Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the call like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keyes, and in this episode of Call like I see it, we're going to discuss the United Autoworker strike, the high stakes play that the union is making to get a more of a fair shake on what's happening with the profits in the auto industry and the important role organized labor plays in our capitalist society.
And later on, we're going to react to and try to make sense of some new recommendations from experts as far as what they're saying, the seven exercises or machines that people should avoid in the gym.
Joining me today is a man who looks to be in his groove this morning. Tunde Ogun. Lana Tunde, are you ready to share what you heard through the grapevine?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Always, man.
As long as I heard it like.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: A chair, only firsthand.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: All right. All right. Now we're recording this on September 19, 2023. And last week, the United Auto Workers, a labor union that dates back to the 1930s and has nearly 400,000 active members, began a strike in an effort to secure a new labor contract, with each of Detroit's big three being Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, which is like Chrysler and Jeep and all that they formed from a merger a while back. In broad strokes, the union is looking for pay increases and other quality of job things. And as I said before, generally try to get the labor more of a fair share of the record profits that the automakers have been making over the past few years. And this is also in the context and in light of a lot of the concessions that were made a few years back during the financial crisis and after that.
So to get us started, Tunda, between the recently started, this recently started UAW strike, but also we still have the Hollywood strikes, the writers strike that's been going on since May, and the actors strike that's been going on since July. What do you make of all these high profile, all this high profile labor turmoil that's going on right now? You see this stuff looking, you know, we can look specifically at the UAW, but also, again, there's a broader context. Do you see this is like just normal class conflict that pops up from time to time, or do you think there's some bigger issues that are driving these great questions?
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Man? I think, like most things that we discuss on the show, there's probably a little bit of both somewhere in the middle. But I would say I'd lean more towards the former, not the latter. In this one, I think it is more of the traditional kind of I don't want to use the term class warfare, because it does. It's a little bit more kinetic than I'm intending here, but I think it's the normal, let's say, the push and pull, the tug of war between the labor class and the capital class that we've seen probably throughout history, but definitely highlighted more in recent times since the industrial revolution really took hold in the last 200 years where.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it wasn't really a fight before that. It was just the capital class or whoever, though. The ownership class just ran over everybody else. Yeah.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: And there was also. This is interesting in preparing for today. I mean, there was just a different. I mean, I think it's very difficult for us to imagine what the world was like prior to the industrial revolution because we've never experienced anything different, which is, you know, there was, you know, monarchies, there was the nobility class, all that. But then, remember, you had the merchant class, you had a lot of the culture coming out of the middle ages. If we say, you know, we're based on the western system here would be. Was that they looked at children as the property of the father, and you had things like apprenticeships. So if your dad was a blacksmith, there was a 99% chance that you were going to be a blacksmith. And when you start going through puberty, you know, as an early teen, you were going to just go with your dad into the blacksmith shop, or if you were a young lady, you were going to go with your mom and help out around the house and do those things. And so there wasn't this type of unskilled labor in the same way that the industrial revolution created. And also because of the unskilled labor.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Quote unquote, was just farm. It was everyone else, which was the most of the people, though. I mean, like, the skilled labor was always going to be something, but again, unskilled labor wasn't pooled together necessarily, and then relying on. Lived on the land.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: That's a better way to put it.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: And it was futile, though, because they lived on the land, but they didn't own that land. Yeah, that was land that it was owned by. That's what I meant. Like, the ownership class just. They just ran the whole show. There wasn't the serfs, by and large. I mean, there were a few reports in history. The serfs, whether it be in China or in, you know, in Europe, they weren't out there striking and winning a bunch of concessions from the term landlord, you know.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: No, and that's a great point.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: But that's why just to finish up. Cause, I mean, you make a very good point, and I correct myself there, that, of course, there has always been unskilled labor, but to the point of the industrial revolution, remember? I mean, the big thing was human migration that happened in a scale that had never been seen before. Because think about it, for the chinese, enough chinese workers to get from China to the United States in the mid 18 hundreds, that didn't happen before because we didn't have steam ships and then ships that ran on oil that could get a human being across the ocean in less than a week. And so then you had the waves of immigrants coming from Europe in the early, late 19th through early 20th century, and that created this pool of unskilled labor that was also in a new place. And it was a lot of, it was kind of like, okay, so what do you do with all these people? And they were the ones working in the equivalent of sweatshops today. So it's an interesting dynamic that is just playing out again.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Leading that. Coming from that, basically. Your point being that there's, there's just, once you had that, then we've set the stage for periodic labor.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Labor versus capital types of things, which, again, really picked up once you had organized labor really start becoming a thing? Because. Because, I mean, organized labor, in order to look at any type of labor conflict, you have to look at organized labor as the converse to the corporation type of thing. Like, corporations are entities that are authorized by the state. They're not natural entities. They are created by documents and so forth and recognized by the state to be able to sue and enter into contracts and so forth. And labor capital, though, is the way it can be organized in a corporation to become a legal entity. Well, labor can be organized, conversely, into a union to become an entity, a separate entity that can act on behalf of a lot of workers. And so that they're a counterbalance. Unions are a natural counterbalance to the idea of a corporation or any type of corporate entity.
