Big Tech & Lessons from the Electricity Crisis

[0:00:01 Speaker 0] Okay, so welcome to the first episode of free lunch, a podcast where the Salem Center for Policy folks sit down and discuss some issues that have been present in our center in the past few months, but also things that are in your minds and, and and we’re gonna sort of argue about. Um today I’m joined by steve ration uh postdoc fellow who does, he is currently in massachusetts, but joining us here in Austin soon and Gregory Salieri, our philosophy or in philosopher in house and also the director of the program for Objectivity in Thought and Enterprise. And sorry, Greg, I I always bundle the just objectivity

[0:00:41 Speaker 1] program. We should call it

[0:00:42 Speaker 0] Objectivity program. Exactly. And finally scott bogus, um, that directs our program in financial regulations. So, and today, I guess steve we’re going to talk about two issues. Right? So what are you taking the first one? So we’re gonna we’re gonna talk about two issues. The first is Big tech and the second is energy because these have both been salient issues over

[0:01:07 Speaker 1] scott. You’ve got the energy

[0:01:08 Speaker 0] background Perfect over the over the past month. So who wants to start with Big Tech?

[0:01:19 Speaker 1] Well, we had a there are just a number of issues that have come up here, right? There’s concerns about whether Big Tech is censoring. We’ve had a number of events relative to this over the course of the year, over Free speech week. Um Tara smith and I both gave talks under the auspices of the Center about Free speech. And I was talking about why I don’t think anything that these companies do is properly understood the censorship or a violation of free speech, but that nonetheless, there are really important and pressing questions about what constitutes a good speech policy and why in running a broad based platform where you expect people to discuss ideas, you want to ensure a wide range of opinions can be expressed. So that’s one issue that comes up with big tech, but another that’s come up more and more recently, um from a lot of different corners. And it’s been tied in some mind to the censorship issue is our some of these companies too big or should they be subject to antitrust prosecution? And there was a panel um, with a few people in that uh, business that is some former sec, sorry, FCC people and people who are lawyers and knowledge about that that we had a few weeks ago on is big tech too big and where I take it to big means there, should it be broken up. Um, and so those are 22 connections in which big text come up. I know I have opinions on both issues. I’m an opponent of antitrust in general and so certainly an opponent of it being used here. Um but I’m interested to hear what other people think. So, let me ask you, let me ask you,

[0:02:58 Speaker 0] Greg, to start from, sorry, uh with with your thoughts on on when you say that not nothing of this, of these companies have done on the censorship side. And the first topic of your uh what’s your rationale behind uh none of it being a problem in your in your view?

[0:03:15 Speaker 1] Well, I don’t think any of it the violation of the right to free speech, whether it’s a problem in the sense that we should think it’s a bad product or a poor business decision or a sign of a deteriorating culture. That’s a a second question. I think that question is more complicated, but I think the right to freedom of speech is the right to be free of forcible government interference in your speech, and the right to associate with different people on different terms, in different economic relationships to speak, and the things you want and support the speech you want without supporting the speech you don’t. And I think that aspect of it, the aspect of association and making deals around what you want to say and what kind of speech you want to support, which includes the ability to boycott or demure from or not support speech you don’t want to support is really crucial to the right of free speech and to the way free speech functions to help people discover the truth. It’s an important decision to say. Uh you know, I don’t want to be associated with this, I don’t want to be party to this kind of a discussion. Um I don’t want this on my platform, I think that people do that is part of what makes the right to free speech, or it’s part of the mechanism by which free speech uh enables us all to discover the truth and and enables us all to have the best ideas surface. So I think one has to be careful about how one does it, but it’s a feature of a free speech regime, not a bug, that there will be cases where people exclude people and withdraw their sanctions.

