Britain's Economic Future and Identity

This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Alright. Welcome to the Jimmy the Giant podcast. I'm here with the wonderful Unlearning Economics, aka Kar al Moran. Welcome to the show. How you how you feeling? How you doing? I'm feeling pretty good. Other than the fact that I'm at the tail. end of an illness So we're both still. Could c cough something up at any moment. But other than that we're all right. We're all good. So I wanted to just jump straight into you did a recent video on AI. Yeah. I think it was titled like Everything Cause AI. Everything was already AI. Yeah, yeah. Um so I wanted to ask really, is AI making YouTube and culture at large worse? I think the answer has to be yes, but the point of the video was to say that this was a process that was already happening. Um if you look at a lot of output and content, YouTube , podcast or whatever, is is probably the best way to see this. If you look at a lot of the content that comes out, there's already this kind of generic regurgitated slop type feel to it, you know, this lowest common denominator type stuff where you're like, well, this is just , you know, a React video. And look, I've made React videos. We're all guilty here, but like a React video or just a commentary video where you're like, I'm just getting the sort of general vibe here. I'm just getting something that's relatively basic, um, quite digestible, and sort of summarizes the information, right? Uh and so you had you had this happening with a lot of things, you have it happening in like film as well. I mean one really common thing you'll see on social media is like people will comment on a weird or or bad or very generic video. They'll be like uh did ai generate this right yeah yeah yeah yeah you get in that like and it's a not not an AI generated video. So this is just something where I think the that and there's a lot of economic theories behind this, but when you when you start to process massive amounts of information and try to produce something for a lot of people . You're this is something that like markets and capitalism have done, governments do this as well, right? And you're doing something that's quite similar to what a large language model does. That's what it does. It takes all the information, it processes it, and it gives you the statistically most likely answer uh to be acceptable to to humans, right? That's how they're they're trained. So it it was was this kind of process. And you know, it was it was inspired by people who've been writing about this in academia for a while. There's like this economist called Herbert Simon who was basically saying this in nineteen ninety-six, like way before we had what we now call AI, there were like precursor models, but nothing like what we've got. Um, and then there were some academics recently who sort of took up the flag and they were like, in a way, AI, although it is different, I'm not trying to be contrarian for the sake of it and say, oh, you know, it doesn't matter. Of course it does. But it it there are a lot of similarities between large language models and like what's come before. Other other ways of processing information, like the internet, right? Like search right like wikipedia you do end up with this kind of like generic sort of output that tries to appeal to as many people as possible um and so and and I was trying to just draw a parallel with that and just say, I guess let's change how we think about AI a little bit instead of seeing it as something that's just come out of nowhere, it's completely new. It's like, no, it's it's processing massive amounts of information and giving us back an answer that the general population find palatable. And that is kind of what like daytime TV does. Yeah, well, you when you were talking about it, so you made a few examples and it gave me it kind of made me think about, you know the artist, musician Oliver Tree? I actually don't know. So Oliver Tree, he and like I'm not critiquing him, because I like his music, but he was making these kind of uh music He was making these songs. He he uh would dress in these crazy kind of ways and it was quite funny, but he would actually make some really banging tunes. Like there was I forget the the big house record that was like massive. Um, and in an interview, he was sort of saying that his way of coming up with something original and unique was just by taking two genres and putting it together. Yeah. And I like feel like we had this era of music, and this was before AI, but we had this era of music where it was really like hybrid fusion genres. So I really love Lil Peep. It's like my icon. Lil Peep is like an emo rapper. So he took like the Blink one eight two kind of rock sound, like the oh my god, my mom sucks kind of singing style, and mixed it with like hip-hop and trap, which was popular, and it made something that felt very new. But then I almost feel like we this became it's almost like uh someone's found like the vessel of gold in the mountain. Yeah. And then everyone fucking runs and then all you do is go, well, if it worked in this place, it'd work here, and then you're just combining these things. And then at some point, although it felt new and original, you're creating these fusion genres, at some point it just starts to feel like, and I wanted to ask you this, that we've run out of ideas. And like you can't make something new, truly new and original. Do you believe that's true? Yeah, I mean I so I I'm glad you said that you liked this music because one of the points I make in this video is you know, just because something's quite generic and it's sold en masse to lots of people, that doesn't mean it's bad. Like I like McDonald's and I like Taylor Swift, right? Like and like actually like Taylor Swift. Yeah Everything that's mass produced and sold is bad. But you're right, you've hit the nail on the head. So I think one of the big problems, the things that people fear with AI, is what about when everything is just AI and there's no human input anymore because all of the output on the internet is from previous AI models, and then that's going through new AI models. And I think that's when things might start to get a bit weird, and you might start to get some hallucinations because, like, the human input, the human touch, the human creativity is lost, and that's exactly the process you're talking about. Like someone comes up with something new, right? It could be uh like music and art, it could be like an invention or technology or something like that. It could even be uh a new way of thinking, like socially, or something like that. Um, and that makes a really big impact. And then over time it gets marketized and like loads and loads of people rush to it. And then that's when you end up with this like, you're like, oh, I'm not sure I like this genre crossing type of music anymore. It just feels like people are just cut like pumping out something that's quite generic. It was good when it was a new idea. But we need that as like humanity and our social systems need people to like disrupt and innovate. And I sound like a Silicon Valley guy, but I'm not because that's not what they're doing at the moment. They're doing the opposite, right? Um, but yeah, we we definitely need that. And when our systems uh foreclose that possibility, right, when you don't get that, that's when you get, you know, Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania. That's when you get these like you know, you you Marvel, I mean, was always kinda generic, right? But I really liked the early saga, the Thanos saga. I thought it was it was really good and it was, you know, it was mass-produced stuff. It was it wasn't exactly groundbreaking, but it was fun. But then since they stopped really innovating and thinking and started pumping things out more frequently, you get now they're just unwatchable. And it really looks like it's AI generated, that man, on the What's Quantumania. I don't know if you've seen it. I saw the clip where you posted it. I can't sit through the whole thing. It's it's horrible. Like um, but it it just seemed you're like this I mean that's actually what inspired the video. I was like, this looks just like it's been generated by an AI based on past Marvel films. They're not pushing anything anymore. It's such an inter p the other day of a councillor, you know, the maker