It Could Happen Here Weekly 40

can make your own decisions. Number what podcast is this for? Uh? Moira, That's a perfect way to open this episode because it's it could happen here, the podcast about things falling apart um and putting them back together. Sometimes not often enough because I'm a hack and a fraud. Um. But um, this is Robert Evans and my guest today is Moira Meltzer Cohen. Moira, you are my lawyer and you are

my editor. You edited after the Revolution book in stores now, so you're you're you're many many things to me, um, and today you're gonna help me understand the Supreme Court. Well that's let me be a little more specific about why we're chatting today on for the internet sake. Um. The Supreme Court last week issued a ruling and there may have been another ruling by the time you hear this, but this specific ruling was about a case that had

to do with what's called a Bivens action. Um. If you have seen people talking about this Supreme Court ruling online, it has probably been with them sharing an image of the United States that shows the hundred mile zone where border patrol is able to operate. UM, and being like, now, because of this ruling, border patrol can come into your

house with impunity and do whatever they want to you. Um. There's been a lot of like stuff said about this ruling, and as is often the case when people are getting really up in arms about the niche aspects of a court ruling, they're not entirely correct about what the ruling does. Um. The hundred mile zone is absolutely a real thing, and the Feds can do all sorts of funked up shipped to you in your house. But that is UM, let's

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

They rationalize it in court later. Um. And so this is this is really a case that further reinforces the fact that for many, many years, UM, federal agents h in particular border control have been able, have had a lot of power to conduct searches if they rationalize those searches with respect to immigration or in this case the even more hype term national security. So, um, this is

not new. The federal statute outlining the powers and duties of border officers was past I think in ninety two, and I believe always said that border agents can conduct searches within quote a reasonable distance of the border. I think case law has determined that that reasonable distance is a hundred miles. Yeah, we're not really looking at anything

particularly new here. Um. So that one of the things about this hundred miles, As people keep saying, oh, the Fourth Amendment doesn't exist within a hundred miles of the border, Um, it does. This is not considered to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment because a search within a reasonable distance of the border is considered a reasonable search right. The Fourth Amendment protects you from unreasonable searching, and this

is statutorily considered a reasonable search right. So I feel like a lot of the media around this particular case is kind of an exercise and extreme point missing. It's both an overreaction to some things that are outrageous but are in no way new. Um, everyone's sharing these maps, like you said, Um, and again it's one of those things where it's like we're not saying there's not a lot of that, this is not a problem. That there aren't problems with the there's that the hundred mile zone

isn't a problem the border patrol. There's not a lot of messed up stuff that they do. It's it's the idea that like this ruling came out and suddenly there's no more Fourth Amendment, right like, which is how some people have interpreted it. Because the Internet is a machine that devours context, that's right, social media, I should say, Yeah, sure. So so this case is is called Egbert v. Bull, which I just think it's a marvelous case name, and

these are all incredible. The original Bivens case is Bivens versus six unknown named agents, which I also elect a lot six unknown narcotics agents. Yeah. Well, I mean there's a lot of sort of wonderful case names. Um. My favorite, of course is Alien v. Predator. Um, Yeah, you see what I did there? I did, I did. I just showed Garrison Aliens last weekend, so I was, oh, for the first time, Yes, marvelous. Uh. So, I don't know.

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

and um, at least as Clarence Thomas describes him. The plaintiff in this case whose bool is basically the viewpoint character from a Steely Dance song like he like appears to have sort of spring fully for him from the head of Donald Fagan, and he drove off with his vanity plate that says smuggler. Honestly, I'm sure going to tell me it was something problematic, but sounds like a cool dude to me. He spent years playing both sides

of this game. He would get paid by people to smuggle them across the Canadian border and he'd make them, he'd like extort money from them. He'd make them buy a room at his hotel, even if they weren't going to stay at his hotel, and then he'd charge them money for every hour that he spent driving to pick them up and take them across to Canada. And then he would turn around and get paid by the Feds to snitch on the people who had just paid him

to smuggle them across the border. Cheez, yeah, all right, now I don't think this guy's cool. Yeah, So he basically ends up getting in an altercation with a federal agent and he's back to being cool, okay, And then when he makes an administrative complaint to the agency, the agent six the i R S on him. This is, I mean, alright, not good behavior, right right. But now, after years of doing dirty work for the Feds, Bool is outraged because he never thought tigers would eat his face.

So he assues the agent under Bivens, which is a case that sort of a little bit maybe sometimes gives individuals a very narrowly tenuous, circumscribed opportunity to sue federal agents for certain civil rights violations. And um, it's not a very strong right and it has been getting ever more eviscerated since. Yeah. Um, And really, what Bivens does is it gives you, uh, you know, in the very unlikely event that you win a Bivens claim, it gives

you money, damages. It doesn't give you a better a law. It doesn't give you better police practices, it doesn't make you safer. It's not nothing. But it's not like it's

it's money justically what the law can give you. Right, So, unless you're harboring the delusion that there is a sort of direct connection between being allowed to try, usually unsuccessfully, to recover money from the federal government and the self control or good behavior of federal agents, Vivons is not actually a particularly useful mechanism for pursuing anything that resembles like a well developed vision of justice. Right, It's not nothing.

I don't I don't want to dismiss the utility of Vivian's but it's you know, it's not like it's not a strong right. It's not a reliable right you know, to sue. Um, it's not very effective. One of my loved colleagues uh described it. He said, Bivens is such a bad doctrine that it's taking other doctrines down with it. Right, It's just it's um, it's just such a weak case at this point that it trying to trying to use it and trying to invoke it can actually end up

just being counterproductive, as it is in this case. Right. Yeah, we have a very unsympathetic plaintiff and we have a really weak doctrine, so he sues under Bivens. It goes up and down the chords. It winds up in the Supreme Court, which issues a sort of a bunch of sort of fragmented opinions, but ultimately all the justices mostly agree this is not a super controversial um question, at

least within the context of the court itself. Yeah. So the first thing is they all say, you don't there's no right to sue for money damages under the theory of First Amendment retaliation. Meaning um wool had sued the agent for basically for punishing him for making a complaint. He's saying, I exercise my First Amendment right to make a complaint to the agency you work for, and then you punished me by sicking the I R S on me. Right,

I see why that's questionable in the actual like legal documentation. Yeah, so, um, you know, the justice to say no, that that's not a right that exists. And then they have some different thoughts on whether or not you can sue for excessive force. Um. But ultimately, the big decision that is made here isn't about the border. It's not about the relative impunity of order Patrol, which has long operated with relative impunity, just

like the rest of the federal government. Yes, I remember that impunity when they were firing tear gas at us. Yeah you know. Uh, they decide you can't sue them, um, which if you, if you ever could have sued them, I guess in a successful or effective way, and if suing them had ever had a meaningful impact on their behavior,

I guess this opinion would be a real loss. But all this o Hinian really does as far as I can tell, And I've spoken with my colleagues and we all agreed that the sort of uproar over this particular case is a little baffling because all it really does is further remove what was already a really inaccessible and

pretty weak remedy. And yeah, sorry sir, well you know, and then everyone lost their minds and started sharing the a c L S a c L used map of the hundred miles of border looks like and getting really mad on Twitter. Yeah, and again the hundred mile border zone. I think it's fair to say that that's a problem. I don't like that's that's a bad way for things to work. The border patrol, as we talked about in our two part are on the border patrol, is a

lot of massive issues with it. But um, I feel like kind of what's happening here is some of this is like a little bit of collective PTSD because of the shock of the imminent kind of demise of Row. And so I think maybe there's this kind of expectation that every ruling issued by the Supreme Court because Funckett is going to be UM this kind of like earth shattering like end of a fundamental right. And in this case it's really just like, no, this is more or

less like this is not a massive see change. Yeah, I like to say about this kind of thing. It's appalling, but it's not surprising. I do want to note, just for your listeners, this case does not in any way touch our right to sue state level police um because there is federal legislation called sec that gives us permission to sue the police, and UM, for some strange reason, the federal government has not passed similar legislation allowing us

to sue them. That's really surprising. I wonder why. So In any case, one of the things the Court says in the Bool opinion is that if the Feds wanted to be constrained by the citizen, RECongress would have given

us the right to constrain them. So so I think this particular case that people have been doing out about is a great sort of example of the way that UM, the sort of the zeitgeist moves inexplicably to make much of things that are maybe not all that much, and will also kind of failing to notice things that are really significant. And so I'd like to sort of highlight

some of those things. UM. I think there actually are real reasons to breathe and prepare and gather our courage, UM, based on what the Supreme Court has done this term, UH, and I love to talk to you about some of those things. So I do think there are real reasons like that to breathe and prepare, and some of the always about getting too in the weed. UM. I guess I want to talk both about the shadow adopt it which sat adopt it is a is a kind of

a more recently point term. Um. What it means is what it's referring to are the cases that are often heard, they're not heard. They're decided by the Supreme Court on the basis of the record below, often without oral argument, and they're often issued as holding decisions without written opinions, so they're often not justified or rationalized or you know, the reasoning for the decisions that are made is often

not made transparent to the public. Okay. Yeah, And these are cases that are sort of highly procedural or there not super complicated questions, or they're questions of law where there's maybe a circuit what it um, and they just need to resolve you know, what might otherwise be repugnant views of the law. Yeah. And the shadow docket has refinently include a jet pinaltycation. Yeah, the decided something of such grave import with decisions that are not explained by

an opinion where the justice is not makes clear the reasoning. Um, this is I mean, in my opinion, MH problematic. Um. And it's you know, to the amount of power that can be exercised by the superin court. To me, I think requires a really intense degree of transparency. If you're I think that like the amount of transparency that is it's incumbent upon you to have is sort of inversely

proportionate to the amount of power you exercise. Yeah, that makes sense, um, And so the Supreme Court has just I mean literally life with it powers here, and so for them to be making decisions on the shadow dotet about death penalty cases and death penalty juristic um is just wild. Um, It's troubling, it's frightening. You know, I think I can't remember if I talked to you before about how about the injuries? Yeah, maybe the show about it, but I certainly talked to you about it. We might

need to do it. It's probably a good idea at some point to do a show about it. But yeah, Um, one of the things that makes br injuries so anomalous is that they aren't public, right, and that to me, like this is a mathema. Well not to me, it is in terms of the sort of um received wisdom about the American legal system. To have secret proceedings is a mathema. Who you are their own principles of due process, which you know, which involves uh well noticed and adhering.

But really there's um a commitment to publicity right in the American legal system that is undermined and trampled upon by federal granturity, and that there is a similar thing happening here with the shadow docket. We know at least what the cases are, we know what these opinions are, what the holdings end up being, UM. But to have these kinds of cases being decided without oral argument, to have these cases being decided UM without written opinions, is troubling.

