Matt (00:00.952)
Hello and welcome to the Latter-day Lens podcast. I'm your host, Matt, and with me today is Sean and Levi. Welcome, guys.

Levi (00:09.205)
Hey!

Shawn (00:09.384)
Hey, hey!

Matt (00:11.158)
Levi, does it feel like it's been a long time since you were with us Levi? Does it feel like like a month maybe? Yeah. Last podcast was just Sean and I. Mono a mono because we had to make up and I hope that listeners sense the love that we have for each other and how we're feeling so much better about each other. I'll open the mailbag. So one listener wrote, one of the abundance advocates you mentioned, Yanni.

Levi (00:14.62)
ages, ages and ages. Yeah, probably a month, right? I missed you guys.

Matt (00:39.654)
This person said Yanni Applebaum. I think it's Yuni? I don't know. We'll just say Mr. or Mrs. Applebaum. I don't know what the gender of this person. Makes a compelling case that it is not as easy to move as Sean would think. The thing that once made America distinctive, the thing that when people came over here from Europe, they noticed right away was that Americans tended to move a lot. In the 19th century, maybe one out of three Americans moved every year.

There'd be a moving day in each city where a third to half of the city would pick up and swap houses in a single afternoon. All of the leases ran out at the same time and everybody was hoping to move up and find something a little bit better. As late as 1970, it was one out of five Americans moving each year. And now it's one in 13 moving each year. So perhaps Sean, there's not the kind of mobility that you think where you say, if you don't like it, you can just move.

Shawn (01:30.324)
Matt.

Matt, when we were in the Glenwood Apartments after our mission in Provo, living together, struggling, I remember in our bedroom, you had a big poster up on the wall of this big, beautiful home, and it said, I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it. Right? Right, remember that? And you just, you looked at it every day and said, Sandra and I one day will live in this place, right? Beautiful big house.

Matt (01:47.672)
Yeah, that's true, yes.

Matt (01:54.156)
Wait, it was a house?

Are you serious? I don't think we had a house. I don't think I dreamed about a house.

Shawn (01:58.996)
HA HA!

Levi (01:59.927)
With a Ferrari up front? You don't remember that?

Shawn (02:02.58)
Yeah, big house of Ferrari, a big poster up on your...

Matt (02:05.482)
Okay, Sean's lying now. For a minute I was like, Sean sometimes remembers things I don't remember, but this is 100 % not true.

Levi (02:12.297)
No, but here's legitimately true. I move into the freshmen dorms at BYU and my roommate puts up one poster and it's a picture of money and it says my first million. 100 % true. I don't know. don't know. We'll have to look him up maybe.

Shawn (02:21.896)
What the heck? Did he get there? Did he get there? It's been 20 years or so. You're not a good friend Levi, if you didn't support that dream of your friend and follow up.

Matt (02:24.834)
Hahaha

Matt (02:32.982)
his first million dollars. But it is true, Sean, it's, people can't just pick up and move if they don't like the situation that they're in.

Levi (02:34.935)
first million.

Shawn (02:38.292)
Well, being easy to move is one thing. Matt, you've moved plenty of times. You know it's not easy. I'd never claim it as being easy to do it, but of course there's, look, we're here to learn to become stewards, right? God sent us here to become stewards over big things and little things. Of course, if I'm unhappy in a situation, a neighborhood, a home, a job, of course we want the human spirit to have the...

the oomph to get up and move and change that situation. Of course we want that. No, we shouldn't say it's too hard to move. No, get out of your slum. Get out of your hard situation. Improve your life.

Matt (03:11.726)
But.

Matt (03:15.278)
Yeah, but Sean, if we're talking about something like abortion, right? And a woman says, or her physician says, you need to have an abortion in order to save your life. And she says, well, I live in Tennessee and I can't do that. It's against the law where I happen to live. You're gonna tell her she should move to another state just so she can have access to healthcare that she didn't anticipate needing? We could just say, don't trample on her rights.

Shawn (03:37.78)
I'm Naz-

I'm not saying that, yeah, I'm saying that absolutely. live in a situation where, I live in California. There's lots and lots here that I think is absolutely ridiculous. Like it is so sad to go down, even in San Diego, that's more. Oh, you guys just.

Levi (03:53.719)
like sunshine.

Matt (03:56.142)
Beaches. Diversity of food.

Levi (03:57.131)
Beaches, hate that stuff. Cool music. Yeah, tacos. Who needs tacos? Get these out of here.

Shawn (04:02.12)
Yeah. Yeah, but you go downtown LA and man, it's not, I mean, go to San Francisco. No, it's not lovely. It is not lovely. No, they're disgusting. It's really, really bad. And if I don't like it, yeah, I have to make big sacrifices to get to a place where I can get the things that I want. And that's the beautiful thing about federalism is some people look at California and go, this is paradise. This is perfect. Obviously you too think it's the greatest thing on earth.

Matt (04:02.894)
You

Matt (04:10.646)
It's lovely! It's lovely! I love both of those places.

Matt (04:31.841)
I know, I love it there.

Shawn (04:32.517)
If I, but if I get too upset by it, it would be a hardship for me to move to Idaho so that I could do whatever I want, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I can do it because if it's in my self interest, I'm going to figure out how to do it. And that's good for me.

Matt (04:39.774)
Yes it would. Yes it would. Yeah. I don't see.

Matt (04:47.886)
There's a woman in our ward who moved to Idaho from California and she was like giving a talk introducing herself and she basically apologized to the ward for being from California. I'm like, calm down, we don't hate you. But apparently she feels the hate from a lot of people in Idaho, like California is not welcome in Idaho.

Shawn (04:57.928)
Yeah.

Shawn (05:06.868)
That's right, I've heard that a lot.

