The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3576 - The Age of Extraction w/ Tim Wu

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

It's Fun Day Monday (in name only)   On today's program:   Donald Trump faces massive backlash over his racist video that he reposted on Truth Social, depicting the Obamas as apes.   A Three-time Trump voter calls into C-SPAN to apologize for his support of Trump.   Columbia Law Professor, Tim Wu joins the show to discuss his book Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.   In the Fun Half:   A local CBS news outlet interviews a former ICE employee who quit over the abuse, over-crowding, and squalid conditions that detained immigrants are experiencing at a detention center in Baltimore.   A masked ICE Agent in Minnesota claims that the blue state media refuses to cover the violent criminals they arrest because it doesn't fir the narrative.   Trump says that will we are finally living in the Trump economy.   Jon Ossoff calls out the Epstein class and spares no billionaire in his indictment of wealth inequality.   The TPUSA alternative halftime show is an absolute disaster.   all that and more To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: NFACTOR MEALS: Go to FactorMeals.com/majority50off and use code majority50off to get 50% off plus Free Breakfast for 1 Year TRUST & WILL: Get 20% off trustandwill.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE: Now through February 9th you can use the code VALENTINE26 to save 30% on all of Sunset Lake's gummies, chocolate fudge, and Farmer's Roast infused coffee beans at SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. It is Monday. February 8, 2020. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Can now in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA.

On the program today, Tim Wu, professor of law at Columbia University, author of The Age of Extraction, how tech platforms conquered our economy and threatened our future prosperity. Did I say February 9th? 8th? Well, it's the 9th. Also on the program on February 9th.

Senate returns today facing a DHS shutdown on Friday. Unclear if ICE would go unfunded because they have a huge slush fund. Meanwhile, Galane Maxwell pleads the fifth and a closed door deposition with Congress. New York City nurses make a deal to end its strike at two hospitals in New York City. More reports of torturous conditions in ice concentration camps. Meanwhile, the conservative Fifth Circuit of Appeals rules against due process for detained migrants. That applies only in the Fifth Circuit, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma. Trump pushing for the next star Tegna merger, merger.

Dr. Oz urges America. to get measles vaccine as cases increase, particularly among young kids. Huh. I didn't authorize that. Okay, Fauci. Netanyahu moves up his meeting with Trump in fear of U.S. Iranian negotiations. U.S. government to fund Maga-aligned think tanks and charities across Europe. think U.S. AID without the AID.

All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is Sunday, Monday. Fund day, Monday. Lots to get to today. We don't need to discuss sport games or anything like that that tick plays yesterday. We don't have time for it. So we won't.

Your team loses. You turn into an obnoxious. Sports ball guy. I just think that like we don't have time for it. Oh, we can talk about the Celtics. No, we're not talking about sports. I mean, of course, we will be talking about the halftime show, which everybody's talking about.

Of course, I'm talking about the performance of who's the other guy besides Kid Rock? I like the cellist in the pirate costume in the country. They're all named like Brantley, Gilbert, and Gilbert Brayette. I don't know. They're all like men, but somehow named what the most racist white lady you went to high school with named her first child. It's going to be fun to see, you know, after a couple of days when Milo figures out, Milo Yanonopoulos figures out how the TPSA people fake their viewership. We'll keep eyes out on that.

I was like the Pablo Torre of the right. I know. It does look like, however, that however many people actually watched that thing, saw Kid Rock get bored with lip syncing like halfway through his song, apparently, and decide that I don't need to actually put the microphone to my mouth. I'm doing this telepathically. I will dance in jeans shirts and my fedora. For the kids, for TPSA to reach out to college kids. I mean, kids in his name. This must be what all the children are into.

His old man, rock. Hello, fellow youngsters. He's just eye candy anyway. All right. Well, listen, let's get into this. Last week, I think it, I can't remember it was during the show. It was overnight. Donald Trump had posted a, there's really no other way to describe it other than like an incredibly racist meme of the Obama's on the heads of.

apes and um you know we were talking that this was sort of like a another uh carl reiner uh excuse rob reiner a moment for uh trump where he um took away the ability of his supporters to pretend like they're not racist uh like this is or just bad people i mean the rhiner thing was i think right you know they genuine not that that was racist uh was racist uh like this is or just bad people i mean the rhiner thing was in the comments that he made, they were just sociopathic, horrific, and cruel. Right. And this, you know, one of the sort of like unspoken words, or I should say agreements between really, in many respects, Republican voters, not all Republican voters, but the vast majority, and their politicians is, we got to speak in enough coded language that you're acknowledging

that we don't like black and brown people, but not in such a way that it seems obvious or ridiculously obvious that we don't like black and brown people. And so that's why it's so important to have figures like Tim Scott and other, you know, and Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson. And the guys behind me who have the shirt called Black for Trump. Where's my black guy? Where's my black guy? Those people function as essentially provide license for white people to be bigoted because if this was a bigoted movement, Tim Scott wouldn't be a Republican. And that's basically it.

And Trump sort of broke that agreement in doing this and made it very difficult for people. This is not, you don't do this in public. And here is Trump. We should say there's stories. When it first came out, Caroline Levitt defended it by saying people being overly sensitive that it wasn't racist. That was the first story. And then she said it was fake outrage, telling news outlets that it was from an internet

meme video depicting President Trump was a king of jungle and Democrats and characters from the Lion King. those characters weren't in the Lion King. No grill is in the line. It's just a Lion King joke. It's a Lion King joke. You can't make fun of anything. And then

and then they ended up deleting the tweet because they realized like, oh, wait a second. That guy got mad at us. And just to be clear, Donald Trump obviously tweeted this. And they are going to blame a fictional person. Like, there were times on this program. I'm not speaking of a time. Where I would blame.

