all right. well, good evening, everyone.

my name is emile doak. i'm the executiv watch and listen tuesday morning beginning at 930 eastern on c-span three on the free c-span nowng apple or online at c-span .orgfo. a healthy democracy does not just look like this. it looks like this. where americans can see democracy at work. citizens are truly informed. our republic arrives. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word the from the nation's capital to wherever you are. the opinion that matters the most is your own. this is what democracy looks like. >> good evening, everyone. i am the executive director of the american conservative.

i am pleased to welcome all of you both here in washington and watching us on c-span2 tonight's book launch event for the latest much discussed book tierney inc. how private power ship crushed american liberty and what to do about it. organized by the community foundation. founded last year the bcf seeks to advance appreciation for roman law, philosophy and religion as a triple foundation of western civilization. it does this by promoting scholarship and students and young professionals by offering conferences like tonight's event this event is also sponsored by my organization the american conservative. it exists to advance a mainstreet vision for conservatism. we pursue our mission primarily through our print magazine and online journalism as well as select conferences and events like the one you are attending here tonight. we are founded here in 2002 only

20 years ago now to reunite conversations we felt they had neglected for far too long. our magazine was a rare voice against the iraq war in the early days of that conflict and a commitment to a foreign policy of realism restraint continues to animate our publication today our mission was broader than that one issue. we want to return considerations of faith and family. to the center of our political discourse. we felt that they were too often simply played and then ignored when policymaking. we wanted to recalibrate the conversation around political economy on the political right. we wanted to advance the interests of american workers against an increasingly globalized free trade regime that prioritize corporate profits overe the concerns of real workers in the real economy now if you read tierney inc. which i believe the washington post called anonymously sensible , which i guess is a complement. if you read it you have many

stories of these real workers attempting to navigate in order that is often stacked against them. theet dispensation for the pages for 21 years now. a healthy skepticism in all forms and a preference for mainstreet over wall street. we also welcome honest disagreement and debates about the best way to advance those interests. i hope we will be able to get into some of these discussions sparked by the provocative prescriptions and tierney inc. here tonight. we have a great lineup of speakers for you to do just that before we start i want to introduce tonight speakers before handing over to the author the book that brings us here tonight. first the founder and editor. a contributing editor to our publication and a writer to the new statesman.

previously he spent nearly a decade at news corporation as an editor and columnist for the wall street journal in new york and london. as the op-ed editor of the new york post. his latest book which we are here to discuss is of course tierney inc. a private power across american liberty and what to do about it just out. if you have not picked up a copy yet, please do. next marco rubio is a senior u.s. senator from florida and the author most recently of decades of decadence, however spoiled elites blue america's inheritance of liberty, security and prosperity which was published earlier this year. director of research at the american economic liberties project and author of goliath 100 year war between monopoly power and democracy published by simon & schuster. serving as a policy advisor to the senate budget committee and writes the big newsletter monopoly. a labor unionist in baltimore in a contributored to compact magazine and last but certainly not least my colleague bradley devlin who was a staff reporter

doing excellent work for us. if you have read bradley's work you may think that he is older than his years. he is actually very young. no real memories of that terrible day 21 years ago, 22 years ago just yesterday. a perspective of conservatives that have come to age. so, just a quick couple of notes here on how tonight's events will proceed. starting us off in just a few minutes here with some opening remarks. another 10-15 minutes. i will invite the full panel our schedules veryy tightly packed. if we do have time we will take one to two questions from the audience at the end. either way we will post promptly so folks can move on to their own dinner plans. i will note to remain in your seats after the panel to allow

the speakers to leave first. with that please join me in welcoming. [applause] >> thank you all for being here. i am thankful to the conservative for sponsoring this gathering. thanks to the steadfast support for our work and thanks to the other analysts. senator rubio who has shown genuine and rare leadership in pushing his party, my party to political dogmas and who has been kind enough to take this book. i would like to pan out to a global picture. four yearsc. now defenders of freedom have been warning of a

democratic recession beginning in the 1970s and then especially after the collapse of the soviet union dozens of societies built on coercion gave way to one on the consent. many regions backsliding the authoritarianism and ideological dictatorship. to see the severity of freedoms global funk the news with the horizon opened up for market reforms have not been shuttered. it was in this. a massive slaughterhouse and complex had had enough. the state owned firm's objectives workers to a digital -- tracking their every move,

communist party bosses make no bones about the purpose of this all present surveillance. it is to stoke a cultural fear, reminding workers that the government is continually monitoring them and failure to meet quotas or as they put it wasting the people's time results in docked pay. at the outset of the pandemic, chinese authorities identified slaughterhouses as essential enterprises. ordering employees to put in ever longer shifts with scant regard for the risk of viral contagion at a moment when covid and its mitigation were understood. the cavalier attitude prompted our protagonist to act. one day in april he led a walk out of his colleagues. their demand was reasonable. they called simply for the complex to be temporarily closed and was stringently sanitized. ....to lapses.

