power, not attention to it.

1:02:30

Anyway, the point is that if we say that the allocation system not markets, right, can tell your factory, the three of us and a bunch of other people that your factory is entitled to a certain amount.

1:02:48

What's that amount going to be.

1:02:50

It's going to be that the number of people, times the duration, intensity, and onerous for each doing socially valued labor.

1:03:00

Okay. So let me ask One

1:03:02

last step then inside the workplace, the worker's council is going to apportion that among the workforce.

1:03:09

Okay. How all right. So I mean, to be clear, just going back to, you know, the, the LeBron example okay.

1:03:18

In that situation, the idea is that in just to be clear, LeBron's getting, I don't know how much he gets paid, 30 million.

1:03:27

Let's just say whatever it's 30 and $40 million a year, but he actually generates, let's say a hundred million dollars worth of, of, of, of, of, of money by, you know, everybody tuning in and going to the games and this and that.

1:03:43

And he doesn't get, but he doesn't get that other 70 million that goes to the owners that goes to the TV people that goes to other people who are basically skimming off of that, because, you know, on some, it's also like almost impossible to quantify if he's bringing in that money.

1:03:58

And the other players are not very, we know he necessarily has to be bringing in more than he's getting.

1:04:04

Otherwise there wouldn't be an owner.

1:04:06

They wouldn't be doing it. They're, they're all trying to get their cut.

1:04:09

Okay. So whatever that figure is, but I'm just trying to say, so in, in this new economy, we would basically look at like, he's playing 60 minutes, a hundred times a year, he's going to practice this amount and we're going to allocate based on that number, whatever, there's a formula, a little More,

1:04:33

what is also going to have a balanced job conflict.

1:04:37

Okay. And he's also, he's going to be, he's not only going to be playing.

1:04:40

He's also going to be like, you know, making sure that the, the, the arena is clean or whatever it is.

1:04:45

Everybody's going to a piece of that. And it's how many hours you put in.

1:04:48

And, and, and there'll be a number, but how is it determined?

1:04:53

So, and, and if I put in more hours, then I'm going to go get a car, or I'm going to get two cars because my family wants two cars, as opposed to, we want a bigger house, or we want more clothes, but how do, how does society organize if there's no markets there, how does society say, this is the value that we're going to allocate to a basketball team?

1:05:18

Or this is value that we're going to allocate to car production.

1:05:22

So there may be five or 10 or a hundred different car companies, and they're all gonna put out cars, but how, how do you find that equilibrium?

1:05:31

If there is no more?

1:05:34

Can I, can I ask you one question? Do you have any economics background?

1:05:37

I doubt they're asking better questions than 90% of economists would ask.

1:05:43

And I'm not just saying that for you.

1:05:45

It's true. Okay. I mean, if you're asking straightforward, all right.

1:05:50

So the, the answer to that question is you have to have an allocation system, right?

1:05:54

And an allocation system is something which by some fashion, right.

1:06:00

Accumulates information from consumers and producers, and generates what the economy is going to do, how much of this, and that is going to be produced and where it's going to go.

1:06:15

And simultaneously prices things, markets do it by competition and get the prices wrong, but they do get prices.

1:06:26

And it does function.

1:06:27

There's no denying that right.

1:06:29

Functions, central planning does it by essentially the following it's as if you send a questionnaire to everybody and you get back some answers, you look at those, you send another questionnaire, you get back some answers, you send orders and you get back obedience.

1:06:48

Okay. That's the, that's the model of central planning, participatory planning.

1:06:53

Doesn't have a center like that. So what is it?

1:06:56

Well, we said we have workers councils, and we also have consumer councils.

1:07:00

So you're in your household as a consumer, but you're also in a neighborhood and there's a consumer council because a lot of consumption is collective.

1:07:08

And then that, then this federations, like there's a Federation of workers, councils up to an industry.

1:07:14

There's a Federation of consumers councils up to a county or a state or whatever, because a lot of consumption is collective in our society.

1:07:21

Most collective consumption. We don't even know what that it's happening.

1:07:26

Right. We have no say in it whatsoever in a participatory economy, you do.

1:07:31

Okay. What's going on?

1:07:32

What allocation then is it has to be some kind of a dialogue between workers and consumers.

1:07:39

Some kind of a conversation in which workers are basically looking at their situation and saying what they want to do.

1:07:48

Consumers are basically looking at their situation.

1:07:52

This includes sort of an estimate of what you're going to.

1:07:55

What's going to be your income for the year because you know how much you want to work, et cetera.

1:07:59

So they're looking at their situation and essentially saying what they want to consume.

1:08:04

This information has to be interact.

1:08:12

So each side has to hate here from the other and when it hears from the other, it has to modify what it's requesting and what we want.

1:08:23

What we hope for is it's called an iterative procedure is a round of such interactions in which you arrive at a plant, you arrive at a level of, of, of synchrony between consumption and production that is doable and that you can proceed with.

1:08:47

And you arrive at prices, valuations that are take into account, the full individual, social and ecological costs and benefits.

1:08:58

This is ideal.

1:09:00

And so if you can do that and, and then, you know, the remuneration is important because the remuneration affects how that occurs.

1:09:12

But the, the case is that this process with a few jobs, right, that facilitated processing the information.

1:09:30

So it's readily accessible, delivering what are called indicative prices.

1:09:37

That's guesses as to what the final price will be.

1:09:41

Right? So in the process, you're hearing indicative prices that represent where we're at in the iterations, right?

1:09:48

And then you're reacting to those.

1:09:50

And those prices are getting closer and closer to actual true social costs and benefits.

1:09:56

And the demands and supplies are getting closer and closer to each other and with slack and so on, you arrive at a plan.

1:10:03

And so the question becomes is this possible a long time ago, actually, around when Robin Henno and I, who, with whom initially this was sort of worked out, we're doing it some years earlier, a guy named Alec NOV, who was a socialist, wrote a book.

1:10:24

And in the book, he said, look, there's markets that central planning, and that's it.

1:10:29

There's nothing else. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

1:10:32

And so you either choose one, you choose the other, you choose both.

1:10:36

And what we were saying is if that's the way the cookie crumbles, we're in hot water, because those allocation systems, both subvert the values we hold dear, and produce outcomes of the sort that you see in the United States.

1:10:56

And you saw in the old Soviet union.

1:10:58

So we, we thought, well, let's not take it as gospel because this guy says it is proof was nothing.

1:11:04

His proof was basically, I said, so, I mean, I mean, literally you can go back and read it for yourself, right.

1:11:12

Is there a real proof of it?

1:11:14

And so we sort of felt like, why, why is it impossible to have not just an individual buyer and seller being oblivious to everything else competing or a planner and everybody also ban, why is it impossible to have the producers?

1:11:36

And the consumers have a process which is facilitated by structures and which lets them exchange their information and arrive at a plan.

1:11:48

If a plan, by the way, isn't like a binding decision over the course of a year.

1:11:53

It certainly changes. Circumstances, change.

1:11:55

There's a hurricane, whatever, all sorts of things can happen, tastes can change, right?

1:12:00

So you have to be able to keep updating. And also the claim is no bosses presents it.

1:12:07

That's the book, I guess.

1:12:09

So no bosses presents a description of this process in more detail than we can do right now.

1:12:17

And there are other presentations that do so as well.

1:12:22

I guess what I would say for your audience is this, nothing that I've said should cause you to jump up and say, I'm a participatory economy advocate.

1:12:34

Right. But what I would hope it would do is cause you to say, hell, I hope he's right.

1:12:40

I hope it really is possible to have an economy in which there's dignity for everybody.

1:12:46

There's equity for all people control their own lives.

1:12:49

I hope that's possible.

1:12:50

And this guy is saying that a structure and a, and a, just a few defining pieces, five defining pieces, make the case.

1:13:01

I want to look for myself and think this through.

1:13:05

I hope people say that.

1:13:07

And that's how the book's written.

1:13:09

It's not written for the economy.

1:13:11

You know, it's not written in some ares or language.

1:13:14

You have to spend a little while thinking through things because it's so foreign, but it's not rocket science.

1:13:21

It's not biochemistry or quantum mechanics.

1:13:23

It's real life stuff that we are all familiar with.

