How WWII Doomed “Creativity” and Led to Its Takeover by Silicon Valley and Weapons Companies

(upbeat music) - Tom Frank, thank you for doing this. - Tucker Carlson, great to be here. - So you've got decades of experience writing books that make people mad. - Oh, made 'em happy, made 'em laugh. - Exactly, but now you've written a book against creativity. How could you be against creativity? (laughing) - Good question. So I'm not actually against creativity. I'm against the way the word has been, like basically hijacked and used to excuse, well, I'll do the whole thing real quick here, Plutocracy. So this word, which is a magical word, a word that describes what is most human and most valuable about us, has been taken over the years and used to describe, well, the American elite, you know, they are creative, they are innovative. Why do they succeed because they are innovators? You know, why should we admire them because they are creative? Why should we cut their taxes? Because that's how to get innovation going again, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's become a kind of a word for rationalizing rule by an elite. - What is creativity? - Well, look, it's supposed to be the definition of it that people use is it's a kind of mental faculty that is analogous to IQ, but with two important differences. Everybody can participate. You know, IQ is supposed to be born in, you know, it's genetic and it doesn't change in the course of your lifetime. - Right. - The main idea behind creativity is that everybody can do it and you can learn how to do it. So your creativity can change. You can get better at it as you go through life. Now, none of this is particularly scientific and it all sort of, it all pretty much falls apart under scrutiny. But nevertheless, you know, there's a reason that we admire artists and we admire novelists and we admire musicians and we admire people that create, you know, this is-- - Making new things. - It's the spark of the divine and the human being. - Exactly. God created, we're made in this image, therefore we create. - Exactly. - It is the most beautiful and human thing, I think, or among them anyway. - Yes. - The word, the problem is the way the word has been completely and utterly hijacked. And in some ways, it's, I'm sorry, I got ahead of you there. Should I-- - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's perfect for this kind of linguistic hijacking that I'm talking about because it's something that we all love. It's something that there can be nothing wrong with it and the same with the word innovation. You know how you see it, you see it everywhere. I saw it on a bus on my way up here, you know, it's like a bus line called innovative. And this word is everywhere. And the reason that it's everywhere is because we admire it so much. There can be nothing wrong with this. This is the noblest of human faculties. This is what makes our country prosperous. You know, this is what supposedly, what makes us unique among the nations is that we're a creative people, we're an innovative people. And this is why our economy is, you know, is, or this is why we're such, you know, so affluent. I didn't notice a change, I didn't, I mean, I noticed it. I didn't understand it as it was happening, but the creativity obviously, undisputed good. But the creative class, there you go. Right, is a different thing. So the creative class was always viewed by suspicion, but I, in my perception, by the ruling class, the creative class was kind of separate distinct thing. They lived in British. But Tucker, what if you, what if you redefine the creative class and you say they are the ruling class? Or you say the ruling class are creative. How about that? Then, well, but this is really what happened. So there's this huge best-selling book in, I think, 202, it came out, Richard Florida was the author and it's called The Rise of the Creative Class. And this, this is the idea that this is the, this is the correct designation for our dominant, the dominant class in America. And he's, but he's using it to describe, he used it to describe all sorts of people, not just artists, not just writers, but basically every manner of white collar professional, highly educated professionals are, are quote unquote creative and they're this, this dominant elite. But because they're creative, we're supposed to look up to them, respect them, admire them and do these massive public favors for them. And this was the, this was the upshot of that book in that theory. And by the way, it's still going. It's this is, there's cities all over America that are building, you know, constantly doing this, building special tax districts for creatives and special, you know, you know, supporting all kind, well, these just think of all the things they did, building bike paths, you know, encouraging coffee shops, you know, doing all this stuff to, to lure, to bring creatives to your city. Because once you did that, then you would have prosperity. Well, then wouldn't the arts flourish? But the arts have withered. The arts have, yes. In fact, they're basically gone. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, so the irony that hangs over this book is that while at the very same time that we have worshipped at the shrine of creativity and also of innovation, that those things have been dying in this country. And we never talk about it. I've noticed. But we all know this is true. I'm a writer. I know a lot of writers. It is the worst time that I can think of to be a writer in America. You know, prices go up and up and up all the time. What writers get paid goes down and down and down and down. Look at what's happened to daily newspaper in every city in America, which used to be the sort of gateway to life as a writer. You look at what's happened to musicians. This is the worst story. You know, the streaming services have made, I have a friend who was in an indie rock band. They had a certain amount of, they were wonderful, absolutely fabulous. Had a certain amount of success. And he was telling me that, or I think he wrote this somewhere that he now earns less in a year. From the streaming services that he got for a song, he gets played thousands and thousands and thousands of time. Then he would get for selling a single 45 record back in the day. But it's like that all over the place. This is what is happening to musicians. You can't earn a living at it. And you look at liberal arts academia, which is what I wanted to spend my life doing, history. It's in a state of collapse. And this is before Trump came along and declared war on it. It was in a state of collapse already. This is across the board. The creative occupations are dying. And this is happening. And this is going on at the same time that we're putting quote unquote creative people on a pedestal. And you know, and we have various presidents and other public figures who talk about innovation constantly. I mean, constantly. Well, it's the same way we started to revere the American Indians. The second we put them on reservations and they pose no real threat. I mean, it's like they became museum pieces. And now we can say how awesome they are. I don't know. I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not a museum piece. I mean, actually, I kind of am. Yo, I guess but the fundamental tension between the people in charge in the creative class, which has existed forever in Athens, it was real. Yes. Is that if you are open-minded enough, you might wind up challenging through your ideas, the precepts that uphold the order. Yes. You are a threat to the people with that power. Yes, that is, I mean, that's obviously that's part of it. But that was in the early, so creativity, obviously, this ability that humans have to make things goes back to the early civilizations. But the word itself only became a, you know, only sort of exploded in the public consciousness after World War II. And that's when you started getting theories about creativity and this idea that you could, if you read the right self-help book, that you could become a more creative person. And by the way, there's this huge traffic in self-help books. It'll tell you how to be a more creative person. You follow these rules and you drink tea at this time of day and you take a walk and you write in a journal when you get up in the morning. And you follow these things and you can become a more creative person. All that exploded in the late 1940s, early 1950s. And in the early days, anyway-- I didn't know that. Why do you think that happened right after the war? Really good question. Part of it is the sort of rise to power of the professional class, which we've been talking about. So that's part of it. Another one is there's this tremendous example during the war of the Manhattan Project of the atomic bomb, which shows the lesson that it taught the world-- I mean, one of many lessons-- but one that was taken to heart was that scientific genius was, from now on, the most important quality in the world. And many of the people who write about creativity refer to that event to the Sahara Shima. But I think it's a combination of those things. The big corporations were setting up these enormous R&D divisions. The government was subsidizing scientific research. And so naturally, they-- and meanwhile, during the war, the army and the Navy had both done psychological studies of the people that they had taken in from the population. And so all of these things come together and this idea of creativity explodes. So first is psychological studies on draft. and people, inductees and officers. - We're really excited to announce our newest partner, AG1, we know AG1 well, 'cause I've been drinking AG1 for years. I don't take anything really, but after the sauna every morning, I mix up AG1 'cause you just feel so much better, and it's good for you, and there's nothing weird in there at all. They make the best foundational nutrition and greens powder supplement there is, we think anyway. So it's just one scoop, and basically that's a huge stack equivalent of supplements. 