[0:04:45 Speaker 0] Yeah, generally, I I agree with you. And I think if we were if you were talking about something that is a very free market of exchange of ideas and I have a platform, you have a platform. I don’t want some some type of discussion in my platform. Fine. You know, don’t buy my platform, don’t come to my product, don’t use my product that in a sort of like, uh if we had a very competitive, very free. And while working market, that’s absolutely true, then I don’t know if we’re deploying where that is not the reality and therefore, when twitter decides to ban such and such from speaking or, you know, former president from participating on it, whether they are violating any any particularly right that anybody would have on that platform, given that is a company providing a service for free in a particular case, right? Um, what I worry about and then I’ll make a connection to university. For example, a private university has limits on, let’s say using private just because it’s something that was outside of the public domain, right? A private university has limits and what it can do to constrain speech of a faculty member, for example, of a student on campus and so on. And the reason for that is that it’s, it’s not they’re not government. They’re not those speech codes that that that are are disputed in court. Oftentimes, universities tend to lose when they when that comes about. Is because there’s an interpretation that that somehow that institution, even though it’s not government has a role as a, as a public square, as a role in fomenting the discussion, the exchange of ideas. In a way that one can see some of these companies that are, you know, in the middle of a pandemic, the public square gets redefined. What is the public square? Where is the place where people can exchange ideas? So one could take the view. I think a justifiable view that going in and saying twitter decided that Carlos cannot post information about Covid. Let’s forget about trump Can be particularly problematic, particular, problematic in the sense that that that that they are. There’s a censorship that is that is being imposed, especially if it is imposed on us. Only one set of ideas. Right? one direction of ideas. For example, if you are against lockdowns, there was something that has been I think a lot more scrutiny on people that have been critical of the public health actions taken in the last year, right? In both facebook and twitter taking those ideas out. I think it’s very problematic as as if those places are the fact of Public square that we have right now in our society. So I don’t know how to think about that. I don’t know what the legality but clearly there in the in the as a legal framework, I think they are protected and they have one that that bad. All right. But as should that be the case. That’s where I have some conflict in my mind about that.

[0:07:29 Speaker 1] I think it’s certainly culturally worrying if you get into a place where the major institutions that are the means by which ideas are shared, are tilting the table, so to speak, in favour of some views and not others. Um but then I think that’s something to be fought culturally by looking for, by promoting the ideas they’re informed, where they’ll have them and it’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening with companies like twitter on these things, so they’re they’re they’re stopping mostly what I’ve seen them doing is putting up um little blurbs telling you that they fact checked something and uh some of that is ham fisted, but you know, a lot of it I actually appreciate because like I think um I still get to see the person’s view I wanted. I I often go, I mean looking for fact checks on these, I find because it’s just too good to be true. Were too bad to be true. Is this uh it just fits my narrative or doesn’t too well and I want to know if it’s true and I I view it as a feature of the service if they’re making it easier for me to find that information. But I get, and I don’t think these services were ever or could ever be purely neutral platforms. Um They were always sucks that they were amplifying some kinds of signals and not others and you know, either by how many people in my friend group like it or there’s always some algorithm that’s determining which ones are amplified. It’s not as though it’s like a bulletin board in the town square and I see whatever the last guy walked by posted on it. Um So I think it’s just part of the service that they’re providing, that they’re trying to find a better way to put me in touch with the set of information I want. And if that set of information includes fact checks, as it often does for me, I view it as a feature, but in cases where I think they’re trying not to let me find out about something when I ever hear about something like that that I’m I’m really concerned about. I mean I think will be really bad, but the cases I’ve looked into like that um I found less concerning when I’ve looked into them than I was at first and I might be missing some of them.

[0:09:39 Speaker 0] I think there are two big issues. The first is the ubiquity and it would be less probably if you’re going to ban someone from what is de facto how we communicate now. I think that’s that would be less problematic if there were alternative if there were viable alternatives. Now, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t that there isn’t information that, you know, companies shouldn’t say, look, you know, we don’t want out there, for instance, you know, no one, no one should be out there promoting like horrific human rights abuses. I think, I think we’d all be in favor of saying like, you know, the burmese government, for instance, shouldn’t be able to promote views that demonize the ruling. I think that would be a reasonable. Uh, and I think facebook facebook did get into some trouble with this. But um, yeah, but I do believe that so that these platforms, even though even though they are an effective public square, should be able to ban some really pernicious views. And then the other issue with the Public square is that this isn’t, You know, nightly news in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. It’s everyone gets their own particular version

[0:11:07 Speaker 1] of the Public square.

