3596 - Raining Death on Iranians to Free Them; Escape from Capitalism w/ Clara Mattei

It is Monday March 9th, 2026.

My name is Sam Cedar.

This is the five-time award-winning majority report.

We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gawannis Canal in the heartland

of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA on the program today, Professor Claire Matai, Professor

of Economics at the University of Tulsa, host of the free podcast and author of Escape

from Capitalism and Intervention.

Also on the program today, at least seven US servicemen, nearly 2,000 dead Iranians

as the strike on the elementary school killing at least 100 children and about 175 in total

confirmed as a US Tomahawk missile.

Oil now above $100 a barrel.

Iran's son, now chosen as the new Iranian supreme leader, strikes on Iran through the weekend

have oil literally raining down on Iranians.

US and Israel's war now threatening the world food supply and Iran is taking out US radar

systems throughout the region.

Meanwhile in this country, TSA shortages as the DHS shutdown continues and the White

House is blocking intelligence reports warning of rising US terror threat linked to the

Iran War.

Meanwhile, Trump's DOJ short circuits years of prep on an antitrust trial versus live

nation, one of the most odious and disliked entities in our culture today, and give them

a fine that is equal to three days of their operating profits, and excuse me, 10 days

of their operating.

Oh, that's much better.

Yeah.

9 to 10 days.

This court blocks Trump's revocation of temporary protected status for 350,000 Haitians.

So that's good news.

And a judge rules that Carrie Lake, remember her, and all of her soft lighting, all of

her soft lighting, her oversight of the voice of America turns out illegal.

She loves doing that, the illegal stuff.

And lastly, the real reason, oh, I should read this from the, the post.

So I get this correct, OK, I borrowed the New York Post's headline for the day.

The real reason why Christy Nome's cuckold husband stayed married to her from Corey Lewin

Dausky's humiliation.

Cuckold in the legal sense, all that in more on today's majority report, welcome ladies

and gentlemen, it is as Emma Vigeland says,

Monday, Monday.

Yes, Monday, Monday, that's what she always says always, always wakes up in the morning,

more fun today.

Well, the more fun today.

It announces to her husband, Monday, Monday.

Yep, you know, goes into hot yoga, Monday, Monday, it is, I did do hot yoga this morning.

See, this is what I'm saying.

I'm trying to figure out if I need to do it in the afternoon to cleanse the news out

of my brain, or if I should do it in the morning, so I'm in a better mood at the office.

I think you guys might prefer the first one, but you definitely have a different like

vibe.

Energy, right?

Right.

Right.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

That sort of manic.

It sort of is.

What do you mean?

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

Very sad.

It's okay.

Am I really that horrible when I don't do yoga?

I mean, on some ways, it's a little bit better.

Okay.

Dave, does it like joy or something?

There's a little.

It's a very uncomfortable.

It makes a very uncomfortable.

Honestly, you look like you just won the lottery when you come inside of it.

All right.

You look good there.

You said, how is your week?

And I said, great.

You go, okay.

A little sauce.

You hate joy.

It's like, it just lets everybody dial it down.

It's the beginning of the week.

Well, okay.

The good news is that we have a lot of bad news that's going to make, I mean, I'll be,

I'll be over this joy thing in just a few minutes.

Well, that's the thing.

I think you're too open to all the news in that way.

And then you absorb it all.

Exactly.

I started a certain level where it's like, I'm already a saturation group.

Oh, got it.

So it can't really...

You disassociated.

That's healthier.

No, it's not disassociation.

It's like, I think of it as like, you empty, like, I come in.

I'm at a full glass already.

Whatever is poured in just goes over the sides.

That's all.

It's not disassociated.

It's just, I'm saturated.

Sounds.

All of this sounds healthier than the thing what I'm doing, going to yoga in the morning.

That seems crazy, man.

It's healthy to think of yourself like a fully, full receptacle of liquid.

Yep.

Yep.

That's what my...

I'm like a carton of milk.

That's what my parents told me, it's small child.

You are like a full glass of water, Sam.

All right, let's get into this now for the hordeness.

Over the weekend.

It was Saturday night.

Unclear if it was Israeli bombs or U.S. bombs.

I mean, the Israeli bombs are U.S. bombs.

It's unclear as to which was the apparatus in which this was fired.

Largely irrelevant, Israel and the U.S. have done this war in concert at various times.

But it is notable that the Americans are blaming the Israelis through Axios and Barack

Reved.

What is old is new again.

Welcome back, Joe Biden.

All the leaks about how the Israelis made us do these horrible things seem to go to Axios'

Barack Reved.

Although we know that Donald Trump claims that Israel is...

He probably made Israel do it, although he's also saying that, and we'll get to this in

a moment, that the decision to end the war will probably be, you know, both his

and Netanyahu's maybe a little bit more his, you know, classic Trump.

Nevertheless, they are bombing Tehran, and as many people have said already that to the

extent that there are Iranians who are desperate to get rid of their regime, and I don't think

it's a slam dunk in any shape or measure to say that it's half or more than half or,

you know, but there's certainly a significant portion of Iranians who want to be free from

the theocracy.

Most of them would be living in major cities like Tehran, as is, you know, that is a dynamic

that exists everywhere in the world.

Urban centers tend to want to seek more liberalism in terms of their regime.

And regardless of that fact, somehow American and US forces, I guess, feel like the best

way to encourage people to rise up against their government that they don't like is to make

their lives horrible.

And here is images from a US Israeli attack on oil deposits in around Tehran.

It looks like the apocalypse for the podcast audience plumes of black smoke and flames

into the night sky.

The long damage for millions of people.

And that's the short term damage.

There are still images I've seen where literally like the oil congeals in the sky and

drops down and on the ground, there's like a thick like black film on things.

Here is a CNN report from Tehran.

By the way, important that Western press is able to be on the ground, just a lesson

to the Washington Post that destroyed its entire foreign reporting bureau.

This is why we need this kind of journalism.

It's also why Israel is not letting the Western press into Gaza.

Yeah, or frankly, my understanding is they are also censoring their images of Tel Aviv

being hit.

So CNN is allowed to broadcast in Tehran and show ostensibly where fires are burning,

where, you know, providing, I guess, theoretically information to the Israelis and Americans as

to like where their bombs landed.

You cannot do the same.

You're not allowed.

There's not that level of freedom of press in Israel.

But here's a CNN report from Iran.

This is what Tehran is waking up to this morning.

The sky above the city is covered in very thick black clouds.

You can see that everywhere.

That's the west of the city over there.

And this is the north of the city.

Normally, if you look to that direction, you could actually see the Al-Borz mountains,

but now all of that is also covered in clouds.

That comes after major airstrikes in the south and the west of the city happened last

night where oil installations were hit, oil storage facilities.

Apparently, also a refinery might have been hit as well.

And now you can see this morning that the sky is still very dark.

We saw thick black plumes of smoke in the sky yesterday.

There were massive fires in the south of the city, but I want to show you something else

because it's also raining.

But you can see that the rain, the rain water, is actually black, also saturated.

