Idaho Prop 1, Charlie Kirk & Why AI Won’t Kill Jobs

 

00:00:00 Bob Neugebauer: Welcome, folks, to the Idaho Pulse. This is your host, Bob. And today our guest will be one of the only people that I happen to love talking to Ronald Nate, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. Now he has a long list of items he would like to, uh, cover. So without further delay, let’s get on with the show and welcome Ron Nate to the Idaho Pulse. It’s nice to have you with us here again, Mr. Nate, what do you have to say today?

00:00:35 Ron Nate: Thank you, Tea party Bob. It’s great being on Idaho Pulse. Uh, yeah. I don’t know if it’s, uh, if it was praise or an indictment that I’m one of the people you like to talk to. So, uh, I’ll take it as a good thing. How about that? Uh,

00:00:50 Bob Neugebauer: Well,

00:00:50 Ron Nate: yeah.

00:00:50 Bob Neugebauer: the the problem is, I don’t know a lot of people who understand economics. You’re one of the few.

00:00:57 Ron Nate: Well, yeah, there’s a few of us out there. Economics explains everything. You know, you got the Thomas souls of the world, Walt Walter Williams and and some of the good ones out there. But you also have the the economists who have been corrupted by the liberal education system, who think that government can fix every problem just by increasing spending or printing play money, and that that’s going to solve all the problems in the world. So, uh, you know, be careful who you who you give and take in terms of economics.

00:01:32 Bob Neugebauer: I’ll give you whatever you want to take.

00:01:34 Ron Nate: Excellent. Hey, I got three things to talk about today. And,

00:01:38 Bob Neugebauer: Let’s

00:01:38 Ron Nate: uh, let’s,

00:01:39 Bob Neugebauer: go.

00:01:39 Ron Nate: let’s start out with number one. Uh, I want to remind everyone about the big important vote at the beginning of November on proposition one. Proposition one returns Idaho to open season on babies in the womb by, uh, legalizing abortion in Idaho again, but it goes even further. It would make Idaho abortion laws even more liberal than it was before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe versus Wade. And remember, before that decision, Idaho was, um was seeing fifteen hundred abortions a year, fifteen hundred babies killed in the womb before they had the chance to take their first breath. This proposition one rolls that all back and does even more. It would allow abortion for any reason up to viability. And. But it doesn’t define viability. And so it basically it says abortion is essentially legal up to birth. It would, uh, allow abortions on minors without their parents knowing or consenting to it. And if you, if you look at the interpretation of that language, it talks about quote unquote, Reproductive health without notification or consent. And that could be broadly interpreted to mean transitioning medical care as well. So it opens that door. Also, it just says abortions can be done by a licensed health care professional. Uh, I know, you know, the rational person looks at that and says that means doctors, but it could mean anything else, like EMTs or dentists or whatever. And so it is really a bad extreme proposition that dials the clock back to even worse than before the Dobbs decision. And Missouri did this. Remember, they’re a red state. Missouri voted the wrong way on their proposition on abortion. And now they have three hundred abortions a month in Missouri. And I don’t want to see Idaho go down that same path. We need to be a beacon of freedom here, a beacon of life, and say, you know what? We’re not going to take this radical, Soros funded proposition, one that puts abortion back on the table.

00:04:03 Bob Neugebauer: Let me just add a couple of things to that. You know, I don’t think this proposition will pass. I feel fairly confident of that. But what really disturbs me is what we’re looking at in the future. And I say that because we have, uh, such a change taking place in the Treasure Valley. And it’s bringing in more and more people. As I have said before, we have three hundred thousand who moved in in the last five years from Washington, Oregon, uh, California, and even a bunch from Utah.

00:04:35 Ron Nate: Mhm.

00:04:36 Bob Neugebauer: But as the technology business continues to grow here, we are going to be importing more and more of those liberal thinking people to work in these plants and to work at these jobs, because Idaho is not going to be able to fill all these jobs that

00:04:54 Ron Nate: Mhm.

