TRASHFUTURE - The Scab-Gig Economy feat. Alex N. Press

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

For this week’s free episode, the cast of Riley, Milo, Hussein, and Alice speak with (now three-time!) guest Alex N. Press, the labour correspondent for Jacobin Magazine, about two of her recent stories. In one, a ‘flexible work’ app is assigning people gigs that lead them directly across a picket line. In another, studio executives in Hollywood are dreaming up ways to digitize an actor’s likeness and use them in AI-generated content, for free, forever. And in the face of Spencer Confidential not actually getting 11 billion downloads, we ask: is the Silicon Valley-ification of Hollywood just intent on destroying the concept of movies? Check out Alex’s articles here! https://jacobin.com/2023/07/southern-california-hotel-workers-strike-automated-management-unite-here https://jacobin.com/2023/07/hollywood-writers-actors-strike-studios-streaming If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello, hello and welcome to this free episode of TF. It is free one. Yes, Milo coming in with his thing, but from far away, I'm never coming in with my thing. I just want to verify. For the list day of also sure, we're all all remote today, scattered to the four corners of, well, actually really scattered to the two ends of Britain. I know.

Remind none of the rest of you tend to and we have a great show for you today where we're going to be talking about the various strike waves that are happening in the US, but specifically looking at a couple different ones in Southern California and how a, I'm not technically employing you, App has been key to companies trying to break one of them to talk about that with us. It is Jacobin's labor relations correspondent. It is Alex Press. Alex, how's it going?

Great. How are you guys? Very, very well. Thank you. And I believe this is your, this is like a three-peat appearance for you on the show, I think. I think so. I think this is three.

You can get into the like mezzanine area of the lounge now. There's like some slightly softer couches. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's a chocolate fountain up there. There's one drink pass up there. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's not even like a drink. Like a ticket. It's like 50% off the drink. Yeah. We are, we are like a British airline in this situation. And so even even the special like members clubs are like a shit.

What? Who's saying a British airline? Which one could you possibly be talking about? It's a mystery. It's a kind of way for British people to be in the air, you know, it is technically an Irish airline. I could say it was like, you know, well, could be more British than that. However, before we get to our discussion

of Southern California's goings on, I have assembled a few tasty pieces of news updates starting with two things I love to talk about, which is techno and wine. Two things I love to talk about on the podcast. techno and wine. Yeah, sit on techno and wine, yeah. Fine, two of my special interests that are also frequent topics of the podcast, don't

say techno in a right. Right, power relations of the 18th century and we work. We work. Oh, okay. I was still stuck on Tecno and wine, sorry. Yeah. Hey, aren't we all? No.

Tecno and wine, Colognelon great power relations of the 18th century You're you're very far away from still writing an international relations dissertation my lo I'm sorry no one of the things I wanted to talk about of course is as we all know I am pretty obsessed with the ongoing what the fuck are we going to do now that the Ponzi scheme has stopped if vacation of crypto and to do now that the Ponzi scheme has stoppedification of crypto. And one, that's really testing the limits of what you can make an if vacation there, I feel. Oh, yeah. We are going to record an episode later today that has a much worse if vacation in it. Can you if vacation if I this now? Yeah. Well, that's indeed. How do you if occasion in Horto? But this prominent trader said

on the light speed podcast about crypto. The biggest thing I think Solana and other crypto applications need is a focus on people who aren't currently in crypto who have absolutely no, we have absolutely. But that's the thing, they run out of those guys. Like they burned through all of them. They had their moment and it's never coming back.

You're never getting another Super Bowl commercial. Like it's just over. Well, specifically, it was said that they need to have quote, and I'm quoting, this is a quote, direct quote. Absolutely no understanding of crypto at all. Yeah. Like most of the people in crypto actually. Yeah, well they need the Reub coin, the Reub. Ooh, which was the original in crypto actually. Yeah, well, they need the Rube coin, the Rube.

Ooh, which was the original Rube coin. Like you want to buy a car to the city and devalue as fast as crypto, the Rube was historically was your best bet. Well, one of the, actually, there's an interesting story where Coinbase released its own private chain and then someone created a currency on it called bald and then it was

revealed. I think it was to make fun of Brian Armstrong who's very bald. No one to say it was revealed that this this currency was created by a guy who was a known scammer and had built lots of people out of lots of money. So what do you think happened when this was revealed? Is it nothing? No, quite the opposite. Oh, is it the poor money in? They gave him money. Yes, correct. People put money in because they thought that,

oh, this guy's an amazing scammer. That way he's gonna pour a bunch of money in an all-get-witch. My money's in like one of the best scams going. I know that you pause, but I'm like invested with like a top tier Ponzi scheme. This guy inspected my wallet, but he said, then I can go out and inspect another 12 people's wallets and then I'll have even more money than I did before. Paying extra for the luxury wallets, inspected, he's got like slightly fresher breath, you know?

Oh yeah, he's got nice kick gloves. But then what happened is that they were unable to bridge their money back from that chain onto the various main ones. And so he just took all of it. Crazy. That guy, the luxury wallet and spectra and spectra everybody's wallets. And then he didn't come back.

Yeah, it's insane. But yeah, I think you got it right, Alice, right? Which is the moment that, Roobs aren't being brought onto the crypto space. And we can see that now that the numbers are small, they weren't being brought in by the applications, they weren't being brought in by utility, they weren't being brought in by all of the great white

papers of the tokenomics. They were being brought in because Mark Wahlberg and then a bunch of tech columnists, like Kevin Rusz, said, hey, you should check this out. The numbers are huge. And those guys also lost their money. Is the other, like, do you know what a Judas goat is? It's a slaughterhouse thing.

You get a friendly goat to like lead all of the goats that you're gonna slaughter up a ramp into the slaughterhouse, and then that goat's just fine. Like you keep that goat like on staff, he's on retainer. Right, what they did was they ran out of Judas goats. They ran out of like people to lead into the big crypto money slaughterhouse. And you know, I don't know how you come back from that. I like the Judas goat. The Judas goat is like, look, follow me up this ramp. I walk up

it every day and I never get killed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The idea of bringing people in who have no idea, absolutely no understanding of cryptos. It just makes me think of like jury duty in the US where you know, it's a police brutality case and they're weeding the people defending the cops are like asking every single juror. Do you have any, do you think the cops are bad? Do you have any criticisms of the police? And when you say yes, they're like, yeah, they're off the jury.

It's just doing it. You're doing it off the jury. It's just doing you know, doing the most the most absolutely ignorant kind of group of people. I heard about some, so some of my followers did jury duty fairly recently. And the guy tried to get out of it by saying explicitly like, I am racist, right? And had to be told, it's a civil case between two white guys. You still have to do it. Hold on.

Hold on. Is one of them Irish? I think I can save this. Just like having to narrate and be like, no, no, no, different kind of racist, I'm like a black supremacist white guy. I'm going to go like equally hard on both of them. Yeah, they should both lose. I'm the world's first white black Israelite.

