Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss the increasing dominance of private equity in the US Economy and consider whether private equity in its current form is actually helping the economy or is it sucking it dry?
Hello, welcome to the Call Like I See it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and joining me today is a man who to date has won every game of Big Bank, Take Little bank that he's ever played.
Quite a winning streak. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to show them why you know, at the end it's all about the Benjamins?
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Then I'll have to disclose that I'm playing against five year old kids at my age. Is that that's why I've never lost.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: You selective of who you play against?
[00:00:55] Speaker B: We're recording. So everyone heard that?
All right, we'll keep going.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Before we get started, if you enjoy the show.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: That explains my track record, everyone. Sorry.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Before we get started, I ask if you enjoy the show that you subscribe, like the show on YouTube or your podcast platform. Doing so really helps the show out. Now we're recording on June 29, 2025. And Tunde, you sent me an article a few weeks back from Issy Lepowski in Vanity Fair. And it talked about a new book coming up from the former Deadspin editor, Megan Greenwell. And that book goes into how many of the common practices from private equity companies really seem to upend a lot of people's lives.
Just really bringing it to the impact on individual people and the way that the companies that are acquired by private equity are operated and, or broken apart and so forth. And the book goes too far as to suggest that for many private equity billionaires may be killing the American dream, which is, you know, big time, you know, like big time assertion, big time thing to throw out there.
So what stood out to you in this article, you know, that suggests, you know, that private equity may be kind of complicit here for a lot of people in killing the American dream.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: That's a great question because it was a great article. And as I would say this, as I delved into it, I think private equity has become, in terms of the term the verbiage used around it has just for many people become another way to point at something to say, I just think I don't like the way things have gone down. And this is one of the reasons. And private equity gets put into certain spheres like that in conversations.
But in preparing for today, what I really came out of in answering this question directly is, is not necessarily private equity itself. It's the lack of transparency that private equity can provide due to the current makeup of the way things are regulatory framework. So because I started thinking to myself that private equity has taken the place of how the public markets used to function prior to the 1930s. So that's when I kind of going out on the higher level of thought on it was like, all right, it's not really about whether it's private or public, so on and so forth. It's about is there transparency?
Do enough of us know what's going on behind the scenes in that sector of the economy? So that if it's behaving in a certain way that could be, let's say, negative or detrimental to the majority of society, are we going to see it? And I think that's the way I realize is private equity has been been allowed to act in a relative regulatory darkness without the transparency for the public. So as things that have happened like the way public. Sorry, private equity has influenced things like the healthcare system and the delivery of care versus cost.
We've heard chatter in the last decade, 15 years, that private equity is one of the reasons that the housing market might be more unaffordable for more Americans. Because companies like Blackstone and others have been allowed to come in and buy up single family homes with deep pockets that you and I as individuals don't have. So just.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: And also people have seen like the high, high profile things like the Toys R Us and Sears and you know, things.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Where they bought companies and then those companies kind of kind of go away, you know, broken down and so forth.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: So. Yeah, so that's kind of what to answer directly.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that. Well, there's a second piece to what you're saying though, because yes, the lack of transparency is a key factor. But when what that ends up doing though, also like the transparency isn't just there for the transparency has a point. The reason the transparency is there is that when there's a light shined on something, when people can see what you're doing, that disincentivizes certain behaviors and it incentivizes other behaviors. And so conversely, when there is no transparency, certain types of things that people may not want to do or may not be inclined to do, when everybody can see them doing it, it may encourage people to do those types of things. And so, I mean, to me, what really stood out was how widespread this has become. You know, what started kind of as a niche thing and a small level or a small part of the economy has grown and grown and grown and become Very a substantial part of the economy. And so as a result of that things that if the same kind of behaviors, which may be due to a lack of transparency that may have been a one off for not really affecting a lot of people.