Levi (05:08.331)
I thought we were going to talk about why why it is the people don't move anymore, which I like I was thinking about that for myself is like, well, first of all, moving sucks. I don't like packing up all my stuff like who needs that. Right. But also it's expensive. Right. Like I've got to pay real estate agents on both ends. And that that's a lot. Right. And I was wondering with these statistics how much the real estate industry has to do with people not moving anymore, because now that I got to pay, you

Matt (05:25.016)
Yes.

Yes.

Levi (05:38.103)
6 % of the price of my house every time I move. That's a lot right to do that every third year. That'd be very expensive.

Matt (05:44.832)
Now I have to read the book that, you know, I didn't want to read and Mr. or Mrs. Applebaum's book about why people don't move. Is it Mr. Applebaum?

Levi (05:52.063)
Mr. Yeah, he's a I just looked him up. He's senior editor for politics at the Atlantic.

Matt (05:58.862)
Oh, okay, well now I'm going to completely dismiss everything he has to say. Because, Sean, you don't know about the Atlantic, but if you did, you would dismiss everything.

Shawn (06:03.538)
Why?

Uh-uh.

Levi (06:10.165)
Okay, Matt, I got beef with the Atlantic too. What's going on over there? Yeah. They just published an interview with Mitch McConnell. I was like, wow, do we really need to hear more from Mitch McConnell? Okay.

Matt (06:14.026)
Yeah, yeah.

Matt (06:20.93)
Hahahaha

Shawn (06:21.78)
hahahaha

Matt (06:23.852)
All right, we're going to move to the next topic because it'll take more time. There is a listener and I'm grateful to this listener for pointing out that I was right before the election. This listener wrote, episode 91 recorded before the election, one of Matt's reasons for supporting Harris was that Trump will not support Ukraine. This was based on Trump's statements during the election season, as well as his actions during his first term using Ukraine as a pawn to help him get reelected. Sean and Sam responded by ridiculing Matt's position.

And Sam even stated that Trump would tow the line and could support you and would support Ukraine better than Biden did. And Sean said, Matt, if you're right, I don't think you are, but if you're right, I'll be the first one to be like, dude, impeach this guy, get this guy out. And then this listener gives like a whole bunch of examples of ways that Trump is not supporting Ukraine right now. And so then this person says, since Sam is no longer available to answer for this, Sean will have to do it on his own.

I look forward to him calling for Trump's impeachment as he promised he would.

Shawn (07:27.912)
I have no problem criticizing this immoral narcissist fool. I have no problem. didn't vote for him. I told you I wanted Nancy. What's her name? Nancy? No, no, no. What was her name?

Matt (07:37.207)
Lieberman.

I don't know who you, Jorgensen, Joe Jorgensen?

Levi (07:40.759)
Hello, C.

Shawn (07:43.804)
No, the Republican one. They were all for Ukraine.

Matt (07:46.286)
sorry, you're talking about Nikki Haley.

Shawn (07:49.256)
Nikki Haley. Thank you. wanted Nikki Haley. I felt like she was a strong leader. I felt like she was a strong woman who is going to be represent our interests in Eastern Europe perfectly. Yeah. So I have no problem criticizing them.

Matt (07:59.66)
And you want Trump to be impeached now?

Shawn (08:03.348)
Well no, he has to, no, not yet. When he does something that's worthy of impeachment, then impeach him.

Matt (08:08.722)
If he breaks the law, right, Sean? Not when. We don't know that he's going to.

Shawn (08:12.67)
Bring it. Bring it. Bring it. Do it. Bring it. I don't care. Do it. Impeach him if you'd like.

Levi (08:14.871)
But I think they just I think the listeners decided chapter and verse where you said if let's see if Trump does not support Ukraine then You'll be the first to be like dude impeach this guy

Shawn (08:29.616)
I didn't actually say those words, don't think, but hats off to the listener. If he actually went back and quote, it's a quote.

Levi (08:31.817)
OK. OK.

Matt (08:34.766)
100%. It's a quote from episode 91.

Shawn (08:38.438)
Yeah, you verified it, Matt. I bet you took the time to verify that.

Levi (08:39.403)
I'm also just saying that Sam's welcome to write in. So there's no reason, Sam, that you have to be excluded from this discussion. Come on, Sam.

Shawn (08:46.946)
That's a great, great point.

Matt (08:47.502)
We will let Sam. This is what I want to say about Ukraine. It's not just about Ukraine. think that the problem is that Trump is not who people thought Trump was going to be. clearly, Americans thought that Trump was going to come in and talk big, but in the end he would support peace and democracy around the world.

Shawn (09:04.072)
What?

Matt (09:16.522)
And it's clear that that's not who Trump is, right? Because if that's who you are, you don't spend your televised address to Congress saying, let's invade Greenland. Let's make Canada the 51st state. Let's take the Panama Canal back. it's, so Trump, I think is just not who people thought he was going to be as president. He's clearly more interested in American domination. He's more like Putin than he is like, Zelensky, right?

Shawn (09:41.044)
You know what the most upsetting thing to me is about all this, Matt Levi, I've found it is so easy to go online and find, for example, like a year and a half ago, this Lindsey Graham, a Republican, what is he from? And man, there was, he, he was walking in the streets of Kiev with this reporter and the reporter says, Hey, should we be supporting this, this, you Ukraine? And he went off with this sermon. It was beautiful. He was talking about how, look, if we don't stand by our

Levi (09:54.099)
Mm-hmm. And Marco Rubio, yeah.

Matt (09:54.284)
Yeah, Senator from South Carolina.

Shawn (10:11.294)
commitments and our partners and our democratic, you know, countries that are fighting for democracy. goes off and off and off and says, we will always, always support Ukraine. This is a, and then this hypocrite, hypocrite re just, just bounces like what a week ago and is just a lackey to Trump and just jumps on his side for political reasons. Man, if you listen to John McCain talk about Ukraine, John McCain was a perfect Republican. I've just found video after video of these.

Matt (10:36.77)
well.