I should not be allowed on a jury. Yeah, and that's the only guy left who's still willing to put his money in crypto. Yeah, well, so we're gonna see how that goes. It's gonna be very funny as this whole thing keeps falling apart. I was told that every time crypto went down and bounced back up higher. So it's gonna be stress as Farak. That's right. Yeah It's about back people bounce back roll pharise. There were others so

Another thing that is we want to talk about ongoing collapses is of course we work We work in addition to having some of the fardiest podcasting booths in the city of London according to our roving, we work correspondent. Yeah, we sure remain anonymous. Yeah, has warned in its recent financial results that it faces quote, substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. And will otherwise need to go through further restructuring or search for additional capital, which is a very polite way of saying we are completely fucked. It's over. They're ripping the podcasting booths out of the offices, as we speak.

But they're trying to like, possible the farts to like make a we work scent. I am, I am in a we work booth at the moment. It does smell of something. I don't know what it is, but every booth that they have here has a unique smell and it's all horrible. And I guess they can try and make money out of that. I don't know. Well, so what has happened is we work being valued at its peak by Softbank at $47 billion.

It's now worth 102.18 million. And that's set to probably be last, not investing advice. You ever think about how like essentially one guy and his wife by getting too weird with it and not being good at business? Like basic concepts of business, lost more money than you will ever make in like a hundred lifetimes. They need the help of a luxury wallet in SmackDown. They lost like the GDP of Indonesia in at a surprise value.

Sorry, I've been playing a lot of trade-als. Indonesia's fucked off. They've come round, they've come round asking me for their GDP. I'm like, listen boys, it's gone down the back of the sofa. You know what it's like. Getting your GDP cashed out like at a casino is a very funny bit too. So Britain's going to get like, you know, it's like we're taking 600 billion quid and like, like chips out to a cashier. It's like cheers.

I was in Jakarta, he said, listen, hang on to it for me, it's me, GDP, look after it, will you? It's quite funny to sort of see this play out like as someone who works in a we work for like most of the week. In the sense of, I remember when we worked whole thing was like, you know, we're a community and we have lots of cool stuff. And like, you know, you have, you know, we'll sort of give you a load of things for free.

And like, from what I understand, like when what we've talked about in the past, like, we work was supposed to be this place that kind of like, you know, it's more so, it's still like, you know, we're like a home, we're not really like a work office and stuff. And now like they desperately try to do those things, bearing in mind that they have no budget to do it. So like today, they were like, yeah, we have like a family yoga class on our horrible balcony. That starts at

7.30 in the morning. And I think like two people showed up. Bring your family to work in the morning and I think like two people showed up. And then we got a flexible family to work in the morning. And then, well, what was very funny was that because no one, because like two people showed up to this, we've everyone then got an email being like, this we work is trying really hard to like, you know, bring, bring people together and the we work philosophy and no one's doing it. It was a thing incredibly, incredibly incredibly funny. But at the same time, like all the things that I would kind of say were nice about what we work

in the sense of fruity, water, and nice, barista-style coffee. That's all gone. They've gone rid of all that. So it is basically a horrible, horrible workspace that is very difficult to use. And also, they've sealed all the windows shut in this building because of suicide risks. Genuinely, it sounds like having a really extra high energy flatmate to be like, I made you like lots of little balls of cucumber war so that I've just left around. But I worked really hard on this 730 AM yoga thing

and you just stayed in and I actually find that you know so just like let me know and you're done being mean to me right? Yeah listen mate you know I know you're having a tough time and that makes a difficult for you to attend things like yoga classes and you know more people that have got to check in with their bloke and say you know are you doing okay that's why I've sealed all the windows and why do you might you might jump out of that first full window to to to a medium injury but that's why I think that's why I've sealed all the windows and why you might jump out of that first full window to a medium injury. But that's why I think it's actually important you attend the yoga

class because you could use a bit of Zen mate. It's just really cruel to do to use specifically a thing to be like, you must come to this outdoor yoga thing every like part of the doors are now sealed. It's a steep rumor. You have to engage in the community. But I'd like to issue to one correction. By the way, I didn't mean Indonesia's GDP. I meant it's export balance. And I looked up it's export balance.

And it lost two of your face right. Oh, I see. He's an idiot. Honestly, it lost two of Indonesia's export balances. All right, so if you look twice. It's for a job as a podcast host. We have an open. Yeah, Raleigh's fired.

He's being managed out by HR right now. So before we carry on with the we work stuff, I just want to, I want to turn to Alex, right? Like to see this thing crash and burn. How surprised are you given that you, I know you thought it was gonna work. Yeah, because I was an early investor. I'm, that came out, that came out later.

Also, I wanna say I knew he was wrong and I was just being polite about the Indonesia thing. So it was like a splicing image situation. Yeah, so it was now the vultures of circle. Everyone suddenly like, I hated him the whole time. I always thought, and you know nothing about Indonesia. I've never been allowed to host a podcast.

And so if there's an opening for the podcast host, I am available just to say. Yeah, I was, don't. Right. But I want to talk a little bit about what Adam Newman is doing now, because as you may recall, we spoke about this late, in a rent 2022, which is that Adam Newman, of course, not like the character of the Chumble-Umba song was not to be left knocked down, but if that gets back up again, went on to Renny.

You also wrote that song about cars,. It's a man of many talents. Went on to receive $350 million from Andreson Horowitz to do WeWork again, but called Flow. But this one was going to be WeWork, but for Living. It's like WeWork. WeWork to Shaz, it's named with like a menstruation tracking app. No, I do not believe he is aware. But so if you recall, the four pillars of the company are a branded technology first

management firm that runs the buildings. An asset manager real estate funds it owns them. A financial services company that takes rent payments and a mechanism that's going to take some of the community value and share it with the value creators in the community. Oh, it's just going to be like Elon Musk shit. Where it's like, oh, you're the most like based epic, like Pepe on this like we work building, have $50. We don't know that yet. He hasn't been clear.

I was surprised. I was surprised. I was surprised. I was surprised. I was surprised. I was surprised. I was surprised. I was surprised.

I was surprised. I was surprised. I was surprised. I was surprised. I was surprised. I was surprised. there would be some form of crypto wallet. Like, possibly, you know, the long, if you organize like a 730 AM, bring your own family, yoga, retreat class thing, then maybe you get like one token that lets you vote on like what color they light up the lights in the, in the elevator. One float of bacon. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, but he says he wants to create an elevated experience for the residents, saying renters can expect several unique experiences including a very funny Example this is just a quote from Adam Newman who was talking recently at a at a panel is if you're in your apartment building near a renter And your toilet gets clogged you call the super if you're in your own apartment and you bought it and you own it and your toilet gets clogged You take the plunger. It's the difference between feeling like owning something and just feeling like you're renting. Wait, so he's spinning, getting people to do the chores

as it gives them a sense of ownership. A sense of ownership, by the way. We've like, lurched from like, I just have like, flatmate on the brain for some reason, but we've lurched from like, anico, like, we've lurched from like, very high energy, hippie, flatmate on the brain for some reason. But we've lurched from like anico like we've lurched from like very high energy hippie flatmate to sort of the worst features combined of like anico capitalists and communist squats where there's a chore wheel

but also you get paid to do the chore wheel with crypto as it would seem that appears to be the closest thing I can approximate to the case. What are these guys all smoking crack? Like I just say, like just every week there's like a new business idea that makes no. So like doing this podcast for years, it just eroded my brain. So if you, if you're a renter, he thinks you don't even try the plunger on the toilet. No.