[0:11:09 Speaker 0] So, you know, when I log into twitter, I’m going to get a different informational environment than you are. And I think this is sort of this is the problem I have with Public Square analogy is that the information I’m getting is not necessarily the information you’re getting and you know, I I don’t know how to think about that because on the one hand, it’s great. Like I get to I get to find out about you know, the things I care about. But on the other hand, that could lead to me getting a whole bunch of information that’s just factually incorrect. Mhm.

[0:11:43 Speaker 1] Yeah, I mean, also, what is a public square? I mean, do we have this analogy to the public square? We’re talking about like speakers corner in the park in London, or, on my view? I’m, you know, a radical, I don’t think there should be public property, so I don’t think there should be a little square owned by the government, that everybody should stand down and talk about. So for me, it’s a metaphor what things are part of the public discourse happening. And then, of course, as steve says, and even if there was a square in the park, we’re not all going to be there on the same day, so we’re all hearing different, different things and as a result of the speakers, we interact with the places that we go, but when you say, like, they should be able to ban this and they shouldn’t be able to be rather um the certain government shouldn’t be able to spread certain information, What’s this be able to I mean, are you saying that you think it would be a good decision on the part of facebook or twitter or whatever not to carry that content? Are you saying that the governments of some other nations should clamp down on it or force twitter not to carry it or what’s the what’s the who’s making things able or unable here?

[0:12:49 Speaker 0] Well, this is this is a this is a difficult question, right? So, I’m thinking I’m thinking of a situation that we all agree is Mhm. Your bad, like, you know, we wouldn’t want someone advocating, you know, genocide on a platform, we wouldn’t want those views to spring. So we can all say, you know, genocide is really bad and no one should be able to promote it. But then, you know, although views like that are protected under the First Amendment in the US right, you can be part of the Nazi Party if you want and go outside and and you know, where your swastika and you know, advocate for that, that’s a legal thing to do here, right? Yes, But that that that means the government can’t take action against you twitter twitter account can and you know, when I say we all like, I I would think that a majority majority of people wouldn’t want to log on to twitter and see, you know, this group a is really bad and we should eliminate them. I think that, hey, you know, that’s I think morally morally wrong and be that’s terrible for business. But mostly, you know, I think is far more

[0:14:06 Speaker 1] important factor. I’m no mixed on that because I don’t want to, I want it to be the case that those kind of ideas aren’t being advocated in my society. I want those ideas to die. I don’t want people to be supporting them. On the other hand, if the guy down the street is advocating that kind of stuff, I’m not sure if I prefer to see it or not. I mean, I want to know it’s offensive when I see it. I don’t want to look at it. On the other hand, you know, if someone is advocating genocide, I think better off that I know of no, that I want to get away from that guy and you know, then that it happened in in quiet, so I don’t know whether I prefer that twitter, you know, hit me to the fact that he’s doing this or keep it out of my feet. The Greg I’ve got a question for you at I think I heard you say something and I’ll put in my own words, you correct if I if I say it wrong, but I thought you were advocating for free speech being the right of private entities to restrict free speech. Um, I wouldn’t phrase it that way because I don’t think, I think the freedom of free speech is the right to, you know, speak on your own property, to your own audience, on your own platform and to contract with people to create platforms, audiences, uh, etcetera. So if you know, you don’t want to repeat what I say, I don’t think you’re violating my free speech. And if you are constraining my free speech, I think you’re exercising yours and if you own twitter and uh you won’t promote my posts or whatever. I think that’s not you. Constraining my free speech is just coming to terms about how we’re going to exercise our respective rights to free speech. So, okay, so thanks for that clarification, This really helps. And I think through this, as an economist, I look at big companies, these big tech companies as having monopolistic properties. Now, I’m also a bit of a hypocrite and I think markets solve problems better than governments solve problems. And look at Microsoft and apple back in the day fighting over browsers and fighting over operating systems, they both fared pretty well. I don’t think there needs to be anti trust action there. Um, but here it’s a little bit different because big tech really has in many ways a monopoly on the speech platforms. And in many ways they look like state actors, they look like the old broadcasters of the 40s, 50s and 60’s and