What was the name of the person I would blame? Oh, God. It wasn't. It wasn't Brendan, but it was. What was the fake name you had for Brendan? I can't remember what it is now. It wasn't Brian. Dang.

Yeah, Patrick. Patrick, yeah. Yes, I would blame Patrick. When we had something go wrong here, or if I had done something that was in a, you know, I had sent an email. I would just, it's Patrick's fault. And Patrick got fired many, many times on this program. program. And that was in Miami living large.

Did Jimmy Doors steal that tactic? Exactly. And yeah, I don't know who said that thing about vaccines. But here is Trump talking about how Patrick, his Patrick, really messed up. The media post that you took down

earlier today. The White House says that a staffer sent it. Who sent it and are you going to fire that? I looked at it. I saw it and I just looked at the first part. It was about voter fraud. in someplace, Georgia. There was a lot of motorfront,

2020 motorfront. And I didn't see the whole thing. I guess during the end of it, there was some kind of a that people don't like. I wouldn't like it either, but I didn't see it. I just, I looked in the first mark,

and it was really about voter fraud and the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is. Then I gave it to the people. Generally, they'd look at the whole thing, but I guess somebody didn't. They posted, and we took it down, and we did it. But that was a voter fraud that nobody talks about.

They don't like to talk about that post. We took it down as soon as we found out about it. Mr. President, a number of Republicans are calling on you to apologize for that post. Is that something you're going to do? No, I didn't make a mistake. I mean, I look at a lot of thousands of things. And I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.

They had that one post, and I guess it was a lot of it. take off. By the way, a lot of people covered, if you look at where it came from, a lot of, I guess it was a takeoff on the Lion King. Yeah. Certainly it was at, until he said that, I'm like, is he

trying to like fudge us by saying he's referring to something else? Because there's nothing about motor for us. No, let's see how deep you have to go into the post to get a sense of whether that thing is a race. Because what do you

argument sounds like there was a bunch of voter fraud stuff and then tacked on or deep into the thing there was a so let's just be fair and let's play it from the beginning and count how many seconds i'll count while we play this how many seconds it takes to see that part that he says he never saw because it was at the end of the thing all right ready begin one this and i haven't press play yet. Okay. Okay. Let's try it again. Let's try this again. We get a press play. Ready? Go, Cleop. You can stay on. One, Mrs. Okay. We did it. That's it. Do you remember the White House Correspondence Dinner in what, 2014 or whenever it was, when Obama put up the, what he said was his birth video? He had some good comedy writers that year. And that's when Trump was in the audience.

This was when the birther conspiracy was really picking up seeing him and Trump was at the forefront of that. And Obama said, this is my birth video and they played the clip from the Lion King. I just wonder how much that is still embedded in his mind and fixated on it. Now he's tweeting out AI slop that's supposedly associated with the Lion King that has explicitly racist images about Obama right at the beginning. Well, that wasn't me. It was someone, the people did it. Right. I gave it to the people.

to the people. They give it to the people. But here is an example. I mean, in addition to the fact that you had all these stories about the White House really mad at that person, not Skavino, who looks at his tweets and not Donald Trump, but the other person.

Let's just call him Patrick, because we're never going to name him. And of course, I'm sure that person's been fired, although no one has been fired, but they're very upset about that person. And the reason is, because again, this is, it just becomes too

hard for his voters to own it public. Not all the voters, I'm sure the vast majority of them are enjoying it, but this is supposed to be something that you trade privately. Exactly. You know, I sent a group email with everybody or I put this on the group chat.

I grouped this on the group chat, exactly. Like, without a doubt, if we were to have access to like the TPSA Slack, this be all over it, but we don't. And the problem is you're not supposed to do this in public. And here is an example

of why that's a problem for the president and Republicans. Oh, my word. I registered Republican. My dad was the president of American Pipelowners Association,

so I came by it rather naturally. The president supported him. but I really want to apologize. I mean, I'm looking at this awful picture of the Obama's. What an embarrassment to our country. All this man does is tell lies.

He is not worthy of the presidency. He takes bribes blatantly, and now he's being a racist. Blatently, they were supposed to deport the dangerous criminals. They were not supposed to go after small children, storm schools, bring terror upon, you know, the little kids and the women and children, not just the immigrants in the school. All the children are scared. This is not a decent man. This is not an honest man. He openly takes bribes.

He's pathetic as a president, and I just want to apologize. to everybody in the country for supporting this rotten, rotten man. John, did you vote for him in all three elections? I did. I was sucked into the stupidity of creating jobs. And there are no more jobs in New Mexico. Things are worse than they were before. You cannot find a primary care position. Our governor just passed some laws to try to help.

If you are a young physician, we want you. in New Mexico. Come here. There's a great need for you. All right. You know, look, it would be fascinating to sort of like reverse engineer and find out at what point what of those things he listed pushed him over the edge. In other words, like, we've got Andrew McCarthy from the National Review writing in the first

part of a series of the Trump administration or Trump himself, the bribes that have been going on. And he said, like, within like the first month, whatever I, as Andrew McCarthy believed about the Biden administration was times 10 with the Trump administration. And this caller, I don't know if he was worried about like sort of like, and it was all the blatant aspect. He said the word blatant over and over again, like out in public. And I think like it's unclear what what straw broke the camel's back. But they have a building sort of concern and it's not until they're sort of exposed that they complain about it. But we will talk more about this in the program. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Tim Wu, professor of law, Columbia University,

author of The Age of Extraction, How Tech Platforms Conquered Our Economy and Threaten our Future Prosperity, I should say, but first a couple of words from our sponsors. First today is something that, you know, people don't generally want to talk about, and that is dying. Oh, gosh. But unfortunately, it's going to happen to all of us. But you can be prepared.