It appears with oil.

And then if we look over there, you can see that the water that's running down here,

also, is black.

So that's what's coming down this morning, this sort of oil-filled brain that we have

right now on the Iranian capital after the strikes to place.

Absolutely, in sanity.

In the short term, it means skin irritation, some chemical burns potentially.

It's going to affect your lungs.

Obviously, anybody that has respiratory issues, it's going to be a major problem.

But in looking at, you know, and Kuwait, the attacks on those oil fields, you can make

assessments about long-term risks and long-term health risks.

And this is going to increase the risk of cancer due to how carcinogenic it is, respiratory

disease, long-term effects for the 10 million people that live in Tehran.

It's going to be in the soil, it's going to be in the waterways.

This is a massive chemical attack on one of the biggest cities in the world by our terrorist

government and the Israelis.

And we're openly saying that this is the objective, like it's not about getting the Iranian

people to rise up clearly.

It's like a Christian nationalist in Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump, and people that want

to so-kay us and see the Iranian people suffer and dismantle their state, create a failed

state.

I mean, I don't even think that their objective, Trump may have been sold that regime

change is possible, but I think that the Israelis are just as happy if the state falls

apart.

I think that they would love the idea of some type of like vulcanization there as the

Iranian people have freedom rain down upon them, and it turns out that freedom when it

rains down upon you is full of acid and petroleum.

And so that's where we're at now.

Oil is over $100 a barrel for the first time, I think, since like 2022, when as soon

as I think Russia invaded Ukraine, which caused that crisis.

And that one was, I think, more like in some ways more speculative, like I mean, I obviously

this is speculative as well, but the 20% of Asia's oil comes from that region.

I don't think that we get nearly as much of that oil at all, but this is the huge benefit

of Russia, of course.

Also, this is going to have huge implications in terms of our economy down the road.

It could even get, you know, and this is sort of where we're at right now.

Short of ending this war in the next couple of days, it's going to get dramatically worse.

We also, and we mentioned this last week, key element of the world's fertilizer is produced

in that region as well.

It's a petroleum byproduct and nitrogen, and you could make it other places.

It just so happens that it's mostly made there.

So we're going to see foods by prices spike.

The only saving potential saving grace, and we shall see, is that Donald Trump is an idiot.

And it's quite possible that he was just convinced to do this by a bunch of Zionists and neocons.

And without any pushback in the White House, because that's the way it works when you have

only unqualified people around who are thankful to be there and don't want to engage in anything.

Pete Hegseth is just going to, whatever you say, Mr. President, and even the domestic

people are going to be like, whatever you say, Mr. President, that's just their job.

He may end up getting calls from some of his business friends who knows who they are,

saying, hey, wait, dude, this is really screwing everything up for everybody, including those

in the Gulf States.

And he may, having been told that this was just going to be easy peasy like Venezuela,

realize like this is not going to be easy peasy like Venezuela.

He may just declare victory and leave.

And the prospect of that, I think we said this on Friday, and then later that day, the

prospect of that went up.

Here is, no, let's go to Carolyn, love it, because she would not say this if there wasn't

talk already in the White House like, maybe we just want to wrap this up.

What is the President mean when he calls for unconditional surrender?

Is he saying that the regime has to believe the language control?

What the President means is that when he, as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces,

determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America, and the goals

of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place

of unconditional surrender, whether they say it themselves or not, frankly, they don't

have a lot of people to say that for them because the United States and the state of Israel

have completely wiped out more than 50 leaders of the former terrorist regime, including

the Supreme Leader himself.

Okay, so the good news is, Trump has the ability, according to Trump, the ability to issue

a unilateral, unconditional surrender from Iran, which honestly, for those of us who don't

want this to happen and want this to end as soon as possible, that is a good thing.

And someone dust off the mission accomplished banner from the Pentagon warehouses and just

show it to Trump and say, this means it's over.

Oh, we accomplished it.

Okay, good.

It's over.

And here he is.

Operation Epic Fury.

I mean, Epic Fury.

I stole that from a Kotlin ski beam, but still, we should call it that, Operation Epic

Fury.

When did Trump issue this?

Do we know?

Issue this truth, social?

Yeah.

Okay, so Trump, I think on Saturday issued this truth social, we'll get confirmation on

when Iran, which is being beat to hell, has apologized in surrender to its Middle East

neighbors.

Now at one point, there was, I don't, I can't remember which Iranian official was, apologized

to some of the neighboring countries saying that we are only going to hit locations that

support the United States.

So in other words, we're just going to hit radar installations, which apparently they

have.

And we're going to hit any civilian targets in the Gulf States that weren't associated

with the US, Israel attacks.

Now the US has called in various countries for servicemen to leave bases and stay at

civilian hotels, which of course is using human shields.

But so it's quite possible some hotels may be hit.

But Trump says Iran, which is being beat to hell, has apologized and surrendered to its

Middle East neighbors and promised it will not shoot at them anymore.

This was only made because of the relentless US and Israeli attacks.

They're looking to take over and rule the Middle East.

It is the first time that Iran has ever lost in thousands of years to surrounding Middle

Eastern countries.

They have said, thank you, President Trump.

I have said, you're welcome.

That's so important.

Iran is no longer the quote, believe the Middle East, and quote, they are instead quote,

the news of the Middle East, and quote, and will be for many decades until they surrender

or more likely completely collapse.

Today, Iran will be hit very hard under serious consideration for complete destruction and

certain death because of Iran's bad behavior.

Our areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this

moment in time.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Like a girl's school.

Like little children and the millions and millions of people who will now face health

implications for this chemical attack.

Well, I've told you.

I mean, we tell you.

Functions as a chemical attack.

Let alone, by the way, what they're doing in Lebanon where they're, you know, it seems

like they're resuming the use of white phosphorus, the Israelis.

Yes.

And so the potential out for this, and it seems to me that we are probably, there's a

rather small window for Trump to basically say, let's get out.

We won.

We're done bombing them because we were so successful.

We can't get any more successful.

There would be too much success and ends this, which would obviously be a good thing.

He's on the record is saying that he would consider ending the campaign in consultation

with Netanyahu, but probably more me than Netanyahu, which, you know, of course, means probably

more Netanyahu.

Right.

So like Netanyahu gives you the figure of Nobel Peace Prize, you're the guy in charge.

Yeah.

It's so, but this is important because if it, if we go further than this, it seems to

me there's must be a time over the next week or two, as things escalate that there is

no sort of turning back that Iran at one point will have an incentive to make this as

painful as possible for everyone in the region because they don't want this to happen again.

Now the day that we end the attack, you know, Iran is going to start to actually, for the

first time I would imagine, actively pursue the building of a nuclear weapon.

The son of the of Kamehni, who is said to be a more of a hardliner on that issue.

And it would be, yeah, it would be complete malpractice, not to buy a government at this

point to not build a nuclear weapon as a deterrent for this happening again.

