The Pete Buttigieg Episode | Lemonade Stand 🍋

0:00Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Lemonade Stand podcast featuring special guest Pete Buddha Judge. Welcome to welcome to the stand. >> Thank you. Glad to be here. Hi Pete, thanks for being here. This is awesome. >> Yeah, this is this is really cool for us. I wanted to start by introducing you a little bit to our audience, maybe they

0:14don't know. >> And I wanted to showcase some of your accomplishments because you're an accomplished man. So, if we could pull up this this scene, Perry. >> Um, at age 22, you graduated from Harvard. And I'm just doing a bit of comparison here to one of our hosts. >> This is uh Aiden. I don't know if you

0:28met him across the pod here >> at 22. I don't know if you know this, he actually got uh >> 502nd place at a Smash Brothers Melee video game tournament. >> Oo. >> So like he was, you know, I'm saying it's you're both >> And is that a prestigious video game? >> It's very prestigious. Okay, cool. >> Then by 25 you guys diverged even

0:46further because you were a road scholar and went to Oxford, but he actually moved up in his placement and got seventh at a Super Smash Brothers Melee. >> You went to Oxford >> video game tournament. That was a big tournament. That was a big >> Yeah, I'm getting my point because by 29 then you were elected mayor of South

1:06Bend, Indiana, but Aiden is not yet 29. So his potential in Super Smashers Melee is kind of unlimited. And so I want to ask you, how can the American public trust somebody who doesn't have that many Melee tournament experience as >> Yeah, that's a good point. Fair question. >> You haven't accomplished nearly as much as my friend Aiden here.

1:24>> Everywhere I go, people ask me this. I didn't know this segment was happening. I didn't know I was I was on trial. >> Oh, I just I want to I want to spotlight your big deal. You've done a lot of stuff. Aiden, >> I do want to ask the idea that you're you know Aiden's age and you were

1:40becoming mayor after going to Oxford and it's just this is crazy. So, what what is it like being that young running one of these positions? >> Still trying to figure out where I found some of those photos. Um they did not line up with the year, I promise.

1:53So, the thing is, wait, I I should probably start by explaining a little bit about Southbend. People have heard of it usually because they watch Notre Dame football or or basketball. But, um, we were a city that that really grew up around the auto industry. Studebaker was as big of a car uh maker as the um the

2:11big three. It would have been the big four if they hadn't gone out of business in the '60s. And it was a city that was really kind of trying to figure out if it was going to make it. Uh, kind of licking its wounds. that a lot of young people kind of got the message growing up as happens across the industrial

2:24Midwest that if you want to succeed, you have to get out. And and I was one of a lot who did. >> All of which is to answer your question by saying when I when I realized that I belonged there, wanted to come back and then ultimately wanted to run for mayor, running at that office, running for

2:38office at that age in a way kind of was my message. It was this way to say, look, there are young people who believe that this community has a future. M and to my amazement actually a lot of older voters who were particularly excited about the idea of a younger person stepping forward to to try to take the city in a different

2:57direction. So, um it was, you know, obviously there was some work to do to establish some credibility that that, you know, I was up to the task and it was it was a leap of faith. It's kind of always a leap of faith when you put somebody in charge of your city or your state or your country as a voter, right?

3:12But that much more so when you're in your 20s. But I actually found a lot of people embraced that as as kind of a way to kind of certify that I was serious about change um and and not just going to represent a status quo that people were were frustrated with in the city.

3:25>> Why do you think it is that we have so few young people running for like we have such an elderly Senate presidency? How like why do you think why do you think that is? >> Yeah. And and to be clear, this is not normal. So the gap between the average age of our elected officials and the

3:40average age of our citizens is wider in the United States than it is in a lot of other places. Uh some of that I think is cultural. I think we've grown up with this idea that you're supposed to wait your turn or wait many many turns before you step forward. Uh obviously I I I you know didn't believe in that. I mean

3:56running for mayor in my 20s. I ran for president in my in my 30s. Uh and and people responded. But there is that kind of cultural expectation that you just got to kind of wait. And I encourage young people who care about politics and care about their their country or their community not to do that. Not to wait.

4:09Yeah. I mean, you should know what you're doing. You know, have a vision if you're if you're thinking about running for office, but I wish more people would. There are also some features of our system that might actually uh systematically make that more true. So, compared to other democracies, we have more of a winner take all system in the

4:27way that our our congressional elections work. for example, you know, a lot of countries you'd be in a place where there would be multiple members in a single district and the top three or something like that get through. Uh some political scientists have argued that in that setup, you tend to have more young candidates or new candidates because a

4:45party will put forward a whole roster of people versus here where it's down to the whichever two people uh had the money and the institutional support to become the the nominees of the two parties >> in every race. Two Yeah. >> Yeah. at least in most places you do have those open primaries which I think I think can help with that a little bit

5:02and and we have seen very young people obviously that are an exception to the rule >> but >> I'm really concerned that there are a lot of structural things in the US that systematically kind of repress the the the chances for a lot of young people to to step up at a very moment where we need more young people to be engaged and

5:18the pitch I always make is uh you know the younger you are the the longer you're planning to be here the more you have irreversibly at stake in a whole set of decisions Right. And these decisions are going to be made with or without you. So, at the very least, you ought to be voting, but also you should

5:32find ways to to uh be involved in those processes. >> I don't know. This system is putting forward the best 75 year olds possible. >> We talked about on this show, but you know, I think in my lifetime, I'm I'm 34. Every president maybe other than Obama was born exactly in 1946. Every single one. >> Think about that.

5:51>> That's astounding. >> Yeah. I mean, Trump, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush. They were all born within a few weeks of each other, I think. And so, you know, we became we they entered our consciousness maybe at different ages, but they're all the same age as each other, except >> they have the same kind of they grew up

6:07in the same values. They have the same. >> Do we need some sort of like mega birth year where we create >> where the millennials take over? >> The the five greatest millennials and then we got >> we run it for you. >> I am I am curious. I was going to ask this later about your your role as

6:21mayor, but since you brought it up, >> uh we have a lot of young folks, including uh I'm we're young. >> We're young, right? We're young. >> Check. >> Um >> and uh what you just said about being involved. I personally have felt a sense of helplessness with politics. I think that's why I often am just drawn to tech

6:38and not to current events because it feels like, well, at least I can make a computer do a thing. There's like a result that can happen. So, you know, for you in your 20s to have gone and successfully do this, how specifically would you encourage people to go out and be involved when it feels so intractable? >> Well, start I would say start with what

6:54you care about. So, you know, for different people that means different things. For me, it it had to do with the fate of the the city that I'd grown up in. We were being called a dying city and uh in the national press and I I wanted to be part of a generation that would change that. But I would also say

7:09more broadly there's a lot of processes that play out uh close to home like these these very unsexy things like the way a planning board is meeting or a zoning board or a city council or something like that. And maybe that doesn't sound like your your idea of a fun way to spend a a Tuesday night. Uh

7:26but you know things that everybody should care about like whether housing is going to be built in your community that'll take the edge off of what it costs to uh uh to to to rent or or to try to own a home. You know, those play out in some of these processes and not a lot of people go. So I'm not even just

7:43talking about the people who run or appointed to a board or a commission or city council or something like that, but just the people who even show up >> tend to skew older. They tend to be people with a direct kind of special interest. Um, >> yeah. >> And I think a lot of folks don't realize those processes are open. Like you you

7:59can show up. You could show up at I mean when I was mayor, anybody could come to a city council meeting and I think you got three minutes. You could say whatever you wanted and everybody would have to listen. And I I actually think there's something important and and healthy about that if and only if a lot

8:14of people step up. Yeah. I mean, you compare that to Congress where in order to testify in Congress, you you have to be invited or or subpoenaed, like one or the other. Um, and um, and there are so many other processes in state and local government where all you have to do to make your voice heard is show up, right?

8:30And I think I I worry sometimes that in a more kind of virtualized digital environment that you know the younger you are the more that's kind of the the environment you you came up in. Um you might overlook the fact that that there are a lot of these processes where if you show up in 3D you can literally

8:48require four elected officials to hear what you have to say. As far as running I think the important thing is to again obviously have a vision know what you care about and you know watch a certain office. Maybe it's a member of Congress. Maybe it's something more local. Uh and you know, one of two things will happen.

9:05Either you'll see a leader and you'll think, "All right, they make a lot of sense. I want to I want to support them with my vote, maybe more. Maybe you want to donate. Maybe you want to uh volunteer, be part of a campaign, or you watch them and you're like, "Well, I could do it better than that." Right?