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When we come back, Tim Wu, Professor of Law at Columbia University and author of Age of Extraction, how tech platforms conquered our economy and threatened our future prosperity. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. Want to welcome back to the program, Professor Tim Wu, Professor of Law at Columbia University, author of Age of Extraction, how tech platforms conquered our economy and threatened our future prosperity.

Tim, welcome back to the prime. I don't know if it was the last time was like when you ran for lieutenant governor. It may have been. It may have been. But I feel like we had you on for your last book, the curse of bigness, I think. Yeah.

But I can't remember. But this one is another entry into the and it's a little more specific in terms of antitrust of focusing more on sort of the concept of platforms and let's start with like the the idea of platforms you you start the book off by going back into history to explain that the concept of platforms have been with us since um uh you you start we were able to really sort of communicate via writing and maybe speaking. Yeah, that's right. I mean, one of the reasons I wrote this book is I'm a believer that platforms,

it's a word we use all the time, have been at the core of almost every successful civilization, you know, going back to ancient Greece and so forth. But I think platforms, you know, say a lot about what kind of civilization you have. and one of the people, recent people thought, Greece was so great is that, you know, you had this kind of place everyone bought and sold and talked and did everything in the center of town,

very fair, open to citizens. In our time, the platform, which is, again, this technology space, intermediary that brings together buyers and sellers, speaker and listeners, in our age it is the tech platforms that have taken over that role. And essentially, in my view,

have taken on an extraordinary amount of power in that role, and that's basically what this book is about. And we'll get back to that idea of how they have gone from like the platform and sort of the act on top of that platform, if you will. But let's also like you recount the sort of the hopes and aspirations when the internet first sort of like got up and running. I am old enough to remember that era and have lived through it. But speak to that idea, because I feel like we had maybe a good half dozen years of like sort of at that peak of where it was going to, where people could sort of realize and also project into the future of it being some form of democracy.

force, I guess. Yeah, I think one of the questions, maybe the main question this book asks, is like, what happened to the dream of the 90s? It's sort of short form. You know, we had this idea, particularly around the internet, although more broadly, and across institutions, that the internet was going to make everybody rich. It was going to make every country on earth a democracy. It was going to give an outlet to sort of every creative force and every kind of potential.

Now, some of that has happened in certain ways, but what has happened over the last 12 years, I mean, I think you can kind of have a before and after. There's this turning point in around, I guess, 2012, 2013, just to pin it down, where I think the Internet goes from being enabling to being extractive. and all of the major platforms, most of the technologies kind of reach the maturity and begin taking more and more from the economy for themselves. So this, you know, instrument, this technology, which was designed to make everybody rich and make everybody heard, really becomes something quite different over the last 12 years. And that's the trend I think we need to change. What was it around at that time that that marks it for you?

I mean, like, it almost. most like in the beginning we had like we had comp you serve and aOL and they they they were sort of like the you were in a fixed world uh at the very beginning just because i think people didn't understand how to operate this but then people got more savvy in the in the late 90s and into the aughts and were able to sort of like swim in you know areas where there wasn't buoys you know sort of like where there was no lifeguard essentially for you. But what was it that changed to mark that? Like, why do you mark 2010 and 2012?

But what actually happened then? You know, I would basically use a single word monopoly. I think that's the period where the main tech platforms sort of established and entrenched and fortified their monopoly and realized that what they wanted to do, was to defend their position and begin turning up the dials of extraction. And, you know, it didn't happen all in one day. You know, it's a little bit like the decline of fall of the Roman Empire. But it's that decade, especially that period,

where you had a lot of the warning signs. I mean, let me go across platforms. In 2010, 2012, Amazon was still an amazing place for independent, small businesses to make money at that period. take from Amazon was like 20%. You know, now you zoom forward here into our era, and they've moved it up into the 50, 60s. It's very hard for small business to make any money. Their take is huge.

They have an advertising fee, which is basically paying for, you know, search results when you look for stuff on Amazon that earned $56 billion in, in 2024. This year, it's over 70 billion. So, I mean, you could fund. I don't know how many media outlets or whatever you want with 70 billion of pure and adulterated profit for something that makes the product worse. Google flipping around then started buying its competitors. They bought Waze. That's something I talk about in the book.

So we lose competition in this area. They start jacking up the advertising. Facebook buys off its main competitors, Instagram, and WhatsApp. And everything just kind of congeals during that era. And they turn on the extraction algorithm, basically. And, you know, I don't, my friend Corey uses, are you allowed to use bad words in the show? Yes. All right.

That's when the inshittification begins. Yeah. And I link it very closely to establish a monopoly and all about defense. And so this beautiful thing, which was supposed to make everybody able to do everything and make a lot of money and so forth turns into the opposite, goes, starts running in the opposite direction. Where were the antitrust cops on the beat at this time period? I mean, specifically, I guess I want to point to the Obama administration. Yeah, I would say in hibernation. Now, I was part of that administration, and I saw it firsthand, but like, just take the ways Google takeover.

So, you know, Google bought ways. Those were the only two mapping programs that were significant at the time. Anyone who knows anything about monopoly has heard of antitrust, knows about merger. You're not able to buy your most dangerous competitor, right? Two companies to one. The only two companies, it's like obvious. So one day, it was an antitrust party. I asked, I found the staffer, and I was like, what was going on with that?

Because I didn't work on. She said, oh, you know, the boss had this idea that Google is where you go when you want to know where you are. Waze is where you go if you want to know where you're going. So they decided they weren't really competitors. They could let the merger go forward. I mean, there was a deep and I think really wrongful, dangerous and belief in two principles during that time. One was kind of this neoliberal idea that market could always solve things. So, oh, don't worry about it.