So that's a move toward an exercise of power that I need characterize as a politarian, and that I find days concerning UM. One of the things that we're seeing, and I think it's sort of not unrelated to that, is that they're they seem to be dispensing the bat when it is very decisive, which is precedent right that the idea that previously decided cases are binding, and you know, if you overturn one, you really have to be very clear that that's what you're doing, and you have to

explain why. And we see that with the leaf Rose Grasp, where they they have, you know, if indeed they issue it. Sure because and this is like an originalism thing, right, Like you can throw out precedent if you're saying all that matters is this interpretation. You're saying that's based on the original intent of like some dead dudes. Is that more or less an accurate way to say it? Or you can overturn DESI UM, you know, or turned precedent. We would have that. I think the just outcome or

whatever is UM. Yeah, but I think there there's many reasons that he can overturn President UM. But they seem to be doing it for subsilential right. They're not. They're not always the leak road rap didn't was pretty clear and parent about it. But I think there are some other things that are going on. Um. There was a sixth Amendment case where UM they just just sort of didn't mention all of the countervailing precedents. Yeah, you know they there's some stuff happening. There is UM a case

in Texas. There was a fishermendent case work the courts. The Supreme Court sent it back down to UM either the district as the Court of Appeals. I don't I don't remember UM or either the district or the circuit uh, and said, look at the side is on death road did absolutely with thee in effective asistence of council whether the as prejudice and the technic court just ignored them. Yeah, and that's one of those ones that people freaked out about. That was like, yeah, I think folks should be very

unsettled by this right. And then the court was like, m they didn't the court. There's Supreme Court that didn't. They just let them get away with it. Um. And so there's just sort of weird um push and full happening not only between this court interpreting the last court opinions and deciding basically not to enforce them, but but there's a interesting power struggle where the opinion Court seems to be strategically feeding power to certain uh certain lower

courts in a way that unusual. You know. So you know, they're not they're not being transparent, they are not following precedence, they are not um enforcing the hierarchy of the courts, which it does sound like an odd thing. I can

put you need to complain about um. But one of one of the things that we want to know is that you know, One of the ways that we can anticipate what the law is or make reliable legal arguments is that the law has to be consistent with you know, the law and the lower court that's to be consistent with what the Supreme Court has said. And if we can no longer rely on that, UM, it's um, you know, chaotic. Potentially,

it's really bad. It's really bad for our clients, apparently, particularly clients who are facing the death penalty, which is a particular concerns. UM. This court does seems pretty intent on knocking over the Empire sist Amendment. UM. And then I think yesterday or the day before, they issued a really important immigration case on the class actions that were brought UM by around behalf of people who were detained an immigration detention for like months and months and months

without hearing, without vant hearing. And essentially what the court held was UM that lower courts don't have any authority to UM lower coach stuff. So many authorities to UM demand that the federal government do or not do certain things because they're they're playing as as the Immigration Naturalization Act does not give them that authority UM. And so it's there there's a lot I think the big trend there is there's a lot of protecting the federals of

this from any kind of accountability. Um, accountability that's being imposed by lower general courts who are concerned the States, right. They have a cool way of showing it. I don't know what else to say about it, because it is one of those things where when we talk about, or when I talk about, like the frustration at people kind of sharing information about stuff the Court is doing, or about changes to how our rights are being interpreted by

courts that are incorrect. It's not because like there's not a problem. It's because it's really important to be aware of like the it's really important to like see the problem accurately, um, and to see it like it's this it's this broad assault. Like like you said, the fact that the fact that you have this kind of high level attack on the Fifth Amendment is really frightening because

that's one of like theoretically our primary protections. Yeah, there's also I think there's going to be a mirandic case. Okay already, Oh boy, I'm not looking forward to that. That's a little bit anxious about that. Um, Yeah, I

don't know. I mean I think that the general thing. So, you know, I think the thing that I would like to highlight your paying attention to what writes just the Freme Court is trampling on It's obviously pretty important, but it's pretty likely to be kind of more of the same, particularly for quality targeted groups of people. I like the lot is in certain respects fictional, right, Like the lies

an abstract concept. Sure, absolutely, yes, your real impact it's not you know, like I don't want to get all post modern here. It's not like a lot of fictional things have have real impacts, um exactly, Like, uh, it has real impact obviously, but I think that the impact of the import ruling, you know, it's very serious, it's very important. Um, but it's also sort of immediately transformed

the world. I think it just sort of changes what kinds of solutions we look to, right, And like, I'm not particularly inclined to look to the court to protect me for anyone, um and not particularly I don't trust the law or spurts enough to really want them to be the arbiter of things place free, siege or Yeah, absolutely not. I mean, obviously I want very council, but um, you know, my hope is that we can take carib ease whether or not to make the course they're relevant

will realize the dead type dream. But um, I guess this thing, you know, especially with roads, and I was I was talking to Margaret, a mutual friend, about this. The thing that's going to change if we're always overturned. Uh, it's really going to be what delusions are available to us and how much courage will it take to pursue them and what are the potential consequencely right, Yeah, what

kind of resources it do you need? Um? I think in the space of these Supreme Court decisions, some of which are genuinely terrible, um, and some of which are just reinforcing things that have belonged in the two Yeah, you know, our grief and our outraged and are bitter popes are not practiced. Um, they're not necessarily useful, right, and and even getting super in the leaves of you know, what does this opinion actually say? I mean, I think that's an interesting but it's and it's good to know

and to at least have somebody around you know. Um. But instead of spending so much time focusing on the real knit, picky language was being used by the unelected God things of the United States. Maybe we start thinking a little bit more about what are the material impacts that might have and what are ways, what are tools that maybe aren't legal tools or at least that are only legal tools, UM, that might be useful in UM

picturing the things that we value. And I think that's both an important note and a good one to end on. Moira Um, I will run one thing by you real quick. So I have a plan and I want to I want your advice in the constitutionality of this. I would

like to acquire Fort Bragg. So I'm thinking what I do is I go in a Third Amendment case right and say that, well, I mean if look, you can't what if we just extended the Quartering Act right like in the you know, could we could we push it even further so that nobody can host soldiers and then all those military bases are gonna be there's gonna be a fire sale. You can't keep soldiers on them, Government's not going to keep running them. And then I get to own Fort Bragg. How are we doing? Is that

is that legal? It's the whole end popole that you own Fort Bragg. That is one of the end goals. I think you should probably cost context that rating. Okay, okay, because yeah, you're right, they're probably gonna outbid me anyway, Okay, But constitutionally, I'm on solid grounds with the third Right. That's bulletproof, you know. Like like many of the questions you asked me, the legal questions you asked me, I

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

I would like us the rep Legal Defense Fund of if when how because if we're going to talk about row at all, the oh boy, yeah, a fund fund which can be found at repro Legal Defense Fund dot org. They have a donate page. They're doing amazing work. I'm um just incredibly impressed with um. They are also at RECRO Legal Defense Funds on Instagram and probably also on Twitter. UM, but I don't really understand Twitter, so I'm not going

to swear to it. That's for the best. We'll check that out dot com retro legal fund, So please donate to the Reproductive Legal Fund Twitter dot com repro legal Fund. By the time this episode drops, we may have the row thing. So I know everybody's gearing up, but you know this is definitely uh, it's it's it's good to help out. We all need to be like Poland because we're not going to yank this back on course through just hoping that eventually Supreme Court gets better. Well, we're

gonna wish really hard. It would be nice, it would be nice, but I think organizing is probably a more effective thing to do in the immediate term. Um, so yeah, I thank you, Moira, and um that's the episode. Oh it could happen here? Which is the podcast that can say? Is I'm Robert Evans with me? Are other people hello? Other people? Hi? Hello? Uh so this podcast? Thanks falling about part putting back together? YadA, YadA, YadA. Today our guest, well not our guest. Our host is uh the inimitable

Andrew Andrew. Hey, Hey, how's it going? What are we talking about today? What are we learning? I'm good? I'm good? Um today open to tackle another book kind of Um, this one's not fictional like the past two. UM. So I do hope to like explore some of those in the future because I think some good conversations come out to those. This week, we're gonna be talking about Paulo

Freire and the pedagogy of the oppressed. Oh yes, for those who don't know, Paulo Freire is Brazilian educator and one of the leading advocates of Well was Brazilian educator and leading advocates of critical pedagogy. Pedagogy is basically like the study of education, philosophy of education UM. He was born in nine and his experiences kind of led him to that path because during his childhood and ad lessons, he was falling behind in school because he was poor.

His poverty and his hunger affected his ability to learn. And so as he got older and he got opportunities and he was able to study and so on, and he basically realized he needs to do more to uplift the lives of the poor, improved lives of the poor, UM, in order to facilitate better educational outcomes. As he says, and were cold, I didn't understand anything because of my hunger. I wasn't dumb, it wasn't a lack of interest. My social condition just didn't allow me to have an education.

Experience showed me once again the relationship between social class us and knowledge. So as he progressed in his studies and his writing and stuff, he eventually contributed to a philosophy of education which blended classical approaches coming from Plato and modern Marxist and post Marxist and anti clonial thinkers. When I was reading the book, it really sort of struck me. I've got a lot of UM and a lot of France found on vibes from his work. He

died in um r I p um. But his greatest contribution UM to me at least and to most people, is his book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In the book, he sort of explores a detailed Marxist class analysis UM in the relationship between like the colonize and colonize, the oppressed and the oppressed, And he talks about the banking model of education that traditional pedagogy spouses because it treats the students as like this bank, this empty vessel to

be filled with knowledge. Instead, he argues for a form of education, of pedagogy that treats the lunar as a co creator in knowledge as far as I'm aware, um, and I guess it's kind of is illustrated in the book itself. But as far as I know, there wasn't an anarchist or libertarian socialist of any variety, but he still ended up coming to some anarchic conclusions with regard

to the education system and learning and stuff. I mean, anarchists have been writing about, you know, like youth liberation and the school system and even experimenting with new models of schooling for a long time. Um. The Forever Movement, for example, experimented with implementing modern schools in UM in the US and Spain, and a Goldman was very much

involved in that process. And UM, I don't think that the experiments were necessarily free of error, but I think they did a good job of trying something new, trying something with more liberatory in the spare of education, because I mean, for the past several hundred years now, UM, we've kind of been going with this sort of um. Prussian model of education is very strict, very regimented, very

divided model of education. The rules UM to sort of ferment, nationalism and division, class divisions and stuff within the populace. So I think that any experimentation in mo libitary and direction is a positive. In the preface, um Fair sort

of goes into why this book came about. He's talking about his experience as a teacher in Brazil, the times, the observations he made well in political exile, and so what he realized as a teacher when he was teaching students is that they had a sort of a fair of freedom. It's not like a real fair of freedom. It's more of a fair of the risks associated with freedom because of the experiences and stuff that they've had.

Um What he considers the most vital, however, to the education system, it's sort of just establishing conscientious out or critical consciousness within students, a consciousness that commits to social change and human liberation. According to for, the educational model can only really be successful if people are radicalized through it, if people are able to see the issues in their current society, think about them, stew upon them, criticize them,

compare them, and look at ways to solve them. And if they don't about with that sort of critical consciousness, then as well, for not. Basically, the education system is kind of spinning on top in mud. I find it especially interesting that I ended up reading this when I did, because, as we've seen in the US, a lot of conversations

are now attacking anything even approaching critical consciousness. But this, you know, who all debate going on about critical race theory and this sort of even though critical race theories are being taught in primary or secondary education, this attack, this full front of attack on anything that resembles critical thinking and critical study of history and of the present. So in chapter one for makes a case for why

the pedagogy the press is necessary. He says, a human kind central problem is how we a fir more identity as human beings. Everyone is trying to reach that sort of affirmation, that sort of human identity, that sort of human nous um. But oppression and systems of oppression interrupt that process. They prevent people from expressing and establishing their

full humanity. Where they're talking about racism keeping people from reaching their full potential, or sexism preventing people or you know, sa patriarchy with the whole limitations and such puts upon

people's sexuality and gender expression and gender identification. One of these systems of oppression are put in place to restrict and confine and bound us below you know, our full potential, and so a lot of that and a lot of the you know, cultivation and forging of one's awareness of you know, the systems around them and how to operate

within them. To explain in the education system, and so the education system is should be one of the critical junctures in which we which our fight for oppressed people.

