We Need To Act NOW - Part 1 of 2

The speaker believes that the government is incapable of addressing the challenges we face. They argue that both the government and corporations are broken, with corporations running amok and needing to be constrained. They suggest that before making larger changes to our economy and society, we must first address the influence of moneyed interests, such as think tanks and lobbying efforts, that affect government decisions. The speaker proposes making it illegal for politicians to receive blank checks from these interests and restricts their ability to return to the private sector after serving in Congress. They also advocate for providing retirement packages for politicians and discouraging them from taking positions in the private sector. These changes aim to reduce the influence of moneyed interests and make politicians less susceptible to being bought. What I think we need to do, literally, on a political level, is we need to recognize that our government is not capable of rising to the challenges facing us. For a long time now, people on all sides of every fucking political spectrum have been, in their own way, pointing to failures of government or failures of private institutions and saying, look, they're broken. Look, they're broken. It's all their fault. This institution isn't functioning correctly, therefore all of our problems are their fault. Okay? The first part I'm with you on. Our government is broken. Our corporations are running amok. I wouldn't say they're broken, because I think it's in their inherent nature to do what they're doing. They're just doing what they do. And they're not being contained. But being allowed to do whatever they want to do is what a corporation looks like when it's broken. They have to be constrained. They do work okay. And I do think that, you know, other changes have to happen. But, yeah, you know, just sticking with a kind of a more Keynesian model is that we're not ready for socialism yet. I mean, you know, I don't care what it's called. I just want it to work. And I don't think we're going to be able to go from zero to sixty in two seconds flat. And I think before we can even think about making steps to address kind of the fundamental way our economy and our society is structured, we have to first contain the corporations in moneyed interests that they represent. Or rather, moneyed interests that represent them. The think tanks and the lobbying efforts. They shouldn't be allowed to influence government. That's why government is broken. Government is broken because of them. So you can point to the fact that government's broken, and you could say it's all their fault, but it's not going to ever change anything until you fix what it was that broke them. You can keep replacing them. You can swap them out with different parts. But isn't it interesting how in every case they end up broken? It's not ever going to... just waiting. And the few that aren't, aren't enough. And just trying to get enough... it's just a doomed strategy to try to replace enough of them so that at any given moment in time, there's enough of them that aren't broken that can actually get something passed to make a change. That's not going to happen. Every time there's an election, we might be able to swap out a few, and that's great, and we got a little bit closer, but guess what? Every time, as we go forward in time, the people that were... they start to break. They break at a fairly predictable rate. So it's a doomed... it's not going to happen. We have to address the thing that's breaking them. Why are they getting broken? It's the moneyed interests that represent them. They want to stay in power. They need election funds. They also sometimes, in many cases, are thinking about what they're going to do afterwards, or how they're going to retire, blah blah blah blah blah. All of those problems can be solved by moneyed interests in varying ways. So they have this... they have to serve them. They might not be fully aware that that's what they're doing. They might not... I don't know how explicit the arrangements are. Some probably are very explicit, and some maybe not. I don't know, but there's an implicit understanding, I would think, at the least, that with the check that they just got comes expectations. And if they don't live up to them, they're not going to get another check. Period. That might be all it is. It doesn't have to be explicit. And that's, you know, it's not even illegal. It's not even illegal, if they keep it to that. It's not a conspiracy theory. It just makes sense. Of course. So until we make it illegal, until we do make it illegal for them to receive just basically blank checks from... like, no, that cannot happen. Further, I think they should not be allowed to go back to the private sector, frankly. Like, once you serve in Congress, you should just be... you should have a retirement package that you get. I don't know. Maybe they could have certain jobs in the private sector, but they can't be allowed to just... Oh, suddenly they're a VP, you know, in some... no, come on. No. It just looks all kind of... At the very least, it needs to be, like, you know, like, really, really discouraged. Like, oh God, that's gross. You know, like, yeah, you can do it, I guess, but don't. I mean, there's plenty of positions that someone can do that's still public. I don't know, some local government position, wherever they live, if they're still quite young. You know, like, if they could do something else in politics that isn't elected, but needs to be done. You know, and they should have a retirement package, too. It's not so many people that get elected to Congress that we can't afford to take care of them. I think we can manage it. There's only a few hundred of them, for fuck's sake. We can look after them, okay? It's a public service. And, you know, we should look after them. In that case, they won't have to try to, you know, scramble for, what are we going to do if I don't get elected? Oh no! Offers from the private sector won't look so appealing in that case. They won't be so easy to buy. I think it'll be pretty hard to make it impossible to buy them. You know, there's always going to be people that are more greedy than others. There's other changes, but at the very least, those are the things that need to be addressed.