KXEL Presents: The Jacobsen Group Podcast – November 2, 2024

Who used all the Wi-Fi?

Ah, apartment life.

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Maybe 2027 deserves an upgrade.

Coming August 2027, Four Lakes Properties introduces the brand new Union Station Apartments, furnished in-unit washer and dryer.

Internet included a great central downtown location, one to five bedroom apartments, and no double occupancy fees.

That's less adulting and more actually enjoying where you live.

Union Station Apartments, now leasing from Four Lakes Properties.

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It's where Iowa comes to talk.

News Talk 1540 KXEL.

Good morning, Eastern Iowa.

The Jacobson Group comes to you here on this Saturday morning sponsored by Midwest Renewable Energy LLC and Hames Homes, the Homes people.

John Jacobson here in studio with Mike Shane.

Today on KXL, 1540 AM, Clear Channel 50,000 Watts and 100.5 FM.

And catch the podcast always KXL.com slash Jacobson J-A-C-O-B-S-E-N.

Kerming.

throughout the Midwest and all of our big 10 states.

Stand by for entertainment.

Three, two, one, go!

We are essentially at election E.

It is Saturday and we are just a little over, I would say 60 hours away from when Dixville Notch votes up in New Hampshire.

Of course, the reality is Americans by the millions have been voting in half of our states now for several weeks and

We conclude our voyage pre-election with Democratic pal, advisor, senior advisor, trusted confidante, bon vie bon, and brother from another mother, although Pete and I are on different sides of the aisle.

I'm technically a registered independent.

Pete McRoberts back with us.

Pete, we are at that point.

It seems unbelievable we're finally here.

And I'm going to start out for the sake of all that is good and decent.

I hope this isn't like an Iowa football game where

is that excruciating four-quarters slog that, with a minute left, is undecided.

Only then is there a sense of urgency, and the cardiac clock eyes are either going to bitterly disappoint us or thrill us at the end.

Pete, I hope either way is to blow out.

Really, I do.

I hope we've got neat and clear closure.

But let's get your thoughts.

Where are we right now, the state?

of the race for the White House.

We'll talk about the Senate House to wrap it up, but let's start with the mighty White House.

John, thank you very much for your time and for all your listeners.

This is going to be a full week, obviously.

And the biggest question, whether it's in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, is turnout, turnout, field, field.

That's it.

And the candidates are getting, of course, a lot of what we would call earned media.

Whenever anyone gives a major speech, it's going to be covered.

But some of that stuff tends to just be baked in.

The presidential candidates, Vice President Harris from President Trump, both had their own big speeches here the last several days.

Each of them landed a little differently.

And I can't overemphasize that in terms of prediction,

the polls just don't tell us anything anymore.

The noise level is so high that you've got to just simply be looking at the ground game anywhere from five to seven competitive states.

And that said, we would argue or we would kind of intuit that 48 hours ago, there was a bit of a drop on the hair side to the extent that polls are believable.

That's come back.

I mean, and look, it's

It's just a couple days out.

And so if it were me, I would rather be Harris right now, all things being equal.

I don't think you can overstate the problem of the Trump Madison Square Garden rally.

I mean, let's just, you and I have talked about this many times.

Pennsylvania is the new Florida, right?

When I got started, Florida was the thing.

And I think it's fair to say that the Madison Square Garden issue with Trump, there are subsequent comments.

cause real damage within an identifiable voting block in Pennsylvania.

I mean, there's there's a half million American citizens in Pennsylvania who are Puerto Rican.

And and that that might be your October surprise to the extent that there is one.

So all things

we had, we had within less than 24 hours after that, we had the we are garbage statement that is resonating deeply with with our base.

And I would argue that's a wash.

Now, let me make a postulate, tear this postulate apart.

So I'm teaching stats right now, and I'm looking at two standard deviations from the mean.

What are the most likely scenarios in 95% of the cases?

I want you to disabuse my notions here.

Number one, I think that this race, in terms of probability of Trump or Harris winning, neither party has more than a 55% probability of winning, meaning it's a de facto coin flip, and turnout is everything.

I also believe this.

Here's why I would rather be Trump right now.

I think Harris needs to win, and she could do this, but she really needs to sweep Pennsylvania.

Michigan and Wisconsin.

If she does that, I believe she wins because I believe she's going to win Nebraska too and that that would put her at precisely 270 electoral votes.

Do I think that that is likely?

Not necessarily.

Do I think that's probable?

Not necessarily, but it's not like she's got to draw a royal flush or even an inside straight.

She needs three of a kind.

If she can sweep that trifecta of Penn, Michigan, Wisconsin, with Nebraska two, I think she wins.

On the other hand, I think if Trump holds Carolina, picks up Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, where early voting numbers are really good for the GOP, then Trump's got to win one of those three.

Michigan's going to be tough, Wisconsin, maybe a little bit better.

Pennsylvania.

I think that garbage troll was one of the greatest PR stunts I've ever seen.

I think that washes Puerto Rico away.

Here's my question.

Is New Hampshire in play?

Is Virginia in play?

Is New Mexico in play?

And if those are in play, could we possibly see a not likely and not probable, but within that 95% two standard deviation bell curve, could Trump end up with 300 electoral votes?

I don't see it.

I mean, given the snare that you just described, Harrison 270, that's just cut and dried, given exactly what you just described, taking Georgia off the map.

She's 270.

I think she's competitive in Georgia.

And you'll notice, and this is, again, this is where analysis gets a little tough, just a couple of days out, because everybody's trying to read the tea leaves and whatnot.

My sense is North Carolina is less competitive than it was.

I heard a report earlier today that Harris had canceled ad buys in North

Carolina.

Moving on.

They're trying to firm up Virginia.

Is Virginia really in play?