There's a sort of dehumanization that it could as a result of oppression, whether it be in the form of comparing people to animals, as racists offten do, whether it be in the form of decreating people to this sort of childlike status, which itself is a is a form of oppression because the fact that you know, childlikeness and youth is considered to be something less than It's just another way they where people are oppressed and another way

in which people are prevented from as certain they're tatomy and their humanity oppressors. They tend to treat people as objects to be possessed, see freedom as threatening, and in turn, oppressed people end up becoming alienated from each other through oppressure and begin to see their oppressors as something to strive towards for It talks about how they oppressed. The whole vision and the whole understanding of what being human is is being like oppressors, and so a lot of

people and you see that even today. You know, um, when they strive for freedom, they strive to become entrepreneurs. You know, they strive to become business owners. They strive to become billionaires and CEOs and all these sort of images of what, you know, what being human looks like. Because people are striving to be free, and if the only way you can get a measure of freedom is by becoming an oppress yourself, and it makes sense a

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

Fair argues, must consist of two stages. Reflection on the nature of oppression and the concrete action needed to change it, and that sort of reading that that that line are paraphrasing, but it it reminds me of the process of prefigurative politics, where not only are you bringing about the consciousness of people to recognize these systems of oppression and understand how they operate, but the concrete action to change it is one that is intended to liked the society that we

wish to establish in the future. Fare does one um that, you know, leaders and stuff must engage in dialogue with oppressed people rather than becoming like oppressors. But as the book goes on, I think he relies a bit too much on this concept of leaders as well. He wants against them existing above the people, but he's still sort of upholds that distinction between the leaders and the people. As the book progresses, um he begins to compare the concept of the banking model to the concept of the

problem posing model of education, as he calls it. In the banking model um quote, he the teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. Where Else he expands upon a topic completely aliens existential experience to the students. His task is to fill the students with the contents of his narration, contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them,

I could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated and alienating verbocity areny being that sentence is quite proposed. But on the contrary, banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction to the following attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole. The teacher teachers, and the students are taught. The teacher knows everything and the student knows nothing. Teacher thinks and

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

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

in full, it really reminds me, um of my schooling experience. Um. As some people may knew, I was actually home schooled for the majority of my learning experience, I actually didn't know that. Oh well, now you know, Yeah, so I was. I was home schooled, um for I would say, the majority of my education experience. And then after I went into college and stuff. But before then, I did, um make it through the school system. And even though it was a really long time ago, my memories are still

crystal clear of that process. You know. Um, I remember seeing students being disciplined. Um. I myself was kind of a teacher's pet. But that doesn't surprise me. And the best possible way, I'm not sure I to take it, but I'll take it in a good way because Andrew not me. That doesn't surprise me. Teachers or cops. Yeah, this is my pre anarchist days. I wasn't you know, I didn't. I wasn't jumping out the booth canal with

a black flag, you know. Unfortunately, a cab includes the person who tried to get me to read Catcher in the Rye. The Rye was a book and it was perfectly fine book. I'm just being an asshole. But but like, Andrew, what are you alluding here? Is that, like stoicism is

something that is weaponized in the education system. Stoicism, stoicism being like no emotion delivering like right right, right, because I was thinking the philosophy, but because yeah, you're like a vessel for quote unquote facts and knowledge to be like injected into you for you to like hold as as Yeah, it's we're seeing a resurgence in this type of saying all the albeit probably a little bit less eloquently stated in some of the anti schooling anarchist literature

that's been coming out in the past few years, or at least has been gaining more traction the past few years. M Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because this and that's kind of that's kind of the funny thing about it, because most people in their school and experience can recall it being in some ways negative, even if they look at it in a positive light, we can at least even if they don't go in that fully radical direction. Most people can look at some of the elements to their schooling,

of their education, and so that that wasn't right. You know, there's something messed up about that. Even something as simple as having to like ask, you know, the teacher to go on and use the toilet. It's just this is those sorts of little ways of control. So, like as I was saying, in my school and experience back when I was in primary school, I was very adorable. I'm sure I could guess, but I remember seeing these students

being disciplined. They had the bell had wrung for you know, the end of break, and he's supposed to, you know, fire back into class. But I think there was a school next door that was having some kind of event and they're playing like music, and so a bunch of students in my class, not me, but a bunch of students in my class were you know, um, dancing at the side of the school, enjoying the music, having a

good time or whatever. Um they heard the bell and they didn't go because they were, you know, they were having a good time. They were like six seven eight um. But then afterwards the teacher, after you know, I sit down and stuff, leacher goes and finds them and brings them in and this is prior to, at least of my knowledge, prior to the corporal punishment being phased out

of school. So I just remember seeing them having to, you know, like lay out their hands and receive punishment for daring to have joy after hours, you know, daring to enjoy themselves. Um what it was supposed to be

class time and they're supposed to be in class. I'm sure people have similar experiences, at least of a kind of punishment uncontroul I mean, this is not the same kind of punishment, but I think to your point of being controlled, like even just like not even being aware of it, just like being forced to stand up and

say the pledge of allegiance. In America, for example, it becomes this like repetitive culty thing every morning that you're expected to do, and if you don't do it, um personal experience, if you refuse to do that, you have to go to the principal's office and explain why. And it happens over and over again. And I think it's like you're you're questioned and you're punished even for like thinking, not like differently, or questioning not even thinking, just questioning reality.

Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And in Syria when I was I went to school in Syria when I was really small, and me and my sister ate really slow and we would get hit with a ruler on our hands because we didn't we didn't finish lunch fast enough. Um, so yeah, mine isn't that intense. But the school I went to when I was a little kid in Oklahoma, number one day paddled us. That was legal as a public school. But my first grade teacher was obsessed with the fact that like it was bad to be left handed, and

you know, she couldn't. She couldn't do the ship that they used to do right. They used to like funk kids up for using their left hands. But she would every single day like chide me and tell me that I should use my right hand to write and stuff, that it wasn't like proper, that it was like bad that I could if you if you if you're not aware, if you're not left handed, when you're like do stuff with a pencil and you're left handed, you get a bunch of like pencil stuff on your on the side

of your hand. Right. It's just like because of the way that unless you're using like those weird left handed notebooks and ship, which no one ever has UM and she would like she gave me so much ship for being dirty because like I would get stuff on my hand. It was just like when I tell people that, it's like really, this was like the nineties. Yeah, there's there's a few of those folks left. I think she was extremely Catholic um and I know none seems to go

on that stuff. I didn't know that Catholic people cared about the left handed thing. Catholic Catholic schools. You yeah, yeah, yeah, I wouldn't say that, like it's I don't think there's anything. And like the Catechism about not being left handed right right, I mean like in some very strict Muslim culture, a lot of it is like phased out. But for example, your left hand isn't meant to be used as the primary hand because it's like a dirty hand, like the

one you wipe yourself with. Yea, yeah, there's a lot. But like I know you were left handed though, yikes. Oh yes, yeah, yikes, thank you, thank you. You should be concerned. I have to makes a number of things frustrating, like shearing sheep anyway, whatever, M well, everything is designed for right handed people, for sure like it has everything it is you try to but you are the master, right, Okay, sorry, speaking of hands just how the curiosity? Did you all

have the hand up hand out experience? Hand out? What's hand out? Basically? Um, it's just sort of a tool you su just sort of a sort of repetitive kind of follow instructions kind of thing. So like if the class getting too rowdies, like hands up, hands out, hands up, hands out, and the teacher does not stop saying it until everyone is quiet down, and it's just like like a robot. Just reason and where I don't think I've

experienced that. I mean you did, Um, I wasn't an assistant teacher at one point, and for very very young children. I'm talking like four to five year olds, And I understand the frustration of like you're just trying to get something done and everyone's going a while now. They just had snacks or whatever, and everyone's kind of while now. But I think that says about like the methods we're

using than about the showering themselves. You know, it's all about like you have to you should adjust more to like their cycles and their needs, their stage, rather than trying to force and shove them into this sort of like robotic Yeah, yeah, totally. It's yeah, they're allowed to actually develop naturally or like be themselves in a setting

like that exactly. I think what happens that kind of throws me is that h people have these experiences, you know, traumatic and not as traumatic in the education system a lot of people, but some people they come out radicalized by it, and other people end up being the like

most stringe and most passionate advocates of it. Like even like this Catholic school teacher you're talking about, Robert, Like, at some point she was also in the education system, and it really makes me wonder, like what she went through to have to come up with that kind of mindset. Yeah, I mean I think she'd grown up in Oklahoma too, so it must have been a nightmare like everything in

that state. Yeah, Like why does it have a panhandle anyway? Um, I mean, the there is a reason for that, and it's not fun, but okay, I'm assuming it's slavery, any fucked up geographic thing going on in the South. The reason is generally slavery. Yeah, right, right, right right, And so she spends a lot of time talking about this banking model and we could go on and on about it.

I spent a lot of time just talking about the education system and all my problems with it, and at some point I would like to do an episode about differ rare schools and out of how those sort of transpired. But what FIR proposes um as an alternative is the problem posing model, which is basically, through dialogue, the teacher and the students ceased to exist. The teacher of the students and the students of the teachers ceased to exist.

So instead of there being these two separate categories, they are teacher, students and student teachers. There's no separation anymore between the one who teaches and the one who has taught. Rather, there's a dialogue between the two as they become part of this process where all of them can grow. You know, you let go of this sort of authoritarian arrangements and allow people to teach and be taught, two learn and be learned to a really draw out what it is

that we have to gain from each other. Rather than being sort of docile listeners, the students and the teachers, the student teachers teacher students, they become co investigators in dialogue. They become critics. They become radicals who are able to open up and depathologize the way that reality works with

human beings exist in the world. Banking education tends to inhibit creativity and try to domesticate our consciousness through after when I was talking about human investigation the other day, um, But in contrast, in the problem posing model tries to it really bases itself on creativity and stimulates, rather than domestication, a sort of a full flourishing of what someone could be unbound and unshackled. So, in summary, banking theory is immobilizing.

It's it's fixating. It doesn't acknowledge people as people but rather objects, whereas the problem posing model it takes people's historicity, it takes people's humanity as their starting point upon which

they can grow and learn from each other. I think that's what frustrated me the most about the education system in the time that I was in it, and even when I got back in it in college, even though it's not as bad in some ways, because you know, in college they tend to emphasize dialogue a bit more

on certain classes. But I find the issue is that there's this assumption in you know, the earlier sections of school, in the secondary school and primary school and even preschool that the children, the youth, you know, they're not there to have anything to add. They're just there to regurgitate, to to study and to repeat what they've studied for approval, not just something I definitely did back in the day.