And the only other deterrence they can possibly have is to say, at one point, when it becomes

too expensive for whatever, would the cost becomes too large for Donald Trump to continue

to do it so that, you know, as if like, you know, a tiger swatting at a bee's nest, those

hornets will bite and bite and bite and bite, make sure that doesn't happen again.

I just want to make one more point about this truth, social reading between the lines

here because you see how he tries to rope in the Middle Eastern.

Can you just put it up briefly for a second?

You see how he keeps repeatedly bringing up the fact that they're going to take over and

rule the Middle East?

By the way, this is what the Israelis say they want to do with the greater Israel theory,

a partisan desire to take over the Middle East.

So look at that projection there.

And I was reading something over the weekend, I really forget who it's from.

So apologies for not citing it.

But that there's this emphasis by Israel and the United States to try to rope in the Middle

Eastern countries into the, at least at least their propaganda effort to say that there

are a united front against Iran here.

Because I think that there's a lot of anxiety and squeamishness rightly so about this relationship

with the United States.

We know that the Saudis and the Iranians, a few years ago, there was talks that were

brokered by the Chinese, they're warming up their relationship to China.

This is Trump trying to brute force bring in the rest of the Gulf States into their kind

of axis of violence, at least rhetorically.

And I don't think it's going to actually have the desired impact because I think that

they're just going to think like maybe we should be diversifying our relationships outside

of the US and the West.

All right.

In a moment, we're going to be talking to Claire Matai, Professor of Economics at University

Tulsa, host of the free podcast and author of Escape from Capitalism and Intervention.

Just a couple of words from our sponsors.

One of them is, oh, and everybody in the office today was saying it feels like spring

and it does.

And now is the time, ladies and gentlemen, do not waste any time to get your stuff to

plant.

If you plant outside, now is the time.

Did you know fast growing trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with

thousands of trees and plants and over two million happy customers?

I did because I was one of those two million customers, be way before they decided to sponsor

this program.

They got all the plants for your yard or your home indoor plants as well, but including

fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, house plants, all grown with care

and guaranteed to arrive healthy.

It's like your local nursery, but anywhere you live with more plants than you'll find

anywhere else.

It doesn't matter what you're looking for fast growing trees helps you find options

that actually work for your climate, your space, your lifestyle.

What zone are you in?

A zone four, five, six, seven, five A, five B, fast growing trees makes it easy to get

your dream yard.

Just click, order, grow and get healthy thriving plants delivered to your door there, live

and thrive, guarantee, promise you that your plants will arrive happy and healthy.

No green thumb required, just quality plants you can count on.

Plus, get ongoing support from trained plant experts who can help you plan your landscape,

choose the right plants and learn how to care for them every step of the way.

Couldn't have a better experience with fast growing trees.

Just aside from the fact that they have a selection that you will not be able to find,

except for like the top highest grade nurseries, they have so many apple trees.

So many plum trees, pear trees, they have so many flowering trees, I've got a bloomerang

lilac that will bloom twice in a year.

I've got apple trees for them, apple trees that you've never heard of.

I can assure you, wonderful Arkansas blacks and, I mean, just Hinseki pairs, but all sorts

of like tall grass and the best part is that you don't stick it in the back of your

Subaru and get dirt all over the place, they deliver to you and their trees don't necessarily

grow faster, but they send big trees to you and they pack them wonderfully.

So convenient, so awesome.

Right now they have great deals on spring essential planting essentials up to half off on selected

plants and the majority of the audience gets 20% off your first purchase when you use

the code majority, a checkout, that's an additional 20% off better plants, better growing fast

growing trees.com using the code majority, a checkout fast growing trees.com code majority

now is the perfect time to plant.

Let's grow together, use majority to save today, offer valid for limited time, terms and conditions

may apply, we'll put the link in the podcast and YouTube descriptions, also sponsoring

the program today, factor meals, somewhere between the first warm weekend and realizing

short season is getting close, eating well stops feeling optional.

It's time to get out of carbonation, factors how I stopped letting a busy schedule be my

excuse, fully prepared meals designed by dieticians and crafted by chefs ready in two minutes,

no planning, no cooking, honestly factor meals is like how I understood what the point

of a microwave was.

I want to thank factor for supporting the majority part and also allowing me to provide

good meals for my son, because left of my own devices, I wouldn't eat terribly well,

but factor sort of reminds me like, oh I can actually give you, you know, healthy meals

that he loves go to factor meals.com slash majority 50 off and use code majority 50 off

that's majority 50 off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year factor meals are

full quality functional ingredients, including lean proteins, colorful vegetables, whole food

ingredients, no refined sugars, no artificial sweeteners, no refined seed oils factor has

so many options, they got high protein, they got calorie smart, they got Mediterranean diet,

and GLP one support, I go for the chef's specials because, you know, I, all the other stuff

confuses me, but Saul and I had a bunch of factor meals, it's a great last week, it makes

it so easy to prepare for him, basically a home cook meal that isn't really home cooked,

but I have no, I have no trip to the grocery store, I have no extra food, you know, nothing

waste in the fridge, and Saul now like somewhere along the line, I don't know where he developed

it, but he loves steak, like I'm, I don't know, not a big red meat eater, but some come

in a man, somehow like he's now like, he's like, I'll take the steak, and so the alpha

kid, I'm like, okay, where did this come from? I have no idea, and but I got this flamin

yarn with like a truffle butter, and carrots, and then there was like a fajita with shrimp

and so it was like a surf and turf like flamin yarn, for me I'm more of like a chicken guy

with some, you know, garlic mashed potatoes, but delicious meals, really delicious, and

he almost eats the vet, all the vegetables, like he'll eat the carrots, squash, not

some excited about, but he'll like a shrimp beans or broccoli, and that's great, factor

has 100 rotating meals, including ready to eat salads to keep things fresh and delicious,

they also have a muscle pro collection to support strength and recovery, I bet you I could

sell him on that, factor meals are also always fresh, they are never frozen, and they're

ready in about two minutes, so you don't need to stress about taking time out of your

schedule to meal prep, that is a huge factor for me, oh, look at what I did there, head

to factor meals.com slash majority 50 off, that's majority 50 off, no spaces, use the

code majority 50 off to get 50% off in free breakfast for a year, offer only valid for

a new factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase, make healthier

eating easier with factor, we'll put a link in the podcast in the YouTube description,

our quick break, we get back Claire Matai.

We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, on the majority report, it is a pleasure to welcome

back to the program, Claire Matai, professor of economics at the University of Tulsa, host

of the free podcast, and also the founder of the free forum, it's freeform.org, author

of escape from capitalism and intervention, Claire, what is the forum for real economic

emancipation at Tulsa Oklahoma?

It's our attempt to change this economic system that oppresses all of us, and that feeds off

of militarism genocide while Americans don't have enough food on their table.

In Oklahoma one out of four children is hungry, and we know that money is abundant, but

is really skewed at the top, and in Tulsa we're trying to do something to gain agency and

realize that our social relations are made of us as people, and thus we have the possibility

to change them.