and it wasn't a chinese slaughterhouse that terminated a worker for leading a walkout at the height of the pandemic over. the employer's careless attitude toward the novel coronavirus. no, that would be the u.s. conglomerate amazon, founded by jeff bezos, the real john ming is named christian smalls, an his name is christian smalls a worker at amazon gfk warehouse facility on staten island. at the height of pandemic he became alarmed as his colleagues became sick. the human resources department dismissed those concerns telling another worker to keep her illness on the download according to "the new york times." then he let his walkout after a which amazon fired him. amazon's lawyer describes smalls who is african-american as quote not smart articulate according to internal memos.

this from the same company that if you months later would elbow its way toow the forefront of corporate america's lives matter activism in the wake of george floyd's murder in minneapolis. since then smalls has fought to organize the 8000 workers with ferocious antiunion activity crew typical of the firm including confiscating prounion pamphlets left in the break room and surveilling where workers congregating on the sidewalk according to the times. we are used to thinking of coercion is something that happens over there by a tyrannical suit systems of lack of checks and balances like their own. a course those regimes are as far as their state systems go far more coercive than ours. pumi stop thinking about things in geographic terms and focus instead on who is meeting out that coercion we reach an unsettling new understanding.

coercion is all too common supposedly non-course of societies like ours, provided we pay attention to private power and admit the possibility of privateer -- private tyranny. our reigning economic ideology tells us in theha t private-secr no one can force us to do anything recompetition ensures we are always free to sign a better deal elsewhere. the arch laissez-faire theorist for examples pale in competition is the only method bye bye which our two babies can be adjusted to each other without coercive authority." milton friedman likewise insisted the central feature of market society is that prevents one person from interfering with another in respect to most of its activities end quote. but this is utopian thinking. i'm some in some ways is idealistic and dangerous as other modern utopia it came to legitimate real word -- real

word protection. marketd utopianism shot through with private coercion.oe coercion that we can't contest at the ballot box for the court systemre for other democratic means it's give-and-take precisely because it's labeled private. take the fact that a third of the 25 million americans employed in food service and retail received less than a upcomingice of the schedules according to the university of california sociologistst daniel snyder and kristin hartnett. it ships the downsides associated low demand onto employees. in addition to wage prepared you because you can never be sure to have enough wages and financial stability of this result of that weaker -- workers treated this way before settling mentally as a result of their children are more likely to show signs of anxiety and act out in

misbehavior doesn't take a rocket scientist to connect the dots the predictable results of their parents -- to spend regular time with them. then there is the model employment agreements. when you sign on the dotted line for a jobjo you agree to its tol surveillance of traditional life including the confiscation of yourto personal devices the usef key logger software to monitor your communications in the recording of her voice and personal likeness for commercial licensing is no longer just about using your picture in a company brochure or commercial arbitration a process originally intended for resolving disputes between merchants a relatively cool equal bargaining power and listening to supreme court conserves practically rewriting the arbitration act the share of nonunion firm subjected workers did arbitrary agreements have exploded.

54% in 22017 up from 2% in 1992. the employees privatized quartz is just 21% which is 59% as often as in federal court in only 30% as often in state courts. corporations meanwhile enjoy what scholars call repeat player advantage the more often the firm appears before private arbitrator the less likely its employees are to prevail. arbitration moreover frequently bargains from joining forces to vindicate rights they would otherwise enjoy under statutoryl law. when it would be manifestly and just not to mention. in one notorious case a low-level employee of the accounting giant ernst & young would have had to show up at $200,000 a ticket not disputed by ernst & young and expenses to cover roughly $4000 for wage

underpayments. just as neil gorsuch riding for a high court majority upheld that outcome on the grounds that the employee had freely contracted to arbitrate. in that ernst & young presented the arbitration clause long after a his employee steven morris had been hired and yet the consent of the condition of preconceived employment in other words he was told if you show up to work the next daygo going forward your disputes for arbitration and according to a certain kind of classical economic theory it's popular among the judiciary's including with real life at that point he had the ability to renegotiate his agreement for press for better terms but in reality as most of us know what you have to do is show up to work the next day because you have to pay a mortgage and pay for all the care and childcare and so on. things don't have to be this

way. a better model would admit that coercion is inevitable and all human affairs not just an market activities.at he would recognize the unchecked private coercion makes a mockery of her democratic ideals and it would insist that such coercion be ameliorated by more robust political give-and-take between the asset rich view and the asset less money. this is the promise of what i call political exchange capitalism. it was the philosophy that underpins the new deal generating the mass prosperity that defined the three decades after a world war ii. crucially it forms a bipartisan consensus winning the allegiance not just of progressives that earlier generation conservatives from eisenhower to nixon. these men weren't starry-eyed socialists. they were hard-nosed realists whose experience was alerted to the dangers of unchecked market power. political estate capitalism

