Addison:

Hello, welcome to The Wiggin Sessions, episode 55. Today I have Charles Hughes Smith, who we just discovered prior to talking, we have flip flops and Paris in common. Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit, right? Welcome, Charles. Thank you.

Charles:

Thank you very much.

Addison:

How do you like to be addressed?

Charles:

Charles is fine.

Addison:

Charles, okay. Well, we met Charles eight years ago and we've been publishing some of your essays in The Daily Reckoning, which you can find online. I just want to acknowledge that the ideas that we talk about, I think we share in common, and that's literally the reason I want to talk to you. For starters, you're in Hawaii right now.

Charles:

Yes.

Addison:

And I'm wondering how the Delta variant is affecting people in Hawaii. Is that a thing? Because right now they just reenacted a mask mandate here in Baltimore where I've been holed up. So I'm just wondering, what's your experience?

Charles:

Well, Hawaii is one of the states with a very high rate of vaccination and most people consider it their responsibility to wear a mask, so the vast majority of people wear masks as a matter of course. And so everyone's kind of surprised that Delta's surging, that we used to have less than 100 cases a day, now it's over 600. So the governor is now acting to reduce the size of groups that are allowed to gather and so on. So clearly, Delta is not responding to vaccination rates of about 60% to 70% of the population.

Addison:

And so what do you think? Let's get into this, because I think that we have similar views on the world. And so, what do you think about vaccinations in general? And I think that's an honest question because there's a lot of people that are grappling with, "Should I do it? Am I being pressured to do it? What's going to be the result?" There was a lot of skepticism.

Charles:

Right. Yeah. And for those of us that try to take a scientific view of it, we are grappling with the fact that we don't really have a lot of good data. In other words, these were sort of rushed through, and so the sample sizes were fairly large, but they didn't ask certain questions. For instance, the protocol for testing the vaccines, the mRNA vaccines, they didn't ask, " Can a vaccinated person be a carrier of the virus and transmit it to other people?" We're just now discovering that they can. In fact, the Baltimore Sun had a piece last week in which an epidemiologist said, "I went to a party of 14 vaccinated people and 11 of us became ill with COVID." So clearly, this is not a sterilizing vaccine of the type like polio and measles. It's more like a flu type vaccine.

Addison:

All right, so it's called COVID 19, meaning we know that this thing exists, right? I've been trying to figure this out, too. We know that it exists. And every year I have this debate with my wife about getting the flu vaccine, or should we not? And every year my arm is in pain for nine months, it's just not fun. But we do know how to battle the COVID virus. I don't know. I'm not trying to put you on the spot because you're not a doctor, but I know that you're thinking about the impact on the environment.

Charles:

That I think what's a fair. The way I would describe it is like this. And I'd be curious what you think. I think that the US as a policy decision went all in on vaccines as the be all to end all that was going to cure the COVID pandemic and put it into history. As a result of that policy decision, with very little R&D in treatments. And so that's a hole in our whole strategy. And of course there's a lot of questions about various other uses of existing medications and so on. But the point is we are lacking treatments, partly because we haven't put any effort and money into that. And so that's now becoming apparent that vaccines are not the end all to be all. And so we need to adjust policy and start focusing on treatments as well, I think is what I hear your point being.

Addison:

Well. Yeah. I'm asking a different question though. I want to get to the anti-vaxxer point of view. I want to say something like, "Just get the freaking vaccine. What's the problem?"

Charles:

I think we have to understand a couple of things. One is that we cannot sacrifice the Bill of Rights on this issue.

Addison:

This is exactly why I asked the question so keep going.