But I mean, this is the thing. If I do anything, I'm calling my landlord to be like, oh, fix it, please. Like anything. And he gets back to me so quickly that I find that very easy and rewarding to do. That definitely hasn't been like a crack in the ceiling of my hallway.

That's been there for the last seven years and counting. Yeah. If you rent and you're having some trouble with your landlord and your toilet is blocked, I would advise trying to lubricate the shit out of the toilet by tipping a full pan of baking grease down the toilet. I usually find that hell. I think what's happened is that we're coming up for this idea.

Adam Newman had to do a couple of things, right? To make this a valuable prospect for investors to invest in like Andre's and Horowitz, he's had to say, we're not just going to be doing like bulk buying leases and retailing them out at a loss to like- It worked before. It did, sure. So he had to say, okay, we're going to own it. But then he's saying, okay, well, how are we going to disrupt renting? Because what's the main thing about renting? It's that they don't own the property.

So we're going to have to give them a sense of ownership. And then I think what happened is because he's now hanging out with Mark Andreessen instead of Masayoshi Saan, he's now filled with a different kind of mania where instead of believing that he's going to save the world, he believes that he's going to discipline renters into what? I'm sure Mark Andreessen thinks like just have landlords whipped What do you think the last time Mark Andreessen used a plunger was? How do you think you got his head like that?

Well that's like it was like a four seps birth but with a plunger that was birth but with a plunger. That's how they got him out of the pussy. Oh, I love Stetrich. Like, we're gonna have to call the plumber. This guy's really wedged in there. His mother's been drinking bacon grease. We told her not to do that. He's in a baby bug.

He's encased in wet wipes and congealed fan. There's only one man who can get him out. It's fucking Uncle Mick the Plumber. Yeah. So this is the closest that Newman has ever come to describing Flow as business model. This is from Fast Company. This is Fast Company quoting him.

What we get so excited about the vision of Flow and the business of Flow is that it's actually a flywheel. If we can create a better experience in the building, the building performs better. If the building performs better, then we're able to raise more money and buy more buildings. Buy more buildings will be able to run more buildings and more users in those buildings.

By the way, not tenants, they're users now. And those users are going to start using our financial services application. If that financial services application is going to do what we want it to do and create services that are actually meaningful, then that again is going to drive more users. And then if we are able to take this value creating mechanism,

this is the nut graph and share it with the residents, a portion of the value, it's going to make them feel ownership before then saying the word ownership is a very complicated work. No, it isn't. No, it isn't. It's just the sense of ownership. I really appreciate it, it's an explicit corporate commitment to gaslight you.

Yeah, but that was good shit. Here's, did anyone catch the core element of how this is going to work? It seems, which is that the more of a community you create by doing 7.30 AM, bring your family yoga classes, the more people come in. And then they pay out to the people who already live there for creating that good community when new people come in with new money.

Hmm. So he was saying all we need is a continuously expanding user base. So let's say we arrange these people in tears, right? So the top tears would be quite narrow, but gradually the tears would get wider until it forms a wide base. Now, legally, of course, we can't draw a straight line around this shape. No, no, no, it's- You could do that at home.

You know what it is. It's a scatter plot that just has a coincidental shape. That's right. Alex, how do you feel about a sense of ownership of some kind of a we work apartment? I mean, that's what I'm living in right now in New York City, and you know, I can't complain. For instance, we know, I have a normal apartment here, but you know, I, we, there was a flood in the basement, not long ago, and our landlord completely is non-responsive. And so there was a sense of ownership, you ownership. We each kind of had to take turns trying to clear the sewage out of the basement.

And so if that is what Newman has in mind here, I feel like he could go pretty far in the United States because people love to feel like they kind of are in it together famously here. People don't want to be on their own. The basement must have flooded that to cancel, bring your uncle to Pilates. Is it fucking night? A bunch of uncles treading water down there. Yeah.

We got to rescue these uncles. A bunch of uncles treading water. But my God, did they feel like it was their water? It wasn't worse than water. The water was owned by flow and in recent oil. I didn't think it was my own. The treading water in the basement of a water was owned by flow and in Dreson all the way into the surrounding environment. I mean, the thing is, it's like a journey. Treading water in the basement of a wee work or a flow, I guess, is like that's the whole

body exercise, and that's the policy's philosophy. So, yeah. Aquarubics for uncles. Although there is one other element to this story, which is that if there's not, it has like several thousand units in the US, but you know where he's considering expanding a certain new city that is being built in a kingdom. Oh my God. Let's go.

You can get a sense of ownership over part of the line, which it makes sense because the line is sort of like a sense of the city. So Ben Horowitz from Andreessen Horowitz said, Saudi has a founder and well, you don't call him a founder. You call him your royal highness We're excited to bring flow there. That's so good. That's such a good line. When you think about it I am basically Mark Zuckerberg, but I'm the Mark Zuckerberg of being Saudi Arabian. It's such a funny fucking thing for MBS to suggest to anyone. In Saudi Arabian politics, there's one CEO, and he is the quarterback of the House of South.

That's right. His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmi. Newman said about the, about possibly building community centric housing in Saudi Arabia. I mean, he didn't say Neon specifically, but he talks about Saudis startup spirits. There's nowhere else he could really be talking about. So from like the new Marava cube, or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I do really like the idea of Saudi Arabia kind of being both like the mecca for start up like for like disgrace startup guys, but

also kind of like the start up guys making, uh, what's it called doing birthright? Or like, Alia to like me on. Yeah, they're going to like, they're going to learn about Ibn Saud and like how inspirational he was as a founder of start up. Convincing Adam Newman that like doing doing the,, like, praying around the carbo is actually like fucking, you know, palates around the queue. Like, we tricked this man into becoming Muslim.

When you think about it, makes Mecca, the Mecca of Islam also. I'm gonna say, instead of going around a cube, you walk or you go around the orb. That's right. I want to talk about one more news item before we go on to our main topic. This is a UK item that Alex had as deep in your wheelhouse because it is about, of course, something that the UK's Labor Department, the Department for Work and Pensions, has said

that is quite alarming. Oh, that's unlike them. Over 50s said Mel Stride, the DWP secretary, should consider delivering takeaways and other flexible jobs for a delivery route, or as you would know it in New York, something like Uber Reads or Seamless or whatever. This is giving me the bad feelings already. Milf deliveries. No, gulf giving me the bad feelings already. Milf deliveries. No, gilf deliveries is the probably like over 50s.