If what's lacking is dialogue, a dialogue that requires you know, hoop and trust and critical thinking, then liberation, you would also be lacking. They can't be dialogue without love for the world and for people, and for knowledge and for bring that knowledge out to people. So as for our says, you know, love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. On the other hand, that

kind of exists without humility. The naming of the world through which people constantly recreate that world cannot be an act of arrogance. I remember incountering a lot of arrogance teachers and lecturers and stuff in my time. To the education system, um are being condescended to multiple occasions, and that's the thing nobody likes being condescended to. But condescension is kind of the default way in which we engage

with young people. Just sort of there's this projected ignorance upon them, is that they have nothing of value to add or to share. Another contrary, you know, we all have something to contribute. If we all closed off, and if we are closed off to the contributions of others, we can't engage in dialogue with them. If we are fearful, if we are um considering people to be like inferior in some ways, if we cannot embrace people as equals,

and how can we engage in dialogue with them? I think there's a beauty in the way that he reflects on dialogue, and he goes on and on about it for quite a while. At one point, he says that dialogue requires an intense faith in humankind, faith in their power to make and remake, to create and recreate, faith in their vocation to be more fully human, which is not the privilege of an elite, but the birth right

of all. And so, finally, when he's talking about action and how um this sort of change is brought about, he divides cultural action into two kinds, dialogical action and anti dieological action. While the pressers use antideological action to protect their power and to separate people, radicals can use dialogical action to bring people together in the struggle for

freedom as a different methods of anticheological action. Through conquest, through divide and rule, through manipulation, through cultural invasion, oppressors were able to put the oppressed in the predicament of there in. You know, the oppressed wouldn't be the oppressed if not for the oppressors oppressing them. That's kind of

self explanatory. Um. But in contrast, radicals from among the oppressed, using biological action, using cooperation, unity, organization, and cultural synthesis are able to rise above and push back against this oppression and to allow education to flourish among all as. I think that's the beauty of the text, um the who that it did abuse in people to really bring about these changes. And I think it was a good read,

five outs of five excellent. And it's not very long, right, it's like under two from what I yes, yes, it's like four short chapters. Rely sure. I know back when you were talking about how um people are sectors of the right specifically are so set on attacking like anything related to like critical theory or critical race theory. Um. I. The the book was was banned like like a decade and like over a decade ago from the Arizona Schools for teaching students that they are oppressed. Uh yeah, that's

that's how you know, that's to be expected. It's a good book. Yeah yeah, so that's anyway, just just a fun fun fact there. We can't we can't have kids knowing that, uh, they have shared interests as a group, um, and that adults are mistreating them comprehensively. That's good. Yeah. God just reminded me of so many just moments that mean teachers like really got into it or like your teachers that were condescending that I hated. I have to really go through the role decks and try to vent

this out. Now after we finished recording, Well, listen, if you're a child, why are you listening to this? Rise up in rebellion? Uh? Destroy the adults. Their joints are terrible. Hit him in the knees. They won't recover. My joints are terrible. Exactly, some fucking nine year old whack you in the knee with like down, You're out of the game. No, I know my kids, my kne would break. Yeah, embrace

the ancient traditions, make les, and go for the fucking joints. Yeah, children of the world, you have nothing to lose, which your bed times. That's that's the episode. Andrew, should we record this episode? Sure, let's start. I'm sure. I'm sure we can use some of that is the opening. Hi, welcome to It could happen here the podcast that is about medical ethics in the eighteen sixties, not today but

fair Yeah, no to today today. It's it's me because we're long and we're doing an episode about inflation and speaking of medical ethics while speaking of kinks. Actually, the moment I said that, I was like, I have opened myself up for that was some of the phil outside That was from some of the first weird interport Internet point I came apart. It was specifically the cast of duck Tails being like, okay, let's get to the topic of the episode. That is, this episode is now about

duck Tails, inflation, fetish pornography. That is enough, pre rebel Christopher, what do you have for us today? Yeah, so we're talking about inflation. Um, we're talking about economic inflation. To be fair, this is somebody was making money off of that inflation. I'll tell you that much. God, I mean the one thing duct Tails actually does crossover because of Scrooge McDuck and his giant and his giant and that

actually it does. That's right, I can tell you right now that's not the only thing about him that was inflated. Oh boy, talking about is dick. Okay, let's let's keep it, keep it on tracked. Okay, So all right, all right, if people are inflation, it's not good. It's pretty high. It's I probably should have looked up the inflation rate, isn't it, Like, yeah, I think it's it keeps point six. Yeah. Yeah.

But every time someone says it's this or it's that, people are like, well no, but they also changed these these and these indicators five years ago and these other ones ten years ago, so really it would be this, and there's judging who's securate about that? This? This is the thing. I didn't put this in the episode, but there's a thing that if you study economics you will realize pretty quickly is that all of the like basically

all of the aconstancy. So we have our fucking bullshit and they're like are basically they're they're they're really really fake, Like yeah, like we we don't like what one of one of the big ones that you know. Is like one of the underlying things that makes all economics fake is that no one knows how to actually calculate the value of of just like a factory. Like like if if you have like a bundle of goods, right, and they're not the same thing, so I don't know, you

have two factories they make different things. Actually figuring out what the value of that is is like fucking impossible, and the like the way that it's done in like if if you look at like like there are these like the um producer statistical animals, right, and the values that are in the like the un statistical animals are literally them guessing because because the thing is like the value depending on like the actual value of the thing

changes right depending on where it is, unlike a supply demanker, blah blah blah blah. And so they literally just tell the people who are doing the econometrics, you just like pick a pick a random like price that they that that that they think is equilibrium. So it's it's completely bullshit. It's it's it's bullshit like literally all the way down.

It's nonsense. All of the indexes are wrong. Uh yeah, Unfortunately, the field of economics doesn't really care about this that much, so we're gonna have to sort of take them seriously. And the thing I specifically want to talk about today was that there was a really interesting paper that was produced by two economists at the DC Federal Reserve UM, David Rattner and j sim about why inflation happens, which is called Who Killed the Phillips Curve and Murder Mystery,

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

by by applying by by by applying marks. And the second thing, the second meason I want to talk about this is that it reveals something that's very very important about the current political situation, which is that both economists and like the rest of the ruling class in general, do not understand what inflation is or what they sort of under kind of understand what it is, they don't

know what causes it. UM. And before we go on here, I should like explain what inflation is because most people I don't know the the way I gott talked about I talked about about this with Garrison like a few days ago about like like the way people get taught about inflation is that inflation is when like your money is worth less. Yeah, when when the government prints more money so to each individual dollar is worth less because it's more of them circulating. Yeah. Yeah, and and this

is like this is this is propaganda. Um, that is not what inflation is. Inflation is literally just when prices go up. And if you think about it, like, okay, that that's kind of the same thing sort of because if prices go up, like your your you know, your your dollars are worth less money, right, But mostly inflation isn't about the amount of money becoming less. Mostly it's

about something happens that makes things cost more. Um, and you know and and likely yeah, like the it is possible for you to get inflation because the government printing too much money, but like mostly are like symbiotic, right, government with more money because prices are going up so that people need more money in circulation to buy things. Um,

you saw this happen a lot with the COVID pandemic. Um. So it's it's that both these things kind of feed off each other and contributes of But but I think something that's important to understand about this is that if if you look into the actual econ stuff, like the supply of money, like how much money there is in the world, has very very little to do with inflation.

It only really has effects inflation when you're doing with like I don't like nineteen thirties twenties Germany or like China after World War Two, where just there's literally just like you know, the government prints so much money that like like my my I have my family has a bunch of stories about like literally carrying out baskets full of money in China to like buy a train ticket because but like everybody knows about buy maur Germany too

is like the weird arrows full of cash and stuff. Yeah, but this stuff that's actually it's really rare, and it's like the reason everyone knows. But when it happens is that it's only happened. It's happened like four or five times, and mostly that's not that's not what why inflation happens.

And if you look at inflation right now. For example, there's the prices of like a whole bunch of stuff, from like food to like microprocessors are going up because a it's harder to produce things because of COVID b our Supply chains are collapsing, and see because Russian invaded Ukraine and like absolutely annihilated an enormous portion of the

global food supply. And this that stuff causes prices to go up, right because now it's harder to make a thing, And because it's harder to make the thing, that thing costs more. And this has you know, this has literally nothing to do with with the money supply, right, Like it doesn't have anything to do with how much money

there is in a circulation. UM. And there's another reason that that that will get into kind of at the end that inflation happens that is not also has nothing to do with money, which is that corporations just do price markups because they know people will pay for it.

And that's that's happening to UM. But having an explanation of like why inflation is happening is really really politically important, even even if the explanation that you have is completely wrong, it it allows you you do really powerful things politically. On Like, one of the ways that neoliberalism sort of took power is that in in in the in the seventies and eighties, especially in sort of sort of the the seventies in particular, both both in academia and a

sort of politics written large. There's this problem where you have a bunch of these old Keynesian economists who are like Kensians are like they're big on like using government spending to keep the economy running, and like you get a lot of welfare programs. But yeah, it was like, okay, you can avoid crises by having the government spending. But the problem is that like they couldn't explain why inflation

was happening in the seventies. Um, And this was because the Kenyans working the Kensians are working out something called the Phillips curve. And we have to do a little bit of econ bullshit. But it's not that complicated. I promise I survived it, so it'll be fine. So the Phillips curve says that like the closer you get to full employment, and like the lower the unemployment rate gets,

the higher inflation rigettes. And this this sort of really starts to kick in around from like five percent unemployment to like four percent to three percent unemployment. Uh, the the inflation rate like spikes. And you know that the reason this is supposed to happen is because the lower the lower the unemployment rate is, Uh, wages start to rise because as there's lots of people who' unemployed, you have to pay them more money to get them to work.

And yeah, so this is and and the theory behind this, right is that like what wages increasing is what is what causes inflation happened because it makes everything costs more. Now there's a simple and obvious this is like, this is a very simple and obvious solutions. So the problem of why like inflation happens and like all simple and obvious solutions, it is also wrong. The Philips curve does

not explain inflation. I'm gonna I'm gonna refer everyone in the chat to this tweet that I made, and I want you to look at exhibit A, which is the Phillips curve, And then I want you to look at Exhibit B, which is I actually plotted unemployment versus inflation in the US from like now seen, and I want to get a description of what the second graph looks like,

because it's supposed to look like a curve. Well, so the first, the first graph we have we have an excite an X Y graph of the Phillips curve starting at eight percent closer to the y axis and then swooping down and then flattening out at on the X axis for the unemployment rate versus the inflation right. And then for the next graph, we have, Um, what's not a curve? What is instead inflation and unemployment graphed um, except it's zig zagging everywhere like dark sides omega beams. Um,

it is not, in fact doing a curve. My my, my favorite thing about this is that um, like multiple multiple like, and this us with both unemployment and inflation. Uh, there are multiple unemployment rates that are associated with different inflation rates and multiple inflation rates that that are all that that generate two different rates of unemployment. It's it's incredible. It is it is, it is it is a it is an is an absolute sort of monument to how

much this stuff doesn't work. And there's a really good reply to your graft tweet that says economists of the modern day court astrologers, it's basically true, like, which is funny astrologers, though we're probably right more often that's true. Well, I mean they're simply guessing, is it a good idea to invade this country or not? Fifty fifty odds it works out for you, right if you're if you're trying to predict, like I don't know the SMP five D,

there's a lot more variables. Yeah, and and this is this is one of the things that like, okay, if if you can be the person who like walks into a lecture and goes the emperor has no clothes, you can like attain immediate ultimate power because again this stuff is like so it's so it's so trivially and easily like falsifiable that like I you know, like built in Friedman is able to do this, and you know, okay, so I actually about false curve, the Phillips curve that

like I showed you that it's like a curve. It's like a very simple one. There's all of these really convoluted like modifications to it. Um there's you know, if you look like the new the new kynesi En Phillips curve or whatever they they've done, they've got a bunch of math to it to try to like make it

