Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we react to the wild Netflix documentary Jerry Fights. Camera Action. And later on, we'll discuss some recent efforts by European officials to rein in the titans of big tech from US Companies and US Industry, and consider why Europeans have historically, over the past few decades, been more apt to stand up to big American industry than American officials have been.
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who's definitely got a story to tell. Dunde Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to hypnotize us with some of your insights today?
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Yeah, let's go.
I was trying to think about when you said hypnotize. I'm thinking about Biggie, and I'm thinking, what can I pull out that song?
[00:01:02] Speaker A: But I would say, yes, that was that.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: Yes. And my mind is not sharp enough at middle age that I can pull it off well, so here we are.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: You got. Your takes are better prepared than that.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. No, they'll slowly come out. You got me.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: You know, you just warm up. Yeah, that was a practice.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: I'm old enough and comfortable enough in my old self that I can acknowledge that I'm not that fast on my feet anymore. Yeah, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: We're recording this on January 14, 2025. And last week, January 7, Netflix released a documentary about the Jerry Springer talk show, which was one of the more popular daytime talk shows on television from the mid-1990s through the early 2000s. Now, the documentary took us behind the scenes and in the heads of some of the key people involved in making it and made some interesting connections between how the. Between the show and how our culture has evolved since then. So to get us started. Tune that. What did you take away from what they showed about how the show was made and also how it evolved from really a pretty bland offering when it started to being the crazy spectacle that it became.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah, this was a great documentary because it's not only did it take me back to kind of a little bit of nostalgia from the younger days of my life, it was a great reminder, kind of the way you set it up. And they used some of this terminology in the documentary, which was. It was the origination of American Shop tv.
And, you know, maybe someone could point to a show before that that was a little bit crazy, too, but this one, I think, was what mainstreamed this. This, like. I like that term. Shock tv. Yeah.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah. If anything was shocking before, it wasn't as shocking as this, people were shocked.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And the way that Jerry Springer, the show itself, became kind of a cultural thing, you know, like, that's. I mean, it wasn't just like a one shocking show. It was. It was the constant shock. And I think what's interesting is once you get in, I think the documentary did a good job. And this is where it was interesting to contrast some of the cultural twists and turns that we've taken as a nation since that show's come out in the last 30 years. And I think one of the things that I felt in watching it and just being reminded was that once you get into this kind of shock value, a way of entertainment, you always have to ratchet it up. And there's. It's like. And I guess it's kind of like, you know, that old thing with the Romans, you know, with the. With the gladiators and all that, like, they kept having to do more and more spectacular things to please the crowd. And I feel like that's kind of the era we're in now with media. And I feel like this. This documentary did such a good job of. Like I said, maybe Jerry Springer as a show didn't start this by themselves, but just as a cultural kind of marker on the roadmap of our journey as Americans, let's put it that way. If I can be that eloquent, it's.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Like, I feel like it's.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: It's a big road marker. Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: It made it a part of, like, normal culture, so to speak. Like, it mainlined it. And I mean, I think your allusion to the Roman Colosseum kind of thing is like. It's like, you know, when you first start having people fighting lions and stuff like that, it's amazing. But then after doing that for, like, six months, it's like, ah, this is. This is boring, you know, so you.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Got to have some people in there, let them get eaten.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, like, it definitely creates this. Like, once shock becomes the currency, so to speak, Shock required. Maintaining shock means you have to keep ratcheting it up. You know, like, that's kind of the way that works as a. And that's not the way with everything, you know, like, that's like, comedy can be comedy. It doesn't have to be crazy and crazy. As long as you could tell funny jokes, you could tell funny jokes, and that can. You know, the jokes can't be the same, but you can recycle that without having to keep escalating things. And so that's an Interesting point, and I think a good point about the way that you trade on the currency of shock. But what stood out to me, actually the initial thing, as, you know, you get in the first 30 minutes, or, you know, there's two, it's a two part, you know, each part about 50 minutes or something like that. And was the, that the people who drove the change from this mundane talk show, hey, you know, like, you excited, you're, you're, you're scared to go to college or yada, yada, yada to this spectacle were tabloid people. People who came from the tabloid industry, which you, if you're in the tabloid industry, your job literally is. And particularly the people who are putting the headlines together and stuff is you have somebody who's walking by and taking a glance in a grocery store, in the checkout aisle, they're just taking a glance at these things. You have to try to get their attention just with a glance. And so it makes sense that those people would bring this mentality of, hey, we want people. If they're going to, if they see a piece of this, they're going to be, they're going to want to know what more about it. So, but that, that came from the tabloid industry and it made me wonder like, okay, so do tabloid people really have a pulse on the way, on what humans respond to more than, than other people really? Like, because, because there is such a bottom line kind of at its core, how can we get somebody to take a second look and they distill it down? And so ultimately they brought all of that kind of sensibility to television. And as you point, it's not going to leave now. You know, like, once it was brought there, then it's like, okay, well, how can we, how can we one up the Jerry Springer show? Or how can we, you know, and so everything becomes about, you know, we have this mentality of how can we get enough of intrigue off of a glance to bring, you know, to bring someone in and then capture their attention, capture their eyeballs, so to speak. And yeah, that this came from people in the tabloid industry I thought was very insightful because we all acknowledge and understand, like, yes, the tabloid people, they are, they're not trafficking in truth. In fact, they're trafficking in. And what can they say? You know, my wife married Bigfoot or something? Like, what can they say? A headline that'll get you to look and ideally get you to pick it up for a few minutes. But it's, it's really, it's not something you're going to spend deep reflection on either. It's like, hey, boom, this is going to be something that I see that is crazy. And then I'm going to put it down.