field by election reformer competing for this season against Andy Burner. Andy Burnham, yeah. And there was a clip of the councillor, uh, and he did the sort of thing, so he goes like uh vote for reform to I think it was like vote for reform to get starmer out. I think that was the line. He went, vote for reform to get Starmer, and then the whole audience in the exact same moment went out. And it was like so, you know how AI everyone says everything at the same time at the exact same point. It was like all the comments were like, This feels like AI. Yeah. And it was like so i i i again when I was watching your video, I only watched it recently. And I was like, it made me think of that clip and it's like AR, yeah, it's this it's this thing and what you're tapping on. I think you called it, you used the term, I think it was from Dan Davies. Yeah. Which was like sc what is it called? Scar uh I've got it written here somewhere. It was like good enough. What is it what was the word? Scar . Oh, satisfying. Satisfying. Satisfying's from h Herbert Simon. Okay, okay. Yeah, that kind of good enough. And it it relates to I mean, so I'm a behavioral economist by background, so this is really my stuff, and I like Herbert Simon's sort of like my idol. But he um he yeah, he came up with this idea of satisfacing, because there's this whole debate in economics about whether people are like rational or close to rational when they like optimize. I mean there's another thing that like tech bros say now, right? They're like optimizing their lives. But really, as humans, there's so much we don't know. We don't we don't know things. We don't know we don't know things. We can't we've copy we follow the crowd, we follow habits, like before we go any further with this episode. I want to give a massive shout out to today's sponsor, Squarespace. 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So be sure to check out squarespace.com forward slash jimmy the giant and to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain, use the code Jimmy the Giant. Anyway, back to the video. Like I don't know if it's right-wing thought or econom like traditional economic thought. It seems to not think of humans as humans. It seems to like not know that that is a thing, that we don't always optimize for the most efficient. But in the market and the way we're meant to behave, we're we're expected to behave like this kind of rational man kind of thing. But in reality, I don't know if that's so true. Well well no, it's it's a good point. I mean there's there's different levels to this, right, isn't there? There's saying I'm gonna assume people are optimizing because the math is easier and I don't really believe it, but it's just a modeling exercise I'm doing and I'm trying to look at recessions and how that works and that's okay, right? People do that in all sorts of sciences all the time, right? Um then there's the people, the economists who who kind of end up believing it. And that's like a bit more problematic when you're like you're like, oh, you're speaking to them and you're like and they're like, well, you know, just choose the most rational choice. And you're like, you're like, no, that's just on the paper man. Don't that's not real. And then there's the even the other level, which I think I just mentioned this with tech bros. Like it's like that optimization as a goal, as a like we should be optimizing. And that's where you get, you know, the LinkedIn posts where like, you know, I wake up at four and learn a language and blah blah blah blah. And you know, before I've even started my day, I've done so much and that kind of thing where you're trying to just get the absolute best out of your time. And you know, I mean, obviously, it's just there is no right answer to how you live to li live your life. Right. There are probably a few wrong answers, but there's no exact right answer. Um and you said like it's taking the human out of it. You're just g putonna loads of press ure on yourself to achieve like a bunch of goals. Yeah. Like that's that's actually really, really miserable. I think people forget they forget that like how much habit informs basically like so much. I mean, everyone knows this example. Your dad probably for a while used physical maps instead of Google Maps. And it's like, obviously, dad, you should be using Google Maps. It's obviously better. But because he has built the habit, it's the additional mental energy to go and learn a new habit is quite a cost. So people will often opt for doing things that are inefficient if they've learnt another way, and even more so if you are time poor and energy poor. So, like my wife, she works and she edits on her phone. And I, you know, she we got a laptop, and there is gonna be a period of time at some point uh where I need to sit her down and teach her how to edit on the computer because it'll be quicker. But because she's very busy, because she's stressed, all this sort of stuff, that additional time to do that is like very hard to get. So she's used to just you know working like that. And it's like we we look at you know often when people say maybe critique behaviors of people and actions, like we forget that if you live in a country and an economy that is making people poor and stressed and tired, the opportunity for them to go and make those longer-term decisions that might in the long term be better for them is like it's sort of unreasonable to expect people to do that unless they have some comfort of housing of not worrying about bills and stuff like that. From like a behavior behavioral point. Well yeah, no, it's totally true, right? And people are very much products of their environment. And that relates to like this um really interesting debate that I think's come out of economics, which is like, you know, does um repeat for co- The internet is coaching our kids. When boys hear that on repeat, it shapes how they see themselves. We can't leave it to those voices. We have to be louder. Together with EE. We need to coach them, guide them, back them. Building our boys up every chance we get. Be yourself, back your mates. Confidence comes from within. As proud partner of the England teams, EE has support and guidance to help build all our boys up on and off the pitch. Search EE Yes Boys. Changes in sexual performance are more common than most people realize. And support doesn't need to feel awkward. With MedExpress, everything happens privately online . Start by completing a short consultation reviewed by UK registered clinicians. If eligible, treatment is delivered discreetly to your home with ongoing support whenever you need it. You're not alone in this. Visit medexpress..co uk slash podcast to learn more . Being short-termist cause you to be poor, or does being poor cause you to be short-termist? And the answer seems to be that it's the latter, right? It's like people who kind of trans ition in and out of poverty. You see the person's the same, but when they're much poorer, they're making much more short-term decisions because they're trying to pay the bills, right? Um, and so if you're trying to change people's habits, and this is why I do kind of think about my project as putting the human into economics. As cheesy as it sounds, because it's like, no, you you have to think about like how people actually behave. And that type of thing matters, like whether you're financially secure, and that's going to affect your behaviors. And if you want people to change your behaviors, whether it's something like as simple as like, you know, your wife switching to the computer editing software, um, or whether it's like a more a more general thing of maybe you want more people to get PhDs or something, right? Like then then you're gonna have to change their environment because their behaviors are actually they're reasonable. They're not rational in the economist sense, but they're they're adaptive to the environment that they're in. Yeah, I get a lot of friends who, you know, maybe sort of self-help kind of bros. And you know, they always say you make your own luck, which is sort of half true. Because it's like I do agree, you know, when people go, oh, I got lucky. So sometimes I say to my mate, who again, quite a self-help bro, I'm like, man, I got a bit lucky, you know, I got furloughed at the right point when a video went viral and that helped me and I had years living at home, my parents, all this sort of stuff I could refine it. And I went, like, you know, I got pretty lucky. And he goes, man, I hate that. You didn't get lucky. Uh you made your own luck. And it's like, sure, I did, but at the same time, you if more resource, more money gives you more opportunity to be lucky. Like you have more chance to waste and make bad decisions and then make good decisions. So you just buy more opposite you buy more lottery tickets if you have more money. Exactly. It's like I mean that's why often th the um arts are just histor ically um populated by rich people, right? That's a big thing again now as well. Yeah, it's like thread again, all these kind of people. Um there's a whole thing about yeah, Neppo babies in art at the moment because I I don't remember if uh there was a lot of these in maybe the 50s, 60s that were products of welfare state artists. Yes. UB 40, I think. That their name derides from uh Yes, yes, yeah, unemployment benefit. I only learned that the other day actually. 