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

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

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

like inflation is still like above temper time. I think it's bikes to like like fift percent or something like into like nineteen four so and and just based on how much larger Huey, Dewey and Louis got sometimes two or three. Do you know who else wants? Oh boy, that's right, Garrison. All of our sponsors are into duck Tales inflation fetish pornography. This is it could happen here a podcast sponsored by the concept of masturbating to the cast of duck tails getting inflated by bicycle pumps. Oh

we're back. Well I've done my part. Yeah, so okay, So so we're left off right. There's there's a bunch of inflation happening. Some of it is happening to DuckTales characters, most of it is happening to the economy. Uh. Paul Volker has tried to stop the inflation by like making there be less money and this has done nothing other

than like dramatically increasing unemployment rate. Now, the problem with again freeman sort of explanation of of inflation is that inflation assistance to the eighties and it only stops after insert foreshadowing noise here. Uh, Reagan crushes the unions and were is to solve inflation, we should stop all unions. That is your official position. No wow, okay, but this, this is this is part of the position of the Federal of the Marxist Federal Reserve. So well, we will

get there a second. So alright, alright. So, so the thing I've been describing that that Freeman is pushing about

the money's way. This is called monitorism, and monitorism is like the fakest theory of inflation, like it's it's a it's a theory of inflation so fake that like even other like even other like neo classical economists don't accept it, like none of the other different neoliberal schools of economics, like every single one of them look at this and was like this is nonsense, Like what what are you doing? But you know, so okay. So though it's like it's

like the TikTok astrology compared to the neoliberal court astrology. Yeah, it's it's it's all. It's like, it's it's it's somehow an even faker x when they of this. But you know this, this brings us back to like where we started, which is that like, okay, so if the monitorist stuff doesn't work, and the Phillips curve also doesn't work, Uh, what is causing inflation? And the answer from inside of

the like the actual field of economics is that nobody knows. Um, here's Daniel k Rollo, who was the former Federal was a former Federal Reserve Bank governor, and was a member of the Federal Reserve Board. So he's a he's a very very high ranking like guy inside the sphere of people who try to apply econ ship and uh, here's

here's the quote that he gave about it. In quote, the substantive point is that we do not at present have a theory of inflation dynamics that works sufficiently well to be of use for the business of real time

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

control the money supply, like the Fed. Now economists like we we we've seen in the past, if you've been following this off in the past like ten years issue, especially in the last five, economists have been getting like increasingly desperate to explain what the fund is happening, and they're getting increasingly increasingly desperate right now because you know, hey, inflation is back, and that that brings us to the paper I mentioned at the top of the episode, which

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

happened economically? A re session? But what's interesting about this right, is that? Okay? So if you think about this, there's an inflation, is there's there's a recession, unemployment skyrockets, this should cause deflation. Well, you know, because you know what else happened to us in night the official Duct Hills video game came out. So I think we are through the looking glass people, you know, I mean this, this this is not any more bullshit than any of the

other stuff they're doing. So like, but you know, okay, but there's there's this there's this thing that happens. We're like, okay, the like the inflation that the inflation rate should have been decreasing and it just stays the same. And economist are like what and this is this is called the

missing deflation ary period. There's there's a second thing where dream this sort of like quote unquote economic recovery and the last like ten years ish until basically until before the pandemic, employment rates dropped really really low, and this should have started this year of triggered inflation, but it doesn't. And you know, okay, And so the people who run the Philip Philips group, like the economist are looking at this and they're like, okay, what do we do? And

the Fed economists. Solution is again and I share you, not Marxism, and more specifically, the solution is neo Marxism. M Mary. Yeah, yeah, this is this is this is this is something else I'm sort of excited about, which is that I finally get to tell the world what a neo Marxist is, because this is technically a thing. It's just that none of the people who talked about

neo Marxists have any idea what it is. The most modern neo marx Actually really well, I mean I guess you could have okay, what what once we explain it, I will, I will talk about how you could theoretically have a post modern neo Marxist. But I don't think I ever met whoa how welcome Welltory terms. Okay, so I'm excited to hear this. Yeah yeah, all right. So what what is happening here is that there's an old joke in Marxist circles that like, the most advanced Pushei

economists is fifty years behind the most vulgar Marxist. And this is this coming true. The Federal Reserve economists are developing, They're trying to make a new Phillips curve and the new Phillips curve is what they call a colleci In Phillips curve because it's based for the guys. New curve just drops. Yeah, it literally is except this this this is this is this is the neo Marxist curve. And it's based on the works it's kind of loosely based on him, but it's just based on the work of

a Polish Marxist economist named Mikhail Collecki. And Clucky is a he's a very very weird Marxist, like by Marxist standards, is extremely weird. And to explain why this is were we have to we have to speed We're gonna have to speed run Marxism one oh one. So I'm going to attempt to explain Marxism in one page. All right, let's okay, okay, mark mark markism one oh one. Right. You have a worker, she has to go find a job and sell her labor to like get food to eat,

because otherwise you can't support herself. Um, so she goes to work at a factory that makes like hospital stretchers. Now under capitalism, and this is this is this is this is one thing I'm explaining this is this is like the this is the orthodox Marxist interpretation. So the people who are about to scream at me for a million years about how this is wrong, I'm explaining the orthodox position. Damnit uh Marxism here? Yeah no, okay, yeah, Chris,

quick question what what what? What? What was Marx? So Marx was a experiment is psychological experiment run by the by Harvard University that was concluded in but he wrote, he wrote a bunch of books, and one of those books is Capital and and in Capital. So okay, so you have you have your worker, right, and she she she works to make hospel stretchers. And the thing that makes the hospital stretcher have value is the amount of

time that it takes a worker to make it. So under under this this sort of understanding of what Marxism is, value is just labor time. Right, The value of an object is how many hours of work it takes to make a thing. Now this labor time or you know, like like and like how how long it takes to

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

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

to the boss. And this is called this is called surplus value, like the amount of time that you're working where you're working for the boss and not to like support yourself. Uh. This this, this is called surplus value. It is the objective route of exploitation and Marxism. I yeah, it's it's it's it's it's the value that goes directly to your boss. That and the reason that like your boss can just steal this from muse because they have

the factor and don't. So if you want to produce something for them to survive, you have to go to him. And this is this is called the ownership of the means of production. Now, the price in theory of of this hospital structure, right is based on value on its value or how many hours it takes to produce it um and how precisely you get from dollars as a unit of measurement from two dollars from time is a subject of an absolutely interminable debate called transformation problem. If

you want to go read more about it. I have wasted probably four years of my life reading about it. I don't recommend it. But the answer is you can sort of kind of get it to work if you funk with the numbers a lot. Uh. But it's if you do what's unclear if they mean anything. You can also bypass it entirely by arguing that only works in the level of the entire world economy. Blah blah, blah blah blah. I don't care. If you do care about this, don't yell at me. Go read chapter six of Pickler

and Needson's Capitalist power Palmatics. Theory is critique Fred Moseley's Money in Totality and kill Mini mcglare is a temporal those system interpretation of Marx's theory of value of Marxist value theory. And then google ducktails, go big jennu Wine and then send all of that, all of your notes on both the texts and the duck tails, send all that to I write okay on Twitter, um and they

get back to please you. You will probably come out of like you will come out of the duck yell stuff like more saying than you wire doing the Marxism stuff.

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

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

sectors is supposed to equalize. Yes, yeah, so and and this means that, like in the combination of this and competition means that prices is supposed to tend towards value or like the how much something cost in money is supposed to tend towards the labor time socially necessary to produce a commodity in a given place. Um, this is like the basic thesis of like what you call orthodox Marxist like orthodox Marxist political economy, you would probably the

Marksian political economy, whatever the fun you want to call it. UM. Now, in in starting in about the ninet inwenties, there was a new Marxism, and this is called neo Marxism. Neo Marxism is basic Like I heard about that from Dr Jordan B. Peters. Yeah yeah, right now. Now, now we're gonna get the inside scoop on on neo mark Exism.

So Neo Marxism. Their basic thesis is like, what if profit rates don't equalize across like betwetween different parts of the economy that make things, and you know, and because they don't do that, what what if what if you don't get competition? Because instead of people being able to just freely move capital between like sectors, what if you

have monopolies? And if you have monopolies, instead of sort of price being like a price is just value blah blah blah blah, because theyone can keep moving their money around, price is now a price. Price is now derived from the power of a corporation because if you know, if if if you if you're a powerful enough corporation to like have a monopoly and stop anyone else in producing the thing that you do. Now you can now you

can charge word called markups. And this is where Michail Collecky like enters from stage left um Collecy like he probably should have been the father father of like modern macroeconomics in the sense that like he invents a bunch of the ship that like Caynes does before Kanes did. But the problem is that he's writing a lot of this Polish and so the sort of like anglophone like economists are not reading it because he's in Poland and

he's a Marxist and he's writing in polo circles. But he invents a bunch of the stuff that like Canes invents slightly earlier, and he starts like looking at like monopoly and oligarchy theory and he starts trying to apply it to Marxism, and it's what you know, his inclusion is that monopolies are powerful enough that they can charge these markups, which is just like additional price increase over like what the like value determined price is supposed to be,

because they can prevent anyone else from selling a thing. And then you know, one what what once you have a monopoly in the market, you can force people to just like fucking suck it up and pay it because

they can't get it from anywhere else. And this is actually this is like pretty similar in some ways to like a bourgeois economic like theory of how this stuff works, which is like, oh yeah, in in bourgeois economics, like monopolies can increase the price over We're they're supposed to be in a perfectly competitive market because they have power

blah blah blah blah blah. But there's something very different in Coluckties work that is not in the normal Bushwa stuff, which is that what what he argues is that trade unions, Okay, so you have a trade union, right, they represented the workers who work at a company, and these that these trade unions are fighting over the over the product of

the markup and this keeps the size of markups. Are these sort of like these price increases that monopolies are doing down because the larger the markup these companies apply, the more incentive there are there is for unions to sort of like fight for pay increases, right, because okay, well, the more expective the goods are, the more money they're like very clearly is on hand. And so the larger

the demands you get from organized labor. And this is the insight that who killed the Phillips curve the paper I was talking about jumps on that unions fight over markups and thus that the strength of unions is part

of what helps determine inflation. And they point out that you know, unions want lower prices and for for goods, and the reason they want lower prices for goods is that the higher the price is of something, right, the less people buy of it, and the less people like buy of the thing, the less has to be produced. And that means that there's less people being employed. And so if you're a union, you want like the most

number of people being employed as you can. And so that means that means that you want you want prices to be low, because yeah, that because because lower prices means more of the more of the good being produced, and more the good being produced means more jobs. And this is where we get to sort of the fundamental assumption behind the regular Philips drip. And this is also true for this sort of like new like pseudo neo Marxist one, right, Um, their assumption is that inflation is

driven by rising wages. And you know, even though the unions are trying to sort of like reduce the markup and like and reduce markups, reduce prices to increase the number of workers, firms are trying to increase prices so they can make back the money they're paying out in widges.

