Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Thank you, everyone for joining us today. I'm Scott Schiff hosting the Atlas society, senior fellow Rob Brazinski explaining how post scarcity economics is not what you think it is. Um, I'd ask everyone to share the room and, and please raise your hand. If you want to join the conversation after Rob gets done with his opening remarks, uh, Rob, I hope you had a good vacation. COVID notwithstanding <laugh>. Um, and you know, you did this topic somewhat at my request, which I appreciate. So, uh, what do we think post scarcity is and what is it really?
Speaker 1 00:00:38 Okay. Okay. So I'm excited about this topic, but first I wanna say, I think you asked me before I left and I was a little more re to talk about it before it happened, but, uh, I had an awesome vacation. What happened is that this was a vacation. My dad originally planned with my old to do with my oldest son two years ago. And then the whole thing got turned upside down by COVID and then he was gonna do a trip with my oldest son. And then two years later do a trip with my youngest son. And then he said, well, now I'm gonna do both of them together. And then he said, but I don't think I can handle both of them together. So my wife and I went along and so we all five of us went off there. And what we did is basically a tour of the entire ancient world, uh, ancient, Mediterranean world, I should say.
Speaker 1 00:01:19 So I got to see, we got to see, you know, we, we spent a couple days in Rome, we went to Crete and saw that, you know, the temple of Canas, the, the, the, the, the, the, uh, mano, the seat of Manne civilization, we saw an Athens. We saw, uh, went to Istanbul, a whole bunch of different places. It was amazing. So, um, a lot of stuff hadn't seen before, actually the one that really caught me, two things caught me off guard for anybody who's who's, I don't recommend traveling or now, cause you're gonna get COVID. But if you are traveling in the future, whatever two things I really recommend that caught me off guard the things I didn't expect to find really interesting were the library of, well it's usually described as the library of Celsus is really, probably best pronounced Celso. The library of Celso at, um, ESUs, which is now in Turkey, but it's, it was an ancient Greek city.
Speaker 1 00:02:08 Um, and the ruins of offices are amazing. And there's a, a library there that was like one of the largest libraries, not any, not as big as the one in Alexandria, but one of the largest libraries in the ancient world. And that was a really great thing to see. And, um, then the other one was STO of ELAs, which is part of the ancient ARA in Athens. So it's sort of at the foot of the, uh, Acropolis. And it's one that, uh, this is, I didn't realize how long ago this was done around 1950 or so there was a, basically a, a, an association of foreigners in Athens who they didn't reconstruct, or, you know, just like curate the ruins of this, this old place called the Stolo. They completely rebuilt it to match the original specifications as best they could tell. And it, I thought it was real.
Speaker 1 00:03:00 I, I was amazed by it because it really, it, because it was so perfectly reconstructed, it, it gave you a real feel for what it was like, you know, the solo was a place. So basically a covered area had a museum originally had a museum in it, and now has a museum in it now, a museum of the ancient ARA. And it was basically gave you an idea of, you know, when the ancient Greek philosophers got together to discuss and teach philosophy, this is the sort of place they would hang out in. So it was really great to, to do that. I really, I, it really gave me an idea of, of what it is the S soak saw and EST. So, uh, um, that was one that I, I really recommend to check out. All right. So enough enough on all of that. So the other thing though, is if you travel, you will get COVID. So, I mean, that's sort of a universal experience for everybody I've talked to. Um,
Speaker 2 00:03:49 Rob, I just wanna, I jump in here is David. Uh, I love Greece. I've been there three times, most recently, four years ago, uh, with, uh, a trip that Marsha Enright mm-hmm <affirmative> and you are wedding my appetite to go back. Oh my God.
Speaker 1 00:04:05 <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:04:05 That is so cool. Congratulations. I love what you were saying.
Speaker 1 00:04:09 Well, and, and the fun thing is I see, I get to go to all these places with my wife and she's, she's an architectural historian. And so I basically I'm, my job is stand under the camera bag while we go through all of these things at an incredibly slow pace, as she, you know, basically photographs, everything. So we have like 300, 400 photographs of the, of the, of Theropolis and all that sort of thing. So, um, it was, it was, it was a lot, it was a great thing. And, you know, I I'm, I joke about how we're gonna have this whole series of, of, of Sherry goes and visits the great monuments of the world completely alone, because she has this tremendous patience to stand there. That's extremely crowded site and wait and wait and wait until everybody else is out of the photo. And she gets the photo and it looks like she visited this place and there was nobody else there.
Speaker 2 00:04:56 <laugh> well, please, uh, I I'd love to see some of Sherry's photos, so
Speaker 1 00:05:04 I'll, I'll post a few in the future. Yeah. I'll, I'll post there. It's some really beautiful stuff. Um, anyway, I'd love to talk about all of that, but let me get into post scarcity. Economics is what I'm supposed to be talking about today. All right. So this is one that, um, when you talk about post scarcity economics, what do people mean by that? Well, this is an idea that some people came up with and have been promoting for a while, which is the idea that well with automation and the robots are gonna do everything, and they're gonna produce so much wealth that we are finally going to be in a post scarcity economy, that the, uh, automation is going to basically pro uh, so streamline and, uh, make the, the process of, of production. So effortless that we'll basically have as much wealth as any anybody possibly want.
Speaker 1 00:05:51 And so we'll be able to live in a post scarcity society where, you know, you there'll be so much wealth that we can, basically everyone can have as much as they want. And the general viewpoint is this leads to something like the universal basic income, the vastly expanded well for a state where basically everybody's provided by the government with an income, because we don't need to worry about production anymore. We have so much production. We can share it all around. This is something that's been used has come up a lot recently among this sort oft future set this post scarcity economy because of the advances that are already real advances in artificial intelligence and automation and, and, and, uh, automation reaching this much higher level than it used to. But the interesting thing, I thought, one of the interesting things I find out about it is that this is not at all a new idea.
Speaker 1 00:06:40 This has been bouncing around for a long time. Uh, there's I've dug up, uh, back in the sixties. Actually, I, it was one of the articles I ran quotes from this back in the sixties, there was a bunch of people who petitioned, uh, president LBJ, uh, about how we should, you know, we should basically have this vast, this is right before he started the great society welfare state. And they're sort of pushing for the welfare state saying, well, now that everything's gonna be automated, essentially we're gonna be in this post scarcity society. We're all production will be so automated that we'll have as much as we could possibly want. And, you know, in fact, the bigger prob biggest problem we're gonna have is everybody be automated out of a job. Everything will be so automated. People won't need, do work anymore. And so we need to have this greatly expanded welfare state.