Charles:

Yeah. There's various approaches. Here in Hawaii, the governor has mandated that state employees either get vaccinated or get weekly antigen tests. In other words, there is a backdoor, a way out, but it's just constant testing. And so as long as there's a backdoor or an alternative, then I think that's one policy solution. But we also have to recognize that these are not the end all to be all vaccines. In other words, they're not sterilizing, they're weakening rather rapidly. The latest study that just came out today and in the state of Minnesota from the Mayo Clinic, said in June, 0.7, less than 1% of the cases were Delta, 70% of the cases were Delta in July. And they've noticed an enormous degradation in the effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines in terms of preventing becoming ill. They're still very effective in preventing death and hospitalization. It's kind of a mixed bag. I think if we look at the science we can say that we'll probably have better vaccines going forward.

Addison:

I feel like I'm on the, let's call it the political front, you and I are probably pretty close. On civil liberties. I would describe you as a libertarian with a lower L. You're not a party member, right?

Charles:

No, no. And I'm also accused of being a Marxist so there you go.

Addison:

That's kind of funny. Where do you come down on policy level mask mandates or vaccination cards or whatever? It's becoming a thing.

Charles:

Again, as you say, it's now so polarized, everything's politicized and the narratives are being twisted. From one point of view the side effects of these vaccines have been suppressed because as part of the sales pitch that they're safe and effective and so on. And then on the other side then the effects of long COVID and other things are being suppressed by other narratives, as if this is just another flu and it's clearly not if you look at the long COVID statistics.

Addison:

How do those narratives take their own path and then lead into policy? That's a really crazy thing to me.

Charles:

I think that's a great question. Let's talk about the larger context here, in which Americans seem to have lost the ability to reach a consensus on virtually anything, except printing money and giving it away. That's the only thing that we can agree on now, consensus wise. And I think that's a super dangerous trajectory. If you can't have consensus on anything, then where is that going to go that's going to be good? I don't see any good in that.

Addison:

I don't see any good either. It makes me worried that the pandemic then becomes the impetus to print money. How do you connect those dots?

Charles:

Exactly. The question that it raises is, was the pandemic a body blow that required the state and the Federal Reserve to go all in on various things? Or was the economy already weakening beneath the surface, but we don't want to talk about that so that was sort of glossed over by the status quo? And that would be my argument and many other people reached the same conclusion. The U.S. economy was weakening fundamentally, structurally, and the pandemic was not so much a bolt from the blue that caused some kind of disaster, it just pushed something that was already crumbling over an edge.

Addison:

Do you want to describe the theory that underlies what you just said?

Charles:

Yeah. I'm going to probably use my own terminology here.

Addison:

That's fine.

Charles:

Addison:

I know this is a tough question, because it's the one that we try to answer. So I know that you're doing the same thing. Where do we go from here? I studied philosophy for a while and knew that Marx was trying to solve these kinds of problems in the 1840s. With the advent of social media, for example, and the distortion that's being created there. So where do we go from here? What's the objective now? We used to care about people making a living wage and being able to raise families. That seems like it's out the window at the moment.

Charles:

Right? Well, let's bring up a couple of topics that both you and I have addressed, which is, what's changed in the last 40 years. Well, globalization is one. Where corporate America basically offshored a lot of its production.

Addison:

And they took the money.

Charles:

Exactly. If you'd call up a chart of corporate profits around 2001, it was about 800 billion a year. And then China joins the WTO, et cetera. And then, voila, the profits are now in excess of $2 trillion and it was a straight line up. What were the policy decisions there? Whether it was conscious or not, the policy was, " We're going to emphasize or prioritize corporate profits above national security and above maintaining a middle-class as part of that national security."

Addison:

I think that's an issue that we're dealing with right now. I don't even know how to ask that question other than, as a middle-class person, because that's what I am, I grew up that way and I've done well for myself and I plan to continue, what do you do about it? It's kind of like the war of the elites really. I have had literally no aspiration to become an elite. I could probably go out there and figure out how to do that, but I don't want to. I had three kids. I got a freaking new puppy. I don't want to figure everything out. I would rather just be able to be prosperous and make sure that the laws that are in place allow me to do that.