describes the world as it really is not the preindustrial arcadia of yeoman farmers in independent partisans the premise for much market you utopian but a machine economy characterized by few colossal firms dominating most industries. its chief aspect as economist john kenneth galbraith tells us is the absence of real price competition and that's the one thinged supposedly useful under practical economic theory to prevent private coercion. that pattern has emerged by the late teen -- 19th century. big tip type rules over at markets for example would bring embarrassment to the monocle is a big gilded age tycoons. galbraith wrote that their only handful of terms in a typical industry each follows that privately exercised economic power is less the exception than the rule. instead of waving competition

against coercion political exchange capitalism strengthens the hands of those subjugatedjuy privatepe power especially in te labor markets. as thus the new dealers resolved to make it easier for workers to mount what galbraith called counterveiling power after a decades in whichng government hd hindered them from doing so sometimes through violence. countervailing powers similar to competition only hear the counterpressure including is not on the same side of a given market not between producers or between employees and so i bet the other side of the market. not with competitors. suppliers is galbraith explains. in this way private economic power is held in check by the countervailing power of those who are subjugated to it. the first begets the second. in competition it requires action something you canmo laissez-faire type submit so in labor markets promoting countervailing power requires

backing to offset the asymmetry that is otherwise created by employees and the few employers. otherwise most employees rationally choose to put up with the bully boss or suffer precarious hours of low wages are rather than take the risk associated with collective action. this was the logic between the 1935 national labor relations act which sought to encourage collective bargaining and a 1938 fair labor standards act which created federal minimum wage and overtime protection. the result, union membership peaked in 1945 to 33%, up from 2.7% at the turn of the 20th century and during the 50s and 60s. under new deal conditions the asset list went along to survive or pitched in tents battles against buses and sometimes lithreaten social stability. posted deal they could channel

their demand to recognize talington mass political parties. in a way this model made explicit what ordinary people are to do the economic life involves coercion put it also gave them a miniature power to negotiate things which they've been often subjective. foreign exchange capitalism foremost requires boosting the share of the labor force along with labor organizations but they that the gear has sunk 6% in the private economy on the long decline that began as you know in the 1970s. apologists for the current state of affairs claims this ison because unions have lost their luster's among employees or because automation and globalization shifted manufacturing out at the united states. if organizer labor is belied by recent polling showing that units are more popular now than they have been in the past century we need the dire's desire to be representative has increased among nonunion workers

since the 1970s. one m.i.t. study finding nearly half of nonunion labor force would go to join the union if given a choice meaning roughly 58 million americans are currently underrepresented. but what about the robots in china? that too was overstated. as labour congress lawrence michelle and a 2020 study manufacturing unit coverage for share of workers who are either union members are otherwise covered by collective bargaining agreements fell by 74% from 197a to 2019. the nonmanufacturing coverage fell by a comparable 60% over the same period. you can perhaps explain the manufacturing drop by pointing to rowboats in china but you struggle to explain the comparable drop in nonmanufacturing sectors. statistical analysis shows overall union coverage only

marginally changes in transposing today's industrial sized conditions in 1979 seccombe or put another way saving manufacturing would have been good for unions. as american workers want to unionize the loss of manufacturing isn't the main obstacle than what w counts for labor's current doldrums? the answer is that private coercion characterizes other dimensions of our economy all made possible by political choices and if they are made by possible political choices they could be reversed. in 90 years since the passage of the wagner act lawmakers and often gop dominated labor boards have nullified large chunks of the original law from creating a free-speech right for employees to campaign against the two sides who enjoy symmetrical power to begin with to effectivelybo abolishing card checks and barring representative some workers

themselves from -- big business and political media allies undermine the purpose of the wagner act to encourage union organizing and collective bargaining. despitee these obstacles affirmative unit action is sweeping the labor market. starbucks baristas flight attendants kellogg's and john deere factory hands reward hands dockworkers screenwriters actors and many other groups have organized to unionize were to win better contracts under bargaining agreements. in a book 2022, two years after a christian smalls -- voted to have his labor union represent them in collective bargaining. america finally isn't china. her political tradition cherishes human dignity than popular counterpressure against elite power. while the united states has always been a market society the

country if given rise to honorable traditions that have sought tom bring the market system under humane democratic-controlled per from the jacksonians to aggressive farmers to populist from teddy roosevelt to franklin roosevelt anti-nixon n and eisenhower thee traditions played a decisive role in forging the first version of political exchange capitalism in the previous century and once more it's up to american workers to drag our leaders into a new consensus on their vigilance, our vigilance depends on a broadly shared prosperity and checks against private tyranny withoutee which there can be no land of the free. they give her much and i'm delighted to welcome senator rubio. [applause] [applause]