00:04:54 Bob Neugebauer: I do believe is going to change this state in the next five to ten years. And that, I feel, is the danger of them bringing this back in again. And another proposition.

00:05:07 Ron Nate: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I agree. Um, I get a little nervous when I hear politicians or government officials talk about there’s not enough jobs or there’s not enough people to fill jobs because then they want to pass a program, they want to pass a policy and it’s going to end up costing us money. But when I know as a free market economist, when there’s more jobs than there are people, the way that more people get attracted is through higher wages. So the market has a way of handling that. Or when there’s more people than there are jobs, then, uh, the market has a way of handling that by, by declining wages, making it less attractive to live in that area and go somewhere else. And so I, I get nervous when I hear politicians and government officials Talking like they need to balance a job market somehow. I’d much rather just let the market handle it and let people make their own decisions, and not spend tax dollars for government officials desperately, desperately trying to balance a market that they know very little about.

00:06:10 Bob Neugebauer: Yeah, but they continue to do that with all of the tax exemptions that they give places like micron and the data centers.

00:06:16 Ron Nate: You

00:06:16 Bob Neugebauer: That’s

00:06:17 Ron Nate: are not

00:06:17 Bob Neugebauer: where

00:06:17 Ron Nate: wrong, sir. Exactly

00:06:18 Bob Neugebauer: that’s where

00:06:19 Ron Nate: right.

00:06:19 Bob Neugebauer: the problem, that’s the problem. And it has to be changed. We are talking literally about hundreds of millions.

00:06:26 Ron Nate: Mhm. Yep. And in Idaho, that’s a lot. That’s a big portion of our budget. And so I

00:06:32 Bob Neugebauer: Yep.

00:06:32 Ron Nate: don’t know how we got on to that from proposition one, but tell your tell your neighbors, tell your friends, even tell your enemies that proposition one must not pass in Idaho because Idaho should be the example for life. We should not be killing babies in the womb. We should not be, uh, an oasis for baby killing. And we can lead the way and say, you know what? You want to go kill your babies, go to some other state, go to some other country. But somebody needs to lead out on this. And I, I hope our fellow Idahoans feel the same. But even if a majority is against this proposition, one could still lose if they don’t go vote. So they gotta, gotta spread the word and get people excited about saving babies lives and putting the leftists in their place.

00:07:23 Bob Neugebauer: Let me tell you, my family is doing its part. Ten days. Ten days ago, I had my fourth great grandchild born.

00:07:31 Ron Nate: Good job. Excellent. You didn’t do anything for it, but good job anyway. Yeah. That’s great.

00:07:36 Bob Neugebauer: Hey. But I was there.

00:07:38 Ron Nate: That’s right. Okay. Topic number two. Um, last week Turning Point USA partnered with us at Idaho Freedom Foundation on September tenth to do a memorial for Charlie Kirk on the first anniversary of his assassination and murder. And it was a it was a great event on the Capitol steps there where you had these young people from colleges, from BSU and and n n u uh, up there talking about the Christian message of, you know, freedom matters, Christian and moral Christian ethics and morality matter. You know, James Madison says the Constitution is wholly inadequate for for people who’s not moral and, and, and guided by God. So, um, great messages there on the Capitol steps. There weren’t as many there as were there last year on the day where we put that vigil together on exactly the day that we heard the terrible news. But I want to point this out, too, that while we had a great crowd of of people there to memorialize Charlie Kirk and what he stood for, there were also some naysayers. Kitty corner across the street in the park, there were, uh, a group of leftists looking clownish, as they always do with their colored hair and, and oversized clothes and, and, uh, mocking signs. They were there with a megaphone. And during the entire time they were, they were mocking and, and sharing offensive messages and everything. While the Tpusa kids in Idaho Freedom Foundation folks were sharing their pro-christian message and, and, uh, you know, messages of hope. And I could feel in the crowd some people getting annoyed by those mockers across the street. But I want to point this out. When I was sitting there listening to this, I was thinking, you know what? Every time, um, something good is happening, every time somebody is working for righteous principles and to do some good in the world, there always seems to be a mocking crowd. I imagine that when when Christ himself went and spoke to communities, there was always a mocking crowd there saying, he’s he’s not a prophet. He’s not this or, you know, shouting down the righteous at the same time. And so I thought that having them there validated the message, the Christian goodness message that was being, uh, spread from the capital steps that the mockers there if, if what was being said by the TP, USA kids didn’t matter, then no one would need to mock them. But because it does matter, they were there. And so it made me listen more closely to what was being said from the capital steps. It made me, appreciate more that we had people trying to do the right thing, even in the face of adversity. I really like the idea that the mockers were there, putting a point on this, that we are in a battle. We’re not just speaking to our own echo chamber, that there are people who are against goodness, against the message that Charlie was trying to spread, and that we have work to do. And so I just want to point that out, that sometimes the mocking, sometimes the naysayers out there are exactly what’s needed to put a point on this and to fire up the people to do what’s right.