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's a great point. And I think, you know, that's really it. It's. It's. I think the medium, what I'm learning. I mean, that book was so right and spot on. The amusing ourselves to death that, that, you know, the medium does just influence our culture. And by medium, I mean the way that information is disseminated. So to your point, when the tabloid is on a grocery store shelf, a person, first of all is seeing that for a short period of time. Then if they want to continue to see it, they have to choose to purchase it, take it home, and then they go in their living room and see it. And you're right, the percentage of people that do that is much smaller. And then we.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: And even if they do that, they're still spending five, ten minutes with it. And that's it, you know, and it's 30 times and. Yeah, but go ahead.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: But. But then with the proliferation of our technology, right by the 90s, you had satellite TV, you had the explosion of all these channels. Because remember when you and I were kids in the 80s, cable TV might have had, you know, 50, 60 channels. By the 90s, I remember this one, you had HBO 1, 2 and 3. And you had all these. You know, that's when he started having like DirecTV with literally a thousand channels. And you had all these different broadcasts and networks and networks that have 17 different channels. So they're playing. It's not just Jerry Springer, one hour of the show they're playing. Jerry Springer, Ricky Lake, Sally Jesse Raphael, you know, all the shows at the time that were trying to compete for eyeballs and what were they doing? Jerry Springer may have been the most aggressive of them, but the Sally Jesse's and the Ricki Lakes still had people behaving in ways that obvious. I think most of us would look back at those shows. Yeah, that was a little bit unbecoming. You know, they're all doing this, the shock value thing. And then to your point, like, fast forward now to the. We're in the full information age, you know, the early 2000s, called the first quarter of the century. And the technology has just leapfrogged from the printing press, putting stuff in the grocery lane, you know, aisle where we see it, to then the television, which is in quote unquote, our living room or our bedroom, where we kind of get immersed in It a little bit more throughout the day. We can spend hours on it to. Now it's in our pocket, in our phone. And the algorithms are conditioned to always kind of have this. Us in this state of heightened anxiety. And the, The. The beauty of. Of the documentary is it showed. And that's why I want to throw back to you and kind of how they. The producers did this prior to algorithms, that it was human to human. You know what I mean?
[00:09:44] Speaker A: No, no. And I thought that, you know, like, that was something that was actually something you brought up to me, which I thought was very. Was that the role of the producer and the documentary did a really good job of like, there were several producers being interviewed on the show and that these are the people that really. They were. They were the. Where the rubber meets the road, you know, they. They were the one that got the guests and spoke to the guests, brought them in. And then more importantly, what you may not recognize was they were the one that primed the guests to then go on the show and create the spectacle. So, yes, the story, like, they made careful. They were saying, hey, these stories are real. They weren't getting people to make up stuff. If they were finding out something was made up, they would get rid of it. Like, they weren't in the business of coming up with fake stuff. But what they would do is talk to the people, prime the people in a way. I believe the term that was used at one point is called shaping the missile. So they would get them riled up or tell them, kind of get them ready to say something that was going to. That they realized was going to set the other person off. And they would basically essentially prime the guests so that they could deliver. Once they got out there, they were all amped up. They were, you know, emotional and everything like that. So they would deliver a spectacle of a show. And the connection that, you know, like I said that I thought was really insightful that you brought up was like, that's really like the job of a social media algorithm right now. You know, is that what these producers did? And like, again, this is a large part of the documentary talking about what the producers did, how hard it was on them, you know, because. Because they're constantly trying to amp people up. Like, question, are they manipulating these people or are they kind of just pushing the right buttons to get them to tell their story? But in a way that's going to deliver more fireworks, you know, like, it's a really interesting point, though, to kind of think of like, that's what the algorithms do to all of us now, basically, is the algorithms based on our browsing history, based on what we look at, how long we look at and so forth. They know how to prime us. They know how to get us. Hey, if we're on, you know, social media app, they know how to get us primed so that we're going to start typing and arguing and stuff like that, because that's going to keep other people more engaged and so forth. So we're all actually the guests on Jerry Springer when it comes to the social media stuff, and the algorithm is the producer that's making us create the spectacle for everybody else to look at. It's got. It's kind of wild to make all that connection. But I mean, I. So, I mean, I know I threw. I Stole My Splendor a little bit, but you got to set me up to see.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: No, no, but, but, but it's good because that's one of the reasons why I would recommend people watch this documentary. I mean, obviously we're not being paid by Netflix here to advertise for them, but it, but it's that insightful in this. Be especially people like around our age or even older. Meaning that you remember seeing this stuff because you can really see how this attitude of exploiting human emotion, really, and, and kind of praying on the human spirit.