>> thank you. i apologize. i will tell you what i was doing. i was tech screaming at my son for getting a parking ticket at school in gainesville florida and in case you are watching from florida. anyway first of all thanks for writing this and for your work. maybe i'll just come from my perspective. iwa was on a videoconference wih state legislators from georgia and asked about tech companies and what theyd could do and it struck me and i said to them what i've said two other people and i think this is i true in al countries there is generally one power company and if the utility to operatee allowed in basically a monopoly space. they are guaranteed a profit that their profits are limited and affordable way it works as you go to the public service commission and said this is how

much it cost to generate power and this is how much you charge people to make my statuary corrects profit. they are a monopoly so imagine if the electric company decides one day i'm not going to provide electricity for people who believe this for are people in this line of workof are people n this line of business. while i'm being dramatic maybe i shouldn't speak about because someone will get the rightut ida of what electric companies and utility should be doing to people. we really aren't that far off it inin many states. it strikes me tomorrow there will be this artificial intelligence meeting in the senate where apparently many like mark zuckerberg are supposed to be there int elon musk as well and we may have a fight as well in coordinating this. it struck me if you think about it and nothing personal against them per se but i would argue in

a room with maybe up to 100 united states senators united states senators the two most powerful people in the room will not be members selected by the public but two important companies want a particular is meta. they control what is in our utilities in the 21st century. if amazon google apple meta and x all get together and maybe the first four or five get together and decide do you know what we are going to do? we are going to destroy -- could they not do that could could they not tonight just about anybody trade in the public square and destroy their business if they refuse to do services. this is an extraordinary amount of power and it can be used for what people presumed to be a noble business but can it can also be used under tremendous public pressure to target

political opponents and target those who they may not agree with. and it has been used to threaten. how many people out there today are not afraid to openly express their views on a topic or take a public position on either side of the debate and it seems to be disproportionate on one side of the debate because they are afraid of the impact that could have not just on a petition. economically. i think that's what you touch upon. we are not built to think of the private companies is holding the amount of power but that's how consolidated it has become. and where that sort of leads is an area that i've most of my time not so much touching on some of the things you've written about and talked about here today. primarily what is this a product of and it tracks pretty well with my life but i graduated high school in 1980 and it did

not become a good student until i started paying for it or should i say borrowing for it. then i started caring more about school. but i graduated in 1989 and from the university of florida 93 so did the world change between 89 and 93? to change quite a bit but i grew up in an era i recall growing up and do you remember the movie the day afterd a where the word was supposed to end in matthew broderick was that the pentagon and almost in the world united states versus the soviet union good versus evil reagan versus the and it all fell apart later like the berlin wall -- the berlin wall collapsed. i was in college in a minute wasn't the predominant thing to hop on line ate. the time. i was aware of her that i knew was a pretty big deal and i thought about that in the rest

of the road to tune we world to tune we emerge from that those two things. first of all a real level of a feeling that we won, free enterprise democracy had one in communism and marxism was defeated three the war was over the cold war and we would become a free enterprise economist and everyone would become an hateocracy. you may save yourself it was a noble endeavor that we meet precision on the assumption -- presumptions of the first is now somehow a global economy and global economic commerce would replace the nation. i know it was out there because i heard it and never have two countries over mcdonald's ever gone to war with the tether. what does it matter anymore these fact checkers say but i'm sure it was true because i heard

it. i imagine multiple people take credit for it to the point being that this idea that somehow commerce between nationstates between people would replace nations and no longer what it matter. you couldn't fight with each other and it would all be worked out that way. not only with the commerce replaced nationstates as a result but in fact we were nothing more at this point not citizens of the country are members of the community we were now either investors and our consumers in the global marketplace. the third assumption that was made as a result of this the national order should be the market outcome would always deliver them best.com which is 100% true. that would drive investment so

who cares if the factory in your town where the employers that's been the b anchor of your community for 30 years is doing what you used to be somewhere else not just because of automation. lower prices and to pay a lot less for whatever does they it is they made there even though it's made halfway around the world to here's the great news about her job is coming that will replace the job and pay you more. you'll be happy that was another assumption that was made. we all know that's not how it works. what we have learned and i say this to you guys by the way is someone basically raised and grew up in the ranks of the fred enterprise democracy of the republican party. one of the reasons why is because the people on the other side of the debate are either socialist or communist or a combination thereof.

so i'm the opposite of whatever that is. so these assumptions guided publicui policy and in some ways built a consensus so that's what you get get to 2001 and slight sure let's let china joined the world trade organization. don't worry they will steal jobs from us and they will get richer when they get rich they will become just like us and that's a pretty gamble but that was the notion. why were these things run click the assumptions were wrong for a couple of reasons. the nation-state will always matter because they are essential. human nature will never change. 5500 years of recorded history teaches us this. we change where they live in the way we dress and we change the way we speak in all kinds of things. human nature will never change one of the core elements is the wish to belong. when you put people together

they want to band together and join each other. one of those things in the modern era and the modern era the last three or 400 years is belonging matters. the idea that we had that would no longer matter as citizens of the world wouldn't matter anymore, that was a fantasy for people that can afford to adopt it and have passports and travel all over the world. for most people in america that was never true. it was natural for the leaders of china and russia and other countries to say we are going to stay with the nation-state thank you very much. we will focus on the nation-state that the other error was made about the childhood mistake that was made with the belief that jobs were simply at the place that provides you a paycheck and jobs are lot more than just about a paycheck. the paycheck matters for the job is not just a job. their jobs and then there reliable jobs.