Charles:

I think that's very well said, Addison. That used to be the value system of America in the past.

Addison:

I call it 'The old right'.

Charles:

What's funny is, even the old left was not that far away from that. It was sort of like, well, the means of reaching that. And the thing about the Daily Reckoning is it's a data driven site, right. In other words, it has a lot of charts, graphics, and data. And I think that's really why I'm always happy to see my work on a Daily Reckoning because it looks at some numbers. And so I'm going to just mention a couple of articles which I think are really consequential. One was a Rand study that came out last year and it was called 'Trends in income, 1975 to 2018'. It basically concluded that $50 trillion had been transferred from labor, the middle-class and the working class, to the elites that own most of the capital.

Charles:

That $50 trillion is substantial. And it wasn't just by magic. Like, "Oh gosh, we just didn't look at it. And suddenly it happened." No, it was the result of policies which favored capitalizing global corporations in globalization, in financialization and in taxation. I was just reading the biography of Truman, and back then in the fifties, he made $75,000 a year as a president, which was quite a bit of money. Well, half was paid in federal tax. And this wasn't like a theoretical tax rate. This is what you actually paid.

Addison:

The real one.

Charles:

That was what you paid, if you were well off. And so now, of course, we see that if you make $500,000 a year, as a professional or as an entrepreneur, you're going to be paying a lot of tax. At least 40 plus percent, state, local, federal.

Addison:

I think I'm at 58 percent right now.

Charles:

Yeah. I was going to say, 40 is minimum then it goes up from there. If we live in high tax states, it's 10% on top of the 34% federal. Plus you've got property taxes. On and on. But if you make $50 million, well Addison, we know what happens. Then you have a PO box in Ireland. You have tax havens and you pay virtually nothing. This unfairness, I think, is part of what's eating away at America.

Addison:

But is that a thing? Are you worried about that?

Charles:

The unfairness or the tax rate?

Addison:

Well, I mean the tax rate is governed, but unfair to the middle class. Do you worry about that? Do you care about that?

Charles:

I do, because I think that humans, as a social animal, there's a lot of evidence that we're extremely attuned to fairness. In other words, we're willing to join a hierarchy, but there has to be a sense of fair play and fairness or equality before the law is how we put it in the modern terms. And when something is rigged against us, then we eventually rebel because that's just not the way we're wired. And so I do worry.

Addison:

Yeah. All right. I'll go along with that. But then the way that we govern the taxation rate, let's say we say it's unfair is through the political system. And even somebody like Howard Buffett, Warren Buffett's dad, was a goldbug, and taught his own son about taxation and fairness and all that kind of stuff. And yet it still continues. There's a legislative motive to continue unfairness, which just seems weird to me. And I know that you've thought this through a lot because I've read all your stuff, but where does that come from? What? We could just steal money from people and then make it lawful?

Charles:

Yeah. I think that's an excellent question. And my answer is, again referring to other people's studies. There was a study called Testing Theories of American Politics, which came out about 2014 or '15. And they basically looked at, does the government listen to the bottom 99.9%, or do they listen and respond to the 0.1%? And the answer was, well, as we all know, they respond in the vast majority to the 0.1%, because it's all about money and lobbying and so on. So I think we've lost the ability to support the common good, which has been lost in the shuffle. And now what I see is wrong is that our democracy was designed to have corrective mechanisms. There was a judiciary that could limit excessive concentration of wealth and power, and the legislature was intended to do so, and the president has the veto power. Well, of those have gone by the wayside and so there's no corrective mechanism left.

Addison:

Do you think it failed?

Charles:

I think it's failed because the concentration of wealth and power has now become so excessive that they've bought their way around virtually all of it, so we have a two-tier legal system. The legislature is basically bought and owned, despite its protests. And the marketplace has also been corrupted and distorted so that most of the American economy is dominated by monopolies and cartels.

Addison:

Does it happen in a system like what we have? How do people survive?