1:13:30

Well, we will put a link to no bosses, a new economy for a better world.

1:13:33

It is. It is.

1:13:35

I never thought I would say this, but it's a third way that I can get behind Third

1:13:43

way. That's true. Economist,

1:13:46

Michael Albert, thank you so much for your time today.

1:13:49

Really appreciate it. Like I say, we'll put a link to no bosses in our podcast and our YouTube descriptions.

1:13:56

I thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it.

1:13:59

I meant when I said you don't need to hear this, but it's it's I mean, have you won?

1:14:08

I was once in Turkey and I on a show like this and it was a accepted, it wasn't like this because it wasn't, it was a key figure in Turkish media, you know, like Dan rather type level of, of figure.

1:14:23

I'm not radical at all.

1:14:26

And I was flabbergasted by how good his questions were and how this was a long time ago after a prior book.

1:14:34

And when I came back, I asked Chomsky about it cause we're friends.

1:14:40

And he said, it's not surprising in the United States.

1:14:46

The need to, to, to be sure that powerful media figures are in line.

1:14:56

And that's, that's people on NBC and ABC who are, you know, TV, whatever you call them.

1:15:04

You know, the people on the screen in America, et cetera, et cetera, the need is so great to be sure that they don't step outside the norms, right?

1:15:16

During the Vietnam war. There isn't a single instance, not one instance of a main newspaper, not a radical one, but a main newspaper or main TV report or a main radio report that said U S invasion of Vietnam.

1:15:33

The phrase could not be ordered.

1:15:36

And the people didn't utter it.

1:15:39

Not because somebody was there to be sure that if they are, they were fired, they couldn't other it.

1:15:46

Cause they couldn't think the thought they literally couldn't think of the thought.

1:15:49

And so Noah's point was look in Turkey.

1:15:51

They don't have to do that. And this guy, this guy thinks he hasn't been socialized.

1:15:55

And so battered by the process of climbing the ladder and the Turkish media that he no longer can think those thoughts, but people in American media by and large are who rise to the top.

1:16:13

And, and that's why things like the majority report is so important.

1:16:19

I think we're doing a, we're doing okay around here, but I appreciate it.

1:16:24

Thank you very much. Thank you so much for coming. All right.

1:16:26

All right, folks, we're going to head into the fun half.

1:16:31

He doesn't realize we're so Washington, Comcast, Google money and Google and Comcast money.

1:16:38

I didn't want to say anything, but folks to your support that makes this show possible.

1:16:46

And of course the Google and Comcast money that we're drowning in Googling Comcast members here.

1:16:53

Okay? Yes. And it's, it is our members that make this possible.

1:16:57

You can become a member [email protected].

1:16:58

Don't

1:16:58

forget

1:16:58

majority

1:16:58

live

1:16:58

January

1:17:07

six. Teenth the big lie you can go to majority, live.com.

1:17:13

Get your tickets better.

1:17:15

Do it quick. We're breaking up families around here, broken family.

1:17:22

Why'd you folks break up because of the majority report, right?

1:17:25

Because the majority live show.

1:17:27

Check that out.

1:17:30

Also. Don't forget. We've got some merch. If you want to buy a Christmas present shop dot majority report, radio.com, where I guess a late Hanukkah present.

1:17:38

You don't have to get it quick. You can put it.

1:17:40

You could have put a picture of it that sometimes either a birthday present or a birthday present Matt what's happening in the Matt Lakin media universe.

1:17:48

Yeah, we got Paul Prescott. Who's a Jacobin contributor.

1:17:50

Now he's writing for the eighth state Senate district in Pennsylvania.

1:17:54

We're going to be talking to him about labor and progressive organizing as well as why democratic voters shouldn't accept pro-charter school candidates and how we can organize for green jobs.

1:18:07

So that's tonight patrion.com.

1:18:08

So I slipped reckoning ticket. The post-game Folks.

1:18:12

See you in the fun house, 6 46, 2 5, 7 39 20.

1:18:18

We'll be taking your calls and getting your I AM's, which you can get.

1:18:21

You can IMS through our [email protected].

1:18:23

So you in the fun half Jamie and I may have a disagreement.

1:18:36

Yeah. You can't just say whatever you want about people.

1:18:38

Just because you're rich. I have an absolute right to mock them on YouTube.

1:18:42

He's up there? Buggy whipping, like he's the boss.

1:18:44

I am not your employer. You don't.

1:18:46

I'm tired of the negativity. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.

1:18:50

You're nervous. You're a little bit upset. You're riled up yet. Maybe you should rethink your defensive that you fucking idiots.

1:18:55

We're just going to get rid of you.

1:18:56

All right. But dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, you want to smoke this joint?

1:19:03

Yes. Do you feel like you are a dinosaur shit?

1:19:12

Exactly. I'm happy now the win-win it's a win, win, win.

1:19:16

Now listen to me.

1:19:18

2, 3, 4, 5 times 8, 4 7, 9 0 6, 5 0 1 4 5, 7 38 56, 27, 1 half 5, 8, 3 0.9 billion.

1:19:32

He's the ultimate master.

1:19:35

Don't you see? Why don't you get a real job instead of everybody's taking their dumb juice today.

1:19:42

Sammy dance, dance, dance, Paul, I had my first post-coital seat with a woman.

1:19:55

I'm hoping that more moves to my repertoire.

1:19:57

All I have is the dip in the swirl.

1:19:59

Fine. We can double dip. Yes. This is a perfect moment.

1:20:03

No, wait, what you make under a million dollars a year.

1:20:06

You're not paying use me. Fuck you.

1:20:08

You fucking liberal Elise. I think you belong in jail for saying that you're a horrible despicable person.

1:20:16

All right. Got to take a quick break. I want to take a moment to talk to some of the libertarians out there.

1:20:22

Take whatever vehicle you want to drive to the library.

1:20:26

What you're talking about is jibber Jabber.

1:20:29

Classic. I'm feeling more chill already.

1:20:32

Donald Trump can kiss all of our acids.

1:20:39

Hey Sam. Hey Andy, are you guys ready?

1:20:43

Such an idiot.

1:20:56

No. Wow. Wow.

1:20:57

That's weird. Unbelievable.

1:21:01

This guy's got a really good horse.

1:21:08

Ooh. Wow.

1:21:13

Damn. I gotta get on. No worries. I want to just flesh this out a little bit.

1:21:16

I mean, look, it's a free speech issue.

1:21:18

If you don't like me. Shut up.

1:21:22

Thank you for calling into the majority report.

1:21:24

Sam will be with you shortly.