9:17And if you have that instinct, then that's a pretty good indication that maybe you should try. Uh after mayor and then a stint in the military, you went and became the department of transportation head, which is a pretty important and incredible job. We are big

9:29fans of trains here. We talk about trains a lot. >> Fans of trains, >> like big fans of trains. Um in fact, maybe actually Perry, do you have it ready? Can we have the train hyperometer? So, we have a kind of running height meter of where exactly we all stand on trains at the moment. >> So, we've been talking a lot about

9:43Bright Line. We've been reading books about China and what they've been doing with their development. Right now, Atrich, I think he's sitting at like maybe a four. So, you know, high fours, >> weirdly low. Aiden is is currently the most enthusiastic about trains, and I believe recently, yeah, I'm somewhere in the middle, but we're big, we're big

9:58trains fans. I'm wondering, you know, of all the things that you handled at the DOT, how do you feel about trains specifically? How excited are you about trains? >> I'm very excited about trains. I think the the potential is enormous. >> Yeah. Put them up at the 10. >> I would own that. Yeah, that's good. Um, I think that first of all, if you are at

10:17all kind of competitive about the idea that America ought to be leading the way, then you got to ask yourself, how is it that that people in so many other countries enjoy a higher standard of train service than we do? And, you know, compared to what we're used to in the US, I I wouldn't even be asking for a

10:33Japanese level, like Italian level would be would be a lot better than we've got, right? Um and uh there's all kinds of reasons why and we we can dig in on that, but I think the the the basic reason why is you get what you pay for, right? So what we did was the biggest investment in passenger rail in 50 years

10:49since Amtrak was set up in the first place. And even that's kind of a down payment on what's going to be needed in the long run. Uh but also working with you mentioned Bright Line, right? Running from from Las Vegas to Southern California. Incredibly exciting. And and part of why I was uh really excited about that and we funded it with with

11:03billions of dollars to help make it happen is I would love for the conversation with anybody who comes back from Las Vegas instead of just like you know somebody who got back from Japan and they're like why can't we have this just so many people go to Vegas and if you see it there and come back and say

11:18why can't we have this in more places I think it becomes something there's more and more public demand for but we we've got to also just never mind a highspeed rail like Bright Line um We just need regular speed rail to be better in this country. >> We'll take slow speed. >> I mean, what most people would consider

11:36regular speed would be a big improvement for us. >> If it's faster than LA traffic, we're fine. Like, we're still in denigrate the great city of LA here. I >> I actually do have a question about that specific project cuz maybe maybe you can illuminate some of it. So when we had looked into that, what admittedly one of

11:50my frustrations with it is seeing that uh instead of going all the way into LA to a place like Union Station, which is the main station in the center of LA, it starts out pretty far east, more towards Ontario. >> Yeah. >> And when you just like math out what like driving takes to Vegas or even the

12:07cost of like a cheap flight from like Burbank airport uh to go to Vegas, it >> all of a sudden like wasn't as appealing to me anymore. And I'm not saying that that project shouldn't exist. I it's like one of my number one personal priorities is that I want to see that type of transportation expand. But I am

12:25wondering that with an example like this that seems so it it would be so obviously more successful if it went into the heart of LA and was more accessible to the population here, what keeps a project like that that has all that funding from having that kind of obvious access point? Like what stops that? Uh so in a word cost so first of

12:47all I don't disagree and I think the long run vision for a mature developed network and set of routes has to be city center to city center downtown to downtown population center gravity to population center of gravity. But I think where we are right now in the US is you just got to start somewhere. So getting it as far as basically Rancho

13:03Cukamonga um gets you into Southern California and I think creates more of a level of demand and expectation that we start uh uh facing the cost or tearing down the barriers that create the cost. It's like a exponential a hockey stick kind of thing the more you get into these areas that are built up. And just to give you a sense of how extreme it

13:20is, you know, in New York, we worked on a project to extend the Second Avenue subway, something I believe really needs to be done uh up uh get it up uh past uh where it goes now, 125th Street, and it is in the billions now to get that extension. And the tunnel is already there. The tunnel was built 50 years

13:42ago. So just getting the stations, the signaling, the the the right of way, the clearance to do that is that expensive. Now, we shouldn't tolerate that either. And there's a whole body of work going on about how to make it less expensive pound-for-pound per square mile, however you want to measure it, to build anything in this country, definitely

13:59including transportation. That's going to require legal reform, structural reform, permitting reform. When we do that, I think we have a better shot at these u these things getting built out. But I think where we are now is we just need somewhere in America, we need actual butts in seats on revenue uh service highspeed rail and then I think

14:19it becomes unstoppable and I think we become more willing as a country to tear down the barriers that have made it hard to build. Could you speak a little more to the to the funding part of that because I I think it touches on a broader subject that we wanted to get to, but the it just with public

14:33transportation, it's kind of my understanding that we actually do spend a ton of money on transportation in the country and like a lot of cities uh even LA Metro spend uh have have enormous budgets to be able to spend on their public transport network. And compared to other cities that I would say are like more successful, like if you looked

14:51at a Tokyo or a Paris or or really anywhere else in the world >> or any rural farm in China >> and uh they they have like kind of more scrutiny, more stringent budgets like and and they're able to make it work. And I'm wondering is there some sort of like chicken egg issue with public

15:13transportation funding in the country? because we do spend a a ton we do spend a ton of money on it. So what's the gap there in like how that money is being spent versus how people are able to successfully accomplish that in other places? >> Well, one issue we have is is relative to what we're willing to spend on public

15:29transit or trains. We're always spending much more on cars and roads and obviously I want our cars and and roads to function well. But we've torqued it in a way that actually pushes people onto the roads in a way uh by uh a mix of kind of subsidies and um and deficiencies on the other end. So that

15:48leads to kind of a vicious cycle where the land gets starts to get planned and used in ways that assume that everybody has to have a car. And that's definitely true in parts of the Midwest. It's true in Southern California. It's true in a lot of kind of low and middle density places. that then makes it that much

16:03more expensive if you try to shift things or improve things like what we're trying to do with with transit. Now, here's another thing that's interesting, right? >> We don't have to have transit built on the same logic that uh dominated the way we did it, let's say, 50 years ago, like a hub and spoke system for for bus

16:22routes. Uh that was basically the only way to do it before you had things like GPS or on demand rides. Now it's not obvious in a middle density area that that's the best way to organize your uh your transit because you can have more on demand pooling uh microtransit all these things adding up into a more rational network that per person or per

16:41ride should be cheaper. The other thing you mentioned is the the the comparison to other countries. And I think this is why and frankly this is a challenge in my party. Um this is why we can't just accept that this is what things are always going to cost because as you mentioned you know you look at some of

16:56these European countries they have environmental standards at least as good as ours probably better. They have labor standards at least as stringent as ours often tougher. and they are still managing like the amount of money it takes to build a mile of railway in Spain for example is a fraction of what it costs here and that is a result of

17:16really not so much technical but political barriers here the number of steps you have to get through to get anything funded the uncertainty of funding I mean right now the president is holding a $16 billion uh round of funding for a tunnel that is more than a hundred years old uh in New York uh the Hudson tunnels They're 110 years old.

17:37They were damaged by Superstorm Sandy. That was more than a decade ago. Hundreds of thousands of people a day go through this tunnel. It needs to be done like yesterday. And now it's getting stopped because of because of political really. Um when that happens, every time that happens, every time that even might happen, it adds to the

17:54uncertainty. It adds to the project timeline and that adds to the cost. So there's no question that we need to design and build things in a better way. I worked on that in my time at DOT, but we got a long way to go as a country. This feels like a bigger We talk about

18:06this something along this line on the show a lot. Bigger than just transportation though. It we we had this idea of like imagine a leaky pipe and you're pouring 10 gallons of money into it and only a little bit comes out for the actual service. And it just feels like we we throw more money in their country at healthcare. We throw more

18:24money at the military. We more money at transportation on a lot of things, but the outcomes we get are often subpar, like way less than the dollar amount we're spending. And so you mentioned like specific problems with transportation, but why do you think this political has invaded almost every aspect of what the government is supposed to be doing? Like

18:40why? >> Well, I think part of it is that the government is less and less structured to solve problems. So think about um think about our Congress for example, our legislature. Uh we got 435 seats. About 40 of them are actually competitive. like you actually really would have to wonder whether the Democrat or the Republican is going to

19:01win. Um you might estimate that number a little higher or a little lower. >> Sure. It's a small percentage. >> So one out of 10, right? And the rest of them it's pretty much decided when you have your nominee. All that really matters is the the fight within the party, the the primary, right? Uh for what's going to be a deep red Republican

19:20seat or a deep blue Democratic seat. That makes it much less likely that when there's a political obstacle obstacle to solving a technical problem that people are really going to come together and get it done, right? Because the only thing you really have to worry about is the the political extreme of your own party, >> right? >> Um and this can so for example, when it

19:42comes to this uh this New York tunnel that that I'm really concerned about because I'm it's it's the largest single transportation project in the country and they just stopped because the president just stopped it. He just he doesn't like Chuck Schumer and he's shutting down the product. >> That doesn't sound like a Trump idea. There's no way.