Charles:

That's the problem, is how do you survive when a lot of your paycheck goes to monopolies and cartels that are not interested in the common good or increasing productivity but just in maintaining their lock on a marketplace? And so I think it's like, okay, we need a rethink or a redo or a reworking of our value system and also our politics and the marketplace, so that the things that create prosperity and adaptability, which is part of prosperity. You've got to be able to change, grow, and innovate. We have to. The government should be focused on enforcing transparency, competition, and adaptability. And in fact, it's protecting all the monopolies and cartels by suppressing those elements.

Addison:

All right. Let's try to get somewhere positive, because I agree with you on all of those points, but let's just try to discuss something that people can invest in. We might decide to invest in technology, for example, because that does change the landscape. What do you think about the space race, the private space race? Do you care about it? Because personally, I don't.

Charles:

Well, I think it's interesting to differentiate two elements of that. One is the innovation, like say in SpaceX reusing these rocket parts. If that makes it faster, better, cheaper, then that's an advance. In terms of billionaires having joy rides in space, that smacks of this excess of “let them eat cake.” So I think we have to differentiate between true innovation that's making something faster, better, cheaper, and something that just seems to be the playthings of billionaires.

Addison:

You just reminded me of something. So I'm going to ask you a different question. I was trying to get this film off the ground called Risk, which was about how we think about innovation and when entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur means the risk-taker. How do we actually do that? I produced a short film, and I showed it in Baltimore. And there was an elderly gentleman from Mexico. And he's like, "I don't understand how Americans create new things." And that was his question. He's like, "You're not answering that in the video." So you were talking about innovation and entrepreneurship, and I think that all of that is important, because that's what drives everything forward, even if we don't know what the next turn is going to reveal. So what do you think about that? If I were that Mexican dude and I asked you that question, what do you think is the answer for Americans?

Charles:

Addison:

Do you think that's really true? I feel like there are still middle-class people that can forge their way out. But we do get trapped into credit cycles and mortgages, or we're beholden to the banks or whatever. But I do feel like the opportunity is still there. Do you feel like it's gone?

Charles:

No, I think there's definitely opportunities, but I think it does require, and maybe it's always required, a bit of unconventionality. And I'll give you a quick example. A lot of young people are building micro homes. And the idea is, "Hey, I don't want a $300,000 mortgage." And so this is a solution. You build a house with whatever cash you have, and then you're debt-free, and then your labor is now yours to benefit from.

Addison:

Since we're talking about labor, and you can tell I'm going way off script here, right? That was Marx's whole thing, the labor theory of value. How much has that changed when you add in social media, for example? People are making money without doing anything.

Charles:

That's an excellent point. And I'm not a real fan of that aspect of Marx's thought.

Addison:

You and I are both old guys.

Charles:

Yeah. So yeah, it's an excellent point. I mean, part of, one of my concerns is that when I look at the young generation, sort of the young Robinhood click, then the focus is not on producing something that's going to be a value to the common good or increase productivity of the nation or anything. It's just speculating to get as rich as possible in the fastest possible time.

Addison:

I think the phrase is rich AF.

Charles:

Yeah. And so then I think the question is, what's the incentive structure that we've created either by happenstance or by policy?

Addison:

I believe it goes away. I am trying to raise three kids, and they look at what I do, and they're like, "Why would I do that?" It makes it difficult. And then I go, "Okay, if you don't want to do this, what are you going to do?" And they're like, "I don't know." And then they show me TikTok videos.

Charles:

Right, right, exactly. So I realize there's that generational thing. But then there's also a lot of young people who are interested in being productive in their own communities.

Addison:

Well, I think there's a lot of people that are interested in engineering, building new things and stuff like that. I see that too. But I just wonder how they're going to get through it if we go into a financial crisis.

Charles:

Yeah.

Addison:

What are they going to do?