If it's, you know, 1% of what's all the economic activity that's happening, you start getting that in the double digit percents and it's a lot, a lot more people will be affected. You know, and, and I, and I say this, I get the general, and I can understand and appreciate the general kind of principle of, you know, and I think the article did a good job of saying like private equity is not coming into places where the least, where we have these complaints where everything was all hunky dory and everything was great. It's like these are a lot of times companies that are trouble or that are distressed in some way or, and, or undervalued. So I get the idea of, okay, coming from the outside, you come in with a fresh set of eyes, you're looking to streamline, you're looking at, to take, you know, lessons from other places, whether it be competitors or other, you know, and apply them. So the idea of kind of revitalizing, you know, come in, this thing could be doing a lot better. Let's come in, let's revitalize, let's sell it back off or let's keep it, you know, as a kind of generating money for us. I can appreciate that idea, but that's why I think the, what we have to look at a lot of times, a lot of times the idea of something sounds great and would be kind of a great concept to have as a part of our toolkit, you know, one of the arrows in the quiver. From an economic standpoint, the question really becomes how it actually is being done now. What are the incentives in place now? And you know, not necessarily the abstract, but what practically is happening. And that's where you can really see when you're looking at how this is affecting people's lives. You know, like the, not just the company owner or you know, something like that or shareholder, but like you know, the thousands of people that may be employed in these situations and the, this attempt, hey, we're going to streamline the heck out of this or we're going to, you know, squeeze every, every bit of juice out of this, what that does to the actual people. Because again, I think we have to always keep in mind that we don't have the economy so that we can serve it. The economy is supposed to Allow for activity to happen ultimately for our own benefit.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Well, speak for yourself.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: You know, this country, you're there to serve the economy. Hey man, that's like when all those games of big bank take little bank.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Exactly. That's why I play against 5 year olds. So yeah, no one ever said it had to be fair. Right. That's the point. That's the sense that since the founding of this country, that's been part of the battle. Right. One of the tugs of war is kind of the aristocracy, the colonial aristocrats versus the working class folks at the time. And so I think this is one of those extension of those cultural back and forths because, you know, I want to stay on the theme that you just were on and then bring it back to where there could be some problems. So. Because I also was looking at the same kind of thing when I was preparing for the day I started looking. Okay, so where have, give me some examples where private equity has been positive for the economy. And there's many one that comes to mind that I think we can all appreciate because most of us watching, all of us watching this would have lived through it, which is just the great financial crisis and kind of that first five years after, you know, it was really private equity in that space, venture capital, but primarily private equity that went into the banking sector and was able, like you said, to come in especially to rural areas where the banks really had failed and collapsed because of what happened with Lehman Brothers and that kind of interconnected system of the global banking system and was able to kind of prop it up pretty quickly. And so it may have taken, taken longer, may have taken a decade or longer for the economy to have rebounded the way it did by let's say 2014, 2015, without private equity's influence. So that's an example, but an example where private equity has been very negative. One of the articles that we'll have in the show notes was in the health care system. And an example that I just will give real quick is the person in the article is stating that once their hospital was taken over by private equity firm, the private equity firm itself like started changing the rules on how, how long doctors could see patients.
So they wanted them to see their decisions basically correct. Yeah. And like making it much shorter so like they would reprimand doctors if they stayed with a patient more than 25 minutes. So they can make it more of a faster conveyor belt, faster on and so forth. So that's.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Well, so they took the model from, from fast food and applied that to America. Yeah.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: No. And put it into health care. So this is where I want to pass it back for your. Your thoughts on this. Because that's what I was thinking, James, and I was thinking that's not really private equity's fault. Private equity is just a way to do business.
That's really why. Why do our regulators and the government allow private equity firms to go into hospitals and behave this way? And that's what I thought, because private equity still has to follow the law. They, I was reading they have latest stats I saw 13 million employees in the United States are employed by private equity firms and it's over $1 trillion in salaries. So it's not like private equity firms can escape things like minimum wage and all that. So my thought was, well, this goes back to a fundamental conversation we as the public need to have, which is at what point do we not want constant growth? Because that's really about going. And that's why I want to hand it back to you about the incentives. The incentives for private equity going into hospital is for constant growth. Our incentive as the public is to go to a hospital and get good care from a doctor. And there was a tension there.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And should the hospital's main goal be maximizing profit or making money to support care? And so I think that's a good question to have. And I think that the analogy I would turn to because we do make these kinds of decisions, whether we know it or not. And I would say like looking at police departments and fire departments, like for example, would we be okay if private equity and the way that they want to operate, which we know. And when you say it's not their fault, it is their fault, but it's our fault first in the sense that we know the beast that they are, so to speak. We know what they're trying to do, how they're going to go about doing it again, streamlining, cutting costs, trying to increase the revenue, all that kind of stuff, trying to turn it around in a short term way that maximizes profit, maximizes growth, period. That's what they're going to try to do. They're not trying to fool anybody. At least now there's no games to be played or anybody to be fooled. So like if you look at an emergency room or a hospital healthcare setting and so forth, would we. And that kind of mentality comes in, then of course we're going to get that kind of result, so to speak. It's going to be less focused on care, less able to provide care.