Shawn (10:38.76)
fools, these fool Republicans abandoning their commitments to what is clearly America's self-interest.

Matt (10:45.09)
Well, so big picture, the solution isn't to complain about Trump or to get rid of Trump. It's to ask the Republicans in Congress to do the things they're already inclined to do. Most Republican senators have said in the past that they would like to support Ukraine. Donald Trump doesn't have unilateral power to do whatever he wants to do in Ukraine. Sure, he's decided to not share intelligence with Ukraine. He's decided to not give them funding, but he can't do that if Congress passes laws to give money to Ukraine.

Shawn (10:54.782)
Nice.

Matt (11:14.444)
If Congress passes a bill saying that we have to share intelligence with Ukraine, then President Trump can't stop that. He could veto it. And if they override his veto, then there would, so what I'm saying is people forget that there's a separation of powers in the United States. So the reason I say Trump isn't who we thought he was going to be is so that people recognize like, stop focusing your attention on Trump and what Trump should or shouldn't do and focus your attention on members of Congress and what they should or shouldn't do. Because the real problem in America right now is that the Senate,

Shawn (11:27.572)
Mmm, I love that.

Shawn (11:41.095)
Excellent.

Matt (11:44.152)
has kind of abdicated its authority to the president at the moment, and they need to reassert themselves and represent their constituents.

Shawn (11:51.22)
Well, Levi, there's our political scientist coming in with some useful information. I love it, Matt.

Levi (11:54.975)
I loved it too. And Nikki Haley actually is one Republican who I think has been pretty true to this, has called Trump out and has said, this is not okay. And I wish that she had a louder voice. I wish there were more Republicans joining in on this. Yeah.

Matt (12:11.918)
If we want that, Republicans especially, all you have to do is write to your member of Congress and tell them that you feel that way. And members of Congress are very responsive to their constituents, especially constituents of their own party. So if you're a Republican telling your Republican in Congress that you're not pleased with what they're doing, they're going to listen to you much more than Trump is going to listen to you.

Shawn (12:35.41)
Nice.

Matt (12:36.898)
Alright, well that's the mailbag, so Levi, you're up first with the Thought Provoker this week.

Levi (12:41.899)
Nice, okay, so I wanted to talk about, probably because we have to, talk about Doge for a minute. And the thing that I see coming out from Doge is, give me just second.

Matt (12:56.472)
does DOGE stand for Levi? that that cryptocurrency with the dog? Department of Government Efficiency.

Levi (12:59.499)
Yeah, I think that's the that's the dog meme, right? yeah, so, so there was recently a Freedom of Information Act requests for Doge and they have dodged it and stonewalled it and sort of in general, they've said we're not we're not obligated to obey this, to obey this request for information. And in fact,

Then Trump moved Doge. Doge used to be in the office of management and budget. And he's since moved it and said it's an independent entity in order to shield it from these FOIA requests. this is worrisome to me. The places that journalists have tried to independently verify Doge's various claims, they're failing hilariously. It's really ridiculous that the amount of

nonsense that's up on their website. anyway, so I'm wondering, is this just an attempt to kind of overwhelm the American public with bad information? Is this just a big gish gallop? Or is this something else? And is a ton of bad information better than than a smaller amount of good information? Is this good for transparency or not?

Shawn (14:18.77)
Levi, if we were in the same room, I would have Matt help me pin you to the ground and write GISH GALLOP on your forehead with a marker and make you walk around for at least a week.

Matt (14:24.814)
You

Levi (14:27.575)
Okay Do we need kishgallup needs some explanation? Is that right? Yeah, so kishgallup is where you you're trying to convince someone of something and you you Overwhelm them with a lot of terrible information. You just say you give them a lot of really bad arguments But you give dozens of these bad arguments. You see this online you see you'll see these big lists that say here's all the bad things that Trump has done and there's like a list of 40 things and

Matt (14:30.574)
We always learn new words from Levi.

Levi (14:57.045)
You research one or two of them and you realize, wait, this is nonsense. This is not a good argument. But the sheer number of arguments tends to be overwhelming for people. And people will read this big list and they'll be convinced by it. Not because they're good arguments, but because there are a lot of them. That's a Gishgala.

Shawn (15:10.878)
So Levi, is your question, is it about Doge specifically or is it about this flooding the zone strategy, this gitch gallop strategy? Is your question about Doge or about the strategy that is being used by the Trump administration clearly?

Levi (15:26.175)
Yeah, I guess my question is, what are we getting? How do we assess Doge? Is Doge doing a good thing for us or a not good thing for us? And actually, I wanted to focus a little bit less on what they're doing for government spending. In the end, I don't really believe they'll do anything for government spending, but what they're doing for the information ecosystem, right? Are they providing us more insight into government or less?

Matt (15:54.734)
Yeah, so I'm not a huge fan of Vivek Ramaswamy. I kind of think of him as a sellout, but I actually saw him on a podcast talking about Doge because originally Vivek Ramaswamy was a part of this whole Doge thing. And then he announced that he was leaving and now he's like teasing some big other announcement he has going forward. But I thought what he said was actually very insightful.

Shawn (15:54.878)
Matt, Matt, want to start?

Matt (16:20.972)
Vivek, his whole purpose in being a part of Doge was because he wanted to change the functioning of the executive branch and he really wanted to be disruptive in the way that things in the executive branch work. And that's something that I study quite a lot. And so I was actually quite afraid of what they were going to do because I had kind of read these plans. But what Vivek said was Elon Musk had a completely different goal. Elon Musk's goal was all about gathering data and using tech.

and Vivek didn't go into details on this, even when they pressed him, he wouldn't say more of what it was, but Elon's purpose was all about collecting data and using tech somehow in government. And Vivek didn't want to be a part of that because it was no longer about reforming government or reforming the executive branch in the way that Ramaswamy thought that it should be done. And I think that that's actually what I've seen from Doge so far. It does very little in terms of like,

making the government more efficient, but does a lot in terms of helping Elon Musk and his group of people that work with him to understand the precision of like how payments are made, who gets what payments, how all of that is done, and that they're just collecting a lot of data on individuals. And I personally think that Elon Musk's interest in that is not altruistic. And so I don't think that Doge is really about trying to make government more efficient.