So we are engaging in an assembly based organization, we come together, we make decisions collectively,

we show that collectivities can decide in a democratic way, and we organize public education

with the purpose of cultivating alternatives to capitalism.

And that's the idea behind escape from capitalism and intervention I have here.

And it is an intervention, and let's go through this.

This has been a theme obviously in your work, and I don't know if I knew after your last

visit about your family history in Italy of a family full of communists who were targeted

essentially by Italian fascists, and you mentioned that I think in the beginning of the book,

but let's go into the, let's just go back to that time for a moment.

Following World War I, League of Nations, you highlight, I think in the preface of the

book, there was already sort of like the beginnings of the creation of this sort of, this

common, I guess common sense or, you know, wisdom of like, there are some hard truths that

we're going to have to subject people to, just talk about that a little bit because that

is the, really in many respects, the genesis, if not the sort of the institutionalization,

I think, of like sort of classical economics and the ideas and myths that we have today.

Yes.

Well, so my great aunt who the book is dedicated to actually left the Communist Party, and

until he wants the Communist Party decided to side fundamentally with the austerity policies

that are so characteristic of today's economics and has really created a really broad consensus

for the idea that we can only live as human beings if we live hard, save hard, work hard.

And in fact, what I try to show in this book is that austerity is in the DNA of capitalism.

If you want to have capitalism, you've got to have austerity.

It's not an option to have happy workers if you want to have happy investors.

And this is really kind of the kernel of this work is to show that when Mussolini under

fascist Italy experimented with a very efficient dosage of austerity, meaning cuts in social

expenditures, something that Americans are very used to, on private, large scale privatizations,

repression of wages and workers' rights.

He was really following the script that the liberals wanted in order to regain profitability

and the possibility of investing in Italy.

So this is the whole point is to show how the logic of need and the logic of profit are

really in contrast with one another, and that we have the possibility to rethink how we

want to run our economy.

And if there's nothing more urgent than this historical moment, we know that as we speak

our tax money, the indebtedness of this country is going to bomb innocent children all

over the Middle East.

We have half a million people displaced in Lebanon already, not to mention constant deaths

in Gaza and in Palestine in Iran all over.

This is profitable for many, many shareholders, as working class people in the US as well

suffer by, of course, skyrocketing now bills for the electricity, for gas, for oil, everything.

So this is the contradiction, is we need to understand that this historical moment is

not exceptional, is just revealing what has always been a deep kernel of our economic

system.

And at freefreeform.org, we really try to show how this needs to change, absolutely, if we

want to have a future as humans.

Well, the fact that this is non-exceptional, also you can look at the period, even of

the New Deal and the kind of efforts to save capitalism by expanding some social services

here in the US as the exceptional time period in history.

Because when you look at capitalism more broadly, historically, most of the time, it's been

out of sync with the needs of the people, even in the imperial core, let alone when we're

looking at how it's been on a 100% failure rate for those in the global south.

Absolutely.

And actually, the topic of my recent research and my next book is actually looking at

the golden age of capitalism, the supposed moment in which inequality was diminishing.

And thanks to this economic growth, you could have everything, you could have capitalism

and social welfare, this is largely a myth.

And as you say, not only because it was based on the super exploitation of the global south,

but also because it was based on a lot of marginalization.

And the economy is new, marginalization of the working classes and the minorities in

the US.

And the economy is new that there's a hard truth if you want to tame inflation, unemployment

levels can't go to low.

And this is what we're seeing today, right?

The fact that now unemployment is back to 4.4%, that's like a whole percentage point

increase from 2023.

This is kind of what the economy needs to avoid working people to get unduly empowered.

And if you give people social resources, you risk cutting what is at the core of how

our economic system maintains itself, which is economic dependence, and market dependence,

economic coercion.

The fact is that if we don't have money in our pockets, we can't survive.

And this is why we're all ready to go work for a crappy job at whatever conditions,

because we don't have any alternative.

And this, though, is a historical condition that can change.

And when some social resources come in, people deny and want to get out of it.

And this is very dangerous for the system.

This is why high unemployment rates are actually very good for the capitalist economy.

And this is a reality, a lot of political economists.

I want to get unemployment in that dynamic in a bit.

Before we get there, I want to just sort of lay some broader stuff down.

So the idea of one of the things that came out of that era, and that broadly, the whole

book is geared towards doing, is fighting this idea of Tina, that there is no alternative

system.

And so let's go back to the idea of the concept of growth, which is sort of like fundamental

in the justification for the system we have, your first chapter deconstructs that concept.

What is it that what what he is when we talk about growth, what are we actually saying?

Thanks.

The escape from capitalism, my book is really trying to deconstruct a lot of those categories

that even supposed lefty people or left the economists to use, right?

And one, it typically is growth, because the idea is that growth is the panacea, it will

solve all our problems.

What do people mean by growth is really just an increase in value and wealth that hides

though what really is at stake here, because growth is based on literally unpaid labor

of the majority.

And this is what economists fail to see, because it's very dangerous to actually problematize

exploitation as the governing social relation of our capitalist economy.

And when I talk about exploitation, of course, not me, just the traditional political economy

that the book escaped from capitalism refers to, we're not talking just about like badly

paid jobs.

We're talking about the structural loss of agency that any worker, including a very well-paid

software engineer working in New York for Google, has to undertake, right?

Because when Google is siding with the genocidal military and giving a lot of high-tech support

for terrible violence, we know that the Google worker, even a very well-paid worker, has

very little choice.

Either you accept or you fire yourself or you get fired.

And this is the whole point, is the fact that we have accepted a subordination in the

production process by which our society delegates to very, very few people and always fewer,

right?

And the asset managers that rule the world are three, basically, decisions on what we need

and why.

And the why is, of course, the engine of profit, which again, it's nothing to say,

you know, it's not that the CEOs are bad or there's like evil individuals who are

excessively greedy.

That's kind of a line that you hear a lot.

Oh, it's just greed.

No, that's not the point.

The point is that structurally growth depends on profit expectations of private investors,

which require to be satisfied, high rates of exploitation, meaning that there needs to

be more value that we produce from what we get in our paycheck.

And this is the whole point of also productivity increases when people speak about productivity

increase.

Productivity increase is a way to increase the surplus without necessarily having to compress

wages, but it's still based on the idea that it's extracting our capacity, our brains

from ourselves, right?

And we need to, we need to say, no, we cannot, this system is completely unsustainable.

But the earth is on fire, and this is not a contingency.

It's because of the type of growth that governs our economic system.

So what is the alternate version of like what is the alternate to growth and what is an

alternate system of, I mean, the idea, it's not that productivity in and of itself is problematic.

It is that as it's defined now, it is an increase that is really driven so that, A, you

can, there's like, there's two different models on how you make money that are more

or less the same.

One is, we're going to increase productivity.

And as each worker produces more, we as the capitalist class will take more of that.

Maybe we'll give a little bit of a share to the worker to keep them happy, maybe.

But we're going to take an increasing share of that productivity.

The other is sort of like private equity where they just come in and go, okay, we're done

with growth.