But what's interesting to me, I looked at this and looked at, you know, even in the light of the writers strike and the actors strike, there seem to be a lot of battles over the direction of that. These, these industries are going, you know, like in the, in the, in Hollywood, they're talking about AI, they're talking about all these different things, and people want to make sure they don't get left out. With the UAW, they're talking about there. There's automation going on and everything like that. But then the head of the UAW comes out and starts talking like, hey, yeah, this is, this is the billionaires versus everybody else. And so I'm like, okay, well, maybe this is just normal class, you know, conflict or class warfare. You know, it's interesting. You said you don't like to use that language, but it's all. It's interesting because I think the upper class, the billionaire class, always acts like there's a class war going on, and then everybody else is kind of like, oh, we don't want to say that. We don't want to say that. But, like, if you look at how our economy and our. The ways things have worked in our country and just how wealth inequality has exploded over the past 40 years, for example, there has. I mean, it's the Warren Buffett quote, you know, the, which is like, oh, yeah, there's a class war, and my class is winning. You know, it's like. So in this instance, what makes this notable, really, is that there seems to be some strength in the pushback from labor that we haven't seen in 50 years.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think part of it, because you're right. I mean, look, I think that Warren Buffett's joke is one of those jokes that's funny because it's true. And. But he's right. And his class has perpetually won at all times. I mean, even when it appears that they were losing, like, let's say, the French Revolution or I, the new deal is not like there weren't temporary losses, basically, but they weren't even really losses. I mean, there was still a class system, and there were still people in the top one or top 5% like we have today. It's just that maybe their, their ability to continue to gain more capital from the system was maybe hampered for a bit, but it's not like they went from being at the very top to the middle or the bottom.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Well, no, but I don't think that's the, I mean, unless somebody's looking at. Looking at this from a pure, like, communism standpoint, I think it's relative. It's relative wins versus relative losses. Like the capital class, when they were earning, when CEO's, the average salary of a CEO was 50 to one to the average worker or something like that, that was looked at as a loss relative to now, when it's like 400 to one or something like that. And so when you're looking at the class, the quote unquote class conflict, and it's really about how you're sharing the spoils of business, how much is going to be given to the ownership class and how much is going to be shared amongst the workers who are generating the productivity. And so there's always going to be a fight over that distribution. You know, it's the distribution of the spoils and the capital class, the labor, excuse me, the capital class, the ownership class has done historically, as you point out, I think correctly, has done a good job of making sure that that's very much so slanted or completely slanted in their favor. You look at something like the new Deal. And, I mean, I point to that from a modern standpoint as the only time that labor kind of got close to even footing to where capital was. And so ever since then, it's been, it's been downhill again. And so now, again, the question being is we're not the question for our show, but just in general, when we're looking at something like this is there's a lot, there seems to be a lot of momentum behind what the UAW is doing again, and there's other high profile things going on. So it's like, are we looking at some kind of sea change here where maybe the trajectory, it starts to change a little bit and workers are able to demand more of a fair share in terms of what, of the spoils of businesses doing well?
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think we're too early to tell, right. There's going to be many forks in the road on this journey, and as a true fork in the road, right. We're going to be stuck, and the system is either going to go left or right. And I think we'll look back 510 years from now and be able to probably answer that with a lot more clarity of which direction it went. But I think for now, as you say something I want to touch on, because you've said this in the past, both on our show and in private conversation about the new deal.
And as you say it, it makes me realize how, again, we're still early in this new journey of this way of doing economies and human societies. Because if you think about the industrial revolution is about roughly 200 years old. You know, the consensus is that it started in the early 18 hundreds. So you figure we're in the early two thousands. So by 100 years ago, roughly. Right. 90 years ago, around the time of the new deal in 1930s, the industrial revolution was only about 100 years old. And like most new things. Right, it's, things got to work themselves through the system a bit. It takes a few generations to see how things play out. And we had a few things happen in that first hundred years. Right. We had some people that figured it out quickly, like John D. Rockefeller or Cornelius Vanderbilt or Andrew Carnegie, you know, John Pierpont Morgan people, you know, that gilded age class that became so wealthy that they basically owned everything, right? And then you had, and those were the days when you had coal companies and steel companies where all the employees lived in a town that was owned by the company. They used, you know, currency. That was the company's currency. They had to shop at company stores, and they were basically like modern day indentured servants. And so what happened is you had reactions to that, like Marxism, communism, socialism, which were ideas, right. And as you well pointed, Roosevelt used to speak to the capital class in the thirties.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: He was a member of. Really?
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Yeah, because he was wealthy.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Franklin Roosevelt.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And he would tell them that I'm saving capitalism by doing this.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Because. Saving you from yourself.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Because if we look back at that period of the 1920s, thirties, you had the soviet revolution in 1917. All this stuff was going on, and there was a lot of interest in the United States in communism and socialism. I mean, there are some truths to those fears that were there at the time. And so that was one thing that Roosevelt was trying to say, is that if you don't give some concessions and allow labor to have a little bit of a benefit from the labor and enjoy some of the spoils, then they are going to come and burn this thing down, too, just like they burned it down in Russia and these other parts of the world at the time. Or you're going to give strength rise to someone like Mussolini or Hitler, who at the time were I fascist. Right. They're just getting.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Because they're preying on the populism of workers, looking for an answer to why, you know, for working so hard, why. Why do we have so little? And why, you know, like, so. But no, so that's a good point.