75, more than 75 ingredients, vitamins, minerals, superfoods, there's no cabinet full of bottles. It is real health, and you can feel it. I mean, it increases mental acuity. 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Or again, we're proud to have a Mrs. Ponser on this show. - What do they find? I don't remember, but they were what they were interested in. It's always the same thing. High-performing people who can accomplish things very efficiently, who can think under pressure and we want more of them. That's always the question. We need more of this kind of people. What was John Sturmark? Our super geniuses, we got to protect them. We don't have too many of them, do you remember? - Of course. This is the argument that Silicon Valley is made on the H1Bs. - Yeah, is that right? - Of course. - Well, so you see this across the board, these arguments used for the worst, these arguments which seem very humane and seem like they should be helping civilization have been used across the board for the worst purposes, imaginable. But what happens is, so then the self-help literature explodes after the war and then right on its heels comes the psychological literature. So psychologists in the game let's study this faculty called creativity, does it exist? What is it? Who has it? How do we encourage it? And then by the 1960s, there's a very interesting episode along the way called Sputnik. And so this literature had got, was well known enough by the late '50s that when Sputnik happened in '57, it became creativity was basically, was turned to as the answer. This is how America was going to be the communists in the space race. They had more people than us, they had more scientists than us, they had excellent engineers, but we had creativity. And so if we, and this was like in '58, at the college University Commencements in '58, early '58, all of these commencement addresses are about how to encourage creativity. We have to have more creativity. They said creativity for survival. Adley Stevenson wrote the introduction to some book back then and he said, we need innovators, not organization men. So this is a very interesting moment where America turns away from the red scare, from McCarthyism, and decides what we really need or is the opposite of that. We need non-conformists, we need divergent thinkers, we need individualists, we need rebels, and we need lots of them. And by the '60s, they got 'em. They got 'em. Yeah, so in the '60s, this doctrine is everywhere, you know? But it was a top-down idea, I didn't know that. Pretty much, yeah, yes, absolutely. So the guy who, the main figure behind all of this was an advertising executive, a very well-known, prominent advert, one of the principles of an agency called BBDO, one of the, used to be, one of the big New York agencies. They did the Pepsi commercials when we were kids. But he wrote the, he was the sort of the guy who introduced this to the general conversation. It was his sort of personal hobby horse, and he succeeded into making it this, you know, national fascination, creativity. It's, yeah. So he succeeded in helping to reorganize society. Yeah, well, he wrote the first big book on it. Yeah, and ultimately, yes, it goes back to this guy. He's a very interesting guy, by the way. But he wrote these books on it, a series of books, all of them very successful. He organized a group at the University of Buffalo that still exists today, publishes the main, like academic scholarly journal on the subject. On creativity. Yeah, yeah, still going to this day. Anyhow, so you get to, where were we were at the '60s? It's actually kind of fun to trace it step by step because what you find is this glorious idea, changing form year after year. So it means one thing, then it means another thing. Yes, yes. Different. How often do you see that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the words magic persists through it all. That's the fascinating thing. So it remains this, you know, thing that we admire and look up to and we think we know what is meant by it. But of course, we never really do. It changes all the time. So I'm sorry, I'm just, I'm cataloging all the, I just do other words, no, all the other words that have been used and misused in the same way. This one is fascinating. I don't want to get ahead of our story, but, but why not? So one of the, one of the guys that, so I chart the political usage of these terms, Ronald Reagan loved the word creativity. Not sure where he picked it up, probably in his general electric days, but he actually wrote a book of, he compiled a book of speeches in the late 60s and the title he gave to it was the creative society. And when he went to do his big tax cuts in the 80s, if you go back and look at the text, by the way, you talk a lot about wealth being, you know, about labor being taxed more than wealth. Creativity, my friend. The big, the big piece of the big, sorry, the big piece of legislation that started that, the, the cut on the 1978 capital gains tax cut, was all done to spur creativity and innovation in America. I mean, they said this again and again and again. I'm sorry, I'm getting way ahead of way ahead. I just don't, I don't follow the re, I mean, I, I have no doubt that what you're saying is true. Yeah. And really your book is about the misuse of the word. I'm trying to, I'm trying to tell you too many anecdotes. But what was the reasoning? So I would think just as a, as a non-genius, non-creative person, I would think if you wanted to spur creativity, you're pretty damn creative. You would want to incentivize work. Really good passive investing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a really good point. But I was creativity used to, to give preference to passive investing over work. Well, you've put your finger on the, on, on one of the, like the many ironies of this whole story. So we were talking about the 60s. In the 70s, the economy began to slow down. You had stagflation, oil crisis, inflation. Everything seems to go wrong. And one of the many things that seemed to go wrong was innovation had appeared to have slowed down in America. And there, this was not, you know, this is not me going back and like reading between the lines. This is in the New York Times at the time. There's, there's an innovation crisis in America in mid 70s. The Washington Post ran stories about it. There were congressional hearings about it. The Carter administration issued a 300 page report on how to get innovation going in America again. This is in 78. And Carter didn't, you know, Carter was a very innovation-minded guy. He had been an engineer, this sort of thing. He was very concerned about this. But he didn't have any answers for it. But the sort of nascent supply side wing of the Republican Party did have an answer. It was really, really simple. Cut capital gains taxes. You cut capital gains taxes. you'll increase the amount of money flowing to venture capital. You do that and you'll get more innovation. You'll get more Silicon Valley's, you'll get, you know, all of this stuff. And they did. And it was a huge tax cut. By the way, in the grand sort of, what would you call it, progression of tax cuts, which we're still doing to this day. This was the first one, 1978 capital gains tax cut. It was, you know, monumental in significance. And it did indeed change the world. It made the stock market immensely more attractive. All kinds of money did indeed flow to venture capital. It did not make us a more innovative people. I mean, the opposite is what has happened. But it did exactly what you just described it. It prioritized investment over manufacturing, over making and doing. So prioritized unforeseen consequences, my friend. I mean, that's the most foreseen consequence ever. And there may be a basis upon which you could defend that. Like if you were looking for a certain goal, like GDP or something, you would do that maybe. But you would never do that in order to increase creativity. Yeah. Well, they did. And then Reagan did it again. They did. And then and they do it all the time. They talk about this all the time. We got to cut capital gains taxes to get creativity moving in this country again. They do it all the time. They're still doing it somewhere today. But then when Reagan did the camp Roth tax cut in '81, if you go back and look at the text, it was explicitly done to encourage creativity in America. This is to get us out of these dull drums of the 1970s. It was, it turns out, so I didn't know this when I went into writing this book. I was just going to write a history of this idea. I had no idea what I was, you know, the can of worms. I was opening up. But it's, it is present at each of the great steps in the sort of what would you call it, the neoliberal turn at every single one. It's there. You know, when you're talking about offshoring manufacturing, it's there. When you talk about privatizing universities, it's there. When you're talking about what have I left out? Well, it's always there. It's they're always talking about innovation. They're always talking about creativity. This class of people, you have to put them on a pedestal. You have to cut their taxes. You have to build special neighborhoods for them. You have to gentrify your cities. You have to do all these things, you know, and, and meanwhile, manufacturing doesn't matter. Not creative. You can go overseas. Who cares? Well, it's by definition creative because it's actually creating something. You would, you would, I know, right? You and I know that. You would be astonished in creating things, Thomas. It's just not creative. You would be astonished at how little ice that argument cut. Driving for the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's means spending a lot of time in a cramped car or train or stuffed into an airplane seat. And the net effect is a stiff and tight back. 