1:21:27

Folks you have exactly 12 hours from this very moment that I am you have exactly twelve hours from this very moment that I speaking. It is now 11:59 It is now eleven fifty nine AM AM. On December 1st, you have exactly 12 hours from the moment that I am saying this to head over to sunset lake Sabba day.com and get 30 to 60% off all Saturday [email protected] but more importantly, well, I, I think so, anyways, not only is it the biggest sale of the year that they're having sunset lakes every day, and the majority report are teaming up to turn what is in the wake of the America's most consumer holiday into a fundraising opportunity for a great on December first. You have exactly twelve hours from the moment that I am saying this 2729 head over to sunset lake seveday dot com. And get thirty to sixty percent off all Saturday products at sunset lake sveday dot com. But more importantly, well, III think so anyways. Not only is this the biggest sale of the year that they're having? Sets out lakes everyday and the majority report are teaming up to turn what is in the wake of the America's most Sumerus holiday into a fundraising opportunity for a great organization. We're talking about give well dot or excuse me. Give directly dot org. For every for every ten percent I'm 10%. I'm For ten percent of every sale at sunset lake sebedday dot com for sorry. [email protected] for the next 12 the next twelve hours only twelve hours left. You get left. You get 30 to 60% off and he ordered that you get with a hundred, over a hundred dollars will receive a free jar of sunset lake Saturday day thirty to sixty percent off Any order that you get with a hundred over a hundred dollars will receive a free jar of sunset lakes at a bad day. Gummies. It's a gummies. It's a $40 forty dollar value. There's value. There's no promo code necessary, but here's the no promo code necessary, but here's the deal. Ten percent deal. 10% of their proceeds will go to give of their proceeds will go to give directly dot org, and the majority will match it. This is it. This is an organization that is fights poverty, internationally, extreme poverty by sending cash directly to people living in extreme poverty and allowing them to choose for an organization that is fights poverty, internationally, extreme poverty, by sending cash directly to people living in extreme poverty and allowing them to choose for themselves what is themselves. What is the most efficient way for them to deploy this the most efficient way for them to deploy this money. Like I said, money? Like I said, the majority part is going to match that 10% donation as you know, sunset lake seven day ma majority employee owned business it's been has donated more than $16,000 this year to anti-drug war organizations, to animal shelters, to union strike funds, conservation efforts, food pantries, and refugee resettlement the majority part's gonna match that ten percent donation. As you know, Sunset Lakes seven day, majority employee owned business, been it has donated more than sixteen thousand dollars this year to anti drug war organizations, to animal shelters, to union strike funds, efforts, food pantries, and refugee resettlement organizations. You know organizations. You know, the products are the products are amazing, The reason why I'm so bright eyed and bushy tailed today because the sunset lake, Sabadell, Take sure I took last night that let me sleep. Visit sunset lake seven eight dot com. Take advantage of these discounts and help the majority of port raise money for great organization organization. The sale ends tonight Wednesday night, December 1st at ends 2729, Wednesday night, December first, at midnight. Also, got this email today, and I'm not sure how to react to it, frankly. Amanda writes in my life partners trying to bypass my fortieth 2729 see you in Boston in January. This is just getting out of hand. She's talking about the big live Mhmm. -- January sixteenth in Boston at the Wilburger Theatre. January sixteenth. We already announced that John Benjamin and Larry Murphy will be there. She writes, this is just getting out of hand. Yes, he's an early fan, a large contribution member, but it's my damn birthday. Because of COVID, we didn't celebrate his fortieth or our twenty year Aiversary for countless other celebrations that four kids demand. Now here we are ready to celebrate. I turned forty on January fourteen, I decided months ago to run my first marathon in Bermuda. Fortunately, that was canceled. And we are now looking for an alternative to celebrate Caribbean all-inclusive adults we are now looking for an alternative to celebrate. Caribbean, all inclusive adults only. Yes, please, but no. It's a constant effort to redirect our celebrations to Boston, which we live forty five minutes from. Doesn't matter. He's playing or improv asylum is back in action. He only keeps bringing it up because of your show playing live. I'm over it. I either invite him to watch your show on another weekend or I'm canceling your subscription. This is beginning to be just too much. And then she rides best regards. Well, thank you for that. Yeah. bookNo. And she says Mike's lover, not taking second to you. Listen, Mike, I don't know what to tell you. This is our only time that we're gonna be in Boston. You guys are gonna have to work this out. But for other people who don't have this type of dilemma. Tickets are selling out very quickly. Head to majority live dot com. 2729 get your ticket for the big live on January sixteenth. Alright, Murphy. John Benjamin, are you there? We have one or two other guests to announce, which we will do later in this week, but head over there now. I don't know if there's any more mezzanine seats at all, but Balcony's great at the Wilbur theater. Alright. Speaking of a live show, let's begin ours now. It is Wednesday, December first two thousand twenty one. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning majority report. We report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Guan us canal in the Heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn USA on the program today, economist Michael Albert author of his latest, no bosses, a new economy for a better broadcasting live. Steps from the industrially ravaged Golanus canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA, On the program today, economist Michael Albertto, of his latest no bosses, a new economy, for a better world. Meanwhile, the supreme court holds oral arguments. In a Mississippi case that seeks to overturn Roe v Wade. Meanwhile, the Republicans may shut down the government over vaccine mandates. 2729 kills three, injuries eight at a Michigan school shooting. Chris Cuomo suspended indefinitely for plotting with his brother scraped the former governor of New York to smear sexual harassment accusers. Meanwhile, Mark Meadows agrees to cooperate with the January sixth investigation. And has new revelations in his book that detail book. That detail how Trump knew he had COVID during his presidential Trump knew he had COVID during its presidential debate. Meanwhile, US has looked so good. That felt fine. US looks to tough and COVID testing requirements for travelers as it becomes clear that Omicron. Omicron. There's a cat already out of the bag. While FDA panel half heartedly endorses the Merck COVID pill, doctor Oz He of very dubious medical claims running for senate in Pennsylvania as a Republican. Meanwhile, Dickens' wins in Atlanta, in a BLM organizer, Social Democrat, or Democratic socialist, I should say, wins the mayor in a large Atlanta suburb. Left, this is Roman Castro, wins in Honduras' presidential election. That is now official. And lastly, a major anti vaccine Christian broadcaster Marcus Lam. Dies at age sixty four of COVID. All this and more On today's majority report, thanks for joining us ladies and gentlemen. Glad you can make it. Here as always, Emma Vigland. Hello, Emma. Hello, Sam. Happy hump day. Oh, there you go. I always forget. I honestly, I always forget. I forget the both that it's that it's the hump day and that we call it, hump day. Right. Well, I mean, get used to it. No. I'm used to it. I just just forget. Okay. Wow. Still reeling from that email that we received where it's really I'm I feel we're responsible for breaking up a marriage potentially. I mean, it seems like it or or losing a subscriber. I mean, it IIII probably go with that first. Right. Right? But it it's it remains Yeah. It's kind of fifty fifty. I don't know. 2729 getting wind of what like John Benjamin Light Murphy might be up to 2729 the show. And I don't it may be worth, like, maybe worth just sort of risking it for that guy. But we'll see. I mean, while the government is scheduled to shut down in two days, on Friday, if there is not a continuing resolution passed, there doesn't seem to be any likelihood of a full year budget being passed, of course. There are negotiations ongoing about passing a continuing resolution, but apparently, There are major elements of the Republican Party that are attempting to shut the government down and leverage the idea of vaccine mandates. There's another federal judge. This one, I think, was in what, Missouri. It was in Mississippi. West Louisiana. Louisiana. Federal judge. Which has enjoined the vaccine mandates in their circuit as well. It was after the Missouri judge yesterday did the same. The part of like a fourteenth state lawsuit about the healthcare worker vaccine mandate? Yeah, it's absurd to want your healthcare workers to have vaccination against COVID. There's data coming out of Israel. It's very early, so you got to take this with a grain of salt, but 2729 there is data coming out of Israel which shows that the vaccine does inhibit OMACRONNA, at the very least, in terms of how serious getting infected with that variant is, I don't know that there's much you can you can take from it. It's better than early data showing the opposite. That's the only thing I can tell you. Not conclusive at this point. We're gonna need a couple more weeks to find out exactly just how effective the vaccine is, but we know that it's certainly effective against the delta variant both in terms of catching it. And in and and and the implications of it. Is it one hundred percent effective? No. Is it ninety percent effective? No. Sixty, seventy percent? Maybe a little more? Yes. Meanwhile, in DC, the Republican Party is it's it's I I don't even know what to to say about with them going back and forth with each other. You know, it's it's really just sort of like the the horrible people versus the marginally more horrible people. But So real housewives of DC. Exactly. However, there are implications for when people like Lauren Albertto. But, really, I mean, this is the Republican Party's been at this for a long time. I mean, there's nothing new. They have set the table and have defined really, I mean, the, you know, whether it's AOC, but in this instance, it's Ilhan Omar. Have set the table to demonize, frankly, women of color who are and and certainly women who are Muslims in the Democratic Party. And after Lauren Barber's most