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's why I just wanted to bring that up and say that's why in today we're looking at something similar where just like in 100 years ago, there was a lot of change in technology, there was a lot of demographic shifts. Just like we talked about, the, the italian immigrants, the irish immigrants, you know, 100, 120 years ago were seen as taking jobs from the real Americans back then. And it's the same argument we're hearing about people coming from south of the border now. So I just feel like we're in.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: That stage again where it's because ultimately, like, capitalism, and you and I agree on this, like, capitalism is the best system, so to speak, that we've seen thus far, to really supercharge human ingenuity and to keep an economic system that can turn over to keep going. What a lot of people who agree with that fail to recognize a lot of times is that capitalism does break itself if it's not periodically checked. And the reason for that is that if you logically follow out the way capitalism works, what end up happening is you'll have one person with all the money and everything, because that person, whoever wins, you're supposed to continue to grow and grow and grow, and you buy up your competitors or anything like that. So you have to put constraints on that. You have to figure out ways to not end up with just one winner or if you go back to the Gilded Age, just five winners or whatever. And the right now, we're in a time period where some experts are saying the level of inequality does rival that of the gilded age. So we're getting to a place where you start, society starts to grumble, so to speak. Like, hey, there's a, there's a lot going. There's a lot of winning going on, and people, by and large, aren't benefiting or, you know, aren't getting a fair share of that winning. And so, yeah, when you have that type of situation, actually, that's the job of the union, basically, because what we don't want to have happen, and this is like, this is when you see stuff like this, there's an encouraging factor on this because what you don't want to have happen is the French Revolution. You don't want violence to start breaking out because that's on the table as well, is like when the public gets so dissatisfied as far as the way the system is working from an economic standpoint, then, and which capitalism, like I said, the natural progression of it is eventually to go that way. If you don't put it, check it from time to time. Antitrust is a check on that. The market system itself is a check on capitalism, because, again, capitalists, why compete? Just buy your competitor. And so the market system itself. But when these checks get weak, then the system starts to pull and tug, and then people go to overreactions, like a communism, which is something that is coming from a place of, hey, the capitalism thing is not serving people. Let's come up with something else. But it's just an overreaction. It's something that doesn't necessarily, at least thus far, has been proven to not work, and it serves as the overreaction. So we're in the phase now where we need labor, organized labor, to constructively through things like strikes and organizing and so forth, to put more of a check on the capital system to make sure that the spoils are shared more throughout society so that society can continue to move forward under a capitalist system that drives human ingenuity and so forth. So, I mean, do you see beyond what we're talking about now? Do you see things in the strike or around here that you find encouraging as far as from looking at our overall system and, you know, and what's going on?
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. And I'll mention those in a sec. I just want to touch on something you said that was in my mind, which is antitrust. Yeah. And the more, you know, obviously, the more I mature as a human being and observe all this stuff, and especially in my profession, which deals with finance and economics, the more I believe that we all underestimate the real value that kind of teddy Roosevelt gave us over 100 years ago with the trust busting stuff with the FTC, the Federal Trade commission and antitrust laws, because I think that's part of it. And we don't realize the relationship. I think most of us don't. And it's not an easy connection to see the relationship between this whole labor market discussion we're having and the idea of antitrust. Because what you're saying when you're just to kind of back it up, when you say that if you just let capitalism go totally unfettered without regulation, that you'll have, you know, one guy at the top with all the money, whether it's one guy or it's a, it's a small class of people.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Is it? I know you're talking figuratively, but it's kind of the joke we make that, you know, there are pure examples of capitalism, but none of us probably would like them. And they're in countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, because there's their third world and there's no checks on anything. It's just whoever has the most money and the most guns got every, all the, all the wealth and everyone else is starving. And so none of us probably want.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: To enjoy, and there's no mechanism to change that. Like, it's just, that's just how it is and that's how it's going to be absent some violent type of situation, which is not the direction we want to go in.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And if we look at where the, you know, the country was, let's say, in the 1890s and that period economically, one could make the argument that it was it was a result of, of, of that monopolization, right? That these companies got so, so big that they didn't have, have to honor their workers anymore because basically everybody needs to work in this. Like we said in capitalism, you need money to pay your bills and pay your rent and pay your light and all that. So if you don't have a job, you're on the street. So when, when forced to take certain jobs, people will take them. And I think that if you look at today, something like the writers strike in Hollywood is a good example because we haven't dealt with antitrust in a serious way in a while. As a nation, let's call it the last decade or two, we have companies now like Google or Amazon or Microsoft. I mean, Amazon's a great example. They own a grocery store chain in Whole Foods. So they're in the food business. They're clearly in the retail business. They manufacture their own products, plus they sell other people's products on their site. They're in the content and entertainment business because Amazon prime creates its own movies and documentaries and tv shows. And then they're now in the healthcare game because, you know, I think I share with you that when I changed my health insurance last year for my son's type one diabetes, all of a sudden the box Cumming has a smiley face on it and it says Amazon pharmacy with all his insulin and all his devices. So a company like Netflix, you know, and companies like Google and Microsoft, if they're creating AI, and that's tech stuff, and now companies like, sorry, Amazon and Netflix team up and they're making content, but yet they're able to use AI. This is a new technology now that creates questions for the labor union, right, to say, okay, well, what does this mean for us? I'm an actor or I'm a writer.