No.

What about Minnesota?

I see polls where Harris is only up plus two in Minnesota.

Nope.

The infrastructure, and again, for a long time, we went towards aggregators, towards like pros or not, but we've moved into the GOTV.

We've moved into the infrastructure.

And one of the things that I'd like listeners to remember,

is just as it happened.

I was listening to Meet the Press the other day, the Meet the Press daily, and it was eight years to the day from the Comey letter that was was detrimental to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Well, in 24 years, 24 years ago, this was the weekend of the George W. Bush DUI arrest.

When it came out, sure.

Okay, sure.

The old DUI arrest that came out the week and right before Tuesday.

Yeah.

So but the reason I'm saying this is because

as the Meet the Press Archives brought in the Clinton 16 campaign manager to kind of clean things up.

And he said, well, we've got 50,000 volunteers all across the country.

We're really moving.

And I compare that to where Vice President Harris, her manager, her campaign co-chair, who for full disclosure is a friend of mine.

That's

why we got you on the show.

You got the inside scoop,

man.

Well, you know, she kind of casually mentions, oh, yes, in the last 24 hours, we knocked a million two doors.

I mean, look, that's real stuff.

And this is why if you go back to July 21,

You know, the Harris campaign, I mean, really, the very first thing that they said to the Biden operation was, if you've got a job today, you've got one tomorrow, right?

So on one hand, you've got the institutional infrastructure, but on the other hand, and this is the thing I want to get across.

I saw in animation of this earlier, Kenover Ware, you know, the pollsters for years worried about the hidden Trump voters and in 16 and in 20, it was just

obvious that there was voters that they just couldn't find.

They didn't know how to locate them.

in order to poll them.

And some commentator yesterday morning said, is 100 days enough to identify and find hidden Harris voters?

And I thought that was a really good question.

So we're in a snap election at this point based upon actual voting data, independence, or people who were undecided in the last week tend to be breaking heavier to the Harris campaign.

It's a Harris by double digits.

I don't mean to say this is national, but Georgia, 50% of the votes were already cast.

That's a real thing.

So you said two weeks ago, is it all ground game here on out?

The answer is demonstrably yes.

And let me go back on the garbage comment.

So whether you believe the White House or not.

And I do.

I saw the video.

I couldn't remember this guy's name at all, who referred to Puerto Rico as garbage.

And neither should anybody.

But I mean, look, I saw the video where the president said to flat out, the only garbage is the supporters.

OK, fine.

But I understand the politics of it.

But here's the point, Biden on the ballot.

And Trump has tried for months to put Biden back on the ballot.

because he doesn't know how to run against Harris.

So what I see in this dustup with the Biden gaff is not dissimilar to other attempts for that campaign to put Biden in the spotlight.

And you tell me if that's worked for the last couple of months.

I think the problem was that he got it in there during her rally and kind of farted in her punch bowl during her rally, just like that comedian kind of did at Madison Square Garden.

I think those kind of wash, but my objects of interest is this.

They have Mark Cuban basically trashing any Republican woman, and that didn't go over.

acutely well either and so there's been a lot of thanks a lot of Republican women have really gone after Mark Cuban and we are seeing I thought the attrition would be more by the candidates but it's almost their surrogates now that are stepping on these gaps Pete Gretchen Whitmer

the comedian at Madison Square Garden.

How does this all play out?

I mean, listen, I've watched Cuban's comments.

And so let's thread the needle here.

And it's kind of fun to do so.

Cuban said Trump doesn't listen to the women around him.

And that's kind of a...

could message.

I mean, you know, he went back and he quote unquote cleaned up about how, oh yes, but there's so and so and so and so, but no, they hit with on Trump.

And I don't, I think if, particularly for women voters, for female voters, that statement alone, Trump does not listen to strong women.

It's real hard to argue against that.

Pete, thanks for all you're doing for us.

It's been great to have you.

We will do a post-mortem after the election.

Hopefully, we'll know in a week.

My goodness, I hope we know in a week.

Absolutely, and I can't wait for the time capsule between now and then.

Oh, we've got, we've got, we've got mission to do yet.

So, and we've got some good stuff in the can.

Ladies and gentlemen, Pete McRoberts, great friend and broadcast colleague.

I'll listen to this dine on Tuesday night.

Take a wander over to the KOFO.

In Kansas City, you can find us online as well and listen live.

Who used all the Wi-Fi?

Ah, apartment life.

Bad Wi-Fi, mystery laundry piles, and a roommate who says, I'll Venmo you.

Maybe 2027 deserves an upgrade.

Coming August 2027, Four Lakes Properties introduces the brand new Union Station Apartments.

Furnished, in-unit washer and dryer, internet included, a great central downtown location, one to five bedroom apartments, and no double occupancy fees.

That's less adulting and more actually enjoying where you live.

Union Station Apartments now lease

from Four Lakes Properties.

Wait, we have a washer and dryer in the apartment?

Good morning on this beautiful Saturday morning in September.

We all survive Friday the 13th.

I'm no Triska Decaphobic.

We're not afraid of anything.

As a matter of fact, we are filled with hope.

and great inspiration.

We have people like Barbara Haymes-Bryans, the family legacy custodian of the awesome Haymes Poems family, two wonderful communities.

in Cedar Rapids, Iowa of manufactured homes.

Barbara, welcome back to the show.

You give people an option for brand new, beautiful, affordable spacious housing, but also you've got some really nice refurbished and pre-owned homes as well.

We have our own dedicated service crews that go in and refurbish, remodel, and re-engineer our pre-owned homes, top to bottom, front to back.

Inside and out, we use a 96-point checklist to refurbish our manufactured homes so you know that if you're moving into a used home, it's still a great, affordable, safe, beautiful, attractive home.