And it's not even about cutting all the jobs that they've been cutting. It's really about Elon Musk wants access to this data and he plans to do something with that data.

Shawn (17:56.264)
hehe

Matt (17:57.452)
That's what Vivek Gramaswamy made it sound like.

Shawn (18:00.5)
I thought you didn't like Vivacrisis.

Matt (18:01.964)
I don't, but he was in the room when these discussions were happening and he made a decision to not be a part of it because he could see the direction it was going, which was different than where he wanted it to be.

Shawn (18:12.286)
So you do like now you do like him. okay. I'm just saying. When he agreed when he agrees with you.

Matt (18:14.132)
No, I don't like him. I'm just saying he has

Levi (18:16.727)
I don't like him. just inherently trust the things that he says on a random podcast. Is that, is that what we should read from this map?

Matt (18:21.858)
I'm not saying that I, I'm not saying that I'm saying that it makes sense, right? Cause otherwise it didn't make a lot of sense to me why he's in and then he's out and now he's doing some other thing. And, and honestly, Elon Musk has no idea how the federal government works. And it's very clear that Vivek Ramaswamy knows exactly how it works. And so it's like, when you, when that guy leaves the team, you're no longer interested in doing the things that he was there to do. Right?

Shawn (18:46.74)
Matt, I think maybe you just think as the government as your club because you're a political scientist and any attack on your club is painful. so, no, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

Matt (18:56.408)
Sean, do you know the first time they attacked my club was like 1938, the Executive Branch Reorganization Act. It's a hundred years that elected officials have said, we're going to come in and we're going to fix the executive branch and make it more responsive to the American public. Every single president since FDR has said the same thing.

Shawn (19:10.004)
Okay, my-

Okay, my lame joke that didn't land, you just made it worse by just digging deeper with your government gobbledygook.

Matt (19:16.391)
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Levi (19:18.967)
Wait, but also I have to explain Gish Gallup and Matt doesn't have to explain the 1938 Executive Readjustment Act or whatever. What's this double standard here, you guys?

Matt (19:24.11)
You

I didn't talk about the Brownlow Commission. I just started with them.

Levi (19:31.66)
Yeah, yeah, what would a podcast be without a discussion of the Brownlow Commission everybody's doing

Shawn (19:33.236)
You

Matt (19:38.176)
It's like a hundred years old, but yeah, it reorganized it. It created when Levi was talking about how Elon Musk was put within the executive office of the president so it could shield him from freedom of information act requests and then moved around the 1938 act kind of created this opportunity for presidents to have people who worked in the white house who were shielded from public scrutiny about things that happen in the white house.

Shawn (19:38.44)
Will it?

Shawn (20:04.82)
Well, let me be a counter argument a little bit, but I would say Levi, they certainly should be honest, accurate, transparent. And in fact, me, who is a big fan of Doge, I would even say if they keep going in that direction, I'm willing to jump on the other side and say, no, don't look government needs to be transparent. They need to disclose. And if you fight against that, I'm going to go against you. But the idea of auditing government agencies to me is a really, really absolutely wonderful.

function that should always exist like government agencies eternally self perpetuate themselves whether they're functional or not whether they're useful or not like once you

Matt (20:43.0)
But Sean, you agree Sean that most of Elon Musk's money comes from federal grants, from the federal government, that he gets a lot of his wealth, that he, let's just say it this way, that his companies are dependent on federal contracts.

Shawn (20:58.894)
Some of them are, yeah.

Matt (21:00.406)
So then would it make you uncomfortable if a person who's getting billions of dollars in federal contracts has access to information about where every single federal dollar is spent that his competitors don't have? And would that make you question whether or not maybe, like if it's transparency that you want, then why not require him to be transparent?

Shawn (21:16.808)
But you're not arguing.

Shawn (21:22.036)
But that's, but Levi's question is about Doge. You're just arguing, you're not arguing that about Doge. You're just saying the wrong person is in charge of Doge.

Matt (21:30.67)
I'm saying that Doge isn't about government efficiency. Doge is about Elon Musk. Like, Elon Musk spent how many hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get Trump elected? Doge is about repaying him for all of that money that he spent. Because when he spends this money to get Trump elected, and what does he want? He wants to be in charge of Doge. And what does he care about with Doge? Access to the finances and personal information of taxpayers.

Shawn (21:54.93)
I don't know if you're gonna look, you can judge that if you want. don't, mean, I judge every government employee, including Elon Musk, Matt, you know me, I don't like, I'm a libertarian. don't trust any of these government employees. I think they're all doing what you just accused Elon Musk of doing. They're doing it for personal gain, most of them. They're doing it for insider trading, they're doing it to profit. And there's some, what?

Levi (22:14.985)
Really? Most government employees you think are are self-dealing.

Shawn (22:18.546)
Sorry, let me revise that. Thank you, Levi, let me revise that. And we are gonna talk about that in the next topic. No, Musk, not most government employees, but I think most empower, those who are in power, even elected employees. I think, yeah, of course, what's the self-interest? And again, I come from a perspective of kind of a libertarian view, which does say you have to seek your self-interest and that's okay. But they are seeking self-interest under the guise of I'm a public servant. That's what Elon Musk is doing, Matt. I'm a public servant, I'm here doing the good.

But just like Dianne Feinstein and Bill, I mean, take your list of any, any politician.

Matt (22:53.646)
Joe Biden, Joe Biden was altruistic. He gave 50 years of his life to America because he loves us. And never once did he think about himself. Never once did he think about his own family, except for the very, very end.