If you now can take my face image or my voice and just recreate this going forward, do I deserve to benefit from that? Because it still was off of my original stuff. And those are questions that couldn't be answered prior to this erade because the.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Technology, well, those are questions that didn't need to be asked prior to this error. You know, it was like, so now these are new questions. So that's the part of it, really, that is, it's not just about the class struggle. Like, there are new questions that are coming up because of the way, in a positive way, I would argue that society is developing, and so they need to answer these questions. And it's good to have a labor union in that sense. To stand up on behalf of the workers. Because if it wasn't for the union, then the companies would just dictate the terms and say, look, if you're in one movie for us, then we can forever use your likeness, you know, and in the example of the actors, we can forever use your likeness. We can just modify it with Ar AI and never have to pay you again. Deal with it. And if you don't want to deal with it, you just don't have to work for us, you know, like and so forth. So the unions allow, give the workers an opportunity to stand in a sense, toe to toe and say, well, no, that's not fair. Let's do something that makes sense for both parties and not just you dictating to us. And as to your Amazon example, as you point out, the more industries you're in one, the more economies of scales you can take advantage of and then buy other people. Like in the entertainment game, it's really particular where you have this, and this hasn't always been the case. You have people that produce entertainment content and then you have entities that distribute it. And what's happening over the last 20 years or so is that now you're having people, they produce it and distribute it, which again makes it more difficult for everyone else to compete, makes them larger, makes them have more bargaining power over everybody and again throws the system out of whack. If Amazon up and decides to buy a movie studio now because Amazon's so big and bad, then that's going to further consolidate the market. And again, going towards this system, again, it's said for effect, but it's the point where one person just owns everything. And so the other thing, or the one thing I want to mention though, in particular, as far as the positives that we're seeing right now, one, like I said to the point that I made earlier, and just to say it clearly, this is a healthy operation of a capitalist system. This is the part of the capitalist system that's necessary to keep the capital part growing. You know, you have to make sure there's complete, there's full buy in, excuse me, from the capital and from the labor. And this is how you keep buy in from the labor, is to make sure there's a negotiating body on their behalf. But we hear so much about how everybody's just out for themselves and so selfish and everything like that. But this is an example and a reminder in society that there is power in solidarity, solidarity within your, your group or your organization. And to be saying, okay, hey, we all are similarly situated. Let's work together and try to get a better outcome for all of us. That's something that, I mean, when you're in a nation that's part of being a nation, when you're in any organization that's part of being an organization, is let's, let's pull together and get strength from being together. And so just to see this example of whether it be the Hollywood stuff, whether the writers and the actors, which have been going for both of those have been going for months now, trying to get more of a fair shake, or now we're seeing with the auto workers, I think that type of thing can we need buy in, whether it be in our economic system, whether it be in our government system or whatever. And so this is the type of example that we want to see in terms of people getting together, trying to accomplish things together, and not necessarily saying, oh, well, I just don't like it, so let's just blow it up. And so that's encouraging to me that we're seeing this demonstrated, exemplified with the unions right now.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a piggyback on what you said about the solidarity. I agree. And I think that part of what we see here, and I think this is a lesson for all of us, and we've discussed this as relates to other discussions in our culture and our society, is just like certain things like those in this argument about equality, for example, and that could be of any group, you know, whether feminism, racial stuff, whatever, there's always a group that's on the out in a society, and then the group that's kind of the in crowd, the majority crowd. And those change over time. Like when we did our show on eugenics, it was eastern Europeans 120 years ago that were seen as the pariah and on the outs. At times it was African Americans, at times it was gays. At times it was women. And each of those groups have jockeyed for their own independence and their own equality at certain periods in our history. And it's created cultural, whether upheavals or changes or whatever. And I think it's no different with, with labor and capital, whereas it's a constant tug of war. And these things are constantly going on within a society. And like we're talking about here, sometimes it's a little bit more kinetic and energetic, and other times there's a little bit more of a lull once people get through that busy period and there's a certain kind of cultural norms and there's like you've talked about in other shows, there's a living memory of this few generations, and then usually technology changes. Enough people have died from prior fights that don't remember, aren't there to kind of warn everyone else about these things. And then we see them pop up again. But it's usually the same type of issues. And that's why I think, let me.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Help with that point. There's a good example of that, and that is what led the things that led to the Great Depression in terms of wealth, concentration, and so forth.
Those things were meant to be remedied by a lot of the new Deal policies. And so it's no coincidence that around the 1970s is when the people were able to start getting those policies, start overturning those new Deal policies. It took about 30 years after they were enacted and worked and did exactly what built the biggest middle class in the history of the world. It wasn't perfect, but again, you build the biggest middle class in history world, you get to take a victory lap on that. And after that, living memory kind of passes. Technology, new challenges come up. It's like, okay, let's get rid of that stuff. And then we end up right back where we started, so to speak. Now, we've been able to borrow enough money to keep us from another Great Depression, but it's still been a situation where the lessons that were learned then get forgotten by a generation or so goes by, and then we end up having to learn these same lessons again. The people that talk about things being cyclical, a lot of times, I think that underpins a lot of it, is just there. The people that are alive for a while, like, oh, we don't want to go down that road. Like, the people that you've talked about this, that post World War Two, everybody kind of like, yeah, that fascism thing, that's not the way to go. But now 2023, some people like, hey.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: You know, fascism looks good.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: They never really tried that, right?
[00:26:19] Speaker B: You know, like, and it's the same, to your point, with the communist crowd, right? Like, they tried communism. It didn't work. But you got people today they're saying.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we should try this. Well, hold on.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: So, yeah, I mean, and, you know, it's an interesting one, too, for the culture is abortion, because it's something, I think that's short enough where I've seen, I remember last year when, when they overturned Roe, the Supreme Court, there are women on tv I was watching in their seventies saying, I can't believe, you know, in my lifetime I saw this overturned. And I remember, and that's the same thing. I thought, well, what you didn't appreciate is for 50 years, there's people that didn't agree with you that were working hard on the other side and they wanted it more. And I think it's the same thing when you look at this, and by.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: The way, and it didn't appear kinetic at that time, like, you didn't know that the fight was still going on. You thought it was. It was, but it wasn't the p, there were people in the background working to bring back what they wanted, and then it got caught once they already had the upper hand, and you didn't realize it.