And you continue to refurbish these on an ongoing basis.

Here with Barbara Hames Bryant at Hames.

Homes, the homeless people, they're in Cedar Rapids.

Barbara, after you've got underwriter review and approval, there's the closing and the community sign in.

It's a beautiful touch, but the community manager there at Hames further explains the guidelines and answers questions.

That's right.

John, everyone agrees to a common set of living standards at Haymes Homes.

And the community manager is not only responsible for making sure the rules are enforced, but also making sure that every resident is happy living in a Haymes community.

And

you've got that data plate that you show them in the Homes.

That's an information summary that is unique to each manufactured home.

And then you also help them with maintenance for your mate.

with maintenance regulations and such, everything from furnace filters and when to check the heat tape.

You know, there's a lot to owning a home, any kind of home, including how to change batteries and a smoke detector of furnace filters, as you mentioned, and, you know, keeping seals around windows and doors.

Oh, snug and comfortable when it starts to get a little chilly outside.

So

Barbara, how do we find you by internet, by phone, and by physical location?

Most of our customers find us first on the internet at hamshomes.com or you can visit us in person seven days a week.

We're open today and tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, seven days a week at the corner of Wilson Avenue and West Post Roads Southwest.

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We have had that phone number for 55 years since 1969.

Put it on your speed dial because we've got beautiful homes we want to show you.

And they are affordable and this is the time now.

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This is a good time to take a look.

Barbara Hames, Brian ladies and gentlemen.

Our

studio

audience on their feet as always.

Barbara between you and Curtis and Clint.

You're a trifecta of radio excellence.

Always a joy to have you on the blowtorch here.

50,000 watts.

caroming across North America, but mostly in Cedar Rapids, Iowatha, Robbins, Marion, North Liberty, Tiffin, Iowa City, Waterloo.

Get down to Hames Homes, folks, and look up Barbara Hames Bryant.

Thanks, Barbara, for joining

us.

It's my pleasure, John.

You have a great weekend.

You too.

God bless.

Talk to you next week.

It's election Eve, guys.

Saturday morning to midnight Monday when voting starts in Dixville Notch.

Good grief, we're basically 60 hours away.

But really, America's been voting for two weeks in half of our state.

What is the state of the race on this last weekend before the general election?

We're taking our final pre-election tour on election Eve with Sheila Murphy, Iowa, Nebraska, GOP political consultant, Sheila.

We checked in with my friend, Pete McRoberts, who is a Biden aide and Democrat operative and consultant, and now lobbyist, a fine lobbyist for a lot of good causes in Iowa, some that I disagree

with,

however.

But Pete is really confident.

He says, you know, it could go either way, but Pete thinks Kamala's got the better ground game, and that Kamala can hold Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and throw in Nebraska O2.

which is an eight-point lead right now for Harris, and Harris sends up a precisely 270.

He says he'd rather be her than Trump.

What say you, Sheila Murphy?

I'd say that's probably what he has to say, and I'll disagree completely.

So we want to hear your analysis.

I can't wait, because frankly, I hope you're right.

So give it away to us there, Sheila.

Every day I see more and more.

that the tide is turning.

It's not as much about politics as it is by change.

As I see it in the attitude of the American people, I think the American people have reached the safety issue point.

They

have had it.

They are ready for a big change and they are going to vote for Trump in a big

way.

see this in the electoral vote area, in the popular vote area, or both.

And what is the fallacy of the Harris plan?

Do you think they're going to lose one of those three big 10 states?

And if so, which one is the most likely to fall?

Well, I think that I believe this to be both popular vote and electoral.

I will be bold and I will say the Trump will get 300 or more electoral votes.

So you think you can cancel one of those big densities?

Which is the most likely to fall in this column?

PA?

Well,

Pennsylvania, for sure.

Well, if she doesn't win Pennsylvania, she basically doesn't have a path if Trump retains North Carolina and gets Georgia and Nevada and Arizona back.

Do you think he's got those?

He has those.

Wow.

Wow.

Let me ask you this.

Do you think it's just potty psychological warfare, or do you believe that Virginia

New Hampshire, Minnesota, and New Mexico could be in play for Trump.

Yes, I think they could.

I think what I'm seeing is that people, and I think I said this last time we spoke, John, people are coming out of the shadows and more boldly and openly stating that they are supporting Trump and in those states as well.

I see this as a national trend and I believe that

The Harris campaign has placed all of their strategic weaponry in attacking Trump and highlighting what they believe to be negative negatives that Trump has.

And this has been a very vital error that they have made.

They have put all their money there.

They have not presented anything positive.

And it is the negativity that the American people are sick to death of.

So they're actually working against themselves.

Sheila, I'm going to go farther.

I think some of the polling has been abjectly corrupt.

Do you agree?

Well, absolutely.

I mean, tell me, John, who's babysitting the pollsters?

Where can we go to find any kind of analysis of the veracity of the objectivity, the professionalism of a poet?

Anybody can just start them and no one's no one's saying who's who's credible and who isn't and we're running everything by polls in this country now I think something has got to change in that regard I I Absolutely have no respect to the polls at this point.

Yeah, I think that's a great point was interesting talking to Pete Pete thought that

Trump had a major gaffe with the Puerto Rico joke at his rally, but I pushed back and said, he was diminishing the garbage quote from Biden.

He said, Trump's not running against Biden.

He's running against Harris.

But come on, that was said, treating a Harris rally by Biden piping into the rally there on the ellipse.

And you get that followed up with the Mark Cuban comment about strong women.

You know, Sheila, I got to tell you, I told this to Pete.

I took Mark Cuban's comment.

that said basically strong, intelligent women don't vote for Trump.

I took that as a personal attack on my wife.