Speaker 1 00:07:26 So this is something that's, you know, it's sort of put forward as, oh, this is a response to new developments, but it's not really, it's an old dream that's been going on for, you know, even before, frankly, even before the 1960s, this is sort of the Marxist dream in a way, except with the ID addition that, oh, well, it's technology. That's finally gonna make this Marxist dream possible that we'll have this economy that just, you know, effortlessly pumps out. Uh, there's a vast supply of goods. There's no real economic scarcity anymore. And therefore we can have this vast welfare state that basically can provide everything for you. And, you know, the real thing is what are people gonna do when they don't have to work? That's the real question. All right. So first of all, I wanna start with this idea of post scarcity economics and say that it's based on a misunderstanding of what scarcity meets now, scarcity is one of these terms.
Speaker 1 00:08:15 It has sort of a, it has a tactical meaning in economics and an everyday sort of colloquial meaning. And part of the problem is that diversions between those two meanings. So if you ask somebody what it means to not have scarcity in the colloquial sort of everyday version, they would say, well, it would mean that the basic necessities of life are extremely cheap or relatively cheap, you know, that, that everyone would be able to, that that virtually everyone would be able to afford the basic necessities of life. Right? So if that's the meaning of scarcity, though, then we're already in a post scarcity world and actually pretty much have been for almost a hundred years now because you know, the, the, uh, by the early 20th century, the industrial evolution had achieved this level of production where practically anyone can afford, you know, a very basic necessities of survival.
Speaker 1 00:09:09 You know, the, the, uh, uh, at least in a, in a society like America, that's been true that, uh, practically everyone, anyone makes enough money. You know, if you're capable of working at all now, there's always gonna be some people who aren't capable of supporting themselves, who for one reason, disability, or, or what have you for unfortunate circumstances, a very small number of people are not gonna be able to work, but for the vast majority of, of, of, of people, if you are capable of working at all, you're capable of making enough money to keep, you know, basic level of a roof over your head, some clothes on your back, some food in your stomach, uh, we've already achieved that post scarcity world, according to that sort of everyday definition of it. But let's take a look, a look about what scarcity actually means in economics in economic scarcity has a different meaning because, you know, if you talk about the, the, the basic necessities of life being relatively cheap, that's very dependent on, you know, I say relatively because that's very dependent on what your standards are, right?
Speaker 1 00:10:11 So if we look at the standards of how people lived in the year 1800, it would cost extremely little <laugh> to live, uh, a sort of average person's life circuit, 1800, but that would mean, you know, no electricity, uh, the standards in terms of how much food and, and what counts as shelter and what counts as clothing, uh, would be so much lower than what we're used to today, right? It would be considered extremely substandard. The life of the average person would be considered extreme poverty by the standards of America in 2022. So, you know, our standards for what is the basic necessities of life keeps going up because we live in an advanced, industrial, very wealthy society. And our idea of what's normal, what's the basic keeps rising up. Right? So, um, and I'm sure that, you know, in 2032, uh, sorry, not 2032 in two in, in, sorry, in, in, in 23rd, in 21, 22, a hundred years from now are standards for what is, you know, the basics required for life will be way, way higher than they are right now.
Speaker 1 00:11:17 Uh, somebody actually did a TV show a while back when these reality shows called 1900 house, I think it was done in Britain, uh, where they took a bunch of, you know, average, ordinary people from the, you know, the, from the early 21st century. And they had them live for like six months in a house that, uh, was run basically with nothing, without anything people didn't have in 1900. So be, you know, totally people living totally by the standard of living the year in 1900. And the basic upshot is everybody hated it <laugh> they hated it. They thought it was horrible because they, you know, the average standard of living back then, even for the wealthy people was so far below what we take as normal today. So that's why we can't have this sort of this everyday version of the word scarcity, because that always gonna be moving target.
Speaker 1 00:12:06 It's always gonna change. Well, I think in a way we, we, we, I said we already have achieved post scarcity economics. If you looked at things by the standards of 1800, but in another sense, we're never going to achieve post scarcity economics because our standards for what's the basic for what's, the bare minimum to get by in life are always gonna be rising. And it's a good thing that they're always gonna be rising. It means we're always gonna be progressing. We're always gonna be coming wealthier and having more and better stuff. So obviously in economics, you need a more specific, a more objective meaning of the word scarcity and what scarcity actually means that economics is not things being relatively cheap compared to historical standards. Scarcity means in economics, the availability of goods in limited quantities, right? The fact that, that there's always gonna be a limited amount of whatever it is you want.
Speaker 1 00:12:59 There's always gonna, it's always gonna be a limited amount of it available. And, uh, now it's clear from that, that, that scarcity, there's no such thing as post scarcity economics in that technical sense of scarcity, because the availability of goods and limited quantity is not some temporary problem that can be solved by technology. It's a basic condition of human existence, right? We can have goods available in much larger quantities than before, but they're always available in a limited quantity. Now I'll be talk about what I mean by goods being available in a limited, uh, quantity. So, uh, one of the things that people use a post scarcity economics people talk about is they talk about it as star Trek economics, because if you're a star Trek fan like me, you remember that, you know, in, in the, uh, especially by the next generation, they have the replicator, right?
Speaker 1 00:13:50 So, uh, uh, John Luke Picard just walks over and there's this little box on the wall looks up outside of a microwave. And he says to a tea, Earl gray hot, and this hot, uh, steaming hot cup of Earl gray T uh, materializes out of thin air. And this is the replicator they have that, you know, they, they, uh, manufactures out of pure energy. They manufacture whatever good you want, uh, whatever food, whatever, you know, it it's in, for some reason it is, it's usually food. They talk about using the replicator to create, you know, spare parts for various machines. But, you know, you create these small objects purely out of energy by materializing them in a replicator. So their idea is that, you know, post scarcity economics is gonna be the equivalent of that, that now they don't say we're gonna have replicators. They say we're gonna have automation. That's so great that we're going to just be able to, you know, have these goods materialize whenever we want them. Well, as somebody, somebody wrote an article about this with regard to star Trek. And he said that the thing about, uh, uh, hold on just second.