[00:27:15] Speaker B: And there's never, and it's a great point. That's why there's not really a finish line to any of these cultural issues, because there's always, every generation or two, there's just, you need to remind people why the things you think that are important to you. At least in this case, if we're talking about labor having. Having a say it and a seat at the table that people can't forget, because the capital side is always going to be trying to get more. And that's the nature of the game. That's what I was going to say. It's natural. And I say this to people again, I'll speak anecdotally for me, because in the type of profession I'm in, and I'm a business owner, I get to take all the legal loopholes of the tax code, for example, as a business owner, and I don't pay the same rate as my assistant, for example. It's, it's, I I'm living not in Warren Buffett's net worth, his world in that way, but as an entrepreneur, I get to play similar games. And the point is, is that I'm not giving writing one more penny than I have to in taxes. As much as I love my country, and I appreciate all my fellow Americans, if the IR's tells me I owe them this much, that's how much I'm paying them. I'm not gonna be altruistic and say, well, if I end up making 1020 million in income, and I somehow, through legal loopholes, only pay 1 million in income tax, that I'm just gonna write an extra three $4 million check because I'm just such a great guy and I want to help my country. That's just not how we are wired as humans. So that's why going back to this kind of, at the, at the big, top level, that's why collective bargaining and the ability for people that don't have a lot of strength in society, which are usually workers, you know, especially line workers and blue collar type workers, that's.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Not as, not as like a dis, but just quote unquote unskilled work, you know, is, generally has the least amount of bargaining power over their situation. Then, you know, like anyone else, you know, once you get into more skilled professions, they typically have a little more control overdem the wages and or the, the amount of money that they're able to charge for what they do.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And the ability to lobby, you know, politicians, all that kind of stuff. I mean, you and I, you're an attorney, I own a wealth management firm. We're probably a lot more comfortable going into some room to speak to a congressperson than someone working the line in a meatpacking plant. It's just, you know, just different classes of and how you're able to deal with others in the society. So I think that all that kind of comes into play, and I think that's why we should always assume that these, that this is never going to end.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: The way you put it, there's no finish line. You know, it's like there's this tension involved in, let's say, a free society, a democratic society. There's a tension involved in how much control is going to or where control is going to be, who's going to exert control, you know, who's going to be able to vote, all that kind of stuff. That tension is a natural tension. It's always going to be there. If you believe a certain way and you sit out, you are giving up ground, basically.
I think the drive for growth is what, and, you know, to drive for more. The drive for growth is what makes capitalism strong. You know, like, that's what it taps into in the human spirit. That makes capitalism something that can work unlike, you know, like other systems that we've seen. But it also creates the mechanism for it to spin out of control. So capitalism's greatest strength also creates the vulnerability to work. It can spin out of control and make our societies break down. And so the unions play an important role in, you know, as with antitrust, as with the, you know, the market system, it plays an important role in keeping that from spinning out of control and allowing the capital allow us to, to harness the strengths of the capitalist system without having our societies crash, our economies crash every 30 years, you know, and so that's kind of, that's what we're in right now is, is this conditions have gotten sufficient to where labor is, like, okay, yeah, we're gonna take a stand, and we're seeing this in multiple places. And so I find that encouraging. I think that's something that, you know, it's almost like when things swing too far in one direction, you know, you got this pushback. And so we should. It's gonna be messy, as with any type of, unless if you want clean, you gotta go authoritarian, which we don't want to go if it's gonna be a little messy. But this is just part of what's needed. And so looking at that, though, you know, and kind of taking more of a step back, you know, we just celebrated, I mean, since September, we just celebrated Labor Day, which is like a real holiday, you know, and it's. It's aptly named, you know, Labor Day, you know. And so we know that organized labor has helped deliver a lot of things that we take for granted, you know, today, you know, things like a five day work week, which is not, like some that's not ordained from the heavens, you know what I'm saying? That's like something people had to fight for. Or the eight hour, again, eight hour work day, you know, again, not ordained from the heavens, you know, something that people had to fight for. So. But that stuff, you know, like, those fights, again, they may still be, there may not be a finish line, but in general, they seem to, society has seemed settle into those types of things. But do you think organized labor still has a role, like, in our modern society in the same way that it did maybe in the Teddy Roosevelt time or the Franklin Roosevelt time, when the Capitol really just ran through labor with no regard?
[00:32:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it does. I mean, I think just like we just got done talking about and just now was, there is no finish line, so there's always going to be a need, just like I said with the other stuff about, you know, equality and all that in the society, right. If you're going to have equality in a democracy and not one group trying to suppress another, then you constantly need. The society itself has to constantly have mechanisms that promote equality and treating people the same and doesn't promote division in certain ways. And I think it's the same thing with the culture of a society as it relates to labor and capital that you want to have. Some of this stuff is like, we've learned, right in this last decade of just watching our society, whatever direction a listener here thinks it's going, that we've learned definitely that there's difference between what's legal and what is then considered more of a cultural norm. And I have learned in this last decade the importance of cultural norms more so than I had understood them before, because you can't legislate everything. And it goes back to, like, when we did the book on Doctor Kingdom. He said, you can't legislate what's in people's heads. Right. If, you know, my goal in being an american is not to try and make, let's say, everybody, not racist or not sexist. That's up to, you know, if I believe in a free country, then everyone's free to think how they want. I just don't want to be imposed upon or suffer because I'm of a group that's different than someone else. So that's really the key. And I think it's the same with labor. Right? Like I'm. Like I said, I'm in a type of wealth state right now in my life that I can play certain games that are legal tax wise, and I don't have to pay the same tax rates as a regular w two employee.