The care Quality will go down and the cost will go up to the end user, so to speak, at least as far as they think they can take it. You know, like, that's kind of the point is you charge as much as you think you can get away with. That's the way market system works in a substance. Especially when. When you got for, like, hospitals and stuff like that, a lot of times you don't have a choice. It's not like, okay, I'm going to, you know, if I want a cheeseburger, I can decide who has the best cheeseburger for the right amount of money. And I can go there, you know, deliberate and go. When I. When it's like, I got to go to the hospital, a lot of times it's not like, oh, okay, I'll go there because they're only going to charge me this much, you know, to keep me alive with my heart attack, whereas they're going to charge me more to keep me alive with my heart attack. So I think I'm going to go to that, you know, or what's closer with further.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: So, by the way. And so, James, when I was having my heart attack last year and drove myself to the hospital, I wasn't thinking that far ahead.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: You were not thinking about, where can I get the best quality care for the lowest possible.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: I was like, where's the closest hospital?
[00:12:44] Speaker A: But along the same lines, though, if we. If we, let's say private equ. We're going to turn over our police departments or our fire departments to private equity, then we know how it would work. You know, the service quality would go down, the cost would go up, and for us, for the. For the end user, and they would, in private equity, would make a lot more money on it. But would we want that to happen? Like, if you call the fire department and it's like, oh, man, I don't know. If the fire. You got a fire. And the fire guys show up and they're like, oh, well, do you want to put this fire out? You know, like, we got to charge you. You know, it's going to be 1,000 bucks, you know, it's going to be $10,000, you know, whatever it is, you know, and it's like, okay, you got to make that decision right there. There's not going to be two of them there trying to. You negotiate between the two. Plus, you got a fire going on or by. I'm getting robbed here. Please come, you know, and it's like, oh, well, we're going to. We'll stop the robber. But you know, like it's going to be this amount of money. So these situations where you don't have the opportunity to leverage the mechanism of the market to make good decisions on yourself. Do we want private equity taking over those kinds of businesses? Because we aren't, they're going to operate it in the way that a market does, but it's really more monopolistic because, hey, I, I got a heart attack, I got to go to hospital. I'm not weighing pros and cons and weighing, you know, care of service and people's reputation versus cost and so forth. So I think that a lot of times we get our wires crossed with these things and we aren't thinking about it from a, a societal standpoint. We, as we the people aren't thinking about, and I guess through our representatives, we're not thinking about whether the, the way something works in some cases is the best way to get the kind of result out of that that we want to get. And that's, you know, so it's one thing if it's Toys R Us and that may, you know, like, that may cause other problems. You know, you got all these people out of work and stuff like that and, and you know, a brand that people may have had, you know, pride in and that goes away and then, you know, we have to recover and get over. Any or other people can take the place or maybe already have taken that place. But it's another thing, there's certain types of things that maybe we don't want that in that space. And so like you said, that is kind of a regulatory thing if we the people want to do something about it.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: Well, and it's also, I mean, you make a great point because the role of a private equity firm is to make money for its shareholders. I mean, and that's kind of, I mean, if you look at the origin of private equity itself is really an industrial age kind of invention.