recent attack on Ilhan Omar as being part of the g hod squad. Apparently, there's some demarkation. And Here's Elhan Omar at a press conference explaining what those implications are. Now we should say, warning, this is gonna be a little bit disturbing because she got a voicemail. There's some language here. I'm going to play you a voicemail that we received hours after I got off the phone with representative Albertto she posted her video. We see as soon as you're bitch. We know you're up 2729, girl, about 2729 country. Don't worry, honey, that will love the opportunity 2729 take you off the faces. I can learn. Can't hear that you fucking fucking piece of shit. You know what you are? You're a fucking freighter. You will not live much longer, bitch. I can almost guaranteed that these are people are rising up, and you will be tried for a military try unit. And you will be found guilty. For those of you who did not hear it very well, let me meet you. What the voicemail says. We see you sand and word bitch, We know what you are up to. You are all about taking over our country. Don't worry, There is plenty that would love the opportunity to take you off the face of this epping earth. Come get it. But you are effing Muslim peace of shit. You are jihadists. We know what you are. You are effing trader. And you will not live any longer. Condemning this should not be a partisan issue. This is about our basic humanity. And fundamental rights of religious freedom enshrined in our constitution. You know what's upsetting though is that it's not really a part of an issue right now because Steny Hoyer said to Axias yesterday that they're still just, quote, considering. Sanctioning. Right. I mean, it's it's it's so They were quicker to sanction Ilhan Omar for saying that the United States and Israel had committed war crimes in passing in one sentence in a statement than they have been likely. I mean, not to obscure who the real villains are here, which are the Republicans. But the Democratic leadership in way that they tried to capitalize on villainizing ill honk on have created this environment, and they are complicit in in many ways. And they're also complicit in not showing the American public the the seriousness of this type stuff. I mean, I don't understand how they think from a political standpoint. They're going to achieve anything with January sixth. If the the one of the problems of January sixth, one of the sort of the predicate of why it was so problematic was because you've got people like this who are in that crowd. And if you're real han Omar and you're getting these type of hats. You you have reason to to fear for your life in that instance. Of course. Yeah. I think it's totally justified. People were feared for the life. I think it was gross. Of people They made fun of AOC. Yeah. They made fun of AOC. Like, this is the type people that they have to worry about. Exactly. And you cannot communicate to the American public that there was any that you're taking this seriously. If you don't take it seriously, They're not going to the American public is not going to get out ahead of the Democratic leadership in responding to this. It's just an absurd. It is it 2729 I mean, it's it's shocking that they're not moving much quicker on this. AND EVENTUALLY, HOPEFY THEY WILL. WHAT I MEAN IS? AND NOT JUST NOT. AS YOU SAY, TYING IT DIRECTLY TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, THEY KEEP DOING THESE LIKE INDIVIDUAL Gosar, how could you tweet out that video? And in the proceedings of censoring Gosar, that's when the initial Jeet Hodge Squad comment was made eat. And then round and round it goes. I'm sure there will be another Republican that backs up Albertto here who who then gets, like, springboarded into some fundraising apparatus by having her back. This is the whole of the Republican Party. And so, like, focusing on the interpersonal drama between the call that Albertto made to Omar, it doesn't disturb us 2729 the entire thing that you're saying here. Right? Which is this is the Republican base. There's a reason this resonates with people. And so the Democrats never get out in front of this, and then they're gonna, you know, fall in twenty twenty four and wonder what happened. IIII yeah. I mean, I yeah. I I couldn't agree more. Disgusting. It's like Scabby gift cards Was like 500 like, five hundred years ago. Yeah, it really is amazing. And and they lost their shit when Sarah Haukeby Sanders was mildly heckled at restoration front. Yeah. Give me a break. Alright. We got some sponsors before we get to Michael. Albertto. Albert. 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That's shopify dot com slash majority. And last night, I've been eyeing a new dining room table, not a dining room table. You know, like, like where you have you know, like a like where you have dinner. Yeah. My table is now twenty five years old. Okay. And the laminates coming off it. I decided it's time. 2729. Yup. I'm looking at a nice table over at joy I'm looking at a nice table over at bird. I've been walking by the store over here, actually, but joy, birds, selection, joy, birds, selection of customizable furniture and modern home been walking by the store over here, actually. But Joybird's so much Oh, I know. Joybird's selection of customizable furniture and modern home decor. Lets you bring your unique style into your you bring your unique style into your space. 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Do we have them? Oh, I can hear you. There you go. Michael, welcome to the program. I'm here with Emma Vigland. Thank you very much, having me. Thanks so much for coming. And so let's this is, you know, I think you some of some of this might be you might have to explain some of the the language. This is, you know, this is I don't know how well versed everyone is this program with some of the terms here. But this is essentially your blueprint from moving from the type of structure that we have with our economy now to one that is far more participatory, which you call Paragon. What what is Paragon? Well, first, the word just stands for participatory economy. So it's just shorthand for that. Oh. It's an alternative economic model, I suppose you could call it, or vision, which means to be an alternative to both what we indoor here capitalism and what used to call itself twentieth century socialism. And it has it's it's not really a blueprint. It it it's more like a scaffold. It is five key elements, which the argument says are needed if a new economy is gonna fulfill the values and the aspirations we have. But a great many of the details will emerge from practice and from experience. So a scaffold on which details develop as we go along. If you want, I can I can, you know, describe the the features? Yeah. I I wanna get to the features, but I first wanna get to the undergirding values that that set the table for this that you go through. I mean, you go through what you call it just in the first chapter alone values for a better I mean, you go through what you call just in the first chapter alone values for a better world. What are the values that this this scaffolding hopes to, I guess, promote. Promote exactly or make the real implement. Sure. Well, people have to people make decisions. In any economy, there are decisions to be made. So the value regarding that that we put forward is called self management. And the idea is that people should have a saying decisions Roughly in proportion to the degree that they're affected by them. So that means that everybody is participating in decision making and with an influence proportionate to the impact on them. A second value that that we think makes sense is that people interact in economies. And so what's our value for people alienating, and the answer is solidarity, which is basically just means that people that the economy should promote instead of antisocial instead of people getting ahead at the expense of others, a degree of solidarity. It should promote empathy. It should create a context in which we have civilized relations instead of what all too often we do have. Another value bears upon the distribution of stuff. How much income do you get? Income is just a claim on the social product. So how much of what society produces are you entitled to? And the usual answer to that question is that you can get income for the property that you own. We rule that out as having absolutely nothing to do with anything ethically valuable or from the point of view of incentives. Another answer is often that you get income. What you can take basically, for bargaining power. If you have more bargaining power, you get more income. That's very typical in our own society. Another version is that you get income for what you contribute to the social product, not what your own thing, you know you know, what you own contributes, but what you buy your own activity contribute. And that one has a lot of of supporters who are critical of capitalism, of leftist supporters, I don't support it. I don't believe that if you're born, for example, with, you know, incredible capacities, Adele's voice, Chomsky's brain, whatever, you should have showered on top of luck in the genetic lottery, great amount of income. Don't see any reason for that. There's no incentive reason and there's no ethical reason, I believe. So the with the value that's put forward is equitable demarkation, and what it means is that we think people should be rewarded or remunerated for how long they work, for how hard they work, for the onerousness of the conditions under which they work if they're doing socially valued labor. So you're not rewarded for wasting your time or wasting resource. Isn't such. You're you're rewarded for doing things that are socially valued, but you're rewarded for duration intensity and onerousness. And you know, an overarching value, which somehow, which in in some sense is necessary for those or is made possible by those is classlessness. And the idea there is that the economy shouldn't demarcate constituency, sectors of the demarkation, such that some dominate others, such that for example, in our own society, the own in class roughly more than two percent dominates everything. Or in the thing called called twentieth century socialism such that a larger class, about twenty percent who monopolize empowering circumstances, dominate eighty percent who whose circumstances are basically disempowering. That's ruled out also if you wanna have classlessness. this. Okay. Alright. So let me just let me just go back over that a a little bit just so that what you'll need folks can digest it because there's -- you're essentially -- you've been now -- like you've been outlining, you know, sort of circumstances as they exist now and some alternates and then the the alternate that you guys that are are promoting here, we should just be clear on that. So and and I wanna go back through these as as as we walk through the Let's start with the last one first. So I think everyone understands right now that we do have a situation where we have AAA concert concentration of wealth and and