Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption. Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to consider the affinity many Americans profess for things like democracy and market economies and really look at why. A lot of times this affinity seems to be very conditional on things playing out the way that people actually expect.
And when they don't play out the way people expect, then, you know, the affinity kind of isn't as strong or worse.
And later on, we're going to discuss the idea of toxic productivity and how the feeling that one needs to be accessible and productive all the time may be harmful for your health.
Joining me today is a man whose takes are strong enough to start an engine. Main Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to blow the people away like that hurricane?
[00:01:12] Speaker B: I don't know. Is the endrick. Is the engine electric or is it combustion? That's. I'm trying to figure out, well, if.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: It'D be a motor if it was electric.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Oh, interesting. Yeah, you just messed me up there.
The difference between an engine and let's have a show, because we could probably have a. I feel myself wanting to debate you about that definition.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Clearly, this isn't what people want to listen to.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: So now we're recording this on May 9, 2022. And last month, we saw a piece in bloomberg.com or on bloomberg.com which asked the questions. They asked the question, do Americans still care about democracy? And in it, the author, Jonathan Bernstein, illustrated how even.
Even though the concept of democracy remains very popular. And he pointed to people going to space, and they're saying they're democratizing outer space. Even if this may have been nonsensical, you know, but that saying it like that makes people feel good.
But there are a significant number of Americans that are hostile to the things that come with a functioning democracy.
And this led to Tunde and me thinking about how this same thing, like people having a professed affinity for something conceptually, and then those same people have, like, a hostility to it when it. When it plays out and when it works. And, you know, and this. This can be seen in things like with market economies and also just liberty in general.
And so today we want to take a closer look at this con or at this phenomenon, and particularly looking beyond just bad faith and hypocrisy, which, you know, we know is there, and that's a part of this, but that's certainly not the whole thing. Everybody who. Who falls victim to this or contributes to. This isn't just a hypocrite. You know, there's more going on here that, you know, we want to take a look at. So to, let's just start general. Why do you think so many Americans have such an affinity for. For concepts like free enterprise and markets and also democracy and liberty, while also having such a problem with how these things play out in practice?
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah, good question, man. I think. Well, first of all, as you even asked me the question, I was going to say, yeah, because they all sound awesome.
Freedom, liberty, all this stuff.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: That's our point, though.
But that's the thing. It's not a given that it would sound awesome to us, so to speak, but it is. We've been conditioned over time. And I would say where we've seen examples, just to kind of get you started, is we see specific, like the article, the Bernstein article we cited already. But, but I've seen this is a lot lately with the name, image and likeness issue that's coming to college sports. And there are a lot of people that are objecting to the college athletes getting paid from, not from the university, but from people who want them to either endorse a product or, you know, it's supposedly wink, wink, that they're going to go to the school, but they're saying, hey, if you do this on social media, if you show up for this autograph signing, we'll give you half a million dollars or something like that. And people have a real problem with this, you know, so there are a lot of places where we'll see this in society where, you know, again, the biggest market person will be like, oh, this is an outrage, you know, that these college students are getting paid, you know, by these boosters or whatever it would be. So, you know, just kind of, what's your takeaway on that?
[00:04:24] Speaker B: I mean, I think that, look, change is never welcomed by everybody. I think in many spheres of life it could be, you know, we could bring up a lot of different things where when we had, I mean, look how people reacted to the pandemic, right? That was change that people, you know, didn't like. And especially change that seems pretty sudden. So even though we know that.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: I don't think sudden matters, man.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Well, well, no, yeah, it's just the change part. Yeah, I think, I think, oh, well, the sudden doesn't help, let's put it that way. But I think that, you know, because what I mean by that is clearly we, everybody knows that there's. That follows sports, let me put it that way. Knows that there's a lot of money in NCAA athletics, especially the big, let's say three sports of football, baseball, basketball type of thing. Right. We know that there's a lot of money in the TV contracts. We know that coaches have been making it, especially in football and basketball, millions of dollars a year. And we know that, you know, PlayStation and Nintendo sell video games that, that, that also end up paying money somewhere. Right.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: There's billions of dollars flow.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And so, and so everybody who's into sports has understood that.
But then there's been this also kind of wink, wink that. Well, these are amateur athletes, so they can't be paid because they're amateurs. So first of all, we have just all accepted that as the way that the system evolved.
We've seen other, like specifically in life. Right. We've seen other people make money at younger ages before they were, let's say, adults. So you could say child actors, you could say, you could say, you know, young baseball players, you could say tennis players, all those kind of sports, golf players, golfers. They tend to be some reason those sports have younger athletes that can excel at a very young age, a teenager age, and they can make money, have.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Small things, they can earn money from their skill.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Yep. But that's outside of the kind of what we just talked about, the silo of culture of just ncaa. And so I think that's what makes the NCAA a bit messy. Now, there's other factors that come into play. Right. There is a portion of it that because it's our country and our culture, could involve somehow race, where most of the athletes at college sports are young and black.
And you know, there could just be people that don't like the idea of seeing these kids actually making millions of dollars at such an early age. They may feel that they, they may mismanage it or who knows what they feel? Right. They just don't like it.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Yeah, there's paternalism. That's not necessarily. Again, paternalism, though, is against the kind economy ethos. You know, like, yeah, there's in a market economy, free enterprise, all that, people are kind of allowed to make risky decisions with money. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But I want to look just more generally, I think actually now we didn't actually agree to come to this, but it's interesting, we came to the same point with this. I think that there is a affinity for these principles, but there is a greater affinity for the status quo.