Now when when unemployment is like high, this doesn't matter because wages don't rise very fast because there's you know, there's this gnormous pool of people who are incredibly desert for job, and you can pay them sort of like nothing, and they'll they'll come work for you because the al turnative is you know, starving or getting evicted. But when when unemployment is low, the bargaining power of workers increases, and that's that that's that's where the class war starts. Yeah,

I mean this. You see this in ninety one with the screen Cartoonists strike that Scrooge McDuck brutally cracked down on um and eventually had to seed seed ground to the guild. But Scrooge, Scrooge McDuck was was brutal during during this time period post the thirties rise of unions. That's right, Garrison, and that's a big part of why Huey, Dewey and Louie had to track him down in his money room and stick a bicycle pump into his mouth while he was sleeping and begin to inflate him largely

while touching themselves critical support. Louis my boy. So as as as as with I don't, I can't. I don't even know how to transition that I can't do it, but nobody does. I mean, really, the main thing is that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number of individuals will inevitably lead to inflation. Which

is true. And and this is one of the things that um that that that the economist are sort of talking about here, which is that like, okay, so once once you get an actual sort of once you once you get like a real class work going on right where you're you're you're getting a class work to the extent that like the bargaining power of workers into bargaining power of of like capitalist firms are essentially like very

close to being equal. Um, you get inflation. Now, what's interesting about this is that when you have strong unions, like when you have strong unions, you get high rates of inflation during periods of sort of inflation shocks, right, because the unions are sort of like propping up wages in this theory. But and this is the interesting part, right, you get way lower rates of unemployment. And so it's okay,

it's just step back for a second. So what's happening here is, right, if you have if you have strong unions and there's something else in the supply chain that increases costs, say to to to to pick a completely random example that never happened. Uh, say, for example, you're in the nineteen seventies and the price of oil is quadrupled in one year, and that increases the price of everything. Now when when when you have a strong but but

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

And when when corporations are strong and you don't have unions, you know, you get these shocks and the inflation rate is much lower, but everyone gets fired. Unemployment rate goes up to like ten percent. Uh. It's you know, it's

an absolute disaster. So that's that's one thing to note about about the way the sort of the Philips curve, the sort of Marxian Phillips curve, like analyze the situation, right, But there's another consequence here, which comes back to like what inflation is under a Phillips curve, Right, Inflation in Phillips curve is literally just wage increases. Right, So when when union power is weak, inflation stuff. But like, what does this actually mean? What it means is that wages

aren't growing, sure, aren't. Yeah, And and this brings us back to like the sort of weirdness we saw in the earlier part of the episode, right right after two thousand eight, right where there should have been deflation because the unemployment rate was really high, and also like junior recovery period where ninflation rate is unemployment rate is super low. But and there should have been inflation, but there wasn't.

And the answer is why why wasn't their inflation? It's well, okay, because no one had a union and so everyone's wages just stayed the same the whole time. I have another explanation for this. And when I previously when I previously said the Ducktails game came out into that to night, I was actually incorrect. Uh. Two thousand and eight was when Nintendo Power listed the Duck Tails game as the thirteenth best Nintendo Entertainment System game. Um, there was it

was voted that into thousand night. Now it's important that thirteen is very unlucky number. So by voting the duck Tails game best game from the NS into thousand eight, and they could have basically caused a psychic rift in the fabric of the universe, creating the financial crash. That's fascinating Garrison, because I was thirteen in two thousand one when I came across that angel Fire website with home drawn Ducktails inflation pornography. Wait, so this I think in

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

properly transition this, so I'm not going to. Uh So it turns out that, yeah, so the reason there hasn't been inflation is that there's no unions. Because we don't have unions. Are wages all suck and uh, this means that you know, wages, wages are stagnant low, and it means that they're not a drive. The unions aren't a driver of inflation. And also low wages are driver inflation

because they you know, like unions aren't around to increase wages. Now. Meanwhile, the other thing that this suggests is that monetary policy and they okay, I think they're they're in exact analysis was like I think like eighty four percent of like inflation shocks can be explained by looking at like union density. Um. But this also means it means what like monetary policy, like how much money there is like in the economy

has like basically no role inflation whatsoever. And and this is you know, okay, so like like this has all been sort of one perspective from some economists of the Federal Reserve, And we can ask the question, like why does this matter? Right? Like why why why? Why does like sort of one like group of people on the Fed like their response this matters And partly it matters because it's again extremely funny to watch the Federal Reserve turning to neo Marxists too, like try to explain why

inflation happens. But it also matters because theories of inflation dictate inflation policy. Um. Jerome Powell, who's the chairman the Federal Reserve, has had a press conference on May fourth, and it's too long to play the whole thing, but he has the speech, and he lays out a few

things that are interesting. So he talks about a bunch of stuff that's causing inflation, rights production bottlenecks, increasing crude oil prices, concreasing commodity prices from like Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Like he's lockdowns and shin another keeping factory like clothes, and like, yeah, okay, those are all like reasonable things

that cause inflation. But then when you get to like what the Fed is actually going to do, he starts talking about how the job market is too good for workers right now and unemployment is too low and that's what driving wages up. So he's planning he's going to tinker around with monetary policy to reduce wages and decrease the demand for jobs. And this brings us back to like two things. The first part is just the class

war part of inflation. Right, Prices are rising right now because someone inside, like prices are rising right now, and someone inside if if you want them to not to like cease to continue rising somewhat some part of like the company is going to have to take a hit to like the their percentage of like the sort of the markup, right, like their their percentage of like the price increase of the corporations do above like cost and okay, so someone has to do this, And the Federal Reserve

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

They talk about a shock or something that causes prices to increase, like you know, a bunch of Ukrainian wheat like suddenly being on harvest will because the Russian army is squatting on it, or like Chinese factory shutting down us the amount of weeder price electronics or sorry reduces the amount of wheat or the amount of electronics being

produced that drives out prices. Right, they talk about like there's an inflationary shock, and then they start talking and instead of talking about that anymore, they start talking about unemployment levels and the job market and monetary policy being

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

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

shock to the people who are reacting to it. And from there the question stops being about like d link with the shock itself and starts being about who's going to pay for these price increases, and in the nineteen eighties, like Reagan's Reagan solution, this iss well, okay, she's just gonna make organized labor pay for it. And so she just annihilates the annihilist the unions. He uses the state

to do it, just crushes the unions completely. And price increases, you know, prices stop increasing, right, And they stop increasing because the production costs of all of these goods like decrease because workers are no longer getting paid and they lose all their benefits. But this is the thing they never dealt with the actual source of the problem, right, Oil prices are still really high to this day, and

we've never transitioned off oil. And so to look at sort of that problem, I want to briefly look at another theory of inflation, which is one presented by Steve Mann, who I think I've actually had on the show before.

He's one of the people at Strange Matters, and he wrote he wrote this article called Notes towards the Theory of Inflation, which is based on the work of a heterodox economist named Frederick Lee, who is he's a cool guy and all of his stuff is like completely out there from the compens from decomperspective of but it it makes more sense than most regularly kind of stuff. So the sort of like founding observation of like that like project Lys basing his stuff on is that like, okay,

prices are not set by like an abstract market. Right, the price of something in a grocery store is set by a guy like that there there there was a specific guy or they are like several specific guys whose job it is to set the prices for the firm. Um. This this this theory of like what it's not even a theory, like the fact that this is how prices are formed by just a guy who sits there with a notebook or like a computer. Is this is what the price is going to be. This is called administered prices.

And Lee like very confestently argues that like this is how firm This is how both large and small firms actually set their prices. Right, a guy calculates his expenses, he adds a mark up, and he sets the price. Now, Steve Man argues that these prices don't generally tend to increase naturally because the price setters don't generally want to just increase the price randomly, because if you if you increase the price randomly, you will piss off your customers.

And the customers, you know, okay, they'll they'll tolerate like some small increases, but if if you raise the price enough, they lose your goodwill towards your brand, and they'll like they'll go off and try to find another brand. And this is disastrous because even if you reduce the prices

back down again, like the good will is lost. And that's sort of like you know, the sort of like happy association that like you have in your brain between like I don't know, like Nestly chocolate or something, or like whatever brand of things you're buying, like you get piste off of them because the price is now like way higher. So you know, you don't go back to the same like grocery store because that they've increased their prices.

Now obviously this is like there's like this subject constraints, right, Like, if if you need insulin and the monopoly that controls insulin production, just jack's the price, You're screwed, right, there's no sort of like there's no other place you can get insulin unless you're gonna try to make it so your your your solutions are you either try to ration it and you die, or you pay for the price increases.

And this this is bad and it does happen. But most goods aren't like this, and so price increases, when they happen, tend to be small and fairly infrequent, unless unless the person that the reason this doesn't this wouldn't happen is if the person setting the price has no choice. And the main reason that if you're a person setting a price, that you would have no choice but to increase like the price that that that that you're setting. The main reason you would do this because something happened

to your supply chain. UM, I don't I don't know if you all see that. There was a TikTok going around from a farmer in Iowa who was talking about like why why food prices are gonna keep increasing? The woman, honestly, I bless her heart, honestly thinks that food prices are not going to go up. She thinks that this is the highest they're going to go. I tried to explain to her that that was not the case, that they're

absolutely going to go up even more. Um, And I told her there are things that like we have to buy. There's something we had to buy that two years ago cost is four dollars. Last year was about forty six. This year it is costing US nineties six dollars. Okay, local farmer fifty had a cattle. It's costing him eight thousand dollars a month to feed them. Please understand, food prices are going to go, yeah, and so and so

you can see here what's happening. Is it like at some point down the supply chain, prices are increasing either because of like climate change, because of the word Ukraine, because of COVID, because of like any thousands sort of

other factors. And eventually the like the farmers who are setting the prices, right, they have to increase their prices because they don't they don't have a choice, right, because because the each person further back in the suppyline as a charity, right, like they have to be able to pay a bunch of ship builds. Yeah, and and this this sort you know that this is the Steve calls it like that. He calls it the supply chain theory

of inflation. Right, and you know in this model, like this is what's causing inflation, right, Each person successively down the line has to eat has to increase their mark up because they have to cover them, They have to

cover the new, newly increased production costs. And this is important because unlike most models of inflation, inflation isn't being caused by like some kind of like giant macroeconomic thing, like it's not being caused by like unemployment or like monetary policy, but it's being caused by very very specific micro recon like forces that you know, there are literally specific people who as a reaction to a specific thing

happening that makes production harder or increasing their prices. And this is a very different sort of you know that this is a very very different theory of inflation than like any of the like seventeen mainstream ones, all of

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

about it, are very very open about it. Here here's from a Business Insider article. What we are very good at is pricing. Colgate Palm of Oil CEO Noah Wallace said, whether it's foreign exchange inflation or raw unpacking material areo inflation, we have found ways over time to recover that in our margin line. We've been we've been very comfortable with our ability to pass on the increases that we've seen at this point, said Croker CFO Gary Miller Chip in October.

And we would expect that to continue to be the case. And here here's from here's from the Wall Street Journal, where more people talk about doing this. We have not seen any material reaction from consumers, Procter and Gamble finance chief Andre Sholton said last week, referring to a string of price increases that went into effect in September. So

that makes us feel good about our relative position. Now, those two articles, like, just those two articles alone talk about prices raising, Like talk about companies that are just raising prices because they know consumers will pay for it.

Because I think there's inflation happening. And those companies just from those two articles alone include Procter and Gamble, nest LEA, Verizon, Unilever, Colgate, Palm of Oil, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Gillette, Chipotle, A, T and T, Verizon, Kimberly, Clark Corp, Clarox, Reynolds, Kroeger's, and Albertson and like that. That's that's just like the corporations in the article that are like specifically named as talking

about having done this right. And they can get away with this because normally, normally write price increases to piss people off, they go to go free for brands. But if if prices across the board are already increasing, you can you can just like do basically like a price gouge increase, and you can do and you can increase your markup and it doesn't it doesn't affect your goodwill because people just assume that inflation is already happening, and

that inflation happens sort of naturally. Is either because the wage like wages are too high, there's too much money in circulation, so oh, there's just like inflation happening. Is this like abstract thing instead of what is actually happening, which there are very specific like they're individual people with with names and addresses who specifically increase the price in

order to screw you. And that that that's that's what's actually at stake here, and having explanation for why inflation happens, it tells you who to blame for it. Like right now, Larry Summers, who was the former Treasury secretary who was responsible for arguably responsible for two thousand directly responsible for two thousand eight h one of people who completely annihilated

the entire Russian economy in the nineties. Uh, he is has apparently been on the phone with Joe Biden, and he is going around saying that in order to solve inflation, we have to cut wages, in rage the unemployment rate to five percent, like for five years, like on average five percent for five years. And so this means either five percent of five percent, five years of five percent inflation, two years of inflation at seven point five percent, or

like one year of teen percent unemployment. And again unemployment right now is it like three percent? So she's talking about millions, potentially tens of millions of people losing their jobs in in order to in order to solve inflation, because Summers, again, Summers is going back on the sort of Phillips model ship, right, where inflation is caused by you know, it doesn't even matter what's actually causing the inflation, which is a bunch of a combination of price gouging

and like, uh, supply chage distructions. Right, She's going, Okay, who His theory isn't about what is causing inflation. His theory is about who's way to pay for it. And his solution is, fuck you. You are going to pay for it. You're going to pay for both the price increases, which the prices won't fucking come back down. That's the other part of this, right, Once, once you get inflation, and once the prices rise, they're sticky, they don't fucking fall.