Shawn (22:59.974)
I can't see. So that's so the point is, it's no different. Elon Musk is no different than any other politician. say Levi not government employee, but politician. Is that safer?

Levi (23:13.375)
Yeah, but I would say that Elon Musk is very different from the people that he is replacing. Right? One of the things that I object to about Doge is this implication that there was nobody watching out for government efficiency before this. And I think that when Doge puts out their big wall of receipts and, you know, half or more of them turned out to be ridiculous is a pretty good indication that

Elon doesn't really know what he's doing, right? That he stepped in here and he thought, well, obviously this isn't really a job. I can obviously do it right away. And it turns out there were inspector generals and there are all kinds of people that are looking out for efficiency in the federal budget. And Elon Musk steps in and says, y'all are a bunch of yokels. I'm going to clean up this town. And I really have an objection to that because I do think that there are lots of people in the federal government that are

pretty sincere people and working to make things better. And the people that Elon is replacing, I feel like are those people, those inspector generals that he pushed out? Yeah, they're good people. They're not Dianne Feinstein.

Matt (24:22.51)
Hey, that's a great transition into my topic. So the Washington Post did a deep dive into employment data to see if federal government employees are actually lazier than everybody else. And what they found is that government employees on average work longer hours and get paid less than their private sector counterparts. They even work more hours each week than self-employed individuals. So given the set of facts,

Shawn (24:26.236)
It is actually, yeah.

Matt (24:49.294)
Should each of our listeners who thinks government employees are lazy repent of their unrighteous judgment of others?

Shawn (24:55.892)
You're targeting any one of us with that, Matt?

Matt (25:00.726)
No, no, no, I didn't say our hosts, our listeners. Yeah, I know that I guarantee we have listeners that believe that government employees are lazy and the data just says that's not true. So is it unrighteous judgment to just say, hey, these people are lazy and they deserve to be fired.

Shawn (25:02.834)
Hahaha!

Levi (25:03.248)
Listeners, listeners out there, this is your call.

Shawn (25:09.3)
So Matt.

Okay, so Matt.

So Matt, we've reached a really interesting and important pinnacle in our podcast here. have to call, I have to require that we qualify what we call data before I answer this question, because it often happens that you bring what you call data or truth and it's based on a survey. And then I have to go and research that survey and I have to waste a bunch of time going, okay, let me give you the background of this government funded survey.

Matt (25:28.814)
You

Shawn (25:45.086)
that ask government employees whether they are lazy or not. Okay? So I have...

Matt (25:49.134)
It doesn't ask them if they're lazy. It asks them how many hours they work and ask them how much they earn. And it's not, it's the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Sean. They're using the data of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is not.

Shawn (25:58.782)
That's right.

asking if government employees are late. Anyway, I don't want to waste the time. So let me, can we settle on this? When one of us brings a survey, we call it data to prove someone's point. And then I viscerally react with, that's not data, that's not true. How about we meet in the middle? Can we agree that maybe it's half right or half correct what their findings are? I tried, I tried, I tried.

Matt (26:19.854)
No, we can't do that, Sean. Okay, okay Sean, is the census, the US Census, is that data?

Shawn (26:31.742)
Sure, maybe the census is, but a survey run by the US census is not.

Matt (26:32.654)
The US Census is

How do they collect the census data, Sean? It's a survey. They go door to door and ask people questions. How many people live here? What is your race? All of our government statistics are based on surveys. The national crime statistics, the...

Shawn (26:45.938)
fine. Then if it's a survey, gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have skepticism in it. That's fine.

Shawn (26:54.9)
then I think I believe in that they're 50 % accurate. That's what I believe.

Matt (26:59.616)
man. But this is like all we have is terms like government data is like the Bureau of Labor Statistics is how we measure. Okay, so there.

Shawn (27:07.668)
But science isn't perfect. Science isn't truth all the time. I I did science 100 % perfect all the time just because someone says, I did a survey. Now this is absolute fact and truth. Or is it just a good way to get half the truth out? A basis to start with.

Levi (27:17.535)
Okay.

My science is perfect. No, bet. No, Sean's Sean's right. Yeah. I think, I think that it is worth looking at the looking at what kind of a survey was done and, you know, self-reported values are not as reliable as others. But, but, but I think it's, but I think the burden of proof ought to be on the people that say government employees are lazy freeloaders. Like I'm like, okay, well, let's see that data.

Shawn (27:33.876)
You

Matt (27:36.623)
jeez. Okay, listen.

Shawn (27:46.388)
Okay, okay, then me answer you. Okay, I'm gonna assume that I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that the data is correct. Let's just say that, okay? But then let me answer. The argument is not I've never said that government employees are lazy. I've never said that people are lazy. Never have I said that. I think the opposite. No, no, I'm answering. No, no, no, I know you're not. I'm answering the survey and the report that this, by the way,

Matt (27:47.074)
Hahaha

You

OK. OK.

Matt (28:02.072)
I'm not attacking you! I'm not coming after you!

Matt (28:08.466)
okay.

Shawn (28:13.598)
This was a very, very biased report from these guys. Yes, watched Matt, I watched the entire thing and it was pretty pathetic. But let's assume that they're all right. My argument has never been that they're lazy, never. Instead, argue that, nope, not at all. I wouldn't say that. I mean, I did say that once, didn't I?

Matt (28:16.974)
from the Washington Post? How dare you, Sean? How dare you, Sean?

Matt (28:34.934)
Incompetent?

Matt (28:39.498)
I don't know, I'm just throwing out words that our listeners might have chosen other than lazy.

Shawn (28:43.816)
Here's the nature, here's my argument, the nature of a bureaucracy, a government bureaucracy, shut up Levi. The argument that I, I'm sorry I'm gonna bring in the invisible hand just cause you love it so much, Matt. The argument that without the.

Levi (28:46.699)
Melodorus.