Speaker 1 00:14:54 Oh, okay. <laugh> you wrote five years ago about it. What's that you wrote a piece five years ago about it, about star Trek economics. Yes. And this, some of this is based on that, um, because they had this thing, you know, the somebody's making a case for the UBI, the universal basic income in Switzerland. And, uh, somebody wrote a piece talking about, oh, this is like Sergeant economics. It's like having the replicator. Well, somebody wrote a piece along years number of years ago, which I thought, so B asked a brilliant question in regard to this sort of this vision of, oh, what if we had replicators? And his question was who minds that I lithium, right? Cause you, if you get, if you know, it's star Trek, all this anti matter fusion, generators, whatever they have, uh, that they use to generate these fabulous amounts of power, this fabulous amount of energy that they use.
Speaker 1 00:15:42 Cuz you know, if you think about it, the ability to materialize something outta of thin air, you know, generating a, a, a, a, a cup of, of hot Earl gray tea, purely out of energy, it's gonna require this phenomenal amount of energy to do that. And all that depends on di lithium crystals, which are used to somehow direct and control this process. It's all a little vague, but, you know, it's, it's science fiction. Yeah. It it's the fiction in science fiction. Yeah. It's all a little vague because of course the science hasn't been invented yet. Um, and of course that, you know, throughout the host, the whole star wars series, the, the scarcity of di lithium and the importance of acquiring di lithium crystals is this running theme. Right? So, uh, this, and there's actually, uh, one of the best, uh, uh, one of the best original season, uh, original series, uh, um, uh, episodes was one with things called muds women, uh, was, it, has, it has this plot that evolves around these sort of rough guys who are off, uh, uh, on this incredibly inhospitable planet, mining de lithium, uh, and hoping to strike it rich as Del lithium minors.
Speaker 1 00:16:47 So again, this gets the idea that goods are always available in the limited quantity, right? That's in basic condition of existence, even if you're in the star Trek universe in the star Trek future, where you have replicators and you can generate whatever you want out of these fabulous quantities of energy, you're still gonna need to get the, the, the D lithium, somebody still have to mine, the di lithium. And, um, so there's still gonna be something, some bottleneck in the production process. There's gonna be still gonna be something that's available in a limited quantity. That means that you cannot actually have literally everything you want. You have to make trade offs and they have to do prices. And there has to be, you know, economic decisions that are being made. All right. So I think like you just have to sort of push aside this whole idea of the post scarcity economy.
Speaker 1 00:17:33 There is no such thing as a post scarcity economy, if you understand what scarcity really means and the objective, uh, exact economist sense now, in terms of the meaning of post scarcity that people are using, which is we basically amounts to, we live in a wealthy society, you know, uh, we don't have a scarcity of goods. Well, the other thing, by the way, the other thing I wanted to point out with regard to, um, automation as being the thing that produces post scarcity. I, I have a vivid memory that, uh, sometime about five years ago, somebody wrote an article about how, how terrible it was gonna be. Then in two to five years, we'd have self driving trucks and it would put all the world, all the truckers out of business. And there's so many people who had a jobs driving trucks, and they were all gonna be outta their job.
Speaker 1 00:18:19 And this was gonna happen in two to five years. And this was written about five years ago, as I recall, um, somewhere around 2016, 2017. And, uh, of course now we've just getting through a period where we've had supply chain disruptions and inflation because there aren't enough truck drivers <laugh>. So this gives an idea, you know, this future in which everything's automated is a lot farther off than, you know, people get all excited and they think, oh, we're gonna have self-driving trucks that, that fully automated future is a lot farther off than we think. So what is post scarcity? You know, if you actually look at the real reality of what's going on, all it really means is we live in a relatively wealthy society. So what we're really asking about, what does a post scarcity economy look like is what does the society look like now that we are generally really rich?
Speaker 1 00:19:09 Um, and the strange paradox I see here is that, you know, the assumption is, oh, well, if we're really rich, then that means we'll have this giant welfare state and we'll have the universal pay income, and everybody will, nobody will have to work and everybody will be paid for by the government, but there's a paradox in there, which is the strange paradox I see is that if you look around the world, the wealthiest economies are the ones that have the biggest welfare states. And of course, that makes sense from a certain level, because poor comp poor countries can't afford big welfare states. They don't have enough money to pay for it. Uh, actually just did an interview a while back with a, uh, a Ukrainian philosopher, very interesting interview, where he basically says, we're not gonna have a, a Western European style welfare state in Ukraine.
Speaker 1 00:19:55 We can't afford it. We've been without it for so long. We've learned how to get by, without it, we're gonna have to spend a lot of money on. We're gonna have to be more like, you know, America in the early 20th century where we spend, most of our budget goes to defense to defend against the, the Russian me. And we're not gonna have a welfare state. A welfare state is a luxury for a wealthy society, but the paradox there is, if you look at it, then that way, what you realize is that most of the world's welfare spending is going to the richest people in the world, right? So in America, we have the wealthiest middle class that has ever existed in all of human history. And they're getting one of the most generous welfare state supports that anybody's ever gotten in all of human history.
Speaker 1 00:20:40 And when you think about that, that's kind of crazy. It's kind of completely upside down because what we're doing is we have a welfare state that treats us like we're in a position of scarcity while we are in fact, living in one of the wealthiest societies that's ever existed. So, uh, I think post scarcity economics, a wealthy post scarcity scarcity society is not one in which we can finally afford the super generous welfare state. It's one in which we actually don't need a welfare state. Um, it's one in which, you know, if, if, if we're living in a society that is so wealthy compared to previous societies where it is easy to afford the basic necessities of life, then we should actually have a smaller welfare state. We should not need a large, uh, and generous welfare state because precisely because there's so much production, there's so much wealth available that, you know, essentially any able bodied person who's capable of working should be able to provide the basic necessities of life for himself.
Speaker 1 00:21:41 Uh, and I think this sort of, you know, that's, that's why I say the post scarcity economics. Isn't what you think it is. It's, it's not one in which we have so much money we can afford to have everybody on welfare. It's one in which we don't need welfare, uh, or welfare becomes, you know, uh, well, charity in general and welfare and specifically becomes much less necessary than it has ever been, because everybody's so much wealthier than they have ever been. Now, one last thing I also wanna put out there, it's not just, we don't need a welfare state. It's also that the paradox here, or, or the, the, the problem that we have with having this idea that, oh, now that we have a welfare state, we can have the universal, basic income. Everybody can get paid a check for the government so they can live without having to work is actually a prescription for having become so wealthy.