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Honestly, man, I think people, even people who don't, who, Whose age wouldn't have them remember when this happened contemporaneously, can still get a lot from seeing this.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Of course you can get a lot of it. I just, I mean, for those of us that do remember, it's like, it's really a good reminder because you can remember those days. But then it. I want to just go back on what you were starting to describe and really go into it. Meaning. Because the documentary shows the production team, the producers kind of ramping these people up in the green room where they're like, literally, there's a scene, and again, I'm not verbatim, I can not remember it that way, but it's more like.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Practicing, you know, they. They with the guests and so they're playing the role of the other person or something.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: They show it where one of the producers is egging up a lady who's gonna be going out on stage and she's saying, he. He slept with these two women and she's kind of. And then they show the lady going out and she's on fire, like she's ready to go punch somebody. And. Because I remember watching the show and seeing the people come out, like, hot, you know, but now, you didn't know as a viewer that they're getting. They're getting, like, riled up back there by.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: They don't just walk around all day like that.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: You know, like, they were actually put in that. That state. Yeah.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And so that's what I kind of realized when I'm watching. I'm like, hold on to your point. I'm like, now instead of just these few people that are guests on a show getting riled up and walking out in front of 100 people, audience and all these TV cameras making a fool of themselves because they're so emotionally riled up that they can't stop and think. You know, that trigger, they're already triggered so much that. That they just respond. There's no space in between for the brain to say, all right, let me chill out and see what I'm about to do here. And that reminded me that now, with technology again, in the last 25 years, like you just said, we're all guests on the Jerry Springer show in one way or another, because we have phones in our pockets that have. On social media and our news feeds, algorithms constantly feeding us stuff that are priming us to want to fight and be all emotional. And so you could be in the grocery store. And this is why I laugh sometimes when I watch with my kids the Karen videos on YouTube. Like, Karen's @ the airport. Karen's, you know, at the grocery store. Because. And you sometimes wonder, like, man, so many people are just so pent up. You're in this public place and someone accidentally bumped somebody or something, and they're all just like, oh, you know, you know, what are you doing?
You violated my dignity as a human or something. And that's what I realized watching the show. I'm like, yeah, these algorithms, social media, all this Internet stuff is just another layer of the technology allowing some sort of production, entertainment or company to manipulate us, just like the producers were talking about. And that's a great point you make. The gentleman did use the term shaping the missile and what he kept saying. And he did this with his finger. I remember. He's like, we want to touch on these certain emotional buttons and triggers. And he just acknowledged that, like, we're gonna. We're gonna be firing these people up. And I'm thinking, now we're. We're all victims of this. And that's a great point you make. We're all guests on the Jerry Springer show now, but that show is now the American life.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: You know what I mean? And, and everything is now like this. Our politics is all entertainment and it's all shock value. Our discussions about business and that, like, everything that's supposed to be serious, that's.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: What you started with. Like, once you start getting accustomed to this certain level of shock in what you consume, it's needed actually to even get you to turn away. Like, even to get you to look like our politicians will behave in a certain way, because that's the only way that's going to get you to pay attention or, you know, our Real Housewives of this, if they're just out there buying, shopping at groceries or not grocery stores, department stores or luxury stores and taking trips somewhere, nobody's watching that. But if somebody's throwing a drink on somebody or something like that, it's like, oh, oh, we got to check this out. So we've become the place of like the society wide. Like, it's like, okay, yeah, everybody has to keep amping this stuff up. One of the things with the, the, the. There's two other things I want to touch on before we get out of this. One was they talked specific. They did give specific mention about the. Where the guests in the Jerry Springer show came from. Primarily, you know, they Jerry Springer triangle, so to speak. I want to talk about that. But the other thing I want to talk about and I want to get to right now is just this idea of, okay, so we're talking about this shock value and how, you know, people, you know, like, this is something. This is how you can get eyeballs and so forth. One piece of the discussion I thought that was missing and I think should be added is the idea that there's this question on whether or not this is human nature. So is it human nature when you see these fights that we're going to, that we're going to run to it and we want to see it and everything like that. Or, or is it merely just something that people will respond to if given the opportunity to. And I think that this is where we get confused a lot of times in that the excuse to put anything on television or on social media is just that, hey, this is what people want. And I don't know that that's 100% true. In fact, I think that's a little misleading because in the abstract, people don't necessarily clamor for that. What it is, though, it definitely is that people will respond to it. If you give them that, they will respond. But if you, if it's not an option, you won't have people banging down the door. In 1990, you didn't have people banging down the door saying, we want people fighting on television. Like, that wasn't what. People weren't clamoring for that. If that's what people wanted because of their nature, then people would be asking for it, whether it was an option or not. What we see is that once it's made an option, people will respond to it, and then that can be exploited commercially. So what we're observing here isn't just a function of human nature, and this is just what it's going to be.