[0:16:31 Speaker 0] you know, look no further

[0:16:32 Speaker 1] than when, you know, former president trump was banned. I mean it was so quiet for a large part of the population that it had a material impact, I believe. And so it’s so, I think it’s, it’s more than just, well, it’s my private property. And um, I don’t want to hear it anymore. And I don’t think that big tech did themselves any favor with the band because if anything, it just demonstrated that they do have monopoly like power over freezing,

[0:17:03 Speaker 0] but they were in this and I think that highlights scott another thing that I think you’re right about is that they are to to close to government in some ways, right? That one reason, I think, I think it’s undeniable that the censorship that took place was primarily in one side of the aisle versus the other. And I think a lot of us do the fact that they responded to pressure from one side of the aisle more. You know, they know who’s coming to power, they know who they need to be more close to right now and therefore it’s less costly for them, right? Especially given that they know they might be in a position of two large and about to be more regulated and so on. That puts me in an uncomfortable position, they are too big. There are a lot of regulatory things that that are going to come their way and they’re just trying to sort of by favors from the pressure the government is putting on them as well. And that’s that’s that’s disturbing. Again, I think theoretically, I would agree with you when you say that markets supposed to solve those things and I think that’s the view that Greg hats that, you know, those things will sort itself out stop, don’t interfere. Somebody can create something for those ideas to be if they are popular and they are in demand, they’re going to be, there’s a value in the, in the market to, to, to, to create them. And we saw that with parlor that yes, there was demand for parlor. People want to go into parlor and here, whatever it is, the party has allowed them to hear parlor. But then you get the people who run the pipes say no, you cannot have it, which is like another layer of like, wait a second. That’s not. We constrain his speech or, or, and there’s really no way to go around that. It’s really difficult for them to go around that right

[0:18:32 Speaker 1] there. Back up now on another. Yes,

[0:18:35 Speaker 0] they took awhile. Right. And, and you know,

[0:18:39 Speaker 1] they could have planned better for it. I mean, I think I’m skeptical that parlor had a coherent strategy here, but it’s not a few thoughts of this monopoly. First of all, there’s amazon facebook twitter. Then there’s also Tiktok, I’ve just learned in the last few days that there are these political stars on Tiktok and apparently also some evangelical preacher who was on our campus yesterday and gathered these huge crowds because everyone knows her from Tiktok and I think they wanted to make fun of her. But anyway, so there’s these other platforms, we don’t know about the clubhouse and different. Um, so I don’t think it’s true that, I mean, it is true that they have a huge impact on our lives, but I think there are more of them than we know about. Um, they’re changing faster than we might think. And um, if you think about, is it like the old media networks, you know, back in the, in the fifties, sixties, seventies, well, there are a couple of really big companies in that sense. It’s similar, but if you think of the range and diversity of viewpoints that we have available to us now, it’s way greater than it was in the sixties seventies 50. I mean, they finally let Milton Friedman on PBS and it made a big difference. But um you know, if you look at people have this idea that walter, Cronkite and the newscasters then were balanced, they weren’t balanced. It’s just people didn’t know of the views that were outside of the narrow band that was on the networks, so it seemed balanced to them. Um Now we have just a ton of views available to us and it might be that the market response now is that there’s too much fringy stuff and what the market is doing is correcting for some of that. More people don’t want some of that fringy stuff than doing that’s the market operating now. I do think with trump, there’s a real worry here about it’s very strange for a major company not to be willing to deal with somebody who was voted for by about half the population. Right? There’s a weird cultural problem when your country is in a state that it’s not some, you know, like um, anti Semitic shooter on gap that nobody wants to deal with. But major companies are unwilling to deal with somebody who supported by, uh, by that much of the population. But that I don’t think a problem with those companies, I think it’s a cultural problem that were, that were like really polarized now. And the very fact that there are so many people who do support that president means that there is a lot of economic energy, there’s a lot of possibility for alternative platforms to come up. And I’m not at all worried that trump is not going to be able to get his word out. Maybe, you know, things got unnaturally quiet for a few days or a few weeks. Uh, but if he’s energetic about getting his word out for good or ill, uh, there’s plenty of opportunity and plenty of capital available to make it happen.