00:11:28 Bob Neugebauer: Let me tell you something. After I had a little experience with the Tea Party, and this goes back any number of years, the louder the crowd that is jeering against you, the more effective you know you are because they’re worried you’re going to change things.

00:11:48 Ron Nate: Yeah. If what you were doing didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be there. But it

00:11:52 Bob Neugebauer: Right.

00:11:52 Ron Nate: obviously matters quite a bit now in politics, we often use this statement that if you’re taking flak, you must be over the target. You know, it’s a military analogy that if you’re you’re dropping bombs and you’re getting shot at, you must be in the right spot there. But I, I, I would like to change that. And I’m going to do it personally that I’m not going to use the military analogy anymore. I’m going to use the analogy that if you’re being mocked, if you’re being shouted down, if they’re trying to embarrass you, you must be giving the right message. And so stay on that message, stay on that work, and let the naysayers say their names, but keep doing the good work. And, uh, and if, if they’re, if they’re trying to shout you down, you must be saying something that’s, that’s worth value.

00:12:40 Bob Neugebauer: All you have to do is look at Trump.

00:12:42 Ron Nate: There you go. Yeah. And so, yeah, every, every good person in politics trying to do good things. Uh, look at the naysayers. Uh, and the, the more angry the left gets, the more, um, on point you must be.

00:12:59 Bob Neugebauer: Absolutely. Thank you for that comment.

00:13:01 Ron Nate: Thank you. All right. Topic number three. This is my last one. But it’s economics, so it might take a little bit longer. And so, um, in economics, uh, oftentimes you hear, you hear fallacies, you know, and I’ve mentioned this before, economics is that one field where everyone feels like they understand a bit of economics and they do because economics is everywhere. People are making economic decisions all the time. Um, but contrast that with somebody doing brain surgery. I would never have the gall to say, hey, you know what? That brain surgeon doesn’t know what he’s doing. He ought to be doing it this way because I know nothing about brain surgery and I know I know nothing about it, so it would just be absurd for me to tell a brain surgeon how to do his work. But on the other hand, experts in the economics field don’t don’t get that kind of luxury or deference because everyone thinks they know a little bit about economics. It’s a field where everyone thinks they can. They know a little bit more than a given expert here or there. And to be fair, that’s probably justified because not all economists agree on things, but, uh, and so when you hear these economic fallacies, I feel like I need to set them straight because sometimes the people are just plain wrong about what they think they know about economics. And today’s topic is the curse of machinery. And how appropriate in today’s age of AI, burgeoning as a field of technology that quote unquote threatens millions, hundreds of millions, billions of jobs out there in society. AI is going to take over the world. We’re not going to have jobs. Maybe we won’t even need to have jobs. Maybe. I, I, I, I just does everything for us. Well, I want to set the record straight on the economics view of the curse of machinery. Got a minute?

00:15:00 Bob Neugebauer: Go get him.