And I have publicly challenged Mark Cuban to a boxing exhibition match for charity.

I detached retina and all my retina is healed.

I'm ready to go into the ring here.

And my comment would be that the proceeds, if I win that match, would go to Otterby University to our free market think tank.

And Sheila, Mark Cuban and I are both in our mid 60s, about 61, 190.

I think it'd be a fair fight.

What say you?

Oh, I think you just with him.

I never thought that Cuban was, well, I think that you beat him in every way, including in the boxing

ring.

The advantage he would have, I think if he started sweating, that terrible shade of black hair dye that he uses, you'd think a billionaire could get a better hair dye match.

But if that got into my eyes, if he dripped that into my eyes, he could blind me, I think.

Yes, that could be.

both scary and entertaining.

But nonetheless, back to the point of all these things.

And I was surprised to hear Pete say that, you know, he's not running against Biden.

Well, Harris isn't running against the comedian that made that terrible

joke.

I

mean, you know, come on, but hypocrisy has reached an all new high.

But look, there is no greater troll.

Trump in the garbage truck in at McDonald's.

If those are iconic images, they are almost up there with the fight, fight, fight.

I can't think of a candidate that has ever had three more iconic images in one campaign.

No.

And that's part of what Trump does.

But it's also part of what I'm talking about in a change of the American attitude.

Trump takes these things and has fun with them.

Yes.

The opposition.

has told America that fun is no longer permitted.

Humor is not to be tolerated, jokes are not to be told, and America's about to have enough of that.

If you're ahead, close positively and happily.

If you're behind, lash out.

I have never seen Trump more at peace with himself, more relaxed, more jovial, more comfortable.

Is that a sign that maybe they've got good internal polling?

I believe that's part of it, but I also think it's part of the intrinsic nature of the two campaigns.

We talked about this in your campaigning.

Our unofficial motto at one point was make campaigning fun again.

And that's what Trump is doing.

I think there's an ability to laugh at yourself, to laugh at others is something that the liberals have lost in this country.

And I think America

is turning on that as much as they are on a bad economy and an open border.

You know Sheila, the endorsement games are fascinating.

Bobby Kennedy has made a huge impact in the Trump race.

I see his former brother-in-law, well actually his former

Well, his ex-wife's cousin, of course, Bobbie Kennedy, is Arnold's ex-wife's cousin.

And I think Arnold wanted in on the family action, and he endorsed Kamala Harris.

And at first I was upset, but then, Sheila, I thought, it's unnatural for Arnold to endorse Kamala.

If Doug Emhoff can do the nanny, why can't Arnold do the maid?

I mean, you know, even Steven.

You know.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has not been politically impressive.

Well, not ever.

He just, you know, he tried to be a politician.

He's one of these guys who's never quite found a footing ideologically.

I don't think anyone's terribly impressed by anything he says or doesn't.

So there we have it.

Well, not only that, but when you use terrorist that much, Sheila, there's monumental shrinkage.

I'm just saying.

Sheila, predict the Senate and House races for us.

What's going to happen in the national chambers?

Okay, Republicans take the Senate, the House, the House is the one thing that has me a little nervous right now.

Right now, I'm willing to say that the Republicans will take it by a whisper, but we'll take it.

And that must mean you think all four House seats in Iowa are going to stay GOP, that none wins, that Miller Meeks wins, that Henson wins, that Feenstra wins.

Absolutely.

I do believe that.

Yes.

Can Don Bacon resurrect from the dead, almost, in Omaha and beat liberal Tony Vargas?

Yes.

I think that's going to be a squeaker, but I think I think Bacon can do it because I think

Um, a lot of the, the Nebraska's Omahaans, I mean, I'm from Omaha.

You sure are.

That's how we're asking for your expertise on this girl.

So, but I, I believe that, uh, you know, that, that she's gone into Democrat hands many times.

Yeah.

And it couldn't happen again, but I think people are very wary of some of our distance.

And I think in the end.

They would rather have bacon, who's not a favorite with conservatives, but who is a lot more reliable for the values that people want to stand behind in Congress.

And I'm thinking and I'm hoping that that will carry bacon through.

Sheila Murphy with us.

Her last interview pre-election.

Sheila, we're going to do the post-mortem next week.

Boy, our country will change one way or the other.

Hang in there, kiddo.

We might even talk to you election night on our KOFO coverage out of Kansas City.

Sheila, always great to have you on with us.

Well, it's a pleasure, John.

Looking forward to talking again.

And we're proud to talk about A cross, America relay for pro-life.

A hyphen cross, America relay.

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Benedictine College students are registered to complete the finishing legs of the relay in Overland Park, Kansas on October 19.

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across.

If you're enjoying this KXEL podcast then we invite you to listen to KXEL's great programming in real time too.

You can hear us on the radio statewide at AM 1540 and in the Cedar Valley at FM 100.5.

We stream live on the web not only through KXEL.com but also through our free KXEL mobile app and Alexa knows how to find us too.

It's where Iowa comes to talk.

News Talk 1540 KXEL.

Who used all the Wi-Fi?

Ah, apartment life.

Bad Wi-Fi, mystery laundry piles, and a roommate who says, I'll Venmo you.

Maybe 2027 deserves an upgrade.

Coming August 2027, Four Lakes Properties introduces the brand new Union Station Apartments.

Furnished, in-unit washer and dryer.

Internet included a great central downtown location, one to five bedroom apartments, and no double occupancy fees.

That's less adulting and more actually enjoying where you live.

Union Station Apartments, now leasing from Four Lakes Properties.

Wait, we have a washer and dryer in the apartment?

department?

Economist and you guys all you have to do is look at Argentina what President Javier Malay is doing there He's already turning it into the Argentine miracle Argentina racked by devastating high interest rates super high inflation a ruinous economy What did Malay do?