[0:21:25 Speaker 0] So, so you mentioned capital. Let me ask you questions scott I think, which is a, is a good analogy to what we’re talking about here. One of the things that happened, um, that I was particularly disturbed by and was the, was, I think with stripe, which process a lot of payments through the internet said they would not process payments for political donations, I think to trump act backs. Okay, so donating money to a campaign is equated to speech in our law, in our system of laws. Okay, so me and my ability to give money to a candidate is my is essentially my ability to to to uh to speak right one way I can speak. Um so again, a bank forget about being striped. Just imagine the bank a bank say no, I’m not going to process the payment for this thing that has uh transfer that that that you want to make because I don’t like those ideas. Is that a how do we um is that okay? Can bank segregate on on on who to send money from one direction, the other based on their just judgment of whether that’s uh undesirable view or I

[0:22:32 Speaker 1] think this is analog to just risk kicking somebody off the platform. I think it’s the exact analogue. It’s the same as amazon not facilitating the infrastructure for parlor. But I I differ with Greg here and that I actually do believe that there are public goods and money transferred money payment systems like Swift and other competing systems are incredibly important. And when those get hijacked and, and undermine stuff like free speech, that is problematic and I think it becomes more sensitive here because it does touch the money system, um, more so than, you know, twitter turning off somebody’s handle,

[0:23:15 Speaker 0] right? So you could get in a situation where forget about trump or a bad view. Imagine somebody has a really good view. We have a finally a candidate that’s a libertarian that has some support in the population. But then, you know, the folks that run the bank said, no, no, no, no, we’re not gonna let you get any money any donations, even though you have popular support, but we don’t like your views. That would be really bad. Right? Uh, even would you think they have the Right? So, Yeah, no, that’s okay. That’s their if their platform, they’re the ones managing the transmission of money and yeah, go figure out a way to try to transfer the money another source, you know? Um, that stuff. Right.

[0:23:52 Speaker 1] Well, ultimately there are going to be some standards for these things and either the standards are going to be that whatever platforms are available, whether it’s transferring ideas or transferring money, right? Uh, decided to take a stand point of neutrality on them or they’re going to not, in which case, um, Either people are going to be closed out of being able to do this or they’re going to have to develop alternative networks. And there are alternative networks for transfer money. It’s just smaller and a lot more inconvenient and a lot worse. Right. Um, but as a society I think, yeah, I would like to see these things be either more neutral in what the central ones promote or more decentralized. There are lots of different companies and we can try to support that, I think, by who we patronize in, so far as we can and what views we support. But if we have the government control what the standards are, that’s the ultimate centralization. That doesn’t allow for dissenting views and dissenting opinions as to what what views ought to be permissible and what shouldn’t or what standards should be used to decide who is and who isn’t allowed to transfer things. And this isn’t merely theoretical if we imagine some good view, because this is the way that they can’t get its word across because of bad policies. This was the case for abolitionism, right? Abolitionism was a radical of slavery was a radical viewpoint at its time, abolitionist literature was not allowed to be put through the Post Office at various times. Likewise, for pro contraceptive literature, and we could say, you know, now, yeah, we wish the Post Office would carry everything and it does and bully for the post Office. But I’m believe for Fedex and other companies that do it, but if it’s in the hands of private companies and the main ones make what we think are the wrong decisions on this. It’s possible, however difficult to circumvent them and possible without going outside the law. But when it’s the government that controls it, I don’t think it’s possible to go outside, and we have a little bit difference. There’s some difference here because and the examples you gave, the government is restricting the free speech here. It’s large private enterprise restricting it. So you don’t think the government has any role whatsoever in keeping very large private institutions from restricting that free speech. So, what I think is the same is whether it’s government or the private individuals that are setting the policies and I think what the government needs to do is free us to set our own policies. And one way we might do that is through having large companies that do it. So I don’t think the issue is restricting being more or less permissive about what speech can be supported or travel over which media. I think it’s the fundamental issue is is that decision made politically by government actors? Or is it made economically by voluntary transactions among people, creating companies and dealing with companies large and small.

[0:26:47 Speaker 0] I view

[0:26:48 Speaker 1] it more as adhering to First Amendment rights and pointing to the Constitution, which I hope we all can agree to, and whether it’s private or government uh taking actions that support it,

[0:27:01 Speaker 0] and, uh, First

[0:27:02 Speaker 1] Amendment about what the like, you can’t violate the First Amendment right? Even if you want to, it’s not about what you can do. And that’s true if you’re amazon or wal mart the same.