00:15:01 Ron Nate: All right. Okay. And I didn’t make up the title The Curse of Machinery. It came from a book called economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt in chapter seven is The Curse of Machinery. And we hear this fallacy over and over again. And I’m going to play you part of the fallacy right here. So, um, I, you know, I’ll always take an opportunity to pick on a leftist. So this is Barack Obama speaking in an interview. And, uh, hopefully you can hear this well, but here he is. This goes to the point you’re just making is there are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM. You don’t go to a bank teller or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate. So all these things have created changes in the economy and what we have to do now. And that’s what this job council is all about, is identifying where are the jobs for the future are going to be. How do we make sure that there’s a match between what people are getting trained for and the jobs that exist? How do we make sure the capital is flowing into those places with the greatest opportunity? We are on the right track. You see that this is a a president of the United States worried that jobs are being displaced by technology, and therefore we need a workforce council or a jobs council to make sure that people have the skills that are needed. Well, I didn’t hear this happening when many of the farm jobs we have being replaced by the tractor. Didn’t hear president saying, oh, the tractors displacing all these farm workers. Markets have a great way of sorting this out. Did you know that the tractor displaced hundreds of thousands of workers? Didn’t do it all at once. Took a little bit of time. But those workers, uh, didn’t didn’t starve to death and die. What it did is it freed up labor to do other things. Instead of picking all the strawberries in the field. They had many other things to do build cars, uh, build homes, uh, you know, other industries open up. And so I want to point this out. This is, this is my lesson today. The curse of machinery is the fallacy that new technology displaces workers, causes unemployment, and therefore is dangerous for an economy when all the evidence, all the evidence points to the contrary. New technology, opens doors, opens opportunities, adds to employment, and actually adds to productivity, and lets us enjoy things we could have only dreamt of decades before that. Because of technology making it easier to grow goods, to build homes, to build cars. Because of all that technology, we can direct labor to other things we wouldn’t have dreamt of before. Bungee cords, amusement parks, televisions, entertainment all these things are modern things that came about because we freed up labor from the necessities of life, so much so that we have the opportunity to produce the things that are the enjoyment of life.

00:18:24 Bob Neugebauer: Glad you play that Obama piece, because if you take a look at what’s happening today, you just have to turn on your TV or your radio and listen to the Democrats screaming loudly and clearly, we have to control AI. We need to control anything that has the ability to change what’s going to happen in our country, or the ability to take our jobs. This is so

00:18:53 Ron Nate: It’s

00:18:53 Bob Neugebauer: perfect.

00:18:53 Ron Nate: crazy. Even

00:18:54 Bob Neugebauer: The

00:18:54 Ron Nate: one

00:18:54 Bob Neugebauer: timing

00:18:54 Ron Nate: of

00:18:54 Bob Neugebauer: is

00:18:54 Ron Nate: my

00:18:55 Bob Neugebauer: great.