I don't want to change that. But if someone in the system forces me to change it, I got to conform. So that's really kind of my point is saying, is that we all need to recognize that the fact that there's no finish line means that this is an ongoing struggle. And I think, to your point, the fact that labor is now rearing its head again and is being effective at doing it should tell us all that. Okay. We need to probably stop and listen and see what's going on here.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: And then. And then. And like we said, some of it may be hype, some of it may be real, all that, but it requires everyone looking in. And that's why I thought about. And just to end this, this part of the discussion on this, because I love your thoughts. I know you love the sports, is, um. I thought about the analogy of collective bargaining in sports, because with sports, it's very interesting because I was joking in my head thinking, well, sports is really billionaires fighting multi millionaires. Right? Like no one. It's not like the traditional labor fights where we really do have single moms that are making very low money and have childcare costs and all these other things. And we're not a fight to get.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: Into the middle class. Yeah, exactly.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: And it's not a fight to get food on the table. These are people that are in. Whether because, and I had a good friend about ten years ago who was really in the middle of the collective bargaining agreement in the NBA between the owners and the players. And I remember him telling me that the fight was about literally 1%, because it was this needle of 50 50, and the players wanted, I'm going to botch this, but I think it was the players wanted 50 50, and the owners wanted, like, 48 for the players and 52 for the owners.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: And I think they might, in terms of the total revenue split.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: Total revenue of the whole league. Correct. And. And including the stuff from the video games, all that stuff. And so I think, if my memory serves correctly, that they settled on 49 to the players and 51% to the owners. And my friend was telling me that he was it because he was talking to both ownership and players at the time, and he told me that he was telling the players at the time, guys, let's not go and keep pushing this out because of the public perception and all that kind of stuff, because you guys are going to make so much more money than you ever have if this thing goes through, even at 49%. And that's where I thought. It's interesting, because what is fair, when you've got billions of dollars raining on a league and you've got some guys making, you know, literally now getting paid two, $300 million over a four or five year period, clearly, the owners are making a ton of money, too. But what is all that by definition. But that's why to me, it's an interesting conversation with sports, because it's not about, like, it's not a dire straits thing. Like, oh, we gotta give them this.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: But the same principle applies, though.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: What's fair?
[00:36:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's how you define fair can differ from different people. You know, like, but to me, when I look at situations like that, just, like, when I look at it here, it's just, you have to account for now, the argument from capital is always, well, we put up the money. This enterprise wouldn't exist if it wasn't for us, so to speak. And. But the argument for the labor is that, well, we're putting the skin in the game, you know, like, we're the ones who are actually having the productivity that's allowing this thing to turn over. So both sides have to recognize their role and acknowledge the other's role, but at the same time, you have to look at it from the standpoint where both sides are vested in the business succeeding as well. And so when I look at, when I look back, actually, when labor got big, labor was as powerful as it ever was. You go back to the 1950s, 1960s in the United States, 1970s, early labor, I think, lost sight of that labor. Just like any organization, institution, once they get too much power, they start kind of losing sight of what's important. So we've seen that, but I can say that labor did that. But we see corporations do this all the time. So, again, those are really flip sides of the same coin in terms of labor and labor unions and corporations and so forth. So both sides have to recognize each other's value, and then both sides have to recognize the value of the ongoing enterprise. And so to me, that's the balance that has to be struck when you're dealing with these, you know, like, and as far as the role of labor, I think it's more important than ever, so to speak, actually, that the stakes continue to. They don't get lower, so to speak. Now, granted, yes, if you have a seven day work weeks, that's, that's high stakes. Like, they're not fighting over that now. Like the, I think the UAW is trying to get from a 40 hours workweek to a 32 hours work week. That's completely different game than what they were fighting for in the 1930s, you know, in 1940s and so forth. But we also don't know, like, that this is a negotiation. So, you know, that could be one of the positions that's there in order to concede later, in order to get something else you want. So you can't judge their demands, so to speak, on a point by point basis. You have to judge ultimately what they're trying to accomplish. Yeah, but when you look at the overall what they're trying to do, the stakes of keeping our society together remain as they did 100 years ago. And so that's really, like, if inequality grows to a certain extent, then our society will fracture based on history, you know, we know that. So this is a part, getting the fair share of the employees, not doing it to the point where you break the business or you break the enterprise, but getting the fair share. And because, again, the natural inclination from the capital isn't just to say, hey, let's give up the fair share. Frederick Douglass has to quote, power concedes nothing without demand. Like, that's. That's. That's well known amongst, you know, humanity. So the role that they play is still a very. And that was really the better way to ask that question, is how important, or is the role more important, or is the same level of importance? It remains as important because, again, it's a vital aspect to the ongoing functioning of the capitalist system for us to harness the benefits of the capitalist, capitalist system. We need them to continue to make sure that the capitalists don't go too far into the natural inclination to spin this thing out of control. So I do want to move to our second topic today, though, at this point, you sent me something that was pretty interesting. You and I both like to exercise and so forth, and from time to time, their whole magazines and publications dedicated to all, you got to do this workout, do that workout. You go to the gym, there's all these different types of machines and so forth. And so it's always funny when I see these articles saying, hey, you see this equipment in the gym? Don't use this. It's like, well, why is it in the gym then? But so what was your takeaway? Or, you know, just your thoughts on the seven exercises, or machines, so to speak, in the gym that experts are saying did not use or did any of them stand out to you?
[00:40:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I kind of had already been pointed in this direction for years just reading other things and dealing with trainers and people like that, that would tell me, hey, don't it's better to use the free weights like dumbbells or maybe a barbell if you have to, depending on something, then, then a lot of those isolation.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Machines, like hyper isolation.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Correct. Because you're especially things like bench press and the squats, like they said in the article, with dismissive machines. That's when I was taught, actually when I was playing college basketball, well, by our trainer because part of it, especially with the squats, he was always saying that you're not the muscles that are used to balance.
[00:41:18] Speaker A: You stabilize your muscles.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There you go. Stabilizer. That's the word.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: I learned the same lesson.
[00:41:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Aren't being worked when you have a machine helping you. Right. And the guy made a good point here, like, because I've, I mean, probably I have some of this too, right? Like who knows if my, both my arms and my legs are exactly the same size to the millimeter, right? If you're a little bit longer on one arm than the other or something, the machines don't help you compensate like you can if you're just using free weights. So it's funny, all that to me made sense. It's just there was a couple things I was doing, like the, still doing like the tricep extension, for example.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: And that's funny. I stopped doing them about a year ago because I started just getting a hurt elbow.