And so what you're seeing actually is, and it's kind of like you said, like, it's, it's an aversion to change a lot of times. Because when they, when we see the, the affinity is like, okay, I like democracy as I understand it, as it exists at this moment, or as, as when, when things are going in a way that I'm comfortable with, or I like free markets and markets economies. Market economies, well, free enterprise market economies or whatever.
As when it's working the way that I kind of understood it, stood it growing up or that I understand it now. But when we make changes to that, even if those changes are consistent with the way these things are supposed to work or kind of inevitable with the way these things are going to work, we have transitions of power in democracies. Like, you're going to lose some sometimes, you're going to win some sometimes.
You're not supposed to say, oh, well, my address or my, you know, the person who's against me and my political opponent is an enemy or is illegitimate. Like those types of things. You can't really do those things in a functioning democracy and at least. And be able to keep the functioning democracy. So I think a lot of times we almost become prisoner of the moment. You know, kind of our humanness becomes prison. It's like, oh, well, if things change from the way that I've become accustomed to them being, then all is lost and, you know, the sky is going to fall and so forth. Whereas, and again, without regard for whether things are changing in a way that's consistent with the principles that I'm talking about that I have an affinity for. Like, we're used to the market working where college football coaches will make 5, 6, 7, they'll be the highest paid state employee in a state. We're used to that. Someone can look at that and say that that is an excess that's, that's out of line. For a college football coach to be making that much money from a university. Like, university is doing a lot more important things than playing college football. But we're okay with the market dictating that. But if the players start getting that money or getting money even if it's not from the university, because it's different, we're like, oh, well, what'll happen if these players start getting all this money? What if they didn't start making demands? What if they didn't start doing it? And it's like, well, that's what happens in every industry.
The talent, the people who deliver whatever you're trying to, whatever you're trying to make delivered are the ones Usually that do call the shots. And so right now we have this kind of, from a market standpoint, this artificial system in place where the talent, where the reason people show up and pay money, or the television networks show up and pay all this money is being kept out of the loop. And so there's kind of a balance of power that is unnatural, but that everybody's comfortable with. And so now we're seeing that's getting rocked right now, and we're seeing people uncomfortable with expressing discomfort with it or outright hostility to it, not because it is offensive to the market aspect or market economy so forth, but because it's offensive to what's been happening so far in this existing order. In the same way, what you're saying there.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that I, you know, preparation for today, I tried to go a little deeper. And I was like, you know, if we say that we like democracy, if we say that we like competition, if we say that we like entrepreneurialism or capitalism and all this stuff, you know, I didn't think of it this way until preparing for the show, but I was like, okay, so what's kind of what are our American values? You know, that. What are our shared values? I just started farting around online and found a different couple different sites. And I would say this, from what I found, there's eight individual things that seem to be on various kind of sites that look legit about what our American values. And they're things that, of course, I'm American. So I saw things that I already knew were within the reality of what we're all kind of brought up to believe as American values. So, one. Independence. Two, privacy. Three, Directness.
Four, equality. Five, competition. And I'm sorry, it wasn't eight. It was only six. I miscounted. And six was informality.
And what was interesting to me was five out of the six are ones that most Americans seem to constantly contradict themselves.
The only one that was actually I thought was left alone, which is kind of cool, was informality.
I was kind of proud of that, too. I was like, yeah, I used to hear that going overseas that American business people, you know, they kind of always come in with this tie off, you know, and we eat during our business negotiations where other countries are very formal. They won't do that. And I was like, yeah, but one.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Thing about what you're pointing out, though, is that a lot of these, these, you know, things that you pointed to are things that where we are, it's relative to someone Else or that's a world. Cultures that we are. It's not like we're absolutes on these things.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah. That's where I was going to. I was going to go. And that's why I want to say a few things and then kick it back for your thoughts on this. Because you're right. Like, I thought about. And this is going to be. I don't mean to be nasty here, but you know what's funny? I thought with privacy.
You know what I thought about how many states right now still have in their books anti sodomy laws.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: And I'm not a guy that's trying to have sodomy every day. But the point is, is that, well, if we really cherish privacy, why we got laws on state books. Talking about what people are doing in.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Their rooms, you know, the privacy of their own room.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
And so that was just something then.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: No dancing on one leg.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: No.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: You know, no holding your arm up and, you know, like, making fart noises. Like, it's just weird things. Not. I shouldn't say it's weird things to make laws about, but it's just. It's a very invasive place to be put in place.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: But what I realize it goes to your point of people. We all come to these things still from the lens of which either we were raised to view them or we want to view them or whatever. And a lot of us aren't honest about the fact that we may want a lot of these, you know, the five out of the six for ourselves, but we're not willing to allow others to have them. So another one to me was directness. That is, if that's one of our core values. You know what I started thinking of this push to change what we teach about American history. Like, this whole thing about we can't talk about historical facts like Jim Crow segregation, or the terrorism unleashed by the Klan and other groups, or slavery or.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: Whatever, we're talking about them based on the way it'll make someone feel.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Correct. And even though these are facts that are in our founding documents and are in things like.