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Nothing is, I'm post-distanagement at this point. Because creativity is the property of a group of people. Not, not, and it's not, it's not, it's not our people. It's, it's, it's, you know, it's the, it's the white color. Well, it's also pretty hard to measure. Actually, I am white color and highly educated, but I mean, it's not the people that I care about. It's not my, my people in the Midwest. But may I ask so for most of human history, the measure of success, prosperity, the goal was not creativity. It was productivity. Like how many bushels a week can we grow? Yeah. And the thing about productivity, whatever you think of it as a goal, it's easily measured. Like you can actually count the bushels. Yeah. Creativity harder to measure. In fact, impossible to measure. So they use, so they use proxies and one of them is productivity growth. And I'm going to, I'm going to, like, ruin the whole interview here and tell, give you give, give away the secret. But since we started worshipping at the shrine of creativity and innovation and doing all of these massive public favors for these people, productivity growth in America, it's, it's gone through the roof, right, Tucker? No. I noticed it's half, it's half of what it was in the 50s and 60s. That's true. Yeah. And GDP growth is the same. So I was born in 65. Economy grew. It was over 5%. I think it was 6% that year. If it gets to 3% now, they're like pop and champagne, corks and stuff. You know, it never gets that high anymore. Ever. So it can't. Yeah. Of course it can. It did. When we were children, it, no, but it can't on the, on the basis of this kind of economy that we have. That's based on finance and real estate. When you do, yes. When you, when you off shore, you know, a huge part of your, of your actual manufacturing company. Yes. Yeah. It's by the way, you said it a fascinating thing a minute ago. And we're going, I feel like we're moving too fast through all this material. But you said a fascinating thing, which is manufacturing is obviously creates. That just seems so obvious to me when I'm reading this stuff. And can I, oh, can I back up a second? I'm getting excited. So I figured all this out. Yes. So I was driving in my car. One day and I had NPR on as per usual as his mind want. And they've got a guy and he's complaining about the Trump tariffs. This is a couple of years ago. And he's complaining about the Trump tariffs. And he says it's going to make it more expensive for him to import whatever manufactured good he sells in America. It's going to be more expensive for him to import that from China where he has it made. But he, then he clarifies right away. He says, but we, we keep the creative work here in America. We just do the manufacturing work in China. And he says this as though we all know that that's how it works. And so I go back and dig into it. And that is, that is the theory. That is what these guys believe. So you remember designed by Apple in California manufacturer assembled in China. That was it. They used to put that on everything they made. I think they sold it because the creative work was kept here at home. And that was supposed to matter. The quote unquote creative work. But the making of things was not creative. So that can go overseas. That doesn't matter. We don't care. Well, that's like saying, if, by the way, it's false, it's wrong. What's insane? Actually, if I order my housekeeper to make my bed, I can't take credit for a made bed. Can I? Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. That's true. I mean, like, but what I made my bed this morning, actually, no, your housekeeper did. So I don't know if you followed my writing over the years, but in the old days, I used to write a lot about labor. And one of the things you realize real quickly when you talk to guys that work on a shop floor is that they do innovate and they innovate all the time. And they're constantly the engine. It's always the engineers are not infallible. You know, the engineers have designed all the machinery, but no, the workers deal with the machinery. They know the product in a sometimes a very intimate way. They know a lot more about it than than anybody over in the office building. They often, you know, they have, they have this granular knowledge about what they're doing that is lost when you ship all that overseas. And the idea that they're because they didn't go to college, they're not creative is absurd. It is ridiculous. It makes me angry every day. Yesterday morning at seven, I watched a friend of mine with a high school education move by himself, a garage off its foundation and loaded onto a dump trailer and drive it five miles to his house. I mean, that's creativity and innovation. Yeah. And our ancestors back on, you know, in the days when everybody was a farmer, they did, they innovated constantly. They had to. They, you know, it's the idea that you don't, you're not creative unless you're, unless you're a member of this elite group is it is the worst is the most toxic idea. But nevertheless, as I say, it, it keeps going. It goes and it goes and it goes. Shall I keep going with the story? I love it. Okay. Yes. It's the most interesting thing I've heard in a long time. Okay. So it's, thank you because you're putting flesh on bones that I knew were there. Like I noticed when I started writing this, this is all it was all a surprise to me to find all this. I had no idea Ronald Reagan loved the word creativity. I didn't know that. And his, his sort of the big thinker of the Reagan White House, George Gilder. Do you remember this guy? Very well. Gilder wrote a book about this where he made this argument. He was actually very, I mean, he's still alive. I should use the present tense. He, he, he makes this argument, I think, very forcefully that, I mean, it's wrong argument, but he's very good at, you know, he was a good writer that, that, that entrepreneurs are the most creative people of them all. And so what we have to do in this country is make sure that entrepreneurs have resources, have money. And then he went further, entrepreneurs are more creative than artists and writers and musicians and whatnot, because he said they're less selfish. He was actually, his arguments were fascinating. They would go, they would attack what, you know, everything that you, everything that you took for granted, you know, but, but this was, this was the Reagan years, right? The entrepreneur is, is the, is the creative person. So Reagan loved the word creative. Democrats tend to love the word innovative or innovation. So you, like I said, Carter was really into innovation. But nobody can top Barack Obama. This is a guy that it was, so this is the unwritten story of the Obama administration. People when people are going to write histories about Obama, they never mentioned this. But if you look, he mentions innovation in every single one of his state of the Union addresses. He talks about it constantly. His White House issued three different innovation manifestos. His campaign, I went back and saw, I was looking on YouTube in '07 when he was challenging Hillary for the Democratic nomination. He did an event at Google headquarters where he rolled out what he called his innovation agenda. This was very important to remember this. And what pundits and historians, they just brush all that off. They think this is an empty word. This word is an empty signifier. It means nothing. No, it's a resonant word. Yes, it's powerful. And it meant a lot. And it meant a lot in legislative terms as well. And I'm going to tell you, I'll give you an example. In 2011, Obama comes to Ossawatame, Kansas, which is a town south of Kansas City, near where I grew up in Kansas City. So this is a big deal. And he proceeds to give a speech, a very good speech, one of the, like, Obama classics where he talks about the decline and fall of the middle class in these midwestern towns. You know, and you go to any town in Kansas and Missouri and you see what he means. The main street is empty. The stores are all boarded up. It's a way of life has died. And he laments this way of life. And he did it in a spectacularly eloquent way. I mean, I wish I could, I wish I could talk that. I mean, it's just, it's my subject. That's why it hits close to home. Yes. I wish I could, I could do it as well as he did. And he evokes this beautifully. But then he goes to the solution. What's the solution? And he talked about this a lot that year. The solution is we have to, you know, there's nothing he can do for those people. There's nothing the government can do for those people whose way of life is ending. We have to have more innovation. And the way we get more innovation is we have to have more people go to, you know, go to university and get STEM degrees, study the STEM. You remember that was the same as STEM subjects. And so you're, you're, you're looking at this. And it's like, that is just a, it's not an answer. It's not a solution. It's the opposite of a solution. It's evading, you know, it's evasion. It's evasion. It's a way of, of not doing anything. And there, by the way, just for the record, there's all sorts of things that the federal government could do to keep blue collar people from being thrown out of the middle class, which is what's happening. There's all, there's a million things. And back then, there were a million things I could have done. And he didn't do them. And neither, neither is Trump, even though now those people are, are his people now. But, but why did Obama like this word so much? And you think about it. And it, it totally, it works for him because it sounds like change. It sounds like progress. So it sounds like liberalism change, right? Innovation. But at the same time, he's telling Google, I get you, I understand. That's what you're all about. You know, it's a corporate, it's the corporate word, par excellence. And then the third thing is it gets