He's come in and in 90 days like Reagan like that you're like John Kennedy.

He's cutting regulations He's cutting spending he wants cut taxes and all of a sudden Argentina's economy is improving by

leaps and bounds.

We're going to go to Ottawa University to the Guartney Institute, Dr. Peter Jacobson, PhD, and the Guartney Chair and a Professor of Economics at Ottawa, and his fellow academician professors at the Guartney Institute with a great segment about our free market system.

Take a

listen.

Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

By investigating faith in economics, we can learn how they lead to human flourishing.

This is the Faith in Economics podcast, a presentation of the Gordney Institute at Ottawa University.

Welcome to our show today.

I'm Christopher Sochanzo, producer and graduate assistant for Gordney Institute.

Joining us today, Dr. Russ McCullough, the founder of Gordney Institute and Wayne Angel Chair of Economics.

Dr. Justin Clark, the Minor Family Professor of Philosophy and Ethics.

Dr. Peter Jacobsen, the Warning Professor of Economic Education and Research.

Finally, the Warning Institute Assistant, Kevin Urga Deju.

All right, well, I'm excited to get into this one.

Dr. Clark's going to lead us through some AI stuff and impacts that we might not even be thinking of.

So, Justin, what do you got?

There was an interesting article that

Curtis Yarvin posted recently and Yarvin is kind of a polemical figure He was a computer scientist and then he did a bunch of kind of political posting and he was he often gets lumped together with like what's called neo reactionary political thought which is kind of on the right ish but not it's kind of a kind of futurist type of right.

It's love

A lot of people who are really into AI and computer science find this kind of political philosophy interesting.

So he had an article about Sam Altman, who is the CEO of OpenAI, which of course now isn't open.

It is just called OpenAI.

And Sam Altman is one of the big opponents of AI.

And the idea that AI is going to revolutionize the workforce.

render a lot of people unemployable or unemployable what they currently do, and that's not a bad thing.

And Jarvan has a kind of opposite take on it.

And so I thought we'd kind of run through his argument because it's interesting and it relies on a couple premises that I initially vehemently disagreed with and now I kind of think I both agree and don't with them.

So where do you guys come down next?

I thought it was a fun read.

fun in a way that, as Quine put it, like, a good game of squash is fun.

Like, that it's exhausting, right?

So, do you want, Justin, if I give you my impression of at least the first part, and you tell me whether or not I'm right on the impression?

Correct.

The way that I read this article is, you know, one of the big arguments in favor of automation is that, like, if we look back at previous attempts to stop automation, we oftentimes think those people were really misguided.

And so the example Yavin uses, like, lamp lighters.

That is people who would go around the street lamps and light them before electricity did the job And so he's pointing out like well, man, do you would you really want there to be lamp lighters today?

Like that's what it would mean to get rid of automation is that there would be lamp

What's the group who was opposed to automation historically called?

Luddites.

Luddites.

Yeah, it's very, it's, you know, the argument against automation is very Luddite.

And so we kind of look at those arguments as being, you know, silly in context to start.

Now, Jarvin's not making that point, but he's pointing out that we think of those things as silly.

Is that what you were going to say, Justin?

Yeah, I was going to say, Altman is making the point.

He brings up lamp lighters, right?

Yes, yeah.

So yeah, Altman is saying, like, oh, well, we wouldn't want there to be lamp lighters.

And Jarvan's response is I want lamp lighters, right?

But here's how he here's how he does it, right?

He doesn't say I want lamp lighters just you know for like the reason of like it gave like us a dignity or something like he's not making an argument about like the virtue of lamp lighting which is a lot of times how these leadide arguments go It's like we don't want to get rid of steel industry because steel is strong and you know, that's kind of the silly But what Jarvan does is something different.

He says there's a lot of people who could have been lamp lighters who now are going to

to take position in the world that could be a net negative for a lot of people.

This is how I'm reading the argument.

And so maybe instead of a lamp lighter, this person goes on to be, and he doesn't use this example, I'm just making one up, but this person goes on to be some middle manager that wastes a bunch of company time with like useless meetings or something like that.

Or something worse, right?

So I just and you can kind of take it away from here But that's what I got from Curtis's points is basically lamp lighters don't cause negative externalities But some of the things lamp lighters might do once they cease to be lamp lighters will cause negative externalities

Yeah, so he says let's take I just have to quote from it because it's good.

He

says Sam

he goes, you know Sam Altman rightly points out that what we look back and we go Well, nobody's wishing for a return of lamp lighters.

Nobody's

Wishing they were a lampliter.

Nobody looks back in the past and wishes I was a lampliter.

And he goes, let's say that Sam Altman's right about all these.

No one's looking in the past wishing they were a lampliter.

But I am looking straight at the present wishing other people were lampliters now.

And you should be too.

And if your philosophy of society were properly adjusted, you would be.

Here's what you would be thinking if you were thinking that.

Other people today should be lamp lighters.

Many, many more people in the future should be lamp lighters because of AI.

And this is not because they wish to be lamp lighters, right?

He says, let's take the set of human beings.

And here, he borrows this from Tyler Cohen, the economist who writes, what is it?

Marginally, what's his blog?

Marginal Revolution.

Marginal Revolution blog.

And he says, there is a class of people who Cohen calls ZMP.

people, zero marginal product.

And he defines these people as people who find it very, very hard to get a job because they are not perceived as having that much to offer at any wage.

Now,

almost all of us who argue against things like the minimum wage, we do so because we say things like, look, there are people who aren't employable in the sense that they provide a benefit to a firm at $20 an hour.

And when you raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour, it excludes these people from the market, right?

This is one of the reasons people argue against the minimum wage.