And really it's about people with excess capital, meaning wealthy people that have enough. I mean there's people out there that are liquid 2,300 million dollars. There's billionaires with a lot of cash and they just, you know, they use.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: That money to make more money. They don't want to just.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah, and they have enough money in the S&P 500 or enough real estate. Right. They themselves want to diversify and maybe they want to buy businesses that they can operate themselves and, and have a little bit more say, than a Coca Cola or an Apple, you know, being a shareholder. So that's what I mean is that private equity itself is what it is.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Well, and that's where there's another conversation to be had there in whether or not as a society, like in the early 1900s, late 1800s, society was set up to where mass accumulations of wealth like that were not frowned upon, were looked upon as being acceptable. In the mid 19th century, or excuse me, 20th century, mid 20th century, mid 1900s, society decided they didn't want huge accumulations of wealth like that just sitting around. They wanted there to be a less disparity in income and wealth amongst the society, thinking it would build a more cohesive society. So they changed, they turned the knobs of the society, changed some things to create so that the people at the top weren't so much further than everybody else. That stuff has been unwound now, you know, so. But that's a place where the high accumulations are back and you know, again, people are not going to just sit, put that money in a mattress, you know, like that money is going to go places and has to do and is going to do things. And these are kind of some of the things that we deal with in more prevalence. And I want to get to the point of the growth, but I know you were in the middle.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Flush that out real quick because part of it is the why, like why is this related to private equity? What you just said about the wealth disparity in the beginning of the century and all that stuff. And it relates to what I said earlier, it's about transparency. Right before it was the public markets that were not transparent. So JP Morgan and Carnegie and all these guys, they had their stocks, they had money in the public markets, but it was untransparent and they were lobbying, you know, the regulators and the politics.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Same negative ways were there in the public market, you know, and that's what.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: I'm saying, that's why, that's why in preparing for today. Because what I'm reading is that the modern form of private Equity began in 1946 and then, you know, it took a few decades to get some legs and by the 70s and 80s it started taking off. And that's kind of what hit me.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: This also lines up to the thing of.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: So that's where I'm going is. But it also hit me that, think about it, if you look at the trajectory of that history, 1920s, 29 crash, the 1930s is when he started having the Glass Steagall act, the securities Exchange act, the securities act of 33. So it's when the system began to regulate the public markets and put more sunlight on it, then you had a real interruption, which is called World War II. Right. From 1939, 1941 ish, to 1945, you've got America in it. So it makes sense that by 1946. Right.
The capital that was benefiting from being in the dark in the public markets begins to try and find a home somewhere else. And that begins the modern history of private equity. So here we are 78 years later, where that untransparent part of our economy has ballooned from 4% in 2000 to now 20% in 2024. Yeah, that there's that much of the economy that is not transparent. So that's what I want to get out.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: And the thing like you talk about that trajectory, it, it did not start to. The trajectory of. It didn't start to go up until the 80s when that was when you started to. The wealth accumulation started to, to, to pick up again. And then the wealth accumulation exploded. You know, the wealth disparity exploded post financial crisis and private equity, again like that, that's why that becomes such a larger part of the economy. And I want to ask you, you know, before we finish this topic up about this trajectory, because you just said, you know, from 4% to 20% of the biggest economy in the world in 20 years, you know, like that's nuts to grow that much relative to everything else. So I mean, if this keeps growing like this, you think that, you know, people might get fed up about this at certain point. Like, you know, these businesses getting swallowed up, you know, and the things that happen with that and demand change or could lead to. I mean, transparency also allows us to, when crises happen, to at least see what's going on and try to address them. You know, when, when everything is opaque, crisis can happen and come out of nowhere. And then we don't even know what we need to do to fix it. You know, like, what kind of concerns should we be looking at as this dark part of the economy? And now it's already a fifth of the economy and it's. The trajectory is going. It's growing faster and faster and faster again relative to everything else. It's growing, it's eating more and more and more of everything else that's going on. What should we be concerned about as far as this kind of trajectory?
[00:19:38] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: How much time do I have?
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say, like you stump me. What should be a concern about. Shoot, let me start plucking stuff. Out of the sky.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: There's a lot.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Right, but, but here's the thing.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: What's the big thing? What kind of big?
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Because I know we want to finish up. So I'll give you an example. Right, another one. 1996 there were 8,000 publicly traded companies in the United States on the listed on the stock exchange.