Charles:

If we want to look at the positives, I think one of the positives is this whole move to decentralize and relocalize. Because if you're going to use local capital, for instance, then you're less exposed to the vagaries of the global financial system. If you have a local marketplace, you're less exposed to the disturbances in the global supply chain, and it's better for the communities, especially in things like food and fresh water and energy. If you can start developing those resources locally, then I think that's a potential job source, and it's also resilient and just beneficial in so many ways. It's kind of a synergy.

Addison:

Do you feel like you're experiencing that in Hawaii? I mean, it's probably a unique situation, because you have to rely on boats and stuff.

Charles:

I'm really happy you asked that question, because in a way it's that sort of earth island thing. You take an island chain and you can kind of say, "Well, this is interesting, because we're kind of running a lab experiment." Two generations ago, Hawaii still raised most of its own food. And there was a tourist industry. I remember distinctly in 1969, which is fifty-some years ago, that everyone was thrilled because 1 million tourists arrived in the island chain at that time. And the most recent 2019 data was 10 million. And so there's been this concentration of economic power, if you will, that it's now only in tourism, and it used to be much more diversified. In other words, there was pineapple and sugarcane, which were large corporate plantations. And in fact, I did work on a plantation in the summer, like everybody else in high school. But it was diversified. There were dairies there. There were truck farms and so on. And so that all got too expensive, because as land values rose and taxation and so on. There's headwinds to starting a small business in Hawaii. But that's starting to reverse. Now people are saying, "Do we really want to depend on 10 million tourists a year?" It's just too many people.

Addison:

In a pandemic, you can't do that.

Charles:

But even beyond that, it's like, well, is that really where we want to go with this concentration of political and economic power, or do we want to diversify our economy? And I think there's a lot of other places, I think there's a movement to diversify the economy. And so energy-wise, of course we have wind and we have sun, so there's wind and solar. And we have geothermal here on the big island. And so I think that there are some people who are trying to say, "Hey, the state's got to help small agriculture instead of basically burdening it with regulations that only are supportable by large agribusiness and that kind of thing." So I think that's a positive thing. And of course that's a job creator, re-localization.

Addison:

I just wonder what the headwinds are like for that, because especially in Hawaii they've always been controlled by corporate interests, like corporate agricultural things. So how do you make that happen?

Charles:

Yeah. Well, again, policy-wise, the state owns a lot of land, as most states do, and so they could in fact lease land at low rates to small farmers.

Addison:

To the people that would manage it.

Charles:

Yeah, and ranchers and so on. So there's some policy movement there. And people find a way if they're given an opportunity.

Addison:

Well, if they don't, then what happens?.

Charles:

Then we're exposed to your topic of risk. The more we're dependent on long supply chains and a handful of nodes, whether it's slaughter houses or internet nodes, then we're really vulnerable to fragile systems breaking right. That's just system dynamics.

Addison:

It kind of worries me post-pandemic, because there's a lot of stuff that's going to have to be reinvented.

Charles:

Yes. But that's the opportunity, right?

Addison:

Yeah, always look at the dark side.

Charles:

No, no, no. I'm often accused of doom and gloom, but I think it's kind of like, "Hey, look, we have to be realistic and look at the problem squarely, or we're not going to have solutions." If we're going to tiptoe around it and suppress it and not look at it squarely, then how are we going to solve the problem? So I think doom and gloom is the first step. Be realistic.

Addison:

Yeah. Well, I guess I would probably agree with that, because that's what we do. But I do worry that politicians and stuff like that, people in other businesses than ours, don't go to the next step, which is, what is, which is what is the solution. Politicians thrive on gloom and doom. That's aware to me every time I fricking open the news, like what the hell? Delta variant, what about the Lambda?

Charles:

Right. Well, it's part of what you and I see, I think as solutions is for people to try to pull away from being completely dependent on these power nodes, whether it's the government or the global marketplace or the financial markets. In other words, if you can reduce your dependency on these, then you're already in better shape. Right?