their jobs and their jobs you can raise a family on. our economic numbers don't match that. i always sort of think to myself every time i hear a report 100,000 new jobs what they don't tell you is what kind ofs jobs. will these jobs be around next month and did these jobs pay at lee's lease 40 or $50,000 of the minimum and cameo portraits of familyly and be a member of the community and can you rely on the job existing three or four years from now? that's the first thing they don't tell you in the second is under employment. 35% of people have degrees and can't find a job thanre they borrowed money for that and now they can't find a job. are these the kinds of jobs and at the point when you jobs away from people you not only rob them of their dignity and purpose you rob them for their ability to take care of their

family. you don't have coaches for the league and you don't have presence of the pta and civic organizations to pull a country together. one of the oceans that was lost in the era was america is not an economy. america's not a government. america is a nation and the fiber of the nation is not the government ore the government s what creates laws and protects us and does all sorts of things. it's not an economy. if you havemy an economy you ned an economy that the fiber and basic elements of the country are family and community. the two most important institutionsi of society not appear how much your gdp grows how geopolitically influential your government may be if you have family and community and the stronger country will not be strong. it will be weekend will be divided.

beginning in 2014 or 2015 and certainly by 2016 part of that happens to be on the presidential trail. if america's doing so well why is everyone so mad at each other end of the world in general. it was shocking to me is i'm a product of the american dream. my mom was this stock market -- and my dad was a banker ande im home. they retire with dignity and left all four of her kids better off. why isn't everybody is happy aboutt it? people say i worked in this place for 40 years and first they cut my pay and then i got up and left. now i can't find a job to replace that one. why don't you learn how to code and moved to san francisco?

they said it doesn't work for me. so it disconnects them from community and all the things that make life worth living. we lost that respect in the challenge then became, i think socialism is failing everywhere it's been tried. if you look at the southern border that states a substantial percentage of the peoplere come from socialist countries like venezuela nicaragua and cuba. build marxism and its failed everywhere. do you know why i believe the market? i believe the marketing lesson because it's the one economic model capable of not creating just prosperity. widespread prosperity that allows you to build society andored in family community. you are going to be a billion air or even a millionaire. you'll the largest number of good-paying jobs. only if you make that a priority only that becomes part of the

equation you can make public policies. whenan you make public policy decisions under the assumption that this policy will generate economic growth, that's important. you can't have good stable good-paying jobs without economic success. you can't just have that alone. it has the great prosperity but also creates good-paying jobs for as many people as possible. that's the perspective of the law. it didn't matter whether wealth was being created or whether it's being concentrated. what mattered was the product of jobs created somewhere else and what mattered was whether the company at an address in this state. america did well when the bell rang at the end of the stock market. here's the other thing the market and i believe in the market the market is a tool that exists to serve the national

interest. not the national interest and not the people and where it really gets complicated one of the most efficient outcomes is nottr good for outcome -- for yr country. some will argue with you and say that never happened and it most certainly did. they have lower labor whatever it may be it's not within our national interest to depend on the for 88% of the rare earth minerals on earth or any of these under and just a real capabilities. during covid we were freaking out because we couldn't make masks and this and that. and all this that was going on. for the first time we couldn't

taste it de-industrialization and it's easy to talk about industrialization. wouldn't it be great if we had more steel likem in the good od days? what i'm saying to you is that that lack of industrial capacity has the national security component to it in the jobs component. i published a report a week ago that talked about men in the workplace and in particular what i was focused on her men without college degrees. why are men without college degrees are going to 21st century to find ate job? the jobs the support of the more industrial type jobs. we could go on and on but the point is we have come to a point where this realization is before us and the choices are not the market is always right whatever outcome it reaches is the right one and to pour a bunch of money into every endeavor. those are two falsehoods that we had to return to an era which we understand the proper role of

thean market. that requires us to reimburse the concept of the national interest at every level. that does not make you a nationalist is a term that's thrown around to say i don't care what's happening tohe the rest the world. i don't only care about america but i care about america not because i'm but an american elected official does not put the national interest isht the first topic behind any decision. who is supposed to put the american national interests first? if you want toth think about the corporate setting our job is to protect our shareholders and my job is to protect my shareholder. i don't think there's anything wrong in saying we need to make the national interest the t t nr

one objective and criteria we apply to any public policy at the federal level in a particular path that is in the national interest to have an economy that empowers workers to have dignified stable work soy they can build a family member two -- there are lot of terrible things that happen world. number one before we decide how we get involved and how much we get involved what's in the interest of the national state we are no longer a unipolar world. we can care about everything in helper we came but by and large we have two -- because it does not have unlimited power. contest to prioritize them in a mutual area. a close with one last