him off the hook for actually doing anything. There's nothing the government can do. The best the government can do is encourage us to be innovators. But since all progress and all economic growth comes, this is the theory comes from innovation. The best he can do is encourage us to innovate. You know, what a cop out like federally-backed student loans or something. Or yeah, or whatever. You know, there he had he had all sorts of things. You know, encouraged people to drive electric cars, you know, encourage different this industry in that. Well, let's think of the favors that he did for Silicon Valley, which were enormous. Think of the favors he did for Wall Street. Here, and I see you. I've already I've already confused you on this one. You're not, you're not, you're not. Wall Street's not creative. Ah, Tucker. A lot of people don't like thinking about life insurance. Why would you? But if you've got a spouse or kids or people who depend on you, then it's worth considering what would happen if you weren't around. No, we can't choose the time. You should remember. And that's why you partner with ethos. They've made getting life insurance really, really easy. You can do the whole thing online. If you sit down with an agent, you don't have to go through a medical exam critically, which is awful. You can get a quote in seconds. You apply in minutes. In some cases, you get secure coverage the same day you apply. You just answer a few simple health questions. And you could get up to a three million dollars in coverage. Some policies are available for as little as 30 bucks a month. So it is a deal. If you've been putting off life insurance because you thought it'd be a hassle and depressing, you have to go to the doctor. It's worth checking out ethos. It takes a few minutes. You get your free quote today ethos.com/tucker. ETHOS.com/tucker. Obviously, the application time may vary as may the rates, but it's solid. Check it out. Well, I mean, I think if you take a look at the private equity sector, I'd just rattle it with creativity. Roll into some company that some other family built and just lard it up with debt and then walk away. That's creative. There's five industries in America that abuse the terms creativity and innovation like more than anybody else. Advertising, pharma, tech, Wall Street and defense, the defense contractors. So there's a whole chapter in the book about the defense contractors describing themselves as innovative. And it's actually very funny because their language is so grotesque and they just they keep it on. They just pile it up. You know, it's it's weapons manufacturers talking about it. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Like people make bombs, 35, yeah. Napalm. Yeah. Yeah. But wait, but to go back to go to go back to like the Wall Street Wall Street Bayla. Napalm, it's it's very innovative. It not only burns, but it sticks to human flesh. It's very innovative. Sorry, excuse me. To go back to is it even real Wall Street. Go back to Wall Street. When they were in the process of deregulating Wall Street in the 90s. And remember this was this was the great sort of object of the Clinton administrations, right? They were going to deregulate Wall Street. They did. They deregulated them again. Every year they would do another deregulatory bank deregulatory measure culminating finally in the repeal of Glass-Steagall. And then there was one after that that I don't even remember the names of them anymore, but it all ended badly. It was a disaster. Yeah, remember as many people warned at the time, but you know, but if you go back and look at the documents and it's all online now because the Clinton, you know, presidential library, it's all, you know, electronic now. Why'd they do it? Always for financial innovation. This was the term of art that they used to describe all these fantastic new financial instruments that these guys were dreaming up. Credit default swaps. Mortgage back securities. Seriously? Yes. Yes. That's financial innovation. We had to have more of it. It was going to make the country. It was like it was going to balloon our economy. It was all it was it was what we we're sending manufacturing overseas. This is what we're doing instead. Just creating poncies. That's innovation. Well, that's your, you know, you have the benefit of hindsight. hindsight is always 2020, but where were you at the time? Anyhow, I'm just kidding, but what they call it, they called it financial honestly. That is a totally fair question since I was involved. I was involved in daily political debate and this topic just kind of somehow didn't come up. Why would it? But you put your finger on another really important element of this, which is that the word innovation and the word creativity too, I think even more so. One of the reasons that they're used for these absolutely obnoxious schemes is they are what I call thought stopping clichés. You hear this word and you don't inquire. It's exactly right. You hear this word and you stop thinking you're like, Oh, it's a good thing then. National security. It's national security. National security, Tom. China. China. China. China. I think innovation is better. It's better. It is better. No, it is better. It's it's it's sort of the story of our times. You know, we worship at this at this shrine. This is what makes us who we are. This is what makes us prosperous above all people. We're going to do all these things to get more of it. All the things backfire. But on we go on and on and on. And yeah. So while this is going on in the Obama term, we've already offshored the bulk of American manufacturing. I mean, that that process is kind of unstoppable by the time you get selected. Yes. I mean, takes office in 2009. That's my. Wait, and in a lot of ways, you remember he was only became president because of the financial crisis and because of the pain in middle America. That's where these are. And then it's there's this there's this tremendous irony here that the guy who comes into office basically elected to do a kind of new deal sort of act instead dedicates his career to innovation. We need more of this. But one of the things another thing you notice is that the innovators get bailed out. The innovators get bailed out the industries that we have designated as innovative and creative. They always get they get all kinds of favors. But everybody else goes to the wall. You know, General Motors has to declare bankruptcy. Everybody gets fired. Exactly. I mean, at least they rescued them, but, but, but, but, but, but they didn't do that. They didn't give, they didn't give Goldman Sachs that same treatment. No, they didn't, they didn't do that to no moral inch, you know? No, I think JP Morgan was fine. Um, but can I just show the, the crises that got Obama to the White House? I mean, which, and I would also add on, honestly, the Iraq war. Oh, of course. Right. Right. But, but certainly the economic crises that got them there, deindustrialization and then the global financial crisis were both caused or at least justified by the imperative of creativity and innovation. Yes. And deindustrialized or brushed off or explained away. Right. So how exactly, and I allowed it over this, but I can you just explain how offshoring manufacturing to Asia was justified with the word creativity or innovation? Yes, I can. There was, there's a theory. These guys. So one of the another fascinating thing about this that I did not expect to find is that creativity keeps changing over the decades. And one of the things that it developed into was an entire social theory of who we are, where we are in history and, you know, how to organize society comes up in the late 60s. And the idea is called the post industrial society. And this is, you know, there's all of these different people who developed the idea at the same time, including one of them was big new Brazinski. Remember this guy? Do I remember him? Yes. Daniel Bell is one. There's a French. There's a very famous French journalist. You actually might know who it is. Jean-Jacques Servin Scriber. Remember this guy? Yes. And all of these guys are coming up with this idea of the post industrial society. Big Brazinski was one of them. I had no idea. Yeah. He was kind of a geopolitical big thinker. Well, he's National Security Advisor in the Carter. Yeah, that's right. And one of the people. And he, but also under John, not National Security, but he was in the Defense Department under Johnson. Oh, yeah. And he was, well, father of Mika, Persiansky. But no, a really important figure in modern American history. And he was one of them. Another one was Peter Drucker. Yes. So you have a kind of a Republican-flavored version where it's all about entrepreneurs. And you have a democratic-flavored version, which comes mainly from Daniel Bell, which is, it's all about the university. But in both cases, it's not about manufacturing. This is manufacturing is the past. This is something that we don't really need to concern ourselves with anymore. And this idea evolves and evolves. And there's different versions of it. I mean, it's still universally accepted to this day. I mean, this is policymakers all over the world believe this stuff. The post-industrial society is a society that runs on, on, on thought, on innovation. What did Obama called it? The knowledge economy. You know, there's all the British have a version of it or did. Tony Blair was uniquely dedicated to this. It's a, anyhow, I'm snickering because it has, but it has no place for manufacturing. But it's also just left like demonstrable destruction in this way. Has it, let's, let's be charitable and say it hasn't really panned out. What's like a true disaster? Now the bill is almost due. And so like this conversation two years from now will be even more painful because I think it'll be obvious that it was just like one of the great failures ever. Well, what can I just say that what I am talking about is that we have in this