Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding with Osita Nwanevu

Welcome to Virtual Sentiments. I'm your host, Kristen Collins. On today's episode, I talked to Oceanvo. Oce is a contributing editor at the New Republic, a columnist at the Guardian, and a Democratic Institutions fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is a former staff writer at the New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slate. and his work has also appeared in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, The Nation, Harper's Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, and These Times, Flaming Hydra, and Gawker. His first book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, was recently published by Random House. We recorded this episode on July 6th, which is a perfect date because this year is the 250th anniversary of the American founding. And this episode is one of three that we've devoted to the American political experiment. Each episode takes a different approach to commemorating the founding, emphasizing America's past, its present, or its future. Our first of this little series within our series was with Laura Field released on July 3rd which focused on America's present how some figures on the new MAGA right interpret the founding and the role those interpretations play in their critiques of liberalism today. This episode with ACA explores his vision for America's democratic future. Arguments he develops through rigorous engagement with contemporary political science history and the works of the founding fathers. We discussed the founding fathers intellectual arguments but also the actual political compromises that they made on the long road that they traveled from revolution to the articles of confederation to the constitution itself. Rather than treat the founders as having the final say on our politics and simply appealing to their authority, Acea draws on their spirit of change of breaking with tradition, citing Thomas Jefferson's own concerns in a 1789 letter to Madison that a country's constitution should change with successive generations. As Acea says later in the episode, "We have more of a capacity to shape this country than ghosts do." I hope you find our conversation as thoughtprovoking as I did. On today's episode of Virtual Sentiments, I'm talking to Ocea Noan Nevu. Osa is a contributing editor at the New Republic, a columnist at the Guardian and the Democratic Institutions Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is a former staff writer at the New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slate. And his work has also appeared in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, The Nation, Harper's Magazine, The Colombia Journalism Review, In These Times, Flaming Hydra, and Gawker. His first book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, was recently published by Random House. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today, Asa. >> Thanks so much for having me. >> Um, I am so excited because we are recording this I my understanding towards the end of your book tour, so hopefully you're not too sick of talking about all this, but also it's July. We're right kind of at we're at the end of the major celebrations downtown for America's semiquincential, but we're still kind of very much in that year, right? And I do feel like your book is such a perfect thing to be reading right now and to be thinking about um because you're reflecting on the past of American politics and of the founding of the republic of the Declaration of Independence. You have a recent piece on that as well that we can talk about uh too. But you're also kind of doing that in order to take stock of the present. And what really I I loved about this book is that you were willing to be super ambitious about your claims that America is not a democracy and that it should be one. and you take really great care to explain what that means to you, what we should think of democracy, engaging with really uh cutting edge, important and relevant political science research, which you know, I will say not to be too negative, but a lot of times when you read pop science or more journalistic accounts of American politics, it can be frustrating as a political theorist, as a political scientist because you feel like that literature is isn't being engaged with. And you did so so deafly. I mean, it was it was excellent. But then in doing that, you're engaging with this theory, giving us a sense of what American democracy should look like, and then also leveraging such an an in-depth understanding of like American history, but also the policy landscape right now. And giving us like this really concrete vision of the reforms and the political actions we'd have to take in both, you know, the public institutions and the private sphere to actually make America a democracy, which is really cool. So, I promise I'm not just buttering you up, but I wanted >> by the book. That's that's the pitch you guys need, right? But I wanted to frame, you know, why I'm so excited to be talking to you, uh, and how I wanted to start this off. So, I thought maybe you could start us off by reflecting a little bit on two things, which is like the motivation of the book. You know, why did you decide to write this book? And knowing that it takes time to write this, what do you think about the fact that it's, you know, you you've released it, you're going on a book tour coinciding with this anniversary of the American founding? I mean, what does that mean to you? What has that like inspired for the book? and has it maybe changed the way you look at the book or has it kind of just sort of fleshed out and help you show the impact of what you're trying to do uh to your audiences? >> Yeah, sure. So, it's funny you mentioned the commemorations cuz I was actually out there in DC on the 4th of July. It was like 102 degrees. So, there was some kind of sickness in me that pulled me there despite the fact that it was a terrible time to be out and about >> for American Patriots which might be one in the same thing. Well, you know, I was there partially because I wanted to write something for one of those newsletters you mentioned, Fred Hydra, but I think it would have been there anyway. And um I actually went to the National Archives for the first time. Like I I'd grown up in the DC area, been to a lot of the museums in the DC area, but I'd never been to the archives, never seen the Constitution, and I figured, well, hell, today's the day to to do it. Um so I was out there for a couple of hours in line, you know, 102 degrees with all these sweaty sweaty but determined people. Um, and then you finally get to this space and it's this really huge kind of retunda where they've got the Constitution, they've got the Declaration, they've got documents like the 19th Amendment, but you get in there and there's just sort of this mob or gaggle of people in front of the Constitution, which is the central document in the space, and you can't see it. Like, it's very hard to get close. There are people who are huddling over it, who are taking selfies, taking pictures of their kids. Nobody can actually see the document. I'm sure in these pictures, you're just getting pictures of other people taking pictures. And so it was this remarkable moment where I got to see kind of in person one of the reasons why I wrote the book which was to kind of demystify and bring that document in particular down to earth. Um I think the constitution is an extraordinarily important document in the history of republican governance. I think it's an important document in the history of political theory. I think it did a lot to make this country possible. And that's not to, you know, that's not something to to take lightly, but I do think it has these fundamental problems that are really really bedeing our politics and have for some time. And as I was writing, you know, I started about 10 years ago writing about politics and the middle of the 2016 campaign, you know, over the course of my still young career, it just occurred to me over and over and over again that we were facing problems that were products of the Constitution and sort of products of a kind of misunderstanding or kind of mislication or a kind of shallow understanding of what democracy actually means. And so you can think about the 2016 elections being part of this. you know, Donald Trump wins an electoral college victory >> while losing the popular vote. But even beyond that, you know, I was as I was covering the 2020 Democratic primary and all the policy issues people were talking about then, whether it was Medicare for all or immigration reform or gun control, >> climate change policy, Green New Deal, that kind of stuff. I found myself having to say over and over and over again, well, yes, you know, this might be a good policy idea for this or that reason. It might have the support of this or that plurality or majority of the American public, but it's very very unlikely that it's going to pass Congress even if Democrats win the presidency. Even if they win Congress. >> Yeah. Y >> given certain structural features of our federal system. And I found myself having to describe that situation over and over again without having the opportunity to really explain it or think through why that was. Why do we have a federal system that is structured the way that it's structured? Is it right to call it a democracy given those kinds of challenges? When Republicans say, "Well, we're a republican, not a democracy, and that justifies the way the system's set up." Is that true? >> Um, and is democracy even desirable? You know, like, can we sort of in this moment where we're dealing with misinformation and the public not being informed about certain things and all these anxieties we have about, >> yes, >> the voting populace, polarization. um should we even feel as gung-ho about democracy as we often do without taking a step back to question those things. So that's that's kind of where the book came from. Um I wanted the space and the time to leave the news cycle a little bit, consult political theory, consult a lot of books that have been sort of lying dusty on my shelf since college and get to the bottom what democracy actually is and and use that as a entry point for really evaluating the political system without a kind of rosetinted perspective. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, and I think that that comes through in the work. And I also think I will also say, I mean, I think there's something that political theorists, you know, the experts in academia can't do that you can do with the incredible experience you have writing about politics and being immersed in um political discourse. And there is this weird there is this strange thing though where distinguishing between like punditry and you know ideas and theory and then actually thinking though a big picture politics because you see I think similar you know I won't name names but similar people who have you know huge audiences who made a name for themselves as being very knowledgeable about the literature who then kind of treat everything as like a horse race politics and kind of give their they're almost more like acting like political consultants in their punditry as opposed to kind of helping us clarify and understand where we're at right now in this political moment and what direction we're going in and how to pull us into a direction that will be more consistent with um the ideas and the values that we claim to care about like democracy, like equality, like liberty. Um so let me then let's get in a little bit more to the substance of the work then. Um, and so thinking about kind of the way you start off the book, you do start with kind of a reading about the beginning of the Declaration of Independence. And so I want to dig in a little bit more, you know, as we're commemorating this year, kind of the way that you approach this moment of commemoration and instead of kind of looking at it through the rosecolored glasses like you describe. And so, you know, what does the Declaration of Independence kind of mean for you in this moment in terms of like what should we be thinking about when we look back on that? And specifically, you know, what does it mean to think of it less in terms of this uh you put it at the end of your recent article on the Declaration of Independence that, you know, thinking of these founders as one generation of founders and thinking of the document not as mere artifact but as example. So, what does that mean and how does that play out in the book too? >> Yeah. So, as you say, I did write this essay for the New Republic on the Declaration for their 250 issue. And part of it's a history of the Declaration and its drafting, but also part of it is looking at how those words have been used, appealed to by different groups across American history up through the president. And I think one of the things you sort of realize as you work through that history is I don't know, it's kind of like a death of the author perspective. People have used this document to different ends. But the the the animating ideal is, you know, here is a set of words that contains a set of political principles that are alive to all people at all times. Like it makes certain claims about what human life is about, what it's for, how government exists to honor those things, protect those things, and what you're entitled to do when your governments don't do that very well. That is what justified a political revolution back in 1776. And I think it's an odd attitude to sort of look at that historical event and come away with a sense that actually our institutions are just there to be revered and deferred to. That is not what the founders did. That is not how this country was founded. You know, if