It's a function of a race to the bottom, that we will do anything in order to get your attention. So therefore, we'll pull out anything that people will respond to. Like the executive producer said, hey, I will execute a person on television, you know, because he. Again, he's saying, there is no limit. I will go to the bottom of the bottom in order to. Because people. Not that that's what people are clamoring for. That's not what people, quote, unquote, independently want, but that's what they will respond to. And that will give me a leg up in getting attention relative to. These are my other competitors if I stoop lower than they do. So I think that's something. That's a connection that's not really made because a lot of time we hear it with social media, too. It's like, oh, well, this is just what people want. If you put this stuff out there, this is what they gravitate towards. And again, it's like, that's not true. Because it's not something that they're asking for before you give it to them. It's no different than sugary sweets or something like that. Like, it's not something that people are clamoring for. It's like, but if you give it to them, then they want, you know, it's like, okay, we're on it. Or. I mean, the example you threw out to me when I. When I talked about this to you is like, drugs, like heroin. It's not like people aren't in the street demonstrating because they want more heroin, but if you give them heroin, then their bodies will respond to it and then they're going to want more of it. But that's not me. That doesn't mean you should go around giving everybody heroin.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: I think that's the. Honestly, man, this is the dilemma of American culture. I think the tension.
Let me see how I put this kind of. The tension and the lack of equilibrium, maybe of Our relationship between corporate power and us as the people. And. And because you said a lot there, which is very good, I think what you've identified, let's say, with the food industry is similar to what we're talking about with what social media, the regular media, like from the Jerry Springer type of show and our political media, from the various cable networks and the way that politicians behave on social media, you know, to, again, needing everyone's attention and shock value.
They're all very similar. And I feel like the way you just described it is a great succinct way of showing that the American consumer and the American citizen in that sense has been a victim of all this.
Because to your point about food. Right, like, that's what I mean. Like, I think most adults in America are somewhat knowledgeable to the fact that fast food isn't that great for you. Fried food isn't that great. I mean, we all kind of heard this stuff. You know, leafy greens are good. But you're right, we're all fighting a battle that's very hard to fight because the food industry, through lobbying, is just allowed to put things, chemicals and flavors and all these things that they know our brains are addicted to.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: Like we will respond to. Our bodies will respond to it in ways that we may not even be able to.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: You know what, and that's a great word, respond.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Respond is the key term, I think, in this. It's not that you're human nature makes you demand that. You know, people weren't demanding Twinkies before they were invented, but once they were invented and people tasted it and their body responded to it a certain way, then it's like, oh, give me more of that. Give me more.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And. And so. And you're right, because it's a trigger that we can resist, like the brain chemistry, meaning we're fighting a battle against scientists in these food companies that actually are shaping the way the new sugar molecule is in some products. So it fits in our tongue and, you know, hits our brain a certain way. Like all that research they're doing, and we don't even realize that because it's not on the package that we're fighting against an army of scientists and psychologists whenever we buy food. And I think it's the same thing with the media, right? Like, you know, these companies are studying how to get our attention, how to disturb us all the. Again, the things we kind of know now about social media and about how we are triggered by algorithms and bots and all that. And, you know, that's what I mean, it's like we all are suffering from a mental health standpoint, physical health standpoint. We're talking about the food and all that. And in order. Because our culture doesn't want to have to go and tell corporate America to chill out because then we don't know, you know, like.