country, we have misunderstood the idea of progress, you know, the push that out. Yeah, this is everything that we're talking about. It hasn't worked, you know, that by incurred that, okay. So in the old days, how does, how does a country become prosperous? You have capital, you have labor, you have some combination there of, you know, you, you, and resources. Yes, resources, you have regulation, you have labor unions, you, you, you share the resources in this way in that. All that sort of thing. You then you in the in the in the in the 1950s and 60s, we say, no, there's this other factor and that factor is creativity and innovation. And it inheres in a social class. If you're Republican entrepreneurs, if you're a Democrat, the highly educated. And we have to do or I mean, then why not both, right? And then we have to do these spectacular favors for this group. And you can see where this is going. So instead of all the other things that used to go to make up prosperity or human flourishing or however you want to put it, what we have instead is spectacular inequality because we've done favor after favor after favor after favor for this group of people. So Christianity began thousands of years ago. And what we call the Holy Land. But today, some people would like Christianity to die there. We're talking about the Israeli settler movement, extremist, violent, dangerous and very anti-Christian, also supported the highest levels of the US and Israeli governments. American taxpayers literally pay for Israeli settlers to murder Christians and Americans and attack them. And this Senate, for example, goes out of its way to pretend it's not happening. Senators just voted against disclosure on the killings of nine Americans in the West Bank. Probably the Senate represents you. Talking about you, Rick Scott of Florida, and many more like you. Well, the vulnerable people project is fighting to end these atrocities. The vulnerable people project is a Christian movement, sincerely a Christian movement, non-violent Jesus-focused that seeks to build a safe home for Christian children in the Holy Land. Place where they will not get attacked and murdered by Israeli terrorists supported by the US Senate. The Catholic pastor in the last all Christian town in the West Bank has a very simple plan. Create a children's center called Kids Kingdom. It's a place for kids to play, make friends, learn the Bible and grow in their Christian faith. This shows listeners can make all of that happen. So many appeals you see based on the Holy Land are in fact scams that support anti-Christian violence, but this is not. Your support at savewestbankchristians.com will help create a place where these children can thrive in the birthplace of our faith. Visit savewestbankchristians.com. Save westbankchristians.com to help build Kids Kingdom. Give Christian children a future in the land where Christianity began. So their rise is not just organic. It's not the product of a meritocracy. They're just smarter than other people. Well, that is the story. No, no, that is the story though. I'm saying that sarcastically, of course, but I don't think people understand the degree to which the rise in fall of various groups is the product of government policy. Oh my God. Tucker, absolutely. I mean, people don't get that at all. I mean, we think that we live, yeah, in some kind of organic state where it's nature gave it to us. And we also went and when I was a kid, I especially encountered this people who thought that government intervention in the economy through regulation or I don't know, pure food laws or whatever making labor unions legal that that was artificial somehow. But it's all, I mean, everything we do is more or less artificial. Everything we do is part of a that, you know, the unfolding of a civilization. It's all who we are, you know. And yes, there was we you and I were born in a society that had that grew by five to 6% every year that had incredibly high taxes that had strong labor unions and there were strikes all the time when we were kids and had enforced antitrust laws. Can you believe that the Johnson administration used to do this routinely? And this was a society where the distance or the difference between, I mean, they, what did he call it? The great society. We were all going to be part of the middle class. And it was Johnson wasn't wrong about that. It was a cliche of the time that you could have a blue collar person living next door to a white collar person. And the only difference would be in their tastes and their, the brand names like this guy drove a Chevy, that guy drove a Buick, you know, and that was a cliche of the society I was growing up in. And it was, I mean, it was, it was mass affluence in, I, I constantly talk to young audiences and they have trouble believing that this exists. I grew up in it. And I grew up in a rich area among rich people who thought of themselves as upper middle class and who stated motels when they traveled to their weekend houses by car. Yeah. So I, this is literally grew up that way. Yeah. Me too. And I am here to tell you this actually, this existed. Now, it wasn't perfect. There are lots of people that hadn't been brought into it yet. But that, that was the goal in the 60s. And that's why you. Everybody in, but it also was a very calm society, relatively speaking, despite all the turmoil of the 60s and 70s, people looked at, even liberal people looked at like groups like the CBD's liberation army. And they're like, yeah, that's crazy. It's crazy because like you, of course, you want to fix things like, maybe we need a head start. Maybe we don't, but yeah, revolution. Why would you have revolution? Yeah. It's a middle class country. But you can say all that was artificial. All of that was fake. You know, because it was all done with, with, with, with heavy handed government intervention. And all of that is true. But then taking it apart is also fake. And what we have done, we have been on a race for first since, well, 1978, to, to destroy that society. We don't say that. We don't say that's what we're doing. We still talk about how much we love the middle class. But yeah, we've taken it apart. You want to hear funny statistic? Yes. So in 1978, one of the interest I was reading in obituary for a guy and it mentioned that in 1978, It's an obituary from 1978. There were two billionaires in America. - A blue hood. - And they were regarded as kind of eccentric, you know, strange people. Today, there's like close to 1,000, you know? - Where are they? Do you know? - Yeah, I do, actually, one was John Armacartha, you know, the MacArthur Foundation. And the other was Daniel Ludwig shipping fortune. - Hey, look what we got here. - Sorry, we got some spaniels in the studio. (laughing) - Yeah, and it was MacArthur's. I was, so I did a whole lot of research on the MacArthur Foundation because it's goal is, what do they call it, extraordinary creativity. They give the genius grant every year to people. But I wound up not using any of it, but I was reading MacArthur's, oh, bit. He died in '78, that same year. That was the first big capital, again, that's-- - So can we detour into the, if you don't mind, into the condition of the creative class? So since I've lived in that class my whole life, the thing that I notice is just how little creativity there is, how much tighter the boundaries are of acceptable thinking, how much more banal the work product is. - Yes. - And how truly creative people are almost instantly penalized or kicked out like, if you-- - Yes. - Someone really starts thinking freely. Like, why are we doing it this way? It's like, shut up, racist or shut up. Whatever, just call them a name, make them go away. - Yeah. - But I almost never hear truly open-minded or creative thinking, open-minded as being a prerequisite for creativity, of course. - Yeah. - I almost never hear that kind of talk in public ever. - Well, where you do hear it, of course, is on social media-- - Well, exactly. - People will say anything. - Exactly. - I mean, you can find anything if you look hard enough. But that's not what you're referring to. You're looking for well-reasoned-- - Well, it's been, well, let me say, it's been shunted to social media. Like, some of the people in social media are cooks and haters, some of them are bots. There's like lots of bad stuff on social media. - There's some brilliant guys, too. - There's some brilliant guys. And every time I see one of those brilliant guys, I think, even if I don't agree with them. I'm like, well, that's really smarter. That's really original. - Yeah. - I think, what the hell are you doing on Twitter? - Yeah. - Shouldn't you be like building a new society? - Yeah. - And the answer is, you can't get a job if you think like that because creativity has been banned. - Or you can't, you can't have-- So I always think of these things in terms of literature. You certainly can't have the kind of literary career that someone would have once it. You would, in the old days, you would go work for a newspaper. You'd have a column. And it could be, you know, a regional paper. It could be the Kansas City star. It could be, you know, a Chicago paper. You know, there are hundreds of these things. But it was a smaller number of voices, but the voices were secure because they had a job. They had a contract. They were paid to do what they were. And so, but that whole, the props of that way of life have all been pulled out. So if you want to go into any kind of creative writing, nowadays, you basically have to have gone to one of a very small number of universities. You can guess which ones. It's obviously it's the ivies. And they, you know, they live in a little bubble world where they all agree with each other. And they write for one another's publications. All the publications are heavily subsidized. So once you bring in that too, once it requires heavy subsidies, then obviously you're not going to have any kind of real. But can