[00:42:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: And I don't do tricep exercise anymore. I just do push ups and I do some dips sometimes, but I don't isolate my tricep alone. And it's funny because I was thinking about this, like, four months ago, just looking in the mirror, like, it's not like my triceps went down, stopped focusing on them, because you're still getting worked out with the other stuff. So a lot of it made sense, you know, reading this.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: No. And I think it's a good reminder from time to time because it's kind of like the.
You keep the main thing, the main thing, so to speak. When you exercise, it's easy to be like, oh, you know, like, I can focus on this. I can isolate that. If, you know, like, if you're doing anything more than, like, when you're doing the basics, you're doing the basics. But it's like, oh, I want my arms to get bigger, so let me go focus on my arms, or I want this, my chest or my arm. Like, we saw this when we were younger, you know, it's a tendency amongst the younger kids, actually, to not work out your legs, you know, because everybody wants to be swole up top. And I guess men, you know, like the women, that's the case, but, like, everybody wants to be swollen. And so you'd have people that start building a bunch of muscle up top and, you know, their legs are really weak, you know, so. But, yeah, for me, I have always leaned in this kind of direction, but it's similar to what you said about the elbow. For me, it was really about, I work out, particularly once I got to be, like, my thirties or late twenties thirties. It's like, hey, man, number one objective here. I want to be in shape and I want to get myself stronger and or keep my strength now that I'm in my forties. But I don't want to get hurt, and so I don't want to be working out and then injure myself, you know? So, like, what can I do to make sure that I limit injury risk? And a lot of that when I was reading about that was about avoiding the hyper isolation, you know? So you're talking about, like, the. The tricep extensions and so forth. And that's really hard on your, um, on your elbow, you know? And so it's like, well, hold on. The amount of weight that you have to lift to work your tricep will put an excess strain on your elbow. And so it was like, okay, well, that's good to know. Like, I don't if I want to do that, like, you said it's bench press. It's. It's, you know, like dips and things like that. And that works. Not just the elbow itself, but I have several joints. Multi joint movements distribute the tension over multi, multiple joints. The Smith machine was.
I thought that was a personal philosophy of mine, like, in terms of, okay, I don't use the Smith machine because. Because I put a cage in my garage, you know, like, but I didn't want to get a Smith machine. I didn't want the track. The Smith machine is similar to, you know, it's on a track. The barbell is on a track. And so you can load it up, but you don't have to worry about it falling or anything like that. But like you said, the stabilizer piece, I didn't want from, again, from an injury standpoint, I didn't want to be able, my muscles to be able to lift a certain amount of weight that my joints and the rest of my body couldn't support. It's like, well, hold on. What happens if I need to hold up something and then my muscles are okay, but then my joints just fall apart? So to me, it was. There's a philosophy behind this. This is, like, granular on it. Like, there's a philosophy, though, like, you train your body like it works, how it works, not like it's some. Like it's some isolated activity. And so that, to me, was the biggest takeaway is like, well, how does this muscle, how do these muscle groups work together? Let's not just look at the one muscle and try to just do that, because that can have unintended consequences.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's interesting, too, because I think part of it is, as we learn more and research, you know, goes into this whole sports, medicine, science and how we, our bodies move, there's just, like, other things in medicine. There's certain times when certain things are in favor and then other times that they might be out of favor with new discoveries. And so I think, you know, there was a time when it was seen as well. This is the right thing to do, to isolate all these muscles and all that. And now we're learning that, you know, that's probably not the best use of.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: The body, and in a sense, you probably had to go through the process.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I agree.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: Thinking that it's the right thing to do in order to learn those unintended consequences. You can't learn unintended consequences in advance.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: It's the butter and margarine thing. I always talk about that. You have to watch certain things play out and how people's bodies reacted to some things, you know, to realize that trans fats and processed food might not.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Be, but no, and it's at least to know for sure because there's some people like, oh, this is gonna happen, but you never know if that's actually the case or if that could be alarmist sometimes. And just by the way, you know, we will have, all the stuff we're discussing will be in the show notes at the, you know, you can, you can pull up, you know, on our website or you know, on the YouTube page or where the pod where you get the podcast.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: But another interesting thing too that I realized just in reading for today and just my own experience, because having played college basketball, I've got several injuries that I've accumulated over the years. Two ACL tears. I tore my achilles when I was 33 playing in some Monday night league out there, still thinking I could play ball, you know, and all that. So what I realized is like one of the exercises they actually have here is the leg extension machine.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: And I used to live on that thing when I was in college and all that, and I used to make serious weights, we would put up on those leg extensions and it was all about strengthening the knee, you know, especially.
[00:46:50] Speaker A: As you know the leg extension is the one where you're sitting down and your knee is at a 90 degree angle and you have weight in front of your, your shin and you push that forward.
[00:46:59] Speaker B: Correct. And so especially after coming out of an ACL tear, that type of exercise was seen as important because it was isolating my left knee, which needed to get restrengthened.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:11] Speaker B: And so what I realized in reading this is probably what the right advice would have been is amen. After this injury you need to work out like this maybe for a year or something, like, you know, like some period of time.