And what he's saying is, yeah, fuck you, you are going to pay for it. You're going to continue to pay these prices. You're also going to pay for it by reducing your wages. You're going to pay for it by getting fired. And you know, and this is this is the sort of the choice that we have, right. It's either we let the ruling class tell exactly the

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

have to say about inflation. Yeah, I mean again, what what we need to do is if we organize as a people and as the people become the vacuum tube that we need to shove down the esophagus of Summers and other members of the ruling class in order to inflate their organs so that their asshole widens and we can collectively fuck them until they deflate. Is that more

or less accurate? Chris? Would you say? Economically? Sure? I mean, you know this is honestly okay, I would say, like this is the thing that this is the thing about having an explation for wine inflation happens. Right, It doesn't matter if it's true or not. You can. As long as long as you have a compelling enough explanation for inflation to cause people to do something, you can, you can.

I mean, and this this is one of the things, for example, like this is one of the things that caused tenement to happen, is that there was skywalketing inflation

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

is true. You can look this up online. Um So, the original Ducktails game from nine was remastered in two thousand thirteen, and it was real. It was released on August thirteen, two thousand thirteen. The remaster of the Duct Tails game thirteen thirteen, both on Lucky Never. I think that could have just just as much to do with our current economic problem around inflation as basically anything else Chris has said here um because August two thousand thirteen

Ducktails getting released Scrooge McDuck main character. That is too much to be a coincidence. Yeah, we are through the looking glass. I can see the nords like there's there's there's no getting away from this one. Look you all you have to do is you just gotta go. You gotta show up to the room with the fucking money is and you gotta take it from them. Do you guys shop up to you kind of show up to the factories and inflate your bosses and you will inflation

will come down. Yeah, it would work. Everybody, welcome to it could happen here the podcast about stuff falling apart and perhaps how we could begin to put them back together. Today, I'm your host, Garrison Davis. We've had a lot of doom and gloom the past few weeks here on the pod, so this episode we more folks used on the putting

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

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

during the risings. This is this is as flatting organization as we can make it, and we're you know, we're trying to make it flatter, and I just think it's important that the people recognize, you know, going out with resources is great, but going out and finding out what resources people need is better. There are so many groups in our city that are supposed to be doing this work that are not, and they're being paid to do

this work, and it's ineffective. And all I want is for for more people to try and do it their own way, to try and do what their community wants, you know, to the best of their abilities. We've seen lots of projects grow out of the mutual a networks that were established. It's been interesting to see how people in the wake of the George Floyd uprising have built off things that started two years ago, what's changed in

their practice, and how it's evolved since then. This past winter in this area of Columbus, Ohio, there was community needs not being at people having to be out in the cold and not having a place to stay. This problem was recognized by people, but unfortunately, far too many people just look at problems and just be like, oh, yes,

here's the thing that sucks. Well, that's too bad. But today we'll be talking about how a collective of people didn't simply acknowledge a problem, but actually went past that point and decided that even with limited resources, they have the capacity to actually figure out how to solve this themselves and provide a solution for the community. I think the first time I really tried something like that was

in December. A friend of mine had reached out about a camp on the south side of Columbus that was being swept by the city and they had needs. They needed new tents so they could set up elsewhere, They needed food and water like they always did, and they needed people to be there. Um to keep, you know,

to prevent violence from occurring as much as possible. UM. So, hearing about that, I started a I set up on my street in a bougie part of Columbus um with a little sign and collected goods whatever people dropped off. I collected money. Um. I raised about two thousand dollars and uh, I think we ended up buying around twenty two tenths. UM got other people there as well, and tried to make sure everybody had what they needed so

they could get set up elsewhere. But that was my first, like my first experience with that, doing it hands on and seeing that that worked, that encouraged me to do more. So that. How has it grown and changed since then? There's still a need for people to stay. Um it still gets pretty cold at night. Um So how throughout throughout winter? How did the project kind of morphin change? How do you go about finding like places to actually like set up the physical spot, right, Like, that's that's

a whole it's a whole other problem. Um is all like the is all like the logistical side of things, Yeah, exactly. Um, Well, we happened to have a space late last fall. I was invited to join a collective at first, collective that was operating out of a church that largely um falling into disrepair, but still operating as a church, and because we had that space, a couple of members of the collective encountered some folks in the neighborhood who needed a

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

was operating out of. For the community's part, when we were at the church, we were in a part of the neighborhood that had largely been gentrified, and so there was some some resistance, some concern about the changing face of the community and about the safety of kids and

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

They didn't really like how we operated, and we got a reputation as a warming space with no rules, and so they felt like because couples could sleep next to each other, UM, because people could go outside for a cigarette at night, because they weren't locked in the building, that we were running a space that was out of control. Well until we were kicked out of the church on March twenty nine. I think it was the physical infrastructure was there. It was just a matter of getting caughts

and blankets and making sure that people had food. Most of that was either through just one off donations to my cash app or I bought it with my own funds UM. Once we were forced to move outside, it got a lot more complicated UM because at that point we didn't have any tents UM. We had to go out that night and purchase. The day that we were removed, we had to go out and purchase I believed ten tents to start and then had a couple dropped off UM.

We now held around twenty tents UM. A lot of those were purchased by by me or by donations that we received UM or had been dropped off by by friends or people in the neighborhood. UM that has been you know, the physical infrastructure is mostly tents and canopies, and most of them are being held up by pieces of old tents or large tree limbs or whatever we can to survive the wind, because it's been nothing but

windstorms for the past well since we got here. Our first camp site was set up on a lot that was connected to the farm four Seasons City Farm UM. Several of the members of the collective are former paid employees of the farm or multi year volunteers. It's a it's a large organization on this part in this part of the town UM Old Town East UM, with about fifteen I believe years of history and goodwill UM. So

we set up next to their lot. But because they're on land bank land, we we didn't want to interfere with their lease with the city. So rather than risk the farm getting fined or UM having having their least broken, we we look next door to a lot on the other side of a chain length fence m two lots actually, one is owned by the city. That's the one where most of our tents are and then one is owned by a private owner who's a rather wealthy person in

the neighborhood. UM. We've done our best to stay on the city lot and that has been good for us. But we're also maintaining both lots and doing our best to keep the trash to a minimum UM to make sure that we're not tearying up the ground as much as we can, though it's hard with all this rain, h and and just do our best to be good neighbors UM and I think that has helped us a lot.

In recent years, lower class Columbus area residents lost twenty thousand units of housing due to unaffordable spiking rent prices and annual point in time tally this year organized by the Community Shelter Board on the number of homeless people in official Columbus and Franklin County emergency shelters increased by more than two hundred people since one and online data from the Shelter Board of a nonprofit organization that receives

funding from the City of Columbus and other organizations, indicates that as of March, there was a seven percent drop in the rate of people exiting their program and moving into stable housing as compared to last year, going from thirty three percent to twenty six A lot of times more formalized shelters are not ideal for people to stay in.

There's many issues with the formalized shelters regarding the specific rules of when you can get inside, how long you can be inside, whether you're locked inside the building, what stuff you can bring with you. At best, they are challenging to navigate. At worst, they're simply hostile to people looking for shelter. I asked Elizabeth what her take on the homeless shelter situation is like in Columbus and the ways their encampment is different from the more official shelters.

We have limited beds, and then the beds that are available are mostly under the governance of the Shelter Board, and the shelter Board wasn't too fond of us either because we weren't following all their rules. And there are a lot of concerns about the way the shelters run. The people that stay with us, the people that come through, they feel safer here. Um there's considerably less drug use.

There's basically no distribution. We try to keep a handle on that because it you know, would bring problems to the camp should it happen there. Um, we are a safe use space. We do have harm reduction materials and they know that, UM, and we we do our best to you know, just make sure that people have the care and the safety that they need. And that is kind of a dirty word. While all of those are

kind of dirty words. And the shelter organizing community, I guess, UM care and and you know, making people comfortable, it's just not really the goal. Next I asked about what types of connections the encampment and First Collective have been making with various organizations for infrastructural support or daily needs, as well as inquiring about the relations the camp has

with the city government. Here is Elizabeth's response. Really reached out to the different you know, harm reduction groups, the different houselessness groups that the emergency action groups, UH, different serve groups, and we just asked them to bring what they could or to send people if they could, just you know, whatever they could spare. And and it's worked. UM.

People show up with whatever they have to offer. UM from all over the city and and just from around the corner, which has been wonderful that the grassroots community support is just blowing my mind. I thought they were going to hate us, and here we are like making friends with everybody. Our first goal is to make sure that we've met people's needs as best we can. Um. You know that that involves right now, UM, keeping propane on site so that they can cook some of the

food that's brought. Um. We get a lot of prepared meals, but we also get a lot of ingredients, and there are quite a few people here that cook and have done pretty miraculous things with a couple of propane girls. Um. We try and have meals prepared every day, but it doesn't doesn't always work out, and sometimes we fill the gaps with little Caesar's or or something else, um whatever whatever it can be scraunged up at the last minute. Some of our biggest allies so far have been and um,

the local food not bombs. Uh, they've been wonderful, as well as some different church groups that that run nonprofits like Community Kitchen. We got our meals provided six days a week by church that's basically down the street and around the corner. But as far as the city goes. For the first couple of days, there were a lot of roll bys um, a lot of city officials taking pictures, no one really talking to us, but you know, there

was clearly concern. It wasn't until a man who works for the city and outreach under the Safety and Security Department, Sean Stevenson, came out and talked to us. Uh that we really started to see the possibilities of working with the city and in so much as they let us. He brought a city attorney, Steve Dunbar, and a gentleman from the mayor's office, UM, Jason jim Ends by Q

talk to our folks, and they listened. They listened to the people at the camp, who explained to them why they were here, explained to them why the resources that are available didn't work for them. You know, it was a it was a tearful conversation and since then they've largely left us alone. UM. We wish that they would provide some of the resources that they talked about, like a couple of porta potties and a dumpster, but you know, we we do our best or their composting toilet and

the good grace of some very kind neighbors. Police raids and sweeps are always an existential fear for those living in diway encampments. Here's what Elizabeth had to say about sweeps and police interactions. What we've been told is that they are They've been told to leave us alone. We've heard this from the cops themselves. We heard this from people who have talked to them. UM. But the precinct that is in this area has been told not to mess with us unless there is a violent conflict. The

thing to do prop stuff at. There are a lot of sweeps that have been threatened around the city of different camps. UM. They've received notice or notice of notice, so they don't know exactly when, but it's supposed to happen sometime. UM. But as far as we're concerned, we haven't really had that problem. UM crops have come through. There are a couple of times when they've been called by by people disgruntled residents or um by neighbors, but for the most part, they talked to us and then

they leave. We we do our best as volunteers to get between the police and other other groups that come out UM, even even the outreach groups that we know are are here to help, just because those interactions can can quickly get volatile. If you know if people aren't

sure about other people's intentions. So I would say that one of the best interactions I've had with the cops is they did come through here once and talk to a few folks, and a sergeant from the police department said, um, roughly that they couldn't make us leave because this was city land and they didn't have anywhere else to send us. So okay, I'll take it. I've got it. I've got

the dr assaultation. Elizabeth does hope that one day the relations between the church that first Collective was previously operating out of could be mended and once again work to utilize the space to serve the Wedder community. She also discussed the possibility of moving into vacant buildings and hoping to restore them while also having a place to provide more stable housing. So where the church is concerned, UM, I haven't given apprope. We we aren't in the building now.