Since 2021, Deliveroo has recorded a 62% increased in riders aged over 50, which strides said were great opportunities, and it's good for people to consider options they might not have thought of. Is it though? Saying you really do need to sensibly stop take where you are in life and assess whether you've got enough money to get you through with the kind of lifestyle and living standards that you're expecting. So Alex, please can we get some of the teamsters over here? Yeah, I think they're on the right.

This just reminds me of something that we may have even discussed last time. I was on here one time about how Amazon also recruits Older people I for I was I can't remember we did the guy There was this one guy who went into an Amazon warehouse And like talked about how good it was to be working in the 70s. I mean, it's fucking crazy Amazon hate people going to the toilet have they met old people Sorry Alex, please carry on. No, no, that was all. It's just that it's reminding me of that completely. If you end it's because, of course, right, if you are going to demolish anything that looks

like a social safety net, if you're going to have lots of the other jobs that people would often have into their 50s, like not unionized or with less and less protections from being laid off or fired or whatever, and you're also going to sort of try and never and never support anyone on any job ever, that of course you're going to have lots and lots of excess people who got pushed out of the labor market by COVID, many of whom were long-term sick

and couldn't get back to work. Like that is just what happened. And the idea, not just of some crackpot or the CEO of Deliveroo, but the idea of the government, a government minister is, what if we got people between the ages of 50 and 67 and we got them, you know, basically on a job where they are cycling for eight hours a day.

Yeah, just like grandmas dropping like flies in the street trying to get you like chicken carts or whatever. I mean, the main thing that strikes me is that anytime you talk about the economy and forecasts of the economy and most of all stuff like house prices and inflation, all of that is couched in terms of like, well, it probably won't be a huge recession because unemployment isn't rising that much. And the reason why unemployment isn't rising that much is in part because we have made your nan deliver your food to you. A kind of a bit of a three-card trick, there. Oh yeah, the job is still there.

It's just the job is going to give you a heart attack. Yeah, it's very depressing. It's like genuinely infuriating. None of us are ever going to be able to retire. The people who are able to retire now are barely able to retire and we're making that group as small as we can get it anyway. So yeah, you're gonna have to work on the fucking Amazon thing or the Uber Eats thing until you die, as will we, unless we get to keep

podcasting forever. Yeah, yeah. So podcasting from the fucking old folks. So what what Mel Stride went on to say is what we're seeing here is the ability to log on and on and off anytime you like, no requirement to have to a certain number of hours. Very funny to take that nice lesson. What we're seeing here is the ability to log on. It's like, yeah, to log on and log off anytime you like no requirement to have to do a certain number of hours, which is driving huge opportunities. It's, it feel like Britain is the last place where anyone would talk about the gig economy like that. I mean, the thing is, right, when zero hours contracts as like a formal thing came in, there are a lot of sort of like older people who are like, that'll teach the the factless youth who

don't want to work anymore, what a real job is. And now it's coming for them to. And I don't say that in a particularly celebratory tone, it's more that like, no, there's just everybody's going to end up like this, it seems like. Yeah. The side that deliveroo and melstrider. Yeah, the side that Deliveroo and Mel Strideron is not the side of really anyone but themselves and anyone cheering for the emiseration

that they're pushing is eventually going to themselves be emiseration. Yeah, well I mean, the thing is you can't really blame people who are in their 50s and 60s because all their lives, they've been taught that be more or less fine. He had a good job, you work all the time, or whatever, you know, you're going to get looked after in your silver-year old age, and you know, it won't necessarily be as like barbarous as this.

And it is. This isn't necessarily like pensioners or people who like are sort of reaching retirement who now have to sort of, who's like circumstances have changed. Like, I think for a while, it's sort of been like fairly, even if it hasn't sort of retuning retirement who now have to sort of, who's like circumstances have changed. Like I think for a while, it's sort of been like fairly, even if it hasn't sort of been said directly, it has indirectly sort of been said that, well, yeah, you're gonna have to work for probably until like your bones like can't take it anymore.

But the idea being that like, you know, there will come a time when your bones can't take it anymore. And then by that point, when you can't move, then we sort of might give you like a minimal sense of assistance. And now the position has been, well, you could never log off. So even if your bones don't function, you can do something in the gig economy. It's kind of a weird and ominous day when the DWP announced they were doing away with the retirement age and replacing it with this new metric of when your bones can't take it anymore. Every year you'll come in and have your bones tested. When your bones can't take it anymore, then you just get transitioned to a new form of gig economy one. So that you can do a Nick Cave scale for retirement.

You know, and the line is going up, but the line is going up so incrementally, but it's important that like you achieve that 0.1%. Yeah. And it's a mirage. I think about the three-card monty thing you mentioned, Riley, in that so much of this is not really going to be productive, labor, so much of this is not even really going to benefit anyone. It's just going to be like, you may as well phrase this more honestly and just start doing an old bastard Corvee, where you just have them build like a giant pyramid or something. And it's like, oh, yeah, we don't actually really need this, but, you know, get some out of the house, you know? So before we move on, I just want to ask Alex, what you think of like

this being government policy or implied government policy, right? Get out to work and get on your bike. I mean, what do you think I think of it? I mean, this is horrible, right? I mean, this is like in America, of course, this is well advanced, that the state, it, but it implicitly does that. I mean, for, for government official to explicitly say, we should be moving the old people into delivery jobs in the US, they don't say that. It's just sort of assumed that that's what's going on, right? Because if you remove a social welfare net and any kind of help for the elderly, not to mention housing, they can afford.

It's no surprise when they show up at your door with your Chipotle. But I, you know, I wish you guys luck over there. And it's, well, I guess it's the, it's almost like we have an A B test of politicians saying explicitly that it's happening versus politicians couching it in nicer terms, which is, it seems to make little difference. Um, but any case, I'd like to move on now to our core, our core discussion, which is of course about the Southern California strike wave and the two example cases, of course, being the hotel workers union that is on strike

should discuss first, and then a little bit about the actors, the SAG after strike, and parallels and commonalities between the two of them. But before we get into this or each topic in turn, I have a question that, I don't know if it's a stupid question or if it doesn't have an answer, but well, a union membership is at a low. Union popularity is at a historic high.

Union activity seems to be experiencing either a significant uptick or at least a significant uptick in coverage. Is Southern California some kind of an epicenter of it? Because there seems to be all the time new strikes being reported there. So Alex, can you talk a little bit about how we got to where we are in terms of this? Yes, I mean, those questions taken together are like an entire book, but I will try to keep it really brief.

So why is union membership low while popularity is high? My answer for what we've seen in the US over the past couple of years is one, there was already this immense inequality, right? And there was this kind of reintroduction of class politics through the Bernie Sanders campaign, which is not something young people have ever heard before, like that there are classes, and you are the working class,

and your boss is profiting off of you, and that could change if you were to organize with your coworkers. And a lot of young people who then we now see organizing unions are going on strikes, that was sort of their, what they kind of take off point for involvement in the labor movement.