We're going to maintain growth, but the way that we're going to now extract that, that

delta is to cut workers.

And it's, it's the same thing.

It's just moving, you know, we're not going to grow.

We don't need to grow.

We can just grow the share of which we take from the existing productivity.

So what's the alternate to both those?

Like we, we obviously need some productive capacity, but it's geared towards what?

So this is the whole point, right?

It's that it's really about the focus.

If we are all, if our whole society is organized to basically satisfy a very abstract concept,

which is this abstract value that really dominates our lives, and it does this by increasing

the rate of exploitation.

Again, I want to emphasize, you can actually measure the rate of exploitation by looking

at the portion of GDP that goes to profits, but respect to the portion of GDP that goes

to wages.

And what you see is that this rate of exploitation grows historically, and we are at the peak

now.

The peak of corporations have made the corporate profits right now are at the high, I think

one of the all-time highest share, and that means that like, they're just taking more

of what workers are producing than they have historically.

Exactly.

And then one more point I want to make of what you said that is important is that, you

know, a lot of the left is like, oh, yeah, it's because of financialization.

It's neoliberalism that brings about financialization.

This is a scapegoat.

The point is that financialization is not an opposition to the supposed real economy,

right?

It's part of how the real economy operates, and this has been true from the very beginning,

from the very time I study during the First World War, as Ross-Roseluxenberg, for example,

saw very clearly.

So this is the whole point is that financialization is only like accelerating, then equality,

the extraction, but it's not a qualitatively different phenomenon.

And this is also why, you know, there's no distinction between the market and the

state.

And this, for me, is very important.

Again, another category that a lot of lefties like to say, oh, it's because of the markets,

if only there were more state.

The state we're talking about here is a capitalist state.

And the capitalist state is meant to maintain the pillars of capitalism, wage labor, and private

command over investment intact.

And this is why what the capitalist state does is moral-stereoty.

You know, stereoty is state intervention, but intervention that brings resources, shifts

those resources from the many to the few.

And this makes a lot of sense for the system, but doesn't make sense for us.

So you're asking, what are the alternatives?

Well, this is the thing that I really feel strongly about, and the reason why I am contributing

to a real life assembly and a real life organization through the free, free forum.org, is that it's

not something that you can have in a template.

This is the very technocratic outlook that I really want to deny, and it's the perfect

one for academics.

And it's very much in line with capitalism, is to say, it's all about, you know, giving

some recipe that others should implement.

I think right now we're seeing that what we need to do is put ourselves first and showing

that we can collectively organize production for use rather than for exchange.

And this means for use value for the materiality around us.

So we don't need to be always mediating everything we have through the profit motive.

And this is really crucial, and it's about like protecting the commons, and the comments

can be protected in a very highly sophisticated technological way.

But the point is that technology can't be the byproduct of real competition in a capitalist

economy, because that technology is going to kill us as it's clear, not only from the

technology that we're addicted to, but by the one that is killing all these children

in the Middle East, Sudan, and elsewhere.

So this is the point is that we want technology, but technology needs to come out of different

social relations of production, which we put ourselves as collective at the center.

This is not easy, but you know, it has been done.

I want to say that industrial capitalism has been around only for 0.1% of the time homo sapiens

has been on this planet.

This means that we are able, capable as humans to rethink these social relations of production

in a way that they are emancipatory rather than the repressive.

It's just about political will and organization, and this will not happen if we lead it to

the elected official in office or to the few that supposedly are benefiting, because there's

no incentive there.

It needs to happen from holding accountable from below, and this is what we're trying to

do in Tulsa with also a participatory budgeting project and the local institutions.

The local is global.

So we need to start locally and connect networks to say we have alternatives.

We just need to act on them.

In terms of the growth and the way that we think of growth, that would be replaced with

an idea that is we wouldn't really necessarily need to call it growth.

We would call it something to the effect of just meeting our needs essentially.

The concept of measuring growth itself is locks us into a framework that we measure simply

because when we talk about growth, what we're really talking about is the ability for more

extraction to happen or exploitation, as you call it, of the worker.

So the idea is we don't even need the word growth.

What we need to do is just conceive of what do we need?

Our needs meant more often than not because of population needs may get bigger, but there

are also times where needs may contract in certain areas.

We don't need to have growth in oil refining because we had growth in the solar power,

for instance, or our population is aging in a certain way that what we don't need growth

in this industry, we need growth in that industry.

So we don't really talk about growth as a measure of the economy.

We talk about it.

How is it satisfying the needs of the population at any given time?

Absolutely.

Growth is interestingly and real.

It's an abstraction.

It's a complete abstraction.

It's measuring the value, this monetary value, who cares about monetary value?

What we care is about satisfying our needs and living in dignity as human beings.

But this is not the priority of this society right now, you see.

And what it's very interesting is that the word growth was not at all around until really

the 50s, and you see, actually, really the early 60s, and you see the way economists

and canes in economists, by the way, they're supposed lefty economists, really tried to

like use it as a measure to try to really compete with the Soviet Union and say capitalism

is better.

So this is the whole point is actually to say it's a construction, a mental construction,

a category that has been used to tame our imagination.

And we now, given the climate catastrophe, have no militarism everywhere, have no alternative

but to really get out of these mental traps.

And this is what the book escaped from practicality.

But even if, even, I mean, to be clear, even if we weren't facing a climate catastrophe,

the idea of growth is not a helpful metric in which to measure whether people are having

their needs met growth, we could, we could attain growth by, by, by developing an army

of thieves who go around and steal stuff from people, and it would create growth because

all these, I have someone stole my TV, I got to go buy a new TV, sales go up, production

to TVs go up, and then all of a sudden we don't, we have growth.

I just want to tell you, sort of lay that out as a discrete sort of like concept that

people should understand, the game is over once you actually engage in the idea that

growth, which is not to say that we don't need needs, our needs don't, but to measure

it as a function of growth is a misdirection in many respects.

And then, so then talk about why austerity exists because if you, once you're locked into

the concept of, okay, we have to grow, austerity comes in and make sure who gets the bigger

slice of the pie of that growth.

Absolutely.

So one real quick thing I want to mention to you is that actually, you know, gee, growth

is measured per capita and what's really fascinating is that like economists love to

like show like a really like nice line in which you know, we didn't have any and now we

have such huge growth.

So clearly this means more human, human progress.

And what's fascinating is that GDP per capita doesn't even tell you how this value is distributed

at all.

So it's only like dividing very abstractly the amount with the total amount of population

pretending that like we all have the same.

It's the opposite.

We have 12 people making more than 4 billion people right now.

We have 19 people who have accumulated almost $2 trillion in the past two years.

Well, we have 2 billion people plus food insecure.

These are the numbers and this is something that the measure of growth will never show

because it's never meant to show you even the distribution, not to mention of course

the exploitation that is grounding it.

So to your question about austerity, what does austerity do?

It protects not only this understanding that there's no alternatives but also our subordination

to market dependence so that in fact the relation of exploitation is maintained alive.