Matt (28:51.31)
You

Matt (28:59.586)
That's fine.

Levi (29:01.097)
Is the invisible hand in the room with us now, Sean?

Matt (29:03.438)
It will be once Sean, once you invoke the invisible hand, it guides the discussion.

Shawn (29:03.86)
that's a great question. No, it's not.

Levi (29:08.553)
OK. it appears. OK, awesome.

Shawn (29:10.292)
So without the effect of the invisible hand, the free market, like a bureaucratic government agency, there is no interest in being efficient. There is no interest in eliminating waste. Like a private company, okay, look at this way. If a private company does harm or does a bad job, they lose money and the consumer will

Levi (29:30.423)
Mmm.

Shawn (29:40.22)
walk away from that and the business will end it'll go out of business. If a government agency does poorly, it will be expanded because the answer is, we just needed more resources or wait a minute, we need another agency to provide this kind of a service in order for us to do a good job. There's no mechanism.

Matt (29:54.648)
You sound like, you sound like Milton Friedman right now.

Shawn (29:58.516)
Thank you. Thank you, Matt.

Matt (29:59.682)
Well, Sean, what I'm trying to argue is that we separate, even if I acknowledge that maybe Milton Friedman was right about the nature of bureaucracy, which I don't think he was, but let's say that I agree with that. Would you agree that there's a difference between what a bureaucracy or the management or the leadership of a bureaucracy wants and the people who actually work within the bureaucracy want? Right? Because, because I've

Shawn (30:08.499)
Okay.

Shawn (30:23.6)
great question,

Matt (30:25.398)
I published a study like this was last year. We did this experiment with federal employees and we were like, we were looking at like, like when they're willing to, create more burden, more like regulations and things like that. And what we found is like federal employees are singularly interested in reducing fraud and waste. That's what they want to do more than anything else. They want their programs to run efficiently and they want to not have fraud and waste.

Shawn (30:53.384)
Then you're saying that the nature of the bureaucracy and the 15 layers of management is what causes it to be full of fraud and waste, not the employees. Is that your point?

Matt (31:02.03)
I'm saying that it's not necessarily true that bureaucracy are more wasteful than private organizations.

Levi (31:05.238)
Why are we assuming it's full of fraud and waste?

Shawn (31:08.733)
we're definitely a seminar.

Shawn (31:13.66)
See that's, I viscerally respond to that. I think there's lots and lots of, I mean, I can give you example after example. Like how about for example, just a big picture example, how about the tobacco industry being subsidized while at the same time for 80 years or 70 years or something, the government, another agency putting out a don't smoke, tobacco's bad for you. Like it's so inefficiently ineffective.

Matt (31:35.214)
but were those tobacco companies being super careful with their money to not be wasteful at the same time?

Shawn (31:41.364)
They were being subsidized by government. They were being propped up and enabled by government.

Matt (31:43.789)
Well, sure.

But so is Elon Musk and all of his companies, right?

Levi (31:47.447)
But that's not a comparative study, Sean. You just said that there is inefficiency in government, but there is inefficiency. You know, my company has layers and layers of bureaucracy.

Shawn (31:57.748)
Right, but the difference is this, the layers and layers of bureaucracy in a private business, if it causes problems or isn't effective, that business rightfully fails and goes out of business. in the, sure, sure, why not? Of course.

Levi (32:09.494)
none of it's big enough. None of it's big enough.

Matt (32:09.527)
No

Matt (32:14.52)
So let's take pharmaceutical sales as an example, Sean, right? They make, well yeah, cause I guess there are a lot of movies about that right now, right? There's a lot of, but just from what I know of the pharmaceutical industry, they have enormous profit margins on their medicine and they have a short window of time in which they can make those profits. And so they will spend gobs of money. They're very wasteful in the money that they spend trying to get people to purchase their product, right? And they don't care.

Shawn (32:18.023)
all the opiate crisis ok

Matt (32:44.288)
If people are being really like careful and pinching their pennies and things like that, they'll have a big convention or a big party or a big whatever. Let's go, everyone go party at this place and have all kinds of free alcohol, free whatever on us. And in the end, we just want you to prescribe our drug to your patients.

Shawn (33:00.094)
I think you're misunderstanding free market. there's a difference between I have a huge budget that is feeding a customer who really wants my product and is gonna pay for it, you're conflating that with a government budget that subsidizes something where there's no equal profit return. There's a huge difference between those two.

Matt (33:21.411)
Right.

Levi (33:21.633)
But, but why, Sean, why can't that be regarded as waste? mean, isn't the entire sales team for a company is, is waste. They don't make the product. They don't make the product better. That, I mean, that is in senses is waste. It works in the market, but it's unnecessary, right? To make a better product.

Shawn (33:32.562)
It's not waste though, but it all...

Not well, if the free hands, the yeah, I mean, if there's the invisible hand says that if a customer really wants and values what company farm company has to offer and the way to deliver that is a costly sales force, as long as the customer is wanting it and demanding it, then there's not it's not wasteful.

Matt (33:42.434)
Invisible hand.

Levi (33:43.286)
I mean...

Matt (33:57.422)
So then if we take that same principle and apply it to the, if we apply that to the bureaucracy, if the customer wants an F-35 jet that costs almost a trillion dollars to produce, then what does it matter whether there's wasteful spending along the way to get there? Because people want that plane.

Levi (33:58.763)
But that's certainly wrong.

Shawn (34:13.224)
Because, because the, no, people don't want that plane. A bureaucracy government who isn't spending its own money, they're spending other people's money, wants that plane. And there's no incentive for that person who's spending someone else's money to be smart or to save or to be, to make sure that that plane is the best value for the best dollar. That's the big difference. That's the invisible hand. The end user is the one that is gonna scrutinize the cost of that plane if it's their own money, if it's their own dollar. But the government's not.