And I'll read this quote later, the quote from the chief justice during the Dred Scott case about how he felt about certain Americans. So those things are facts, but people don't want to hear it. They don't want to be direct about that.
Equality. Right.
That speaks for itself. Competition. That's one I thought was interesting because I remember joking on the show that I'm at the point in my life where I'm gonna be the honest capitalist in the room here. That competition, man, you figure out a way that I can just have a monopoly and have a gravy train coming every time. I just peel off some gravy, put in the bank account, go fill up my 100 foot yacht, then I'm good.
And I was thinking about it, not just business, because I know that's easy to get caught on things like antitrust and business competition. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about when we get into some of the tougher conversations about things like equality as relates to competition, that some people believe that by specifically guys like you and I being given an equal chance to compete in this country, somehow took away from someone else's kids.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Even though they'll tell us we've seen that argument expressly.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: You know, where it's like, oh, well.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: If you leveled up, you found one from someone, a major bank.
Right.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: We level the playing field, then we're harming the people who've had the advantage.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: Exactly. And so that's why I love these conversations, because what you do is you can catch someone tripping themselves up.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Well, I'll say this, and I think that you actually said it in there, you kind of buried it. But what it is, I think in a lot of ways. And again, setting aside the block of hypocrisy and bad faith, because that we all know that's there, that's easy to see, that's not a very entertaining discussion to have, you know, but I think it goes a lot of this is we're just not honest with ourselves. Like, look at the values you just read. Like, when you're talking about independence, privacy, directness, things like that, equality and informality and competition, a lot of times these things would be considered aspirational. You know, like, these things are in conflict with the ways that humans would interact with each other. A lot of times on, like, a lot of times humans want advantage. They don't want, you know, equality or competition. They want kind of, you know, hey, you know, like, I'm trying to get the ref to look, look away when I'm doing something wrong or call the other guy tighter. And so we see this with, you know, in fandom, you know, like. Or any of these things, like, privacy. Like, yeah, people want privacy. But yes, people are very gossipy, you know, like, so a lot of these things really seem to be more aspirational.
And so we kind of set them as things that we quote, unquote, value, even though. And it's kind of like an unspoken thing in our own minds where it's like, well, that's not really how people operate all the time. And so we're gonna. I guess we can try to make the effort to do these. These are things that we think would be good things to be like, but we're going to fall short a lot of times because, I mean, it sounds crazy to say in a way, but we're kind of setting the bar pretty far as far as, you know, like, if we're gonna really look at this stuff and really try to be like that. Like, I look at the competition as one, and I myself, I value competition. And I think part of competition is sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. And I was abhorred, you know, like, if you go back 20, you know, 10, 20 years ago, where we had this thing where, you know, people couldn't win, people couldn't lose in youth sports and stuff like that. And it's like, what are you guys talking about? Like, actually there is valuable, you know, information, valuable lessons to be learned from winning sometimes and losing sometimes, and you're losing, learning how to lose and then getting back up and keeping going. And not just, oh, I lost or I lost five times. And that means it's, you know, all is lost. It's like, well, no, you keep working and stuff like that. So that's valuable stuff there. Competition teaches a lot of valuable things that. And it's not just about whether you win or not. It's about how you can respond to adversity and things like that. So to me, all I look at all these things is just saying, oh, well, actually, we are not saying let's value things about us that we already are. We're saying let's value the things that we think would be really great if we could get to.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, part of that. It's a good example you make with the winning and losing is part of that is also, you know, we should allow our society to try some things and then be okay acknowledging when they don't work and moving on. Because I agree with you. I'm. I played NCAA basketball. I, you know, was highly competitive athlete, and I'm competitive now as a business person in my own way. And my point is, is that, you know, the sports thing is a good example where that type of everybody won a trophy came about because there was a feeling at a certain time that kids sports was becoming way too competitive. Like, the kids weren't allowed to even just have fun. And that Kids that weren't that good weren't getting playing time, and they just weren't, you know, it wasn't a good experience.
So.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Or maybe there's a market solution where. And to me, this, to me, the way it should have been was you have more competitive places and then you have spaces that are less competitive. Not that you're not trying to win or that you don't acknowledge somebody for winning, but just that, like, there is an issue when you have some people that like some parents that are there 12, 12 months a year, and then others that want to show up for just one season. Like, there is a disconnect there in terms of that.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: So, but, and it's. And that's what I mean. Like, so that's an example of how maybe like the idea or term of competitiveness. Right. Can be interpreted by different people in different ways. And then even, like me as an example, right. I'm more of the flexible type of mindset. So I'm like, all right, well, maybe let's. If the kids, if some kids were getting hurt by over competitive stuff, I'm willing to be malleable. Let's try this out. And if that doesn't work, then let's just go back to the way it was, if it's not worse. And I think that's what James, we're probably identifying now based on the sentiment of that article, which was like, you and I were raised in a country where we. Maybe we were naive, right? Maybe we were naive when we heard people talking about equality and about democracy and about everybody sharing this country and about expanding people's rights to be involved in the system and their ability to.