Speaker 1 00:22:28 And so technological advanced, that's a prescription for stagnation for having a stagnant economy for stopping our level of production at this current level. Uh, because what you're basically doing is you're telling people, nobody has to work. Uh, we're so wealthy. You don't have to work anymore. Everybody can just sort of coast and we'll all get by at whatever the existing prevailing level of wealth is. Now, imagine you did that in 1850 or in 1900, you said, oh, and this is basically just going to go back to communis. This is basically what marks was saying. He was saying, look, you know, uh, uh, one of the things about the communist manifesto was he recognizes, look at all this amazing production this happened because of, uh, well, he doesn't say because of capitalism, he says like can says because of capitalism, but he says, you know, because of the industrial revolution, because of this new, uh, production technology, all this wealth has been produced.
Speaker 1 00:23:22 And it basically concludes, therefore, now we don't need to have production be tied to work. Uh, we can have this system of, for each according to disability, to each, according to his need, you can be, you know, you can do what you want. You can be, uh, a farmer in the morning and a, a fisherman in the afternoon and a critic in the evening. That's a famous passage from one of his works, this idea that wealth we can, we can totally separate wealth from. Uh, and the process of production from, from people actually getting paid and working. And it came from the same notion that, well, look, we're so much wealthier than we were before because the, because we have factories and we have, uh, uh, industrial processes, we have, uh, uh, the, you know, the, this new industrial revolution that creates so much wealth.
Speaker 1 00:24:07 Well, if we'd followed marks, we would've had the level of, we would've stagnated at the level of wealth of 1850, or the level of wealth of 1900 or whatever, wherever it was that we imposed this wealth, this, this ideal society where nobody works, where nobody has to work, you would stagnate at whatever level of wealth that is. And what you'd do is miss out on is you would miss out on whatever comes next. You'd miss out on the tremendous growth and opportunity, and, you know, all the entrepreneurial effort, entrepreneurial effort and the businesses that need to be started, and the technology that needs to be developed to get us to the next stage, to become even wealthier and even have, and, and even better off. Uh, and I guess the irony I point out about this is that, uh, uh, people site star Trek as this, but if you did this, we'd never get to the star Trek future with the replicators and, and the faster the light travel and the, the, the spaceships, uh, the starships going, uh, to explore the galaxy.
Speaker 1 00:25:04 Uh, so anyway, so my point of all this is that posteriority economics in the strict economic sense does not exist and can never exist. A wealthy society can exist, but a wealthy society exists precisely as the product of a lot of people going out there working. And the wealthier we get, the more incentive we have to have more and more people out there working, and the less need we have for people to live off of a welfare state. So the actual quote, unquote, post scarcity economics, the economics of a rich tactic, logically advanced society should actually be more people going out and working more people going out and, and creating new things and starting new businesses, and much, much less need for anybody to be supported either by private charity or definitely not by, uh, by, by the welfare state. So it's sort of like a, a, my perspective is a complete opposite of what people talk about these days when they talk about post scarcity economics. So I want to get a sense from you Scott, as to whether that, that addresses what you were thinking of there.
Speaker 0 00:26:08 Yeah. I think it, it does lot. I wanna encourage everyone to share the room, as well as raise your hand if you want to get involved in the conversation. Um, I just see it because I, I see that the left, um, uses it to push that UBI kind of marks this agenda, but maybe there, there is a place for it to use the idea as an incentive, like you were saying to kind of move to capitalism to get closer to that later.
Speaker 1 00:26:39 Yeah. Well, by, you know, the thing is, I also think the, the, one of the things I wanna, maybe that was implicit here that I wanna spell out more on that is also the idea that there's a static view of economics in here that there's some level of wealth for reach, and that will be enough, and we'll all just wanna stop there. Right. And, you know, the minute you start bringing star Trek into this, of course, that reminds you, we've got centuries left, you know, centuries ahead of us to get anywhere close to this sort of thing. That's, that's portrayed in our science fiction as a level of tremendous wealth and prosperity and, and technological advancement. So I would say, you know, if, if you were to suddenly invent the technology that would make, say replicators possible, or, you know, faster, the light travel or anti-matter, uh, engines, you know, that all that sort of stuff is star Trek.
Speaker 1 00:27:26 If somebody were to suddenly invent, develop that science tomorrow, the answer wouldn't be okay, great. We've reached it, everybody stop. The answer I view would be all hands on deck. You know, we get this tremendous opportunity to make this huge leap forward. Everybody should be out there taking this new science and technology and figuring out all the different things we can do and create and build with it. And that's what I would see as the answer to it is, you know, all hands on deck. I do think there is something though. I think where, where I want to agree with you though, is I think there's a lot of value in talking up to the fact that yes, we have achieved this tremendous amount. We live in a wealthy society, a wealthier society than anybody's ever lived in at all of human history. And we should talk about all the things that makes it, that that makes possible and all the things that are, that are potentials, things that are potential for human beings in this wealthy kind of society that never existed before that we have because of capitalism.
Speaker 0 00:28:26 That's, those are fair points. Go ahead.
Speaker 1 00:28:31 And I think we should open up, you know, for people to talk about what is it that's different? What can we do? That's different in a, in a super wealthy society. Like we like we, for the most part, I mean, there are always, there are, there are people who are poor right there. So, uh, and there are people who don't have those opportunities. There are new immigrants who come here with nothing, but, you know, the average person in America is far better off than the average person was, you know, 50 years ago or a hundred years ago or 200 years ago. And I think we should talk about what sorts of things does that make possible in our lives that people would would've would've seemed inconceivable in, in, in previous year, in previous eras?
Speaker 0 00:29:08 Well, I do wanna at least invite David. I didn't know if you had a point, uh, TAs, founder, David Kelly's with us.