'Cause have you been following the island basic income scheme for artists? I think that's what I read about it. Yeah. Cause that's been really successful and they're saying even financially it's made return because they're having more time to make art and sell art. So even in terms of just like pure scrooging it, like it's like it's it's made a return. And this is one of the points I make um like I've made repeatedly that it's just a lot of these things that in the era of austerity where we're saying, you know, we can't afford this, we can't afford that, you're talking about like really basic needs. You're talking about people getting food, people taking care of their kids, people having a house, people having education, health. These things are a good thing to invest in. Right? The better off somebody is with regard to those things, the more productive they're going to be. And there's like lots of evidence on this on like numerous fronts, but you can if you invest in these things, you will see over the long term a return. Like a child childcare is like the most nailed-on example where it's like a kid that has like access to nutrition, who has care, who has like health, who is healthy and has like good education, they what they're what they're gonna grow up to be. They're gonna grow up to get a good job, pay taxes, not being not um taking benefits , they're not gonna be criminals or anything like that, they're not gonna cost the state money, right? And so obviously there's a lot of social good you're doing there. I think you should do those things uh to a degree maybe even though you can feel it to be purely as you say Scrooge, it is like actually makes more logical sense. It's that's the thing that I think really um yeah, it will drive you insane if you try and look at the economy logically, if you're like sort of thinking, well , surely if the goal is, if the goal is the stated goal, which is like we need to make more money, then you're going, well, we're making a lot of decisions that would actually uh mean that overall we make less money. Like we're we could be funding things that would make us more productive. Like the obvious thing would be, you know, like a good r rail link between the north and the south, HS two. Would fundamentally help everyone, including big businesses, become wealthier. And I think this was the Dan Davis stuff where you were talking a bit about like this ideological kind of trap we're in, whereby like our I think you use the term like organizing principles, so like our under our like uh pers uh like our rules of understanding the world are built faulty. We're like operating from the wrong operating system, and even if it's illogical, we can't get out of it because of the sort of ideas that underpin British economic thought. And when you look at somewhere like the Scandinavian nations, you're obviously like they're doing things that are obviously they make sense, but we can't seem to get them here because of the way that we've shaped society. So I wanted to ask you d how so when it comes to these sort of like organizing principles, I guess people would say like neoliberalism, maybe you have better terms, or how do you think is it possible for us to move to a point where we do you does it require a fundamental collapse of society in order to change the underlying ideology? Like they call it like a a rapture, a rupture moment? Or do can it happen through gradual policy reform and change? Oh, that that's's a really good question. I mean, um let me let me let me think out loud and try to come back to it. Because I think the the so one of the things that I talk about in that video is is the financial sector, the role of the financial sector and short-termism , and uh how basically shareholder value has come to rule decisions. And this is when you get like quarterly shareholder returns, right? Like try and get the most money out of the company in the shortest time . And if you look at like in the eighties there was this real, real rupture between old school uh business people and like and like this new finan cial class. And this have you seen the film Pretty Woman? Yeah. You see, you know, the old guy, um, Ralph Nader, is it? I can't I forget who plays him. Um, is like clashing with the new guy, and the old guy's like, no, this is my business. I bu ilt it up, you know, we make more money in the long term if we do the right thing by people. We retain our customers, you know, keep our workers happy. And then the other guy's like, no, I'm gonna break it up and sell off the pieces, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's literally what's come to dominate, especially in Anglo countries, in the US-UK, to an extent, I think like Canada and Australia as well. But we we're making those decisions. And this is literally, you know, it sounds like a lateral move to say this. This is how you get Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantumania . Because like I love that link so good. Because like what they're saying is we've got this brand identity with Marvel, with Ant-Man. The first Ant Man movie's sick. I love the first Ant Man movie. The second one's all right, but the third one's awful. And they're just like, we know enough people are going to buy this because of the brand, because of the effort that's been put into it before, for us to make back our money, make a profit, right? And yeah , that's detrimental to the brand. Now Marvel, people don't, it's a joke. People don't care about it anymore, right? But the shareholders that got their money, you know, at the time, they they might well be gone, right? They're only thinking about the immediate future . So it this this is really how you get the entire economy go askew. And there's this other um uh there's this book that came out recently called The Asset Class by Hetty O'Brien. Okay. It's about private equity. I remember speaking to Dan Davies about this, and he said, and he's he's a sort of British liberal. I wouldn't even call him a socialist, but he's like worked in finance for a very long time, very smart guy, and he just said, I've got friends in private equity, and I say this to their face, there's nothing worth rescuing in it. I think the whole industry should be abolished, banned. That's simply it. And I was like, I was like, yeah, maybe. And then I read Hetty's book and I was like, Yeah. Like they literally because they just gut companies. Right? And so they they just go in and not just companies, man, like care homes, right? You're you're talking about and they just extract money from them and the care gets well. And people literally die. You know, it's not like they've run this nice old man's business into the ground like in pretty woman. It's like, no, they've taken over a hospital and now the roof's falling down. Like, it's ridiculous. So in terms of that, I think. Just to explain to the audience, sorry, but this is like LBOs, leveraged buyouts. Is that the same sort of thing? Okay, yeah. So they load it with debt. So the a leveraged buyout, let me do my best to explain it. Um but it it's basically what they do is they borrow money to buy a company . And what they do once they've bought the company is they transfer the debt to the company so they're no longer personally liable for it. And when people hear that, they're like, wait a second, how is that how is that legal? Like that doesn't make any