19:58>> To be fair, Chuck's had a lot of attitude lately. I've been I've been keeping an eye on it. It's not like they it's not like they said, "Oh, we just discovered this huge design flaw, right? It's not like that. It's it's just they're nakedly admitting he even said that they would they he would start funding the project again if they named

20:13Dulles Airport and Penn Station after Donald Trump, right? >> Um now they're trying so much to ask. Now they're trying to move all the highways after them and the train. >> I mean, I heard the tunnel's woke, so we >> Exactly. Yeah. >> Uh there's a bridge to Canada, the Gordy How Bridge. The Canadians are actually paying for it. And it included a lot of

20:31American uh uh materials. >> Who's paying for it? >> Yeah. Mexico didn't pay for the wall, but Canada was paying for the bridge. >> Thanks. >> And um I didn't >> I didn't ask me about that. >> Um and now the president's saying, "Well, I'm not going to let it open." Not really clear why. Well, because he's

20:52mad at Canada, I guess. But it's not exactly irrational. That kind of irrational is really costly. And the reason that has to do with what I was just saying earlier is that normally, regardless of right, left, the people from that region would stand up, even to a president of their own party, the elected officials, right? You would

21:07expect Michigan Republicans to say, "No, you can't just like stop a bridge into Michigan that's critical to our economy." Republicans in New Jersey and New York would be standing right next to Democrats in New Jersey and New York saying, "You can't do this." But we don't have that. So I I know that it can sound kind of uh um you know technical

21:24or arcane to be talking about things like the way districts are drawn in Congress and connect that up to how much it costs to build a mile of tunnel or a stretch of road. But I really think there's a relationship between those things. Uh you know you go through the

21:36different industries every every example is a little different. You mentioned healthcare. I mean part of that is because it's actually a a classic textbook example of where a normal market tends not to work. Right? If if you think about just what you learn in economics about where a market works well, you know, the market for uh peanut

21:53butter, uh where you got a set number of choices, anybody can enter, anybody can make their own brand of peanut butter. Uh everybody knows what peanut butter is um and you have a certain willingness to pay for it and maybe you have an extra willingness to pay for it if it's better, but only so much, right? And

22:06then all your textbook market dynamics kick in, supply, demand, and it pushes the cost down to be relatively close to what it actually costs to produce. None of that's true in healthcare. I mean, first of all, you can't just jump in and be an alternate provider of healthcare. It takes years to get uh to be a doctor

22:22and and and there's a lot of restrictions on on the number of doctors in a particular specialty who get certified every year. Um the person who is making the purchasing decision is not always the same thing as the customer because you got this uh insurance company as middleman, right? >> Um your willingness to pay is not really

22:39on a normal high. It's not like peanut butter, right? Especially think >> you can't walk away. >> Yeah. or if you think you're going to die if you don't get this treatment, then like you don't care if it's a gazillion, whatever. Like, get it for me, right? And and so there all these examples where normal market conditions

22:52don't apply, which is why in my view, we need to be ready to have a a public system where the private sector can still be there, but they have to demonstrate that they're better than the public system in order to get your business. Uh we call it Medicare for all who want it versus Medicare for all whether you want it or not. That's what

23:07we called it when I was running for president. Because places that do that don't just take better care of people. They actually have a record of having more efficient use of dollars. In other words, more of the dollar that goes into your healthare actually goes toward treating you instead of going into this administrative muck where it just kind

23:27of disappears in bureaucracy. Um although I am helpful uh hopeful in healthcare that it's one of many areas where if we get AI right I'm not sure we will but if we do the cost >> nope >> well I I wanted to I actually wanted to ask about healthcare because I think it's a a really good example. So I'm

23:48>> we'll come back to AI later. We're going to talk about vibe coding apps and for 45 you do a a vibe code a to-do list app. We're going to do a bunch Yeah. Yeah. um very like pro- universal healthcare of of some kind, right? Like this the system that we have at every turn. Like whether I talk to friends who

24:04are doctors, whether I talk to my friends who are just trying to get a checkup and they don't have insurance or they have bad insurance, like it is terrible at like every level. It feels like one of the problems with Medicare for all or or a public system of any kind is that Medicare will uh cover the

24:24bills as they are in an American system. >> And to cover everyone under a system like Medicare now is literally it's >> as much as I would like to just say spend the money, it's it's literally not to me it literally is not possible. And I think there's a lot of rhetoric around let's create some sort of like more

24:46encompassing Medicare program that more people are covered under, but how do you combat the cost part? Like the fact that some drug here might be hundreds of dollars versus like the 10 or 20 that it is in another country or a treatment the same way. And I think that's such a critical component of solving this that never gets

25:05>> talked about. And I'm wondering when you think about a health care solution in the long run like how that part of it gets changed. >> Yes. I think this is hugely important because the the the debates over how we structure the insurance they really matter. But if we do nothing about the actual underlying cost of care, then

25:23we're not solving the problem. And uh and we have to do both. So getting the insurance structure right means more of the dollar actually goes toward the actual cost. Meanwhile, you have to make sure the actual cost is lower. How do you do that? Part of it is making sure you use the market power that your insurer has. So for example, we know for

25:38a fact that if Medicare is allowed to bargain for lower drug prices, uh you get lower drug prices. >> Aren't we not allowed to currently, >> right? Legally from there. There's 10 that we can do as of this year. >> 10, right? >> Yes. They only picked 10. Yeah. >> I'm sorry to sideline my own question. Why Why is that not allowed? That seems

25:59psychotic. And I feel like I must I must be missing something. >> Politics. It's politics, right? It's it's the fact that obviously you've got some very powerful industries that can get their way and make sure that what seems like the most common sensical thing in the world doesn't actually happen. And if I can zoom out for a bit,

26:16>> yeah, >> there are so many things in this country where okay, you don't have 100% agreement. We're we got lots of different ideas in this country, but basically like at least twothirds of the country thinks we ought to do something in a certain way. Whether we're talking about having a more progressive tax code where the wealthiest are paying more

26:33than they do now. Whether we're talking about healthcare, having the government uh maybe not take over everything of course, but but but play a more aggressive role in making sure you can get your health taken care of. Whether we're talking about uh social personal liberties, uh right to choose, uh uh marriage equality, um whether we're talking about uh um gun safety, wherever

26:54you are in Second Amendment, at least making sure there's universal background checks, these are all things that have at least twothirds of the country on board. And they can't happen in today's Washington. when the entire concept of of America like the whole way we invented this country was the idea that if you have a certain democratic system

27:10of government what that government comes up with will be more aligned with what most people want. We don't have that right now. And to me that's that's a foundational problem that kind of if we address that properly and there's a whole set of things I could take you through on what I think that looks like then all the other specific problems

27:27around healthcare policy, transportation policy, tax policy start to get better.

27:31Do you have any idea how you I think a an overwhelming feeling I have about what you're saying is this feeling of being at the bottom of this hole we've dug so deep. And when I look at not not to say that other countries don't have problems of their own, but like if you looked at China like they can

27:51>> they can cut out a lot of this through like kind of authoritarian means. You can skip a lot of the like the red tape and the political by being authoritarian. I'm not saying go in that direction. I'm saying like that's one way. Or you could look at another country like >> Denmark that I think probably has a

28:07stronger democracy right now than than we do and they're able to approach these problems in a different way. >> Yes. >> And I see we're in like this tangled horrific web of political polarization. It's how at a national level, how do you begin to like undo some of this stuff?

28:28And I know that's vague, but it's that's the that's the like big boogeyman I see that I feel like is really difficult to overcome. >> Also tack on what you just said. You could go in the details. I would love to go out. I want to like what are some things we can actually do instead of just acknowledging there's problems.

28:45>> So I think I think part of the answer to your question is the we we have this kind of first mover disadvantage uh with our constitution because we were kind of the first country to try to do it this way. So we innovated with this technology of kind of constitutional democratic republic representative system of government. Um

29:04you know other countries were viewed as constitutional but they didn't actually write the constitution down. We think constitution by definition is a is a is a document. Actually in the British system they think of themselves as having a constitution but it's not it's not written which creates its own set of problems as you might imagine. But uh

29:21anyway there are a few things. It was very elegantly designed and the most elegant thing about the constitution is the capacity for amendments. So you write this basic law that everything else is built on top of but you also realize that it there might be something in there that you need to change or fix or develop. So you have the process of

29:38creating an amendment and um uh and it's it's not easy but but it's something you can do if you really want to as a country. We set the threshold for how to do it a little too high. So other countries after us developing democratic systems and by the way some of our own states most of our own states within the

29:57US came at it a little differently had a way you could amend your constitution they actually do it more often. We haven't done a substantive amendment to the constitution in about 50 years >> and was the last one >> uh there was a technical one in the 90s about congressional pay but actually uh one of the last big ones was about

30:14lowering the voting age which went from 21 to 18. >> Okay, >> good move I would say. Right. Um, you know, in the 20th century, we we had quite a few. Um, not all of which were good, right? We had prohibition, an amendment to the constitution, so you couldn't get a drink. But then after a few years, realized that was a bad idea.

30:30Change it back with another amendment, right? Um, the Bill of Rights is amendments that that wasn't in kind of the 1.0 constitution. They they pad they they tack that on, right? >> Um, so that's where I would begin to answer your question is we should entertain some constitutional amendments to improve the democratic nature of our country. Like if you could wave a magic wand,

30:51what's your agreement? >> Cuz I imagine like you're not you're not starting at the surface level of like the amendment is going to be like we'll finish the tunnel. Like the 26th amendment is >> it's it's going to be something like deeper that has further consequences. So I'm curious what that would look like. >> That's my point. It's easier to get

31:06things like the tunnel done if you uh fix democracy or improve democracy. So what might some of those amendments be? Uh, first of all, a super simple one that I just think is important in principle. One person, one vote. Uh, that everybody's vaugh account the same. >> Wait a minute, though. I'm richer than Aiden. Why would I have the same amount

31:24of votes as him? >> That's the whole point. >> That doesn't >> And we're older. We should have more. >> We're older and we're wealthier. We should be able to have more impact. >> No, I like this because one day I'll be richer than you and then I want to have more than you. >> So, we actually don't have one even for

31:41picking the president, right? We don't have that especially for picking the president uh because of the electoral college. We should just we're the only country in the world that that we're the only presidential democracy where you can come in second place >> and you get to be president and the person who came in first place in terms

31:55of getting the most votes doesn't get to be president. That is nuts. So that's one we could fix. Another one we could do is about gerrymandering. Um these districts that are drawn in the most bizarre shapes. I saw one of them. It was described as the shape of goofy kicking Donald Duck. um on a map so that