And this is why I want to also always say that there's nothing spontaneous of this hierarchical

world we live in.

It has to be constantly be protected by state intervention, by governance, by central

banks, by IMF and other international institutions that constantly do what?

Cut social expenditures, privatize, increase interest rates, deregulate labor, do all these

policies and of course tax the people and not capital.

All of these policies, this package of the austerity trinity that I discuss in the book

are again very much functional to this economic system.

So a lot of lefty economists like to tell us, oh you know, it's just bad choice.

You could do without austerity if only we had the right in light in people in government.

I want to tell you the opposite story, I want to tell you, listen in order to not have austerity

we got to change the rules of the game because austerity is foundational to maintaining

us track because if the majority had options they would opt for these options.

It was enough to see what happened under the COVID pandemic.

People quit their jobs once they got a meager paycheck in their inboxes.

This is enough to show you that no one wants anymore to work for someone else in terrible

conditions, have no say over what they do for the majority of their day, not see their

children, work for genocide, that's over.

And the only way you keep it going is through hard dosages of austerity.

That's not by chance that Donald Trump with his big beautiful bill has escalated austerity

like no tomorrow, right?

He's cutting 500 billion to a Medicaid in the next 10 years, 200 billion to food stamps

while he is going to bring the military expenditures really, really high.

So what I also want to say is that austerity has nothing to do with spending less and taxing

more.

This is an empty definition that we need to overcome to understand what austerity actually

is.

And austerity is the government selecting where it spends.

It spends against people in favor of those private businesses they incentivize, invest and

protect.

And of course, the military industrial complex surveillance, those are perfect because

they don't empower people, but they boost the economic growth.

And at the same time, it's about taxing people rather than capital.

And it's about this game of how people suffer to benefit fewer and fewer people.

This is what austerity is about.

And we got to understand how it works to be able to say, okay, that's enough.

We don't need this in our lives.

We want our children to see a better future.

So austerity is the part of the machine that provides a certain amount of discipline

essentially and the flow of the money that must always exist in some form or another.

It may be constant.

It may be increased at certain times.

It may be decreased for political reasons at certain times, but it always exists.

It is literally part of the machine and not something that's introduced into the system,

but something that exists there and at times just to keep the proper balance is there.

And that leads us into unemployment and inflation, which is also another mechanism.

austerity is more of a fiscal mechanism built into the machine to provide some amount of

discipline on the vast majority of us.

But then there's a monetary means in which to provide that discipline.

And that's where inflation and unemployment come in.

Yes.

So I would tell you that austerity is a trinity.

So there's a fiscal side.

There's also the, again, the direct act on labor through what I call industrial austerity.

So again, labor deregulation and wage repression.

And then there's the monetary side.

And what's really interesting here is to note that, you know, we always hear experts say,

of course, we need to tackle inflation.

Of course, we have to increase interest rates because we will all benefit if inflation

is low.

Now, this whole discussion is missing the point because not only increasing interest rate

might not even help attain inflation, especially if inflation is due to the exorbitant profit

margins that we're seeing.

What inflating inflation through interest rate hikes actually does is increase the rate

of exploitation.

And why is this is because increasing, increasing interest rates create higher unemployment,

which is exactly what the US is seeing right now.

We had something like 90,000 over 90,000 job lost last month in February.

This is not happening out of a natural disaster.

This is politically constructed through harsh austerity measures that the fed with Trump

are bringing about.

So this whole point about saying, you know, the supposed conflict between the fed and

the current administration is a superficial level because we know that they are operating

for the bottom line, which is the capital order.

And again, when I say the capital order, and it's the title of my previous book, is

the stress that there's nothing spontaneous, it's political order that requires this.

And one point is that instead of talking about how, you know, the real trade-off is between

profits and unemployment.

The fact that if unemployment is low, this will bite into profits because people will

be able to get higher wages and better working conditions because of their higher bargaining

power.

What they tell us, it's not about profits or unemployment.

It's about inflation unemployment because supposedly they want to make it sound like it's

actually they're trying to solve our problems.

The reality is that they're not and inflation is not going down.

But yes, profits are going up because that's what increasing interest rates actually does

in the long run.

Okay.

I just want to make this lay out a couple of things like the fed articulates their mandate

as controlling two things.

One is inflation and the other is unemployment and they see these things in opposition to

each other and they're constantly, at least the story goes, they're constantly trying to

balance this seesaw.

There's a direct, at least they claim or at least it's set up to imply there's a direct

inverse proportion between inflation and employment and they're trying to sort of like get it

to balance.

Now, for the vast majority of my lifetime, which is a significant period of time, we were

told that there was like, you're, you cannot get unemployment below, I think it was six

or seven percent.

It's not possible without there being raging inflation.

And then all of a sudden, it's like, whoops, we got it down to like three percent.

Well, I guess so much, I mean, this was like, this was like religious gospel.

And so, okay.

So with that said, you're saying that the inflation, they say it's about inflation, but it's

really about profit margin.

How is it that raising interest rates increases profit?

I mean, we can see it.

We now have the highest corporate profit rate we've had.

But nobody has drawn the line to the higher interest rates and that profit.

And what is, what's the mechanism in which that works?

So this is important because again, the political economy tradition I draw on in the book Escape

from Capitalism and this is kind of the base of the tradition I kind of stand for.

It's trying to go below, but beyond deeper than the surface level because at the surface

level, you can say, no, increasing interest rates is going to hurt business because it's

going to increase their borrowing costs and they're not able to invest in blah, blah, blah.

Absolutely.

It's going to increase the cost of borrowing.

Now, the point is that that's true in the immediate moment, but what's most important

is what economists never talk about are labor relations that are kind of always taken

for granted because if you talk about them, then that will piss off people.

And what you find out is that, you know, for business to do well, it also needs to employ

people and make sure that they'll accept their exploitation.

And this is what at the end of the day is most interesting is that, you know, immediately,

of course, creditors gain, you know that if you have, you know, you have, you're a

creditor, you're making a lot of money when interest rates go up.

But in the long run, what's happening is that all profit margins are increasing because

you're able to keep the working class in check.

And in check means are keeping labor costs low and plus you're avoiding strikes or any

forms of alternatives from emerging.

So this is really important.

And that because that is because as you raise interest rates, what does it do to labor?

The economy slows down, right?

Exactly because of borrowing costs more.

The economy slows down and this, in fact, creates less job opportunities and also layoffs.

This is, in fact, you know, we were at 3.4 in 2023 in terms of unemployment rates, which

is around almost 6 million people, by the way, unemployed.

And these are the official statistics.

The official statistics don't count those who stop searching for a job, the people that

are disenfranchised in our economic system, which are much more, they think.

People working in a job they may not like, etc., etc.

So colleagues tell me that actually you would have to multiply by two, at least the official

statistics to actually get the real number of people who are unemployed in our country.

But even so, those almost 6 million people were too little for to maintain that monetary

stability that is required for a capitalist economy to function because that monetary

stability requires higher exploitation rates.

Why?