Speaker 2 00:29:16 Uh, yes. Thank you, Scott. Um, you know, I I'm, I, I'm not a star Trek. Uh <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:29:25 Um, at, you know, I'm, I'm just, you know, not my interest, but I haven't found a Valla shrug. And one of the themes of Valla shrug that I think is relevant here, that to compliment what Rob is saying is that you can't just stop. Uh, if you don't, if you don't have a system that encourages people to take, uh, to act rationally and, um, you know, use their minds to, to invest in technology, it's not just that you won't have progress, you will have decline. People will maintain the systems. And, you know, that was written, the road was written in 57. So she was talking about railroads, but you could say the same thing about the internet today. That's maintained by people who are constantly putting out fires and are water systems. And, and the fact that delivers electricity to our homes, we all know some of the glitches that have occurred. If they're not solved by people who are knowledgeable, the system declines, we go backward. So it's not just a question of whether we can go forward, continue to going forward or not. Stasis means we go backward. There's no, there's no stopping wanna and get Rob's point, uh, perspective on,
Speaker 1 00:30:49 Yeah. Speaking of star Trek, there's probably been a star Trek episode based on that idea. At some point of, you know, it's a, some society they encountered that was basically coasting off of, uh, ancient technology that they didn't understand. Uh, um, I, I it's by tongue, there's been there, there's been an episode there somewhere that deals with that. But I also also think I mentioned that there's this letter that was signed, that sent to president Johnson in like 19 63, 4, or something like that. It must have been 64 or 65. I can't remember. But right about the time that he was talking about the great society welfare state, there was this letter that was signed saying, oh, in the future, everything's gonna be so automated. We're gonna need to have this welfare state. And they talked about how, you know, this, this it's this new cybernetic technology.
Speaker 1 00:31:32 And they're basically talking about computers and information technology and the internet and all the stuff that we have, you know, the, uh, the, the vast computer systems we have today and basically saying, oh, it's all gonna be so automated. We won't need to have anybody to do it. Well, anybody who works with these systems today, I mean, you know, there's, there's huge numbers of people. There's millions of people employed today in managing these computer systems because they don't work automatically. They need huge amounts of maintenance and they need retrofitting. And then somebody comes up with the new program and you need, or somebody catch up, you know, uh, I remember reading, there was a, a number year, a couple of years ago, four or five years ago, there was a, I think it was Delta. One of the major airlines had like in the middle of a busy time, uh, major traveling weekend, they had a bunch of their computer systems go down.
Speaker 1 00:32:23 And the reason was because they were still using a computer system was 30 years old and they were sort of cobbled it together and kept patch it together and kept it going on new, on new equipment, because it was too much of a disruption to change this 30 year old system. But that meant you had to have people constantly fixing all the problems with it, right. So far from being something that could be automated. This was something that was so intricate, so complex that it requires this whole army of, of people with new skills to, to keep it going and to patch together all the problems and, and, uh, to constantly be upgrading and, and, and, and improving it. Uh, so that's a great example of how you keep having this assumption that, oh, well, we fix all the problems now and they're gonna work and we don't need anybody to do anything. And it turns out no, actually the more complex and the more advanced this system gets, the more people you need and the more expertise you need. And, you know, the, the more, the more easily, the whole thing can fall apart at any minute, precisely because it's so advanced and so complex.
Speaker 2 00:33:27 Thanks, Rob. Uh, my point. Exactly. So, um, onto others.
Speaker 0 00:33:33 Thank you. Appreciate that, Keith. Thank you for joining us. Do you have a question for Rob? Um,
Speaker 5 00:33:45 Oh, sorry. I had to unmute myself. Sorry about that. Um, yeah, I just wanted to Rob bring up that, uh, you know, for the people who have that post scarcity, uh, advocates or UBI mindsets, those, uh, the people you're talking about that in your talk, what I wonder is that I don't, I'm not sure they really care about prosperity, or they really care about, um, you know, uh, that the spectacular, uh, success we're gonna achieve over the centuries. I, to me, I think they're more motivated by equality and they could actually, and what I'm thinking about is I've, I remember all my lefty friends when, um, when I would talk to them about Hong Kong and, and they, if, when they would look at Hong Kong and you see all these people who moved into Hong Kong and that tremendous success, and you see the skyscrapers, tremendous wealth development, they it's almost as if they never saw that they would focus on all the newcomers to Hong Kong were still poor and say, oh, look at that terrible, uh, uh, uh, disparity of wealth. So I just wanna know if you want to address some that topic at all that.
Speaker 1 00:34:41 Yeah. And the funny thing about disparity of wealth is that, uh, wealth disparity is now, first of all, I mean, you know, you've never seen disparity, disparity of wealth is never in a, in a modern capital society is never one thousands of as, as, you know, one tiny percentage as tragic as it is in precap societies. And especially in aristocratic societies, right. Where you had, uh, you know, Louis the 14th living in luxury at Versai, although we <laugh> possibly, but true fact, actually one of the first, um, uh, one of the first bits of, uh, pieces of indoor plumbing was an indoor toilet developed for Marie Antoinette at Versai. Uh, and the thing is that, you know, so Lou the 14th, this adult after Lou the 14th, so Lou the 14th living in Olin at Versai did not have indoor plumbing. I mean, it's a horrible, if, if you look into the sanitation standards of, of, of that era, it was, we we'd be horrified by it today.
Speaker 1 00:35:46 But the point is that Louis the 14th was living in wealth and opulence in Versai. And the vast majority of people were basically living on the brink of starvation. So, you know, inequality meant something totally different in, in a precap societies than anything that we're worried about in capital societies. Um, and that's actually, you know, one of the big facts of today that I wanted to mention is that, um, you know, this meant they have a measure of what's called extreme poverty and based extreme poverty by this is UN measures. These things extreme poverty is basically living on the equivalent of less than a dollar a day. And if you think about it, that it is, excuse me, these are people who are living like peasants in, in Louis, the 14th, France, where they're all constantly on the brink of starvation. Um, and the most amazing fact about our, our current world is that those people are disappearing.
Speaker 1 00:36:38 Not that they're all dying off, but that most people are rising up out of extreme poverty that it used to be that like 60, 70% of the world lived in extreme poverty by this measure. And it's now down to about 20% and is dropping rapidly. And they're saying in a couple of decades, there'll basically be almost nobody in the world living in extreme poverty. So that's one of the things we talk about inequality you have to look at is that the low end of inequality is essentially being wiped out. There is no, you know, you, you, you cannot reach in a modern, uh, technologically it's very difficult. You have to like, you know, basically be a drug addict living on the streets. And even then if you're in San Francisco, you'll have people crowding around you trying to provide you with benefits. Um, you have to be, it's very difficult in a modern industrial society to even reach the low end of the scale of inequality that existed in precap societies.