and a concentration of power within the context of our economy. And and also to some extent and and also similarly with our politics, and and they're not really that distinct of of an animal as it were. And you're also saying that in the context of of socialism, as it has been, I guess, practiced up to this point or at least and theorized that having a, you know, workers councils, for instance, are also problematic because your to trading the power instead of in one or two percent of people, maybe in twenty percent of the people. I mean, roughly speaking. right? Yeah. then Okay. But there's a clear cut reason for But but there's a clear cut reason for that. In other words, it's not that workers' council caused that. It's that the decisionmaking labor causes that. So if you divide up every every economy is always gonna have jobs. K? And the job is a collection of basically tasks. Okay? So If you divide up tasks so that about a fifth of the workforce is doing all of the tasks which convey demarkation, which gives you access to daily decision making, which increases your confidence and your verbal skills and your connections to others and so on, which is empowering. And four fifths do work, do tasks, do work that's composed of tasks, which are disempowering which literally reduce the information at your disposal, which literally reduce confidence, reduce ties and connections to others. Separate you from access to decision making and so on. Then the the former group, even if you have democracy, So let's say you have workers councils, and let's say you have democracy in them. Or you even try for self management in them. Right? It doesn't matter in one sense that old vision of labor, and this is how institutions work, that old vision of labor. By its very logic, by its structure, by its implications for the people in the economy subverts your desire to be democratic. It subverts your desire for self management. And twenty percent start establishing and and setting the agendas. Twenty percent start doing all the ag arguing about, you know, the issues and and deliberating over them. And eighty percent are bystanders, and eventually, they don't even go to the meetings, and that's what happens in those circumstances. It should sound familiar for our political elections, but that's a different issue. Yeah. And I mean, I think, like but but any you know, if you belong to a co op, the supermarket, you can you can sort of see the similar dynamic that's going on there. You know, if that there's a certain, and I I guess, inevitability is the argument that that is going to happen. Howard Bauchner: But 2729 see, I don't think it's inevitable at all. Can I tell you a little story? Under that Yeah. That is that is the that's the impression. Yes. I agree. Okay. And he's yeah. I don't know how much time we have. I'd I'd like to tell you, we time. A lot of time. Okay. Good. So, I mean, Argentina twenty years ago, and there was an economic crisis. And the economy was great you know, it was in disarray and many workplaces were failing. And the owners left and by and large so did the what I want so did the members of that twenty percent? I called out the coordinator class. So so did the coordinator class. Workers took over workers instituted what you described, workers councils. They instituted democracy for decision making. They leveled the wages. Right? And so I'm in a room with about fifty representatives of workplaces who have done this, and it's about six months, seven months after they've done it, and I'm there to get a talk. And and we're going around the room at the beginning. And at the beginning, everybody's very excited and, you know, enlivant by the fact that they're in a room with people like themselves and they can you know, the the the who have they haven't met because it's gonna because because they're from around Argentina. So we start going around the road and the mood begins to change as people describe where they're coming from and where they're at. And by the time we get to the seventh person, and it was literally the seventh person because this is imprinted in my mind. The person says, I thought I would never say anything like this. I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but maybe Margaret Thatcher was right. Maybe there is no alternative. We took over. We have our councils. We we implemented democracy. We made the wages fair, and now all the old crap. All the old crap is coming back, I don't know. Right? That's what said. And so I and and at this point, I'm not exaggerating here. There were some people in the room who were sort of crying. Because their experience was similar. And so we stopped. And I said, And that what you mean is the alienation and the the sense of indignity and the and you know, the lack of control was all coming back. Yes. And I said, and you feel that's because of human nature. A number of them nodded, and he said yes. And I said, I wanna ask you a question. When you took over, and you instituted democracy and you leveled the wages. Did you change the definition of the jobs at all? And first, he didn't understand the question. And I said, well, did you change the way the jobs were defined? What people were doing? They said, of course not. You know, we have to get the work done. We have to we have to do what we're here to do in our various workplaces. And I said, well, I don't think it was human nature 2729 caused the problem. I think it was that it maintained the old division of labor. And the old division of labor by its very nature, right, sort of impose the subsequent results. And so we talked about it. And I do think that's the case. I do think that that that old division of labor caused the people who took the jobs from that were before, they had powered people's jobs. We're empowered. And one last element of this, I'm in a factory again, Argentina, same time, it's a glass factory and I'm talking to a woman and she's now the chief financial officer, so to speak of this glass And one last element of this. I'm in a factory. Again, Alienating, same time. It's a glass factory, and I'm talking to a woman. And she's now the chief financial officer, so to speak, of this glass factory. And I asked, what were you doing before? Were you doing before the, you know, the owner left and you took over? She says I was working at, and she tells me the the open furnace that she was working at. It was just incredible. And she described what she was doing. I probably would have lasted a day. Right? And she's doing a day in and day out for years. And But now she was doing this empowered job. So I said, well, what was the hardest thing to learn? In this in this switch. Right? And she didn't wanna tell me. She was a little embarrassed, I think. I don't know. And so I said, what was it? Was it to learn accounting concepts? No. Was it to learn how to use the computer? No. Was it to learn how to use spreadsheets? No. And I think I came up with one or two other things to ask her, and then I just gave up. And I said, well, please. You gotta tell me. And she said, well, first, I had to learn read. Yeah. So there's, so that's one answer to the question of, are people not doing empowering things because they're incapable of it or is it a So there's an so that's one answer to the question of are people not doing empowering things because they're incapable of it? Or is it a social The other way I answer the question is I say think back fifty or sixty years. Imagine a big stadium in United States. Imagine all the surgeons in the United States are in that stadium. Look around, what do you see? And everybody tells me, I see white men in the and I say, so you don't see that many women. You see very few women. Yes. She very few blacks. Yes. And I say, what was the explanation? And they say, the demarkation. Well, all the surgeons would tell you that it's because the women and the blacks couldn't do it. And I said, what would a lot of the women in the box outside the stadium say? And I said, well, a lot of them would have said the same thing. In a in a, you know, not happily, but they might have said the same thing. And I said, and could that have been the explanation? In other words, if it was true that women were incapable of doing empowering things from some genetic reason, or black, red, Would it explain the situation answer? Yes, it would. But it wasn't the case. It wasn't true. And everybody knows it. And now everybody knows it. And it's exactly the same thing in And it's exactly the same thing. Working class people are denied and have crushed just like women in blacks, have crushed the capacities that that need to be evidenced and and welcomed in order for people to participate forward? In, in that instance, in, in in that instance in in Argentina, I mean, because I because it's it's it's much clearer like, you know, what would happen if everyone's was emancipated in terms of pursuing what they want in that stadium with surgeons. You'd have a far greater sort of diversity of who's who's a surgeon in that instance. But in those in those companies in Argentina, like, what does that look like in terms of and I understand the concept of You are you're working with a structure of the division of labor, which is a which has been designed in many respects. To disempower people so that so that the the managerial structure can also be employed. But what would that look But what would that look like? Like, what is if you're slicing up the the the labor in a different way. Right. Does every one of those workers who are feeling disempowered? Are they doing different tasks? Or how does that how is the new structure imposed if it is like, what generates that? Well, there's two two parts to this question, I think. Both very good. One part is, well, what's the end result? What does it look like to have a workplace, which is classless, basically. That's what we're asking. Right? So that's one. And then the second question, which is actually much harder is, well, what's the transition? What is it? How do you get from where we are to there? But until you have there, in there. You you can't really ask the transition question very sensibly, I don't think. So well, let me just let me You could you could the end could be a function of the process versus It is. Okay. So it is very much because it's the process. That is the process of doing what, of opposing current economics, of opposing capitalism, of trying for a new system. So that's the process we're talking about. If that process is blind to the possibility or even the even seeing that there could be a class that is not owners, that is the new ruling class, new boss in place of the old boss. If it's blind to that, If it says, look, there's only workers and and owners. And so if we get rid of owners, we win. Then then it's almost inexorable. I think that when you get rid of owners, you'll get the new boss in place of the old boss. But suppose instead, you're sensitive to this possibility, And so you think that well, how do you solve it? You you solve it by having jobs, each of which is comparably empowering to the rest. And what does that