[0:27:13 Speaker 0] But that’s what makes the point interesting, right? Because I am absolutely free to violate the free the First Amendment in my private store, right? In my store. If you walk into my store and not allowed to say what you want, that’s that’s that’s absolutely true, right?

[0:27:28 Speaker 1] Is that a violation of

[0:27:30 Speaker 0] the First Amendment? It was

[0:27:32 Speaker 1] protecting, you

[0:27:33 Speaker 0] know, you’re not exactly you’re not protected. The First Amendment does not apply to a private to a job. So people say that a lot of times like, oh, I was fired from my job for giving my opinions like, you don’t you don’t have the right to your opinion in your job. That’s not. We here at the university, we have this added protection. We are courts have decided to extend the First Amendment to us, essentially. Right? Again, that was not necessarily the case at first, but courts decided on that, that we are protected by the First Amendment because of the nature of our job. Right? And I think that’s the discussion we’re having is that I don’t think we all agree would agree that that, you know, if you work at Mcdonald’s, you do not have the First Amendment rights associated with you. Um, but then we’re talking about companies that operate in a space that has this sort of public good associated with it, whether it’s transfer money, whether it’s trusting information and maybe they are too big and their monopolistic in some ways, which then one can make a reasonable argument that the First Amendment protections applies

[0:28:30 Speaker 1] to that space

[0:28:31 Speaker 0] as well. And there’s a difference

[0:28:32 Speaker 1] between being an employee and not being able to exert your First minute rights and a business model that’s built up about being intermediary of communicating your views, Right? So that’s their business model, right speaking.

[0:28:47 Speaker 0] And speaking of public goods, uh, we can obviously keep talking about this, but, uh, I wanted to make sure that we got in the our discussion on the the energy crisis in. So what was the

[0:29:05 Speaker 1] trends? Could I just notice a difference in how we’re thinking about this? Because um, Carlos and and scott, you’re both thinking about it? Where does the First Amendment apply? Or where do First Amendment protections apply? And they apply in this case, but not that case, or to this person, but not to that person? Um, I think of it somewhat different. I think that First Amendment protections apply everywhere, I mean everywhere within the country. But the question is, what do, what do they imply for this case? So I think the Mcdonald’s worker and the Mcdonald’s both have full First Amendment protection, but what that protection is against is the government specifying what can be said and what deals can be made about what can be said. And so when the Mcdonald’s fire somebody for cursing on a customer or whatever he might do, that would be against. Uh, one might think of as against his First Amendment right? I think of that as an exercise of the First Amendment, uh, that that that the Mcdonald’s has the freedom to set that policy, that he has the freedom to contract for a job under those terms terms that, you know, where he gives up, um, uh, he agrees to say certain things and not others in this concept. All of that I see is what’s made possible with the First Amendment.

[0:30:19 Speaker 0] So there are two

[0:30:20 Speaker 1] thinking about the amendments role here. I

[0:30:22 Speaker 0] would separate that because we explicitly having a constitutional freedom of contract, which is which is separate from from from the way the way where the First Man would have says, which is explicit about that the government shall not right interviewing your ability to communicate ideas, uh religious ideas and so

[0:30:39 Speaker 1] on, contracting over speech though right? Like when we agree, um, we it’s because we each have freedom of speech and then have freedom of contract that we can get into. We can contract to speak about various things and not about other things. And I think what makes a difference here in this context is that these enterprises have landed themselves to give voices to facilitate this. And we’ve come to expect it. And whether or not we should have expected it, we did. And now they took it away. It turned everything upside down. And now we’re having this discussion. So there’s a question of whether reliance interests, who are something having become necessity of life are perceived as a necessity of life changes that which brings us to energy. I think, really,