You and I may have believed that the majority of Americans wanted that, and I think that the majority might want that.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: But we thought, I think what it is, is that we didn't know that that was at least in part performative. And that that was. That's like this person that went into space saying, hey, we're democratizing space by taking three billionaires into space. And it's like, what are you talking about? That's clearly performative. But we didn't know that part of the discussion, at least in part, is performative.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And that got me thinking. One of the things I wanted to discuss, which I have here, was there's a U.S. senator named Mike Lee from Utah. And this is what I mean, he's a senator right now in 2022. And he had a tweet almost two years ago, October of 2020, where he says, quote, Democracy isn't the objective. Liberty, peace and prosperity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy. Contort that. Now that's interesting to me coming from a US Senator who was democratically elected in a state. And I think that, first of all, I want to talk to those who immediately, when new, jerk and say we're not a democracy or a constitutional republic. I understand that. But we are a republic that has a democratic framework. Right.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Democratically elected officials.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: That's not appointed.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: The representatives are elected in elections by people. So that's. That's a fact now. And by the voters. Now the other. The one thing I saw is. Hold on, here's a conservative guy telling me we want the human condition to flourish.
I thought the whole idea of social engineering wasn't. Wasn't good. That didn't work. You know, Marxism, communism, all these other isms didn't work. So I don't know what condition allows the human condition to flourish. Maybe it is chaos or maybe it's not. I don't know. But that's interesting. But then.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Well, I mean, the other one. The irony is that democracy is one of the things that helps.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I know, but. Of course. But when it's not going your way, then you. Then it's not. Then it's not democracy, but the fun of the best one. And you're going to laugh because I got. I found where to plug my. My, my boys.
Democracy isn't the objective. Liberty, peace and prosperity are. You know who. Who said that we want peace?
No, he said, then we shall have peace.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Hmm.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Emperor Palpatine.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: Remember, that's the whole point of the. You got me from bringing in.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: I didn't know where I was coming.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: Remember, the empire is about order.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: And order is peace.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: And that's the interesting. And I thought about when he says we want to flourish. You know, I thought of the German.
The German economy from 1933 to 1939 because they boomed under Adolf Hitler's plans.
The problem is they also had concentration camps at the same time or invading their neighbors like Russia is today. So the bottom line is that, yeah, you can have a flourishing economy under. And just like China's got a flourishing economy, but they got a million Uyghurs in concentration camps right now. So you can have a flourishing economy with a bunch of oppression and you can have peace if you have a system that doesn't allow for any dissent. So that's what I'm saying is.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Let me jump in there because that. Actually, I remember that and we actually didn't prepare to about this. But it's interesting you bring it up because I know.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Because I won't let you know that I'm bringing up Star Wars. I gotta throw down. But see, look, now I'm gonna get a gym. Now I'm gonna get a gym. That's why I'm happy. Go ahead.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: What it was, was that was a sleight of hand, though, that he pulled there. Because on one hand, he's putting democracy in opposition to those concepts, as if democracy thwarts those. But then he throws in at the end rank democracy, which. That's not what. No, nobody, I should say this, nobody is trying to do rank democracy. We have a constitution to prevent. The constitution is in fact, to prevent oppression of minority schools of thought or minority, this minority and minority of anything against the majority. The constitution protects the minorities from the majority. You know, like you. You don't need freedom of speech if your speech is supported by most people. You only need. Freedom of speech is if the things you're trying to say are things that aren't popular with the majority. You don't need freedom of religion if your religion is the one that everybody does. You only need for. So it was what he did, basically, there was saying, oh, democracy is not the goal. We want these other things. Saying it in a way that democracy is opposition to those, and then saying that it was actually rank democracy. So I thought that when he said that, like, you know what, he's really trying to pull a fast one on people and in a sense to try to turn people against the idea of democracy, saying that any form of democracy is, quote, unquote, rank democracy, and essentially arguing that people want to get rid of the Constitution, which I don't hear anybody saying. So, but ultimately, I think with this, though, that is actually a. An example of the opposite of what we're talking about here, though, where Mike Lee is saying, actually trying to push against the idea of democracy, which you see from time to time. And you see. I mean, you've talked about this with the Founding Fathers in terms of how, you know, they talked about, you know, democratic institutions and democratic elections, but they weren't letting everybody participate in that. You know, it was. And it wasn't even just everybody who was white, you know, or even anybody who was a white male. It was white male landowners, you know, like. So they were very restrictive on who could actually participate in the voting part of the country as well. So there is.