00:18:55 Ron Nate: one of my conservative friends who’s in the legislature two years ago, we were driving toward the Capitol and, and she said, um, you know, we’re, we’ve got some AI bills here to regulate AI. So it doesn’t take away jobs or, or, or threaten our privacy or whatever. And I go, what? She said, we need these bills. And I said, we don’t need these bills. You know, we because it moves doesn’t mean we need to regulate it. You know, the market has a great way of sorting this out. You know, if you’ve been in government long enough, suddenly you start getting this mindset that anything new needs government attention. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. So let me finish making the case here. And here’s Henry Hazlett’s case. His case is that Obama is wrong and so was Hillary Clinton before him. And so was. So was FDR, and so was every technophobe out there that they were wrong in time past. And, um, here’s why. Because new technology and, and I’ll go through this in steps. Technology must lower costs somehow for it to be adopted. If it doesn’t lower costs, if it’s more costly to use the technology to do something than we’re currently experiencing, the technology is not beneficial at all. Only when technology lowers the cost of doing something does it start to get adopted. And lowering costs means usually displacing workers using less labor and more technology is what saves the cost. And if you stop the story right there, and if you say, you know what, the combine displaced two hundred thousand workers. It sounds like a tragedy there that there. But if you extend the analysis and keep going, you have to see that it is a net benefit. Sure. The technology lowered costs and lowering the costs, right. There is a benefit because now instead of producing wheat at the higher cost, it’s producing it at the lower cost. And so that wheat at a lower cost can only mean a few things. It can mean that consumers are now getting their wheat cheaper, and therefore they will have more money to spend on other things. And those other things will increase in production and increase in profitability and increase in employment. Or number two, what if the costs aren’t what if the cost savings aren’t passed on to the consumer and the. The farmer or the firm keeps the profits? Well, there’s only certain things a firm can do with the profits. Number one, that the. The guy can. Whoever owns the firm can spend it, can buy yachts and mansions or whatever. Well, that right there is an increase in employment when you’re buying yachts and mansions. Somebody has to build those. That’s an increase in employment. The, uh, the, the person could, uh, spend them on investment can invest in other industries. Well, investing in other industries increases employment there. Or the profiteer can take and expand their own business. If McDonald’s came up with the grill two thousand machine that displaced all the grill workers, you’d go, oh, that’s horrible for the grill workers, but it’s great for McDonald’s. McDonald’s just became more profitable. There’ll be more McDonald’s out there. There’ll be more cashiers, more drive thru window workers, more fry cook workers. So expanding their own industry means more employment in there. And so Hazlett goes through all this and says, yeah, if if you just stop at the technology, it sounds disastrous. But if you see the downstream effects, consumers having more money, uh, firms earning profits and reinvesting and growing businesses and growing jobs, therefore the technology has to be a net positive, otherwise it wouldn’t be adopted. And on net, it has to be a net positive. The kiosk at the bank or the airline terminal? Yeah, it displaced some tellers and some ticket agents. But what it did is, well, the technology to build the kiosks was one thing, but that was not enough to, to, to displace all the workers. Uh, the added profits, the added profitability of the airline industry, the added profitability of the banking industry, increases those industries and adds employment. Overall. It is a beautiful thing when you consider all the effects. And I have a real case in point if you have some time for it.

00:23:26 Bob Neugebauer: I always have time for you. But while you’re talking, I’m watching this little item that’s just crossed the tape on the big money show here, which says American workers, uh, their salaries hit record highs in twenty twenty five. So

00:23:43 Ron Nate: Oh, yes.

00:23:45 Bob Neugebauer: you have to say that people are not looking at things the way they should. And I think a lot of that has to do with the social media propaganda.

00:23:55 Ron Nate: Yes. If you if you are one of these Luddites, these technophobes that think technology is bad and it puts people out of work and whatnot, if more people were being put out of work than there were jobs available, wages would drop. They wouldn’t rise. Here’s the the the little hidden mystery of technology. Technology makes every worker that uses it more productive. The word processor made writers much more productive. The combine made each farmer that was on the combine more productive. And so the technology adding to the productivity of workers actually leads to higher wages, not lower wages. That is one huge fallacy out there that technology causes unemployment and therefore drives wages down when in every case, every technological advancement has led to higher wages, not lower wages. You’re exactly right, Bob.

00:24:50 Bob Neugebauer: Well, they say a rising tide raises all ships. And the alternative to that is that the official poverty rate dipped to the lowest on record last year.

00:25:04 Ron Nate: Yeah. It’s an amazing thing that, you know, just think about it in your own life, the all the opportunities that new technology has brought you both in terms of your productivity, in terms of what you can do for fun. Uh, the amount of leisure time that we can now experience because we don’t have to spend all the time building a house by hand. You know, you have nail guns and you have all sorts of prefab stuff that makes it easier to do these these previously painstaking tasks. Let me give you an example of Andrew Carnegie. You know, he’s famous for.

00:25:42 Bob Neugebauer: Deal.