you read the words of somebody like Thomas Jefferson in particular on constitutions, I mean he famously wrote that he didn't believe constitutions could justly last I think more than 19 years. Yeah. And anything further than that was the dead hand of one past generation oppressing all future generations. I think 19 years is a little short by my estimation, but you know, I think that there there's probably some reasonable medium between 19 years and more than two centuries when it comes to thinking about our founding documents and institutions. And that's kind of the thing I'm I'm trying to to say, I think, in that essay and also in in this book. I don't think that we have to rever the founders as saints. I think we should take them seriously as political actors and political theorists. If we think that there's something to respect about the revolution, certainly it is in you know the the way of thinking that's encapsulated in the declaration. We are supposed to think deeply about whether our institutions match our principles and match our first uh premises about what human life is for and about. Um and we should be willing to challenge those institutions when it seems like they're falling short. That is, you know, another thing I think the book exists to do, to give people the permission to believe that and believe about themselves, as you say, like I think that the founders were only our first generation of founders. And there have been many, many people in the time since who've fundamentally reworked this country and its institutions to our collective benefit. Whether that's, you know, the radical Republicans, you know, around reconstruction or the people who fought for women's suffrage, civil rights movement, there all kinds of figures we could look to >> who've really reshaped this country in fundamental ways since it was founded. And to sort of only hold up and revere the founders in 76 and 87 and their creations as, you know, definition of what this country is. and to sort of give those documents a kind of patent where it's like, you know, they were >> taken down some mountain and >> Yeah. >> like like stone tablets, you know, it's it's not that's I I think that's a weird attitude to have, especially given again that we are by my lights falling short in so many respects um in our politics because there are these flaws to the Constitution in particular. >> No, I think that's exactly right. And I think I think you do put it um in in your writing about this. It's an invitation to engage in political philosophy. I mean, how many countries can have that as a part of their founding myth, you know? I mean, and I mean that myth not necessarily in a in a negative or false way. I just mean like of course that moment has this incredible historical legacy for us. But when we kind of encase it within glass and kind of treat it as this as something more revelatory then we forget the inherent participatory kind of deliberative aspect of what is happening in that moment. And that's you know I'm putting that in a still relatively beautiful idealized way. And what I wanted to also invite us to talk about, and this is what I I just think a lot about because uh you know, right now we're in a political moment that seems very fraught. I mean, January 6 is still I think anyone who's thinking about American democracy has to reckon with that blemish or or that uh undermining of the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power, which is the one of the major kind of basic institutional definitions of what uh a dem democracy means um in a modern kind of political science sense when we kind of categorize these regime types. And so, you know, we we have all this tension, all this fear. People are are worried. And yet, you know, we've gone through arguably even worse moments in our past that we've had to go through. And the revolution being kind of this also in inherently violent moment in terms of uh reckoning with and creating this country uh out of the empire, right, the British Empire. And so in that moment, it's not this perfect revoly and pure founding uh experience, but it is something that's also fraught with political compromises. And as you were saying, as you were indicating, I mean, these were compromises that were not peacefully negotiated over time. it it institutionalize and formalize major um forms of oppression and forms of uh you know inequality and uh in order to achieve the the establishment of the country and I think there are people who are very when you when you say that to them they get so upset because it feels like a personal front and it means that you can't draw inspiration from this but it's more like we have to hold these things at once and also maybe there's some a lesson about politics there for us in terms of understanding that so I wondered if you kind of if Do you have any thoughts on that in terms of the political compromises, the processes also from like the articles of the confederation that period of time to the the the uh constitutional convention and the constitution? >> Well, I mean I think that's the the period of time where this is sort of most most obvious when it comes to thinking about the founders. I mean, you know, we had an initial constitution in the articles. Um I think that this is one of the things that your basic American history education gets right. It was a terrible document. I mean it took uh supermajorities to basically get anything done or unonyimity to get anything done. Made it basically impossible to have a national trade policy. Made it impossible to do a lot of things that you need to do uh to sort of get a fledgling country off the ground. Um and there was a process for amending the articles. Um they need a unanimous agreement from all the different uh states and as you know the founders convened in Philadelphia without by the way Rhode Island for reasons I get into the book. Um, >> and I do want to hear those, but you can set that. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, they know at the outset, like look, we're not going to get unanimous agreement for anything that we do here, but we're in a situation that is bad enough by our lights. And we could talk about whether or not they were justified in thinking some of the things that they did, but they know like by our lights, we're not actually going to be able to resolve this crisis unless we come to a new document, and we're going to ignore the rules that exist for amending the articles. we're going to ignore the mandate we're sent to to Philadelphia with only to amend the articles and come up with a different set of governing institutions for this country. Yet another radical move from a revolutionary generation and again to sort of understand the document the result of the constitution is something that we have to keep etched in stone and respect for all time is kind of strange given its origins there. >> Yeah. Um but if you read the notes uh from the convention, if you read the letters that the founders were sending back and forth between themselves as the constitution was being drafted and then ratified, this is not a document that was produced purely as as a function of political theory or high-minded ideals. There were there are a lot of practical compromises they had to make. A lot of things that Hamilton and Madison did not want in the final document that ended up in the final document that they had to defend. >> Yeah. And I think again it's it's just important to sort of have that in mind so we don't think that this is something that was created without any mistakes or any possibility of improvement or even radical redesign. It is a political document for a particular time >> made by people with particular economic and political concerns. We now have ours and we should have the right or feel that we have the right to sort of think about fundamentally different arrangements on on that basis. And you know if 100 years hence having done that uh some other generation says well looking around us and you know uh our colony on Mars or whatever uh we think we might need a new constitution now you know they may I just think that that process of regeneration is just how societies sensibly rationally respond to their own circumstances. We have one of the oldest and hardest to amend constitutions on the planet. um average lifespan I think there's a study at the University of Chicago you know a few years ago or maybe a decade ago >> that found that the average lifespan of constitutions in the developed world is something like 30 >> 32 years I believe we're very very out of whack and I think part of it has to do with this reverential attitude or not feeling we have the permission >> even though we know more about governance we have political science we have the ability to evaluate political questions with more rigor than the founders did >> despite all of that not to speak of our belief in equality and the fact that we we believe that black people and women and all kinds of minorities deserve right. Despite all of that, >> we still don't think that we are >> enough or that we measure up enough to to make our own decisions here. And I I think that that's something that uh the book really tries to challenge. >> Yes. No. And I I think it does. And I want well and there's so much now we can we can shift to talking about that more and moving more towards the present and and how to make it democratic. But you know because this is we have a little bit of the historical bent here. I and you did get to bracket that why wasn't Rhode Island included because I think that's such an important part of that history. >> Yeah. So to do like a very very condensed version um the United States leaves the revolution in a state of economic crisis. Basically a lot of property has been destroyed. A lot of people farmers people in the back country are really struggling to pay their debts and to pay you know new taxes. And there are movements up and down the country to address this situation. kind of early populist movements um by a variety of measures. Some of them are things like paying for your debts and taxes in kind with certain goods, other kinds of debt relief. But I think the thing that really ends up influencing the founders uh the most is this desire to print paper money >> um in order to put more money into circulation and make the discharging of debts and and the payment of taxes easier. Um Rhode Island is one of the states that really really takes to this. Yeah. >> And the founders are horrified by the situation overall. They think that these measures and printing of paper money in particular basically undermines the stability of contracts, indulges people who've been spending too much from the founders's perspective and and not uh being fiscally responsible. They think it might lead to attacks on private property in general. Yeah. >> And so one of the main reasons why the constitution ends up being drafted is to sort of create a sovereign and active federal government that's capable of controlling >> the economic situation in the country without leaving it to state governments that are much more active and much more powerful functionally than the Congress under the Confederation. Rhode Island knows that this is what's up. >> Yeah. >> And they refuse to send delegates to the convention on that basis. And that creates a dilemma because again the founders know I mean this is one of the provisions of the articles you cannot really fundamentally amend the document without unanimous agreement from all the different states >> and that is one of the things that I think forces them to the conclusion that they have to with some completely new arrangement. >> Um yeah there's been a lot of you know historiographic debate about this over the last century especially I mean people talk about the beard thesis early in the 20th century. thesis, you know, reductively was, well, the founders did all this because they personally were going to profit from the development of a new constitution that has been overstated. It wasn't so much the personal finances that were at stake as much as this general principle of who gets to control the economy and also the principle of democracy. >> It is one of the things this crisis that convinces people, Washington says this in one of his letters, I believe, maybe the British were right. >> Yeah. to doubt that mankind was fit for its own governance without superior authorities. Maybe this this crisis shows us and rebellions like Sha's rebellion which is one thing I think that people do learn about in school. You know, there's a real cynicism and anxiety about the level of public power. >> Yes. >> That arises after the revolution and the constitution is written to to bring that under control. Let's then respond head-on to those who would say, you know, if we complain today about how undemocratic our institutions are, um who would say, well, America's not a democracy, it's republic. So, what would be what's kind of you think like the best way to respond to that? Because we see like you just said, there was anxiety about public power and so to some degree there was an attempt to kind of exclude this democratic energy, right? But, you know, why should we not be satisfied with that? Why should we not just then defer to our fathers, let's say? So I think we have to define our terms and that's what the first couple of chapters in the book well before I even get into the history are about uh in the first chapter you know I define certainly beyond any controversy or debate or disagreement what democracy is for all time exactly >> I'm sure that's a definition that nobody will have tr any trouble with ever again um but to me you know democracy talk about you know the gap between Athenian democracy and representative democracy and you know why is it that we call both of