It still exemplifies, though, this disconnect between people's emotional feel, most people's emotional feel towards the idea of a democracy and being in one versus okay, well, if I'm going to be in a democracy, like you said, hey, I'm hostile to this thing if I'm losing the election.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say. That's why to me, Mike Lee's comments were profound.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: I think what he's doing there is taking advantage of in many respects that people don't really understand. A lot of times with these, with, with these concepts, you know, whether it be democracy or market economies and so forth, people may have a general idea of what you're talking about or, or at least some perceived idea what you're talking about, but not really kind of the real mechanisms of what it means and the implications of if it means this, then that means that this could happen to me or that could happen to me like the implications of equality, meaning that you may not have an advantage anymore. You know, like that's, there's something to that. But, and I want to give an example of this and I'll pick on Joe Manchin here because just recently, Joe Manchin, with all the, you know, with the Supreme Court releasing its draft, we're not releasing, but a leak of the draft of it's a opinion that's supposed to overturn Roe v. Wade or may overturn that or whatever, Joe Manchin comes out and says that he not, he's not going to, he's not going to support getting rid of the filibuster because doing so would be undemocratic, which is a weird thing to say because the filibuster, it actually just simply requires by a rule, not by any law, not by any constitution or anything like that, but just a rule of a House rule for the Senate that you need a super majority, not a majority. A majority does not control because of the filibuster, where the filibuster is applicable. And so he's saying like he comes to say this is a US Senator saying that, saying that you can't get rid of this rule that prevents majorities from acting because doing so it would be anti Democratic. Which I was just shocked by that. And it's like, well, wow. So he's now equating having a democratic process with super majorities and a super majority being needed to just get the will of the majority. And that to me is like, that's again, that's a US Senator. And if he's out here spouting things, saying that may evidence or illustrate a loose understanding of the idea of kind of a democratic process and democracy. I imagine that many Americans are going to have, you know, that run into that same struggle in terms of understand, really understanding and grasping kind of not again, not just how they work, but the implications of that. Sometimes you're going to win, sometimes you're going to lose. And, you know, you get, okay, yeah, people don't want the filibuster. It could be turned against you. If the other side has 51 votes and it's like, well, hold on, isn't that how democracy works? Yes, of course, yes. If the other side, like, I'm fine with that. If I've accepted democracy, then yes, I've accepted the idea that if the other side gets more votes than me, then they're going to do stuff that I may not want them to do. But that's how it works. As long as it's within the Constitution, which the filibuster is not an issue of that, then it seems to be that that should be more in furtherance of a democratic institution.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: Well, that's, that comes back to the elements of control. And it's interesting because I've been telling my friends that are hard Democrats about this for a long time and they keep, oh, I'll say, well, Democrats, I don't know why you're so weak. Just get rid of the filibuster when you want to. You got 50 votes in the Senate and one tiebreaker as a vice president. Do what you can. Oh, but Joe Manchin is. Well, you got to figure out how to, how to, how to motivate them to see your point. That's number one. Number two is, then the worst one, though is to me is, oh, but if, if we do that, then when we get in, if the Republicans get in power, they're just going to ram everything I say. So what?
So what? That's a democracy. Like Dick Cheney was right, 51% is all you need. And I tell people that.
Why are you going to let the fear of your opponent stop you from doing something? If you're genuine about this system being a democracy like that, then you should want 51 because that means, guess what? The voters are going to be more engaged right now. The 60 votes causes too much apathy.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: People feel, if you're genuine, that what you think you're doing will actually make things better. That's the other thing is whether you truly believe what you're doing is going to make things better. But. Sorry, go ahead.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: But it's just that this idea that because out of fear, we're going to fear ourselves into not having a country anymore.
And that's what I mean, like this idea that, oh, but if my opponent gets in, that's what I mean. Both Democrats and Republicans suffer that, oh, my opponent gets in, the whole world's over. So I can't let them do this or that. And so the, I'll say this, though.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: That'S not in itself like when you're talking about norms, when you're talking about a certain level of respect for, for the institutions, then that's fine.
But in terms of let's block something that would happen democratically for that reason, that seems to be a bridge too far. And this doesn't even get into the origin of the filibuster and what it was put in place to accomplish, which we're not going to make the show about that. But just ultimately the thing is that if we're going to be about, if we're going to have this affinity for democracy, you have to be willing to understand that you're going to win some, you're going to lose some, and you have to be willing to take your shot when you, when you've won some. If you, if you're in power, take a shot. Don't sit here. I mean, I agree with what you're saying. Don't sit here and have all these excuses why you're not taking your shot. As far as, oh, we can't do this because of this, we can't do this because of that. It's like, well, then you're no good in power. You know, like that the, the answer you're, the feedback you're giving to everyone is like, well, we put you in power and all you have is excuses.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: I got a new joke. You're not going to like it because sports and you're not gonna like that I brought this up, but we're gonna call those people. SCOTTIE Pippen's okay.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: I thought that was funny.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: They had their shot, they had a game, but then they still complaining anyway. But what's interesting about your comments there is it's, it reminds me, goes back to what you said about when the country was founding. Founded, right. That it was the only people that were allowed at the time to participate were white landowning males.
So that's not even a knock at, you know, racial stuff because non white landowning males could not vote and white women were prevented from participating that way as well. So it was a very, very smaller group. Right.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: It Brings in all the things we talked about, about our normal divisions. It brings in the racial division, it brings in the, the, the, the gender division and it brings in the economic division.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: No, but what it shows you is that, you know, because this was going back to ancient Rome, there were, there were people that always criticized the idea of the masses having a say. Right.
And I get, I get it that yeah, if you allow the emotions of the larger group to constantly sway back and forth, they can be manipulated to go in all kind of direct. I mean look at the big lie, right? You had you know, five, 10,000 people storming the capitol because they were told something.