There'll be someone else, even though Google bought ways something new will come along. Well, nothing new came along. And the other was this idea, well, tech is always special so we can never touch them. And look, I was in the Obama administration. We were really, we thought of Google as kind of like a chair. And we were really nice to them, but we, like, we're not thinking straight about the dangers of private power. I, you know, it's funny, but you mentioned Google because before we took this show as a podcast, I did a series of short videos, and I can't remember exactly what it was.

But I know I did one about Google, and this is like 2010, maybe, reminding them of their slogan, which when they launched, People forget this is don't be evil. And there was a sense of like, they're, oh, wow, they have a real attitude about going into this industry. And then it just sort of melted away. You know, I have the line in my book where I feel like over time, structure beats out good intentions. And the thing with Google is they structured, they were a very well-meaning company.

I think they were a progressive force. They were important. But they didn't structure anything to protect themselves. stay that way. Unlike Wikipedia, which made itself into a nonprofit, Google just said, okay, we'll be a regular for-profit combination, but we're really good guys, and we will be different. And like, we're never going to do anything bad and don't be evil.

And, you know, after 10 years, everybody, and you need to make money and investors staring you down, you know, the strongest will gets collapsed. No one can obey two masters, and they, you know, eventually their good intentions faded. All right. Well, let's go back. I want to talk about the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the notion of, of hurting as I mean, I mean, that you, you write about like, this is, um, much of this. I mean, I think like, there are elements both on, on both ends where without structure, um, you know, water will, will, will, will, will drop to the lowest, uh, point and sort of our tendencies will, we will, um, just even as citizens. or consumers very often, not always, go to the point of lease resistance in many respects and settle in some ways. But talk about that concept of hurting within the context of platforms.

Well, I think over the last five years or so, maybe eight years, the story of business on the internet has become fundamentally one of loyalty, verging on dependence and trying to capture as large a herd of humanity as possible to sit on your platform. And the model, just to change metaphors, is a little bit more like a casino where it doesn't really matter what we do when we're there, as long as you are there. You know, as long as you're checking stuff out, you know, you can doing this, doing that, you can collect fees, you can collect data, you can advertise. So I think that's become the game.

And unfortunately, you know, we're all, look. look, we're human. We're subject to it. It's it's very challenging to try to seek out inconvenient options. And if you know, you want my one business lesson from this book, it's that convenience is the most powerful force in human behavior right now. And how does hurting happen then, right? I mean, you can do them with anti or with monopolistic practices, but there's also, I would imagine, even more like insidious tactics. Yeah, I mean, I think it's about some of it, and I think this is pretty well documented, is the effort to make platforms addictive.

You know, just like very careful study of, you know, what basically works for the gambling industry. I mean, it's crazy that so many of the business models of our major companies are borrowed from like gambling or other areas. But the other, I think, is less, less, you know, negative. just to rely on essentially the human trait of, we're kind of a little bit lazy, you know, or we're busy or like whatever. We just do what we do.

And I think that's been very powerfully built upon, you know, which I think you can judge a civilization by the emotions it relies upon. And, you know, in our time, it's got quite a bit of anger, fear, and laziness that we're relying upon. Sorry to be so optimistic about the world. I mean, I think there's also, you know, something to the sort of the synergy, sorry to use that word, between sort of like people having less time, having to work more to provide for sort of basic necessities.

And then that same, a different part of that same system providing sort of like convenience in lieu of stuff because people are. so exhausted. I mean, like, you know, I think we're seeing this rise of like ordering in, you know, part of it is in the wake of COVID. I think things have changed. But part of it is also, I think people are expending more because they're having to expend more energy for less in other areas of their life and expending more to sort of like make it easier for them to expend more to get less. Yeah, I agree with that. You know, it's, and it's quite an insightful comment. There's something wrong and almost it feels like beyond our power to do something about,

about the fact we have not made work better, you know. When you think about, like, what do most people do with much of their lives? It's work. And particularly since, you know, most families to afford living today need both parents working. And, look, I'm not trying to say that, but I'm just saying, like, that is like an economic necessity for most people. And I agree, we've sort of been squeezed. Here we are the wealthiest society in human history, yet people are so squeezed they can't, like, you know, cook dinners for their family. Yeah.

Well, it's also the orientation of our economy towards an increasingly small percentage of it, the one that is most responsible for consumer spending. I mean, Dordash and Uber Eats and stuff like that, those are people that have the ability to have that delivered to. them and can spend and use that extra money when it gets delivered to them, right? We have the top 10% is responsible for half of consumer spending right now. It feels like all that capital with tech is responsible in many ways for that as well. Yes, I agree with that. And if there's a message of this book, it's, you know, the broader goal of this book is to talk about balance in the American economic system. You know, we often talk about separation of powers. And we often talk about the need for balance between the Congress and the White House and the courts, which I've got to say is not in the best state of affairs either.

But our economic balance is really out of whack, you know. And yeah. Well, I know I want to get to that in a moment. But I also want like it does feel, I mean, and I've referenced this in the past. I once found a steamer trunk back in my yard sailing days with an article of a futurist talking to a ladies. Club in Florida in the 50s. And they were tight in his big thing among other things was that we're going to have watches that are going to give us TV from satellites, which was right, although he thought it was

going to be powered by propane gas. But he did say the biggest challenge for us by the time we get into the 80s or 90s is going to be what are we going to do because machines are going to help our productivity so much. What are we going to do with all the extra free time? Yeah. And the promise of technology, it feels like, has always been left unfettered. The promise of technology has always been, this is going to help workers or people produce more with less effort.