[0:31:24 Speaker 0] really, that was a beautiful transition. Thanks for keeping us. We wanna we wanna talk a little bit about a few things that we, uh, got to discuss since the energy crisis. Well, let’s talk about what the crisis was. Right. We have this blackout in texas for a number of days due to, uh, once in a century winter storm that created temperatures super cold temperatures across the state of texas. And our infrastructure wasn’t prepared for that in a way that not enough generation was able to be there at a time where there’s a lot of demand for power. Uh and you know, we got to the big loss of loss of property, loss of life associated with this black House

[0:32:06 Speaker 1] less than many days

[0:32:07 Speaker 0] across across the state in some places, you know, up to a week. Um So we had a few discussions, one of them were having some people that work on the regulator side and understand those markets, the energy markets in texas in particular, but also all the way to folks that just think more um more generically about the energy business and thinking about ways in which we’ve been treating energy in the past in the past few years. Um uh with the focus on renewal renewables is a way to to to deal with with the vast amounts of carbon dioxide being emitted the atmosphere so on and so forth. Anyway, So I, I learned a bunch of from those discussions. I think I encourage anybody to watch some of those discussions that we have in our Youtube channel. Um, but I’ll start, I’ll start by just pointing out one thing that to me was, was very salient throughout the discussions that as soon as you have a crisis,

[0:33:01 Speaker 1] there’s this

[0:33:01 Speaker 0] notion that there’s somebody to be blamed. That there is a problem to be fixed. And, and uh, somebody that studies the decision making and studies uncertainty. Um, there’s absolutely eggs. Nt perhaps we did everything right. And then something really bad happened because, you know, it was either a very small probability event, something that we wouldn’t necessarily want to insure against and it’s totally fine. Right? You know, bad things happen and we’re not going to ensure ourselves against everything. So that’s the where I started thinking about this problem. Is that a problem here? Or we just saw something that is really dramatically outside of the bounds of what we can expect and therefore nothing can be done about it. That’s that’s what it is. We’re all going to pay a price for that really low probability event. Or is there something that eggs. Nt we could have seen that it had to be done had to be done differently. So I don’t know. I don’t know where falling that yet. But that’s that’s that’s the one thing that I’m still thinking about what it is. We need to do anything or or our system is actually pretty decent as it is and just move forward and not worry about

[0:34:06 Speaker 1] it. So I think

[0:34:08 Speaker 0] that

[0:34:09 Speaker 1] the events that the center put on really helped educate me in terms of arriving at the conclusion that this was an extreme event and they’re probably things that could be done to make the less the next event of this nature less problematic. But it was more of an extreme event than it was any particular policy or system that was in place. It was a learning event. It was in fact the most extreme weather event we’ve had and probably 100 years here. So why should you be surprised that something happened out of the ordinary? And it speaks a lot economically to how much insurance do you want to have to protect against bad events? If you want, low cost energy and you don’t want to pay for insurance, then you better be prepared to deal with the consequences of something like this. And that calculus may end up changing. But there are two things that I found particularly interesting about this and one is to your point, Carlos, the immediate and extreme pressure put on the commissioners and the market for what they did wrong before any investigation was done. And all of the resignations of the people who knew the situation vest, right? So basically you purged anybody who knew how things worked and then you have nobody left at the top. And the irony is that the only people left are the legislators

[0:35:26 Speaker 0] who are complaining or anything

[0:35:28 Speaker 1] about it. You know, anything about it,

[0:35:29 Speaker 0] right? So

[0:35:30 Speaker 1] I think that is the knee jerk reaction that often happens, particularly in government when there’s a problem and you want somebody’s hedge role. And I think that was particularly thoughtful and I feel for all the board members, I don’t think anyone, any one of them are evil or bad people. In fact, Peter Crampton is a world renowned economist who was at the University of Maryland and he’s the guy when I was at the sec, we frequently consulted on how to how to deal with equity market structure issues, right? And there’s like two people or three people in the world that can do what he does and now we want him off the boards. He doesn’t live in texas because he doesn’t have skin in the game. Like that’s just kind of, you know, an outcome that, you know, is not thoughtful. The other thing that I find really interesting about this episode is that people are criticizing that it was the market in terms of not working here, that we shouldn’t have a market function. In fact, I think based on what I’ve learned so far is that the failure was actually a human failure, not a market failure. You had three commissioners decided there was no power coming and they flip the switch saying we’re gonna make it $9 per kill, a megawatt