these kind of systems that are so difference the same name. >> Yeah. >> And what I say is well I think that in either case what we're trying to achieve or bring about is uh governance by the governed public. In a democracy the people are the ones >> who do the governing for themselves or in Lincoln's construction you know government of by and for the people. There is no superior class of elites >> or you know people with hereditary privilege who have the privilege of controlling society. The people who are themselves subject to governance are the ones that doing the governing. many many different systems you could create to try to achieve that ideal but that's what we're trying to achieve >> and by my lights you know the three main components of any democratic system that actually accomplishes that are political equality >> again there's no class of people that has an entrenched privilege >> or a different set of rights responsiveness democracy is not a suggestion box and people come together to act something does happen might not happen directly or immediately but the system is obligated to respond in some to the public coming together. And the third thing is majority rule. >> Yeah. >> So of all the different ways we might make a collective choice together from >> you know supermajority agreement all the way to some form of minority rule. Majority rule is the decision rule that respects the equality of all the participants. >> Those are the three components of democracy as I see it and I again go through in the first chapter why I think that system is good. Now I also offer in these early chapters a definition of republicanism. >> Yeah. And this is something I I derive mostly from the work of Philip Pettit and people in that kind of political theory school and republicanism where they talk about republicanism as a system designed to prevent uh entrenched power that might dominate others. So if we think of liberalism as a political philosophy that's about you know preventing active abuses you know somebody in government or governments in general >> not having you know the right to or the ability to de directly uh abuse you in some kind of way or take something from you. >> Um republicanism is about okay how do we prevent institutions, governments, parties in society from acquiring that much power to begin with? >> Yeah. Yeah. like it's a possibility. >> It's a possibility. How do we sort of prevent that possibility from happening? And government might not be abusing me today. >> I might be able to go to court if it does >> or have some other recourse if it does. Um republicanism is about well, how do we sort of ensure that you're not never in that situation to begin with? >> And there are many different institutions you can create um to thwart the creation of power in that kind of way. You can talk about written constitutions, uh institutions that protect the rule of law >> and so on and so forth. But those institutions and those systems are not intrinsically democratic in the terms that I describe democracy. And we can look at history like we think about the Roman Republic for instance some democratic features you tribune of the pleb and so on but was not a representative democracy in the way that we understand it now. We could talk about the Italian city states of the middle ages and renaissance. Yeah. Right. Widely understood as republican governance. They had very very complex systems for distributing power. Most people in those societies could not participate in politics. So they weren't democracies. >> So there is a real difference there. >> And I think you know at the end of the day the people on the right mostly who say that we're a republic of some kind certainly non-democracy >> I think have the better side of the argument to me and I think this is one of the most controversial things in the book because if you're on the left like I am you're supposed to reject that. No. No. All they meant by republicanism, you know, at the founding was representative democracy. I complicate that in the fourth chapter. It's a lot of like very deep textual whatever I can't really get into now. But there is there is a real difference there. You are talking about different systems. You can certainly have and I think we should have >> democratic republics >> that you know take everything that is worthwhile and meaningful and good in republican governance >> and sort of nonetheless respects majorities and respects the public's right to rule. That is not what we have. We have a system of distributed power in this country that happens to empower minorities, >> people who happen to live in certain parts of the country, people of certain ideologies and so on. And I think that that's what ought to change. Those those those inequities are the inequities that motivate the book in the first place. So it's a very long-winded answer, but I do think that there is there there are fundamental differences between Republican governance and democratic governance. You can have democratic republics, and that is what I'm urging us to move towards in this country. >> No, I I don't think there was longwinded at all. I mean, it's a big question, impressively condensed and clear answer for that. And and it's something that I will say I struggle with because when people ask me that it's like you know I guess for me it's also at the end of the day I might see the point and say sure at that moment they didn't want a democracy and they didn't they didn't create one but why should we defer to that? I mean why should we be satisfied with that? I mean I you know both of us were very much excluded from the institutions they created at that moment. So you know how could I possibly totally defer to it? I I think that this is this is this is like the is ought problem, right? Like I think that people believe that if you win the debate >> against the rights, let's say >> on whether we were founded as a republic or democracy, >> you fundamentally resolve the question of what America is and should be. And that is not the case. Like it is it from my perspective true >> the republic uh that people at the founding >> intended to create a kind of republic that was not democratic by my lights and by I think most of our lights that is no bearing >> to me on where we ought to go as a country and the kind of country we ought to be. But this perspective on history where if you sort of win an argument about the fundamental character of something that happened 200 years ago, you've settled for all time what America is is, I think, wrongheaded. I think we see it in all kinds of debates, not necessarily constitutional debates even, but >> just in our general kind of discourse about American history where I think people want to say often with great intentions and progressive intentions, we're afraid by this DNA. we're afraid by this kind of evil or this kind of action that happened. >> You know, I just I think that we have the agency to look at that and take it seriously and think critically about the ways in which the past still influences the present, >> but also to say, well, we're here now. >> Yeah. >> And, you know, we have more of a capacity to shape this country than ghosts do, and we should continue to do so. Um, so yeah, that's that's I think the the the motivating impulse behind the republic versus democracy debate is this kind of attitude towards history where it's just I I don't think that the stakes of that debate are whoever wins, they've decided what America governing institutions ought to be like. I just I just don't have that attitude towards thinking through that question. >> No. No, and I do think that what but I also what I love about the book is that while you know you you're very ambitious in it and you're taking a you are I think challenging those who would just oversimplify how we commemorate and remember the founding I also do but there is this deep I mean also it's deeply historical what you're doing and it's also you still value and and I wouldn't say you're not you still have like a a I don't want to say reverence necessarily but you still have a deep respect for this moment and for the history and for the the text. And it's actually precisely because of that respect that you're able to understand it in this in it all of its complexity and all of the disagreements and the dissent and all of the the politics of that moment that I think is very valuable and very unique. And so, you know, I I I do want to make sure we kind of underscore that as we say, yeah, why should we just be led by the dead hand that Thomas as to put to use Thomas Jefferson's words. Yeah. >> Yeah. I think I say at some point in the fourth chapter, you know, I take the arguments that, you know, these were a group of, you know, dozens of white men who own slaves and there were no women and they, you know, participate in the genocide of Native Americans. I take all of that seriously. If that were all that I had to say for my argument, it would be a much shorter Yeah. >> book. So, I thought it would be more interesting. Okay. Like, you know, all of that is true. And yet, you know, if we take them at their word, >> um, and we take the the action of the revolution seriously, >> I think we're still left with a lot of reasons to have a different attitude towards these documents. Um, and that's worth saying >> partially because I think the people are used to the other arguments, which is not to to deny its significance >> or its substance, >> but you know, I think, you know, I I I'm interested in these people as political theorists. I'm interested in the revolution as, you know, one of the most extraordinary things I think has ever happened in human history. I I don't think that that's that's that's wrong to believe or to say. Also, I don't think saying that is is uh dismisses all the complexity of the revolution. I just think it was an extraordinary thing. I think the constitution was an extraordinary document. But there are still events and still documents that we have the right to sort of think critically about. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, and I I will say I think it's really important that we grapple with the contradictions of the moment in terms of these men writing this, you know, writing the you know the Declaration of Independence but also creating the Constitution. All of this you know so in and there is you know there is also literature that critically engaged republicanism in terms of like its definition of liberty on the basis of the existence of slavery. I mean both in terms of just intellectually defining freedom you know in respect to the other of the people who are enslaved in that system and and the existence of slavery but then also it's the way in which you know the freedom the the ability to kind of think deeply and um spend all this time on political philosophy on citizenship on civic action is dependent on the fact that you are free from labor because you have oppressed and you've enslaved others and that so we have to grapple with those things you can't you know ignore it and I I think um and that is that is true true for the you know early America but it's also true for the ancient you know heritage that they were drawing on intellectually in terms of Athens uh or in terms of Greece and in terms of uh Rome as well and so you know that's just also a part of that has to be a part of the discourse you can't neglect that >> I think I think that's absolutely right I mean I think the book is ultimately a work of political economy >> yes yes great >> you know so we talked about that a little bit as far as the origins of the constitution were concerned But, you know, as I work through towards the end of the book, the features of the American system that I think ought to change, >> you know, there's a chapter on political institutions. Yes. >> Um, you know, I talk about all the things you would expect, the electoral college, the Senate, redistricting, money, and politics, all of that kind of stuff. But the last chapter, >> perhaps more prosperively, here at the Mercada Center, uh, is about economic democracy. It's about, you know, the extent to which our freedom, our liberty, and our agency, >> um, if we care about democracy is shaped by our economic institutions and the power that we have or don't have as workers, >> you know, and one of the reasons why I think it's it's worth considering ways we might power ourselves um, as workers in the economy is precisely, you know, one of the things you said, which is, you know, your freedom and leisure time to think critically about the society you're in, your ability to participate in politics >> uh with any meaningful kind of power. No, it depends I think a little bit on the extent to which you live in egalitarian society and the amount of economic resources you have available to you. So yeah, this is something that I'm obviously thinking about a lot uh now when it comes to the tech industry and AI and its impacts and so on. But you know the book if the book had been written you know even a year after uh I started if I had started it even a year later there would have been so much more about AI. >> Yeah in it >> it's to the benefit of the book that I was not obsessed in the way that I am now. >> That's what I was about to say. I was about to say thank goodness because I don't think it would I think it has >> a enduring kind of features of the arguments where you can I when you read it now you can clearly think about AI. Yeah. But I also think that this is what really just you've seen me like more emotional than I'm going to get here. But it it just it does grind my gears the way that you know AI has also people have kind of treated it as this so fundamentally novel question and moment that we're in. And of course there's a lot of novelty. Of course there's a lot of