Because as soon as you think about.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Somebody brings up a way, hey, we got to try to rein this in, they're like, oh, you know, free market. You know, you can't. Like, we don't even have a mechanism to effectively discuss that.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. I was going to say we've been conditioned to believe that trying to rein in anything corporate is basically. You're a communist, right? Like, there's these extremes. No, seriously, like I either got to be total free market or I'm a total company.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Whatever they want, wherever they want, they can put whatever in my food. You know, like the lockdown is obviously they can put. They don't have to tell you what's in it, but you know, we want.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I'm just saying there seems to be no ability to have a discussion about some sort of healthy middle ground. Right. That, that capitalism is great, but it should be well regulated too. And I think that with the proliferation of the technology and again, these are things that I think are also very personal, right? Like regulating what people information they see and all that. Like, you know, because of a lot of Americans, we're very individualistic. It's like, all right, well, who are you to tell me what I can watch or not? And I think a lot of things are the messenger. We talk about this with food, right. Ten years ago we had a first lady who wanted to help Americans get off sugar and she had a garden in the yard and all that. Today we have people coming in who want to also help people get healthy.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: But the off of processed foods and stuff.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: But the response of the audience, meaning the public, is very different. It's just because it's two separate messengers. And I think that that goes into how we're so fractured by all this stuff.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: And well, that goes into the answer on how corporate America is able to, to. To. To keep us pointing the finger elsewhere other than them in order to try to rein in this type stuff. I think one of the things I just to draw the connection. The, the reason why I think it was important that we pointed out that the people who really, you know, who, who kind of created this direction for the Springer show, we're from the tabloid industry, is to connect to this because the tabloid industry were the scientists basically on how to, with a limited window, get and maintain attention. Like they were the ones who had been doing experiments, so to speak, you know, by selling, you know, tabloid magazines. But they had been doing these experiments day after day, week after week for decades. How can we get, you know, attention and so forth. And so they were very well versed. What that industry had learned over the past few decades was very well versed. And once it was able to be translated over to television in a different medium, it was able to explode in a different way.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: But no, I think we can wrap this topic from there. We appreciate all for joining us on this episode or this, this part of this episode. Check out part two as well and we'll talk to you soon.
All right, so for our second topic today, we're discussed. We've seen reports recently on European leaders and the EU and in general standing up to tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk in ways that seems like US politicians would never do. You've seen people like the EU pushing back on Mark Zuckerberg by asserting that the EU will still force platforms to remove content that may be harmful, specifically citing content that may be harmful to children or harmful to EU's democracies. And we've seen officials calling out Elon Musk for supporting what they call a new international reactionary movement. Why do you think leaders and organizations, these governmental bodies in Europe seem so, or don't seem to be so easily pulled into the palm of Big Tech? Because as we see in the United States, there is very little resistance when Big Tech wants to do this or wants to do that or anything like that.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I think there's several reasons, and I'm sure I got some blind spots and things I can't see, but I think they're coupled to just say here succinctly is one is corruption. I think that as Americans, we think corruption happens only in third world countries and banana republics or when it's absolutely obvious. Like the discussion we had last year about Senator Bob Menendez in New Jersey who was found with gold bars in his shirt pockets and cash. Right. That's what we think of as Americans as corruption. Like, all right, it's this obvious guy was on the take and we saw him get a bribe on some video recording. You know, that was all grainy. And that's, that's our version of corruption.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Remember. It's not just us, though. The Supreme Court was saying that if, if you get a favor for doing Some kind of legislation and you don't get the favor until after it's already over, then that's not corrupt.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's all it's.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: As long as. As long as you don't get the money till after you do the good deed.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's where I'm going, is that we think of corruption as something other in our society because we don't recognize that we basically legalize corruption. And in a serious way. I say that, and it's unfortunate, but you're right. Anyone can go look that up. I think that was a year ago, that ruling by the Supreme Court that you can take gifts after you get in office and it's okay.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: As long as you've already done whatever the gift was in exchange for.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So no way anyone could work that out beforehand.