00:25:44 Ron Nate: Yeah. He is famous for producing steel. Now I’m going to read something, uh, uh, from a book on Andrew Carnegie. And here is his quote on the steel business. This is back, uh, from I think it was, uh, eighteen or nineteen oh one. He says the steel business is like this two pounds of iron stone purchased on the shores of Lake Superior and transported to Pittsburgh. Two pounds of coal mined in Connellsville, manufactured into Coke and brought to Pittsburgh. One half pound of limestone mined east of the Alleghenies and brought to Pittsburgh a little manganese ore mined in Virginia, brought to Pittsburgh. And all these four and one half pounds of material manufactured into one pound of solid steel and sold for one cent. Now that’s amazing. That’s, you know, think about what that is. That’s what is it, twenty dollars a ton for steel. Well, when he was in his steel business in eighteen seventy three, the price of steel was one hundred dollars per ton. But then Carnegie went to England and ran into a guy named Henry Bessemer. And I’m not a steel expert, but I’ll sum it up this way. The process of producing and refining steel is painstaking. They would heat up all those materials, four and one half pound materials, you know, in large quantities and heat it up, superheat it, and then the impurities would float to the top. They’d scrape those off, heat it off again, scrape those off. And refining it meant purifying it. And so that was a big, big horizontal, big flat heating vats to to scrape off the impurities. Well, Carnegie went to England and ran into a guy named Henry Bessemer who had a different way of doing it, put all the materials in huge, large kind of ceramic bowls with a hole in the bottom where they would force air up through it and burn off all the impurities all at once in one fantastic shower of sparks and everything, burn off all the impurities in in a fraction of the time and in larger quantities than could be done the old way. And so Carnegie brings that process back to America. So between eighteen seventy three and eighteen seventy five, when Carnegie did this process, the price of steel dropped from one hundred dollars a ton to fifty dollars a ton. Huge

00:28:19 Bob Neugebauer: Therefore

00:28:19 Ron Nate: savings.

00:28:20 Bob Neugebauer: that was the Bessemer furnace, was it not?

00:28:23 Ron Nate: That’s right. The Bessemer process. Yep. And eighteen seventy seven dropped to forty dollars a ton. Eight years later dropped to twenty dollars a ton. And that was when he made that comment. You know, a penny per pound is the same thing as twenty dollars a ton. And then eighteen ninety eight, eighteen dollars a ton. So this new technology lowered the price of steel to less than one fifth of what it was before. And so you’re like, oh, this new technology, it’s displacing all these workers. But and by the way, not only did the price of steel come down, it was way better quality than it was before, way better quality than the old iron rails. The value of his steel company went from seven hundred thousand dollars back in eighteen seventy seven, and he sold it for what would be equivalent to four hundred and ninety two million dollars today. He was the richest man in America at the time. But here’s the thing that I want to point out with this this technology, while it sounds great for the steel industry and great for Andrew Carnegie himself, I mean, he he turned great profits from this. The number of steel firms in eighteen seventy was eight hundred and eight. The number in nineteen hundred was six hundred sixty nine. It reduced the number of steel companies. The number of employees in the steel industry, however, went from seventy eight thousand workers in eighteen seventy to two hundred and seventy two thousand workers just thirty years later. So did you catch that? About three times as many workers in the steel industry as the price dropped, because the quantity of steel being produced went up dramatically. So much construction building skyscrapers. Now, the average number of employees for firm went from ninety seven to four hundred and seven. So each firm was four times as big in terms of employees producing way more steel. but the technology just made it way more efficient. And so that is an example both of economies of scale and technology actually creating employment by making steel cheaper, by displacing workers needed for each ton. You’re producing so many more tons, you’re actually employing more workers. It’s a beautiful thing.

00:30:42 Bob Neugebauer: So why are we so afraid of AI?

00:30:45 Ron Nate: Because it is a natural instinct to think that it’s going to take my job. But you know what? Uh, maybe your job isn’t that valuable, but you are much more valuable in the next job you have. And so AI frees up a lot of work from writing articles, from doing research, from doing all of those things and frees us up to do things about new ideas, new ways of doing things, new technologies, new things that we could do that we couldn’t have dreamt of before.