And then you get the pandemic. It sounds trite or too simple, but people really do say it kind of changed their understanding of their place within the class hierarchy. Their boss didn't care when they lived or died or risked their health of their family. Me and all the boss was sitting in an air condition, either work from home office in the Hamptons

or otherwise not at risk. And so that was sort of a confluence of things that led people to say, take risks that they wouldn't previously have taken as far as organizing a union or otherwise kind of going on the offensive. Why membership is still low is, you know, in short, there's been a massive one-sided class war in this country for 40 years. I mean, it's been going on longer than that, but there's not really been a labor movements that's strong enough to fight back. So, you know, it's been declining for decades

and there are immense legal obstacles and practical obstacles to successfully organizing a union. You know, it's really remarkable just to give an example like, when you wanna organize a union at your workplace, right? Your boss has unlimited access to you and your co-workers throughout that process. He can constantly call you in

and as long as he doesn't explicitly threaten retaliation, he can tell you why the union is bad, right? Why it's a bad idea. The union, on the other hand, has no legal access to anyone in the workplace. They can't enter the property. You know, if they start going to people's homes, the boss might start describing that as harassment

and kind of whip people up. So there's just immense obstacles. So that's my answer. Is that unfortunately people supporting unions doesn't meaningfully translate into them joining unions or otherwise organizing them? Because there's just a lot of legal obstacles in the way. That's obviously I'm glad that people support them,

but it's for those reasons that I kind of laid out at the beginning. As far as the Southern California, kind of many strike way of going on, I think honestly, some of this is just that the SAG after a NWGA strikes, the actors and writers are predominantly Hollywood based. But actually, it's really more widespread

of a kind of uptick and activity than just Southern California. For instance, like the UPS workers in this country of whom there are about 340,000 who are teamsters, they came very close to a strike at the end of July. And that would have been nationwide, right? That would have been big cities in small towns, it would have been distributed geographically. And there's quite likely going to be a strike by auto workers come September, 150,000 of them. And that will obviously be much more midwestern.

So I think actually you just happen to catch a moment where it's very Southern California. And then, but that said, the other thing I would say here is we'll go into the unite here, the hotel workers strike, but unite here is like a really kind of unique union, particularly kind of a fighting aggressive union. And so they are very well organized in Southern California with the hotel workers. And so that's why we're seeing it there.

Yeah, well, and also, by the way, you mentioned the, you mentioned the UPS contract. I thought it was very funny to see tech guys like Jason Kolkhan as be like, oh, yeah, By the way, you mentioned the UPS contract. I thought it was very funny to see tech guys like Jason Culconis be like, oh yeah, well, you're there all making 170 K a year with benefits. But this is, now we're just gonna automate the jobs with AI. And it's like, hey, good luck.

But B, it is very curious that any time wages go up or down, someone like Culconis's answer is, that means there's gotta be AI. Yeah, because they previously, you know up or down, someone like Calcona's answer is, that means there's got to be AI. Yeah, because they previously, you know, before this, they would have been very down on AI. But speaking of the tech angle, right, the thing that I think made me relatively interested in the Unite Hear Strike was the role of a company called InstaWork, which says of itself, the future of hourly work has arrived.

At InstaWork, our mission is to create economic opportunities for local businesses and hourly workers around the globe. We believe everyone deserves a chance to thrive in their careers and we're here to empower our users to make that happen. Together, we can redefine the future of hourly work and create a world where everyone has a chance to thrive.

Alex, tell me a little bit about InstaWork and how it plays into the Unite here activity. Yeah, people are not thriving. InstaWork comes into this strike because of this, I wrote a story for Jack Abin about one particular worker named Thomas Bradley. He was living out of his car. He'd been trying to break into the Southern California hospitality industry for decades. Four reasons that are very complex.

Black workers have basically been entirely excluded from hotel work. And predominantly, it's Latino workers in those jobs. Thomas is black. He went onto his phone and he signed up for InstaWork, which is like a staffing gig economy app, right? Like you can go on there. I was looking at the interface before we recorded, and you know, it's, it looks like any other

kind of social media site you pick what kind of jobs you're interested in. They're in like cute bubbles that look like you're filling out a dating app profile. And then you have to have recommendations to get the good jobs. So there's really quite a few barriers or hurdles to get over. But in the end, you can say, I want a bar 10. It'll list the bartending shifts that are open in your area for the next week or two and you sign up. So it's just a Uber but for jobs.

And so when you first scale on the top the dummy app, you've got to do like XP grinding to get to the level that you're allowed to like bartend or whatever, you've got to spend like a whole day just like sucking Dixels on me and then it's like, okay, now you can buy that. What happens is you start as

you start busing and then if you XP grind enough, you could just be CEO. So sorry, Alex. Yeah, so Thomas picked up. He saw that this hotel had shifts for him that were open. The Laguna cliffs, Marriott, Resort and Spa in Orange County, California. And so he signed up for a shift. He shows up for the shift. This is early July. And he sees there's a picket line outside of the hotel. and there's actually an active strike It's the United here local 11 workers who have started engaging in rolling picket lines

Which means you know they might strike one hotel one day and then another the next it's to keep the hotels from knowing Who's going to be struck when without them having to maintain a picket line, you know indefinitely? Cool. Yeah, I mean this is unite here very kind of like a Rillow Warfare type tactics. And so Thomas naturally is like, well, if there's a strike, then that makes me a strike breaker, which of course, InstaWork had not mentioned when they were listing the shift.

And Thomas refused across the picket line. He joined the strike. He had their great photos of him holding a strike sign. And of course, InstaWork automatically listed him as a no-show for the shift. And it then canceled the other shifts he had on his schedule for that week. And very soon, I don't know the exact timeline here,

but it had suspended his account. Now, the problem is that it is a violation of labor law to retaliate against a worker for exercising their right to engage in legally-concerted protected activity like going on strike. And so the union has now filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. But it was really interesting when I was writing about this. I looked at some screenshots of Thomas Bradley's messages to other people on the InstaWork, their group DMs for InstaWorkers because they're a secondary market of shifts where workers sign up for shifts, not actually knowing if they can make those shifts because they just want to secure their spot, and then they realize they can't

work them, and they start trading with each other. So it's this really kind of like, it's a genuinely secondary market, and so that's why they're all in contact. And the workers are saying, we understand that we're being used as strikebreakers, but we also understand that we're automatically going to be penalized just like Thomas was if we refuse to cross-pick it lines. So this is very much automated strike breaking. And you know, you talk to the hotel workers

who are actually in the union, and they're like, who are all these people? Just random people are showing up instantly, even though we didn't give the hotel warning about this strike, and that's what in store workWork and other apps like them basically are accomplishing here. I have actually one question, which is, well, I have many questions, but one of them is, who is the action actually filed against? It's not like you're an employee of InstaWork, right?

Right. You're filling out a W2 for the, InstaWork is the platform or mediator, right? And so you are being employed, well, tech not as a worker, not as an actual employee by the hotel, but you're a contractor to the hotel. And so InstaWork, though, by facilitating this, is still automatically kind of, it is, it is an automatic violator of the NLRB.