Speaker 1 00:37:33 But there is something to the effect though, that, you know, Louis the 14th, you know, the life he lived was the best that was possibly available, you know, in the, in the mid 18th century, while we've way surpassed that, you know, he lives almost like a poor person compared in, in some respects compared to compared to, uh, how the average person in America lives today, there's been so many tremendous advances. So that, um, one thing that one part of the issue of in, of, of inequality is that inequality can increase one of two ways, right? The, the, the low end can go lower or the high end can go higher. And basically what we live in is societies where the high end has gone higher. And so somebody like Elon Musk or somebody like, um, Jeff Bezos, you know, the wealthiest people in the world today have at their disposal, the tremendous wealth it can live, you know, can, can achieve a wealth.
Speaker 1 00:38:29 That was that, that goes beyond anything ever achieved in, in all previous years. So the high end is high, but the low end is much higher than it used to be too. So I think, you know, there's the folly in looking at things in a relative scale, but as to the people who talk about post scarcity economics, I think it's, it's much simpler it's that they've had beaten into them that you are, if, to be a good person, you have to be pro well first aid, uh, you have to, and, and actually, I think it's even deeper than that. Cause if you really look at them, it's the idea that, uh, if you look at the premises that they use, it's fundamentally the idea. You know, we talked about aristocracy, it's an idea from aristocracy. It's the idea that work is noble work is a necessity.
Speaker 1 00:39:15 You are forced into it doesn't really provide meaning or per it doesn't provide meaning or value in your life. It's an ugly necessity and you should, uh, the best kind of life is one where you could avoid work all together. Right? So Alexis to TOEFL talking about in a, you know, you wrote democracy in America, talked about this as a difference between the Americans and the Europeans is that the Europeans are so influenced by the mentality of aristocracy and in aristocracy, the thing that makes you a nobleman, the thing that makes you better than other people, things that you status is precisely the fact that you do not have to work and that you don't work, right. Uh, I mean, you might, you know, engage in certain there's certain pursuits that we're okay to engage in because they're with your pursuits of gentlemen, you know, so writing books and, uh, uh, you know, being efficient auto of art, or if we're gonna be realistic, you know, playing cards and gambling on horses, these were, these were the activities of, of the, uh, that were gentleman's activities.
Speaker 1 00:40:14 But the idea that, you know, that you would work is what marks you as somebody in the lower classes. And so work work has looked down upon, whereas, uh, took full points out in America, you know, work as regarded as normal. It's regarded as LD, audible, you're looked on as something as sort of suspicious if you don't work. Um, and, uh, it reminds me of, uh, um, one of my favorite people, uh, Benjamin Franklin writing, I think in his autobiography talking about how he would, uh, uh, you know, even as he became very, very wealthy in, in one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, uh, he would go through Philadelphia with, uh, you know, with carrying, I think it was paper or something like that in a wheelbarrow, you know, doing act, doing manual labor, even it was totally unnecessary for him. He was way wealthier.
Speaker 1 00:41:00 He didn't have to do it, but he would make a point of doing it. He said, quote, to show that I was not above my business. And so, you know, it shows you how much the ethical standards were that work was normal. You're sort of suspicious if you didn't do any work so that Ben Franklin feels like to keep up appearances. He has to continue to do manual labor, even, even after he is become quite wealthy. Um, so it's that attitude of, uh, it's the anti work attitude, the idea that work is ignoble, and I sort of view this sort of UBI and the welfare state thing, I call it democratized aristocracy. So it's the idea that, you know, they they've people who have, who have absorbed that mentality of aristocracy, that work is noble. And then they said, well, therefore it shouldn't, but it shouldn't be just the, the elite aristocrats who don't work. It should be everybody who's able to not, you know, everybody should be allowed to not work, not working should be democratized and we should all live. We should all live like, you know, like feudal Lords, uh, because, um, the robots will do all the work. And of course, you know, this, the robots are never gonna do all the work.
Speaker 0 00:42:05 That's, uh, that's great stuff. I'm, I mean, this is tangentially related. Um, in, in some cases, you know, that they talk about the singularity and how we're increasing the rate of production to where it'll, it will, you know, one day get to where things are coming out so far and so fast. But, uh, there have been, you know, in a, you talk about what we would do with these replicators, and then it would be time to get to work. But I mean, I think of the example of like cell phones and how people use them more for, you know, base things than, than something great. And so, you know, I'm just curious is, is there something where, you know, maybe people even, uh, can't handle the, the rate of change <laugh> and they, they almost embrace kind of policies. That'll slow things down.
Speaker 1 00:43:00 I'm not so sure about that, but I, I do think that, you know, one of the things that I take out of a lot of the new technology we have is, you know, if you go back, so one of the things I like to look at is, is futurism of the past, right? You know, what did people think the future was gonna be like 50 years ago or 30 years ago or a hundred years ago. And it's really interesting because what they, you know, some of, sometimes they got things, right? Sometimes they got things completely wrong, but the thing that jumps out most is they had no idea what we were going to do. What we do with the wealth of this technology we have is stuff that we didn't even know we wanted to do before the technology existed. Oftentimes the's stuff that the people who have vetted the technology didn't know we were going to do with it.
Speaker 1 00:43:46 Right. If you look at how we use the internet today, there's all, all the different things we use it for. People had no clue. And I'm old enough that I can remember when, you know, back when the internet was first, you know, uh, I can remember when the worldwide web first came around. Right. And, and you actually had the HTML and, uh, the web suddenly had pictures, right. And, and not just text. And we had no clue what, all things we were going to do with it. So one of the things that's going to happen is you'll think, oh, well, someday we'll have so much so such advanced new technology. Uh, we, you know, it will come out so fast. We, we will have all of our needs will be satisfied. And what you don't realize is that you don't know the things that you're going to use, all this new wealth and technology for all the things you will do once you, when you have that, that you couldn't even pre predict it ahead of time, that we will find new wants and new desires and new forms of entertainment, new forms of production, new things that we're capable of doing that, that we won't be able to project.