Addison:

Yeah. Well, that's what I liked about your writings that you're advocating, like an Emersonian rugged individualism. Let's not worry about that stuff and take care of ourselves. And if we can figure out a network where we help each other, that's a good thing.

Charles:

Right.

Addison:

And Emerson was talking about that in the 1830s, I think?

Charles:

Yeah.

Addison:

I think that's the only thing. All right, so maybe I'll ask this question, just because I'm curious, Emerson was a minister and he used the ministry and sermons to convince people of things. And we don't do that. We just write and we publish stuff online and then we use the marketplace instead because we try to, if we say something and people buy it, then we're like, "Hey, that worked. Let's do that again." So it's very different from setting up a church and understanding people's relationship with God, which Emerson talks about a lot. So I don't know what your view is on that. Do you think there's a venue there where you can talk to people about their faith and that kind of thing? Because my faith has always been the market.

Charles:

You raise a really interesting topic and just use your example of Emerson and the early 1800s. There was a great awakening in the 1820s.

Addison:

Yeah, I did a whole project on the great awakening.

Charles:

Oh, excellent. Okay. Well good. You can tell me more about it, but the first great awakening was in the 1700s and this was the second.

Addison:

1830s and I'll tell you what happened. And he wrote the story of New England and the Puritans. And I grew up in New Hampshire believing that. So when I found it out, I was like, "What?" When I actually read it, I was like, "My entire life." So you go.

Charles:

No, no. And so, well, there's been a lot of people that have written about the synergy of Protestant work ethic and capitalism and so on. And this is not to say that Catholicism doesn't have a role in that. And there's a lot of interesting academic ideas about, well, is faith part of why American exceptionalism.

Addison:

That's what I'm saying.

Charles:

And, and I think as a multi faith society now, I think we can maybe separate out the faithful in whatever faith they hold. They're much more similar to each other than to people who have no religious or faith connection or belief system. But, I do worry about the decline of morality in America. And I think America, I call it publicly, it's a moral cesspool. And I say that in things like student loans. When you and I started out, or at least for me, two generations ago, the idea that it was acceptable or even something to applaud that we were going to load young students with no income and no wealth with $2 trillion in debt. That would have been criminal. That would not have been acceptable. And no matter how much you bought.

Addison:

I think I might be a little bit younger than you because I did that.

Charles:

Yeah, you are.

Addison:

I did it. I was like, "Oh yeah, I get it. I'll do this." And it got me through school. And then suddenly, I was in debt and I was like, "Holy shit." I think that's literally the reason that I have been writing the stuff I've been writing for 25 years, 30 years, because I was like, "What? What just happened?"

Charles:

Yeah. But you get my drift.

Addison:

I get it.

Charles:

It's like what was acceptable has changed. And so for instance, it used to be unacceptable for pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers. That was against the law. Now it's not only acceptable, it's everywhere.

Addison:

It's pandemic.

Charles:

Yeah. Even before the pandemic.

Addison:

No, no, what I mean is the widespread sales of pharmaceuticals is pandemic.

Charles:

Oh, right. Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Addison:

That's what I'm saying.

Charles:

Yeah.

Addison:

That's a little bit personal to me because one of our neighbor's sons died of opioids.

Charles:

Tragic.

Addison:

We grew up with them and he's not here anymore.

Charles:

Yeah. That is extremely tragic. And it's unfortunately widespread.

Addison:

Yeah.

Charles:

So I think your question about faith is interesting because can we look ahead to a future where there's a commonality, in other words of values, whether you believe in God or not, can we reach that?

Addison:

I don't know, that's why I was bringing it up because I didn't know what your opinion was, but that guided generations of people. But it doesn't any longer. There are a lot of people that have faith in things. That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking about when you and I are talking and then people tap into this and they hear what we're saying, we're not ministers, we're not professing faith or whatever. And we're talking about markets. That's been my guiding mission is I just believe that people can engage in transactions, out of goodwill. I can sell you something, you'll buy it, or you can sell me something and I'll buy it. And then the money has to have some value in between. There's no faith in that, other than that we believe in the money.