What happens is that businesses dump the cost of higher production because of higher wages

on the consumer.

So it's true.

It's not, so this is the whole point about this business, I'm not trying to say mainstream

economists lie.

And what I'm trying to say is that mainstream economists actually reveal how classist and

oppressive and ultimately irrational for the logic of need and very rational, of course,

for the logic of profit, which is what counts.

But very irrational for the logic of us as humans, this system is.

Because what we see here is that, in fact, when workers do increase their bar game power,

this is what happened in the 60s, like in 1965, in 1965, in the high day of Keynesianism

in the United States, is that when unemployment was, in fact, pushed down, and this supposedly

was what the Fed also had to do, right, like pushed down unemployment because historically

had been super high in the United States, when unemployment is pushed down, this triggers

potential inflationary spirals, because if workers demand more and achieve more, corporations

will just dump that extra cost on the consumer.

But rather than problematized, why is it that corporations can dump the extra cost on

the consumers, economic models of my mainstream colleagues only speak about the wage push.

The fact that the workers are the culprits because they're the one who are triggering

the inflationary spiral, not even talking about what happens at the level of the firm

because it's considered deterministic.

It's like, oh, no, firms actually don't, there's this whole abstraction about price takers.

Firms that don't actually make any decisions, it's just the competitive market that works.

So this is complete abstraction, all to say, that's always the workers fault.

So it makes sense to raise interest rates, increase the rate of unemployment, so that we

go all back to normal in a situation in which workers are screwed and very few benefit.

And this is the norm in our society, so we shouldn't fool ourselves.

Donald Trump is just the escalation of this, is nothing different.

So if I understand the way that it's sort of like a naturalized, if workers get more

money, then firms will pass this on to consumers rather than contract their profit margin.

The profit margin, the amount that the delta between what workers produce and what they,

what the gross revenues are, that's what the capital's take home and that can never be

contracted.

It can only be expanded essentially.

And so rather than saying, okay, right now we're getting five cents on the dollar for

every ten cents that our workers create.

But now they're asking for five and a half cents, we're going to have to get that half

a cent from the public when they buy our goods.

But actually, since we have the excuse of the five and a half cents, we might also say

a full cent.

And we're actually going to gain another half a cent on our, how much of that productivity

we are capturing essentially.

And the alternate is that you don't have that delta, that we have a system where we don't,

we are not obligated to provide for the capital a profit margin or really any profit unless,

to the extent that maybe we need it as a society to put somewhere else into society.

We don't need that.

Now what do you say to people who say, well, without that, without that exploitation, we wouldn't,

I mean, obviously we would have capital because we have a fiat currency, we can create capital.

When we shrink or increase interest rates, all we're doing is creating capital, more money

or less money.

But what do you say about like, there's not going to be an incentive for geniuses like

Elon Musk to go and build this stuff or like, you know, I didn't know that I needed a

flat screen monitor.

I thought I was fine with a big bulky monitor.

And then someone had the profit incentive to go get a flat screen monitor, that will all

disappear in a clarumatized world.

What do you say to that?

Yeah, I mean, that's, I think this is the exact point is that it's so irrational, according

to the logic of need, again, stressed because we can't talk about rational, rational,

rational in general.

And we have to ask for who is a rational, rational, rational.

So for us, it makes no sense to delegate to few people decisions about what is being,

how we invest because they're, it's true that they were, the big corporation will only

invest if there's enough profit expectations.

So it is true that as you point out, you can't really question the, who gets, like the

share that goes to profit because if it's too little, in fact, these people will just

not invest and then we will have nothing being produced, right?

So this is the whole point is that we need to say, well, why don't, what if we, as people,

through cooperatives, through councils, through different formations that are absolutely

possible, feasible and have existed historically?

And no, also got a lot of attacks from the dominant model.

What if we took on, and as you point out, just operate according to the logic of need,

to the logic of use, talk about protecting, sharing and growing what we need.

And in that case, you wouldn't need to have a secure and very, like a very fat profit

margin to anybody because that very concept would disappear.

Now, the incentive myth is, of course, required to justify this type of economic system.

But I can assure you, I see it with the forum for real economic emancipation, we are an assembly.

People feel humanized by participating in an effort that has nothing to do with self-interest

and, you know, maximizing one's utility.

Economists have convinced us that the only way in which we can operate is if we maximize

our utility and we act in a very self-interested way.

And this is killing us.

People do want to participate in economies of care, of solidarity, of horizontality.

And that's what allows us to be human and not just monsters.

And the only way to survive right now is to do that because this system requires us to

be monster.

Requires us to not even think about all these children who are starving and dying everywhere

while the United States escalates its empire and its sources of revenue and extraction.

This for me is something that I can no longer tolerate.

I have children myself and I understand that the only way in which we can go about without

losing our mental health is if we show concretely as the free is doing and we hope the free will

multiply as a model elsewhere and we have a lot of people who are interested in building

something similar.

So I'm here if you want to reach out through my free free from org, we can easily talk

about alternatives.

This is the point is that people need this deeply, much more than money, they need the sense

of being alive in a collective that empowers their human spirit.

And we should say it's not a question of pursuing self-interest, it seems to me, but it's

pursuing something that is self-interest exclusive.

Like because you cannot win in a capitalist society unless your endeavor is self-interest

exclusive.

It's like it could be in my interest to have a Lyme disease vaccine.

I only say Lyme disease vaccine because I know a lot of people who got in Lyme disease

and there was a vaccine out there like 20 or 30 years ago, it was like 70% effective,

but it just wasn't profitable enough.

So it just goes away.

But there's need for it, but it may be so regional that somebody can't make a profit

for it.

It certainly could provide a need and it doesn't have the margin to justify somebody to

do it.

And we don't have a system now that says like, oh, actually, we have a need for these

medications, even if they're not profitable, we need them.

And yes, because we don't have to worry about making X number over what it would cost

to produce this or to research it, we can now actually produce it.

And that goes across the board with whatever it is.

Yes.

And this is what important is you see that we need new language, we need new concepts.

And this is what my book tries to do because again, of course, it's in our interest to

have things that help us flourish, right?

School, art, creativity, like green space, everything that we need is in our interest.

But as you point out, like the economists have captured these words to their benefit,

including the word freedom.

This is why we really want to keep the word free and the free form is to say, freedom

is not compatible with capitalism.

Democracy in the real sense is not compatible with capitalism.

We need to reappropriate those words and talk about economic democracy, real freedom.

Because an interest in a way that is actually uplifting us, rather than like pitting one

against the other, we need new language.

But I think the only way we will get new language, Sam, is if we participate differently,

if we actually take initiative, if we do do these new experiments, because that's the

only way I've realized being in the assembly has changed me.

Like I've learned how deeply sometimes, you know, selfish I actually am and how sometimes

I, so you learn how to like actually improve as a human being, only if you put yourself

in a situation in which you can learn from being around others.

So our language, our concepts and our facts, this is what Gramsci said, it's praxis, right?