mean? It doesn't mean everybody does everything. That's ridiculous. Okay? So it doesn't mean that. But it does mean, I don't know, people like to use the hospital as an example, I guess, because everybody's been in one and one time or another. So It does mean that people don't only do surgery, and people don't only clean bedpans. Instead, people do a mix of things. Can you do this overnight? No. But over time, can you attain a situation where your workforce is by its daily activities, all prepared to be confident enough and aware enough and have enough information to participate effectively in decision making and stay at eighty percent going home. We call that balanced job complex And that's one institutional feature of this thing called participatory economics. How do you obtain that. I mean, I'm just thinking about I mean, obviously, not everybody is capable of doing surgery. That's fine. Any other things in the hospital that need to be done, that can be empowering besides the surgery. But how do you how is the how is that well, I mean, is it a signed? I mean, or is it developed from, You know, know, over? Yeah. I mean, like, you know, it's it's one thing 2729. I mean, and then this is, you know, sort of the the difficulty here is the limited imagination that we have because we're we're coming out of this this type of of of system. Like, is it every worker sort of says, like, here's five choices for me. I'm going to do this I'm gonna do this one, this one, that one, or how does work? it work? No. Imagine a work plus. So in the current version of that workplace, you could almost ask the same question. That is, in the current version of that workplace, you apply for a job. right? That's what you do, and you get hired and you have the That's what you do. And you you get hired when you have the job. Now, the fact is you can't apply for a job that is a balanced job. There's no such thing in the workplace. Each and every job is either on the coordinator class side powered or on the working class side disempowered. So what's the difference? The difference is that in a new workplace, the jobs that you apply for are all balanced. Right? So in a and and who sets who do who divides up the tasks into the jobs, the workers council. The the answer to every question, we can short circuit it. The answer to every question about who decides What's going on in the workplace? Is the workers' council? Of course, in context of the desires of the whole demarkation. But it's basically the workers' council. So the workers council is deciding. So I was in a workplace called South End Press where basically what we did. And this was even before Participants socioeconomic was well defined. Right? But we sat around and we realized if you had you know, somebody who was in charge of the finances and somebody who had the best contacts with the authors, they'd run the show. Whatever else you did. Even if they didn't own the the the business. Right? Because we weren't we were nonprofit. Nobody's gonna own it. So we decided that we had to figure out a way to apportion the tests in South End Press so that they would not cause even against our will somebody to be elevated to dominance. It's a relatively small group. And so we we had everybody doing editorial work, and I took care of that part of the problem. We had everybody sharing in things like, you know, taking the mail, answering the phone, etcetera, etcetera. And we had people all doing a particular kind of work, like for instance, keeping the books or dealing with fulfillment. It's in other words, fulfilling orders for books, dealing with the design of things, dealing with promotions, so on. And to a certain extent that that would change over time. But but what we didn't have is, you know, people cleaning for other people ruling. It's not easy to do that inside capitalism. You have to have a whole lot of commitment to it, and you have to have You have to buck the pressure of the buck the pressure of banks that want, you know, to deal with the boss and so on and so forth, but you can do it. It's possible. But in a full, fully transformed society, and we haven't talked about other elements of this. But in a fully transformed becomes natural. Right now, you don't go into a workplace and apply for a job and ask how come it's not balanced. Every No one no one expects any such thing. Right? Right. In a participatory economy, you go into a work for a place and if if you were given a list of jobs and one of them was unbalanced, you would say what the hell is this? Well, then this essentially vision eliminate the managerial class that has emerged in the our iteration of global capitalism. Yeah. I call it the coordinator class. Okay. It was originally called, you're right. The professionalmanagerial class Barbara Aaron Reich and John Aaron Reich a long time ago. And that south end press, we publish their famous And at South End Press, we published their famous essay. And that's what got the ball rolling in some ways. It's you don't eliminate all the tasks. I mean, some of them you eliminate because they're disgusting and worthless. But tons of empowering tasks are necessary and essential. So you don't eliminate the So you don't eliminate the tasks. You just disperse them a little bit more than before. So that everybody has an empowering situation. And look at one immediate implication. Right now, with twenty percent doing empowering and eighty said during disempowering. What is the, what does the educational system has to what does the system has to do? Well, the the public school system, the school system literally has to graduate twenty percent who expect to be dominant. Right? And eighty percent who are prepared to take orders and endure boredom. And that's what school does for eighty percent of the students. It basically Alienating sorting process as opposed to a fully alienating process. Yes. And and and it isn't even it's a debilitating process. I mean, the idea that the school system is to educate It's not. It's not to educate the eighty percent. It's to deliver the eighty percent to the economy prepared to fit and that means prepared to take orders into a door boardroom. And what what are how far fields you wanna go, but after the sixth this became a very conscious policy. Well, in, in, in, in, how did it manifest itself as a, as a I'm And and and and how did it manifest itself as as a I'm happy to far field. Sure. Okay. After after the sixties, the other side, not my side, looked and said, good Lord, this was a horror show. And we have to figure out what happened and prevent it from happening. And they establish something called the Carnegie Commission. That basically was investigating I mean, it's not basically it was investigating to discern the causes of the sixties. And it wasn't entirely stupid. They came up with one that was quite smart, I think. They said, you know, I mean, it's hard to even voice it. It's so embarrassing. They said, we were over educating people. Right? We were creating a a set of people graduating from high school and entering college who expected have a life. And when they encountered the world outside, they were more or less horrified and alienated by it, and many of them did what we saw them do. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. It's not the whole story by any means, but there's a lot of truth to it. But regardless, of how true it was. The lesson that they took is that we should jack up the cost of higher education to keep, you know, the rattle out as no one would describe the the situation. Jack up the cost to keep the rattle out. And and much more, even more so, a a portion educational resource to communities in a manner which favored the communities whose family situation was favoring this kind of confidence and this kind of expectation. And they did it. And now in the United States. We have higher education. I mean, it's incredible. Graduate school education in the United States is still very good. I mean, at the better schools. Internationally, it's still very good. But there's an interesting which is that students who graduate from undergraduate education in the United States have a hard time dealing with it. And AAA growing proportion of the attendance at the better graduate programs in the United States is actually from overseas. And the reason for that is because so many people are stunted by education rather than flourishing. And even in the twenty percent, you have the problem of simultaneously giving people some tools and some confidence, but making sure that they that they're disinclined to use those tools and that confidence to challenge the system. So you want them to you know, be ready to try and socially climb, not be critics? Let's go through some of the other sort of, I guess, aspects of of both - of our economy that would change or that - let's start with with private ownership. And okay. And were you right. And but were you also defined that for us. Sure. Not I can't own my car. It wasn't doesn't right. It doesn't mean that you can't own the shirt that you're wearing. Of course, you own that. And it it is not the case that I, because I am an avowed advocate of participatory economics, could come into your house and take you sure. That's nonsense. What it means is society has stuff that is we can call it productive assets. It's the stuff with which society produces the social product. And so what is that? And what is that? Well, let's equipment, lots of equipment of various kinds, venues, like buildings, natural freemarkets, It's also the talents and the knowledge that have accumulated over, Jake and know, the technology. It's also that. So instead of having this stuff owned by Bezos and Company, who then use that ownership to dominate outcomes it to accrue, you know, gargantuan unheard of wealth. Instead of that, we think of that material that stuff as part of a commons, a productive commons. And that productive commons is there for society to use However, to use elements of that productive commons, you have to effectively I mean, we'd have to go further to do to do this but effectively you have to make a case that you're gonna use it tentatively. In other words, you're not gonna waste it. You're not gonna take natural resources and waste them. You're not gonna take equipment and factories and so on and waste them. And you're not going to produce gargantuan amounts that offset the value you're going to do socially valued Or and you're not gonna produce gargantuan amounts that offset the value. You're gonna do socially valued activity. And so what we've done is we've said, let's replace private ownership. Yeah. Bezos doesn't own anything anymore and so on. Let's replace that. Not with a simple idea that, you know, the state owns it. But with an idea that it's it's there 2729 be used when it is a responsible socially valuable use, and that would leave us having to explain, well, how do we determine that. But anyway, that's the criteria. And that's the replacement for private ownership. So how did how did that last time final thing. What remember you asked me about the values? Why how does the