And therefore, the challenge is going to be, what do we do with our leisure time? Yeah. But in fact, what happens is it's like an arms race. and that the extra value created by that productivity does not go to the people who are working, but rather to those who have deployed the technology. And it has increased exponentially that delta between what is the extra productivity and how much actually goes to the people who are being productive. Yes. I completely agree. This is why the word extraction is in the title of the book. Because I think we have, we are living in the age of extraction. And the extraction is of all the productivity that we all have. Exactly as you just said, you know, we individually, all of us have the capability, you know, that six people had 20 years ago in order to do stuff. But where has that surplus gone? Has it gone to the average worker, the average American?

such that they have all the time they want and they they you know can live like the aristocracy lived in the 19th century i mean the answer is no although we have as many possessions as people did but but generally no i think there's been an enormous extraction and if you look i mean at monopolized corporate profit taking it is just a very straightforward story and the ability and you know we we gave up on on balance somewhere in the 19th 80s and 90s and trying to re-funnel back the gains of our technology to the average person. That's basically the story of the last 50 years. You write about before you get to solutions in the book, you write about the dangers in it

that, you know, aside from the fact that like, aside from the sort of just malaise that it creates for the vast majority of us, but society-wide, you write about the dangers. Talk about that for a moment. Yeah, one part of my book, I have a section called The Real Road to Serfdom. And it's inspired by a book that people may know called The Road to Serfdom, which said that, you know, the reason you get totalitarian government is that you have, you know, a well-meaning social welfare state, and it goes on and on and on and becomes, you know, Soviet Russia.

But I think that quite the opposite. You're being a little bit ironic by quoting Hayek. We should just tell people. I just want people to understand that. Yeah. I think it's the opposite, which is to say, if you don't have government rebalancing and taking a role in making sure the government, the economy reigns balanced, you have a predictable sequence where, you know, you monopolize major industries, they extract from people, people get angry, they demand change. And if the government is unable to do anything about that, if the government cannot rebalance, cannot, you know, fix monopoly problems, cannot, cannot. prevent people's wealth from being extracted, they get angry and they turn to, you know,

a strong man who's really going to solve everything for them. So I think that is the situation we see all over the world. I mean, I wrote this before our current state of government, but it was basically I was thinking about Venezuela where the same things happened, and Germany during the 30s and Italy during the 20s. So yeah, there's some real dangers from failing to deal with monopolization extraction problems. Let's just expand on that a little bit. You write about the sort of the persistent dream of self-correcting economies. And this is obviously like the high act, you know, neoliberal in the most specific sense coming from Montpelin and the sort of the implication that markets will will provide.

the solution left on their own, although there was also an element of like, but we should also, uh, government should function in a more subtle way of, of helping specific industries and players in there. But why does, and I guess maybe to tie this in with the notion of like, post facto redistribution is not enough. Yes. I mean, we, we talk about wealth tax on this program. We talk about the 90% tax rate for people making over what would be $3 million in today's dollars in the 50s in the early 60s. But that's after the fact, which why is that not enough? Yeah. Well, so there's two ideas there.

The first is maybe a little more technical. You know, having worked in government multiple times in my career in Obama, Biden, White House, and so forth, I feel that, you know, this private sector can be really important, and the market has tendencies to try and solve itself. But the idea that all of our monopoly and extraction problems are going to be solved by the market is really a fantasy we need to get over because monopolies can be very persistent. I guess I'll put it that way,

particularly as they often are when they are very good at getting the assistance of government to stay there. And, you know, so I think that, I'll say. The other point, I think, is more of a challenge to some liberals, which is I think there is a tenor of liberal thought. I think it was pretty big, particularly the Clinton era, that says, well, it's okay to have monopoly. It's okay to have incredibly profitable corporations, because we can always fix it later, and we need to grow the pie, and we'll just tax it later. Okay. And the main challenge, the main problem with that theory is that the later never comes, and predictably it

doesn't come, because the more money you give to people, the better they are to resist their own taxation or their own various forms of redistribution. So you're always in this situation. In fact, you'd have to sort of constantly be raising taxes all the time if you wanted to keep up with where the tax rates have gone. So, you know, you back yourself into a corner where you're now trying much, much, much later to try to pass a wealth tax, or sorry, a wealth tax something else later. I'm not saying I'm opposed to that. And it's a decent effort. But we've set up a situation because the wealthy are good at influencing government, we've given them the means to influence government by saying, take your money and then we'll tax you later. It's also

completely nonsensical, not just from the taxation standpoint, but from the purpose of anti-monautical monopoly laws, which is to create and foster competition. Because if you say you're just going to deal with it later, the damage is already done. I mean, the tech industry understands this. We're later we're going to be talking about Waymo, but the Uber understood this by just doing whatever they wanted, smashing and grabbing. And then like, okay, the medallion stuff and like taxi laws, we'll deal with that later. But we're trying to race ahead of regulations, not respond to them. Because we know that if we can create this market, then we can crowd out the competition. And then we will be such a staple that you can't get rid of us.

Yeah. You know, another great example is where we blew it is in social media where, you know, this model, extremely toxic model of preying on people's worst emotions and building, you know, the most angry response as possible than advertising on that in a very individualized way, having that being like a dominant business model, you know, for Facebook and Twitter as well, although it's gotten a lot worse. You know, once that becomes the business model and everyone thinks that's fine, you have a race to the bottom instead of the race of the top.

So part of what you need to do in competition policy is try to figure out with guardrails a way is to have races to the top. And that's what I think we fail to do, but, you know, maybe we're learning our lesson. We're certainly paying for it right now. I wanted to wait on that, but since you're at that point, algorithms. Like I, um, my contention is, is that, uh, there must be a way through antitrust law to basically say, just you can't have them. Like, you know, like, like, I mean, more like, you know, maybe, maybe.