observation talking about theke anything. i'm a i firm believer you basically cannot hold back technological progress no matter how hard you try. technology is going to happen in artificial intelligence in. a couple points i have artificial intelligence is it going to become something and nobody can answer this but is it going to be a technology that makes humans do what humans do better faster and more accurately or will it be something that replaces human's? is it going to the automation that allows one worker to do the work of five or so going to be something thathe takes the human element out completely? what strikes me about it is there is a lot more freaking out going on about ai right now. much more than there was about autonation. some worried about automation. the workers will make more money

or don't worry about the industrialization because we'll all be softwaretwd engineers. those same people are freaking out. for the first time that the massive disruptive technological advance that threatens not the blue-collar workers, not the 40,000-dollar a year worker of people making a lot of money and realizing they may not need me anymore. one of the cornerstones of the hollow it strike screenwriters don't want to be replaced by machine actors don't want to be replaced by an avatar. if you think about it we are are seeing at disruption that impacts white-collar higher educated or higher standard of living workers and all of a sudden they are freaking out about the revolution of change going on in society. that did not exist when it came to the american worker weather was of the malice of the greater we decided we were no longer a company -- a country that would make things. we did damage to

the country and the reason why i know this is true because it's not just happening to us. virtually every industrialized country in the world is going through similar a peoples whether it's immigration or the state of their economy or government policies and climate because they are feeling the exact same thing. the assumptions that of the leftist world and country for years for a mistake in no way to confront that mistake and reverse it. my personal hope although i think you are more pessimistic than i am able to easy because there are lot of deep roots that go into everything from intellectual world and public policy too much of the traditional teaching. we have made a lot of progress and for fiveve years. i think you for the invitation to talk about it because what

you discuss about tyranny is the byproduct of economic decisions that empowered the centralization of vertical integration of certain inter-cities that have extraordinary power at a time they say don't worry about it because there'll be a competitor out there. there is no amazon for amazon or google. anyway thank you for the chance to talk about this and i look forward to your questions. [applause] simi thank you senator rubio. i want to invite our panel is now to join us up here on the stage. audience if you bear with us will get the mic hooked up and go straight into our panel discussion.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> i want to start our panel discussion where senator rubio left off. it's a question of where this book is on the political spectrum. you are a man of the right and you have been a commentator and the conservatives face and you've gotten a lot of criticism from thee right. i want to start on that note. you recall that narrative you mentionedd in your remarks abot the political economic history of this country especially in the post depression era and you said part of what drove the prosperity that we saw in the past century was an addition to the limits. that's something that i've written about from a conservative perspective. i just want to give you this opportunity to answer your critics. >> a great question. the smartest reviews of this book have come from marxist.

they have argued that this book would have put forward is a fundamentally conservative project where is often when i'm dealing with center right or center left podcast or viewers they say it seems like your brain is a right-wing rain when it comes to abortion but you have more of a left-wing mentality when it comes to the economy and how do you reconcile that? miis a commitment to market that exists within the limits of the common good that arises from the same place. it's from my catholic faith and catholic teachings where the pope realized there were vast disparities of power and wealth in the way c to combat that onef the ways is by allowing workers encouraging them to organize and bargain collectively and for the

state to intervene in the market to ensure we wouldn't have catastrophic situations of market failures. it's not as if i shutdown my conservative rain when i became a writer on the political economy and put it back on when it comes to less cultural issues. it comes from the same place. it'su very important that the nw deal project in the new deal order and herbert hoover laid the framework and given greater skill to fdr this idea of compromise which is seen as a conservative thing in the case of market disruption and social unrest of workers who didn't earn enough to afford the goods. this model of class compromise

is not class antagonism but it recognizes the fact that it's real but it reconciles the classes ratheris than take it al the way to the evolution of one class or the other. and there's nothing contradictorybe about being conservative and socially managed catholic decision. one quick follow-up for senator rubio before bringing in the rest of panel you touched on this at the end of your remarks that you are more optimistic about remaking the gop is a working-class party. i'm wondering if you can expand on that and two what you think are some of the barriers to achieving that? >> perceval i think i think that's where the party writ large is the one of the things that became apparent when i ran for president i'd go campaign someone at here now for and

these people are sending our jobs overseas and you go somewhere else with people that had different experiences and there is a difference between its donor base and its voter base. you'veve revealed is what the donors tell you good ideas and that may be unfair. generally speaking the tradition of the party and forti the votes were were different. someone has the bee the voice of that group and one of the things tthat challenge us from my perspective is that traditional political spectrum as we have identified it for 25 or 30 years. we think somehow if you are here 150 years ago the center left and right woulder look different but there was an era in this country where there were conservative democrats and quite liberal republican so we have had multiple realignments and