And so you don't want that type of messiness because in a fairness to everybody in politics, right, six months before the insurrection was hundreds of thousands of people in US streets protesting stuff. So you don't want that every six.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Months are equivalent though. I don't think you should.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Well, it doesn't matter. That's why I'm not taking side. I'm just making the point that if a society was doing that every six months it would be messy. I mean, let's just be honest about that. So the point is, is that that's also a reflection.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: That's not an argument to take the people out of power though. I mean like ultimately the people are, their passions are going to be a part of this. Like to try to take the people's passions out of it, you're actually end up in a worse spot. And I'll tell you this, the whole idea of you can't fool all the people all the time is what should be guiding us from this. Like it should be a given that yes, 20% of the people are gonna be misled about this. 20% of people aren't gonna be able to get past this one issue or this one thing and they're just gon focused on that. And 20% of the people, 10%, like they're going to be all of these different groups. But the whole point is, is that with when you put all of that together, then you can get some rationality by pooling all that together. And actually that's what, that's the harm when people sit out because they see the fanatics and it's like, well hold on, you're empowering the fanatics. We need the non fanatics to participate as well because that is, that's what's supposed to sober this thing out and balance this out so we don't end up just going in a fanatical direction in any way. Shape or form or in any way that it could go well.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: And it's also important, I mean, besides the participation of those at the ground level, that is the voters, what's also important is that the leaders. And this goes back to, like you said, about you know, having rules of the game. It's almost like, imagine having coaches or something that, that are in a basketball game, but one coach just says, I'm, I'm not going to play by the rule. I don't respect the rules. I don't respect the referees. Blah, blah, blah.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: No fat. My guy. I'm not taking my guy out after he files out, I'm just going to leave him in.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Yeah, whatever. Yeah. And so what I'm saying is the idea of kind of. Because what we've learned in this last few years, right, is that norms and kind of the rituals of our society are very important. So, for example, I'll pick on two guys, Al Gore and Donald Trump.
One guy lost an election, and I think to my knowledge, it's the only election that actually was stopped during the counting of votes in American history.
When Al Gore lost to George.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: Well, during the recount. But yeah.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: And. Yeah. Okay. So during the recount, but still the recount wasn't finished, so I guess we don't know. But what happened is the rituals I'm discussing here are conceding defeat, congratulating the winner, and participating in the presidential transition. Right. Showing up to the inauguration, kind of playing the game.
Al Gore, I'm sure, wasn't happy about being told that his recount was being stopped and that he now lost without knowing really what the full recount was.
[00:34:27] Speaker A: Yeah, but lost BY like, what, 500 votes.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And he did. And, and he did something similar to what Richard Nixon did. Right. He looked and said, this is bigger than me.
I need to. And in Al Gore's case was I needed to go and tell my party and tell the people that voted for me that I lost. I'm conceding and I'm moving on. And I'm sure Democrats weren't happy to lose that election.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: No, he was. He would actually. He got a lot of flack from his party for doing that, that they didn't keep pushing it. But yeah, go.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And so. And so. But then we have 20, literally 20 years later, in 2020, a different example from Donald Trump where not only does he not concede the results of the election, he doesn't congratulate the winner and he didn't participate. He didn't even show up to the inauguration. Remember, he tried to have his own separate thing and he flew off in the helicopter. And the vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, is the one who actually showed up and did the magnanimous thing of representing his party and the half of American voters that didn't vote for Joe Biden and in doing the ritual, ritualistic, peaceful transition. And so I think that's. That's it.
Like for us, how you have this.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: Show that you care about these things, actually, even like this system.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. That's what I meant by.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: But also the concepts, too. That's how you show that you care about democracy. What Pence did, what Gore did, is like, okay, for democracy to continue, for this democracy to be something that people still see in a positive light, I have to bite the bullet here, be about more than just myself and show my face here. You know, So, I mean, I think that is. I mean, I think that's a good place to end here. You know, just. Well, that's the kind of, well, hold on. Words. You know, people say a lot of things, but those are the kind of actions that illustrate someone saying, okay, I do.
I don't just care about the idea or the concept of democracy. I do care about it in practice. And so therefore, in this situation, which is not difficult, I'm doing something I don't want to do, but I will do it, because that's, you know, because that's my, my actions, so to speak. But let's, let's move to the next, the next topic. You sent me something on discussing the concept of toxic productivity, which I've heard of toxic positivity. I've heard of all these types of things that as far as people overdoing something in terms of a, you know, like a mindset or an approach or anything like that. But the toxic productivity was a Newman for me.
And really that got into just the idea of. And some of it is technologically based, you know, in our modern society, particularly with after the pandemic, where, you know, you have time, you might be at home, but you have your email right there. It's on your computer, on your phone. You know, you might get a communication, you might get to that. And it's always this urge to, oh, I can bang out a couple of emails. Oh, I can knock this out real quick here on my laptop as I'm sitting here, you know, in my living room or whatever. And how over the long haul, that's something that wears on you, you know, like you shouldn't always feel on or product that you need to be productive and so forth. So what, you know, what was your kind of reaction to reading this?
[00:37:26] Speaker B: It was very interesting, man. I think again, this is one of those things that I think probably most of us that live in this society have some gut feeling that there's something, you know, kind of not right with the way we've evolved in our work life. Balance, right? That boy ain't gonna. Yeah. What I would say this. I feel like I've been personally, and not to like toot my own horn, but I just feel like as an entreprene because I've been on my own now for seven years and outside of just the corporate angle, I've been a little bit more self aware of this kind of stuff out of necessity. But I do appreciate because I can contrast now to when I worked in a large corporation. And you know, it is funny, it's very difficult to turn a lot of that stuff off because the corporation also conditions you to become like the hamster in a hamster wheel.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: And then you have other people and so. And then, and then as an entrepreneur sometimes, because you don't have that, you know, hamster wheel always on that you can just jump into and then it's just going. And you can just jump in and out.