Charles:

Well, let's take a look at that. That's certainly true at one level, but we also have to have trust in each other that whatever I bought or we sold, it lives up to whatever the sales pitch was.

Addison:

Right. To price.

Charles:

And then Adam Smith is famous for the “invisible hand'', which is basically if we all follow our self-interest, everything will work out great. But he also wrote about the moral foundation of society.

Addison:

That's literally one of my all time favorites is the Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Charles:

Yeah. And isn't that what we're talking about?

Addison:

The idea that you actually have to trust in the person you're talking to.

Charles:

Right.

Addison:

That's amazing. That's an amazing idea in moral philosophy.

Charles:

It is. And then if we look at stagnant economies, we discover that trust in others and strangers is very low and that inhibits, but don't you think we're also talking about the fact that maybe America has lost its moral moorings?

Addison:

I don't want to go there though. That's why I was asking you the question, I just don't want to go there because I don't believe it. I don't believe that people are, I think that people are morally good. And I do think that they get misguided and we've seen a lot of that. So there's evidence that we get misguided all the time. Come on, man. I lived in Baltimore. Every day, it's like how many people got killed last night? So I do believe that we get misguided, but I don't think human beings are fundamentally bankrupt.

Charles:

No, I agree with you. Individually, everybody's trying to be a good person and be ethical. But the system itself, I think, is corrupted.

Addison:

Yeah, how do you fix the system? That's what I want to say. And I've been a hardcore conventional constitutionalist for a long time. Because I think that that's the best effort we've ever made and they're fucking it up right now, but I still think it's the best system we've ever even conceived of.

Charles:

Addison:

I would just extend your comments to social media.

Charles:

Yes.

Addison:

Because now, I've never been in favor even in history class, I've never been in favor of the way that they trust busted and all that kind of stuff. I've never been in favor of that, but right now, we need to trust busters for social media. We need somebody to let us talk. You know what? We could get shut down for having this conversation.

Charles:

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Addison:

You could just say, "Well, you can't say that."

Charles:

Yeah. Precisely.

Addison:

Because then I might just want to say, go away. I could say it in a more colorful language.

Charles:

My term is privatized totalitarianism because where's democracy when somebody can shut everybody down on their own accord?

Addison:

It's not going to work.

Charles:

No.

Addison:

Well, you know what? Historically, it's called fascism.

Charles:

Right. Right. Well, there we go. We're going to be shadow banned, but Addison, I know this is part of why I get accused of being a Marxist as I've proposed on my blog. Hey, we need to turn these into utilities. In other words, they have to be regulated.

Addison:

I'm not in favor of that, but I can see the argument for sure.

Charles:

Yeah.

Addison:

That's what we did with electricity.

Charles:

Yeah. And water. In other words, if it's an essential, then the people have to have essentials.

Addison:

I think the only thing that's remaining is somebody has to make the argument that it's essential. And we haven't done that yet. But then, literally you take the guys that are trying to go to freaking Mars off the market. Is that a good thing?

Charles:

Well, I would say I think social media and the internet are essentials and so they should be regulated like a utility. And that way the public has some say.

Addison:

Just not there yet. You're going to have to convince me.

Charles:

Okay. Well, it's good that we have a disagreement over how to control social media. If somebody else comes up with a better solution.

Addison:

It's like the Wild West and somebody's going to come in with a gun and figure it out. No, I think that's going to happen.

Charles:

Yikes.

Addison:

That's how everything gets civilized. All right, man. It's good to see you. I think we've probably gone way over our time.

Charles:

Well, what a fascinating range of topics.

Addison:

Thank you Charles, for joining me.

Charles:

Thank you.

Addison:

And I will talk to you again soon.

Charles:

Thank you very much.