reinventions of how the parties aligned and so forth and polarization has driven people over a part. where the home of the america, that says i don't want the government controlling the means of production and i don't want to be government employee and i don't want the government telling you what to do but i do want public policy that care about creating an economy where it's not just people that can get rich but people can find good stable payingth jobs. there are people who said felt terrible for tapping the world but the end of day we had to do with in america's national interest first and foremost. and how we react around the world, there's a market for that. that market will be met by some political movement. won't be easy and there's a tremendous amount of infrastructure, over 25 or 30 or so can be built on the traditional paradigm. but it's an inevitable evolution and i think the republican party right now is the only place

because the social radicalization of the party makes it impossible for it to be the hostel environment of the working class voter is looking for common sense and balance in politics that reflect not just economic needs of the general needs of the family and for the future of the country. i certainly think that's where it winds up. >> i want to bring in matt stoller previewer manitu if you have a left-wing -- i'm curious first to response to senator rubio's optimism on the gop working-class party and two we think there's a limit to that

left-right cooperation. >> yeah so i look at it, i'm a democrat and i kind of look at the problem is sort of both parties are intertwined. who's going to find the voice that speaks to that angry frustrated person out there who sees a disconnected it they aren't to give the quick example where both parties could do it today is the first day of the google antitrust trial which is then brought by trump in 2020 and has been continued by biden and either party and their estates involved, either partyy could win and become the dominant governing party. what i think is happening and what your bookk is about is a

specific language which is the language of efficiency for the language of efficiency, the language of economics in modern economics is a language of moral reform that is taken over both parties the corporate world that think that while the policy world. different parties with different philosophies of how to be. once you are removed from that world where there is no power or utopian power which is a trap all of a sudden the possibility of buildingdi a society opens up in what you see and this happened to me and i think it happens to everyone who one day doesn't have power and when they does for their many ways to this. youse choose to do it and the party that the sites do that first isrt the party that will e dominant over a generation. >> bradley you are our young

conservative on the panel. it struck me that perhaps some of the most praised for project on the right lease has come from younger conservatives. a lot of older generations. if you are looking for that it's going to be the younger generation and i'm wondering if you can speak on why that is especially with your experience as a young conservative. >> younger conservatives are not old start type's and they continue to turn out papers on why we need a corporate tax cut. some statistics that he has in his book that most everyone in the audience probably knows in 1973 the productivity of the labor going up 75% that same year and yet real wages have

only gone up 9%. and if you look at deeper into that data you'll see that wages aree stagnant but the gains tht have been made are concentrated by wage owners about 76%. how did he get there? education. a lot of necessary goods are considered necessary for families in college. we have seen a rapid increase in those types and time and time againou the young people are talked about they say yes my student loans that could factor into me delaying getting married, delaying buying a home, delaying having children. so the same time the old guard says if you're educated you can get into those rungs of wage labor that are ceding those

things. since 2000 the average salaries for college graduates haveti ben volatile and anna downswing. what pulls people lot of that in young people haven't gotten a p good answer from the two political parties who are convinced on appeasing corporate power and setting up were continuing that neoliberal structure that is lined out in the book. svin young conservatives they think are seeing this fallacy in their own lives and republican politicians, not senator rubio about wallets, wallets, wallets, paychecks, paychecks, paychecks. it hits their wallet. young people are seeing those in

the cost of all of these goods to start a family. young conservatives are realizing there's an incorrect anthropology that undergirds a lot of this that pushes family to the side and pushes nations to the sidefo and focuses more n this consent, choose at while contracting and they might not articulated in a direct way that they see that kind of arrangement that is so much of what we call begin the party consensus rests on is false. they are pursuing other forms of conservatism that hearkens back to the time before the goldwater years in 1964 that serve the republican party for the longest time. the republican party was founded until the roosevelt tapped the number one issue for republicans

were the terrace and the general tariff. if you go to -- you'll see an exhibit of pressure from republicans who say democrats free trade leads to despair and republicans leads to prosperity and good will towards all men but that's the tradition that young conservatives are rediscovering to navigate out these problems that this neo-liberal consensus presents. >> do want to turn to two union membership and the need to support the union. i mentioned this. there are many statistics that show a lot of workers want to join a union and some think it's helpful to put this into light

with a survey done by american compass which asked why union members would not want to be part of a union. the top reasons why were one, political involvement is toxic and two member dues and three corruption and become less at number nine with peer retaliation. i know you've done a lot of worn and labor movement i'm curious your thoughts on why potential union members and this is a great antidote to a lot of issues of our political economy. >> it bears keeping in mind that it's not like becoming a member of the nra or democratic social america for the main way that people become union members is incidental by becoming an employee.