Speaker 1 00:44:47 Uh, we won't just, you know, cuz a lot of the, the mistakes made by futurists in the past is assuming we'll live exactly like we do today only with, you know, only we'll do things. We'll do all the exact things we do today, but we'll do them with technology, right. Instead of realizing that well, we'll, we'll do all the things we do today with technology, but there's all sorts of new things we're gonna do that. We don't even, we can't even project because the new technology's gonna make it possible. So it's this failure for imagination, which I think comes from, excuse me, that sort of static mentality. And you can see where the static mentality comes from by the way, which is that through most of human history change has been slow that, um, you know, prior to the industrial revolution, the way you lived was not significantly different from the way your parents lived or the way your grandparents lived or the way their parents lived and you know, time change happened. But it was,
Speaker 1 00:45:45 It was very slow and incremental and, and you, you have to go on the scale of centuries to really notice it. Whereas there was this vast acceleration and, and even in the 19th century, you know, it was things were moving very, very began moving very, very quickly, but it was more of a sort of over a generation or two things would change and become radically different. Now it's like things become radically different over a period of 10, 15, 20 years. Uh, I mean how I work today in my, in my, in my line of work, compared to how I did in, in the year, you know, 1999, it's a huge difference. It's radically different in terms of how I gather information, how I use information, how I disseminate information, it's all changed completely. So change happens in a much more noticeable time scale, but I think our mentality doesn't always absorb that, right. We still think in this sort of 17th century or 18th century way that, um, you know, how we live a generation now is gonna be, or two generations from now is gonna be pretty much like we do now, just might do, you know, there might be a little more technology to do, uh, that helps us do it rather than realizing exactly how big the changes are gonna be.
Speaker 0 00:47:01 Good. Uh, Lawrence, thank you for joining us. Do you have a question for Rob? You may need to,
Speaker 1 00:47:13 Oh, Lawrence,
Speaker 0 00:47:14 There he is.
Speaker 6 00:47:15 Hello? Can you hear me?
Speaker 0 00:47:17 Yes.
Speaker 1 00:47:17 Yes, we
Speaker 6 00:47:18 Can hear you. Okay. I think it worked out time. Hi Rob. Uh, so you you've already kind of touched on this question, but I'm not sure if you're familiar. There is, um, one of these big sort of, as part of the more web culture, there is this forum on Reddit called R slash anti work where essentially if everyone just getting together, just complaining about work and how they're trying to get out of it. So I I'm curious, um, you know, with internet, allowing people to sort of come together and build these larger sort of clicks, so to speak, what are your thoughts on, uh, an organiz, a group like that coming to at least being online, do you think there is like, they're sort of creating like a, a gravity, well, just sucking more people in or is it just poor education? That's driving people towards such groups.
Speaker 1 00:48:09 Yeah. It's kinda interesting that somebody posted something, I think on Twitter recently just to get the last day or so, which, uh, you know, basically said, you know, 50 years ago somebody said, I think I'd like to eat tax. Somebody would say, oh, come on, that's stupid. Don't do that. And he'd say, oh, okay. And then, you know, a couple along today, somebody says, I think I' like to eat tax and they go do internet search. And they find a, um, a, a internet, uh, discussion group of thousands, other people who are into eating tax, <laugh> it wasn't eating tax. It was something similarly self-destructive and stupid. But, um, you know, it's, it's, it is kind of one of the things that, that changes are where life has changed because of the technology we have is the fact that any idea that's, that's, that's really sort of lame and stupid.
Speaker 1 00:48:53 You will find a whole lot more people who you can agree with you and, and reinforce you and come up with arguments to help you help you believe this stupid thing. Right? So, uh, that, that is definitely a factor. Um, although I say, you know, this goes back a long time, like I said, it goes back to aristocracy. It goes, I think it goes back to Marxism, this idea that us having to my, having to work, my, having to have a job, a career and have a, a nine to five that I go to is inherently oppressive. And I think it comes from that, uh, that aristocratic mindset, that work is noble and not working as the proof of being a noble whole, uh, and of, of having of being, having an elevated status and existence in life. Um, but I also think that, I guess the, the thing that strikes me is, is how people get the, the quote unquote post scarcity economics, or rather what makes it PO what's possible to you in life, in a much wealthier society, they get it upside down.
Speaker 1 00:49:54 So they say, oh, what's gonna be possible. If you have a much wealthier society, I won't have to work at all. And all this drudgery of having to work, I can get out of what actually is made possible by a wealthy society is that your work doesn't have to be drudgery, right? So, you know, 200 years ago, if you wanted to work, there were relatively few options available to the average person you couldn't, you know, and a lot of this talk we had these days about how do, what you love and follow your bliss and these sort of, you know, Silicon valley as, uh, was it, uh, what's Steve jobs thing, uh, say something or rather stay foolish? Uh, what was the phrase, but this idea think different? No, I can't think different was one of his things, but, uh, it, it's this idea that you could, you know, this, this very Silicon valley idea that you should decide what, what brings you joy in life, and you should go do that.
Speaker 1 00:50:48 And that should be how you make a living. You know, all of that is the luxury we have from living in an advanced industrial society. And actually it is, it is a real option for people, much more so than it has ever been in the past. Um, you know, whereas, you know, 200 years ago, you know, working at a factory was probably just about the only option you had. It was a way better option, you know, working on a farm or working at a factory. Those were your options, um, for the vast majority of people, because there's simply, you know, the economy wasn't advanced enough to allow for all these different specialties and for you to explore it. Also, wasn't advanced enough for you to spend, you know, the first 25 years of your life going to college and then going to graduate school and exploring all the different things that you want out of life and finding yourself before you commit to actually like, you know, making a living that was not possible to the vast majority of human beings, uh, you know, by the vast majority, mean like 99%, right?
Speaker 1 00:51:49 This was not possible to people. Uh, so this, you know, the idea that work is drudgery and therefore we should avoid it. The wealthy society we live in has actually the that's exact opposite of the wrong of exact opposite of what this society's made possible for us. What's made possible for us is you don't have to look at work as, as drudgery. You don't have to look at it as something that, oh I guess I just have to do this, even though I don't want to, there are so many different things you, you could do in life. So many different kinds of jobs and careers you could have. It's so much easier to make a living doing those things than it ever was in the past. I mean, I'm a, I'm a full-time writer for crying out loud. Okay. So, I mean, this is something that was a pie in the sky career for the vast majority of people.
Speaker 1 00:52:37 Uh, uh, and if you did it, you know, you had to, you know, you had to be in a few handful, there were a handful of big cities where you might be able to get a job doing what I do, but it'd probably be a lot less, you know, I'd be covering local politics and there'd be a lot less, uh, a lot more constraints that I'd probably make less money than I'd than not that I'm making a huge amount, but yeah, probably make less money be less well off than I am now. So, you know, there, there, the number of things you could do to quote unquote, follow your bliss, those options are way, way farther, more wide open than they've ever been in any previous era in history. So to sit around moaning about how, oh, it's terrible that I have to work at such drudgery is like, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, there's the perversity of it.