What happened is I kept working on those kind of machines when I used to be a member of a gym like LA fitness and all that up until my mid thirties.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: And what would happen is I remember cuz I just brought a bunch of memories just reading, you know, preparing for this discussion and I realized, man, my knee has not hurt for me for about seven, eight years now. Like I've been feeling great and then that's what I thought about it. Yeah. Cuz I haven't been going to the gym like that in that period of time. I've been doing different types of exercise, walking. I do squats now.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean about in the, in the article I wanted to mention the leg machine as well, leg extension machine, because, yeah, you see that, that's another one of those things. Like you, it really works your quads as well, your quadricep muscles, which are the front of the thigh. And so I remember, like, that's one of the ones that people love to do and they want to get, you know, that definition there. But I had the same issue with that one as I had with the, with the tricep extension is that the amount of weight that I had to put on it to actually work because I do a lot of squats, you know, things like that, lunges and, which are, those are the more functional things. So if I wanted to work my quad, I had to put so much weight on there that I could feel it in my knee and my knee would start hurting. And I'm like, well, hold on, why is my knee hurting? And so I, you know, again, I just stopped doing that back in my twenties. Like, I can't do this exercise because the, I'd rather put, you know, a bunch of weight on a squat and then push that up and down and that, I don't feel pain afterwards with that. But when I would isolate a particular muscle and try to put, and it was just one joint, one joint, the squat is two joints. I, it's your hip and it's your knee versus, you know, just one joint, then it's just that knee. Then again, the amount of weight I put on there to work the actual muscle was straining my knee. So, yeah, I mean, it's you, you, if you, that's the other thing with, with any type of exercise as well though is you got to listen to your body, you know, and then you gotta be flexible in terms of, okay, well, if my body's hurting, I, either my form is off and I got to figure out, you know, what's wrong there, or I may be doing something that's not conducive to building my body as opposed to breaking it down.
[00:49:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think the, the one thing too that I noticed when I stopped doing those isolated kind of weights as much is really my back pain was a lot less. Because what I realized is, like you're saying just by focusing, let's say just on your quad, or when I was just doing the, like I said, I was having elbow pain eventually after doing tricep extensions, is because you're just working out one muscle and our bodies are very good at pulling and I, one area and compensating for another. So if, if you're only working out, let's say, like you're saying your quadricep and you're not working out your hamstring exactly the same type of way. Eventually your body's gonna be pulling in one area because now that quadriceps got all this activity going on and it needs all this calories and it needs all this stuff to go in there and feed it, and you're, it's, it's.
[00:50:07] Speaker A: You know, it's an imbalance and it starts pulling. It might do that. And you're not strengthening the hamstring to the same degree. To your point, it starts pulling on.
[00:50:14] Speaker B: Your lower back or your knee, you know?
[00:50:16] Speaker A: And so, you know, like, you're like, oh, well, I'll do the leg extension and also do the leg curl. And it's like, but you're not working those because you're not working them in concert. You can't really say that they're both going to increase in strength in kind of a proportional way, as they will if you're just doing squats, you know?
[00:50:31] Speaker B: And, you know what that made me think of is, and this is plug for the audience to go look in our library for our show we did on the book sapiens, because remember, in the book, he made a good point in saying that once human beings got out of being hunter gatherers and started going into the agrarian age and farming and all that was when the fossil records of humans start showing injuries like herniated discs and shoulder separations and all these things. And I thought that sort of got me thinking, like, yes, like, working out is no different.
At what point is this overhead extension of a tricep, an actual natural movement that I would do in the wild? You know what I mean? Or like you're saying like a leg extension, that I would literally be sitting somewhere on a rock and just pushing my leg up and down if this was, you know, 10,000 years ago and I'm sitting somewhere. No, but a squat is a natural movement, right? You're picking up something. Or I thought about it. Even when you're laying down, you kind of do like a dip. Or if you're sitting down to get up, you know, that's kind of more of a natural. You're pushing yourself up off something. So I think a lot of this, like we've done with other areas, let's say, in medicine and science, as we learn about our bodies, just like, you know, issues like carpal tunnel syndrome or people having issues with their necks and their backs from sitting in front of computers all day. Like, these are things that, yeah, because human beings weren't designed to behave this way. And so when we behave this way for too long in a lifetime, your body starts suffering. And I think it's the same way that now we're learning through exercise, hey, maybe that the natural movements are the best way for us to stay conditioned and stay in shape without adding all these additional potential harms and injuries over, especially as we get older, over time.
[00:52:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things. It kind of, it mirrors what humans do in a lot of ways. This is our ingenuity. Like, we start with the basics, and then we try to figure out, well, how can we improve on the basics? And we introduce all these things. And some of them are good, you know, some of them are good. Improving on the basics. Like, I think a kettlebell is, you know, a great way to improve upon the basics. But then there's other things that we add. They're trying to improve upon the basics, and we do all this stuff, and then it's like, oh, well, these things actually are not as helpful as we thought. And so the key in that sense is to stay, remain flexible and to keep paying attention and to not say, okay, we had this stuff. It's in forever now. You know, it's a constant evaluation on what's working and what's not. And that's on an individual level as well as, you know, like, just kind of paying attention from a societal standpoint. So to me, you know, like, that's what we're seeing here is just that, that's that feedback, okay? Like, we threw a bunch of stuff in to try to improve upon the basics, and then the ultimate results or the ultimate advice coming back here is like, yeah, focus on the basics. You know, there are a couple things that, you know, we've added to the mix that are helpful with that, but the basics are what's going to allow you to improve strength, you know, and so forth, but not to lessen your risk for injury, you know, which to me, again, like I said, if I'm, I'm exercising, if I'm voluntarily exercising, which I want to do, you know, I think one of the most important things with that is to, that's not the hippocratic oath, but it's important. Don't hurt yourself first, you know?
[00:53:28] Speaker B: Well, so now that we got through the easy part of this discussion, now we're going to talk about vaccines, right?
[00:53:36] Speaker A: That was your obligatory mention for us to get more. To get more into the like, to get into the algorithm, right?
[00:53:44] Speaker B: No comment. That's just me saying I think time's up on the show.
[00:53:47] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, for sure. But. No, I think we can wrap up here. But we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it. Tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: I'm tuned in with Lana.
[00:54:01] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