I just challenge your analysis on one point? I mean, you said that creativity's more you implied that creativity is possible in a society in which people have some security. And yet, I don't think anyone has more security than a tenured ivy league professor. Talk about security. And yet it's ossified. Like I can't think of any interesting in the. Oh, there's some kind of humanities. I wanted to be one of those when I started it. I actually got a PhD in history. And I'm not sorry that I didn't go through with it. I like how my life has turned out. And I like writing books. But I do miss that they have colleagues. They constantly bounce ideas on each other. Cool. There's still some very brilliant people. Do you know anyone who's like thinking outside, really outside? I don't see any radicalism at all. I see kind of state-approved, Apple-Google-approved radicalism fake, performative radicalism, race radicalism, for example. But I don't see any like true free thinking. Maybe I'm missing it. Yeah, no, it exists. I mean, you have to search. But the thing is it's all under threat. Okay, so the tenured was a great invention in its day. But now it doesn't protect anyone anymore. And the vast majority of people who were my cohort when we got our PhDs, this was in the mid-90s, became what's called adjuncts. And, you know, because they're, the university is, it's, this is another incredible can of worms. You should look into this, by the way. It's the decline in fall of the university. And it's not because of conservative politicians. It's not because of Trump. Or it's not solely because of those people. It's because of the logic of the university itself. And it's sort of determination to remake itself as a profit centered or as a profit-minded organization. And so what you have is they bring these people on. They teach classes. They get paid very, very little, but they keep with it. They keep at it. They suffer the indignities. They live in their cars. These are adjuncts I'm talking about here. And they, I did it for a while. You get paid, I got paid something like $1,500 for a whole semester. Yeah, for a lot of work. And you do two, you can put together two or three of those and maybe earn a living this way and you drive around and you live in your, you have to, it's not a good way of life. But people stick with it because they think, you know, I've never done anything else in my life, but get good grades and write good term papers and whatnot. And I'm good at this, dammit. And sooner or later they're going to recognize me and they're going to, and I'm going to get the 10-year track job. And they never do. And so you've got this enormous population of adjuncts in America who do the, they do the majority of teaching. So you know how you pay this extravagant sum for your kid to go to whatever university, they're being taught by adjuncts. And less, they're very, very careful. That's, that's who does the vast majority of the teaching in this country nowadays. It's this floating population of people who have no job security. Of course they don't wait a minute. But, but, but, but, but, you're getting back to being taught by almost a few people, more or less. I mean, some are some, I mean, that's, come on. That's going too far, but I'm being made, sorry. But wait, the upshot of this is, what does this do for, for creativity? Come on. If that's how you're living, you think you're going to write, like you're going to write some fantastic breakthrough text. Hell no. Hell no. That's fascinating. So what percent, that's so interesting. But you know where the university, where their resources have gone? So they've, they've totally screwed the professoriate. And every, every university professor in America will tell you horror stories about this. Where the money has gone is they now have this enormous population of administrators. I was talking to a professor friend of mine. It's Stan for the other day. And she told me that there are now more administrators. I'll, exactly what she said is the ratio of administrators to undergraduate students at Stanford is now one to one. What do they do? You get your own, they don't, they don't write books. Is it like a, a valet? You show up and you get your administrator? You're like, you're a dean or a sub dean or a sub sub dean. And they, they, I don't know what they do. But they don't, you know, they're not, they're not doing the creative work of academia. You know, they're, it's, it's, yeah. And this is everywhere, by the way. This is every university is like this now. Huge numbers of administrators. Was JFK killed by a lone gunman? C.I. remote viewing real, is it really possible? We're putting conspiracy theories to the test to see if they're really theories at all. Shadow figures take some of the world's most famous mysteries and recreates him to see if the official narrative is true. A team of elite operations veterans put the magic bullet theory to the test. And how did the Malaysian airliner vanish in 2014? Experts analyzed whistleblower footage and they recreat the explosion some say brought it down. And is it possible that Atlantis was a real place? Can psychics actually see what's going on in real time from the other side of the world? Meet Project Stargate's first recruit to learn about efforts to train potential psychics spies. So it's time we find out for sure our new series Shadow Figures at Tucker Carlson.com. And the federal dollars flowing into these places and not for like breakthrough cancer research. It's a really high. Yes, yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now Trump has, you know, he's declared war on them, you know, which is very frightening. And it's, I mean, what would be nice is if instead of doing that, he actually like knew what the problem was and tried to do something to fix it. But can I ask if they're getting all that, if they have enough money to hire administrators for every student, if they're getting billions and they are in federal funding directly or indirectly, if the student loans are guaranteed by taxpayers, which they are, there's also creativity angle here, which I'm gonna, I'm gonna surprise you with. But why are they charging families 80 grand a year to send their kids to this counterproductive experience? Like, why are they still screwing parents and students? So there's a lot of different answers to that. One is that they say they need the money. Okay, they actually, most of them actually don't. One is because that's who they are. are now. They have changed their mission. So you and I are old enough so that we think of the University as a charitable institution, something that cares about you. But that role, that mission is actually long gone. And creativity had a hand in undoing that as well. This is fascinating story. Nobody knows this. It was big. It was front page news at the time, but it's utterly forgotten. There was a law passed in 1980 called the By-Dole Act. Do you remember this? By-Dole. It was a birch pie. Oh, birch pie from Indiana. And Bob Dole from Kansas. And the idea was to encourage, to encourage, again, this is part of the response to the innovation crisis of the 70s. And the idea was that we would, we should make it easier for universities to patent scientific research, but mainly meaning pharmaceuticals. And this has proven to be an incredible bananza for universities. They now have the higher lobbyists to protect their patents and drugs. But it also turned the, it transformed the university, I think again, unforeseen consequences, transformed the university into a more mercenary institution where it's this huge real estate operation. They build these office buildings right next to it and they call it an innovation center. And you're paying for the privilege to be part of this class to join this class. And that has to be, that can't just be open to everyone. There has to be some, you have to have some value, right? They have to extract some value for that. And I think they could raise the price much higher and people would continue to pay it. There's also a really gross explanation, which is there's, there's a liberal version of this too, where they had a model that they'd come up with. They called it high tuition, high aid, where they would be, they would be a welfare state unto themselves, and they would decide who gets, you know, everybody has to pay this enormous price tag, but we're going to let some people off. And so they get to sort of, you know, play government all on their own. And this, this was a lot of really well, that was a lot of well-meaning people that thought this was a good idea. And it has been, it is, and now they'll basically all tell you that, that was a disaster, that didn't work. Instead, we put generations of students into incredible amounts of debt, you know. Unpayable debt. Unpayable debt. It's like a mortgage on the, you can't sell the house. Yeah. What, do you remember what it cut? Well, there's no way you'd remember this before our time, but in the 60s, what it cost to go to the University of California. And nothing. Yeah. It was free if you were in state. Yeah. And they were the best. Yeah. And if you're, and it was excellent. And if you're out of state, it was very, very cheap, you know, and now what is it? It's done par with everything else. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. When I went to, I went to the University of Virginia in the 80s, and I got out, I was $7,000 in debt. And I was like, damn, that's the most money ever. How am I ever going to pay that off? But it's like, it's nothing by comparison to what, to what's being done to the current generation to the kids now. What is a college tuition for your kids ish? Your kid's generation right now. It's 80 or 90. There's some have broken 100. I mean, it's on all the costs, not just the tuition, but the costs. So some universities are very expensive to live in New York, you know. So what, let's discuss the measurable effects of it. Yeah. By the way, wrap this up. Another gift of innovation, the innovation philosophy, the innovation ideal of the post industrial society. How much innovation has the actual innovation? Well, they have invented a lot of drugs, but you'd be surprised at how, I mean, there has been, look, we're living in the age of the internet, the smartphone, you know, the revolution and AI is coming. There's been all of these revolutions in technology. Truth be told, they're not even, they're not, they pale besides the really amazing, like really earth shattering innovations of, of say late 19th century to the 1970s. There's an economist at Northwestern, Robert Gordon has written this whole book about this and it's, it's quite a long book, but it's an excellent book about, you know, in the history of invention in America. And basically, things like the electric light, the car, the airplanes indoor, indoor plumbing. Yeah. And airplanes, these revolutionized life in a way that, that, you know, the internet for all of its, you know, all of the amazing things that you can do with it, doesn't even come close. So what you, what you see is that innovation in these sort of physical things, things that we make and systems that we build and that sort of thing has really slowed. I mean, we still drive around in cars, cars are better now, but it's still cars. We, you know, we, we still ride in jet planes when we, when we travel, as we did when you and I were children. We still, did you see this? We bombed Iran with B-52s. Yes. Plains built before we were born. Long before. And by the way, the, the jets have not gotten faster. The 707 was faster than, than whatever, whatever jet you fly on now. Is that true? It is true, but that's, but they, but they say that the modern ones are designed to conserve fuel. They don't use as much gasoline. And that's true. But, uh, no, they're, but, but the upshot of all this is that innovation outside of the internet, outside of computers and telecommunications seems to have slowed down. We don't really know why. Um, maybe because we've abandoned the physical world in favor of the theoretical world or the fantasy worlds, if you will. Yes. But the, but this is shown in the, in the statistics. This is sort of where we started. The, you know, productivity statistics, economic growth every year is way below what it was in the, in the 50s and 60s. But also in the human level. So I always think if we're, you know, so brilliant and innovative, why don't we innovate away out of people dying of drug odies in public parks? And there seems to be, which is, but that would require the state. You know, that would require you, we're using the state, yeah, to prop up Silicon Valley, right? And the weapons manufacturers and whatever I was wondering when we were going to get that, I'm not even arguing against that. I'm, though, I could, but I'm just saying, like, oh, you're going to, we're going to, we're going to get into all this innovation. How about like, I don't know, reducing the suicide rate a little bit. Yeah. But there seems to be no meaningful effort to figure out why are those people killing themselves? Yeah. And by the way, the downsizing, the sort of the rolling back of the ambitions of government was also part of the innovation brief. So do you remember in the Clinton years, this is, this is something by the way that, that people traditionally looked to and still do, looked to the democratic party for. But in the Clinton years, they were deciding, now, you know, we don't want to be, we don't want to do that anymore. And they had a plan. It was, they, or they had a sort of manifesto, it was called reinventing government. And the idea was you outsource everything. And that was, you guessed it, innovation. Can I just disagree a little bit? I don't think that the ambitions have been reduced. I think they've been expanded, but they've just been changed. So, yes. Well, exactly. Right. So the idea that like you would want to keep people from dying of drug odies in public places, that's a big ambition. Or that you have that. But bringing democracy to the rest of the world, building data centers, the size of Rhode Island, I actually think they're more grandiose in their goals than they've ever been. Yes. That's, that's, that's funny when you put it that way because it's just a change of perspective. It's a change of who they care about. Well, exactly. But it's not like they have smaller ambitions. They have bigger ambitions. Yeah. We're going to run the world. We're going to make it safer. But they wanted, they wanted to do that back in the Cold War. Sure. But, but we were all going to be on board. We were all going to be, do you remember we were in a, we were in a global competition with the Soviets. And we had to show the third world who that was the object of, of, of the Cold War was who's going to win over all these not all countries. Yes. And we had to prove to them that we cared about the least among us that we that everybody was, you know, in America, everybody had a shot that we were a decent society. We were a society that your country could look to and admire and want to be like. And that pressure is all off. And, yes, I mean, it's one of the, that's one of the big sort of explanatory reasons that people give for why we just, we just gave up on it all. The great society, you know, organized labor and, you know, having a decent society for working people to live in. And we gave up on it completely. And you think that part of the answer is because we had no longer had the competition to impress anymore. That's a way of putting it. Yeah. That's, that's certainly part of the answer. But the answer, as I, it's much bigger because all of this begins, you know, while the Cold War was, you know, was still in full effect. So it's, everything has its roots back in the, you know, 50s and 60s. So why give preference to Silicon Valley over traditional manufacturing, which the government has done. So the, the short answer is because they're creative, because they innovate. The long answer. I mean, it depends on if you want, yeah. No kidding. You know, we can talk about, we can talk about classic cars, but there's a So much actual innovation in manufacturing at all levels. If I'm making, I worked in a big bean factory. There was a ton of innovation in the big bean factory. Yes. I mean, they're ahead of me. By the way, do you know that the Chinese know this? They have not fallen for the, the, the, the sort of post-industrial ideology. I know they understand that a lot of, of, of innovation and improvement and whatever you want to call it comes off the shop floor. That, you know, that, that when you build things, you learn how to build things better. You learn how to build other things. There's all sorts of, of, of doors open up from the manufacturing process. It's not something to be sneered at and dismissed just because you don't like the people who work there, which is what we've done. Can I ask how the media went? And so how do you wind up going from a society that celebrates hard work, actual innovation, real creativity to one that worked. World War II. Remember Rosie the Riveter that working class people were heroes. Of course. And even rich people have actually made stuff, you know, like I come up with a new industrial process. Yeah. These people become rich and famous. And then you wind up in a world where people who literally collect interest payments for a living become the heroes. But in order for that to happen at the level of public relations, you need a compliant media willing to tell us that's true. And willing to listen to the end. And by the way, you're now you're I just what are you talking about venture capital or talking about the whole thing. A society based on collecting interest payments is an ignitable society. And but the people who do it have always been reviled for all of history. Yes. I mean, the New Testament's all about how tax collectors are bad. Okay. So like, this is not a new thing. How do you wake up in a world where tax collectors are great? The guy who is collecting the big on the loan, the loan shark is now the, the hero. Like what? Because you know, you know the answer. I'm not sure I do. But I know he makes a makes innovation possible. That is that is that is the payday loan guy. That's a fight. Oh my God. I almost kind of want to stop here. That is a financial innovation. Come on. It is. It is. I mean, that's one of the things that they would have considered a financial innovation. Payday loans. Yeah. Yeah. And you know how they justify it? Because it's getting it's like people who couldn't get money from a bank, right? They couldn't take out a loan anywhere else. And look, they're, they're filling a, come on. Do you know how many recosuits were filed against the Genevisee family for loan sharking at lower interest rates? A lot. Those guys went to prison for it. Sure. Of course, but, but, but to get back to, you know, the sort of the operations of capital, which is what you're, what you're asking about, of course they rationalize it in this way. That they're subsidizing it. If they make innovation happen, of course they do. 100%. That's all they talk about. That's how they, that's how they describe themselves. That's how they think of themselves. That's what they're doing. You know, remember, um, and, and by the way, we're talking about the bailouts. I was, I was, oh, by the way, the, we're, we are to get back to my book. I go to South by Southwest for the book. So I, I had to go to a creativity festival. I chose that one. I spent the whole, I did the whole 10 day thing. I was there. I witnessed it. I tried to witness it all. But while I was there, I feel the endless, you, I want to hear about that. But just tell me, I got COVID, of course you did. So there's an innovation, there's an innovation. Yeah, yeah, but, but while I was there. So like a day or two into it, Silicon Valley bank failed. And so this is a, there's a gathering of