sense. You're like, then you can just asset strip it, like let it go bankrupt and run away with a bunch of money. And you you no liability whatsoever. You're not taking any risk. Like, you know, the argument for some kind of business in capitalism is people take risk. You're not. You're asset stripping. And so, yeah, I think in terms of like ruptures, I don't know how this happens, but I could see really, really big restrictions on like leverage buyouts, right, for instance, right? And that um there are other, I guess, ways you could you could regulate the private equity industry. But I would like to see that disappear and I would like to see shareholder capitalism as well where you're just talking about short-term returns. I would like to see that re-jig. So you've got something that cut you know companies are run more by workers with workers on boards like they do in some North Europe an countries. You mentioned the Nordic countries, um, or uh other community groups or even government representatives, right? And you have a sort of balance and essentially you make the economy more democratic, because right now, it is, you know, people say it all the time, but it is run in the interests of the few. And that's why it's not working. Well, it's sort of interesting when you say about uh Dan Davies being a more like a liberal thinker. And you you actually use the clip, and I really like Rory uh Sutherland. I always nearly get Stu Stuart and Sutherland mixed up. Rory Sutherland . And he uh I really like Rory Sutherland and and so he he is one of these people, and I've noticed this strain of like liberal um thought where they fucking fundamentally understand the problem. They get it, and they they sound so articulate, and you're like, mate, you get it, but they think it can be changed by either a cultural shift in attitude, like just let's talk about, well maybe if we think more long term, actually we all make money better. This is Rory like Sutherland's idea, and I want to get him on the pod and ask him about this because it's like the structure of it is what forces this behavior. And I don't believe everyone can just sit down, read a book, change their mind, and it will change. Yeah. And then when Dan Davies, you I think in your conversation with him, he said he would ban like private equity LBOs and stuff like this. I'm no I wonder and I I pose this to you because I don't know what you where you stand sort of deep from politics is do you think that these things can be avoided just through policy decision, or do you think and obviously the classic critique is that eventually these things find a way of reasserting themselves because of the innate power imbalances in in society. So no matter what reformist policy you might bring up, if you don't solve the general balance of power, they will always eventually undo and something else will come along and undo the progress of the ban or however you choose to. Yeah, I mean there's this idea, and it it's a terrible uh sounding term , but they're called non-reformist reforms, uh which is ones that basically lay the groundwork for political power as I'd see it. So when I talk about like worker democracy before, that's once you've got workers on the board and other people, it's very hard to get rid of them, right? You've created a political power base. Something similar goes for like unions. Um, and I think ultimately, you know, there are no reforms or even revolutions that cannot be undone . Yes. Things will always chat. I don't think there's a sort of a way to necessarily avoid that. I mean I was looking at I was looking into um how elites persist through revolutions uh recently there's these interesting papers on it with uh Maoism and also with the transition from the Ming to the Qing dynasty in in China. I'm not sure I've got that the right way around. I'm not an expert but the anyway the elites do kind of always always find a way. Yeah, then boys know what they do. They do. And it's I wish I wish they didn't, but I do think that probably there will always be some inequalities, and probably powerful people will always get away somehow. And you know, they're there in many cases they won't face the justice that they should have. Um, but ultimately, if you if you can kind of move towards this place where more people have a voice and it just becomes much harder to like ride roughshod over them and just like uh you know, uh take away their rights and things like that. That's the kind of thing that I'm gonna It it's that it's that thing of like yeah, if y it's almost better just to try and get people into positions of power because it balances the scale inherently. It's like um I had Barry's economics on that episode. It it has actually gonna come out probably after this one. Okay. And he was talking about this idea, there was an old study about how I think it was Francis Golton who is like he's like the guy who came up with eugenics round. Oh right, okay. On I think that's what happens when you look at 20th century academia. It's like eugenesis, eugenesis. Doesn't matter what their political ideology was, they're all eugenis. Yeah, it's a shame that I have to quote this guy, but you know, whatever. He didn't know. And uh he uh he did this thing where he went to a country fair and it was sort of like what is the weight you know they they like guess the weight of a horse or some shit. It's like they before iPhones these thought we're trying to fucking find something fun to do. And so they uh yeah, they would like be guessed the weight of a hor se and so they asked everyone and they'd be like expert in horse weight, you know, like maybe he's a gambler or something, so they should be the most accurate. And then it would be like old lady, young person, blah blah blah blah. And when they all guessed, you know, no one got it right. But when you summise or you add up everyone's guess and divide it by the number, you actually get exactly the correct answer. Yeah. And it was something about how if you can try and, as you say, like in a a company, forcibly put people into positions of power, they will correct uh and they will make the right decisions and wrong decisions that are different. And the problem I guess of the concentration of power is the types of people that have it are all correcting in the right way and correcting in the wrong way, but they don't balance each other out. I mean let me talk a little bit about Rory Sutherland and I don't wanna I don't wanna necessarily, you know, try and be rinsing him and he's not here to defend himself. I'm keen, I like Rory . I do get the sense of what no, me too. Like I really love listening to him uh more than the other Rory but so but like so but I do get the sense that like you said when it's class background as well right so there's things like who has power, who has formal democracy voting rights, um, but also this class background, and you get the sense when he talks about these problems. Yeah, he talks about short to short-term financial returns, right? And his solution in his head is like, oh well, I want to send a letter to the Financial Times. And it's like, it's because that's you think it's all a boys' club, man. You think it's all just you posh guys chatting, and you can, you know, have a ruddy good chat and sort out the problems with the world, and that's kind of because you do have that power, so it's kind of a bit true. Yeah, you do your chats matter more than most people's chats. Um, but at the same time, you know, I just don't think because he's so detached from the rest of the world, he just can't necessarily see that that's not how you're gonna solve the problem. They always miss the power imbalance. That's the fundamental thing. They always think it's just ideas and thoughts. They don't get that. It's literally, it's to do with who owns the power. And it's that is you cannot change it through goodwill alone. I remember there was that period of time, it was like, I forget who the CEO maybe of Whole Foods or something wrote a book about uh I went to ask you a little bit about because it kind of mixes with this topic of sat I can never say the fucking word satisfacing. Satisficing is not a nice one to say. uh the idea that capitalism is you know we is sort of sold as innovative and all this sort of stuff but really there is this sort of like deep risk adverseness as you say like you go on intellectual property, just do