uncertainty. And yet if you take a longer view and if you also think about what we've been dealing with in America, it is dealing with the rise of automation before AI and and the changes in all sorts of people's lives in terms of their work environment and also a lot of those changes themselves. You can't just reduce a tech to technology. It is shaped as you said by the economic institutions that are shaped by laws and policies. And so, you know, I think no matter what people, like you said, that part of the argument, you know, if you're if you got very excited, you're like, "Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna um I shouldn't I shouldn't read the book. I shouldn't look at the camera." If you got, you know, if you're listening this this conversation, you got really excited. I can't wait to to read the book. And you're somebody who's maybe a a died in the wool free market classical liberal, you should know, maybe you're going to get a little riled up by the the later chapter on economic democracy. But I think it's worth engaging with uh especially for that because I think we need to have these conversations because I also think in not having these conversations we are making it you know we're obscuring and we're kind of not providing answers to people who are going through truly disruptive experiences in their work lives in their personal lives over the past again not just from AI but going back to the 90s going back further than that um and so you know I I do think that that's crucial so I but I want to take these different parts of your argument in turn but like you like you just said it is very much a book of political economy. Um and so why don't you why don't we first focus on the public institution on the political institutions because I think the other thing here is that there are a lot of people who when they make the argument that America is a republic and not a democracy they will rely on the fact that the founders and also just and this is I think common I don't think this is I don't think all of liberalism has to be motivated by this but I think it's a common theme among liberals especially is that there is an anxiety of democracy and there is an anxiety of tyranny of the majority and so that's the thing they want to avoid. You know, for me, I'm always a little bit like, well, do you maybe think that you got to also avoid tyranny of the minority, right? I mean, that's also a historical problem. Uh, and also, you know, something that we we don't want to have. And if you I don't want tyranny of anybody, right? But, um, and so why don't you uh I the thing that really stuck out to me was how much like I could give that chapter to people who are interested in those debates in terms of understanding, well, here's why. Yes. I don't think that America is, you know, is is under a tyranny of majority. And in fact, we have to reckon with the way in which maybe the bigger threat is tyranny of of minority and not necessarily in a way that was designed by these, you know, pretty undemocratic founders, but actually dynamics and institutions, things like the filibuster that were not original to the constitution. So, you know, I know you won't be able to get into all of that, but maybe give us a little bit of an image of the the argument you make there in terms of the nature of our political institutions, why they're not democratic, how we can make them more democratic. >> Yeah, sure. I mean I think you know a lot of people who listen to this probably are familiar with some of these arguments but there is some comparative work uh on the set in particular where I point to research that's like you know even to the extent you might believe that having a bicimeal legislature is desirable in certain ways and uh you know the extent to which you might desire some kind of filter mechanism I'm you know very far left respect but even if you're somebody who believes that you know empirically we have one of the most malortioned upper houses in the entire world I think only Argentina and Brazil, according to one study, has an upper house that's more egalitarian than the Senate on a vote to vote basis. So, I think that matters. I think it matters. I think it distorts policy that somebody in Wyoming has about 60 times representation in that chamber as somebody in California does. Um I think that's unhealthy for for policym. >> Yeah. >> You know, and I think that there there's some familiarity with some of the arguments there. But um one of the things I think I try to say in the book um in that chapter on the set in particular and the filibuster in particular that um maybe people aren't familiar with is first of all this is one of the areas where Hamilton and Madison were very disappointed. Yeah. >> Madison says at the convention that the Senate as it's currently constructed is a very stupid idea. Yeah. >> It would create all of these different minoritarian uh distortions. It would you know upend stability in the country. Um it was just bad and they were forced to the Senate's current design and the what people know as a Connecticut compromise um because the small states basically threatened to walk out of the convention. >> Yeah. >> You have Gunning Bedford of Delaware getting up to make a speech to say look if we don't have equal representation in the Senate, we might secede >> from the United States and join some other foreign country. So really the kind of impass there that they had to do something about. And to Madison's disappointment and his disappointment you can actually read in the federal papers like he's a very he's he's very very half-hearted in describing the Senate and and why it makes sense you know to a disappointment that's the arrangement we are stuck with you obviously we have the direct collection of senators now we did not have before and that's that matters um but it's a really really crazy institution the filibuster as you say which was not part of the original design only you know makes it crazier um we functionally have a non unfunctional Congress. It passes certain things. Certain major laws do get passed, but um it's very very hard to pass legislation. You have to do all these workarounds through reconciliation perhaps that actually end up distorting the policy that you're trying to craft because you have to meet the requirements of the the bird bath. >> And there are also these kinds of social and political impacts too that I don't think people think enough about. I mean, you know, if you're concerned about polarization and you're wondering why we've gotten so polarized and what we might do to resolve that, I think it matters that many many people are sending people to Congress, >> knowing that Congress is not going to do a whole lot. >> And if Congress is not going to do a whole lot as far as policym is concerned and also your political opponents aren't going to do a whole lot if they win, >> the stakes to you of the vote you make in a primary are going to be very, very low. Like why not elevate somebody who's like a talk show host or a political influencer that just makes you feel good if you know that you're not actually going to get a a working Congress that's productive and that's constantly passing legislation. So all kinds of things like that and dynamics I think are really really deranging our politics. Um and there are fixes. So I you know I'm not somebody who supports having an article 5 convention tomorrow. Yeah, >> I I see the idea of replacing the Constitution as a long-term movement that's going to take many decades and generations and it's going to take, you know, building more buyin from the public >> on a lot of these ideas. Um, but there are some things we can do very, very quickly, relatively speaking, um, that take only majorities in Congress or when it comes to the electoral college, I talk about the national popular vote interstate compact. That's something that state legislators can do are on their way to doing. Frankly, there are like 200 electoral votes >> committed to that process. So, I I talk about feasible solutions that are not pie in the sky solutions that don't require on constitutional amendments for the most part. >> And yeah, I hope that that chapter reads practically to people, even people who are not, you know, fire breathing leftists like myself. I think on on basic good governance grounds, we have a federal government that's not working very well. And a lot of that could be attributed to either the constitution or >> you know institutions that we've developed that are functionally parts of our small C constitution at this point. >> Well, and I think that that's really important because I think that the executive branch now just has and and whoever is in the White House has incredible power and I mean to some degree that power is brittle. I mean you know it's been always increasing. I mean Trump has had you know a huge increase in executive orders but there's just there's also been an uptick uptick over time of executive orders and also you know the next president when the first thing they come in is kind of undo all those executive orders. So that's those things are not you know they're not there but the power that it has is immense unpredictab unpredictability and uncertainty and and the reason why that's happening is partly because of how powerless how dysfunctional Congress is and that really is the more representative institution and and that is like what I'm very frightened by I will say is that increasingly it feels like people are forgetting at least I thought that public discourse and kind of the understanding of American democracy was an understanding that Congress was really the the most representative institution and it is supposed to be kind of the main way that you know popular power kind of functions and we can see that that at the federal level in terms of responsiveness to constituents. You know like you you're the president power might not represent you in in the sense that you voted for the other party but you have this but legislation is supposed to be taking place at the congressional level anyway. So you don't you know there's a certain check on terms of how much that national election matters and now it feels like that is the most important thing and that which coincides with you know Americans partly the media environment people identifying more with national identity with and and paying attention to national politics because of the decline of local media um all these again economic political economic conditions but that's very frightening I don't think so when you when you worry about tyranny majority in congressional legislation you've just now created the autocratic threat that we were oh that that we know they were worried about. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, this is another one of the things where if the book had been written a little bit later, you know, it would have been different in a substantive way. So I I mean I'm focused mostly on Congress in that chapter, but I do talked about the executive and I would have talked about the executive more especially given what we've seen in the last year. the idea that, you know, somebody donates $250 million to a campaign. They're given a special place in the subsequent administration where they get to unwind programs and >> uh dismantle departments and so on and and there's no congressional oversight. I mean, that's that's a remarkable situation. Um, look at this war with Iran we're in the middle of, right? I mean, we one of the things the Constitution does say that I think it makes sense is Congress has the power to declare war. Well, it's functionally no longer true. Um, so yeah, we have this kind of runaway executive and I think partially because to your point, Congress is now ineffectual. We have presidents coming in, you know, understanding that their legislative pushes aren't actually going to go anywhere. And so they issue all these executive actions that get reversed in the next administration. You know, the the White House gets to take in a lot of power. There's a lot of trying to legislate either through the courts or through uh through the agencies. All of that's more opaque and less transparent than it might be if you were actually >> having legislators do their job and and and >> and craft legislation in the public eye. So all of that really matters >> and is is is I think symptomatic of of the ways in which the system is very unbalanced and and dysfunctional right now. >> Yeah. Yeah. No. And and that and that also points to the fact that there is um this other kind of way we we need to kind of take a holistic view of the American democratic experience and the threats that we face because you know then let's you know get on the table a little bit but again I think we're going to zoom out so that it's more you know relevant no matter what is happening in the state of technology but right now you know there's all this discourse around AI regulation. In fact, I was somewhere and uh I was in London this last week and you know people there were really kind of they and I've heard this from other people too. there's this sort of like oh like even Trump seems to think we should regulate I AI and that gives them kind of some kind of hope and there's something very frightening I will admit to you know even though I'm somebody who's not I'm not a priori or inherently against regulation by any means but I don't see I I'm very afraid of the fact that we are in this incredibly disruptive technological technologically and economically disruptive moment and yet we have this incredibly dysfunctional um government that is probably even easier for you know the best organized well-funded companies for example to lobby to influence that decision- making uh at that kind of central authority executive level and that so when