Matt (34:41.784)
But isn't it possible, isn't it possible that the employees, the people working in that program would say, we want to be cost effective. We don't want there to be fraud in our program. We don't want there to be waste because we don't want there to be some kind of public scrutiny that says these people are being wasteful. Like I think that it's possible that federal employees choose public service because they want to make the world a better place and they are trying the best they can to reduce fraud and waste. And the cause of it isn't them.

but it's the people above them. okay.

Shawn (35:12.07)
I don't blame them at all. I would never say they're lazy. I don't say that. say that the bureaucracy itself, the nature of that business is so inefficient that these employees can't help but to be stuck in a system where oftentimes they don't create value in exchange for the compensation that the whole agency is getting. it, okay, they're gonna be asked the postal service.

Matt (35:33.762)
Here's the test, Sean. Here's the test.

Matt (35:38.446)
One of your sons comes home from his mission and he's like, dad, I need your advice. I'm trying to decide. I could either start my own business or I could begin a career and one day become a mid-level bureaucrat in the federal government. What should I do daddy?

Shawn (35:55.646)
What the heck? Why is that the test?

Matt (35:59.146)
What would you counsel? Would you say, go start your own business?

Shawn (36:01.502)
I would say go. I'd say, son, I love you. Go pray about it and go do what you want. What the heck? Why is that the test?

Matt (36:05.07)
You wouldn't be ashamed to have a son who's a bureaucrat in the federal government. okay. Well, you passed the test, Sean.

Shawn (36:12.988)
Not at all. No. thanks.

Levi (36:14.901)
Well, I wanted to push back on the idea of the invisible hand because I don't think the invisible hand works the way that people think it does. Right. There's this vision that the invisible hand without anybody's effort moves, you know, price signals move to the economy and they push the economy toward efficient, whatever, allocation of resources. But I would say that so many of us work for the invisible hand, right?

Shawn (36:20.425)
Yes.

Levi (36:45.003)
At your company, at my company, how many people at my company make the product or make the product better? Half maybe, right? And the other half are doing sales and marketing. They're trying to push the product just as it is onto other people. And I'm not saying I'm not following, I'm not faulting those people at all. What I'm saying is the invisible hand requires

Matt (37:00.329)
HR.

Levi (37:08.007)
armies and armies of people to put their effort into moving these price signals through this and I don't know why that can't be considered waste right the the sales forces of all the companies in your market They're doing the job that the Soviet Comitat used to do right they're saying here's who should produce what?

Shawn (37:28.7)
is so here's the response.

Levi (37:31.105)
There's just a million million of these people working all day to keep the invisible hand flowing. It's not invisible. It's super visible.

Shawn (37:36.564)
Well, here's my response to that. The consumer can only be tricked by a communist propaganda machine for so long before they realize, what the heck, this product they're telling me is this great product isn't a great product. I'm not going to buy it. So if this massive sales group and marketing group is putting out, is signaling false value, that will only last.

Levi (38:03.893)
But what if it's real?

Shawn (38:05.15)
but that will only last so long. What is real is how the consumer will actually react to that value.

Levi (38:08.055)
But what if it's real? I mean, what I'm saying is that Coke makes a soda, right? And Pepsi makes a soda. And then Coke hires an enormous marketing team to market that soda to everyone. And Pepsi hires the same enormous marketing team to market it to everyone, right? And those people all work for the invisible hand. The invisible hand is not visible.

Shawn (38:20.008)
Yeah.

Levi (38:34.825)
It's all of those millions and billions of dollars that people spend on opposite sides of the issue trying to get you to buy their product. How come that's not waste?

Shawn (38:44.818)
Because if Pepsi and Coke weren't desirable by humans, then none of that marketing would work and then it would be waste. But the fact that people love, and Matt's the expert, he loves Coke and Pepsi so much that he would be like, I don't care what they say or how they present it, I will drink it. Right, Matt?

Matt (38:44.867)
I think the-

Matt (38:52.034)
I think that...

Matt (38:56.686)
No.

Matt (39:01.43)
I know I actually won't. I don't like soda, but the challenge I think Sean that Levi's pointing out is Adam Smith's philosophy about the market ignores the effects of marketing on consumer behavior. And my example would be the summer salespeople, right? Sorry, I just got a note of, so the summer salespeople at BYU-Idaho.

They come in, they say, we want you to sell pest control or solar panels. And the way that they choose which company to work for is which one's gonna send them on the best cruise to Mexico or have the best party in Mexico. And they every summer bring in a new crop of young people. And then those people, like party, party, party to get trained on how to do their job. And then they just go knock on doors. And then in the end, they're...

selling a product that most people don't stick with that product for very long. They,

Shawn (39:57.992)
that's a broad assumption. You have data for that, you have a survey for that.

Matt (40:03.134)
Do you know very many people, Sean, that have like a subscription to Pest Control?

Shawn (40:07.043)
me? Yes.

Matt (40:08.396)
You do? You pay? Okay, but do you do it through one of these summer salespeople?

Shawn (40:12.82)
I don't remember how we signed up for it. Why would that matter? The product's the same? Well, the delivery of the product doesn't matter. If I want the product, I'm gonna get the product, whether it's through Sales Guy or if I go direct. The point is that wasn't wasteful, that wasn't at all. They're providing a value.

Matt (40:15.7)
because.

Matt (40:25.89)
Well, so the stories that I'm told are that people sign up for it for just a couple months and then they cancel. But it doesn't matter because next summer, those summer sales bros are going to go out and find a whole new crop of people who've never heard of it before and they're going to sign them up for a couple months. It's our living scripture's example, Sean. When we're...

Shawn (40:40.308)
I think you're judging that industry absolutely wrong. If people don't want pest control, it wouldn't be a thriving giant industry.

Matt (40:53.238)
If people didn't want living scriptures, they wouldn't have sold. Yes.

Shawn (40:56.316)
It's that dumb company still exists. The robo calls it.

Levi (40:56.542)
or Robocalls.