what works, do what works, do what works, let someone else take a risk and then jump on it, buy it out, do what works, do it, and kill it. Um do you think there is a role for the state to invest into say something like R D because I think the key era of innovation was post-war and I don't know if I just have a romanticized understanding of this, but it sounded like things like NASA, et cet.era They had deep pockets of money and they would give this money to um researchers, smart bros, smart gals, and they would be able to sit and think of ideas, come up with things, take risks, some would work, some would w wouldn't work . But it was never typically they didn't have, you know, then need there's KPIs and you need to get it to come with a sellable product at the end of it. And by having that freedom you start to actually come up with much more interesting ideas because one of the things I hear a lot um is like there uh there's like a problem in R D now where people it's safer to just sort of repackage other people's work and other people's ideas and just sort of resell the same thing continuously in slightly different ways than taking some massive risk and really innovate in something brand new. Yeah. So do you think there is a role where the state, in your perfect world, where the state would fund this kind of like research more so and then private companies would use that or how yeah well this is why you don't optimize, right? Because you just can't know what the outcome's gonna be that far in advance. And I think that one of the things about early um well, let's say late twentieth century academia and research and development is that it might have been relatively goalless compared to what we're used to. So you might have people just working on something that doesn't come to fruition for for decades . And uh e you know, even before that, there's obviously all these thinkers that everyone really respects, Charles Darwin, uh Karl Marx, Adam Smith, uh, Isaac Newton. You know, th these ideas didn't come to them within a sort of quarter. You know, they they came they came to them really gradually over a long time with a lot of different inputs. And I mean Charles Darwin was partly inspired by economics, but also he went to the Galapagos Islands famously and like that's where he he it finally crystallized for him like when he was traveling. And so I I just don't think I mean it's people say it in academia all the time, it's almost a cliche, but like they wouldn't get tenure. now Right. And so what you asked is about governments and markets. My issue is that the same ideology has infected everywhere. So governments now have targets, right? Governments are a bit more short-termist, right? And you're not allowed to sort of to work on something, to fund something that doesn't seem to immediately yield some kind of dividend or outcome. Uh and so that's something that I think has just generally infected, and even with the the you know optimizing tech bros, it's in our minds as well now, right? It's like it's infected us as individuals, and you can't just have the sort of stereotype of the old sort of aimless professor who is kind of working on something not sure that's cave. Is that what that is? The idea that you go I think it's Plato's cave. I'm trying to remember what the old adage is or old story where like they go into the cave and they come out with their big thought. It's not like you you kind of need to go into this place into like a long deep investment into thought and thinking and everything. But Plato's cle cave is when you can't Plato's cave is when you can't see anything because you're only watching the shadows on the wall. But yeah I yeah, like you know, I had this feeling a lot and I think yeah, y what you said about sort of touches on I guess I would say Western attitude, what the problem is, is yeah it,'s this end goal objective orientation always. And I think that that is inherently a struggle. Um, in because I wonder if where a lot of these arts originally come from is just people kind of like, like if we're to really go back theatre and all this stuff, it was more like slow uh cultural things that emerge, and I guess the problem with algorithms, etc., and this is the double-edged sword, right? Of our niche is that we make YouTube videos. And when I was young, I would really idealize this idea that the internet is this liberator that I can take my hobby and my passion to make a career out of it. But when everything becomes like objective-based, there is something you lose from it. And it there is something that is, yeah, I don't know how to explain it, but I remember I would say personally it kind of ruined parkour for me for a little bit. Right. Where it was like I I used to when I was younger just go and have fun with my mates. And then we went to make a brand. And then from there it was like, okay, now when we go out, there's this extra thing and it has an objective. And it was fun. Not to say there was no fun in it, but then over time, the logical end for that for me was I became like parkour YouTuber. And by that point, the kind of soul of it had gone, and it became this like thing. And I wonder if, yeah, we kill a part of it by commodify ing everything. This is making me think of uh the Louis Thoreau manosphere documentary because I think you can see the contrast between the two models quite clearly. Louis Thoreau, you know, disappears for a couple of years, then comes out with a very well-made documentary, and obviously it does well on various metrics. But you know, it's just sort of on there, and there's no view count um or anything, right? And it's uh it also I think has a longer-term cultural impact, but you can see the juxta position directly in that video because you've got that guy, HS Dicky Toki , who's like trying to like film a React video with him and like you know, doing it very, very short-termist, right? So there's this like clash, and I think you know the internet in some ways it no uh not in some way the internet has gotten worse right the internet has got it is objectively it's called in shittification right everybody's talking about it now Google deliberately sabotage their search engine . It's now got more AI, like and you know, quite bad AI as well, and like more uh sponsored uh uh links, and it's a lot of things on the internet have got worse, and I think that's's it a really interesting example of what we're talking about, where those big companies with kind of short-termist financial interest take over and they try to extract what they can out of it and turn it into metrics and an algorithm and it ends up sort of sucking the life out of it. Cause if you go back , if you go back even 20 years, right, you're looking at an internet that's, you know, it's not perfect, it's still really racist and male dominated. To be sure. I know I was on the World of Warcraft forums back then. But um but you know it it was it was just a bit it was a bit less attention grabbing, it was a bit less about metrics and it was there was a lot more open source stuff, um and things just seemed to work better. Uh and and that and now that's kind of lost. And if you go even further back, I mean I'm not old enough or quite nerdy enough to to know too much about this, but the the heyday of the open source internet in the nineties or even before, when it was um just people who could code really, right? But it was that would have been very, very slow. Everything was accessible to everyone. And you did it for the love of the game. You did it for like the community that was online . And I just I do think that's that's kind of disappeared now. And that now they're trying to shut down all these open source alternatives and stuff, and they're getting star ved and it's you know it's hard for them to compete with the corporate beer moths. I'm doing a video at the moment about gaming and shittification so it's like and I I sort of go through yeah I go through that kind of like World of Warcra ft era , and there was this, yeah, it's it's sort of difficult, yeah. Cause I think it back then it was the less centralization, so you had your game, and like culture was more separate and siloed, so you had like the FIFA bros and then you had like the COD bros. COD yeah and it was like they were kind of different pockets and we weren't all on one platform. We weren't all on YouTube or TikTok or whatever. We had our