I think about what regulation might is most likely to you know be successful I don't have a lot of confidence it'll be in the support of >> Americans more broadly of people I care about I mean how am I supposed to be optimistic about that >> uh I don't think there's much reason to be unless unless certain things change. I mean I do so as I said you know I talk about money and politics a good bit um in the fifth chapter and one of the things I try to do is sort of complicate or frustrate this conception people have where it's like everything that's wrong in Congress is like this company shows up in an office with like a big bag of money they put on a desk and then they get the legislation they want. >> Um you know that happens sometimes. uh it's not usually the way that these things work. I think that the channels of influence are much more diffuse. Um, you know, there's this great paper, I think from 20 years ago, I think it's called something like why isn't there more money in politics where >> they basically say, well, relative to the resources that corporations have, they actually underinvest in politics a certain way, it takes very little. Um, and so I I try to think through like, okay, how is this actually working based on research? And a lot of it is like, you know, >> people come into Congress without a whole lot of technical knowledge for the most part on all the issues they might have to legislate on. they might know a lot about a given issue that's, you know, relevant to their constituency and so on. When it comes to like technology and like very very technical fields, they often just don't know a whole lot about the thing they're supposed to be regulating or crafting legislation about. >> And so that creates an opportunity for whether it's anthropic or open AI or whatever in this case to come to Congress and say, "Well, look, like we know about this issue. We're developing this technology, you know, and we are we're here as like fair-minded, good, objective people, you know, we're not here just to make money. We're here to inform you as to how this technology works. how it might be best regulated. We saw this parade over the last couple years of them doing this >> and because people don't have the resources, the knowledge, the background to >> interpret >> those kinds of claims and that information critically. >> Yeah. >> A lot of cases companies end up getting what they want. And it might not be that money changed hands at all. >> Yes. Yeah. >> So it's it's it's there all kinds of ways in which that power manifests itself. It's not just through well I think we should reform campaign finance and formal lobbying. you know, they prop up a think tank that puts out a report >> on a given issue and you know, some staffer picks it up and shows it to their member and they read it and that's how they think about that issue or that very very granular policy issue. It might be, you know, people are hanging out and doing golf with the people of this set like so money manifests itself in all kinds of ways. Um, and you know, one of the arguments for the sixth chapter on political economy is as much as we might hope to regulate the more direct forms of influence, campaign financing and lobbying, we still have an economy where if things are very very unequal, >> all of those other channels get utilized nonetheless >> to shape policym in contention of of what the majority either wants or would benefit from. >> Um, and that's worth taking seriously. And I think that AI, you know, this is this is one of the things that makes me the most worried. I mean, hell, we have congressmen who still don't know what the internet is, let alone generative >> generative AI. Um, >> and, you know, going back to the the dysfunction of the Senate and and um how Congress has struggled to pass legislation in general, you know, we've seen over the last 20 years bipartisan legislation on whether it's gun control, immigration, different issues get taken up and fail nonetheless. Yeah. >> Um, you know, I say this as somebody again who's like a fire breathing left. There's no love for bipartisanship intrinsically, but if you're somebody who believes that we have to come together to pass laws and all that jazz, you know, that we've we've seen that happen and get thwarted by the institutions in so many cases and that's another I think hurdle to having some kind of reasonable arrangement uh get made on AI. Well, I think what you're also pointing to there is that and bringing us into that next chapter on economic democracy, but it but it is related to conversations I've had this season on the podcast with Sam Bag uh who has a book dispersion of power on thinking of democracy as like a a as a negative ideal as kind of diffusing power and and and reducing the risk of state capture by you know any one large group. But that that what that requires uh is a civil society and and this is what's interesting to me is I think that there's a way in which liberals have often thought of civil society as this kind of nice fuzzy a-olitical space. You know people are you know the sort of toillian volunteeristic associations where people don't rely on the state. They don't you know engage in the kind of political lobbying and the kind of political associations and they're able to kind of solve their own problems together. neither through profit nor through that kind of political action. And of course that is very true. But there's also a way in which ci civil society goes handinand with politics, handinhand with democracy because it shapes it. It allows for people to create these organizational forms, these organi organizations, these collective group memberships that also kind of challenge uh power within that private sphere too. So, so Sam talks about, you know, civil society organizations which also include things like unions. And so, again, unions might be somewhat controversial for some people, but uh they what they do represent is this idea of people having a right to form organizations together. And so and that being a part of potentially challenging the way in which you know management at companies, executives at companies have also the biggest say in terms of how they might be influencing you know the way that these these these technologies are discussed and debated and how they're conceptualized even though like you said no money is changing hands. Um but that's also you know kind of then just thinking about this idea of like the private sphere civil society being a part of democratic life as well and it itself kind of both creating and shaping democracy but also being shaped by the political institutions that we have and so I wanted to yeah so just as a general invitation to then moving us you know campaign finance is a kind of good bridge to get us into the economic sphere and what it means to be thinking in terms of economic democracy and and what does that look like? >> Yeah, sure. So I mean I don't really say this much in the uh the book itself but I have been doing some background writing on liberalism here and there for the past couple of years and I talk a lot about some of that writing the freedom of association right so when it comes to politics you can't really do anything by yourself >> uh you can write a letter to your congressman you can do some things you mouth off on social media but any kind of actual political activity depends upon people working together in concert through civil society institutions other organizations are informal and so on. We do politics together. Um and we develop the capacities that we need to sustain democracy in particular together. Um again, if you are concerned about polarization, if you're concerned about the tenor of our political debate, you're concerned about the extent to which people can read political information literally and so on. Um, you know, I think that a lot of that discourse is also pointed to the absence or the decline of civic institutions that help provide those skills to people. I think that unions can be understood as an important part of that civic infrastructure. like setting aside the rest of the economic argument. If you want more places in American life where people come together with people who are different from them >> for a collective purpose, who get socialized into politics and political participation, >> who learn how to make arguments and rally people like that, that's all work that unions help do and helped do when they were stronger uh in this country. And I so I think that you know they should be understood as organizations that contribute to that civic infrastructure. And I think that might, you know, danger our politics less >> if people had the opportunity to develop those capacities. Um, even more controversially, you know, I talk about ways that we can sort of institutionalize this within firms themselves when it comes to works councils and other kinds of labor organization >> internal to firms that you see more commonly in in Europe. But part of the argument there is certainly that people need and we collectively as a society need places where people learn how to do politics or to practice some of the basic capacities that we need to make democracy work. >> Um and yeah, I just think that in in in a very real absence, we should be turning to unions. I think for all kinds of reasons, but for for that reason in particular, I think I think the argument uh makes sense. Yeah. And I think I I think there's a way in which you know there might be some kind of liberal argument about you know not necessarily enthusiastic but at least accepting of unions as sure that should be one among many contractual uh you know organizational forms that we can allow. But what are the ways in which you know America is itself currently the way our institutions are structured that shape unions that is fundamentally hostile to the possibility of people forming unions in the first place right now because there have been increasing labor movements and organizational um actions in you know Amazon for example but there it seems like things are very much uh on the side of people who uh people at these companies who want to stop their workers from unionizing. Well, I think at the outset, um, we have a labor law system that makes it very very hard to organize from beginning. The idea that you have to sort of work from firm to firm to firm >> um to organize a given workplace >> through a very very extended process where even when you get to the bargaining table, you might not succeed at the end of the day in getting a contract meaningful amount of time. >> That process alone creates a lot of hurdles >> for organizers. I think the economy has also changed dramatically from the day of the labor movement decades and decades ago. >> Uh where it's not these you know maybe massive factory where people working all together in the same place same space and so on. >> Um >> you know we have different levels of organization firms where things are being contracted out to different parties might not necessarily even know what the what the parent firm >> Yeah. >> uh is that you're actually working for in a given case. That's been exacerbated >> by the rise of the gig economy certainly. Yeah, it get it's it's all very very complicated in ways that the labor law has not really been updated to >> to reflect >> and you know you get to then after that the active efforts and made to frustrate organizing right to work laws that kind of thing. >> So there are a lot of >> hurdles there. Um, but I think that we're at a moment where it's sort of also incumbent upon the labor movement to think critically about the extent to which their existing modes of organizing and the policies that they're advocating for might not reflect the realities of the current economy. >> I think it's a time to think critically about new labor structures, new forms of organization >> um that might make a little bit more sense, which is not to say that traditional unions aren't important, that shouldn't grow. I think they should support the proact but you know we live in a rapidly changing economy >> a more complex economy than these laws written for and these modes of organizing were developed for and that matters. So I I talk about the work of people like Sharon Block at Harvard on this question where these she and others are thinking really really ambitiously about um what different forms of organization might look like. >> Um I offer some of the those ideas at the at the end of the book. Yeah, it's a difficult world to be doing organizing work in, but you know, I think that we have models and ideas that are worth drawing from and worth worth exploring. >> Yeah, let me dig into that a little bit further because I think that that's a a common so this is where again and we we could talk more about this, but the sort of tensions between liberalism and democracy come into play is that and I and again I don't want to um I I also think liberalism is a very compatious school of thought and and tradition. And so, you know, I think there are liberals who would have no problem whatsoever with the unions with uh more democratic uh structures within firms uh being incentivized or or at least embraced um if not part of you know institutional theory. But you know let's let's take this other kind of view which is that you know a dynamic economy is the way to deal with potential problematic or undesirable forms of governance within firms because what you you know yes it might be without a union without kind of these um kind of stickier and more restrictive contracting you know like obligations around contracts then it might be easier for a worker to be fired but ideally that means that it'll be easier to get hired by a different firm. So there is this maybe there might be this emphasis on exit as opposed to voice. And so then the