And so as far as who the complaint was filed against, I have this down here somewhere. There are a few people that it was directed to. One was the hotel itself, and then the ownership of the hotel, which is actually associated with the University of California. And then I think also InstaWork is named in the complaint, because it is, again, their business model,

that is facilitating these violations of the NLRB. And again, with no notice to the workers who are signing up to be used as strike breakers. And if you want to know if InstaWork is going to make this more automatic, the CEO, Samir Megani, whose Twitter is full of just pictures of him smiling with InstaWork, quote unquote, pros, me like, we're all in it together, has said that he is planning on expanding the use of AI in its worker and job matching algorithm based on skill and reliability. So soon, it's not just

going to be automated strike breaking, it's going to be automated and unexplainable strike breaking. Right, so, Dina, on the one hand, you have to sort of like rolling picket. On the other, the chaos run. Essentially, yeah. Work as might show up, how many hands and eyes and things like that

those workers have? What do I worry about it? But, you know, we're constructing a gate, and that's gonna like allow labor to move freely through it. What's going to allow the uncles to get to the Pilates class? Yeah, we've got uncles, the likes of which you've never seen. And also the other, the whole sort of InstaWork unite here, debacle, brings up, of course, something

you alluded to earlier, Alex, about these sort of racial dynamics of the Southern California hotel industry, which is that when a strike needs to be broken, those hotels can find qualified black employees, even though they say, quote, in this I'm quoting from someone you quoted a housekeeper you spoke to, there are no African Americans at the hotel, there are no LGBTQ people we know of at the hotel hotel but the day that at-broad workers suddenly they could bring them in what's the if you if you're gay you are like able to clean a hotel but only an emergency it's

i mean yes to underline the point like thomas is he told me he had been trying to get a you know full-time job, a permanent job since he was 18 years old. Now he's 41 years old. And he went quite at length, you know, it's quoted in the piece briefly, but about his experiences and his confusion because he felt like he was being singled out. He didn't understand what he was doing wrong, why he kept not getting the permanent job offers.

And that is decades and he went to culinary school, you know, he went to the L.A. Trade Tech College and studied culinary arts. So the fact that they overnight now are bringing in, you know, as far as I could tell, a lot of these people who are showing up as strike breakers, it's majority black, right? And so the hotels have said in the past that they cannot find qualified black workers. And that's why they, you know, they're only Latino and white workers, especially at the luxury hotels like this one. And then, you know, Thomas said he couldn't believe it because he's just watching workers

with no experience at all, getting trained, you know, immediately because they're being used as strike breakers and they're totally capable of doing the job. So this is just like an immense frustration and extremely upsetting, you know, and has a very, very, very bad history in the United States as far as black workers being used as strike breakers and that being the only way they're even led into certain employment situations.

Essentially what we've done is we have automated one function of a robber bearer. That's right. Yes. But you buy a baron. There's also, there's an end of the story that also works as a guest. Oh, good job. You're fucking awesome.

We got chat G.P.T. to like do a racialized divide and conquer. Yeah. It's weird, huh? How you, how we apply all of these new technologies to old problems and they keep producing the same fucking answer. Crazy. It's almost as if they're sort of confined by some kind of invisible structure. Oh, no. Oh, well, probably nothing. Um, by the invisible old.

Yeah, there is also at the end of this story before we switch on to Sag After a, another sort of item that's worth discussing, which is that ultimately, Bradley goes on to find a union job at a hotel that accepted the contract from Unite, if you're right here, rather, and is now working to stop other Instawork pros from crossing those same picket lines. Yes. I got to say, I rarely do my stories have happy endings, but I was very surprised. I got on the phone with him on July 24, which was about a week or two after this or deal had been playing out for him. I actually very much, I think, annoyed the union staffer who was helping contact,

put us in contact by starting with asking how his day was and what he'd been up to. And he explained that he just had finished orientation. And so the big surprise reveal that they'd gotten him hooked up with the job was destroyed by me in my very good small talk, asking how was your day. And so he had just finished his first his orientation shift at the West in Bonaventure Hotel in Switzerland in downtown LA, which is still to this moment the only hotel that has reached a tentative agreement with the United Year Local 11. The other hotels that are still being struck, there's something like 60 properties across Southern California.

And I won't go into all of it, but just to be clear, like the workers' key demands are about raises because the cost of housing has become so completely impossible for them to afford in Southern California. So they want the big raises and they want the hotels to kind of sign on to work with the workers and the union on policy solutions to the housing crisis. Naturally, the hotels are completely avoid. But so I just live with 10 of you in a big bed. But so Thomas is currently not going to want as far as I know employed as a bank wet runner at that hotel in downtown LA. Well, yeah, and I we will link both of the articles that we're discussing here in the description.

I do recommend checking out that article. I want to move on to the SAG Aftra strike, which you've also been covering around the same time. And I want to open with what the Executive Vice President Ben Whitehair told the crowd of actors and their supporters from stage. The entertainment industry is with you. Wall Street would love for us to think

that factory workers, delivery drivers, hotel workers, writers, and actors have nothing in common, but you all know that is not the case. And throughout your article, what becomes very clear is that it is specifically this combination of Wall Street and Silicon Valley that is attempting to, whether through platforms like InstaWork or some kind of a here-to-for-undescribed AI system to just digitize and keep reusing, I don't know, Michael Shannon forever. That they have the same goal. Only Michael Shannon. It's all it's like fucking being John Malkovich, but it's all Michael Shannon and specifically boardwalk Empire Michael Shannon. It's not on my mind. I don't know why he was on my mind. I don't know why he was on my mind. I'm curious, it's fucking weird,

everyone on the Michael Shannon. Anyway, what were, so I think the question right we have, and this is, we've talked about the WGA strikes before with one of the striking writers, but I think Alex just says, you've been reporting on this as from the labor beat. What are the studios, the AMP TPP experiencing?

What did they want to do? Why are they sort of crying, other than the fact that they're lying, but what's their logic for crying poverty? And also, why are these people not exactly the best bed fellows? A lot of questions for you. Why are they crying poverty?

I mean, this is what every employer does in a contract negotiation situation, right? They plot. What are they pretending is the problem? Yes. I mean, this is what every employer does in a contract negotiation situation, right? They, they, what are they pretending is the problem? Yes. So, I mean, so the one thing you can say is that they are correct that the streaming model probably is not sustainable. So they're saying, look at how bad the thing, look at how bad these things we made are.

You can't possibly expect us to be making any money off of this. And that is pretty much the argument. I spoke to a bunch of people on the picket lines who are like, we don't have to pay, they're the business guys. Why are we paying for how shitty their product is? And of course, there is still money there. The revenue is there. And certainly, it's not facetious to point to the CEO's salaries, which are 25, 50 million David Zoslov, the Warner Brothers CEO, two years ago is almost 250 million. But what they're pointing to as this more interesting or underlying conflict leading to this strike by both the actors and writers is that Netflix set up a mirage, right?