own pockets. Like to be honest the FIFA guys tended to be cooler and more real life bros. And then the codlot tended to be the real like gamer bros. And you'd have like forums. And I used to make like I played RuneScape and you would make your own like shit website. And it was like had all the fucking animations like my mouse was a dolphin. It went hard and it was like so yeah it was this and you can really romanticize it but then it is that thing where markets tend to and I think you you know to you this isn't gonna be phenomenally new information but, they tend to be as they grow and try and attract a broader market base of people, they do tend to be their best. Like they too and it's that thing of capitalism where a lot of the time people uh look you know they look at the best part of capitalism and it is tend to be that growth phase. Yeah. And then they they say that that is capitalism. And it's like, well, also the other end where they've now got the market and they trap you in and then they make it shitter and shitter and shitter. That is the other end of it. And uh yeah, like I think it's that romanticizing of the good part of capitalism, that sort of market expansion, which some would argue, you know, you can have markets without arguably having the exact same form of capitalism that we have now. But yeah, I don't really know what the point of the question was. But it was sort of to romantic, you know, think about that kind of old era. No, the growth phase, but like the Joseph Shimpeter, the economist. I don't know if you've heard of him, he's quite a famous one. He's basically um he he says almost exactly the same things as Karl Marx, except that he's pro-capitalist. But he talked a lot about technological change, and this was the thing: like the stages that you go through, and you're right, like people who are fans of capitalism, they're like, well, what about the entrepreneur with an idea and a business and that you know they're working really hard and they they create something new? And you're like, I'm like, yeah, man, I completely I get that, but the problem is that they eventually turn into Jeff Bezos where they have control, right? They have control and they become an economic dictator. They have control over their own industry. Then they start branching into other I mean Amazon, you know, has its own filming studios, credit facilities, marketing, like just you know what I mean? It's it's just uh it's gargantuan. It does so many things. Um uh that originally it was just selling books on the internet. But also then Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. So you end up controlling the media as well, right? Why do you capitalists why do capitalists not like why is there not genuine right wing critique of monopolies in this era? It seems to like because ideologically they are meant to oppose it. And if there is a role of a state, it is to break up monopolies but you don't hear that talk from absolutely any of them. And I don't know where that is why they don't you know if you were really to be an ideological capitalist why do you not say you know Amazon should be broken up, these things should be broken up. Why do they not do that? There are two answers to that, which I think uh maybe two two separate answers actually that not necessarily directly linked, but within economics, if you if you look at like, yeah, the old school conservative economist, maybe Milton Friedman or someone like that, you'll find, I mean it's a it'll be a footnote or something, but he's like, Yeah, you do have to break up monopolies at some point. But he will say Yeah, we love the monopolies. Like they will say it, right? And it's part of conventional economic thing. As conventional as you get, monopolies are bad. You need competition. But what came out of the 80s and 70s, I think, was this idea that just because the monopoly keeps the price low, things are fine. And this pervaded all of the uh antitrust enforcement, especially in the States. In Europe, we've bought into it a bit less, especially the EU. Um, but yeah, that this idea that if the price is low, there's not really a problem. And look at Amazon, the price is low. Yeah, of course, the prices are low. It's just that he's taking over every single aspect of the industry. Yeah, and if you're just looking at the prices, you're not seeing that right. And there was um you know, Lena Khan. She she became um she worked for the Biden administration. She's like a d law professor. She wrote this really famous article in twenty sixteen called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox. And it was like , why are you just looking at the prices with Amazon? It's basically what I just said, right? But like really well detailed about how they've priced competitors out. Yeah, they have fair pricing policy, which means that you can't sell it for cheaper anywhere else. Yeah. So if they add a fee to it , that fee will spread across the economy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They've got they've got so much power. And you can't understand that from just looking at prices. Um so that that pervaded America and American tech monopolies are the ones that are dominating now. The other answer um is I the cultural wars I think have to you know, if you look at like Elon Musk, he is like the case study for this, right? Like kind of loosely progressive guy at first, wanted to um build renewable energy and and uh electric cars, fine. Um and then he just got hijacked by like the anti-woke stuff, bought up Twitter. Now he's lost his mind entirely. Uh but if if you look at that, I think because the the those uh monopolies are perceived maybe as being on one side of the culture wars. You've had this kind of about face where actually a lot of people right-wing people wouldn't have liked Elon Musk, because he was renewable energy, right? Yeah, yeah. Uh but I think that's why especially in the US you get a lot of people kind of kind of buying into that, even though ideologically they should like Theodore Roosevelt, right, was was against was against monopoly. But yeah, I I think I think those are the two two reasons and I I don't know what you know, you could argue the culture wars I don't really have the expertise to argue this well, but the culture wars w were somehow a manufactured distraction from a lot of these economic issues. Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's very interesting when we sort of it almost links back to what we were originally saying. It's like we when we talk about these conversations, we're in this sort of at the moment, I guess, logical brain kind of way of thinking about it. And the big problem is that we analyze everything through logic so we believe that people believe ideologies. Yeah. But in reality they don't. Like we're emotional people and you can see that through the irony of yeah right wing thought has led to and I guess this would be like lead on to the next question is like would you consider what America has become to be a kleptocracy or an oligarchy? Would you say it is? Would you would you be able to define it as that? I I think so, yeah. If you maybe explain to them what that is if you just be where it's run in the interests of the rich basically and and there I think uh a kleptocracy is an oligarch oligarchy is when it's run in the interests of a rich. I suppose you could , in principle, rare, but you might have a benevolent oligarchy where they're kind of aware, I mean you could argue China's a bit like that, they're a bit more aware of their status, even though they are elites, but a kleptocracy is where they're just looting it, right? That's that's what it seems like. Well it seems like, you know, if if you look at um all the the insider trading with Trump, the announcements, even like when he starts wars or or ceasefires and then people make big bets on it, like the precise time. And you look at what he's done with the White House, renovating the White House And tariffs, weaponising tariffs, preference preferential treatment for like Apple and sort of Exactly, yeah, yeah. All of this and and for AI, right? Uh that was a lot of the AI um raw raw ingredients uh aren't subject to tariffs and uh it's almost I saw one guy argue that uh Welcome to Paris Pizzeria. Your blind dates is already at the table, and here she is . Cousin Brenda, what are you doing here? You're married anyway. Substitution brought to you by Patty Power. Cousin Brenda makes me for Beth the office crush. Oh, get in. You might not always pick the right starter, but your sub can still deliver. Because with Paddy's super sub, your bet rolls over to the player coming on. Patty Power. Valid on selected leagues and markets only. Pre-match and in-play bets on qualifying player outcome selections only. Ts and C's and exclusions apply. Ever wondered if the magic was real? 