It's only through praxis that we can actually get something that is truly revolutionary

in the positive sense of the word.

Again, they've appropriated the word revolution to mean something horrible.

Revolution means transformation, it's a positive thing.

And if there is bloodshed, it usually comes from those who don't want any change and

wants to preserve the status quo, this is what historically has happened.

So we want revolution in the positive sense of saying, let's, let's, let's escape this

horrendous situation we're in because it is enough.

All right.

Lastly, in the context of, is there, obviously like what you're talking about in terms of

the praxis and in terms of like setting up these entities to explore and to widen our

imagination about and get outside of the structural constraints, both from a language perspective

and obviously the system.

Is there any room for or value for concurrent parallel, political, electoral, political movements

within the context of that system?

Because there, any politician as much as we may like them is also sort of stuck within

those constraints to a certain degree.

It seems to me because not enough people, we have to acknowledge that, I mean, the whole

argument is we need more information or imagination.

Most people don't have that.

Most people will not read your book.

Most people will not hear this interview will not, I mean, that's just the reality of it.

What's your perspective on that?

So my dear friend and colleague Camila Vergara came up with this concept, systemic corruption,

right?

Again, tells you it's not because there's a bad politician in office, it's the role of

the game in our constitution is meant to structurally detach our representatives from

the represented.

And this is how liberal constitutions are like, we're born.

That's what they needed to do is again to protect the few wealthy property owners who

are actually benefiting off of slavery and capital investment.

So this is key.

So the, sorry, now I'm, I'm, I'm spacing out, you ask, oh, yes, so how about what do we

do about this?

I think the only way you can get those in office, even at a local level to be true to the those

who supposedly are representing their base is if the base is organized.

And this is why the two, like, you know, building assembly spaces and grassroots mobilization

that is actually organized through an institution and not just spontaneous or random and elected

electoral politics.

They go together because the only way you'll get someone in office to respond to the actual

logic of need and not to the logical profit given the systemic corruption and the systemic

capture from above from the oligarchy we live in is if this base is organized and can push

and can pressure the local admit the local and federal elected officials to do something

according to logic that is not the one that the system wants.

And this is what I think we need to do.

This is why I think what's happening in New York is also very interesting is whether the

organization that have allowed, I'm done to win, will be able to maintain him accountable

through organizing locally.

And this is what we've done in Tulsa too, you know, we got the mayor to come and listen

to the concept of why participatory budgeting and well taxes on local level would be a very

good way to get resources and to solve homelessness in a way that doesn't just require, you know,

incentivizing producer the real estate sector through tax breaks, which clearly is not helping

out the homeless crisis that the U.S. is facing right now.

So this is why I think the two things are like you can't have one without the other.

The only way we will actually have elected official to respond to people's needs is if

these people just don't just think they do their duty just by voting once every ex amount

of years, but like take action every day of the week, every day of the month to make their

voices heard through democratic institutions.

Sarah Matai, founder of the free forum, you can find it at freeforum.org, Professor of

Economics at the University of Tulsa, the book is Escape from Capitalism, an intervention.

There it is right there.

Folks can get more information there.

Clara, thank you so much, really, really appreciate you're coming on and appreciate

your work.

I appreciate your show very, very much.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break and head into the fun half of the

program wherein we will probably not have much fun.

I mean, we may have some, but, you know, we may, that'll be our teaser.

Stay tuned.

That's right.

The suspense.

There's a Chuck Schumer clip on the sound sheet.

Well, things are looking up.

I'm sure.

Just remember it's your support that makes the show possible.

You can become a member and join the majority of port.com when you do, you not only get

the free show free of commercials, but you also get the fun half.

And just coffee.co.

Fair trade coffee, use the coupon code majority, you get 10% off.

Matt.

Yeah, left reckoning.

There's a Sunday show.

Oh, sorry.

I got taken it back by Ben Shapiro's eyebrows in this.

I hadn't seen this particular clip.

Oh, my God.

I hope he's okay.

Oh, we're going to get to the hard news in a moment, folks.

The heck is going on.

Something very strange is happening with Ben Shapiro's eyebrows.

So he got latisse, but for I, latisse is what makes your eyelashes grow, but he got that

for his eyebrows.

So he got a polstered.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've seen that.

Like with, honestly, with the grease paint and people getting tattoos, but I've never seen

it like, we get a, we get, we're going to do a deep dot.

A lab accident.

I hate it.

Right.

I want to know who his, his threader is or maybe he got like a hair transplant on his

eyebrows.

That's the thing is like it looks like he put like a tonic that's mentally top of your head

like on his eyebrows.

Yeah.

But those don't work that well anyway.

So he's, it almost seems like it needs to have been a surgical option.

He's got Turkish hair in his face.

But, uh, yeah, I'm sort of taking it back.

I can't remember exactly.

I'm sure we talked about the Iran war on the Sunday show.

So, oh, we actually talked about the things Kamala Harris warned us about.

So yeah, check that out.

Patreon.com.

So distracted by the eyebrows.

Understandable.

I'm not.

I don't have anything.

I mean, it's sold out.

It sold out our show.

Sorry, suckers.

You were too late.

We tried to warn you.

You know, Francesca was worried about it.

I was like, we're cool.

Don't worry.

We sold out pretty quickly.

So I'm pretty happy about that.

I'm happy to excited for our show on the 22nd.

So it's in like a little less than two weeks in LA.

But if you want to watch the show and you are unable to go, it's going to be available

to patrons for the situation room.

So just if you want to become a patron, you'll be able to see the live show.

Do that now.

It's like, um, I mean, you get, if you're going to ultimately join, you might as well

get access to the show right now.

Exactly.

Right.

See you in the fun if three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now.

And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now.

And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is

three months from now.

But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow, what is that

going on?

It's not.

Wait a second.

Hold on.

Hold on for a second.

Emma, welcome to the program.

Hey.

Matt.

Who?

Fun.

What is up, everyone?

Fun.

No, me.

You did it.

Fun.

No, Brandon.

Let's go Brandon.

Bradley, you want to say hello?

Sorry, this is clearly everyone.

I'm just a random guy.

It's all the voice today.

Fun and only false.

No, I'm sorry.

Women are talking.

Oh, wow.

It's all the finished.

Where is this coming from, dude?

But, dude, you want to smoke this, um, Saturday?

Yes.

Five minutes.

Is it?

Yes.

Is this me?

It is you.

Is this me?

It is me?

It is you.

It is me.

Oh, it's me?

It is you.

It is me.

It is you.

It is me.

Oh, it's me.

It is you.

Oh, it is me.

It is you.

It is you.

It's just the weak being weeded out, obviously.

Yeah.

Sun down, guns up.

I don't know.

But, you should know.

We just don't like the entertaining ideas.

I have a question.

Who cares?

Our chat is enabled for us.

I love it.

I do love that.

Love.

Got a jump.

I gotta be quick.

I'm losing it bro

2 o'clock we're already late and the guy's been a dick. So screw him

Send to a good long range of like what is wrong with you love you bye

Love you. Bye. Bye