So that's what I'm saying. So when we've codified into our own laws that gifts can be made and they're not considered bribes, what are you going to say to that? Right. And so that is corruption. It's just legal. And so, yes, we have a whole healthy. I wouldn't even call it. Call it a cottage industry. I would call it an ecosystem of lobbying. And the tech industry, for example, lobbies our Congress, who makes the laws to not put certain things in there that they feel would make their businesses less.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: Profitable, strain them in any way, shape or form.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: And going back to the European Union now, I think there's a couple reasons. One is the European Union is a union of multiple nations, more than a dozen. I think it's like 17 or something. Now, I'm probably wrong, but it's enough that it's much harder, I think, to corrupt a group of individual nations that themselves have their own president or prime minister and then their whole legislature and then their own voters and different cultures. And, you know, like you said to me in a conversation, Spain's culture is different than Belgium, which is different than, you know, whatever other country. Right. So the bottom line is, is that I think that just makes it harder. Number two, these are American companies, so they're here, not there. So obviously they're, you know, it's easier to grease politicians and get your way in your own country.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: And then the last look at them a little more skeptically if they're quote, unquote, foreign, you know.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that lastly, because this is also with food, cosmetics, I mean, it's not just tech, it's a lot of industries that the EU seems to be more interested in protecting their citizens from harm than the American government is from protecting its citizens from harm from these corporations. And so I think part of it is also just Europe has a different history than the United States. And I think the Europeans are more mature in the sense that the relation. They're more careful, I think, with their relation between their government and their cons and the population, just because of, you know, the last 100, 150 years of European history, from revolutions to world wars. And so I just think that there's. There's a little bit of all that mixed in. But. But yeah, I just think that part of it. I mean, the blatant one to me is the corruption piece that we just legalize corruption, that companies can just go lobby to Congress.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Yeah, well, see, I think there's. There's actually something implicit in that that I wanted to make it make explicit in that, you know, in the United States, we consider when somebody says lobbying, we implicitly that think that's money. Like, we, we like. Lobbying doesn't actually have to include money. Lobbying could be persuasion, like, you know, giving, you know, like, we're going to give you a presentation that explains why you should do this. And that's how I'm lobbying you. We, in this country, we've lost that. That's a complete disconnect. Like, we think, oh, lobbying. Well, how much was the lobbying? Like, how much did the lobbying entail? Like, we've automatically associated the idea of lobbying with paying, which is inherently corruption, which it kind of gets into what you were saying. As far as we've internalized a level of corruption that we don't even see anymore. Like, we're completely oblivious to it. And I think that, that. I wouldn't say maturity, I wouldn't use that word, but I think that the evolution of the European culture has been different than the evolution of the American culture, probably in large part due to this legalization of corruption. But the other piece is kind of the Balkanization I'll use, and I think you touched on this, but I want to go a little bit deeper in that The American public, I think, is easier to manipulate as a whole than the European public. And so the EU has more defense against the big tech, because big tech can't easily manipulate all of these countries. And the reason for that is that in America, while we have different states and so forth, a lot of, from a cultural standpoint, we have a lot of the same cultural pressure points in the whole country. And so certain pressure points can be pushed by big tech very easily and influence large swaths of the electorate and. Or large swaths of the people in legislative bodies or in the executive branch or in the judicial branch. So by pushing very few pressure points, they can influence a lot of people. They can turn a lot of people against each other and, you know, divide and conquer, so to speak. Whereas in Europe, and that was kind of my point with the Spain versus Belgium versus wherever else, it's hard to do that. They don't have all the same. They don't have the same pressure points in Spain that they do in Belgium, you know, so if you want to manipulate large swaths of the EU populate of the, of the population in these EU countries, it's. It can't be done by pushing a button. It's like, you got to go send the delegation here and they got to do this. And they had like. So it's very. It's because it's more diffuse. This is, you know, a good argument for, you know, having not having power to centralize, you know, and so which is the irony of all this is that all of these things were the thoughts that the founding fathers of the United States had. As far as organizing.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Wasn't there a country invented on that country?
[00:31:47] Speaker A: Yeah, our country was invented on a lot of these things, but it's kind of coalesced into something that's not that while as we see the benefits of this decentralization and, you know, from a cultural standpoint and everything, we see the benefits of that in Europe right now, whereas here we don't have that anymore. And so I think it's the combination of the two. And they feed each other basically. Like, our culture has gone to one that has continued to evolve in a way where since corruption is legal, forms of corruption are legal and we internalize those that again, these are blind spots for many of us, you know, like. And you've raised some excellent points as far as, you know, the different chemicals that can go in cosmetics or food. And even your trip when you went to Europe a year or two ago and you were like, yo, that the same companies make different products here because they're not allowed to use products, these cancer products there.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: I mean, look, going to McDonald's in Italy is a total. It's like an actual restaurant. I mean, not to say you sitting there eating a Big Mac with your fork and knife. But what I'm saying is the food is fresh. Like, they have real chicken that you pull it apart and it's stringy meat. It's not processed. You know what I mean?
And that's what I was saying. I was dumbfounded. Like, hold on, I got to come to another continent to consume products from American companies that are actually healthier for me. Why? Why is my own government not protecting me as a consumer? And that go back into everything we're saying is the money. I just real quick, I wanted to be accurate, looking up Citizens United, the Supreme Court case that allowed unlimited corporate spending. And remember the attitude from, you know, Mr. Romney when he ran for president where corporations are people, remember that. And so I.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: And what the Citizens United reasoning was was that money is speech one, and then two, you can't restrict the quote unquote speech of these non human entities, these corporations.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's, let's break that down really quickly because the reality is that 2012 was the first presidential election since that ruling that allowed corporate money. And then that's the first time we heard of things like super PACs also where the money can be given. And they call it dark money because those who give it don't have to disclose who they are. So 2012, it's estimated that the entire spend on that presidential election was $1 billion. Dark money, not dark money. All that I learned recently that the recent election in 2024, that number was $16 billion. Think about that. In 12 years, 16 time increase.