Sometimes you might have to play different mind tricks to get yourself motivated, you know, for example. So it's, it's interesting. But, but the idea of toxic positivity. I like the title because no.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: Productivity.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Sorry. Yeah, it's so much. I was having this, this vision of me working next to a. Next to a nuclear power plant with a Hazmat suit on on my laptop. Toxic productivity. But no, this idea that you're right. And I think unfortunately I've seen friends of mine, honestly. And it's sad, like, I mean this in a serious way, like get divorced over stuff like this. Like they literally couldn't turn it off.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: And they had. Whether it's an insecurity that they just felt they had to keep going.
Whether they were addicted to working or money, whatever it is that they lost friends and family because they didn't know, like you're saying literally when to turn their phone off to stop texting because their spouse, you know, at some point it becomes where you're emotionally not present. Right. And it's almost like cheating. So, you know, that's why to me, this is very interesting to read.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: The one that stuck out to me when we were reading it was the mention of the kind of imposter mindset that a lot of times people will have, that they have to kind of be responsive or be on it at all the times, because they don't, you know, and that's. This is a normal psychological condition that people, many people experience, even, you know, very accomplished people, just that, oh, I got to be perfect at all times or else people are going to discover that I shouldn't really be this high up or this successful or whatever. And so how this is kind of a way of coping thing for that, which, you know, can show you how that type of a mindset can create other problems for you, you know, like in that sense. And so also I think there's an emotional satisfaction like we do a lot of times where we are a lot of times wired to kind of get things done. Whether that's because a corporation is pushing you or because you just want to check things off your to do list or whatever. Like, we kind of just like, I think that's part of our human condition is to say, okay, I have this, that I'm going to do. And so, you know, once I'm. Once I'm done, I feel satisfied about that. I get an emotional satisfaction about that or out of that. And so the toxic productivity piece seems to be a lot of times to not know that there's a time and a place for everything more than anything is that you want to.
The time is always the time to check something off. And like, honestly, you know, like that I can see how that can be something that could really eat at you. Because then if you, if you accustom yourself to doing that, then anytime you're not checking something off the box, you're going to be thinking about checking something off the box. You know, I should have been doing this, I should have been doing that. And so it seems like it would drive you crazy because you're always going to be either like you're going to be in this mindset where I have to be doing something, I have to be accomplishing something, getting something done, or I'm just going to be feeling super guilty about not getting something done. So you set yourself up in this no win situation.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think you hit something, which is interesting. You know, you use the term human condition. And one of the things in the article, I didn't know this, but it says, In 2019, the World Health Organization officially added workplace burnout to its international classification of diseases as an occupational phenomenon.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: So what they basically said was, this is only happening because of the way human beings are working right now. And that's what I mean by when you said human condition made me think of that. Because the difference now is this has not always been the human condition. Right.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: Which I guess, which suggests it's not really part of the human condition. It's more of a cultural condition.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: Well, yeah, but this goes back to again, as we've identified in so many different conversations how technology may be changing us. You know what I mean? Meaning, just like we said right before we all had smartphones, you couldn't be stressed out over all the messages and all the stuff that keeps seeping your brain. And so just like we talk about with, like before in the first segment about, you know, we have to try giving every kid a trophy to realize maybe this wasn't the system we wanted. Right. And what happened, maybe the other extreme.
[00:42:23] Speaker A: Wasn'T great, but maybe this extreme, this one is.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: Yeah. It might gonna have its own issues too. And I think that's what's happening. We're living through this period now where you think about. I mean, it's amazing, right? 2008, the first iPhone comes out.
So it's only been 14 years where we've had access to the smartphones where you can watch videos and have all this stuff on your right in the palm of your hand.
And so, and I would beg to say in 2008, not every single, you know, three and a half, four billion people in the world didn't have iPhones. Right. It's probably only the last six, seven years that most people began to have these kind of smartphones that can really cause more stress and get in our brains more. So I feel like that's part of it, because then you read in the article the other things about the massive toll it takes on our mental health. And then you couple in what they already identified, too, which we can't ignore, which is the last two years, the pandemic environment.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: Because it's kind of thrown, like, for you and I, who are more entrepreneurial, we may have found a little more joy in the ability to now really work from home. And we're around our kids and our wives and we have a good. You know, we tend to like our family, so it's okay for us to be alone. But I mean, I could see where if you were in a certain type of corporation and, you know, they're trying back, especially when everyone's locked down and you're trying to figure out how to. You're used to being nine to five out of the house and you're trying to figure out how to do it in the house. You got your kid over here on the computer trying to do school and blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:43:44] Speaker B: How all these things, like, a lot of people do need to separate like a line to say, okay, I'm working or I'm not working.