I'm not even sure I would even keep like Netflix, my, our suggestion for you. Because as you extend out that sort of like, you know, like, you. use of algorithm. And maybe it can be as distinct of like algorithms, but not for X, Y and Z. Because it seems to me like the, if the theory is that we need to do this before we get to distribution, like we need to pre, we need to structure our the making of money. Because, and we're structuring it right now, it's just a question of how we're going to structure. The idea that Any government doesn't pick win-enders and losers, in my mind is a fallacy. They always do.

We always do by definition. But if you get rid of algorithms, it then inhibits the ability. It's almost like the fairness doctrine in the context of you are ruining business models as a principle and not allowing for that to recruit. Is there anything in like antitrust law? that exist now or could where algorithms, I mean, surely we must have the ability to say, like, this is just not a fair business practice. You know, we have done that before. I mean, you mentioned in other forms of media that we took this.

But let me back up on this a little bit. You know, individualized algorithms, which are basically trying to guess what you want and feed it to you, I feel like they're in some fundamental tension with freedom. I mean, there's something very different about a model where, you know, you go to a store or whatever, and you look around and you decide what you want. And something where people figure out who they are and try to figure out what you want and push it at you, it kind of makes whatever you are, like, what if you totally want to break? Let's say you love craft beer and you decide, you know, I'm going to drink Budweiser today or something. You just want to break from who you are. But we live in a world where you just kind of get bombarded with who you are over and over.

and over and over, and everybody becomes these, like, comic book characters of themselves. And, you know, like, I feel like I know people who just have become, like, the worst versions of themselves. So there's even a deeper point there with the algorithm is that it kind of stews you in your own juices. And, like, that's not the best. Could you do it? I don't think anti-Raslaw, as it is, is set up for that. I know states have experimented with this, I'll tell you what the platforms say is they say that's the First Amendment right of ours to decide how we want to feed you stuff. You know, that the algorithm is no different than let's say the editor of the New York Times

who's deciding what's going to be on the front page. I happen to disagree with that. I think it's one of the many ways that an overly aggressive view of the First Amendment has taken us astray. But I think Congress could do it, could proclaim. It's also conceptually not the same thing because the editor can decide I'm putting this on the front page, but everybody gets that. Right.

The owner at a supermarket could say, like, we're putting Budweiser on aisle three at the top in a special promotion case. And that might encourage it, but that encourages it for everyone. It is not like down to the individual. And I don't know like, I mean, conceptually, it's not the same thing, it seems to me. I think it's different, too. You've got to convince the Supreme Court of that. And including some of our... There's some other things that have to happen, I think,

in time and nature before that. I'm including the liberal judges on that. Because, you know, Justice Kagan, for example, completely buys the theory that Google's algorithm is the same thing as New York Times editor, choosing stories, or YouTube's algorithm, which I just think it's different. And, you know, it's an example of something being...

It's like taking an analogy going too far. It's also not a human choosing. Right. I mean, I have a little more respect for a human, you know, like obviously you put some thought into what's going to be in the show. That's human judgment. And I, you know, respect that and think it's essential, frankly. But it's totally different than an automated procedure, which is just trying to figure out what, you know, works on your riptilling and brain and makes you buy stuff. So, yeah, I, I guess we couldn't be in more agreement. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, we're, I'm,

sort of repeating a point that you're making, but there's a lot of moral panic about, you know, us being so polarized. I mean, I think that there's some validity to it. And, um, but it's in part because like you're, as you're saying, just stewing in your own stuff, everything on social media appears to be nostalgia content at this point. And it's genuinely having, I think, like a deleterious effect on people's ability to have, you know, critical examination of the world, let alone when it's doing a kids. Yeah. No, I think that's right. It's how. of like, you know, our own, you know, we're a very sort of self-absorbed society, obviously. So what happens if you just let people, you know, live in their own narcissistic, you know,

actual literal narcissistic pool where you're sort of, you know, change my marinating in your own, like, interests and beliefs and prejudices, what happens? Well, I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty ugly. I think human beings look a lot better when we're kind of, you know, forced to walk in the street and see a lot of different ideas and thoughts and, you know, that that's a much healthier way to be. Ultimately, what we're really talking about from a, from a, from a democracy standpoint is to inhibit the ability of some people to monopolize, not just money, but, uh, uh, political power. And, and, and, and so, um, it's, I think the, the benefit is that we end up becoming more

interesting people and have more fulfilling lives. But as a as a as a as a pure like sort of like from a democracy function, inhibiting people from from becoming a become our society becoming a plutonomy and then to a plutocracy is really the name of the game. And you know, we've interviewed folks about antitrust on this program, certainly over the past 10, 15 years. almost to a person we hear largely we don't even need a new set of laws. The laws are on the books. We are, particularly in the Biden administration, coming out of an era where the perspective on antitrust had been perverted in some way by Robert Bork in the Chicago school

in this notion of consumer value. and it just was a reinterpretation of antitrust away from the fundamental principles of antitrust, which was sort of like a democracy project, both economic democracy and in terms of civil democracy. But in the same way, I'm curious as in the same way that you need to sort of structure our common. in our economy in a way to inhibit people from accruing a concentrated amount of wealth. What is the mechanism to inhibit Ronald Reagan Part 2 coming in and just reinterpreting the laws in such a way that you could fundamentally derail antitrust over the course of four or five decades without having to really change the laws.