Speaker 1 00:53:20 I, I, I think it's the fact that people tend to cling to old loads thought and not have the flexibility to change them when the world changes around them, when the evidence changed about what's going on. And so clinging to the old mode of thought is work is drudgery. It's an imposition on me. I shouldn't have to do it while you look around you, when you realize that actually, you know, so much more varied in interesting types of worker available to you, it doesn't have to be drudgery. You can enjoy every minute of it or almost every minute of it.
Speaker 6 00:53:51 I guess the follow up to that would be then, do you see people kind of acting more like de I don't know if you've seen this, I'm just curious if there's any people like the Jacobins who opine for a simpler time and technological level more primitive.
Speaker 1 00:54:06 Oh yeah. That's I mean, that's definitely the case because part of this too, the part of this mindset, you know, like I said, people join people cling to old concepts, right? And one of their ways of cling to old concepts is to imagine an idealized oversimplified path. I actually think one of my theories about Marx is that was part of Marxism. Cause when you look, when you scratch Marxism, you find a heavy vein of sort of medieval nostalgia that the life of the simple crafts village craftsmen, the life of the simple village blacksmith in a medieval society was so much better than being a Drudge in the factories. Now it wasn't remotely true, you know, life in the middle, I just was way worse than life in the early years of the industrial revolution, but they built up and they helped build up that sort of nostalgia for this Renaissance fair version of, of medieval life, right? By the way, one of the great ironies of our, of, of the modern world is we have all these things called Renaissance fairs that are almost entirely devoted to recreating medieval society, not the Renaissance, but that that's a pet peeve for another day.
Speaker 0 00:55:17 They had better swords than the medieval fairs, I guess.
Speaker 2 00:55:21 Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:55:23 Go
Speaker 1 00:55:23 Ahead. It's all like, it's all like Knight and plate armor. And it's like, well, by the renaissances they were beyond this, they had cannons. They, anyway, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna go on a ran on that. So please,
Speaker 2 00:55:34 Scott, if I could make just one final one last point, I know we're running out of time, but, um, to Rob's point about, um, state economics, uh, some years ago, maybe 50 back now, John Kenneth gore wrote a book, all the affluent society, which he said that in, in essence, uh, we've reached a limits of production now in, in private sphere. Now we have to, um, uh, take care of the private sphere, uh, the public sphere, sorry. And, um, and he was saying, you know, the only new needs that people have that keep the economy going are from advertising and John, uh, um, British Hayek wrote a great repost to that saying, let's look at arch. Does anyone object to new artworks, new movies, new, no people spent tons of money on new movies and not so much art, cuz it's mostly crap, but, um, uh, anyway, no one objects to, to artistic creativity. And so the, the whole idea of plus scarcity to economics, um, going back as I say to Galbrath a long time ago, just is focused on economics, not on culture, not on the whole realm of the values that we get out of living in, in, in a productive society. So, uh, I just wanna add that because it, I think the artistic aspect, um, is, uh, important here in addition to all the economic points that Robbie's made.
Speaker 1 00:57:28 Well also, also, David, I wanna mention that this, I view of how people view arch differently than they view economics is also a leftover, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking we we're, at some point we're gonna eventually in the future, we're eventually gonna realize how deeply the aristocratic organization of society, how deeply it twisted people's mindsets in a way that lasts for a long, long, long time. And this idea that while art is an elevated realm, but economics is low and grubby and we don't really need any more of that, you know, that comes from the aristocratic mindset, right? Because one of the things that was okay for the aristocrat to focus his attention on you, weren't supposed to focus it on money and production cuz that's, that's beneath you. You know, the, the whole point of being an aristocratic is you don't have to think about that.
Speaker 1 00:58:18 Uh, so, but the one thing it was okay to focus on was, was art and poetry and, and uh, music and, and uh, philosophy and, and these elevated pursuits and that differentiation of these sort of elevated, uh, pursuits versus the low grubby pursuits of economics, that mentality is itself a kind of leftover of an aristocratic mindset. Uh, I think even in Plato, it's a leftover over aristocratic mindset cuz he came from what was essentially at aristocratic society as society where the slaves did the work. And uh, you know, you as a citizen were supposed to have time to go to the ARA and debate and debate philosophy, uh, and you weren't supposed to be devoted yourself to, to work, uh, uh, and production. So, uh, I think we're eventually gonna realize at some point in the future, we're gonna look back and realize how many of these attitudes are the distortions that came out of, uh, aristocratic and futile and slave based societies?
Speaker 2 00:59:18 No, I, I agree completely. And uh, again, I will refer to Ella STR where the mind body dichotomy mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, one example, which is art versus commerce, um, is, uh, you know, illustrated and announced in the, uh, in, in, in the course of the plot and also in, in Gulf speech and elsewhere where you have, uh, the strikers in Atlas drug involved, not only businessmen like, um, uh, the, um, all the heroes who bene relies on, but also the musicians. Um, he, and, um, yeah, yeah, some mother, well,
Speaker 1 01:00:03 And also the other on the other side, li Rearden is a great example of the, sort of the, the Patricia aristocratic mindset.
Speaker 2 01:00:11 Exactly. Yeah. Oh, just adapted
Speaker 1 01:00:13 To new socialist economics.
Speaker 2 01:00:16 Right.
Speaker 0 01:00:17 Well, uh, yeah, go ahead, David.
Speaker 2 01:00:20 All right. So I, I just wanna make that point. I, I know we're at the end of the hour, so I'll turn it back to Scott. Thank thanks, Rob. Great, great session.
Speaker 0 01:00:29 Great. Yeah, it was a great session. Um, this week the Atlas society is at freedom Fest. I just got here. If you're in Vegas, uh, the next four days, come on over to the booth, say, hi, get some TAs swag. We've got some great pocket guides. Uh, tomorrow at 7:00 PM. Steven Hicks will be continuing his series, educations, villains and heroes tomorrow it's Russo and emotional collectivism and Thursday at 4:00 PM. Eastern back here on clubhouse with Jason Hill about allegory propaganda. And didacticism in the novels of iron Rand. Very provocative topic. Ooh. Yes. Uh, Rob, welcome back. I look forward to more Tuesdays with Rob going forward and uh, in the meantime, I'm Scott Schiff and hope to see you at other TAs events this week, or live at freedom fast.
Speaker 1 01:01:23 Great to be back. Thanks everyone.
Speaker 0 01:01:25 Good to have you take care.