concern would be if we embrace or try to make it easier for people to collectively organize then it makes it harder we kind of make by strengthening labor rights you make the dynam the economy maybe less dynamic and less able to have that kind of I don't want to I mean it's a little weird but there's sort of an interoperability aspect to that. Right. >> Yeah. I mean I think that there are real trade-offs. At the same time though, I I do wonder even if we believe in exit as a mode of recourse for bad working conditions, how adequately have we protected the worker's right to exit. We have a kind where non-competes for instance really really restrict your ability to just sort of leave your job and find a better one. >> Yeah. >> Um that's something that labor organizing and the advocacy of progressives is trying to fix. So, you know, I I think that there's like an idealized world where, you know, everybody's kind of frictionless. You don't like this job, move to another one. That's not actually the world we live in. Even if without non-competes, even if we fix that situation, it's very very hard to sort of like get up and find a different job. Americans are less mobile than ever in many respects. So those are those are problems that I think should incline us to say, well, yeah, you should have the right to exit, but what are the tools and resources we have within your workplace to improve conditions? And to your point, you know, how do we balance the desiraability of that with the desiraability of economic dynamism and economic growth? I take growth very, very seriously. I'm not somebody or you know one of the people on the left who sort of dismisses the the reality that growth lifts um people up in the from their you know worse economic circumstances into better ones. We have to have an economy that grows that is dynamic where people can start new business and so on. >> But also we're very very very skewed against the worker here in this country in ways that I do think have a dilitarious impact on their well-being. And I don't think that, you know, we have to believe that strengthening workers and improving that situation means that we give up economic growth and give up innovation and give up a dynamic economy. We have to strike a balance here. And I think that there's just a lot of interest in not trying to work out a balance. And I think that's that's a real problem. So, you know, the book offers some ideas. It offers some uh trade-offs maybe for for some of these policies, but I think there's a lot here that's worth considering and worth taking up. we don't have to sort of import the German labor model directly into the United States and believe it's going to work out in the same way. But, you know, I think there there's room here to to experiment and work out what better labor arrangements might be. >> Yeah. Well, and I think you're exactly right that that's the thing is I I think you know growth is so important and then there's this way in which by if you but if you if you're talking to somebody who just lost their job or somebody who has faced a hostile work environment and you still say well we don't want to mess with the way that our you know labor relations work because we're going to lose our ability to grow. I mean that doesn't mean anything when you're living in that kind of experience and that that and that is why you know when we talk about political theory when we talk about political economy and these different traditions and we think about domination matters I mean we can't just avoid talking about that and when somebody you we you have to wonder you know what happens if you feel as though you're powerless in those private spaces you're what do you what hope do you have that you think you can make a difference in the public spaces? Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. And you know, it's just like who is growth for ultimately and how how broadly is growth distributed. It's not just about the growth happening as a matter of aggregate statistics. It's like who is actually the beneficiaries? How much of that is actually going to the workers at these firms relative to investors, executives and so on. And I think those are questions that are worth asking especially now. I mean people are dissatisfied with the state of the economy in kind of unprecedented levels. >> Yeah. That's discontent that has to be wrestled with and wrestled with seriously. And I think the people who believe in a kindic economy sort of don't pay attention to that and sort of like sideline these kinds of conversations. I think the people who end up appealing to that discontent are people going to offer much worse economic solutions and and kind of uh panaceas that that don't actually work and actually make things worse. We see, I think, immigration policy playing some of that role here. So through you know the the the discontent here matters. I do think there are cues we can take from places where labor laws are stronger and I think the serious question is you know how can we integrate all of that within the need >> again I believe in in to have a a dynamic and growing economy. >> Yeah. >> The book offers a few provocations uh in that direction but I just hope it it sparks and opens a conversation here. Well, and let me let's like let's also get into more of the details here about the way that because I do think I'm I'm struck by the fact that you are taking seriously because there are people who maybe romanticize the 20th century and I think there's maybe some way that we can go back to the economy of the 20th century or to also the landscape of unions in their heyday when we're we are you know the sort of dynamics towards a gig economy are so much harder to control or prevent right and so what then does it look like to update our understandings of how to help the American worker, how to think of labor and the possibility of Americans being able to collectively organize in their in the private sphere while partly because of appreciation of growth but partly just knowing the reality of our economy is that it it has shifted in terms of the way people even like to work. I mean there are people who who are appreciative who really benefit from the kinds of gig economy relations and labor uh experiences that provided by apps um provided by Uber and other apps who who want that flexibility that you wouldn't have had in the 20th century. >> Yeah, I think that's real. So first of all, I think that this is actually one of the places where the political inequities I'm talking about and economic policy really really intersect. the idea of going back to the 20th century very reductively. I think that we have a trade policy in this country right now that is built around the hope of returning the state of Michigan >> and all the rest of states which you need to win the electoral college back to the magic of the 20th century. Right? >> So it's it's it's it's this idea well you know we now have a globalized economy where many things are being made overseas that are contributing to our economy. >> Obviously there have been people in this country who've lost out. >> Yeah. And so, you know, the the kind of sloppilist solution to that is, well, we're just going to like restrict trade and then all those factories just kind of going to pop up out of the ground in the rust belt states again. >> And, you know, it's manufacturing in particular >> that made those jobs good. There's something intrinsically good about working to build a car or working, you know, uh, in a sheet metal factory that's better than other kinds of jobs. We need to bring those jobs specifically back. Um, I think that's like very unserious >> to me. >> It's very naive. It's very naive. Um to me, and you know this is the analysis you would expect from somebody on the left, but like to me the thing that made those jobs stable and renumerative for many workers at the time was the fact that there were organized jobs. There were unions that were very very strong um in these places in those industries. We have in the south of this country an auto industry that does not look at all like the 20th century auto industry in the rust belt. I think part of the difference there is it's not a unionized sector in the same kind of way. And to me, there's no reason to believe that the only kinds of jobs that are good or the best kinds of jobs that are good are going to be those kinds of manufacturing jobs in general, which is not to say we shouldn't have manufacturing jobs, that those jobs aren't important and so on, but like, >> you know, I think that working at Walmart should be a good job that puts you on a pathway to making more money and that builds your wealth. I think that working in the service industry and other kinds of healthcare as you get like these should all be good jobs and we should be thinking about the ways in which we are not doing enough to ensure those jobs are enumerative as it could be and I think that labor is part of the the answer and the solution there. What was I forgot what the second thing you said was? >> Well, it was about also, you know, people when we talk about the gig economy, I think especially especially on the left, a lot of critiques. I'm very sympathetic to them certainly, but at the same time, you talk to people who who do make money through Uber through these other especially people who are doing more care work too, like you know, taking care of children and things like that. I mean that they want the flexibility that those jobs give them. Um, and maybe are less concerned from like the left critique of the way that these workers are exploited. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think you know even if you have that critique the existing models for labor organization are not going to work with an Uber >> or with a Door Dash. It's just reality. >> Um and so there have been people who thinking very creatively over the last decade or so about different forms of organization. You know let's bring you know groups of rid share drivers together for instance in kind of cooperatives so that they can negotiate with Uber >> on that basis or like appeal to Uber on that basis advocate for their own rights. So it's not just you and this opaque company mediated >> you're interacting with through an app but like you as a collective of workers >> coming together and it's not even just the gig economy where you see those kind of dynamics in place. So I did a piece um in the last couple of years about the direct care industry in Colorado. So people who go into people's homes who are elderly or disabled and they work on a very very intimate one-to-one basis with those people might work for a company or a firm but not interact with anybody else in that company. >> You can't organize that in the way that you'd organize a traditional union. And so there's this body that's been set up in Colorado called the direct care stabilization board where they bring together uh worker representatives, representatives from the state, representatives from the companies themselves to come together and talk about working conditions maybe propose some basic standards >> and it's part of you know this wave of wage and workers boards we've seen over the last I 105 years. >> Yeah. Seen as a kind of step towards sectoral bargaining. >> Yes. You know, there are stronger versions of this and weaker versions of this. Especially, you know, California, they have a fast food board, for instance, that has the ability to just set wages. You know, those kinds of things, I think, have to be explored for a lot of reasons, but partially because it is much much easier to fit that kind of model for labor into the current economy than the traditional firmtomir, placetoplace model. And if you had those kinds of uh institutions, I think you you would preserve a lot of the dynamism and the freedom that people see in being able to work for themselves through an app and use that as part of their their supplemental uh income. But again, like I think that the the presumption that you know once upon a time we had good jobs and they were in these four industries and we just have to bring those jobs in those industries back through magic or insane trade policy or insane immigration policy. It's just not it's not going to work. >> And incumbent upon people from whatever ideological perspective you have to think more, you know, deeply about what actual empowerment would look like. >> Yeah. Well, and and and yeah, and you know, when you were talking about the idea of like factories popping up from the ground. I mean, it made me laugh, but it's also like I don't laugh because I make light or because I don't respect the people who miss those jobs and who want those jobs, but I also I do I just I have to be honest. I mean being around members of the elite who make this rhetoric around and try to appeal and try to create this kind of romantic ideal of you know mid-century America and then also of this sort of maybe you know masculine you know uh worker who works with his hands and it's just so tired and strange and just like I said naive and almost it's almost infantilizing to think that that that people are going to be convinced that this is what the future of our economy is going to be able to look like and and and instead and it's I think demeaning to the people who are now making up so much of the actual American worker today people in care work especially women in care work right there's a there is a certain kind of gendered nature to the way that this discourse >> absolutely I mean I think that you know political elites don't really know >> very much about a a lot of things but you know the the composition of the economy is I think one of the areas is where you see this disconnect between the rhetoric and reality um in ways that end up mattering for economic