32:13you can, you know, predetermine the the the results. Um making sure that there is fairness in the way that districts are drawn. Making sure that there's a a little more specificity around the right to vote. I would argue that if you're a low-income American and you got uh two jobs or three, uh having to stand in line for more than an hour in order to

32:33vote means you didn't really have the right to vote. But right now, there's no constitutional protection saying that uh it is a responsibility to make sure you can actually go in and cast that vote. uh we could adjust uh the way money works in politics. You know, right now the Supreme Court holds that basically a corporation is the same thing as a

32:50person for the purpose of intervening in politics. And uh spending money to manipulate the outcome of an election is the same thing as me giving a speech about my views. Money is speech. Corporations are people. We could clear that up with a constitutional amendment. I think we should. >> You're anti-free speech. >> My good friend McDonald's has a lot of

33:08thoughts on regulation of fast food that I want to hear. And if he's not able, and I think he's a he, if he's not able, it's free. >> This is the thing, right? Like, we don't have to, if there's one thing I'm trying to say everywhere I go, it's it doesn't have to be this way. Like, we've gotten

33:25soaked in things being a certain way that isn't working, and it doesn't have to be that way. So, those are just a few examples of of structural democratic reform. Um, but there's also reforms ahead, I think, in terms of how our economy works that we need to get ready for, especially given what AI is going to do. And I think when that I'm not

33:41saying it fixes everything. I am saying that a lot of other problems would be easier to solve if we had a government that was more accountable to the people and more representative. >> I would like for that to happen. I hope somebody makes that happen. >> I'm working on it. >> Yeah. >> This is like the repeal Citizens United

33:59type. >> Yes, that's part of it. That's okay. Yeah. Yes, I would like that. >> Right. But this is the thing. We we we I think we're we all feel so j like it's we feel like it's too much to ask. And it's not. It's not too much to ask. Like our whole country got set up around I

34:14mean, you know, was way more radical than anything we've just talked about is the idea of not having a king and setting up a democratic government. This is super radical idea, right? When when the founders did it and they did it, >> right? >> And more or less worked out. What do you think about the uh the structural

34:28problems with the Senate where it's two per state? Some states have way smaller population. Here in California, we have 60 times Wyoming or whatever, but we have Is that What do you think about that? >> I mean, I cannot imagine that that's what the founders had in mind. I know that, you know, they struck these deals that that you know, you get uh equal

34:45representation in the Senate per state. But I mean, again, if you think about within, for example, we have state senates, right, within every state. Yeah. uh one state's unicameal has but whatever you know the US Senate isn't the only Senate but it's the only Senate where the seats aren't proportioned equally >> right

35:05>> but there's a lot of things we could do that don't require amending the Constitution I think we should launch a package of constitutional amendments to make our country more democratic but just to be clear things like uh reforming the Supreme Court to make it less partisan which might involve a different number of justices that actually the number nine nine justices

35:22in the Supreme Court that's in the Constitution. We start out with three and they changed it and then they stopped changing it. Uh we the number of representatives in the House of Representatives, the number of states in the United States, like none of those things are locked in in the Constitution. We should be >> We have to make a whole new flag though.

35:36It would be such a pain. >> I know you'd have to find another star. And >> it is really unfortunate. 50 is a great >> We really got to lock it in. >> That That is It is tough that we >> Sorry, Puerto Rico. 50 is just too clean. >> We already made so many flags.

35:50Support for Lemonade Stand comes from Adobe Acrobat Studio. >> Guys, I have a I have an actual thing that I have been using lately that actually helps me. If you have a really let's say I'm still in school, this is an example for people that are tiny little baby children like Aiden >> and you have a book that you need to

36:08read or a or or 18 pages or whatever. >> You didn't read books at school. >> Don't lie to us. >> Comments matches. All right. uh you can put that in a PDF into Adobe Acro PDF spaces and it will generate a literally it'll generate a podcast for you or a presentation for you that you can then use to summarize and understand

36:28the the takeaways from this longer. >> It's actually amazing for learning. >> It literally is just like you can have it you can like have it generate a quiz for you. It's like it is a helpful thing for summarizing a very large document that's in a PDF is a useful >> you need resources for your baby mind

36:43but I consume the material in one go and I keep it all in my head. That's how I keep everything so straight and easily managed in front of me. >> You're always saying disaster communicating with you. Be like Atriarch. Use Adobe. Learn more at adobe.com/do that with Acrobat. And now you can use PDF spaces to learn so much

37:01more from your files, man. Be forgetful. Play. Be free. He's just channeling. >> Don't follow the constraints of >> of the office in the workspace that I'm working in. >> Make your co-workers mad. Support

37:21for this episode comes from Tasty Trade. And I want to ask, what's a time you forged your own path in life? Right. We're just talking to Mr. Pete Buddha Judge. He forged a path early in his life. How were you forging at age 28, Aiden Gaming? >> I think a few years ago after I was working in esports for a while, I was

37:38living with my friend Lewig and he had become a big, you know, he had become a big your own YouTuber, not not follow. He kind of had this big coat behind him that I like that I reached out and grabbed and then I got a job. Is that what you meant? >> Yeah, that's that's kind of what I

37:57meant. It's like following behind. >> All the greats did that, you know? They grabbed the coattails and just hung on. >> In business and in life >> to forge my own path. >> You got to forge your own path, make your own decisions. With Tasty Trade, you can trade stocks, options, futures, and more allin-one platform and offers

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38:41Um I I did want to ask I I think the early part of this kind of focus on uh you know the idea of like how money is spent spending money more efficiently. >> The flip side of this >> uh is raising taxes especially on the wealthiest people. And uh I think just looking at what is

39:02necessary from like a policy perspective, a fiscal perspective in the future, it seems like we need to cut spending by making spending at least like more efficient, but also by raising taxes. >> And it feels like that platform of let's raise taxes and cut spending is

39:22historically very unpopular. Yeah. But we're getting further and further along into a place where that's necessary and someone kind of needs to be the guy and presumably will not be liked for it. And I'm wondering if that since that does seem necessary, I'm wondering if you agree with that to begin with, but also if that's like a politically tenable

39:44platform for anyone to even have in the future. >> Yeah, I think it's a fair question. I think it's it's pretty obviously true though that we need to uh have more and better sources of revenue and we need to be more efficient with our spending. Like I think most people just accept that that's true. And again, having cut

40:00my teeth as a mayor where you know you don't there's no federal reserve for the city of South Bend. Like we did our budget in in cash, right? And uh and we could only borrow so much and we couldn't print money. And so if I want to do more of this, I had to do less of that or we had to we had to ask the

40:15taxpayer. And I think we've really drifted away from that in terms of our national policy >> because that forces you to make the hard choices you have to make. Right. >> Right. Right. Which is the last thing that any I mean look any political body is going to have a hard time with that but for reasons we just went over like

40:30we're especially hardressed to do it right in today's currently. >> Would you guys consider Southbend just using the tariff money? >> Yeah. You keeping the other towns around you. >> Yeah. I just saw new numbers on the on the tariff money. the average household now has paid about an extra thousand dollar last year alone and that's set to

40:47go up this year from the tariffs. So this idea that this is just some abstract economic thing like this is hitting a lot of families that can't afford an extra thousand right now and it's not exactly helping our our trade balances. So even on its face in terms of what it was supposed to do, it has not led to an improvement in

41:03manufacturing. China actually just had their biggest year trade surplus ever, right? It was just not even working. And uh >> you know coming back to the spending side, this is why part of why the whole Doge thing kind of breaks my brain is that we really do need work on government efficiency. If we had had an actual serious effort to have a

41:25department of government efficiency versus the one we got, >> I really think it would have found some things that we could do differently and better. But instead, what they did was uh first of all, they made a bunch of up. I mean, if you look at the the numbers, you know, journalists went back to look at some of the the savings they

41:37claimed and they're literally wrong. There's one case where they just said, I can't believe this actually happened. They said billion instead of million and just overstated their savings by a factor of a thousand. This literally happened. I'm not making this up. >> We all make mistakes. >> Who among us hasn't Who among us hasn't accidentally fired the people in charge

41:54of nuclear weapons safety? >> Um, but you know, the stuff they tore down uh and overall spending went up. >> Yes. >> It's not even the line of it's it's up over last year. So it's >> But should we rethink the way we spend money in terms of our federal government? Yeah, like of course we should. >> Are we forced to? I mean,

42:12>> well, so this is the other interesting thing, right? I I I think that there will be a kind of a reckoning that is forced because I don't think the world is willing to lend America money indefinitely forever. By the way, the number one reason they did was because our political system was seen as a gold standard. So if our if if

42:30our leadership and political system are just kind of transparently a mess, they're going to be limits on our ability to borrow, which is going to create limits on our ability to spend, which is going to force the kind of conversation that that you're raising. But look, we know where we can find some revenue. I I I don't mean to say that

42:48it's as simple as like you find the one richest guy in the country and you tax his brains out and then all the problems will be solved. It's not that >> however, >> it's a shakeddown. It's a shake down. >> It's the Elon shakeddown. It's an amendment. I mean, I do this one way. >> We sacrificed one a year like in that

43:05old story. >> The Hunger Games, >> right? >> But I'll tell you what, a guy like that and a lot of other people like that are paying a lower percentage of their true income in taxes than a firefighter or a teacher >> or their secretary or Yeah. >> or Yeah. or their own employees, which is insane. So if you had a fairer

43:25taxation system that asked more of the wealthiest and if you did a better job of collecting what people actually owe. So part of what they they've done unfortunately is fired a bunch of people in the IRS whose job was not to raise anybody's taxes but just to make sure people paid the taxes that they're supposed to be paying which again if

43:41you're a firefighter or a teacher you probably are. If you have some complicated multi-million dollar financial scheme uh um underpinning your family finances or if you're you know the Elon Musks of the world um then you're probably not paying every I don't you know >> like you like you do.