And if

you... I just want to say you meant $25 an hour, right?

Having it above, like... Oh, what was that?

You said $20 and $20.

I just, for the listeners, wanted to... So if we raise the minimum wage to $25, but you offer $20 of product, you're unemployed.

Oh, yeah, I just meant if you

set the wage at $20 an hour, if you set the minimum wage at $20 an hour, there will be people.

who are unemployable at that rate.

And Jarvan says, OK, well, let's just take that class of people and call them ZMP people.

We don't have to agree about how big that class is.

We just have to think that that class exists.

And he says, here are two assertions.

The first one is that if people in Z, that class of people,

were lamp lighters instead of what they are, their external impact on people who aren't in Z would be positive, or would be more positive than it is now.

And assertion B is that if people in Z were lamp lighters instead of what they are, their internalities, or the quality of their own human experience would be better than it is.

And then he says, okay, well if both A and B are true, then that means it's better for everybody because the class of the union of Z and non-Z is everybody.

So the argument is that as AI gets more and more developed, the class of people in Z is going to increase, right?

The number of people in Z is going to increase.

And that's, I think, like maybe one assumption here that you can argue with.

But it does seem, I'm wondering what you guys think about this idea that, well, it seems like there are

There are people who, when we render them unemployable, the fact that they are unemployed actually exerts a greater cost on everybody who is employed.

Because that seems to be what assertion A is, right?

Yeah, I mean, this is sort of like when my two kids have like a response, like some sort of chore that they're trying to fulfill.

And my six-year-old is actually really good at fulfilling the chore.

My four-year-old is not my four-year-old is like she doesn't contribute anything to the fulfillment of the chore But I still can't let her not do the chore Because if she isn't doing the chore she's distracting the other child from doing the chore

So I'd

rather her clean things in such a way that I have to fix them Then her not clean and stop the six-year-old from being actually productive right like this is maybe a good like metaphor

exactly it's that

even if people in Z who Yarvin thinks is going to encompass a great number of people, including all of us in the future, right?

And we can disagree about with Yarvin about this, right?

But that we tend to cause more trouble when we're unemployed.

It's a lot of leisure time and a lot of time to go do things that are going to be externally costly on everybody else.

This is usually

why we think that there are work programs, right?

It's to give people something to do.

And so that's assertion A, and assertion B is that actually having something to do is good for people, inherently.

Yeah, I'm getting that argument, you know, work is good and there's value in that and integrity, but I gotta say, I'm a little lost on what the ZMP, the lamp lighter analogy, what is he saying these people should be doing when AI develops?

He's saying it would be better for them to do something that we would see as useless or something that AI could do cheaper than them than allow for them to be totally free with their time and causing destruction.

In

other words,

maybe the harm of keeping lamp lighters is less than the harm of getting rid of lamp lighters and making idle, you know, idle hands do the devil's work or whatever this saying goes.

But ultimately then restricting AI.

to keep them doing things, to keep them doing things that could be replaced with AI?

I think that would be

one of Jarvan's implications, yeah, is that AI shouldn't be allowed to take certain jobs or something.

Justin, do you have a better, because you've actually read the whole article.

I think he's saying to let it run, and then when you get the Sam Altman promise.

boom in productivity that AI generates, you should use that excess wealth of the society to shape the labor market so that

We are paying people to do things like, as he says, follow the Daniel Day Lewis example and make shoes or something like that.

Something that I would like to talk about after the break is this gets into the territory of UBI and stuff like that.

And I think that'd be a good place to take this after the break.

But Russ, if you have

other

questions, you can

break that down.

That's kind of related to where I was thinking too, that maybe the missing part of this argument, but you were just touching on it, is that AI makes everything so cheap that you don't really need to work, and therefore we could get rid of.

minimum wage and maybe get into a UBI argument or something like that but that's ultimately with such tremendous increases in productivity everything's basically free or whatever and you just kind of live your life the way you want to live your life because there's really no constraints on basics necessities of food and housing or something so anyway that looks like some areas we can get into after the break and we'll be back in just a bit.

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If you find philosophy fascinating but want to make sure that your study of the subject is practical, if you enjoy economic analysis but want to see how economic laws interact with more principles, if you are interested in politics but want to explore how economic and ethical realities constrain our political choices,

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If you're a professor or an advisor of college students and you're interested in your school competing in PPE League this spring, contact Peter, Justin or Russ today.

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All right, so we're back.

And Peter, what do you think?

What's this UBI thing?

We didn't say what it means, even, so.

Yeah, so YARVN even brings this up in the article.

And again, I haven't finished it with a detailed read.

But my understanding is YARVN is actually opposed to UBI.

Universal basic income.

It's a universal

basic income.

For listeners, if you remember Andrew Yang.

This was Andrew Yang's proposal when he ran in 2020 against Biden or maybe it was even 2016 against Hillary.

I don't even

remember.

But he was arguing we should give everybody $1,000 a month.

And the typical thing is like, oh, automation is going to take jobs.

We need to give people some security.

And at the same time, this will free them up to do the things they've always wanted to do, like art, or take risks, and be entrepreneurs, yada yada.

And Chris says, well, this is Sam Altman's solution.

So Sam Altman does acknowledge that AI will displace a lot of workers.

And so what Sam says is, yeah, we should just give out a UBI to people.

And I think what Curtis argues is that that's not a good idea.

He doesn't think that just giving money away is going to solve this problem because, again, basically Jarvan's thesis is that idle hands make for the devil's playground or whatever.

Again, I forget the saying, but it's the perfect saying for this article.

Jarvan's basically just capitalizing on that old knowledge that you cause problems when people don't have anything to do.

And so maybe Justin, you can speak a little bit to Jarvan's actual solution.

So a really, really large study on UBI just came out of Texas.