[00:43:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: And to kind of be like one foot in, one foot out, where you're trying to feed your kid dinner. And then you got someone emailing you and then you tell her, okay, I gotta go. That causes a lot of stress over time for people because you don't really have a line marking when you're on or off.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Well, let me, let me say this because what this made me think about when we talk, we were talking about the human condition or our cultural condition. And actually I think it's probably is part of the human condition. But what we're observing right now is that we have more things to do and more ways to do them. Like, if what I wake up in the morning and all I got to do is go hunt for the day, you know, then if it's raining, then it's like, I can't go hunt on my phone, you know, or like, I can't. Like, I'm just going to chill while this is raining. Like, all right, well, I got to just wait. And so, but now if I wake up and I got to do this and that on my, like, oh, my computer doesn't work. Oh, we'll do it on your phone. Oh, well, the Internet's down. Well, you know, just type it up or do whatever. And then once the Internet's back up or hop on a, you know, make, if your Internet's not working, do a hotspot, you know, on your device. Like, there's always kind of a workaround to get done, whatever you need to get done. And you're correct. Like the there. Not only does technology lower the barriers and the boundaries to when you of what you can do and when you can do it. But yeah, with the pandemic, these things got co. Mingled like it was like you actually did have to respond to an email as you were trying to get dinner ready because, you know, like, you had all this going on and so forth. So commingling all those together, it makes it more difficult. It does. A lot of times having a time and a place for things and that, you know, you're using yourself or me as an example. That doesn't even with the thing I thought about a lot of times with the pandemic stuff is just the size of your space and how many, you know, how many kids you had or the size of your family would make a huge difference as well, you know, in terms of you're in a large house or if you're in like a one bedroom apartment or something like that, that may be fine if everybody leaves during the day, go to school, go to work and everything, and then you come back and go to bed, or come back, eat dinner, go to bed. But that becomes a much different thing when everybody's there all the time. So. But basically blurring the lines is my point with the lot. When the lines have been blown from a technological standpoint, from a, you know, kind of a task standpoint, the types of things you have to do, then it really does become something that's constantly on your mind, so to speak, as, okay, this pending, this is pending. This is pending. Not just, oh, I'll have to do that tomorrow. I'll have to do that, you know, at some later time.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think part of it too is, Is, you know, because it's funny, man, as we're having this conversation. So I was conditioned when I was corporate that I had to always be busy.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: Like been to work nine to five, and I was working 12 hours a day, so it was nine to nine, you know, that kind of stuff. And it took me years as an entrepreneur to get that out of my system. Like literally that feeling of inadequacy, like if I wasn't always busy, and by busy I mean meeting people, talking, all that, that somehow was deficient. And what I had to transition as I matured in my mind was the quality versus quantity. Right.
[00:46:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: And that's what. Because you said it best at the beginning of this conversation.
When I was young, it worked well for the corporation to have me in a hamster wheel because, you know, in my industry especially, you know, the stats used to be that in a class of 100 people, if you had, you know, passing the securities exams and all that, two years later, five would be there.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Maybe 10 if you're lucky. So, you know, that's what it was. You know, let's put these kids, crank it out, you know, make them do cold calls, all the boiler room days when I started. And then if they don't make it, that's not our problem.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: Yeah, we got another class coming in next year.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: It's even better because now we got people with accounts and who bought insurance and we don't have to pay someone on it.
So it's almost their business model to make sure it's 90% of attrition. But that's what I had to learn and have. And that's what I was going to say. The feeling of not doing enough and then the feeling of imposter. I find a lot, again, a lot of this goes back to how we were raised.
Are things like self esteem, all that. Because if you have a healthy self esteem, you, you believe you earn something, right? That's, that's what allowed me. When I look back, I kind of felt like, well, hold on, maybe this is what busting my ass for 20 years was supposed to be about. Yeah, like I've earned the right to not have to go hard and I've earned the right to make my own kind of space here and to work with who I want to work with.
[00:48:09] Speaker A: Well, I think what it is actually is that if you have that, that makeup or that experience than what it is is that because I think those feelings, you can't control your feelings. So I think those feelings can pop up for anyone. But you have the tools to kind of talk yourself down when those feelings may pop up.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: But that comes from self esteem and.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean working.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: And that's why, I mean, because I've, I've known of people in corporate America who didn't earn it and they know it. You know what I mean?
[00:48:34] Speaker A: Yeah, but no, I mean it's an interesting concept, you know, that like I said that you, you shot over and that I thought it was worth a discussion because yeah, toxic productivity is something. I think it's something we're going to see more and more, you know, just as work becomes closer and closer to our palms and our pockets and everything like that, and what the expectations are as far as how long and how much you should be working and what that should be in terms of. Okay, you've sent me things on work week. You know, how long should the work week be now? You know, this isn't. We're not all going and you know, working an assembly line, you know, like, so what should be the expectations from that? So I think we'll see more of this, but it's an interesting introduction to it, so I think we can wrap it up.
[00:49:13] Speaker B: Well, one alternative is that I could maybe do an experiment and why don't I try and go to have toxic productivity? Let's see how I'll come and report on you for like four weeks, start working 12 hours a day again. I'm gonna start ignoring my family, start looking at my phone all the time.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: With your wife, man.
[00:49:30] Speaker B: What do you think?
[00:49:32] Speaker A: I'm not involved in this.
[00:49:34] Speaker B: I definitely tell her it was your.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: Idea or I didn't endorse it.
[00:49:38] Speaker B: I did nothing.
[00:49:39] Speaker A: You're on your own, bro. You gotta clear that with your wife.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: She'll appreciate that you're scared of her.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: But, no, we. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I See It. Subscribe to the podcast, rate us, review us, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:49:56] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Valana.
[00:49:58] Speaker A: All right. And we'll talk to you next time.