00:31:19 Bob Neugebauer: Amazing how everybody is so afraid of new technologies, but how they have changed our world.

00:31:26 Ron Nate: Yeah, yeah. And so, um, you know, if you were a steelworker back in eighteen seventy five and you saw Carnegie bring this thing, you might go on strike and say, no, we can’t have this Bessemer process. We’re all going to lose our jobs. Well, thirty years later, four times as many of you are working in the steel plants as before, and there are fewer plants.

00:31:48 Bob Neugebauer: So I would predict that we are on the road to prosperity. Is that correct?

00:31:54 Ron Nate: We are on the road to prosperity. It’s an amazing thing what can happen when you employ new technology? And not only that, if you kept cost constant, new technology tends to make things better too. And so the cost of making a movie is much higher now than it was before. But also the quality of the movie is much higher now and involves many more people. I mean, this makes my point to go look at the credits at the end of a movie. It’s almost disgusting how they want to attribute every single aspect of the movie making process. The person that made the sandwiches for the crew that served the, you know, actors or whatever, you’re like, do we have to have the sandwich makers in the credits? But they’re recognizing that this whole production process involves hundreds and thousands of people just to make a movie. Movies are much better now. They’re more costly to produce, but they’re employing many more people. But they’re more accessible to people now, to more people

00:32:53 Bob Neugebauer: Okay.

00:32:53 Ron Nate: can go to the movies and enjoy them than ever before.

00:32:56 Bob Neugebauer: Okay. My last question to you.

00:32:59 Ron Nate: Yeah.

00:33:00 Bob Neugebauer: If AI is going to be so powerful, will it be able to fix the problem of our national debt?

00:33:11 Ron Nate: The the thing here is that the government sector in my view, a lot of ways competes with the private sector. And really the economy is if we break down the word echo. Echo is the environment, the household. Nomos is management of the management of the household here. We. Our household is the amount of resources we command. The management of it is what are we going to produce with those resources? Who’s going to benefit from that production? And you know, how is that production going to get done? The more we turn over to the public sector, the government, the less efficient they are. They are not as responsive to price and profit signals as the private sector is, because their livelihood doesn’t depend on it. The politician will always can screw it up all the time and will always get paid. But the businessmen, if they screw it up, they’re out of business. And so the incentives are much better aligned for private businesses to be responsive to market signals. And so I worry, you know, AI is not going to save us from an ever growing government because government cannot do it, possibly as well as the private sector does. I trust AI in the private sector hands better than the public sector hands.

00:34:25 Bob Neugebauer: I don’t disagree, but why do you think the Democrats want to get their hands on controlling AI? Because once they control it. Oh.

00:34:34 Ron Nate: Well, yeah, imagine the mayor of New York. He loves the idea of socialism. If he could control AI and say that, you know what? AI is going to make government be so perfect, it’s going to create utopia for everyone and we will run it. Uh, check your wallets and check your rights because they’re under attack.

00:34:53 Bob Neugebauer: Absolutely. One hundred percent. Right. Thanks

00:34:56 Ron Nate: Mhm.

00:34:56 Bob Neugebauer: for your comments.

00:34:57 Ron Nate: Yeah. Well thank you. It’s great to be on the Idaho Pulse every week. I love it.

00:35:03 Bob Neugebauer: Ron, always a pleasure. I want to thank you again for joining us, and hopefully we’ll see you again next week.

00:35:09 Ron Nate: It’ll be great. Yeah. Thank you. Have a great day.

00:35:11 Bob Neugebauer: Thanks.

00:35:11 Ron Nate: Peace

00:35:12 Bob Neugebauer: Thank

00:35:12 Ron Nate: out, my

00:35:12 Bob Neugebauer: you

00:35:12 Ron Nate: friends.

00:35:12 Bob Neugebauer: sir.