That's a good question. First, I'm happy to hear that the antitrust change message back to the original vision has sunk in with you in that way, because I think that has been the project. We've got a little hiccup going on right now, but it's a, yeah, it's, well, but, you know, the long term is the most important, and these are like constitutional level values. I mean, at some level, I don't want to be critical of the U.S. Constitution, but at some level, it was a mistake by the founders not to include an anti-monopoly provision, which they debated having in there. Because at some level, the decentralization of power is the goal of the Constitution. You know, no one branch, no one part of government, including federal or state, should have all the power.

but what was left out of that was private power. And it's clear in our times that we have private entities that have, you know, as much, if not more power than individual states and sometimes can overwhelm the federal government. And we kind of forgot about that. Okay, things were different in the 18th century. So if you wanted to have a long-term project, you'd have to think of the decentralization of economic power of having a constitutional imperative. And, you know, adding the constitution is one thing, or just having it be understood,

which sometimes is how things work, but this is a constitutional level imperative. And we cannot allow there to be such incredible imbalances and still maintain a democracy. You know, some time ago we interviewed, it was I think Fishkin and Forbath, who had written the anti- oligarchy constitution. And it seems like, you know, like in the parlance of 250 years ago,

being against the king was to be against the oligarch and the oligarchy and the concentration of wealth and i.e. power, we've lost sight of that, I guess. And so the, how does one reintroduce that notion so that if Robert Bork comes back and decides that we're going to reinterpret this antitrust law that you or some other group has the ability to sue the federal government and say, what you're doing is fundamentally unconstitutional or, you know, if not, you know, statutorily wrong because you're not applying the antitrust standards in the way that it's written. I mean, what's crazy about it is some of it comes down to an embrace of a conservative idea, which is originalism, which is, you know, that you have to respect the original.

Actually, conservatives love originalism when it comes to the Constitution. They don't like it when it comes to statutes. Because the original intent of the antitrust statute, the Sherman Act, was to prevent worker, to protect workers, farmers, consumers, against like monster corporations. That's the original intent. anyone who reads it honestly, and to prevent, you know, a political aggregation of power so that you have a monarchy in the private sector. That is like so obviously the intent. And if you read it, it's very hard to deny it. So one answer is just, you know, we anchor ourselves back to reading

the antitrust statutes in light of the intent of Congress. And if that is the understood method, you're fine. You know, the way people have run away from that is to say, well, yeah, everything has to be understood in terms of contemporary economics. But my view has been, you know, the antitrust laws are laws. Congress had its reasons for them, and they are anchored in some of our constitutional values, and that's how they need to be interpreted. From your perspective as a law professor, has it changed in the institution of law schools, the interpretation of antitrust, sufficiently that you feel some confidence that going forward as we produce more judges, that that concept has been sort of internalized? I think things, look, things, when change happens, it happens, you know,

it fits and starts. It's funny you should mention that I spent the morning working on our casebook. Lena Kahn and I are writing a casebook, a few other people's effort, teach a shall assessment writing a casebook in our field, which like, you know, is meant to make front and center what the original point of these laws were. So I think the student, first of all, I mean, the amount of student interest we have in anti-monopoly work is incredible. You know, like all of our classes are completely full with huge waiting lists. And a lot of people just seem to want to devote their lives with these projects. I guess it should. shows you that there is a hunger to try to do something to fight this.

So I think it's sinking in. Look, obviously, people are very cynical about the Trump administration, but I also think that some of the fundamental principles of our country are less about administrations and more about what's taken for granted. And certainly when I was saying the Obama White House, it was taken for granted. It was only about, like, neoliberal economics. And I think that's totally changed. So there's a sign of optimism.

That's a great place to end. Tim Wu, Professor of Law and Columbia University, author of Age of Extraction, How Tech Platforms, Conquered Our Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity. Thanks so much for your time today. We'll put a link, obviously, to that at Majority.fm and our YouTube and podcast description. Thanks again.

I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's been great. Thanks. Thank you. All right, folks. I'm going to take a quick break, head into the fun half of the program wherein we will have fun. Yes, we will.

Really cool. Reminds us that Bezos fired 300 journalists from the Washington Post last week. Unclear how many minutes of the Melania film that would have cost to maintain those salaries. Derek Thompson rushed to Twitter to say, it's like he doesn't care about the media. Thanks for that insight.

He left... He left... It's not an attack on your entire industry. He's negligence. They left journalists stranded on assignment all across the world. Absolutely unconscionable. The... The...

The Rasparo thing about the drain and the... Giant sucking sounds? Yeah, like, that's been happening in media for the entirety of our lives. Well, he was talking about the jobs going overseas. Yeah. But the press, the press, you look at the employment and people employed by as journalists. For the past 50 years, it's been cratering. And the people employed to sell PR or marketing has been rising.

This is a long-term trend. And we're going to see it just collapse now. It's over. I mean, I can't remember now, like if this is, because it was, we went through a period where we would talk about this all the time. Maybe it was in the odds. but as recently as 30, 40 years ago, like news organizations at networks were basically a lost leader. They didn't make any money. They didn't make any money.

And they were simply the way that you sort of, like, it was part of your responsibility. And newspapers and media outlets have simply become mechanisms in which to sell. as opposed to like some notion of civic duty or whatnot. It's also, I mean, it's the influencerification also of information on the internet. Everything is pay to play now. I mean, most of the posts that you're seeing on social media, they're being elevated to the top because it's pay to play. It sounds silly, but you see these like the rise, as Matt saying, of public relations, even in movie campaigns. Like, they're this, that weather, this horrible interpretation I can tell already is.

it's going to be horrible of Wuthering Heights is coming out. And like they're pretending that they were in love just for that that couple is, the two stars, just for two weeks so they can get social media hype. Like everything is. Well, that's an old. That, they used to actually do that a long time ago.