43:58>> Yeah. I I all my money is in a shelter in in Ireland >> in Swallbart routing it through. I don't think they have any tax havens involved. I just pulled more. >> I've been waiting for years to to for somebody to mention Swalbard and I want to talk about Please don't let him get started on Sweden. He is trying to I

44:19need a president who cares more about the seed vault. >> I am obsessed with Swalbard. I went up there. This is my guy. >> It is fascinating. Do people know about this? >> No, like barely. This is this is the northernmost place you can get to using frequent flyer miles, which is how I wound up there. Um, and it's pretty much

44:39the northernmost everything. Like if you get if you get money, the little um the little ATM screen says in Norwegian, world's northernmost ATM. Uh, and the church there is the world's northernmost. It's the 78th parallel. It is like way way beyond anything else we think of as Arctic. And uh, I just think it's a fascinating place. So, sorry, I

44:55got very excited. >> It's okay. >> Um, and the seed vault. Where were we? >> Taxation. So, so yeah, tax evasion by very rich people is clearly a problem in this country. Uh, we I'm not saying that would cover the entire deficit. I'm saying it would make a big difference if we collect it properly. >> So, I I do have I

45:11>> Let me say before Elon sues me, I'm not accusing him of tax evasion directly. I have no idea. >> Wink. I do

45:19I do have two questions about raising taxes. The first is I watched your all-in interview and I think on that you describe Bernie as further to the left of you on tax policy when it comes to like the wealth tax or like what you might do. And I think there's fair critiques of how like a wealth tax might

45:39function. But I think critiques of taxes on the wealthy often come at the expense of doing anything at all. Yeah. And historically, we do have we had incredibly high tax rates through some of the country's uh most successful times. >> Yes. >> And I I guess I'm just wondering for for

45:59you who would is stating that your tax policy would be different than somebody like Bernie's, do you have an idea of what direction or what you would be looking for to like what what what type of tax policy would you take to not not only the wealthy but like people in general? >> Yeah. I mean, I think it should be,

46:16first of all, to be clear, taxes on the wealthy need to be higher. They just do. Um, uh, if you look at what's fair, if you look at what it's going to take to meet our revenue goals, if you look at, uh, international comparisons, in in my opinion, that's clearly the case. And at the same time, I think it would be

46:32misleading to suggest that's all we've got to do. That's why I'm bringing up collection, leakage, and and evasion. That's why I'm bringing up spending and being more efficient. I think we got to do all of those things at the same time. So yes, we needed a tax code that that requires the wealthy to pay their fair share. And the idea of a wealth tax is,

46:49you know, not fundamentally different from the idea of a property tax, which is how we got most of the funds that I used in my first experience in elected office as mayor. So I don't think there's anything wrong in principle with assessing uh some kind of tax. Now, it has to be reasonable. It has to uh be

47:04set up in a way that it's not going to have unintended consequences. Um, but again, this is something that that I think people like blly say about taxes on the rich in cases where it's not actually true. So, you may have heard me sparring with the all-in guys a little bit on this, where, you know, there are

47:19times in our past when the the highest income tax brackets were much higher than they are now. And growth was actually pretty good economically. So this idea that you're just going to kill economic growth middle class. Yeah. >> Uh this idea that you're going to kill your economic growth if you ever try to tax the wealthy or tax corporations um

47:40in a way that that draws more of of those uh again I want corporations, you know, I want good businesses to do well, but I want them to pay their fair share along the way, especially because all of us through our tax dollars are creating the things that allow those corporations to create value. And my favorite example

47:56of this is the internet itself. The internet was literally invented by the American taxpayer, the federal government. That's what DARPA did famously. Uh created this thing, didn't really know how to commercialize it. Like private enterprise had to do that. But private enterprise never could have had the scale to do the basic research that made the internet a thing in the

48:17first place. And I think we have this illusion that uh that that there are certain companies or certain people who just invented themselves when all of us do what we do in some kind of context. And part of the context for any business is infrastructure uh research the rule of law. If you don't have that, you can't build a

48:37business from from a uh from a coffee shop to a to to a major AI company. Look, none of that happens if you don't have those things. >> Then you pay it, right? >> And those things cost money and that's what taxes are for. It's like a membership fee in it's sometimes been described as the taxes of your

48:50membership fee to be in a civilized society and we ought to think of it that way. can ask you this is gonna be a harder question for a politician to answer because uh >> it's it's bad for votes but I want to ask it which is that >> so something like I'd say six out of 10 you know 60% of our uh tax dollars are

49:11going to things that primarily benefit the old which would be social security Medicare other other thing and I'm not saying those are bad things I'm supportive in general social security but there is a sense that most of this money is not going to regular working Americans in the middle. Like it's it's finding its way to people who already have statistically the most

49:32the most property, the most wealth, the most stocks. Not every old person has that, but that's that's where it's going. And I want to know >> what are your thoughts on like h how how do we meaningfully reduce the deficit or balance our budget if all of our money is going to interest, Medicare, Social Security, like that's almost everything,

49:49military, I guess. >> Yeah. And of those, I think interest is the one that's probably the most generationally unfair. Uh because look, if we're talking about social security and Medicare, to be clear, the older you are, the more you've paid into it, too, right? People pay into that their whole lives. That's where I worry about this word entitlement. Uh in fact, I remember

50:04when I was campaigning a guy said, "I don't I don't think it was an entitlement. I think it was a paid intimate," which maybe isn't a term that'll catch on, but but it's the it's an honest way to think about it. Um interest is another story, right? Because look, taking on debt, the same as starting a business or buying a

50:18house, like it makes sense if you do it at a level where there's going to be a return, where it's going to pay off, and where you're going to come out ahead. And that's true for a country. I think we've overshot that at this point. I think the debt has grown to a level that even the left cannot ignore. And I think

50:34that in many ways that does set up a younger generation for more pain. I mean, you know, not that long ago, the average age to buy your first house is in your 20s. Now, by some measures, it's 40. >> Yeah. >> And I think even that's slipping away, right? >> And that's related actually to our indebtedness because that affects

50:54interest rates, which affects, you know, uh what's possible in terms of getting a mortgage. So, but I don't think it has to be like generational warfare here. Like I I I believe that uh and again I experienced this in my very first uh elected office where older voters in in my city were rooting for a younger mayor

51:10to kind of believe in a different kind of future that that people should want their grandkids to do well right and yet it's it's that generation that's under more and more pressure. Also, you know, I I belong now to what what's considered a the sandwich generation, as in we're sandwiched between uh parents who are growing older, who we are taking care

51:29of, and kids who we are taking care of. And uh those pressures in terms of the time as well as the cost that a lot of people are going through are massive. And our country just isn't doing a very good job of supporting that. Uh it's still got a lot of problems around things like long-term care that make it

51:44harder to take care of a parent. And then all kinds of things that make it harder to be a parent like the complete lack of paid family leave in this country. Only country to do that other than I think Papa New Guinea to have just no national but two economic powerhouses. >> Um we don't it's another example where

52:02it doesn't have to be that way. If literally every other country in the world has figured out a way to do paid family leave, uh how are we not doing that in this country? we see uh universal uh child care and not just uh they're they're uh they're seeking to do it in New York but also New Mexico has

52:17launched that like these things can be done. They would make it dramatically easier to go through that generational journey where you go from a young person to to to a parent to uh um to retirement. But for all of that to work, every generation has to believe that they're they're contributing to something where they're going to be

52:35better off. Right? If you were born the year my mom was born, end of World War II, statistically, you got a 90% chance economically of coming out ahead of your parents. If you're born the year I was born in the 80s, it's it's a coin flip. It's 50/50. And by some measures, that's now underwater. Uh if if you're born

52:54more recently, I think the generational bargain breaks down. >> Yeah. That's that's where the anger I'm seeing is coming from. >> Yeah. And >> and so that's what the heart of my question is getting at, which is, you know, you mentioned housing. I think Trump just had a speech where he mentioned, "I'm not going to let any

53:08housing price go down because then people and it it was like almost baffling that he would say that so publicly because from the audience that we're talking to and hearing, it's like a huge source of their fury and nihilism. They can't get on the ladder." >> But think of the kind of people who have memberships at Mara Lago. I mean, think

53:23of the kind of people who Donald Trump spends all his time with, right? These are people who are f perfectly happy for real estate to get even more expensive because they own a bunch of it. So does he. He's a real estate guy, right? So the last thing he's going to want to do is see housing costs go down.

53:38>> I guess yes for the for the mega elite and the people you're talking to of course and it's easy to do that but the core of the problem he's talking about feels like a big issue in politics which is that there is a large cohort of voting age boomers who >> I think will have to lose out a little

53:53bit at least the wealthiest of them that own property. It will have to go down in value for for regular people to be able to participate in the way that they participated >> or at least go up less quickly. >> Sure. I guess wages have to >> exactly our income has to grow more quickly than the price of housing. Right

54:07now the opposite's happening.