Now we know from the surface of the numbers that we are allowed to see as the public, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party raised about a billion dollars, a little more than that. And Donald Trump, we know, got certain individual money like the 277 million that Elon Musk gave, the 100 million Mrs. Adelson gave. And you know that the heir of the Mellon family gave 165 million. So Donald Trump probably got a billion dollars from individual billionaires too.
So that, let's call that 2 billion that we can kind of account for, that means 14 billion. And that's why this is not a partisan observation. $14 billion. We kind of don't know who paid for that, who paid for these, you know, these politicians to run and all that stuff. And my point really is, is that these companies are getting a return on their investment.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Yeah, they're not doing this for fun.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. They're doing this.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: They can see directly how they are impacting the ability for governments to either regulate them or to not be able to regulate them.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Exactly. And I'm going to look something up right now, just out of curiosity. So I apologize.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Well, let me jump in then and you can come back with that because I think the second piece of this though was talking about the, like how the separation or the separation that.
Because European nations can't be easily. Or all these different European nations can't be easily manipulated, you know, with. Along the same kind of cultural lines. The other piece I would say with that is that while they are like, while they're not kind of uniform in a way from a cultural standpoint that makes it very easily or they're more susceptible to manipulation, they do seem to have more common purpose than we do, you know, and that's that. I know I spoke on this briefly in our first part, but just what stands out to me with something like this is, is the idea that Americans don't feel like we're all in the same boat. Like, I was shocked, and I know you were too, that we all have on our Apple devices now they have USB C. You know, like this uniform standard. Hey, not the biggest deal in the world. But why was that done? Well, Europe decided that Apple shouldn't be able to use their own charger. Then they should have to use a charger that everybody else use. You use a universal charger so we have less waste. And, you know, it makes it easier for consumers. It wasn't the end of the world for Apple, you know, like, in fact that makes it much more convenient. The American companies that was brought up in America and they were like, no way, you know, like, the American regulators wouldn't do something like that because they were in the tape. And I think that it shouldn't be a surprise that Americans don't see themselves as in this boat together. And this is what concerns me the most about this is just that what we have in the United States, which is very, I think, harmful, is that there are entire media apparatuses set up to turn Americans against each other. Like, that's what the media apparatus is there for is to this media apparatus, you go there and they tell you why this other group of Americans are terrible. You go somewhere else, they tell you why this other group of Americans are terrible. There aren't really any media or any kind of organizations that are set up to bring Americans together and just say, hey people, we're all in this together. Let's try to work together and solve our problems. There's nothing out there like that's laughable to you even bring that up like. And so if you're sold all the time an idea that the root of all your problems are your fellow Americans, then of course you're not going to work, want to work with them to solve Problems, and you'll be easy to kind of manipulate amongst people who don't want problems to be solved, so to speak. And so I think that we're just kind of in this situation where, I mean, we're not just in it, but we can see we're in a situation where Americans are ill equipped a lot of times to deal with powerful interests and to get a fair shake. And that's whether it be the pharmaceuticals, you know, pharmaceutical laws where we're going to overpay for drugs, whether, going to, whether it's going to be, can you use these yellow dye, this and that creates all these problems in your product or any of these things. Like, we're just not equipped at this moment to be able to go toe to toe with powerful industries and powerful interests because it's very easy to have us, hey, look at that, you know, there's a guy dancing on the tower, you know, and then we're just distracted or hey, those people are fighting over there. Watch, you know, and then that stuff dies on the vine.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: But that's the point I'm making, James, is that through the manipulation of the courts over a long period of time, our country has been set up where basically this corruption of buying politicians so that they can do the bidding of the wealthy and the oligarch class is legal. And the point is, is that we've been convinced about trickle down economics in our culture since the 1980s. And the idea, I can hear someone already arguing with me saying, well, if you tax Apple, you're going to hurt their ability for the stock price to grow and our growth and this and that, and hey, that could be true. But that's what I'm saying is that we need to have these more realistic, open conversations as a country because we have a $35 trillion deficit and we have a bunch of Americans that keep saying they want health care, they want to reduce inflation, they want to increase people's wages, they want more jobs, they want this, they want that. And if you want all that, you got to choose are you going to only protect the shareholder class? Because people like me are doing okay because I work in the industry that deals with capital markets and I own shares of these companies. But I'm trying to not be selfish and I want to help the whole country. So I think we should be having these conversations a little bit more. And that's what does differentiate us from Europe, is that the European countries have already kind of figured out that we need a bit of a healthy equilibrium. If the population is a Little bit out of whack. That's gonna end badly anyway.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Well, they, they, they tend to have an approach where they understand, a lot of them understand that at least in large part, we're in this together. You know, like, it's the only reason why you would do these kind of regulations that they do. Like, why, why are they forcing McDonald's to use real food and not ultra processed stuff? Like, why would they do that other than to realize, like, hey, we are. We as a, we the people, so to speak. We as a nation, we as a collection, we as a group are trying to address these issues together. And I think that there's, there's something that I think that we have to just acknowledge with what you're saying. And I think this is something we would want to change, but that is just that the way the system is currently set up. Because dollars are the, are the thing that drives what's happening. Dollars are the voters, so to speak, not people. You know, post Citizens United. Again, if money is speech, then money goes a lot further than anything I got to say, or you got to say money goes further than anything anybody has to say. So once money becomes speech, then that's the only thing that really matters. And so while we still have this illusion that everything that we're saying means all this, what we're seeing, as you said, you go from a billion dollars to $16 billion, that's not a mistake. That's not just like, oh, you know, maybe let's just see if this works. That's because they know that it works, you know, and then.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Yeah, so no, I mean, look, sorry, man, but think about what you just said. No, but I always want to focus on. You said money is speech.