Today there's 4,000. But the economy over that almost 30 years, 29 years, grew by 20 trillion and we have an additional 70 million people in this country. So the idea is that the economy's grown, the population's grown. You know, we've had this robust growth, but yet we have 50% less companies on the publicly and transparent markets. So what is just real quick, I.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: Want to visualize that real quick. So like the pie has grown X amount and the number of slices of the pie have been reduced in half, so to speak. Or at least the slices we can see. You know, part of it's just cut off and we can't even see that. So it's really jarring when you think about those numbers, you know. And then like I said, we'll have that stuff that where you're getting that stuff in the show notes.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And so think about the lack of transparency. What does that do? There was a lack of transparency in a division of a company called AIG going into 2008 about how they were dealing with their mortgages. And there was also lacks of transparency in firms like Lehman Brothers. And what that when those things began to come out quickly, right. It caused a scare and a collapse of the financial system in 2008.
We could say the same thing about FTX, right. A few years ago that crypto unmanaged, unregulated, no transparency. And a young man at 25 to 30 years old over a five year period named Sam Bankman Fried was able to go from zero to being worth 30 billion because all he did was walk around and talk, you know, crap to everybody that they thought he was so smart. So that's what I'm saying is that the real risk of taking the sunlight away from big chunks of the economy is that we're not going to know as the public and think about policymakers and people like at the Fed and all that are going to have less opportunity to spot cracks in the system as they are forming. So that by the time we might get wind as the public or policymakers to certain cracks, they might be chasms or huge fissures that are much harder to kind of seal over again. And I think that's the real risk, and that is what happened going into 1929 because of lack of transparency in the public markets. And you know, I mean, I think history has proven this out time and again and, but we are at a time now where we have no limiting memory of those times. And everybody has been misdirected off the scent. Right. And are blaming other things like wokeism and, you know, trans people for their problems and not recognizing that it's a long arc of keeping our eye off stuff like this that usually ends up to where you a lot of times allude to, which is wealth imbalances and disparities that cause pain for people in the society.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Well, to me, that actually is the biggest risk here, is that you cordon off more and more of a percentage of the wealth that's being generated, the spoils. Like the economy does a good job of producing wealth and prosperity, but the more that stuff is hoarded by fewer and fewer and fewer people, then society itself becomes subject to very dangerous forces because people look around and there's all this prosperity. Everybody's, you know, not everybody, but most people are hard at work. They're being more productive than ever, yet they aren't able. It's not like our productivity's grown so much. Why haven't, hasn't. Why can't a middle class person do stuff, even with their money, comparable to what a middle class person could do 50 years ago? You know, like the standard of living in the United States is a wealthy country already relative to the world. So. But nonetheless it's all relative. It's relative to what's around you. So when you have real wages, which are wages adjusted for inflation, how much money can, or how much does your money can your money buy at the time you're in? Like, it's great. I have all this money that would buy a lot in 1980, but that doesn't help me now because I'm in 2025. So when real wages don't keep going up, when people aren't, their buying power doesn't increase despite all of this prosperity, they start looking around and they want something or someone to blame for that. And so we see this in societies across the world. So I think that the societal concern would be that more and more people are going to be excluded from or boxed out primarily from the spoils of the economy. And then, I mean, you talk about it actually stuck with me. You talk about this principle called transference where you have this feeling, you transfer your emotion from one place to another.
So I think there Are a lot of people in the United States right now that have a feeling that something's not right now. I think we see this in the voting patterns and the type of messages that people are drawn to. People, you know, across the board, you know, are drawn to, whether it be a mayoral primary in New York or the president United States, people are drawn to people saying, hey, there's something wrong with what's going on here, people. And they might have different answers as to why, you know, but the idea, if you're up here selling everything's okay, you're probably not. You're probably not with who the public's listening to right now. So there already is this feeling. And so my concern is that becomes subject to the principle of transference, where instead of being mad at, okay, well, the spoils of society, we're not getting a piece of that at all. Well, let's not look and find out where those are. Let's look and let's be mad at, you know, I'm going to transfer that to someone else. So I can't do anything about these hugely powerful, rich private equity companies. So I'll be mad at and be. And blame everything on an immigrant who. I do have power. I'm powerless against the private equity, but I'm not powerless against an immigrant. So I can blame the immigrant for my unhappiness. And then it doesn't make the economy better, it doesn't make society any better, but it allows people with an outlet, given an outlet or something like that. And so to me, that's kind of. It's difficult a lot of times for the ends to meet and say, okay, hey, the reason we're doing this is because we're out of whack in terms of how society spoils are shared and distributed. I should say not even shared, but distributed. You know, people are. People are producing stuff. So to me, that's the biggest concern is just that the, when you have these great imbalances and, you know, like wealth distribution, it leads to, you know, people get it, but they don't. They aren't necessarily going to be able to see how and why. And then also even you look at it in other ways, the solutions a lot of times aren't even going to be the ones like we've, we've solved this once, you know, with the New Deal, so to speak, in my mind. But sometimes the solutions are, you know, people, countries go like super far to the left or super far to the right. New Deal wasn't super far to the left. Or. Right. But a lot of times populations can be subject to go to extremes in, when, when they feel these types of situations. And so that's my biggest concern, actually, is that the economics of it all and private equity being a part of that. Because like you said, the, the, the, the lack of transparency could take us somewhere more dark, you know, than, than. Than where we would want society to go in a prosperous type of situation.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: No, you're right, James, and I'll finish on this. I know we want to get out is. You're right. And it even lends more to the fact that the public needs to get engaged. Because when, as you're talking, I'm thinking in my mind, this all comes back to money and politics.