policy. So, you know, for instance, whenever people talk about rural America, >> you know, and campaigns and you do these aerial shots of like fields of corn and so on, it's like everybody everybody in rural America is a corn farmer. Um whether you look at actual statistics, it's it's not that different from job composition terms from the other parts of the country. Like the big industries are service, >> education, healthcare, government, like the these are increasingly no matter where you live, the basic features of the economy. And if you actually spend time in rural America, you go out to rural Kentucky, >> you know, you end up at a Walmart and you realize like that Walmart is employing like dozens of people and it's like the economic center for maybe a couple of miles around, you know, and it it's and this is one of the things that I think >> understanding this might also make our politics a little bit more insane, >> right? So the idea that we are not living these kind of like vastly different unintelligible lives but actually like are you know many of us are all just working for more >> you know could could all of us build a kind of common economic agenda >> rather than you know depending on these pre presuppositions that there are these radically different agendas that different parts of the country need or radically different kinds of political representation that other parts of the country need. many of us, you know, as different as we might be in certain respects, have the same bosses and are being shaped by the same forces. And I think that matters and I think that we'd have a better politics and better policies if politicians realize this. >> Well, and I think that I mean, yeah, to to your point, I mean, and also to bring it back to democracy. I mean, this is why I think on the one and you talked about this in the book, but there's there's a lot of cheap talk around democracy, a lot of kind of like flowery language about democracy. And then uh but the reason why democracy really matters is because political elites all the time are going to conjure images of who the ordinary citizen is, who the person is that they supposedly speak to. But they will, you know, unless there's like actual democratic institutions that actually have any kind of power that are is really responsive to the people themselves. And and even in that case, so often those images that are evoked are really going to be the things that they benefit from or the world that they want to see or the particular group that they're actually speaking to and not the ordinary citizen. And so that is also a form of cheap talk, you know, and then and then at the same time kind of make this flower flowery language towards democracy. I mean you realize that um the image in your head is not the public but you also realize through democracy that the public itself is very very dynamic is capable of change. >> So one of the things I point out in the early chapters of this book is you know I'm not >> offering a model of democracy where there is this this mass called the people or they majority that is a stable entity that you just appeal to and refer to every time you have an election. Um what democracy is is like a stable set of processes through which you know through fair competition and through the assembly of majorities you know the public makes itself heard but you might have a different majority or a different governing coalition in the next election or the next couple of years and there's this dynamism to it because I think that there are people who appeal to democracy in contrast >> by reference to a people um or a majority that is also kind of imagined in the very same way you And it's it's it's the public is very complicated. And one of the things we want democracy to do actually is to give the public the opportunity to say, well, we had an election and this group of people want as the majority, their policies either did or did not work. >> And we might have reason to try a new set of policies or a new set of candidates next time around. That kind of dynamism and that change is part of the reason why I think democracy is is desirable. So I think the politicians they they construct in their heads the images of the public that they want and >> I think that they are enabled in this any time that the structures of our institutions empower some people at the expense of others. If some people end up winning >> much or most of the time, >> yeah, >> it's easier politicians to say, well, that is the actual public they're responding to. And it's, you know, it's exurban or rural >> people who live in these parts of the country and people who live in >> Washington DC or people who live in New York or Los Angeles or Baltimore don't really matter. Like the actual public is this >> majority that ends up shaping elections every every couple of years. >> Yeah. That distorts policymaking. leads to to incorrect conclusions about the public and its desires. And I think it uh it makes us a less dynamic society than we could be. >> And I think there is a way in which like this is always and I will also just kind of bring it back to maybe maybe some reflection on how you see your work as some as a journalist as a as a scholar as an author and talking about somebody who is also influencing the way that people think about American politics. And so you know politicians do this but also pundits do this. you know, I do this, uh, scholars do this. So, kind of how do you think about like the responsibility of having a platform and of of of trying to make sense of this environment and knowing that what you say matters? >> Well, I'm not sure it does. Uh, I kind of hope >> that's a good point. I mean, I will say actually it is very good to not be, you know, so egotistical that you think what you say will necessarily matter. I mean, especially now given that like all of us who write are competing with like Call of Duty streamers for the attention of the of of the voting public. I mean, I I really don't I don't know how much uh work like this actually shifts things. I think that the model for me for you know most of the time I've been doing this is well you know like most people are not going to pick up this book or are going to be aware that it exists but maybe people who are like in the policy space or in politics working campaigns working in advocacy groups they read this and they shift their thinking about how they message or how they approach a policy issue and you know the extent that I understand that people have been doing that I've heard a lot from democracy groups and other nonprofits in that space I mean they are in the moment right now where I think they're trying to figure out given the failure to move on a lot of these issues under the Biden administration, they had the For the People Act and so on, they're trying to regroup and and think about what's next. There's been this discourse in the last uh year and a half or so after the 2024 election about whether it was wrong to focus on democracy. >> Yeah. >> And whether Democrats should continue even using the word democracy in their appeals. Yeah, you know, I think the book is an intervention in that debate, too, because it it's it says from the outset, literally from the first chapter, we talk about democracy in a very blinkered >> and unappealing and kind of sterile way. >> People don't believe that there is democracy in America to save in the first place and to sort of run as though there was was a mistake. >> People also want from democracy or from their institutions in general real material benefits. And if you're talking about democracy a way that's abstracted from all of that, they're going to lose. >> Yeah. >> At least on that issue. >> So, you know, I I think that the book has been, at least I hope it's been a useful intervention on those fronts as far as influencing discourse in general, my responsibility. I don't know. I I try to be I'm a very slow writer. >> Yeah. And I think that that has been to my detriment in certain respects, but also it is how I think you come to conclusions that are actually worthwhile and novel. There's a version of this book that was much easier where I did not read, you know, the latest in the literature about redistricting and I also did not read The Republic again by Plato >> and just sort of did >> the standard democracy's broken whatever and it just would have been a lesser work and there's all kinds of books like that already. But the fact here and in my other work that I do take the time to know what I'm talking about and not just fire off takes and consult academic literature and consult political theory and so on. I mean that that I feel is all me trying to meet my responsibility to put new information into the world or new arguments at the very least into the world. >> Um and to try to shape how people see an issue >> with more than just conventional wisdom and more than my own presuppositions. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And that's I think the attitude that you know whatever kind of writing you do, whatever kind of journalism you do, you ought to have. >> Yeah. >> Um because then what you know what's the point? >> I'm again skeptical about whether there is a point even doing work at this level. But I think if if it's worth doing at all, it's it's worth doing in this way. >> Well, I think I mean you brought up Plato. So that I mean there is this interesting thing with the republic where you know there's these different ways to read it and I think one way is even to read it as like almost an anti-political work in the sense of like the philosopher might read it and see and think like well the the real kind of way to live your life is to kind of like abstain from politics right but then it's like why would the philosopher engage in politics and it would be to not be ruled by those worst and so there is this thing with with writing and with you know engaging in public discourse course especially you know if you're somebody who has you know a certain expertise or you know rec being recognized as a figure in some capacity or having a platform in some capacity where the thing that I I worry about is that there's such a demand like you like for content for like for for for fast t like hot takes for for writing fast and what happens with that is is and actually this also something that play talks about we we'll bracket that but you where you you get sort of immersed in opinion and and and then distracted from kind of higher quality deeper research and reflection and then if you I think it's if if you don't if you do think that you're this is what what I'm struggling with is that I think there are people who don't have the humility you have who you you just stated the idea of like you're not sure anything you do say has an impact and I think it's very valuable to have that humility humility and we need people like that who have that humility because they're more I think careful about what they say they think with a lot of consideration in terms of how they express themselves. But then there are people who I think maybe don't have that humility who are very confident and then are being heard are being listened to and then potentially perpetuating certain kinds of scapegoating of getting us away from the fundamental problems you know and flaming things around um immigration around trans people for example and and not realizing that to some degree what you are saying might lead public opinion in certain directions. Um especially again the more follow followers you have the more people who are buying your books and listening to you. I mean, I do think there is a responsibility that comes with that field. And so then we need people who are willing to express themselves in careful and slow ways. Um, and even if that means that, you know, they have to, you know, it's it's a certain kind of pressure to kind of be doing that. But I guess what I'm trying to say, maybe there's a way in which when you think that you aren't necessarily going to have an impact, maybe that's something that helps you kind of be willing to kind of take the time and then therefore like say something that you're proud of because of the integrity that you have. >> Yeah, maybe. I mean, I just um I mean I I I do do this because I would like to have an impact. >> Yeah. >> There's also like a an absence of humility there where part of reason why I'm doing this is because I I want to I want to change the things in the world around me that I think are are wrong. But, you know, like I I think being detached from the kinds of vicissitudes of day in dayout discourse is very important for all of those reasons you described. Just I think maybe it is to the benefit of writers in general that they're no longer competing >> for all of these views and retweets or whatever because more and more the discursive field is shifting over to other mediums. And so writers, if you're going to do this, have to be doing it for other reasons beyond that kind of gratification. So yeah, I'm not really sure. But also, you know, because I'm doing this because I want to have an impact. Like I've been thinking about, you know, video and other mediums where I could be expressing these ideas. I've certainly appeared in a hell of a lot of podcasts for this book. So that's part of it. >> Um, yeah. No, I think we're we're in a moment though where it's just um I mean, I wrote something for the Columbia Journalism Review a few years ago. I think the title was like, "What is the point of political writing?" both because you know it's often unclear how much you're influencing the public but also you know to bring it back full circle to democracy a country where it does not actually necessarily matter what majorities believe or think or want anyway. So even if you were successful in persuading