So Netflix with its head start on the other streamers, you know, sort of bought a bunch of back catalog, back library, licensed stuff from the other studios, put them on their website. And they said, you know, just for $10 a month, you can cancel your cable, you can watch infinite shows forever, and it's going to be great, and we won't have any ads. And every other studio started trying to copy them only to then realize, you know, it's like they ran out past the cliff in a cartoon, and then they realized that Netflix also had no more land under it, and now they're all falling down, right? And they just didn't realize that there was no more, you know, sort of, there was no more

runway for them. Netflix obviously is now instituting ads and cancelling, not letting you use your like ex-boyfriends, Netflix password anymore and things like that. And so there is a real question of what happens when they went all in on this business model that was unsustainable. But that said, you know, I think the workers here are very right

that there's plenty of money to be had and they can just to try to respond to Wall Street investment pressure by turning around and squeezing labor is just not realistic, especially in an industry where these workers are so well organized in their unions. And so in many ways, right, it's the same, the same kinds of story

where Silicon Valley builds Netflix. Wall Street then looks at Netflix and tries to find the next Netflix. Turns Hollywood into Silicon Valley. Everyone forgets how to make movies. Then all of a sudden, we turn the gravity up on the economy and then we, everyone realizes all at once that 11 billion people didn't watch

Spencer Confidential and that we actually are going to. I want to live a million times. I'm sorry. It was a good movie. So you quote Mike Sherr, a striking writer who says, no one's running the town. Used to be able to say who are the five people that run Hollywood? Everyone could reel off those names, but now nobody is running Hollywood. So when we say that,

is that based on this sort of building on that idea of everyone kind of followed the leader who turned out to be as blind as them? Yeah, that's part of it. And the other thing Mike was getting at here is that, you know, the quote before that is he, I guess to give some context here. Mike sure is the creator of both the good place, Parks and Rec.

He was a writer on every season of the office. He's like the most successful television writer, you know, in America, more or less. And so this guy, you know, has this, he's been in the WGA for decades. He's kind of seen this transformation. And he's extremely upset, right? He's joined the Negotiating Committee for this round of contract negotiations. I saw him at the UPS rally that we were talking about

that you opened with that quote from Ben Whitehair. And so these workers are really across divides getting to know each other well. But the thing Mike said to me before that quote was, you know, he said there used to be people running these companies who thought of themselves as stewards of the industry. You know, I sat, I'm sitting in a chair that Jack Warner sat in. I have a responsibility to this history. And he says, now these guys are tech bros from Cupertino. They're not people that care about Hollywood, right? And so he's sort of saying that you'll hear this

complaint. And, you know, every other industry, I'm sure you guys have talked about Hollywood, right? And so he's sort of saying that you'll hear this complaint and every other industry, I'm sure you guys have talked about this, that no longer is the kind of specifics of art or product or type of work being considered. But instead, there's sort of outside tech guys, Silicon Valley, coming in and squeezing this company or this industry, like it's any other kind of thing that needs to be fixed. Get rid of the inefficiencies, inefficiencies, suck out money and then move on.

And so no one's in control. Yeah, efficiencies like making a good movie. Exactly. You can't be doing that. It's a waste of money. Days of the big podcast, barons are over. So guys, 11 billion people watch, spends the confidential.

People don't want good movies. They want movies where Mark Wahlberg fights Asimov. I got to tell you, I mean, the best example of this that I can think of is there was some profile of David Zaslov, that CEO for Warner's a few years ago. And I forget if he's, they're on his yacht or someone else's yacht and he's with bunch of celebrities, I think Oprah is there and whatever, his usual, his little inner circle crew. And they put on an episode of I Think Fleabag and there's a sexy.

Oh, wow. And David Zaslov pauses the show. I'm on a yacht. And he's saying, we shouldn't watch this. We can't watch this. You know, it's so disturbing and upsetting. And oh, he's a tumbler like curating. They basically end up holding a vote about whether to watch it or not.

I really should look up which article this was. So I get the details right. Well, whoa, it's two adults having sex gross. It's a guy who not only doesn't care about the industry, but seems to actively hate television and film. And that's the guy in charge. Well, it makes sense, right, when you're in the business. Now, not to glorify, obviously, the old studio system, right?

It's one of these things of these things getting progressively worse. They were bad before, but now they're bad without even having the good byproduct of movies. It's like, if you're in the business of making enchantment, and if you're in the tech industry, you're in the business of disenchanting everything, that's how you end up with the 90th Marvel TV series that three people watch and somehow cost a apocalypse now amount of money to produce. I would hate for people to come out of this thinking that the firm stance, the passing line of trash future is that it's good when a guy in Judpas has like 3,000 horses killed in order to make one scene that then gets cut.

It's not that the old ways were good, right? As you say, it's just that they were involved in the thing. Yeah, at the old ways were at least ways. Yeah, I mean, I speak to, I quote in that article, another WGA member, this woman, Rachel Alter, who was in her 20s, I can't remember exactly, exactly, haul old. She'd worked on a bunch of shows, stars as heels, Netflix as the society and Marvel Studios Loki. And she had worked in these mini rooms that are a big issue at the bargaining table as well, where

instead of having a traditional writer's room where there's like six writers, eight writers on a stable contract for the extent of the season. Now it's maybe one showrunner tasked with holding the whole thing together helped by a few younger guys from Instawork. Exactly, exactly. The one man that makes Ted Lasso. I'm very overwhelmed. I'm tensed.

I'm going to call him right after the dark. Sorry, no. Yeah. He meets a man on a bus and he's nice to him in a folksy southern way. I Don't go time to come up with what Ted Lasso would do. I've employed 14 guys in Vietnam They're trying to decide what Ted Lasso don't speak English. I'm running it back and forth through Google translate Ted Lasso sounds like he's come from a different dimension. I friends like Ted Lasso sounds like he's come from a different dimension.

I mean, yes, basically, yes, what Milo was saying though, that there are now like five people who are successful and their way overworked. And then there's a bunch of people who like barely are, you know, are allowed anywhere near a studio, but technically are, you know, employed in the film industry. But I just, I brought up Rachel Alter just to say that she described the work she does as basically, she says, it's like a machine assembly line. And she said, art suffers, right, when you're overworked and taxed this way. And I often find myself saying as someone who hates most television, that comes out these days, like if you hate it and you hate the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's only going to get worse if these people lose their strike because they're trying to, I mean, at risk of sounding

romantic, like they aren't attempting to assert the value of human creativity and art against an algorithm, right? And they've been losing for a while and we've seen the result, which is just the most garbage fucking films in television. It doesn't make any sense. What is his name? Lasso. He's not a fucking cowboy. He's a football coach in England, but he's a...