values relate to this? Well, when we were doing this, having settled on self management and solidarity and diversity and equity. We then simply ask ourselves, what's the implication of private ownership for those? And the answer is, It obliterates them. Right? It isn't just that it's a slight problem. Private ownership obliterates self management. It obliterates that liquidity. It obliterates solidarity, and it obliterates diversity. So so the answer, unless we can't come up with something, we should get rid of that. And so we came up with something. And and the thing that we came up with is common. That's not an unusual. That's not unique to participatory economics. What do we do with, let's say, just like restaurants? I mean, I'm just I'm trying to make this down like, a most practical a restaurant is a workplace. Right? If you don't have the owner, then who runs the workplace. Answer the workforce. Alright? So the workers' council in the workplace, and and there's an industry council, an industry of restaurants. But anyway, The the workers council in the workplace does it. If you don't get rid of the old division of labor, let's make it a big restaurant. So it's more interesting. If you don't get rid of a big of of the old division of labor, some of those workers are gonna dominate the rest. That does away with self management, equity, etcetera. So we don't want that. So we have to figure out an alternative to the division of labor and so that now we've got balanced jobs that we need if we're serious about our values. I mean, if we don't care, okay. But if we're serious, then you can't retain something that violates them so horrifically. So you get rid of that division of labor. So a a restaurant or an auto plant Albertto auto presumably. Anyway, restaurant or a auto plant. Same thing. Workers counsel probably work teams, decisionmaking so on. Making decisions via a self managed form of deliberation and tallying of preferences. Remuneration for how long you work, how hard you work, and the owners of the conditions under which you work, and that is a big change, a very big change. And then, you know, we we the most complicated part, I suppose, is the allocation system. Howard Bauchner: Well, yeah, I wanted to talk about that, necessarily. The the the there is and and ability. I mean, there's in your in this scenario, I guess, for this this aren't necessarily markets, but there are products. And and if I want a product that I have the ability to to make more money by not necessarily being super skilled at something, but in terms of, like, exerting a easily, relatively quantifiable more effort or less effort. Right? I mean, that's basically direct. We usually direct through that. I mean so Okay. First off, The main competitor to that, so to speak, is the view that you should get back in income that's that's correlated to, proportionate 2729, what you contribute to the social product. That's the main competitor. Most people who are progressive are not going to say, you know, you should get profits and they're not going to say you should get what you can Most people who are progressive are not gonna say, you know, you should get profits, and they're not gonna say you should get what you can take. You know, that's al capone's economy. That's what we have by Anyway, you're not gonna say that. So should you get back essentially what you contribute? And when some socialist tell me that they believe that, I say to them, do you think that you know, LeBron James or Steph Curry owns forty million dollars a year is overpaid or underpaid. And they, of course, say way overpaid. Absolutely. This is ridiculous. And I say, well, no, he's underpaid. By the norm that you just gave us their underpaid. Nike take some of it, the owner of the team take some of it, the TV networks take some of it. They're not getting all of it because they don't have enough bargaining power. They're getting what they have the power to take. And so that makes the person think somewhat. And then I would add, well, why should the bookNo James get such a high income or Steph Curry because they were born with these attributes. Right? Why why are we showering wealth upon them on top of that? And Yeah. These are values. You know, they're not it's not a mathematical proof. I don't like that notion. So we come to this notion that you get for duration intense lean on earthiness. And the way that looks I mean, you're asking really good questions and they take us steadily deeper. And so let's assume for a minute that in the economy as a whole, institutions say that our workplace should get a certain amount to a portion among its workforce as income. And income is just I mean, that's the same concept as now. Right? You get an income and that income, you use that to get stuff you want. From the social just like now. But you're not operating in a market because there aren't buyers and sellers who are competing. There aren't I don't know how much time you want to spend on markets. Markets are rejected because they produce antisociality. They violate solidarity. Because they literally produce, this is a harder argument, the coordinator classwork and class distinction. Even without owners. And because they misprice virtually everything, that is to say markets are supposed to be this fantastic vehicle for societies to sensibly allocate because they're evaluating things well. Well, the truth is, and no economists would deny this. This is an irony here. That markets don't evaluate things well. Freemarkets take into account the will of the buyer and the will of the seller. But they don't take into account, for example, if I'm buying a car, the people who are gonna breathe the fumes from the car. Externalities and Externalities ignored. They also by and large, they don't take into account, for example, unless I have the power to force it. My health as a worker. Right? It's irrelevant. Right? bookNo that that only comes into play if a union can force it into play. So it's power, not attention to it. Anyway, the point is that if we say that the allocation system, not markets. Right? Can tell your factory, the three of us and a bunch of other people, that your factory is entitled to a certain amount. What's that amount gonna be? It's going to be that the number of people times the duration intensity and onerousness for each doing socially valued labor. Okay. So let me ask me ask it. So then, one last step. Then inside the workplace, The Workers Council is gonna apportion that among the workforce. Howard Bauchner: Okay. Howard Bauchner: Howard Bauchner: Howard Bauchner: 2729: Howard Bauchner: Howard Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: Bauchner: B the LeBron example. Okay. In that situation, the idea is that and just to be clear, LeBron's getting I don't know how much he gets paid. Thirty million dollars a month. Listen. Let's just say million. Let's just say whatever it's 30 and $40 million a year, but he actually generates, let's say a hundred million dollars worth of, of, of, of, of, of money by, you know, everybody tuning in and going to the games and this and just say whatever. It's thirty, forty million dollars a year. But he actually generates, let's say, a hundred million dollars worth of of of of of of of money by, you know, everybody tuning and going to the games, and it's a national champion. And he doesn't get but he doesn't get that other seventy million that goes to the owners, that goes to the TV people, that goes to other people who are basically skimming off of that because, you know, on some It's also, like, almost impossible to quantify if he's bringing in that money and the other player or not. We know he necessarily has to be bringing in more than he's getting. Otherwise, there wouldn't be an owner. They wouldn't be doing it. They're they're all trying to get their cut. Okay. So whatever that figure is, but I'm just trying to say so in in this new economy, we would basically look at, like, he's playing sixty minutes, a hundred times a year. He's going to practice this amount. And we're going to allocate based on that number. Whatever There's a formula There's a little more But he's also gonna have a balanced job complex. Okay. And he's also he's gonna be he's not only gonna be playing, he's also gonna be, like, you know, making sure that the the the arena is clean or whatever it is, everybody's getting a whole piece of that. And it's how many hours you put in. And, and, and there'll be a number, but how is it and and and there'll be a number. But how is it determined? So and and and if I put in more hours, then I'm gonna go get a car or I'm gonna get two cars because my family wants two cars as opposed to we want a bigger house or we want not more close. But how do how does society organize? If there's no markets there, how does society say this is the value that we're gonna allocate to a basketball team or this is value that we're gonna allocate to car production So there may be five or ten or a hundred different car companies, and they're all gonna put out cars. But how how do you find that equilibrium if there is no market. Can I can ask you one question? Do you have any economics background? I don't. They're asking better questions than ninety percent of economists would ask. And I'm not just saying that for you. It's true. Okay? I mean, if you you're asking straightforward Alright. So the answer to that question is you have to have an allocation system. Right? And an allocation system is something which by some fashion, right, accumulates information from consumers and producers. And generates what the economy is going to do, how much of this and that is gonna be produced and where it's gonna go, and simultaneously prices things. Markets do it by competition. And get the prices wrong, but they do get prices. And it does function. There's no point denying that. Right? Functions. Sexual planning does it by essentially the following. It's as if you send a questionnaire to everybody and you get back some answers. You look at those, you send another questionnaire, you get back some answers, you send orders, and you get back obedience. Okay. That's the that's the model of central planning. Participants planning doesn't have a center like that. So what is it? Well, we said we have workers councils, and we also have consumer When we said we have workers councils, And we also have consumer councils. So you're in your household as a consumer, but you're also in a neighborhood and there's consumer council because lot of consumption is collective. And then that then there's Like, there's a of workers councils up to an industry there's a demarkation of consumers' councils up to a county or a state or whatever. Because a lot of consumption is collective. In our society, most collective consumption, we don't even know what that it's happening. Right? We have no say not whatsoever in a participatory economy do. do. Okay. What's going on? What allocation then is, it has to be some kind of a dialogue between workers and consumers, some kind of a conversation. In which workers are basically looking at their situation