That's all like, it's a great point you make, man.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and so the, the, so the people doing the talking are the people that are spending the money. All the talking that we're doing with our mouths is, has become much less important. And so therefore the interests of money override the interests of people. So that's the result that you end up win when you make money. Speech. So the other thing I'll say though, and this is just, this is, this is a common misconception. It's like, oh, somebody, if you, if you tax the, you know, the, the high earners or if you tax the, the companies, then the economy is going to have all these problems. And that's just fundamentally not true. Like, we've observed that that's not true. And we've observed that the trickle down economics doesn't work. But these lessons, for obvious reasons aren't going to be things that are taught commonly. Like if you look at top tax rate in the United states in the 50s and 60s, our economy still worked somehow some way. But you had a top tax rate of 93%. Even after that it goes to 75%. Economy still work. You still had, you know, major corporations doing big things. You had, you know, Ford was still amazing. You know, all this other stuff and you talk now and people are like, oh, if you raise taxes beyond this small amount, everything's going to fall apart. And it's like, well, no, it didn't. And in fact you had very stable growth. And the issue though is that the growth that's being sought now, they want unrestrained growth, just growth that is basically is something that is exponential in a way that essentially is unnatural. But in order to get that, yes, you have to take all these, any restraint off. But the society that that builds is one that leads, as we've seen, to a lot of booms and busts, which is very painful, we don't like and also is one where all of the spoils of what we do do well as a economy collectively all the spoils just collect at the top. And so, and that's not a sustainable thing either actually also leads to the booms and busts as well. So the fundamental untruth that we have to play hands off with these corporations or else the economy is not going to work is something that, that's not something that drives this, but that's something that's used to justify it after the fact. What drives it is the dollars. Dollars being speech, Money being speech, meaning, you know, the person with a big wallet has more than the person with the big mouth.
[00:43:24] Speaker B: Yeah, well, let's hope that these realities are becoming more obvious to more people, which I think they are. They are.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Just on top of that though, we have to hope that the correct culprit is identified as these realities become apparent.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: Yeah, well that ends up happening a.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Lot of times is this kind of stuff becomes apparent and then they'll say, oh well, let's just blame this group.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: Yeah, this group that doesn't have any.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Money, let's just blame them. Or you know, let's blame immigrants or you know, like so the finger will commonly, you know, from people with the motivation to do so will get pointed at people that don't. Aren't driving the issue.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean we're watching it in real time and maybe the Internet and social media helps us to see it a little bit clearer. At least those of us watching with a little bit of distance. Instance, the divide and conquer game. I mean, it's just amazing watching the proliferation of it through social media by our, our cultural leaders, let's put it that way. So, you know, let's see where this goes. Yeah.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: And I mean, just kind of to reiterate the point I made in part one, like the, the idea that people respond to like these divide and conquer messages, that the division, if people respond to the division, doesn't mean that it's inherent in human nature that people want to be divided or people are looking for division. Just because we respond to it doesn't mean that, like that's something that is given because it's effective at somebody else's agenda, but it can be just as effective. Again, if we spent half as much time trying to put messages together that brought Americans together to solve their problems, we would be in a much better place. But that's not. Again, that's just not where the energy goes. Because Americans coming together to solve their problems makes it harder for the few to consolidate all the spoils of society and then close out the many from a lot of those benefits. So, you know, that's kind of. People gotta want it.
[00:45:08] Speaker B: Well, you stay on your high horse. I'll just keep buying shares of Apple.
[00:45:13] Speaker A: Hey, you can do both.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: So I keep throwing my money in the market until someone comes along and stops all that money in the system.
[00:45:22] Speaker A: No, for sure. So. But I think we can wrap this topic in this episode. From there. 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. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: I am Tunde Lana.
[00:45:34] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