This comes back to incentives. Our politicians are incentivized. Their constituent, in the example I gave with the health care and the hospital system, for example, their constituent is actually the health care lobby.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: It's not us more so than the.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: People get the money at the hospital.
Not saying that that should be that way, but.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Yeah, correct. But it is. So when a private equity. So if you and I just seriously, this is how the world works today. You and I could be partners in a private equity firm where we have 5, $10 billion in assets under management right now, with the way that the Supreme Court has whittled down the campaign finance laws, you and I as individuals can't give more than five grand or whatever that number is.
But our company could give an unlimited amount. So we could go give $20 million to a local congressperson, state legislature people, all that kind of stuff, and they're gonna now pick up our phone call more than if you or I, as a constituent, try and call our congressional office. I've tried to get meetings with my congressperson, and I keep getting emails saying, no, I bet you if I gave that person a million dollars in the last campaign, I get a meeting.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: Seriously?
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Maybe they'll be like, yeah, she'll be coming over with tea and crumpets, like, hey, man, what do you want? Right? And then what would I say? I'd say, hey, that group over there has legislation. Because my partner James and I, we owned a $10 billion private equity firm. I just gave you $1 million last year. And I see your opponent has legislation on the table to try and make doctors have to spend at least one hour with a patient. I don't want that. And you know what? She's going to listen to me because I just gave her a million dollars.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: That's the system and that's. Yeah, that's the system that, you know, is in place. And so, yeah, I mean, we can address that.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: You don't want to elect politicians. That's my point. It comes back to us as the public.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: Exactly. And so. And again, that's not to say, like, a lot of times you have these discussions and people will tell you that this thing is all bad, you know, like. Or a lot of times we've seen. Now capitalism is just bad or private equity. And it's not that these things are tools. And so we are. If capitalism is a hammer, we don't want to use that to fix a vase. You know, like, if we need to nail a nail, then it's perfect for that. So certain things should be, you know, should be subjected. And we really let the capitalist kind of ethos take. Take hold and it'll give us the result. We want other things. We may not want that. And again, that's why my example of the police departments or the fire departments or the roads or, you know, like, there's certain things that as a society we have decided, like, hey, hey, we don't necessarily need the capitalist ethos there. Now, we may hire private companies, but we want to do these things with the primary goal being the benefit of the public. And so we got to be able to keep that stuff straight in our mind because going to the extreme of everything needs to be in the markets and the capital, you know, or nothing does. And we got to go straight socialism for everything is. Those extremes aren't going to give us the answer we need. It's the ability to kind of deal with what kind of incentives we want in place for what different things we're trying to accomplish. And, you know, so saying it's complicated.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Obviously we'll end on this. Who speaks in absolutes?
[00:30:03] Speaker A: Hey, hey, you got to say it, man. This is you.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: This is your. Okay.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: But you're the Star wars guy among the two of us, though, so that's.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: That's bringing out the best.
So the socialists and the capitalists are sith. So when they're only an absolute.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: When they're in absolutes.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: As opposed to looking at those things as tools to bring about better monetary. Yeah, so. But. Yeah, but I think we'll wrap this topic from there. We'll have.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: That's when we end it. When we're on Star Wars. It's over.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll have a. A call out this week as well. So check that. 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.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Ogamana.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