and saying what they wanna do. Consumers are basically bookNo at their situation, this includes sort of an estimate of what you're gonna what's gonna be your income for the year because you you know how much you wanna work, etcetera. So they're looking at their situation and essentially seeing what they want to consume. This information has to be interact. Right. So each side has to hit here from the other. And when it hears from the other, it has to modify what it's requesting. And what we want what we hope for is it's called an iterative procedure, is a round of such interactions in which you arrive at a plant. You arrive at a level of of of synchrony between consumption and production that is doable and that you can proceed with. And you arrive at prices valuations that are taken to account the full individual social and ecological costs and benefits. This is ideal. And so if you can do that and And then, you know, the remuneration is important because the remuneration affects how that occurs. But the the case is that this process with a a few jobs, right, that facilitate it, processing the information so it's readily accessible. Delivering what are called indicative prices, that's guesses as to what the final price will be. Right? So in the process, you're hearing indicative prices that represent where we're at in the iterations. right? And then you're reacting to And then you're reacting to those, and those prices are getting closer and closer to actual true social costs and benefits. And the demands and supplies are getting closer and closer to each other. And with Slack and so on, you arrive at a plan. And So the question becomes, is this possible? A long time ago, actually, around women, Robin and I, who with whom initially this was sort of worked out. We're doing it some years earlier. A guy named Alex Nov. Who was a socialist, wrote a bookNo. And in the book, he said, look, there's markets, there's central and that's it. There's nothing else. That's the way the cookie crumbles. And so you either choose one, you choose the other, you choose both. And what we were saying is if that's the way the cookie crumbles, we're in hot water. Because those allocation systems both subvert the values we hold dear and produce outcomes of the sort that you see in the United States and you saw in the old Soviet Union. union. So we, we thought, well, let's not take it as gospel because this guy says it is proof was So we we thought, well, let's not take it as gospel because this this guy says it. His proof was nothing. His proof was basically I said so. I mean I mean, literally, even though I can read it for yourself. Right? There's no real proof of it. And so we sort of felt like Why why is it impossible to have not an individual buy on seller being oblivious to everything else competing, or a planner and everybody else obeying, why is it impossible to have the producers and the consumers have a process which is facilitated by structures and which lets them exchange their information and arrive at a plan. If a plan by the way isn't like a binding decision over the course of the year, it certainly changes, circumstances change, there's a hurricane, whatever. All sorts of things can happen, taste can change. Right? So you have to be able to keep updating it also. The the claim is no bosses presents it. That's the book, I that's the book, I guess, you know, the the company on here. Right. So no bosses presents a description of this process in more detail than we can do right now. And there are other presentations that do so as well. I guess what I would say for your audience is this. Nothing that I've said should cause you to jump up and say, I'm a participatory economy advocate. Right? But what I would hope it would do is cause you to say, hell, I hope he's right. I hope it really is possible to have an an economy in which this dignity for everybody, this equity for all, people control their own lives. I hope that's possible. And this guy is saying that that a structure and a and a just a few defining pieces, five defining pieces make the case. I wanna look for myself and think this through. I I hope people say that and that's how the bookNo written. It's not written for economy, you know, it's not written in some arcane language. You have to spend a little while thinking through things because they're so far. But it's not rocket science. It's it's not biochemistry or quantum mechanics. It's real life stuff that we are all familiar with. Well well, we will put a link to no boss's new economy for a better world. It is I never thought I would say this, but it's a third way that I can get behind. It's a third way. That's That's true. Economist, Michael Albertto, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Like I say, we'll put a link bookNo bosses in our podcast and our YouTube descriptions. I thank you very much for having thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it. And I I meant when I said You don't need to hear this, but it's it's I mean, if you want I was once in Turkey, and I was on a show like this. And it was a accepted, it wasn't like this because it wasn't it was a key figure and Turkish media, you know, like damn rather type level of of figure, not radical at all. And I was flabbergasted by how good his questions were and how this was a long time ago after a prior book. And when I came back, I I asked Chomsky about it because we're friends. And he said, it's not surprising. In the United States, States. The need to, to, to be sure that powerful media figures are in the need to to to be sure that powerful media figures are in line. And that's that's people on NBC and ABC who are you know, TV, whatever you call them, you know, the people on the screen -- Sure. -- America, etcetera, etcetera. That need is so great to be sure that they don't step outside the norms. Right? During the Vietnam War, there isn't a single instance, not one instance of a main newspaper not a radical one but a main newspaper or a main TV report or main radio report that said US invasion of Vietnam, the phrase could not be uttered. And the people didn't utter it. Not because somebody was there to be sure that if they are, they were fired, they couldn't other not because somebody was there to be sure that if they ordered it, they were fired. They couldn't order it because they couldn't think the thought. They literally couldn't think of the thought. And so no one's point was, look, in Turkey, they don't have to do that, and this guy had this guy thinks. He hasn't been so socialized. And so battered by the process of climbing the ladder in the Turkish media that he no longer can think those thoughts. But people in American media, by and large, are who rise to the top that's why things like the majority report is so important. Well, I like to I think we're doing a, we're doing okay around here, but I appreciate we're doing we're doing okay around here, but I appreciate it. it. Thank you very you very much. Thank you so much for coming here. Alright. Alright. Folks, we're gonna head into the fun half. He doesn't realize we're so lost in Comcast money. I don't wanna say And Google money. Hey. Google and Comcast money. I didn't wanna say anything, but Folks, 2729 your support that makes this show possible and, of course, the Google and Comcast money that we're drowning in. Do Google and Comcast? Members, you're okay. Yes. And it's it is our members that make this possible. You can become a member today at join the majority report dot com. Don't forget majority live. January sixteenth. The big live. Big lives. Yeah. You can go to majority live dot com. Get your tickets. Better do it quick. But we're we're breaking up families around here. Broken family. Why'd you folks break up because of the majority report? Right. Because of the majority live show. Check that out. Also, don't forget, we got some merch if you wanna buy a Christmas present. Shop dot majority report radio dot com or I guess a late Hanukkah press. You have to get it quick. You can put a you could put a picture of it that sometimes birthday present. Her birthday present. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Lecken Media universe? Yeah. Tonight, we got Paul Prescott. Who's a Jacobin a jack up and contributor, and I was running for eighth state senate district in Pennsylvania. We're gonna be talking to him about labor and progressive organizing as well as why Democratic voters shouldn't accept pro charter school candidates and how we can organize for a green job. So that's tonight, patreon dot com. So I still have recognized to get the post game. Folks, see you in the fun half, 646257 thirty nine twenty will be taking your calls and getting your IMs, which you can get you can IMS through our app at majority app dot com. See you in the fun half. Left is bad. Jamie and I may have a disagreement. Yeah. You can't just say disagreement. Yeah. You can't just say whatever you want about you want about people just because you're rich. I have an absolute right to mock them on 2729. He's off their buggy weapon like he's bought. I am not your employer. You know, it's tired of the negativity. don't. I'm tired of the sorry. didn't mean jump set you. You're nervous. You're a little bit upset. You riled up. Yes. Maybe you should rethink your defense of that. You're fucking idiots. We're just going to get rid of you. Alright. But, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude. You wanna smoke this joint? Yes. Do you feel like you are a dinosaur? This is good shit. Exactly. I'm happy now. The win win win win. Oh, yeah. Now listen to me. 2345 times 8479065014572 thirty eight fifty six. Twenty seven. One half. Five eights. Three point nine billion. Wow. He's the ultimate mabler. Don't you see. Why don't you get a real job instead of doing Montreal and Detroit Electric Limbach? Everybody's taking their dumb juice today. Come on, Sammy. Dance, dance, dance. Grand Paul had my first coital seats with a woman. I'm hoping to add more moves to my repertoire. All I have is the dip in the swirl. Fine. We can double dip. Yes. This is a perfect moment. No. Wait. What? You make hundred million dollars a year, mister Com here. Not bad. Excuse me. Fuck you. You fucking little leap. I think you belong in Chad. Thank you for saying that, Seth. You're a horrible despicable person. Alright. Gonna take a quick break. I want take moment to talk to some of the Libertarius out there. Take whatever v local you want 2729 drive to the library. What you're talking about is jibberjap. Classic. I'm feeling more chill already. Donald Trump, he kissed all of our asses. Hey, Sam. Hey, Andy. You guys ready to people. Schindler was such an idiot. They got to be massive. I agree. No. Death 2729 You. Yep. Wow. Wow. That's That's weird. No way. Unbelievable. This guy's got a really good hook. Rohit. Ooh. Wow. But then I gotta get on. No worries. Let's just let's just I wanna just flush this out a little bit. I mean, look, it's a free speech issue. If you don't like me Hey. Hey. Shut up. Thank you for calling 2729 the majority report. Sam will be with you shortly.