the second-largest way is by people who are the first to form a union at their workplace. for those cases i think successful campaigns are going to be built around the issues that matter to those employees who elect the union. these abstract, these surveys are a bit abstract and i think they are interesting and they point to reputations that unions have better buildup in certain ways. what were some of the top reasons? >> the union political involvement. >> oh political involvement. the reasons i was talking about an actual political orientation of union members, a lot of union members are republicans already. different units will have

different makeup and some are going to be more conservative than others. look at the diversity that exists in the labor movement now. you see the demonstrations of some pilots now. they'll get together and stand the line and they are conservative and they hold the signs at the same level in the exact same way. this is ' labor demonstration in the same way that one is boisterous. even though the labor movement is small and wants to get a lot bigger ishe it's quite diverse d there is room for all kinds of people who want to join together and have a say at work to negotiate a contract with their co-workers and their employers. andd having something that's vey important that is touched on in the book and that is not being an employee at tips on what senator rubio is talking about

having stability in a job and reliability and stability. >> one more thought on the question is being perceived out wrongly. being politicized on the site of the democratic party. our friend michael lind points out at one point he visited the page up -- and her pins tweaked with something like -- tweak lease stand for reproductive freedom. lots of workers are covered by the afl-cio v don't share these views

it reflects that it's become part of the democratic party but one major reason -- reason for that is over the past two generations the labor movement has often, more often than not gotten the back of the hand from the republican party. so it's been forced to shift to the democrats by political necessity and even those workers who are coming to the republican party as voters they don't have an organized voice within the republican party in the same way that organized labor is an organized part of the democratic coalition. he had a republican party and labor organizations i think you would see labor becoming more dependent because it's not so dependent on one party knowingat that the other one would be hostility for stage and the national relations board would be made up of union busters and so forth.

>> i want to turn it to the audience and we have time for one maybe two questions of you have a question please raise your hand yes, right over here. >> i was just curious to what degree of -- are you? >> sure yes when i became a catholic i was working for publication that pushes the neoliberal doctrine, tax cuts, free trade over every thing else and the more i read the teachings on social issues and catholic social teachingsss the less the attempt to synthesize catholicism and seems a tenable.

neil mentioned limited neutrality and classical and christian tradition. i think there's a liberating aspect in having a catholic view on things because you look at the market and you neither fetishize the market for you completely turn away from it. you say it's a tool but it's subject to the comparatives of the common good and therefore it's limited. that is a respect for limits that's a harder line. >> one of the things i found very interesting about the reviews of the book that were critical was a gotcha. the catholics significantly catholic social teaching in some of these liberal theorists often used similar language but they

are getting at somewhat different things. that's the answer logical fallacies that i alluded to that runs not just a neoliberalism but all the way back. it's that choice or consent oriented contracting oriented mindset that is completely foreign to relieve the entire western canon and creed of the 15th and 16th century and for me we rediscovered that sense talking about equality and freedom and dignity and rights. those are the types of freedom and dignitybo we are talking abt with these questions. various policy that you may hear from conservatives this day and age. >> i've spoken on this before in the past that the catholic

social doctrine is incredibly incredibly fast and it is its intellectual deep atat its rated and basic principals. first is the dignity of persons and the individual. where you derive that dignity from an image of the creator but also what it is you who it dignity from. it's not wealth or status or material possessions. fuit is from that its fundamentl core it argues man was made to work. so what it argues is human beings have an obligation to work and then it goes on to say in a functioning economy people have. an obligation to work but you have public policies makers have no patient to foster the economy that creates at work and that's two sides of the same coin. you are expected to to work in you to work and you have to economy that produces work. the other is a very simple definition for the rolls to

promote the common good which was a speech i gave in 29 about common good capitalism and large it was the argument that capitalism is told the to achieve the common good in the definition for what is in the common good is what politicsou s about. theirfu fundamental principals that we have broad agreement on ieand one of them has of them is the need to have economic policies that create work for those who we are expecting to work in the kind of work allows you to do the things that make life worth living and to gflourish. that's what we don't have an answer for. when i was growing up that say to get a the degree that take seven or eight years and borrow some money it doesn't matter you will make it back. what is is at the formula today? outside of a handful of jobs figure how to do this nifty figure out how to invent page on the internet where people can connect with each other you can become a billionaire. other than that sort of thing what is the guarantee and i

don't mean guarantee you'll bee wealthy but the guaranteed if you're willing to do x. mackiel at least find a job that pays you enough so you don't have the stay up at night worrying that you'll off at any moment and you lose everything you have and why should i even get married and why should i own a home and why should even be involved in the community when i to look for 2.5 years to find another job. we don't have an answer. isis to say in the verge of becoming the generation that we are living in. from personal experience and the numbers back it up members of my family are at least 10 years behind where i was economically and socially in terms of homeownership in career achievement and polite. when i was 30 -- that has a dramatic impact on the country moving forward. i don't think we have fully yet

absorb it. >> it's important to realize that neoliberalism is religious zealotry and i saw senator polley introduces billy on the user which gets introduced practically and there was a metaphysical rage like how dare you and that's what you find when you propose new ideas or say hey this doesn't work in there like how dare you. criticism is their religion. faith works both ways. >> how dare you? i mentioned at the outset we are on a tight timeline but we have time for few close enough. if you have not bought someone

please do it to provocative and important book. you can keep up with him at the american conservative and last housekeeping note i mentioned at the outset pleased in your seats until we have had a chance to lead them. thanks to all of our panels and please join me in thanking our panelists. [applause]