I don't have a key, but I got a church every Sunday. Um I'm not I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in God, but I do like the messages that I get there, and I I want to continue to use this really wonderful building as a part of the community, you know it's there. There are a lot of goals that that we as a camp have and some of them include the church and we we'd love to get back into that space and fix the two bathrooms in the basement that are just sitting there, build

some showers, laundry facilities, a free store, kitchen. There's there's so much that we could do if we could utilize that building in addition to the the infrastructure that we have here um. But when it comes to two buildings

something more. We're currently working on a proposal for the city for some of the relief funds that have been received but not dispersed with the goals of ideally building little cabins on platforms on the lot that we're on now, just to start to get people out of tents, to start meeting some of the code requirements to improve the sanitary and living conditions, and then from there we'll ask

them to give us a building to restore. There's a lot of really skilled people out here and they want to work, and they want to work on all of these old buildings that have been allowed to fall apart all over the city. There are so many rooms available. There's so many units that they could work on that they could live in, and I think that's what they want to do, So that's what we're going to try

and help them do. The camp functions under a sort of direct democracy with residents and first collective volunteers, some of whom are all residents, hold regular community meetings where camp occupants vote to make decisions about camp guidelines. There has been a couple instances of violence, UM, a couple particularly scary moments that we had to try and de escalate.

And there's sometimes that we didn't handle things as best we could UM, but we we try, and we tried to talk through the way that the way that it goes down with the residents, among the volunteers. UM. We try to be transparent about you know, why why we make some of the decisions that we do, and for

the most part, we leave it to the community. UM. There have been some really great community meetings go so long, UM, but they talk about everything they talk about, you know, shared concerns about safety, concerns about how they want to live together and what would make and feel safer, and established guidelines and occasionally vote to remove people. So UM, we've managed to resolve some of those conflicts before they

went that far. I initially talked with Elizabeth in May two, but I was able to catch up with her a few weeks ago to hear about what's been going on the past month. UM. I just wanted to kind of fill you in on what we've been up to UM over the past month or so. It's it's been busy. UM. We've been to a lot of Area Commission meetings for the different areas of the city to try and make some allies and talk to people about what we think is a solution to a problem they don't know how

to solve, but to get some unwanted attention. A local station, Tim TB came through with a bit of an agenda. Right now, the city of Columbus has a problem and it has to do with homelessness. I can't set up on city property along East Mound Street in the middle of the Near East Side neighborhood, is raising questions tonight about whether the twenty people who live there should be allowed to stay are forced to go to Kevin Landers

has been working the story all day. Today. He went to the camp and spoke to those who lived there and got answers from city leaders about addressing concerns from neighbors who say that camp it's got to go. This on Housing community is located on East Mound Street. The people who live here, the city says, are technically trespassing. The city says they're going to let them stay here until they can find housing, but not everybody wants them here.

They wanted to talk specifically about our sanitation situation and nothing else. Um. I told them we've been waiting on the city since abol fifteen for the dumpster the Port of John's if they'd offered, but um, they were still looking into it. So we took it into our own hands. All that attention, we needed to do something, So we contracted a porta john company who is currently donating to porta John's and servicing it once a week. Um, which is great. Uh. We had a compost toilet before and

this is so much better. Um. And we went out of pocket to pay for the trash service. So we're getting our own trash service. Trash service now once a week. Um. It's not quite enough, but it certainly helps you see code enforcement go by all the time. Um, they've been driving by. I've seen them at least five or six times. Today people are waiting for something that they can latch onto,

But so far, so good. With Columbus facing one hundred degree heat waves, what started as a warming station in winter now serves as a cooling station this summer for its few dozen residents, as gears shift and new seasonal materials are required. The camp has been exploring alternative methods of funding to sustain the level of resources and services they've been able to provide the past few months. We did launch a go fund me and we've had pretty

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

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

to pay with residents phone bills. Sometimes funds are also used to compensate residents for extra labor put towards maintaining the camp, like cleaning up the campsite, cutting up firewood, and providing extra services like haircuts. The response has been really good. I think people understand what we're trying to do and are are being really receptive to it. UM. I can't say the same about the city though. We UH. We met with Councilwoman shale A Favor from the city

on Monday and presented a proposal. We asked for eighty five dollars over the next six months to continue operation, to pay a small salary to the three volunteers that are here all the time, UM for healthcare, for a small stipend to give to each resident of the camp every every week, UM additional operating funds. Just we came to them with this ask and they didn't really seem

to get it UM, so we're gonna keep trying. They they felt like they can't really support a tent city in their minds, like they couldn't give money to support people who were residing in tents because tents are inadequate shelter. But I mean I can test that not having a tent is also an adequate shelter. The City of Columbus relies almost completely on the Community Shelter Board to manage its problem with homelessness. Community Shelter Board has a revenue

of around forty four million dollars a year. They pay their director half a million dollars just under UM and a few other executives received ample compensation. But their success rate for the entire county is label at you go through their data. They have managed to get pent of the people who come through their shelter into some sort of housing. For the zip code that we're serving at seven,

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

Special Projects for the Department of Development. If you have a problem with a homeless camp in the city, she is the person that the city wants you to talk to, no matter what UM if if you're homeless, that's who that's who they want you to talk to. She's under the Department of Development. Her her main focus is economic development. She's just special projects, which means she helps clear the way by getting camps out of the way for development projects.

That's that's her role, and she is the city's liaison. No matter who we talked to, she's the one that we keep coming back to. So I think it's pretty um cynical and upsetting that this isn't under the purview of the Department of Health, you know, and any any other department would be a little bit better than the

Department of Development to show so much we care. We're planning to go back to the city, uh, regardless of what they say about this initial proposal, because there's a lot that we'd like to build here and and we think they'd be amenable if they understood. We're drafting a second round proposal taking inspiration from Dignity Village in Portland.

It's an autonomous village of fun housed people that's existed since two thousand and I think there's a lot of we can learn from them for modeling this in a way that the city might better understand. We believe that what we're doing here is transitional housing, and the people who are here want to be involved in building that transitional housing for themselves and then for the people to come after. So that's that's what we're hoping to get the city to sign off on. Whom we met with.

We met with the councilwoman. One of the things that she said was they at the city they don't have a model for serving the population that we're serving. Um, they don't. They don't know how to handle people who don't want to move inside, who don't want to move into the shelter system for whatever reason, and so all they can really do is move them around. Um, we're trying to tell them that we do have a model and we think we think that we can help the city as long as they stay pretty hands off and

give us money for it. So fingers crossed. I'm not going to hold my breath, but fingers crossed. The city of Columbus has been much more openly hostile to some other encampments providing cooling and shelter in parts of the city. We're not the only on house encampment in Columbus. Um. There there are a lot more, and there's one that is at it's called Here Park on the south side. We have a lot of friends there. UM. Our organization

works with their organization. UH. They were served a fourteen day eviction notice UM on the first and they have until to move out. UM. So we're doing whatever we can to support them. But UM, it very much feels like we're being treated like the good camp and they're the bad camp right now. So we're trying our best to make sure that the city knows that we're with them. You know, I I'm whatever they think about us. We we support those people no matter what, and we'll see

whatever we can to help. UM. We're trying to give them advice about the things that have worked for us to keep the city away and hopefully if they do have to move on the fourteenth, they'll be able to set up somewhere over the city or give them a break. Here is some audio of a press conference given at the Here Park camp just last week. The city is not out here giving out water. The city is not out here making sure that UH people don't get heat

exhaustion or heat stroke. Right, They're nowhere to be found. So we are here to remind them they have a hundred and thirty five million dollars in American Rescue Plan funds. Where is this money going? Why do we not have housing? This weather is just a little taste for many of us of the conditions that our unhoused neighbors out here can look forward to enduring for the entire summer. The City of Columbus was planning on evicting our people today

June fourteenth. They delayed that eviction. It is a human right, so we are here to assert our human rights. Two housing. They're hoping that we're going to get hot and tired and we're out. Are we gonna let up? The Here Park Camp eviction was pushed back to June twenty one due to a massive heat wave, and by June one, the temperature was still in the upper nineties, but the city followed through on their threat and swept the camp.

At least twenty Columbus police cruisers, city attorneys, people from the Department of Development, and other city employees were on site for the eviction. Bulldozers and massive machinery crushed people's tents and personal belongings. Some folks, forcibly displaced have lived

in the here Park for nearly a decade. For wrapping up this episode, I had just one more question for Elizabeth for people who would be interested in trying to create similar projects or hopeful smilar similar projects in their area, how will it would be some advice to give to

people who who are want to try something similar. What's the kind of stuff that you've learned the past few months that you were kind of surprised by UM and and you know, if if you could do anything different, what's what's like what's the kind of stuff that you would uh that you would approach UM to make the processes like smoother or slightly more improved. Well, I would

have looked for more funders first. Um. The one of the most painful parts for me has, like just personally has been holding the purse UM, being the person that everyone knows to ask for for cash if they needed for something UM It. It is a it is a real strain on compassion sometimes, you know, on compassion fatigue is real, and it can be really hard day and day out having to field requests from people who you know need these resources, but you can't always give everything.

It's it's hard to say no. Learning to say no has um has helped, but ah, diversifying our funding sources is also helping a lot. Um. I've learned that I can't do at all and that I need to take breaks, and that being here is is what I want to do. But it doesn't mean I need to always always do it.

Sometimes you've got to step away. UM. I I wish that I had spent a little more time with my family, um, rather than you know, throwing myself completely into this U. But two months ago my fiance, my ex fiance, asked me to leave. So I have been living at the camp too. UM. So I it's it's been a pretty stark jump to go from having a big house and some retirement funds to living in a tent and having none. But I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't change it, and

I'm going to keep doing it. It's because I can, because I could, And that's that's really what I want people to see is that if they can do something,

they should. Um. It's the best job I've ever had. Um. You know, nothing is more rewarding than going to work and hanging out with your friends all day, like helping them get jobs and find apartments and meet friends like, all right, there's so many wonderful people here, and like me and the other volunteers, we love all of them and you want nothing more than to see them succeed. So yeah, I just I just advised people to do what they can, to ask for what they need and

try and provide it. Anyone who wants to know more about the First Collective and what they're doing, you can go to First hyphen Collective dot org. You can find links on Elizabeth's Twitter account at an Optimist. And even if you disagree with some of the organizational or structural choices, I hope you at least learned something or got something productive out of this example of people putting in effort to fill in the gaps in their local community that

isn't for us today. See you on the other side. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until we the death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here.

Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com slash Sources, Thanks for listening.