I know, but you're seeing it. I mean, I'm not trying to go like that movie that was really funny with Pamela Anderson and Liamneeson, they also faked being in a relationship for like to, I mean, like it sounds silly, but,

but every, all of the information that's out there right now is, designed to create engagement as opposed to like proliferating truth. And we're wondering why these legacy outlets aren't fully covering what we're seeing in the Epstein files. There's basically no journalists and the ones that they're left are not inclined to dig that deep into this kind of thing. Like Maggie Haberman was the big reporter in the New York Times during the first Trump administration. You look into her background. Her father was like a PR guy for the Trumps. It's It's elites in our media that are replicating the same message and not challenging power in any meaningful way.

Well, that said, you can support this program by becoming a member at Join the Majority Report.com. When you do not only get the free show free of commercials, you also get the fun half, and you can IM us on the fun half. Someone just asked Daredevil on the IM, are you taking calls today? maybe we don't like that level of planning doesn't pressure on us yeah exactly um but uh we might also just coffee dot co-op fair trade coffee hot chocolate use the coupon code majority get 10% off what's uh there seems to be like uh concern brewing in the some youtube bullshit in the tech in the tech area uh matt what's happening on the matt leccian media universe uh yeah there's new jacobin uh before that YouTube issue, I was going to look up

what we did on Friday. Go check out the Tuesday show 10 o'clock. We had Robin Wansley on talking about Minnesota and Chip Gibbons talking about this new idea that reporting on members of our armed services is doxing them.

Which God. I'm getting too old for this. Tell me about it. Patreon.com slash the Left Reckoning to get our Sunday show where we talk about the Epstein Fowles, including Kimball Musk who well he went on a podcast

and people should have to you have to check out left reckoning David and I Is that is that Musk's what brother or father His cooler older brother His cooler older brother And what does he say

He wears a cowboy He plays guitar He went on to It doesn't matter what the podcast was But he went on to a podcast Talk about his The worst period of his life Which was his divorce

Of course And the which actually kind of led to Like the other time That he needed a triple intervention from people because of how much partying he was doing. And it turns out some recent emails may have set some insight into the type of party. He was doing it. And why an intervention was needed by three different people?

Are you trying to tell me that the guy in the cowboy hat who's divorced, who is singing an acoustic guitar song in a very closed setting and an intimate one, is in some way, I don't know, having a midlife crisis? I think he's the exact type of person. We need to entrust the priorities of our economy, I think these guys are great at allocating capital, and I look forward to the future that they're all creating for us. You know what sucks, too?

Now we're not going to Mars. We're going to the moon. We just needed to hear Kimball-Mogg. So close. We just needed to let him do a live set at Burning Man on his acoustic, and we could have data centers on the moon right now. And he's such a pathological line. I mean, the light where he's like,

Mars would have taken 25 years, but we can do the moon in 10. Right. Okay. Yeah, I'm sure. Sure, buddy. Give us more investment money Any day now Here's an idea for a

member feed Of you two guys Like when there's like A problem with YouTube Because usually like I look over And it's just like Swipe left Swipe left

And then all of a sudden Not me It's like Oh no Oh no Oh no Oh no What's going on?

Having an emotional breakdown. That's the panic when we have to work. It's like when you're working. Things aren't automated. What's going on? That's the thing. It's like when it reminds me of like working at McDonald's when we were like 30 minutes from clothes

and a big bus would come through. It's like you. Yeah, right. Making me have to get the, get my hands dirty again. All right. See him the fun half. Jamie and I may have a disagreement.

Yeah, you can't just save. whatever you want about people just because you're rich. I have an absolute right to mock them on YouTube. He's up their buggy whipping like he's the boss. I am not your employer. You know, I'm tired of the negativity. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. You're nervous.

You're a little bit upset. You're riled up. Yeah, maybe you should rethink your defense of that, you're fucking idiots. We're just going to get rid of you. All right. But dude. Dude. Dude.

Dude. Dude. You want to smoke this joint? Yes. Do you feel like you are a dinosaur? That's a good shit. Exactly. I'm happy now.

It's a win, win, win. Uh, hell yeah. Now, listen to me. Two, three, four, five times, eight, four, seven, nine, six, five, seven, five, seven, two, thirty-eighth, 56, twenty-six, twenty-seven, one-half, five-eighths, three-nine billion. Wow. He's the ultimate math, nerds. Don't you see? Why don't you get a real job instead of steering vitriol and hatred

You left wing limb off Everybody's taking their dumb juice today Come on, Sammy Dance, dance, dance Ooh My first post-coital scene With a woman I'm hoping to add more moves to my repertoire

All I have is the dip in the swirl Fine, we can double dip Yes, this is a perfect moment No Wait what? You make under a million dollars to gear You're scum, you're not paying me Fuck you, you fucking liberal elite

I think you belong in jail. Thank you for saying that, Sam. You're a horrible, despicable person. All right, going to take a quick break. I want to take a moment to talk to some of the libertarians out there. Take whatever vehicle you want to drive to the library. What you're talking about is jibber japs. Classic.

I'm feeling more chill already. Donald Trump can kiss all of our asses. Hey, Sam, hey, Andy. Are you guys ready to do some evil? Hitler was such an idiot. I think I might be a Nazi. Agree. No.

Death to America. Do. Yes. Wow. Wow. That's weird. No way. Unbelievable.

This guy's got a really good hook. Throw our hands up. Wow. But Sam, I gotta get off. No worries. Listen, I want to just flesh this out a little bit. I mean, look, it's a free speech issue if you don't like me. Hey, hey, hey, hey, shut up.

Thank you for calling into the majority report. Sam will be with you shortly.