like the majority of the public to agree with you it necessarily do anything in the world like in in that case then like what is the point of any of this and I still don't have an answer. So I think one of the you know self-interested reasons why I want us to be democracy is because then it makes writing matter a little bit more because then if people agree with me that it actually it does something. So I don't know I I it's all it's all very complicated. I think this is a very um unsettled and challenging time to be a writer in many respects but I also think it's a you know perversely a very very interesting time >> and a time where ideas matter and a time where you know a lot of the gatekeepers and a lot of the norms and presuppositions have kind of been eroded to the point where we have this free-for-all and we can return to things like the constitution with new eyes. >> Yeah. >> And without the kind of reverence that we've been uh we've inherited. >> Yeah. And I think there's a lot of uh intellectually promising work that can come from an environment like that. Yeah. >> But I think it's also very dangerous. Yeah. >> Um and so it's up to each of us as writers to to know what we're about and know what our principles are and hopefully approach these questions with a humane public-mindedness and that's what I try to do. >> Yeah. No, I think that's great. And I mean not to, you know, throw, you know, it's not like we won't have time to fully flesh this out, but to some degree that's by per on purpose, but you know, one of the reasons why I asked that question is because I I've been thinking a lot about about why I write like why does somebody write? Because AI has kind of introduced this I mean you say AI slop, you have all this, but let's just say in the very least way more competition in terms of stuff that people could read online. Um, and so for me it's like when I write I am partly writing I am writing always to some degree for myself. I mean that sounds selfish and maybe to some degree it is. I do think like AI is interesting because it's like writing that's almost entirely for the consumer like the consu to some degree like the consumer >> creates it. So if you if you're using a chatbot you use a chatbot to create writing for yourself for you to read. Or there's also this way in which like people are oriented around like well I'm using AI because like it helps me you know get more stuff out there like more ideas that I wouldn't have time to kind of write and it or maybe you know helps me flesh out ideas like that's a little bit of a separate thing but I think the more people rely on it for content generation it's like I'm I'm looking for an audience that I'm like trying to send this out to and it's like I write because I'm trying to figure out what I think in the first place, right? And so like I hope that it might be indirectly helpful if I end up publishing it for other people and I I would like it to potentially influence how other people think, but it's also like I actually will also say I'm eager for other people to talk back at me to in a respectful way to be clear, but I want a conversation. It's like so the the part of the process is selfish and individual and that I'm I'm writing for myself as my own audience and trying to figuring out what I think in the first place, but then after it has become an, you know, a product, I guess, it still isn't something that, you know, I just want to send out there and hope that everybody else is eating it up and loving it. It's like I hope that I've become part of something bigger than myself and I'm and I am something I will learn through that process from others, you know. No, I think that that's that's exactly right and it matches what I think as well. I mean, I don't use AI for anything and there are a dozen different reasons why we can get into it. Uh, but we'd hear here for, you know, five more hours. Um, >> but I don't use it for anything. and and and when it comes to, you know, thinking through writing specifically, you know, everything that's in this book is in there because to your point, like I consulted information and I consulted data and consulted political theory and and I came to the conclusions I make having thought through all of that. And so I trust it in that way. >> If something appears before me on a screen and I don't know where it came from, I have no reason to trust it in the same kind of way. Yeah, >> even it's the rendering of somebody else's ideas, you know, it matters to me that I read, you know, William Reer, >> you know, and I sort of worked through that, >> um, rather than sort of trusting a summary that was produced by wherever, you know, and that's just that's the point for me. like I I want to trust the things that I'm saying, >> but also I want to engage in the process of thinking myself and reasoning myself and not outsourcing that to is kind something opaque that I I don't really know, understand that's trying to make money from me. >> So yeah, that's that's kind of my orientation. But you know, the thing about this moment that is again both really really intellectually interesting and really really scary is that those premises are not universally shared. >> Yes. And you have to actually make a case for them. You cannot presume as a writer or as a as an artist or as a filmmaker or musician or whatever happens to be that everybody's doing those things from the same premises that you are. >> People do. It's been revealed very very starkly in the last year, two years >> have very different ideas about what creativity means and what it means to think and what it means to write and why somebody should do any of these things. And if we have our own perspectives on all of that, we actually now we're in a position where we have to make an argument to people >> that they should agree. >> And I think we can, but yeah, it it won't do to just sort of, >> you know, hold on to a world where Yeah. we all assumed that we all were on the same page on what art was. >> Yeah. you know, um, >> and again, that's exciting because, you know, it would be great to like write the definitive set of arguments that that actually tell us what art is all about, what it's for, and so on. But it's also, you know, if if we don't do that, then the people end up making the decisions are, >> you know, uh, very very strange people in Silicon Valley. So, >> uh, you know, that's that's that's the the promise and the, uh, you know, the peril of the moment here. >> Yeah. Very very well said. I I I really have been very grateful this entire conversation has been excellent. Um I really enjoyed it. I do want to give you an opportunity. Is there anything that we talked about that anything that we didn't talk about that you would like to chat more on? >> It covered a lot of ground. Um I don't think so. I think I think we just about covered uh covered everything. >> Well, let me ask then also like what are you working on right now? What's next? >> So yeah, I have um some reviews that I'm doing between now and the end of the year. I have a book on literacy I'm reviewing or the literacy crisis if there is one for the New Republic. I'm reviewing >> uh a book on uh the college educated working class and kind of economic discontent amongst sort of like educated people and its impacts. Um I am going to write something about AI between now and the end of the year that's going to be like a Jeremiah of some kind. I just need the time to to do it. Um, so yeah, like little things like that. But also, you know, I'm thinking about the next book project. I have an idea of what it is. It is going to be about the American idea and American nationalism and sort of thinking about it from the left and whether there's the recoverable vision and purpose for this society that we should be talking up in this moment now. So yeah, that's kind of what I've on the dock and we'll see what happens. There's an election this year. >> That's right. I'm sure you'll be writing something about that. >> That's right. So yeah, that's that's what I've got so far. >> Well, great. A lot to look forward to then. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. >> Thank you so so much for having me. As usual, there's a few reflections that I want to share before we wrap things up. OSEDA intervenes in debates today about whether public discourse, especially among politicians and pundits, anybody trying to influence politics, should appeal to American democracy. Ace argues that people too often talk about democracy in the abstract, separate from any kind of material benefits or the everyday difficulties that Americans deal with in their daily lives. He argues that America is actually not a democracy, but it should be. Ace defines democracy using three metrics. Political equality, that is to say, no person or class of people has an entrenched political privilege or distinct set of rights. responsiveness. That is to say, eventually and on some measures, the legislation and government action often reflects Americans preferences or interests and majoritarian rule. But his vision of democracy includes freedoms and rights constraints that are typically referred to as liberal, such as freedoms of speech, freedoms of association, and is a dynamic vision of democracy. That is to say that the composition of majority coalitions are always shifting and whoever wins or loses elections is always changing. While even the title of Ace's book calls for a new American founding, he is clear that he's not calling for some sort of immediate national convention to amend the Constitution as outlined in article 5. Instead, he emphasizes that changes need to be developed through long-term mobilization with the general public's genuine participation and buyin. That said, he argues that some of the dysfunction of American politics, such as our institutions's lack of responsiveness to voters preferences or lack of opportunities for self-governance, can be mitigated at the state level and in civil society organizations and participating in organizations and smaller institutions exercising collective action can help Americans exercise agency and practice the civic habits that efforts at more constitutional level changes would require in the first place. Bita's book also addresses what he calls economic democracy. He argues people in power can't just dismiss the economic discontent and frustration of Americans even as we acknowledge that policy responses that emphasize tariffs won't work to bring back the good jobs that they promise. He argues for people on both sides of the political spectrum to cease making these false promises about a return to a mid-century manufacturing economy that will not come back and to come to terms with the many changes that our economy is defined by. From automation to the gig economy and other distinctive features of our time. Aita criticized how much the law makes it difficult for workers to unionize or otherwise act in concert. and his work shows how sectoral organizations can help workers find resources and fight for improvements in their workplaces. Here I think I have to note that many economists criticize unions as economically inefficient. While they initially increase wages for the original unionized workers, these gains dissipate. In terms of a classic text, though there's more recent research, you could see Gordon Tollik's 1975 transitional gains trap. However, many economists will also acknowledge that those who support unions and other organizational structures to enhance worker power often do so for reasons that are beyond wages or economic efficiency, such as the ability to exercise voice to shape the direction of a firm and to remedy oppressive workplace conditions. In his book, Acea discusses the massive surveillance and widespread injuries suffered by workers in Amazon warehouses and drivers, as well as the company's efforts to thwart unionization, to give one such example. But if you're skeptical of unions, economists also argue for other policy solutions that can help workers more than tariffs ever will. My colleague Leah Pelosi works on portable benefits for independent contractors from truckers to care workers, which are designed to help gig workers and other independent workers access employment benefits such as healthcare and retirement funds. Despite their differences, I like that Asz and Leah's approaches start from a cleareyed view of many kinds of real people who fall under the commonly evoked image of the American worker and the need for policy solutions to avoid naive nostalgia for a past that we will never get back. Given this year's anniversary of the Wealth of Nations, I couldn't help but think of Adam Smith's critiques of tariffs and subsidies, which usually helped some merchants and industries at the expense of many of the poorest workers in the population as a whole. I discussed these arguments in earlier episodes this season with Smith scholars Maria P. Paganelli and Glory Lou. So, if you're interested in more, check those out. I'll add that this conversation with Osa reminded me of some of my other favorite passages from Wealth of Nations where Smith criticizes how laws made it easy for merchants to meet and coordinate together while prohibiting their employees, poor workers from doing the same. To be clear, this is a very different historical context. Smith was not talking about unions. But as long as we continue to turn to Smith as a resource for political economy, it's important to keep in mind that he himself considered not only how laws and policies shaped wages or economic efficiency, but the power that employers and industry leaders can wield in the political system and in the private sphere over their own employees and the market as a whole. I'm so grateful to Osa for joining me and to you for listening. Till next time. Heat. Heat.