54:08>> So that's kind of what I I just want to drill it back down to like what can actually be done. Let's say in the 2028 election, you know, new administration's coming in. Knock on wood. Um how do you possibly politic make something politically tenable where we say we are going to spend less in areas like social

54:24security or Medicare or are we saying we're not going to do that and it's strictly going to be from increased taxes? How do these numbers add up? There's there's part of me that is sort of nihilistic that makes me think we have to wait for the boomer generation to no longer be voting to put it nicely and I just don't it seems how how do you

54:43make a difference? How do you get people to actually vote for these changes? So politically, I think it's calling an older generation to support. Remember, the the people, if you're an older generation, the people you love most are so often in a younger generation. And I think calling out to that is really important. Uh because we have so many

55:03dynamics in our policy that pit people against each other. Right versus left, workingass versus uh uh versus white collar, um north versus south. then it could be old versus young, right? And we just we don't need any more cleavages like that. >> So I'm interested in in in a style of politics that that pulls people together into a shared project. And in in

55:25American history, unfortunately, usually us coming together in a national project is in the face of something really terrible like a war, right? Some of the highest levels of unity we ever had uh were World War II. Um the a sort of a a corresponding but less lesser level of national unity was the Cold War, right? Yeah. >> Um, but it shouldn't take a war

55:48to do big things. Substantively in terms of what I think it'll actually take, I think the outlines of it are actually visible to us. I think it's it's building more housing. I think the best way to make Medicare cost less is to make the delivery of healthare cost less uh versus leaving people out in the cold or things like the Medicaid cuts that

56:05that that Trump and the Republicans push through. Um, I'm not saying we don't have to have hard choices. We can't always have our cake and eat it too. But there's so much money on the table right now in terms of fairer taxation on the revenue side and better use of our tax dollar on the spending side before you

56:22even get to the muscle and bone tough admittedly tough decisions that we're going to have to make as a country which might affect you know by the time somebody who's born today is retiring might affect some things about the shape of social security and Medicare. >> Yeah. They're going to have the the Trump accounts. They're going to have

56:35the dollars in >> Let me admit I actually think that's a good policy. I hate to admit it. I definitely don't don't I don't hate to admit I I hate to I hate to endorse something named after Trump. So maybe we can rename it. >> Uh and I think there are different ways you could do it. But look, I think the

56:48basic idea of making sure that everybody has some kind of you know what an economist would call an initial endowment that everybody has something to start with makes sense. And um uh you know it it's there's no like one party should have a monopoly on that idea. We should make sure that everybody is set up uh with something. And I'm I'm glad

57:08they did it. I mean, in a bill full of a lot of really horrible things. I think that's one that that that had a lot of value. >> Okay. >> Another idea just thrown at you, if you know, if you were leading the country, you could start a war with Papa New Guinea to unite people again, >> right? We'd all be Well, there are one

57:24They're the only one that's on our same page. We can pick someone. >> I I have actually genuinely thought about this. If aliens came to Earth and declared war, wow, it'd be easy to pass policy, right? >> Get some stuff through. Yeah. >> I hope so. We should fail. We should >> um a reasonable time to bring up AI the

57:45big >> scary thing in the cloud I guess sort of. So we do have a running uh like AI hypometer as well. So kind of look at what we're doing right now. So I think atriarch is pretty low right now based on last. Yeah like two low twos a little bit higher. >> And then recently I've been let's see

58:0227.8. Um you recently this past summer wrote uh a substack saying that you are concerned about AI regulation. I'm curious even in the what seven months since that point a massive amount has changed. Yes. >> Curious where you think about AI right now and then that substack was largely >> I think this is a big deal. I think we

58:22aren't preparing for it properly which I super agree with in terms of regulation. >> Where do you currently stand? >> So that continues to be my view. I'd say in the months since then there have been ups and downs for sure. I mean, we Yeah, you put me in like the dates, dates, nines. >> Oh, nice. >> I think I think that means it's on my

58:40side. >> We're closer together. I think >> numerically you're still >> Yeah, you're still out there. Closer to me to you. >> It's like that graph porn where the numbers do not make any sense. It's like, >> well, let me put it this way. We're I think we're still underreacting, which might be a weird thing to say given how

58:56much people talk about AI. >> And and look, the capabilities we never quite know. Um, I was, you know, a few months ago I was in Silicon Valley and there had been a couple of model releases. They didn't seem quite what everybody expected and so everybody was kind of a little bit down on on these things. I was in the Bay Area a few days

59:14ago and Claude Code has has dropped and you know here everybody's talking about Bad Bunny there everybody's talking about Claude Code is is kind of the it's the talk of the town and uh people are really impressed slash alarmed about uh about what that means. So, but my thing is, and what I'm trying to push the

59:34policy world and and my own Democratic party to do more of >> is to think about this not just as like a tech thing that you have to be like a tech geek to care about, >> but as a political economy problem, as a as a question of how our economy is going to work because I think some of

59:50those impacts are going to hit much faster than we're ready for. And again, I'm I'm a product of where I'm from, right? So, I grew up in the industrial Midwest, northern Indiana, just as this wave of automation and trade comes in in the 90s and early 2000s, and knocks so many people and whole towns uh off course economically by by just changing

1:00:12what what it means to be part of this economy. I think we're facing a wave like that, even bigger probably >> and even more widespread because it's hitting so many white collar professions, right? Amodai who's the head of anthropic wrote a very long blog a week or two ago and one of the things he warned about is

1:00:29that the reason that these techs are different than something like farmers getting replaced by you know a new implement on the farm is that the AIS will be able to cover many different white collar jobs simultaneously right if you're not going to be able to just go from one information job in the legal industry over to the insurance industry

1:00:46it's just going to cover both of those at once and it's just going to broadly just eliminate entire categor like highle categories, not specific ones. And that's an area I'm extremely concerned about. As much as I am I'm more excited about AI than the average person. >> The job displacement in the short term in the next couple years

1:01:05>> seems to me like a incoming catastrophe like incredibly concerning. So I did want to definitively ask that specifically. What are your thoughts around that? Like I have a hard time imagining us suddenly being launching UBI for the population in the next 2 years. And I do see potential mass unemployment for entry-level jobs in the

1:01:25next two years. And how do you possibly deal with that right now? >> Yeah. So, you know, right now we have a system of unemployment insurance that was built in a time when a huge shock to employment would be like a 2% or a 4% change, right? Like if the unemployment rate went from 4% to 6% or 8% that would

1:01:47be a massive development in our economic system and that would test the limits of our policy tools and there is a a non-trivial chance that it could be a multiple of that right in terms of what happens. Now look, through our experience, at least in the last few hundred years, when a new technology eliminates certain tasks or even certain

1:02:05jobs, the long-term result is that there are different jobs that emerge and and people find themselves doing different things. Uh but that's over the long term. We don't honor Kanees, the economist, said in the long run, we're all dead. And you know, the job for policy makers and politicians, I think, is to deal with with what's happening

1:02:25right now with a view to the long run. And so if we have a massive and material difference in hiring in entry level coding, parallegals, I you could go down a list of a lot of knowledge work professions, >> customer service, I'm driving, >> some of which by the way, coding in particular, those are job categories that policy makers actually pushed

1:02:47people into a generation ago. You talked about learn >> the juxiposition of you know the sad potential story of getting fed the rhetoric of learn to code being maybe you know in your 40s 50s and you're suddenly you're making the effort like I actually do want to pursue something new get educated around this new thing try to pursue this new career and then

1:03:07you're a few years into it >> and now this is happening >> right but here's the thing to think about we don't really know exactly what the level of disruption will be right And we don't really know exactly what the level of value will be that it creates. But those two things we we can more or less assume are going to travel

1:03:26together. In other words, a world where the AI doesn't do as much as we thought it did is also one in which it probably doesn't disrupt as many jobs as we fear it might. And to to put the other case, a world in which it is disrupting jobs left, right, and center means it is doing a huge amount of work that used to

1:03:46be impossible for a machine to achieve. Yeah. >> And if that's true, that means generally for somebody it's creating a huge amount of value. The question then becomes who who gets that, right? Because I believe AI can lead to one of two results. It can either be for most people a shorter work week and more money in your pocket

1:04:06than before or it can be even more ridiculous concentrations of wealth and power than we already have. And what we already have, by the way, is pretty extreme. Like it's not just something that we look at at the news about some of these really wealthy people and say, "Oh gosh, that's really unequal." This is historically pretty extreme.