They did a big UBI program that had, I think, thousands of participants.

And they gave these people like $1,000 a month.

And basically, the results were extremely disappointing for UBI advocates.

Because basically, the only thing that happened is these people took the money and they leasured more.

It didn't increase their entrepreneurship.

It didn't increase their art.

It actually didn't increase time with kids.

It actually decreased it.

I don't think significantly, but the sign was negative.

It didn't increase.

The only thing people engaged in more, and they did tons of metrics and tons of measures, the only thing people did more is leisure and hang out with friends more.

That's all.

So this argument, like, if you give people UBI, you're going to unleash the creative power of the human mind.

It's like, actually, people just like to sit around and play video games.

Two other things that went down were time spent with self-improvement.

And actually, the one thing that increased was domestic production.

In other words, people spent more time doing dishes and cleaning their house and stuff like that.

But it wasn't even that much on that.

And so it's like even the most meager gains are so small, especially when you contrast it with the fact that people decreased their working hours.

And so people worked on average less, including the people who lived with the people who received the UBI.

So like spouses worked less too.

And so, you know, UBI, I don't believe it has any ability to like unleash human creativity.

I do agree with the idea that like

people get value out of working.

But I'm not really confident in courtesy of this idea of let's fix it by taking that big lump of wealth we generate and arrange a labor market.

The funny thing is throughout human history, the only way that people have been able to work consistently and productively is with some system.

whereby the wage of the worker is pretty directly associated with the viability of the company.

Most recently in terms of profit, but even like pre-profit there were similar institutions that sort of like tried to mimic the market system that did this.

And I think if we're gonna get to this aid, like I don't think there's, you can't do make work.

Like I actually don't think that like people are going to take jobs as lamp lighters seriously and get fulfillment from some job that could be done by a robot.

This is like, yeah, government workers have a job too, but I don't feel like a lot of cases.

the people in those jobs feel like the jobs are like really doing anything.

You know, there was that book BS jobs that came out however long ago about these like unfulfilling middle manager jobs.

I don't know that this fixes the problem that Curtis is pointing out.

So I don't know, either of you have thoughts on that, I'm not sure.

Can I say something about the EBI thing real quick?

Because I think Yarvin's argument against EBI is interesting.

So, and let's just note that what Yarvin's saying is something like, if AI does what Sam Altman says it's going to do,

It's going to displace an enormous amount of workers, right?

Sam Altman's solution for that is UBI, and Jarvan says, that's bad.

When you have UBI, you essentially make every single citizen the political patron of the current state.

They're just, they are living on handouts.

They are going to be loyal to whoever is giving them handouts.

This makes everybody, this is a kind of serfdom by any other means.

This is really bad.

Then there's YARVN solution, which is to use the state to massage labor markets so that people are needed in jobs which, you know, something, there's some hand-wavy stuff there too.

If we don't like those two options, what's the third option?

What's the

other

option?

Or do we disagree with the assumption that's driving both YARVN and Altman's?

um, thesis that AI will render a bunch of, a bunch of us unemployable.

Maybe, can I say something about why you might doubt that?

Like, doubt my, why you might doubt Jarvis and Altman's, um, assumption here?

It's something like, well, if we look back in history, we note that fewer, like, it seems like fewer people were able to be economically productive than are now economically productive.

in the sense that now having something like a physical disability doesn't render you economically unproductive.

And one of the reasons that we think people are more productive now is that there is more capital invested per head in the workforce, right?

If you have a physical disability, you can still do really economic

economically productive work because you don't have to load stuff off a boat or enough to be a longshoreman you can work at a computer which of course costs money You can work in a building that has all these lifts etc But it's that we have that amount of cap capital invested That allows you to take advantage of some kind of comparative advantage that you might not have otherwise been able to take advantage of And it's it seems like

both YARVN and Altman are counting on that trend reversing itself.

No, no, no, when there's so much capital invested per head of the workforce for AI, it will render each individual's marginal.

or comparative advantage useless so

yeah the the whole question is on the margin is capital a substitute for or complement to labor like that's what we're asking and in so far it's a compliment it does render more people employable i think that's a possible story uh so i i think that that's possibly true

You know, the one thing I'd say that my real objection to Jarvan's thing is actually the longshoremen is a perfect example of like sometimes using the governments to reinforce the labor market does not create like this like very productive like source of like oh these people have the purpose like the longshoremen were recently on record and saying we are going to destroy your entire civilization if you don't give us more money like that is the definition of a profession that's causing a negative externality right longshoremen could be entirely replaced by cranes.

The only reason they haven't been is because government regulation and union work has basically ensured that they are totally immune to AI taking over their spot.

And so what do they do?

Their job as a longshoreman is basically gone.

And so they have a job as a full-time government lobbyist, basically.

That's what their union does.

And so you don't fix this problem in government restructure labor markets.

It makes it worse.

Then you make professional bureaucrats.

Yeah, we have a...

awesome history of it's gonna work out.

But it maybe takes a little bit of faith and it takes markets that, and this is something Peter I think has a forthcoming book coming out touching on some of this or a piece anyway, the Industrial Revolution looked like there was always people saying that we're gonna lose jobs and people are gonna be poor and look at us now.

The

people, our poorest people today have luxuries that the rich of the rich a hundred years ago could only dream of.

So I feel like we're actually kind of living this reality already prior to AI doing what Altman and other, those other people are saying, if we take a hundred year jump in history,

It's the equivalent of what's going on today.

The difference, maybe, arguably, and that there's issues to grapple with, is that this AI jump might happen in the next 10 years, right?