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You know, eventually, inevitably. And it's certainly the case of Trump, you know, a billionaire, reality TV star, plus Musk, another multi-centi billionaire, almost a trillionaire, probably by now. Like the case of them kind of seizing control and looting the economy for their own ends, that does seem like a big, a big sort of score in favor of the idea that capitalism will always turn into oligarchy, kleptocracy, fascism, whatever you want to call it. I think yeah, what's happening in America is really kind of for me and I think lots of people is it's moved me out of that more social democ d democratic attitude where it's like we can, you know, contail, we can put regulations of and it's like this will always eventually happen this this way. And you could get to a point where you just have complete fascist rule and then you lose any opportunity to do anything to fix it. And um the irony again, just to point out sort of an ideological and economic way of thinking, is that I mean why a kleptocracy is kind of bad and like a right-wing capitalist should be fundamentally against it is that there isn't like a market discipline that is like correcting for price. It's who does the old eight-year-old man who falls asleep in interviews, who does he think is the winner, and he will choose the winner, and then they get to win in the market. And so that is inherent ly you're gonna be spaffing money into a thing that might not actually have the value and then other countries can outcompete you if they have a bit more discipline and so America might be just building like uh an empire on sand s,ort of thing, at this point. Um, and it's like, yeah, you don't have that that's that's the fundamental problem of this. Well, it is funny, you know, we keep going back to this question of like why would you not do the the old school pretty woman like, you know, it's better for everyone if everyone prospers over the long term. Um, and I do think that there's one answer, and um there's this economist called um Mikhail Kolecsky, uh Hungarian economist who wrote about how the the capital class as he called it wouldn't like full employment. They don't like it when everyone's employed because the workers have the bargaining power, right? If if somebody offers you bad terms, bad wages, you could say, fuck off, I'm going somewhere else. Right. And and so they don't like that. And so even though their profits actually might be higher in an absolute sense, in a economy where everyone's working, everyone's happy, productive, it's growing. Relatively, their money and power is lower relative to that of the workers and you know the the unwashed masses. So that's like that that's kind of I think what's going on there. I think that Trump is a bully, and he sees this, you can see this in the international arena as well, right? He doesn't care if he hurts the USA or even himself if he hurts China more. Now w now whether that's what's actually gonna happen or what's happened, maybe not. I think China's more resilient than maybe he expected. So he was probably wrong. But he is just like, Well, no, it's fine, like I I'll I'll sacrifice something, but we'll still be on top. And that's that's I think the ideology, if you can call it an ideology, maybe it's just being a wanker. But that's that's how they think. Yeah, and that's that is it. And it's like they think in terms of power, and the I I remember, yeah, when I was, I guess, on the right, a bit younger, I used to think more in terms of like money and like you know, entrepreneurship and stuff. And then you start to realize, like, these people, they don't think necessarily, maybe there are some, obviously. Some are some of those rich people are just good entrepreneurs, but some of them, like to get into that position, you need this sort of like I always explain it, the guy who you've met on a night out who grabs your hand on a handshake and holds it. That's the person. And it's like you don't like that person. But that person knows how to play situations. Maybe they say the weird comment that makes everyone uncomfortable, but they sit in it. And it's like there is a pathology of a type of person who looks at everything around them as their position in the hierarchy. And I think why a lot of people can't grasp that is because that type of person on like an interpersonal level tends to be not liked and people don't like them, they don't hang out with them. But that same type of person can win in a business setting if they're very good at it, yeah. If they're very slimy, if they're very like manipulative, and so you have almost this like filtering process where these people can like filter to the top of society, and then we're like, they can't possibly really think like that. Like, and so you almost underestimate their pathology. And so, like, this idea, you know, sometimes I used to think it was too simplistic to be like billionaires are evil, but I think there is more of a case that there isn't a pathology that is rewarded in the market that is like unlike anything that most normal people act like in friend groups, and then it becomes very hard for us to even empathize that that can exist because it's like I, don't know anyone like that really. Did you ever uh read the game? The pick up articles. I never read it, but I'm aware of it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I read it when I was king and all. But he was he was talking about what that's how they viewed, you know, dating, trying to meet women, right? Basically sociopathically to plan it. And you might do something a bit weird or wacky. And some of it was kind of harmless, like you know, you just go up you just have an opener and you go up to someone and but like he said even obviously it was fundamentally really odd and reads really oddly now but he said like there were people who took it further than him in that book and they end up treating all social interac tions that way. Yeah. And then everything they're saying is like orchestrated and planned. And they'll tell people what they want to hear and then stab them in the back, right? And it just really reminded me of that because it is like if you're not like that, you don't understand how someone could ever be like that. But that kind of thing is rewarded. And you know, those people, I mean, maybe they are entrepreneurs and innovators in some cases, but in a lot of cases they might not be. They might just work through, you know, making deals or um you know just rising to the top through you know the the corporate machinery right and it's just it's a fundamentally different outlook but it does seem like those are the people that are in charge. Yeah, yeah. Well it's that and I think that's why uh when I was a bit younger and I would see a lot of people on the left called like Trump a fascist and this sort of stuff. I never understood that because I saw fascism as just you know Hitler gassing people and etc. And it's like what they were tapping into is that type of mentality, uh, which is to see everything as a hierarchy of weak and powerful. And like once I started to understand fascism as more of this, it's analysis that I have a position in the hierarchy, there are are people who inherently strong and there's people that are inherently weak. I started to notice it with a lot of friends who who went down the self-help route. I noticed a lot of them end up in right-wing politics, myself included, for a period of time. And the ones who have stayed with it, they've become more extreme and more closer to like a distinctly fascist mentality because they have gone through the world seeing every interaction as like, yeah, how am I coming across in here? Do I look strong, assertive, and confident, or do I seem weak? And if I seem weak, will people take advantage of me? And it's like this, and I think it comes from like a deep fear, insecurity of your position. You know, you could deep