1:04:22>> Like 1929 levels of wealth inequality. >> Yeah. In fact, it's it's rare for a republic, a democratic system to hit this level of of inequality and survive. Like when the Roman Empire when the Roman Republic was hitting this level of inequality, that's about the time it stopped being a republic and started being >> emp historical context of this level of

1:04:44wealth inequality is like it it like dissolves society. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is look, we're not quite at like pre-revolutionary France level, but like that's kind of the next stop if we don't do something. But this is the irony, right? >> If you appropriately capture some of the value of what AI might generate and you

1:05:04return it to the people and I don't think that's I don't think that's un I don't think that's confiscation. I think that's participation because again, the American taxpayer literally invented the internet >> and all these models trained on data that all of us put out in the world for free. Yeah. >> So, it seems to me only fair that we

1:05:19could get a slice of it, right? You could structure, you could use taxes to do that. You could also structure it as more of a dividend. I mean, there's different models for how to do it. Some of which will really push us in terms of our creativity as policy makers. Like, do we really think it could make sense

1:05:32for there to be a public share in in an AI hyperscaler? I think maybe I think that's one example of how to do it. But my point is, let's come up with policies that kind of flex up or down so that if the value is not that great and the disruption is not that great, then the policy intervention doesn't have to be

1:05:48that great either. But if we have massive disruption and almost by definition massive wealth being created, then it's really a question how that wealth is arranged. And that is not a technology question. It's a policy choice. given our timing, I want I want to bring it to the real world short-term future of what's going on here because

1:06:08the things you're talking about are massive changes and right now today we

1:06:11live in a world where uh Republicans control the House, the Senate, the presidency, the judiciary, and they're all basically voting in lock step with Donald Trump who's kind of doing whimsical random things dayto-day via tweet by whimsical. Yeah, >> whimsical is probably the wrong word. >> Fairy tale, >> chaotic, dangerous. Okay. >> Right. So, we have the midterms this

1:06:31year. >> Yeah. >> And I first of all, I want to get your broad overview thoughts of how you how you see them going because it does seem like he is especially post economic slowdown, post Alex Prey, it feels like he is entering a very unpopular era where there is a tide turning. So, do you think that is something that

1:06:47Democrats are going to be able to capitalize on given that they are not particularly seeing popularity spikes? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So, I I think the answer is yes. I think a few things have to happen. Uh, one thing is Democrats need to realize that our job is not to just restore the old status quo because if it

1:07:05looks like that's all all we're selling, that might get us through 26, but it's not a real answer. Substantively, for all the reasons we've been talking about for the last hour, it's not enough, but also politically, I don't think it's going to work. The the most important thing you need to know about the old status quo is that it led to this.

1:07:19>> Yeah. Created Trump. Yeah. Essentially. Okay. So, so putting all of that on the table, I I would say the other thing in in terms of the the the now the kind of political moment we're in that I think is super interesting actually is the behavior of the Republicans, the endangered House Republicans. Um, so in Indiana, for example, last year, the

1:07:37state senate Republicans voted against Donald Trump's gerrymandering plan. This might sound like a pretty technical thing. I got to tell you, it is a huge deal for state legislators in a Republican party in a place like Indiana where I grew up to directly be pressured by the president to do something and to say no. And we've seen patterns of this.

1:07:58We've seen those those local Republicans over >> Jerry. Why? Why do you think? >> Um because they didn't like it. Uh because people across the state hated it. Um I would like to think it's partly because I showed up and did a rally with like a thousand people reminding them of how much people in the state hated it.

1:08:13And um and because the pressure backfired because they were being such frankly the White House they were being such dicks about it that that a lot of the uh legislators who were very conservative Republicans said I I'm not going to help you anymore. But my my broader point is this. You got local uh Republicans rebelling uh and defying the

1:08:30president on gerrymandering. We had a handful of congressional Republicans defi defying the president on the Epstein files. Right. Trump is trying to keep the Epstein files from being released and they vote against them and say they got to be released. Right now you have some Republican governors breaking ranks on AI, which is very interesting. And what that tells me is

1:08:49that his grip, his death grip on the Republican party, which is how he began to take power, is starting to come loose. And I think it's starting to become loose because he's unpopular. And I'm mentioning this because we don't have to wait for election day for some of these things to play out. But in order for there to be change, people

1:09:06have to really speak up. That's why it's so important, for example, that a lot of people, and by the way, not just liberals, right? But a lot of libertarians, second amendment folks, they look at what's going on in in Minneapolis where you've got federal agents shooting American citizens basically for protesting and saying this is insane and breaking ranks. I think

1:09:25that can begin to bear fruit in terms of political change before we even get to the midterms. And I think that's even more true after some of the primaries run their course and fewer Republicans in office are worried about their right flank. I I I do feel like I agree with what you're saying. It feels like because of the cracking of the

1:09:44Republican party right now and the momentum that there is, you could put up almost anybody on the opposing side and they have a fighting chance at winning in the midterms. And my concern more has to do with like dude, nobody likes the Democratic party right now. Like none of I'm I'm pretty left-leaning guy. like um my very left friends like hate the

1:10:04Democratic party and you know people on the right hate the Democratic party and kind of it's it for many failures in the past like few years especially >> so even though I think there's the momentum to get elected in the midterms or like the next presidential election what substantial change do you think there needs to be

1:10:25for that for the party to actually be something that people are are happy to vote I think that I guess the strongest message I could say here is like not a single person I talked to over the entire year was happy that it was Biden Trump. They were like this is this is insane that these are my two options.

1:10:44>> And I think with that in mind like are is it more of a >> like we've talked to young uh promising mayors. We've talked to Mayor Scott from Baltimore recently. We I think Mumani is moving in like a really promising direction right now. So what does the future of that party that we can actually like get behind look like?

1:11:04>> Well, I think in terms of message, we got to make it clear what we're actually building toward because yeah, a tailwind in 26 might lead to a good result in 26, but that's not enough to substitute for a governing vision. So, we got to make it clear the changes we would make, some of which I I hope I've been able to

1:11:21convey in our time just now, to our political structure as well as our economic policy that would make your everyday life better off. not not just this team won and that team lost on Capitol Hill, but like your ability to afford a home and the chances that one job is enough and your sense of uh personal and economic security and the

1:11:41likelihood that you feel like you have a reasonable shot at like having kids and a family if that's an outcome you want in your life that that is more likely because we got elected and because you you voted against these guys, right? >> So tangible kind of more tangible results. >> Yes. But then at the same time as that

1:11:58we do need to be putting forward different and I think in many cases younger faces right so uh and this could be a little self- serving but I I also think it's true like if we really if I'm right that we have 60 or 70% of people agreeing with us on most of the really big issues uh taxes abortion uh even

1:12:19immigration actually in terms of broadly what policy should be if we have 60 or 70% agreement on the issues and we can't get 50% in an election. It raises the question of who is bearing the message and can we put forward more compelling leaders and I I would argue they're out there. There are a lot of people on the bench uh in the Democratic

1:12:39party who deserve to be called off of the bench and be on the field. I think more of them are coming forward, stepping forward. Uh you will see me uh if you follow me online, you'll see me uh backing some of these candidates even this year who I think represent that. And they don't all have the same posture

1:12:55as each other. They have different ideas sometimes from each other. But the point is each of them is exquisitly true to who they are and where they're from. And those are the kinds of candidates who I think are going to win and and they will collectively make up I think a new and different and better face for the

1:13:09Democratic party.

1:13:11Support for this show comes from cloaked. >> All right, Doug. You know how every time I get mad at on the show, I leak his address to the public to try and like get people to hurt him. Perry's been trying to censor it out of the show and I don't think it works cuz you like graffiti it everywhere.

1:13:24>> Yeah, I I do a lot to get it out there. He's figured out that if you use cloaked, it actually not only takes down your private information but prevents it from leaking again. >> Oo, interesting. >> It's like really frustrating for me trying to get him in trouble or get him hurt. >> You shouldn't be frustrated about this.

1:13:40You should just You shouldn't disagree with me on the podcasting my private information. >> Have support. If you you can protect things like your social security number, prevent identity theft. It uh it catches all of this. It will not physically approach your friend to get him to stop putting the address in the physical space of your show.

1:14:00>> I'm confused. It will or will not cover up all the graffiti that Brandon has been putting in here. >> It won't. It admittedly Cloaked won't do that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's the one thing Cloaked won't do. But only if you have normal friends who didn't try to out your address. YOU KNOW WHAT? YOU CAN JUST GO TO CLOAK.COM/LEMONADE. You

1:14:15can take your pre free privacy scan and if you choose to subscribe to Cloak, use code lemonade for 30% off your Cloak subscription. I hate you. >> He lives in LA.

1:14:26>> Support for Lemonade Stand comes from the league. >> Okay. So, like a couple episodes ago, we did a league advertisement where you mentioned one of our basketball friends who you put onto the league to try it out because we are all currently in relationships. >> So, we can't use the league as a dating app. After we did that, one of my

1:14:42marketing Monday researchers reached out to me and said, "I have a positive league story that he wanted to share. This is a true story from my researcher, Dom. My wife and I met on the league in 2020. We both love the app and people who are more likely to have their life together versus endless pictures of men

1:14:57holding fish or overly edited edited photos. The league brought us together and we even sent the founder a thank you letter for bringing us together. I can testify. This sounds like made up. THIS SOUNDS MADE UP. TESTIFYING this is a hand of god real story that my researcher actually had. >> Does your researcher work at the league?