So where we went down a 100-year jump to where we are today, we adapted, we're rich, we're fed, nobody dies of starvation in the United States, 95% of the people have a refrigerator, a cell phone, cable, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

And these are our poor, our

Having luxuries that the rich could only have dreamt of a hundred years ago So I feel like this reality is actually here and it's proven itself that we will sustain we will figure things out new jobs will arise as as Justin was saying with the use of this highly productive capital and We just have to have a little faith in decentralized people

Making their own decisions of what's best for themselves will be able to figure it out when there's enough tools out there.

Let me say one thing about kind of like the structure of this argument and it used to be the case like you can find the economists from the 20s saying things like well you know in 30 years you know you only have to work three hours a day to get the things that everybody needs.

You know, you need a house, you need a little bit of meat, and two rooms for four people, that's enough to raise a family, and you'll be set.

So people will only have, there'll be a 20 hour work week, right?

And what I don't think that they counted on, what they were looking at is given what people currently demand, how many hours of labor will it take if we assume that the rate of return on labor goes up.

And it seems like, though, that everybody's still working 40 hours a week, and what actually happened is that maybe people in the past couldn't understand, like, oh, that human demands are going to increase as well, right?

And then it seems like the argument here is something like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know that happened.

We know that in the past they didn't understand.

that humans will continue to demand more and more.

However, once AI really takes off, AI will be able to satisfy or produce all of those things that we are currently demanding even more of.

So increase the demands all you want.

AI will still be able to satisfy those demands.

And I think maybe this goes back to something we've talked about in the past where the demand,

We've seen in the past like 20 years a lot of people demand not just a particular kind of thing to consume But they want the thing that they consume to be have made in a certain way right and so it just might be the case that the thing that Yavin is talking about needing the state to do which is to for you know make it the case that

people can actually have a living wage making shoes or whatever.

It might be that there's just an increased demand for artisanal products when it becomes so cheap to get the regular product or whatever like that.

You know, I know I can get soap for ten cents a bar, but given that everything else is so cheap, I actually prefer to pay $1.50 per bar to get the soap that's made from my neighbor who I know or whatever.

And so I think that our demand can expand not only in terms of the kinds of stuff that we demand, but the, you know, the historical nature of the stuff that we consume.

And

so it just might be the case that demand markets or that demand could change in a way that renders, Yavin's need to like enforce production, but that just happens organically.

Yeah, yeah, and we're we're so rich like I think the craft beer industry is a good example of what you just said that we Yeah, we could Budweiser and Budlight and whatever that though those work can produce beer cheaper, but

I have the luxury to choose these and I kind of like that I know that it was made in my hometown and every hometown now around the whole United States has some sort of craft beer industry and when you travel you get to try their beer that you can't buy in your store.

I mean all of that stuff is a fundamental shift I think in part due to how rich we are and our rising income.

that is in part generated by through capital changes and capital structure changes, which includes the recent advent of AI-driven elements.

Exactly, and that happened not because the state decided, you know, we need to get jobs for these weird people and beards and leather aprons, you know, craft IPA, you know, connoisseur's love.

It happened because that was a response to organic demand, right?

And so

It might, I always think that on the AI stuff, it has seemed to me like there's a lot of chicken littles out there.

But I do think that there are two kind of key insights from the Yard and Peace.

One is which I do think work is generally good for us.

And I think that's something that maybe gets ignored in some like macroeconomic analyses that it's only

Something that people seek to avoid right yeah, right So so that seems important to me and it also seems important that he makes this claim that

Given that work is important like this idea that we just exist to consume as much as we can we can look in the future There's that movie Wally or whatever where everybody just is like this fat person who's You know doesn't even move about on their own.

They just move about this motorized chair and consume stuff You can see how something like

how we could end up in a situation like that through a bunch of individual steps which everybody thinks are net positive, right?

We're wealthier and wealthier and wealthier and wealthier.

Oh my gosh, look at this place we ended up in.

And so I do think it's right to kind of worry about those kinds of scenarios.

Yeah.

Yeah, that might be a fun movie night.

We need to do is walley and especially should write that down.

Yeah, I already wrote it down actually my favorite because I I think that that movie I've heard other people comment that movie as it relates to these AI developments So that that would be a fun one to do so

All right, well any other last words?

I think I got a last word from Peter

He's texting it to me.

He says, Justin, you were right about everything.

I'm sorry I had to leave the podcast, but you were right and I was wrong about everything from Peter.

Okay, I guess

that's it.

All right, so we'll give Peter the last word then.

Well, this has been a production of the Gordon Institute here at Ottawa University.

I'd like to thank y'all for listening.

Five Star Reading helps other people find us so that when we pass this along to your friends and family, that might like to take a listen.

Other than that, be fruitful and multiply.

Thanks.

And finally, John Jacobson's prediction for the presidential election.

Here it goes.

Donald Trump will be returned to the White House.

Trump will win nearly 300 electoral votes.

A solid majority.

We will not be in extra innings.

We will not be in prolonged litigation.

At least nothing more than sound and fury told by idiots.

signifying nothing.

Trump will win one or two of the big 10 industrial states, most likely Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Trump will retain North Carolina and gain back Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

Trump with almost 300 electoral votes, winning the presidency in the electoral college,

easily.

Always thanks to Dr. Jeff Stein, the czar of all things at KXEL.

Always enjoyed to be with you on behalf of Mike Sheen and me.

Thanks as always to Barbara Hames, Hames the Homes People and Jim and Cindy Jandran at Midwest Renewable Energy LLC and Life Runners.

People across the country running for life, protecting the right to life from womb,

to tomb.

John Jacobson saying catch our podcast on kxl.com slash Jacobson, J-A-C-O-B-S-E-N on 1540, 100.5.

Until next week, be safe, be smart, be good, be strong.

Love Jesus Christ.

Thank Him and love Him.

And God bless us everyone.

Tell me again, bye bye.

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