Yeah, he doesn't try explaining this to people in Indonesia. They're already pissed off about their GDP. Fliped up with their trade balance. But this is something actually that we've talked to it before as well, which is, when whenever we talk about striking railroad workers in the UK, for example, or striking teachers, what you see time and again is that they're striking to preserve the, for many reasons, one of those reasons is to protect the quality of the thing they're doing. The striking railway workers are trying to make sure that there's someone there in the

train station so that they can be there in the train station getting paid and so that if you fall down, you don't just have to wait to die. Actually, care about the thing because the labor tends to like what it creates for the most part. Yeah. And you know, one thing I want to get in before we sort of wrap up here as well is what makes the SAG after a proposal kind of distinct from the WGA proposal, or sorry, the SAG after sort of grievances, different from the WGA grievances, are that for example, it's not just they want to use, the studios want to use AI to generate scripts, but they want to be able to get, pay someone for a day to scan them completely, and that companies can then own that scan and use it forever, thereby making any background actor

or up to minor character, uncastable forever, but also it means that we're just going to have the same small number of characters, of characters walking in and out of stream. And by forever, we mean one, Michael Shannon, do not go into the scanning room. Please, God, we cannot, we can't replace it. They're telling me to use Michael Shannon. And it's higher football team cannot be composed of Michael Shannon. You got this American geek. He's talked to 14 people. They're all Michael Shannon. He got a bus. Everyone on there was my, the Indonesians are very confused and rightly so. They can't pay free power 15 hour. They can't understand this. So also I do like the idea that like some fans of the Ted Lasso team have opinions about which

Michael Shannon is better in defense and which is better as a striker. Yeah, the box to box Shannon, you know. Now that's the keeper Shannon. But this is one of the, this is one of the issues right where they're trying to just take and mass produce people in identifiable ways, whereas the WGA issue was, they want, the studios want to take writing and recombine it in ways that are unattributable, the actors, they want to just take someone and be able to use them sort of forever. That strikes me as a kind of, it's a two sides of the same coin essentially. It's the same attributability versus no attributability.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like the AI is definitely a far more active present threat for the actors and performers and certainly voice actors than it is for the writers. The writers are sort of just being sort of forward thinking about the threat being posed because they're the ones that traditionally have always done this. The last writer strike was about getting new media, i.e. streaming covered under WGA jurisdiction because even though at the time it was basically not used whatsoever, the writers were like, this is going to be, you know, this technological innovation is going to be the future of the industry. And so likewise, they're sort of trying to get it in writing now before AI becomes a threat to them.

Whereas the actors and the voice actors and the background actors and the stunt performers all very actively have seen that it can be used, that they're, you know, they're sort of the most well-known examples like the Daging in the Irishman versus what the future looks like, which is you scan a background performer, all of a sudden you don't need them anymore, which they're out of work forever. This is the majority of SAG's membership, right? It is not mostly Tom Cruise. It is mostly the person who you can't possibly name, but have seen in 25 different movies.

And I think when you think about the logic here, it's actually, it has way bigger implications, you don't need as many actors. All of a sudden you don't need costume designers, and you don't need art production. You don't need hair and makeup because you're not using real people. And so really all of a sudden with this, you know, if it goes in without regulation and without any kind of limitations and informed consent, all of a sudden you have basically wiped out what remains a mat like a gigantic industry in this country, you know, you're hitting all of these unions. And so there's a reason that they also are

kind of connected here. Is there all facing this threat? And fundamentally, right, this goes back to what we talked about when we talked to the WGA strike as well, which is the fantasy of the tech executives who have been taken to sort of hell on these studios and their immediate totes is that they will be able to make movies by just thinking of what would be profitable and never having to interact with anyone else ever except a chatbot, essentially. We're gonna get, well, we're finally gonna get the NFT

ape film, but what's gonna happen and then sort of happen, but didn't, right? The world is crying out for it. Starring Michael Shannon. The world wants the ape universe, starring Michael Shannon. I mean, I was gonna ask like, there were one very quick question,

which sort of related to all of that, which is kind of not necessarily like the end game, but do the sort of like, do the tech guys in the situation feel like they have the upper hand to a degree that the impression that I sort of get is, obviously they don't give a shit about like any of the artistic quality.

And I feel like a lot of them like are much more open to sort of admitting that in these weird ways. They sort of say that, it's just kind of where we're trying to break down a liturism and so on. AI will empower people to do that. The reality seems to be that their calculation is, most people have to use these shitty systems anyway. They're predicting that

like as AI becomes more ubiquitous, or they feel like it's gonna become more ubiquitous. Like they're gonna win purely on the basis that like the world is sort of being built in their favor. And I wonder whether the strategy that the studios are kind of playing, especially at the pro AI studios are playing towards is one where they're making the same kind of calculation. And if so, will these kind of, like, how are these strike efforts

kind of addressing that broader structural problem if they are at all? Yeah, I mean, the, as I said, with the example of how the writer is kind of struck in advance to get new media and streaming under their jurisdiction last time. Both the actors and the writers this time are sort of looking and saying, yes, the world is being kind of built in the favor of introducing this new technology, right? They can't be lulled out about this technology. But if you get it in writing that, you know, for what SAG is asking for here, you know, there'd be informed consent that a performer, right now the studios are proposing,

or at least at their last before the negotiations broke off, they were proposing that a performer would sign saying they're okay with being scanned and having their likeness used in perpetuity for whatever reason they want, in exchange for half a day or a day's pay for that scan. But the studios were like, see they would have to agree, right? We're getting consent.

And of course, everyone in the union responded by saying, it's not really consent if this very struggling performer maybe is desperate for a job and realizes that if they don't sign, then the studios will just hire someone, a more desperate actor who will sign that. I think they're really just trying to build a wall out, which is often what unions do is like, it's not that they're anti-technology,

but rather they understand that technology, if it is able to be deployed by an employer without any restrictions, we'll be used to save on labor. They're saying let's actually use it for maybe more socially useful and less harmful kind of ends. Those hippies. So I think that's as good a place as any to call this episode to a close. Alex, I want to thank you so much for coming and talking to us today.

It's been great. Oh yeah, always a pleasure. I'll see you all in the mezzanine, you know. I'll be, I'll be tricking though. The one yellow shot me and whatever other guests have a three or more. Yeah, I'm having a round of shots with all the Michael shannins. Yeah.

Yeah. No, you're having a round of shots with Patrick Wyman who is still there. He can't have him to leave. He won't do it. We've scanned him. I think he's been sleeping there. It's like really, I, hmm.

All right, all right, Garrett Dennis, you can go anywhere you want, but you can't stay here. Anyway, and also to remind all of you that if you are in Edinburgh and you want to see a show around lunchtime, Milo Edwards is performing sentimental his comedy show. Yeah, tomorrow I'll be being played by Michael Shannon. So, Dave Paul Paul and, and, and of course, if you want more of this podcast, there's a second episode every week on the Patreon for $5 and then further content at the $10 tier.

We don't have any live shows coming up, so go with God, I suppose. We'll tell you when we do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right. Hey, shorter plugs than usual. So once again, thank you, Alex. Thank you, door listeners. And we will see all of you on the bonus episode in just a couple of short days. Bye, everyone. Bye. you