1:15:17>> Here's the thing. More is it better? Better is better. >> So, you could join the league, find someone in yours, download the app, and apply today. >> Dude, he even sent me his wife's original league profile picture. >> Blanked out. >> Oh, wow. She's holding a fish. Uh,

1:15:36is there a fear in your mind at all of a nightmare scenario for this midterms where feels crazy to say, but an attempt to subvert the election in any way, an attempt to >> it feels like with some of the actions being taken uh >> with seizing voting records, suing all the different states, like it feels like

1:15:54there's a real effort, like it doesn't it doesn't feel hidden to make a challenge. Is this something that's on your mind? How do you >> Okay, >> look, earlier I described the reasons I think Trump is getting weaker. I think as he gets weaker, he will also grow more dangerous. And when he says he's going to do some of these things, I

1:16:11believe him. I don't believe him that he's going to lower costs, but I believe him when he says he wants to nationalize elections. And we've seen so many cases where something that was just outside of the realm of imagination, >> Greenland. >> Yeah. Or even just January 6, right? The idea of an armed attack on the United

1:16:26States capital by Trump supporters would have gotten you kind of laughed at in I don't know 2018 and then it happened in 2021 and that was then. This is 10 times darker. So am I worried about that? Of course I am. I'll say this though. In addition to the fact that there's good work happening in political and legal uh

1:16:41areas to to prevent that. That doesn't work if the people won't tolerate it, >> right? >> And that's kind of more broadly true, I think, of the abuses that we're seeing, the authoritarian turn that we've seen. Uh, and if you talk to people in places that feel like they lost their democracy or where it got away from them, like if

1:16:59you talk to somebody who was uh, standing up to Putin back when it seemed like you could get somewhere by standing up to Putin 10 or 15 years ago, they'll say they wish they had spent even more time and energy on kind of old-fashioned sounding stuff like like taking to the streets just to make it clear that most

1:17:17people were not on board with this. Remember, MAGA is a minority movement. Republican party legitimately got uh, you know, enough to win a majority or almost a majority in the presidential election, right? They won. I'm not saying they didn't. >> Sure. >> But MAGA, it was like 20% 30% depending what surveys you look at. So, I don't

1:17:36want to I don't want to do a rerun of my earlier stuff about our structure. It's a weakness in our country that we're the kind of country where you can have a 20% movement take over one of the two parties and then run the table as if they ran the whole country. But it doesn't have to be that way either. And

1:17:51we need if if it looks like that sort of thing is starting to happen, then our ordinary political and legal processes won't be enough to save us. There has to be enough people standing up, including, by the way, Republicans saying like, "Look, uh, I'm a Republican, but that doesn't mean I'm okay with someone from my party trying to overrun or reverse or

1:18:13steal an election." That's my biggest fear because in his first term it felt like there was enough of those >> Republicans. >> Yes. >> And this time it does not feel like there's any limit. So I >> it it sounds crazy when I first say and then the more we get closer it feels like it's less crazy. So I guess Yeah.

1:18:28>> Yeah. Now also if the the homework for my party is uh if it isn't even close then it's really hard to pull that kind of thing off. >> True. >> Yeah.

1:18:37Do you think there's room in kind of the national docket of stuff to be done because there's so much for more election reform to happen like we talked the money part feels like the most extreme and I feel like it's the top of mind thing for a lot of people and I think that feels but there's little

1:18:55aspects like >> uh campaign like campaign timelines like in in Singapore I think they campaign for like nine days or something and it's so you don't waste a bunch of time like having call and raise money and campaign when you could be doing the job. >> Yeah. No, it's exhausting to have like a two-year presidential cycle or a

1:19:14permanent congressional cycle. >> Now, the the challenge there obviously is we've we've decided, you know, I disagree that that that money on campaigns counts as the same as speech, but you know, I believe that campaigning is speech and and and so it's very hard to find a way to restrict that that would be fair in a way that that you

1:19:30know, Singapore would do because they don't care about free speech as much as you and I might. >> Yeah. Uh, so some of that we may just have to deal with. But just generally, again, I keep coming back to this. The political system we've inherited is not the only way for a political system to work. It's not even the only way for an

1:19:45American democratic representative republic based on our constitution to work. It doesn't have to be this way. And if everybody, if the one thing everybody agrees is the system sucks, then we can't keep acting as if the system was fine. >> Yeah. What can be done? >> Change it, right? What can you do? >> Yeah. >> Is it is term limits a part of this? Do

1:20:04you feel like certainly we've had the same folks every >> He's talking about you going younger. What if we go older? What if we start putting up 90 year olds, 95 year olds? >> Have you even considered that the people in charge might not be experienced enough? >> That's the problem. Lack of wisdom. I think maybe >> I mean I think this the best way we can

1:20:23deal with that is to make races more competitive. U the the actual record of term limits has been mixed. This is one thing where I've actually changed my mind a little bit. I used to be really drawn to this as a policy. I still think it's appropriate in certain contexts and I think we should really think about it

1:20:37for the Supreme Court. >> But what I've noticed is in some states that do this, what winds up happening is uh the the politicians come and go. And so just when they've built enough expertise to really take command of a policy issue, there's somebody new there, which sounds like a nice refreshing thing and it can be. Often

1:20:56what that means is the people who are there for 15 years, 20 years, 25 years around the state house are the lobbyists and they wind up legitimately knowing more about the policy. That's interesting than the committee chair of of of whatever part in the legislature is supposed to be doing, you know, whatever it is, you know, healthcare or

1:21:12utilities or whatever and the lobbyists can run circles around the legislators. So, I would want to know that there was a way to solve for that before I felt comfortable seeing that model I've seen in some of the states get uh get bigger. But what I am a big fan of is changing uh uh more frequently finding a way I I

1:21:28would argue through more competitive elections to change who's in office more often. Th

1:21:32>> this is brings up a question I want to ask you. So after uh after the Biden administration, after Department of Transportation Secretary, you have still been speaking on these issues, coming to places like this, a lot of former secretaries just go become lobbyists. So how much were you offered to be a lobbyist? How much did you give up? And

1:21:50could we have that job instead? Because it sounds awesome. How do we fill in for you on the lobbying trail? >> Yeah, weirdly I didn't get really approached probably because of what I did when I was in office. Right. >> You weren't quite as friendly. >> I was I was like a pretty tough regulator on airlines. Um so they

1:22:04weren't like rushing to hire a guy. It's funny actually. Ironically, my successor, the current secretary of transportation, uh is a former airline lobbyist. So he was a lobbyist and then they put him in charge of the department. Uh kind of flipped >> that solves that term thing. go back and forth and that's so cool. Uh, you know, because we were really

1:22:23tough on the airlines and we made them take better care of their passengers. We upped the fines. We held them accountable for some of these meltdowns that happened. Uh, we in some cases added a zero or two to the level of of enforcement uh action and and refunds and and um settlements that they had to offer. But I'll say this, like they

1:22:40still did well as businesses on my watch. They just they they made money. They just had to make money while taking better care of passengers. But anyway, I I don't think that made me super popular in the uh industry lobbying world. So, shockingly, those offers didn't come flying in when I uh when I left office. >> I think you're underplaying it. They're

1:22:56they're quite good. I'm a big I'm a big fan of those changes you made, and I can see why they would not be. >> Uh Pete, we're running up on time. I want to thank you so much for coming on this show. I sincerely appreciate it. Good talking to you. Enjoyed it. >> Thanks so much, Pete.

1:23:08>> My parents are fans of yours. uh surprisingly because they they you know they they were they leaned Republican for most of their life but the Trump is really thrown in the middle >> and they overnighted me your book Trust. >> Oh wow. >> So I I took a I read through I didn't get 100% done but I read it.

1:23:23>> Well, thank you. >> It's interesting that that was written in 2020. It feels like in the past six years trust which was low then has gotten astronomically low. I wonder if I could ask you a final question. Is everything you're saying today in service of that goal of kind of rein I think it doesn't >> the thing I'm seeing from our audience

1:23:40is a complete lack of trust in government on either side. >> Yeah. >> I wonder if you could frame that in a >> Yeah. I think the breakdown of trust between people in their government, between people in our institutions, between Americans and each other is uh is something that could be lethal if we don't do something about it. And uh you

1:24:01know if you're talking about societies and systems and structures, I'd say it's not that different from how it is between two people uh where it could take years to build a certain level of trust. And it only takes a couple of bad choices or one bad choice to tear that trust up and then you have a lot of work

1:24:17to do to build it. which is why I I wrote a whole book about trust driven by my experiences not just in and around politics, but reflecting on on what it meant that when uh when I was in the military, I learned to trust my life to people I barely knew. I mean, part of my job was to uh take vehicles and and and

1:24:36people in my unit outside the wire. And, you know, getting into a vehicle together, we didn't necessarily know each other very well. Sometimes all we had was a handshake and, you know, we had the same flag on our shoulder and that was about it. And yet we were trusting each other with our lives. And I think that's kind of a metaphor for

1:24:52where we're at as a country. Uh where all of us actually part of living in the same country as somebody is you're trusting everybody else with your life. Uh and that gets played out through our political processes again and again. Um the good news is under pressure and our country is under pressure. There are ways to earn trust and build trust

1:25:09quickly. And if we can get that done through results, through actually making problems better, uh, then you get more where that came from. Trust can build, it can compound. And when you have a society with more trust, again, whether it's the government being viewed as more trustworthy or just us more ready to trust each other in our society, then

1:25:29our capacity to do big things gets much much better. And it's one of the reasons why for all the mess of the world we're in right now, I'm I'm ultimately optimistic about what's possible because I think it's not too late. >> Thank you, babe. >> Thank you. >> This conversation made me a little more hopeful and I appreciate that a lot.

1:25:45Thanks so much for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Thanks everybody. >> Thanks guys for watching.

1:25:50>> Thank god we got rid of that guy. >> Who was that guy? Literally improving the whole time. >> He just walked in. Is he like He just walked in. >> CEO. Peter. I didn't I did not know I was >> short for Peter. >> I don't know. >> If uh that was fun. >> That was fun. Uh we were a little

1:26:08pressed for time and I think we had some more things we wanted to chat about or talk about in that episode. But uh if you're interested in us talking about that a little more, you can come check out uh our notes. You're going to be us talking. >> No, no, just us. Just us. Uh we do an

1:26:20extra episode every week on the Patreon. It's patreon.com/lemonadsand. But otherwise, we will see you back for a normal episode next week. Thanks everybody.