people, of the, of people who call themselves creatives. They're from advertising. They're from tech. They're from finance. They're from, you know, all the industries that we've been talking about. Silicon Valley bank fails. And they're like, oh, no. And you, you know, this is, it's, it's the kind of people who actually have their money there. They bailed it out. The US government bailed it right out, like immediately, of course. And so when, when innovation is involved, which, whenever you say the magic word Silicon Valley, it, it is whenever, whenever you do that, you're, you're, you're, you're going to, you're going to be getting a bail out, you know, that's, that operation is going to get to continue. But I thought, doesn't that kind of undercut the whole justification for the entrepreneurship class, which is these are risk takers? These are mavericks. Of course it does. None of this, none of this, this is all, can I curse on your show? Of course you may. It's all transparently bullshit. It is. But only once you begin digging into it and looking at it and, and, and digging through it. And this is what you have to, you, you have to have a critical attitude. And this is why I write books like this. It's so that we can, you know, so that we can see what's been done to us and how they did it. I just want to, that's the first step in any kind of recovery. I just want to say that there's nothing probably more other than, like, love that I admire more than creativity. And that's why this is such a sad thing to hear from me. But that's why it's, that's why it's enfolded the way it has. I know, because it's, because the word is exactly that. It's the most beautiful thing. Yes. And the fact that it's the spark of the divine, it's the spark of the divine. And the fact that it's the spark of the divine. And a way, and you know what's coming, AI. Yeah. So let's, let's, can you handle this conversation? Emotionally. I'm going to have to. Okay. I think you are because everything we talk about is a breakfast. But I think, and you said, what I feel, which is, ah, the subject is so upsetting. It's like hard even to talk about it sometimes, especially for you and me. So I'm in the crosshairs. Yeah. You know, it's like my, my skill is writing. It's now an automated skill. Yeah. As of about a year ago. Yeah. So you've, you've got an inherent conflict. That's one way of putting it. So, okay, it is upsetting. And also, there's, as we discussed off camera, there's a lot that's unknown. Like we don't actually know where this is going. But we know what it's done so far, which has been transformative already, you know. So, but it's also the culmination of the trends that you have been describing for the last hour. Yes. Actually, yes. It is of a piece with all of this. Yes. It's like destroying human beings in the name of preserving human creativity. And it's, and it's, and, and all of this talk of God-like creatures. It's, it's those guys in Silicon Valley. I watched your interview with Sam Altman. Yes. And what's the, what is the right, what is the right biblical metaphor here? And what it is is it's, it's atom. They're creating a silicon atom. And they are instructing it to take dominion over the earth. Yes. And the fishes and the birds and the animals. And also us. Yes. And that's what it is. And they're pretty explicit. And someone sent me last night actually a big tech guy in Silicon Valley who's very prohuman and a decent man sent me the anthropic constitution for AI that grants the AI the machine it is building rights as an individual. And says that we're not going to make any decision with that running it by the AI. And if the AI disagrees, then it's invalid. Treating the AI as a living thing. In fact, is a superior thing to whom it genuinely flexed. Like that whole worldview is, it's, it's terrifying. And there's a scene at the end of the, of my book where all the tech execs get together with Donald Trump and they're in the White House. And they're sitting around a big table in the White House, much like this one. Although I imagine gold plated and they go around the table, the tech execs, all the, all the Silicon Valley billionaires, they go around the table. And they take turns, they take turns flattering Trump and they, and they, every single one of them thinks to lard their flattery with the word innovation. You know, thank you, Mr. President for being such a great president and caring about American innovation. And the next one is like, Mr. President, you and I are going to take American innovation to the next level. The every single one of them does this. This is the doctrine. What's funny is Trump himself doesn't particularly, he said we're in a, we're, he's going to bring us into a new golden age of American innovation. But, uh, he really, his favorite word is not innovation and it's not creativity. It's genius. He likes the word genius, which is a very much a throwback to the 19th century. So pre, you know, all of this stuff, you know, he's thinking Napoleon, list, good, uh, you know, Nietzsche, or maybe he's not thinking that I'd be astonished if Trump had read Nietzsche. Yeah. Nietzsche is pretty accessible. Actually, great. Oh, yeah, I know. I know. But great, but good, uh, absolutely. I'm just guessing, but you know, what do I know? Um, but yeah, yeah, but it's the great, but it's, but it's the same, it's the same, it's the same logic. The logic is unfolding. This most creativity, the most admirable thing about the human being is now going to supplant us and, or maybe it is, look, maybe it isn't. It's also, you know, this, it's, it's, it's, it's not a perfect technology. It gets things wrong all the time. I, I was unable to use it for my research for this book because it, it doesn't, um, it doesn't know history in any kind of granular way. It knows the, you know, the broad sweep of things. But if you're out there, if you're writing something new that, you know, no, it's not going to be able to help you with that. Well, no, because it's in a, it's a, a malgamation of like other people's opinions. Exactly, exactly. So if you're doing anything novel, right, it's not, it's, you're going to puzzle it. But, uh, where was, where was I going with this? For, oh, so we, we, you know, we've, we've brushed off over the decades, brushed off, uh, working people, you know, who are seeing their way of life and, and we say, you know, what it is, it's just that you're, your, your bloodites, you know, and that's always the term. That's always the term. And that's bad, right? Yeah. I always think that's bad in our society, and now it's all of us. I support it so strongly, I can't even tell you, and I'm not ashamed at all. You support what? The Luddites, strongly. And I look down on people, which is all of us, including me who sit passively by as humanity faces extinction, and they're like, oh, it's not happening. You know, see what you all about the Luddites? It's hard to believe that they were about to be destroyed, and they tried to fight back, and everybody should don't get on the freight car, okay, don't do that, and we are. And I don't understand why. Part of it's our leadership. Yeah, part of it's us, though, unfortunately. Part of it is us, but do you think it would make any difference? I mean, there was Silicon Valley supported Hillary by 70 in terms of donation, 70 to one over Trump in '16. For 24, they completely flipped sides. He is, you know, at some point he is their man. And I, you know, we're at a sort of crisis moment here, and I don't see him doing what needs to be done. No. And I'm not sure I see the Democrats doing what needs to be done. I mean, they, we're going to find out very soon if they're willing to, but the Democrats loves, I mean, think of Obama and Google for God's sakes. He loved those guys. You know, the White House was filled with these former Google employees towards the end. No, I don't see, I don't, I was in New York the other day when I was, I was having nightmares about this, and I was walking down the street, and it was a beautiful sunny day in Manhattan, and it looked just like it always does. And people are going about their jobs just like they always do. And, you know, you follow the crowd and you write on the subway and you do all the things that you've always done. And it's hard to believe that this way, that our, it's, in fact, it's impossible to believe that this way of life is threatened. It's, it's, do you think that it is? I don't know what to think. I know it's already, it's already making an impact here and there. I don't know what's going to happen. I know you can generate content, quote, unquote, with a click of a button now. My kids tease me all the time. They write, they write stuff. And they have, they have chat GPT or whatever generate stuff in the style of Thomas Frank. Is it good? No, it's terrible, it's terrible. Do you agree with it, though? No, no, it's not, I like to think, now maybe I'm wrong, but I like to think that I'm a subtle thinker or something like that. And it, you know, and it's version of me is like, is like, you know, a social realist propaganda from the 30s. And maybe that's how the outside world sees me. And maybe they're right, but that's not how I see myself. So no, I, it's insulting. I'm like, that's not me. I don't write like that. I'm unique and interesting. I'm creative. So good. Well, I think you are creative. And I think this book is amazing and I, I don't know if anybody's ever going to celebrate this book, but it's, it's hard. But it's, you have to, we have to understand it. If we're going to change where we're going. I couldn't agree more. I just think that constituency for your ideas is broad, but there's sort of no overlap with anyone in power. Oh, well, that's, okay. There you spoke truth, my friend. That is exactly right. That is for sure. Tom Frank, thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. This has been a blast. Thanks for having me. It has been for me. Thank you.