it, I'm sure like therapists would deep it around like how you interacted with people when you were young and stuff like that. But I do think that that's like I wish when people uh yeah talked about fashion or like when people hear people talk about fashion, they start to understand that it's more about this kind of mentality of like crush the weak and and the strong, you know, they deserve what they get, sort of thing like that. Yeah, no, that 's why it leads to it really really fits with the game, right? I'm sure lots of former the game readers uh are now down that pipeline, right? If you think about Musk again, and I you know, I just feel like I always end up talking about him, but I guess you can't not. But he, you know, it's transparent, he fundamentally just wants to be liked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so beautiful the irony. Uh give it 20 years, 30 years when he's gone. We'll see. Yeah. But that'll be a great film. Yeah, yeah. He's literally just like a little boy, and he just wants that like validation in a social situation, right? And he's exactly like you said, he'll be thinking, H doow I come across? You know, but he can't like articulate that vulnerability, yeah. So he just ends up like being the like simultaneously the richest person in history and also like the biggest loser in history, really embarrassing to listen to. I feel like he's almost perfect for art like people who are more critical of capitalism because he is like such an embodied, yeah, it's a parody of it. He's like such a he is like, there you go. That's what we're talking about. It's him. Like he is that's the thing. And it's like, yeah, I think it's almost a perfect case study. I kinda wanted to end on like a topic about like to bring it sort of to Britain, I guess. So like we're talking about America. America has like AI, and you talk about China, they also do technology, but they're more manufacturing based and stuff like that. I find it really interesting, I guess, and I said this the other day, like what does Britain do? Like what are we? And what would you see from like an economic perspective? What is like a way if you had you know the ability to recover the economy and we didn't have all this ideological baggage, if we were just to look at it, like what in the chessboard of of plays could Britain do as an economy? What can we offer the world to somehow move out of what we are right now? I guess we're finance, but Yeah, yeah, I mean we've got uh yeah that to say finance would would contradict what I said uh earlier in the interview, like obviously that's a sector that I'd actually like to see shrink. Not that it doesn't have its place in some ways, but I think um what do we do? I mean, we do culture that's very true really well. You know, the we punch well above our weight with that. You know, we exp if you look at every year there's I mean Louis through uh um adolescents write that as well. Like uh we always release uh bangers. Bangers. Such fucking bangers. And that that's one thing. Education is another. We're really good at education. Um, we have some of the world's oldest universities, and um we do have a really high quality people still come here from all across the world to get like a really good education. Arms is another one which we do really well, but you know, maybe we could look at taking that engineering expertise and sort of channeling it towards actually being able to build high speed rail properly. What were you gonna say about water pistols would be a little bit of paintball, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The world's painting rail maybe ball station But that's like I mean, yeah, we don't really we we do have a lot of engineering expertise and and architecture and stuff. It's it's I think that our whole system for building things our planning system is just fundamentally broken. So we we could do much better on that front uh if we reform that. Keir Starmer to his credit is one of the things that he's kind of started to do. He never really properly does anything, does he? He's kind of started to do. But look, I mean , we ha we we don't have that much, I think. And and it is it's a cultural thing, it's a services thing, it's a soft skills thing that the the UK, if it has its role in the world, it is kind of going to going to be that incubator of think ing and thought and yeah. Yeah. Um I mean we we did have our opportunity to be world leaders in renewable energy, but we sort of squandered the natural. Did you think not that we can't invest. I mean, still, obviously, always you want to go to not emitting any fossil fuels and other other uh greenhouse greenhouse gases. And like um you yeah, but like we we've fall on way behind on that, right? Really? Because I heard, yeah, that green is sort of one of the things that we have a lot of, at least talent in. Yeah, we do. We do. I mean, maybe I'm being too cynical then. What happens if I don't know the full story then? So I'm just talking about like how we we cut all our renewable funding. I mean, one of my favorite, I say favourite, one of my uh principal examples of David Cameron uh of all of austerity not working to achieve its stated aims even, is David Cameron when he said in twenty thirteen, I'll cut all the green crap from the civil service. Cut subsidies for renewables, uh, wind and solar, retrofitting of homes, double glazing, triple glazing, things like that, right? Cut that to save pennies, then it ended up costing us pounds down the line because our energy bills are that much higher, especially after Ukraine and then Iran, right? It's costing people a lot of money. Then the government has to bail it out. So it costs the government money too, right? And but at that point I think we might have been able to be at the frontier in terms of the actual design technology of solar panels. But now China's just China's just le apt ahead. Uh and like I said, you know, there it there is there is a lot of expertise and talent in this country. Um, maybe we could try and you know, uh catch up there. I do think with some of these things you do have to accept when the opportunities passed. I think we also have magic industries out of nowhere. I think we also lost chemicals, like we had chem we were good at chemicals for chemical . And I think post Brexit we like fucked it, we lost that whole that doesn't help.. Yeah, yeah It's like, yeah, we're just in this continuous mistake. And it I think you're completely right that it comes down to, yeah, we've just got the foundational principles of how we see the world, short termism. That's the thing that needs to change. And I don't know if that can be done through policy. It's like we it only feels like we're going more in the wrong direction. It never feels like we're like reflecting on ourselves. And that's the big problem with you know they call it like colonial drift and stuff like that. We never had our big crash. We never uh lost the war. We never did anything. Like we stayed the same the whole time. We haven't been taught a lesson. We never really yeah, we never like fell off the bike. The bike just slowed down with a puncher. Now we're here. But yeah, man, that was really, really fun. I love chatting with you. It was really great. Really good. Thanks for coming down. I appreciate it. Check out Unlearned Economics. Maybe you want to say about some of the shit you're working on. He's a slow release. Yeah, that sounds horrible for some reason. Famously channel. Um I 've I've got a short video for me and a long video in the works, but they um the one is about coffee shops. Oh, yeah . Oh , just become coffee shops. Oh in Brighton you could get footage here. We are the hub of coffee shops. That's the thing. I was like, um That's a great why did they just take over the high street? And it relates to a lot of what we've been talking about with decline and like insecure work kind of replacing secure work. Um so I've got that video coming out soon. It's only fifty minutes long. And then uh I've got one that's gonna be much longer, like three hours. It is like barely say anything. Very well, thanks so much for coming on too much. Thank you so much, man. Thanks for inviting me. Co o. Where will your career take you? At PWC, we're shaping the future together. So you can spark your curiosity. So you can do inspiring work. So you can grow here and go further. Search PWC UK Careers.