Levi (41:00.668)
If people didn't want robo calls, there wouldn't be a market for it.

Shawn (41:03.668)
Okay, all right. All right. But there's not a market for it. It's and fraud. There's not a market for it. No, the free hand. Yeah, but through theft and fraud, the free hand can't exist if they lie and cheat and steal your money. That industry only exists because old people are tricked into giving money away. That's why it's billions of dollars.

Levi (41:07.348)
They make billions. They make billions of dollars.

Matt (41:26.894)
It's been a long time since I did this, Sean, but I'm gonna give you points. Way to go. You did a great job.

Shawn (41:33.0)
For what? Go ahead.

Matt (41:34.754)
for your argument on this topic.

Why do I have to say why you get points? get points. Last time you said I could give you points if you had the best answer. You have the best answer and I gave you points for that.

Shawn (41:38.996)
That was...

Okay.

Levi (41:47.7)
Well, we better move to discussing child pornography. seems like is that John's topic? Okay.

Shawn (41:48.308)
Thanks.

Matt (41:54.766)
All right, so I'm here up.

Shawn (41:55.016)
boy. Well, this was Matt's topic, but I took it. How about that? Okay, Breeze Louise, Louie, Lee, Lou, Lee?

Matt (42:00.224)
Yeah, I get it. This is a good topic.

Matt (42:06.488)
Breeze-loo.

Shawn (42:07.966)
Lou, thanks. Breeze Lou's life was shattered when an explicit video filmed without her consent while she was underaged, surfaced online, quickly spreading and morphing into deep fake content. This violation triggered a prolonged and agonizing ordeal pushing her to the brink of suicide as she fought to remove the images. While other companies responded, when you say other companies, Matt, you mean companies that were hosting it or like a platform that was showing the content.

Matt (42:32.962)
Yeah, like YouTube or Hub Porn or whatever. Yeah.

Shawn (42:36.48)
So a lot of companies, when she said, pointed out, they removed the content. Well, Microsoft's in action for months, despite hosting a significant portion of the content on its Azure cloud compounded her trauma and Azure cloud, Matt, I I'm not familiar with the Microsoft products because I'm not a nerd and I don't use PC Microsoft products.

Matt (42:55.412)
so most companies out there, if you wanna have a website, rather than hosting content, like paying for your own server, you buy server space on the Microsoft Azure cloud or, yeah, it's a cloud server.

Shawn (43:06.804)
it's yours. No servers. It's a server. okay. I see. okay. Okay. So that basically, so they're providing a warehouse of servers and then someone builds a website and hosts this really, really illegal, illegal and improper content. Got it. Got it. Got it. So

Levi (43:10.331)
Azure, yeah.

Matt (43:23.98)
Yeah, it would be illegal. Actually, in this particular case, she was 18, like she was a couple days past 18 when it was filmed. So technically it wasn't illegal because she was technically 18 years old, even though she was just barely 18. So that's why Microsoft didn't act on it really, really quickly because she was technically not a child anymore.

Shawn (43:47.86)
an adult.

Okay, so eventually they did. her claim was that it was non-consensual or it was non-consensual?

Levi (43:51.208)
But non-consensual, that's illegal, right?

Matt (43:54.03)
Sure.

Matt (43:57.558)
It wasn't adjudicated, right? She's just telling people, take this content down.

Shawn (44:00.062)
So we don't know. So that's important, right? Isn't it Levi? Okay. So eventually Microsoft did remove the images, but one reason it took them so long to do so was that they were cloud hosting the content. In other words, there was just a warehouse. We're providing a house. What you do in that house, whether it's legal or not, I don't have any say in, is what they're saying, right? Okay. So if one company hosts immoral or degrading content for another company, are they morally correct?

Levi (44:03.572)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (44:20.384)
Right. Yeah.

Shawn (44:29.256)
when they choose to delete that.

Matt (44:31.928)
Yeah, that's a good question, Sean.

Shawn (44:33.818)
Thanks man.

Levi (44:35.284)
Well, and it turns out it is a good man good question I Mean in the in the case of this particular Woman, it seems open and shut. Of course Microsoft should have acted faster and I think this is a Pretty good argument for the fact that companies can't self-regulate that we need some regulators to step in And help things out but leaving that aside

Matt (44:35.566)
Sean, I'm giving you points just for asking that question.

Shawn (44:40.66)
Thanks dude! That feels good.

Shawn (44:59.72)
hahahahah

Matt (44:59.861)
Hahaha

Levi (45:03.7)
I do think it's an interesting question. you know, Sean, I don't know if you intentionally meant to do this. If I have a rental house and somebody rents my house and, you know, does drugs in or sells drugs out of it, am I then liable? You know, to what extent am I liable for that? Am I obligated to sniff that out and shut it down? Or what, you know, what are my obligations there? Or there are lots of these questions where I, as a

Provider in the market would like to not have to also be the police But maybe they maybe we do need to be the police. I don't know Matt. What do you think?

Matt (45:41.814)
Yeah, my it's not going to shock anybody that my position is I don't care. Like the agreement that you have with another company. If you have content on your servers, that's degrading or immoral. You have a moral obligation to delete that content and not store it on your servers.

Levi (45:59.07)
But my question is what, to what extent do you have to sniff it out and, police it? Like is that, is that Microsoft opportunity? Like is that their obligation?

Shawn (45:59.24)
I mean, I...

Matt (46:05.848)
So maybe they don't have to be the one, maybe it can just be somebody reports it and you delete it, right? But as soon as you become aware of that content, you should delete it. That's just my view. We would say the same thing. If there was a drug raid at a rental that I had and they found that they were cooking meth in that rental of mine, I couldn't say to them, hey, you can't seize that evidence. You can't hold me liable because.

Even though it's my home, like I didn't know they were making meth there. We would say, no, look, you have an obligation to make sure that law abiding activities are happening in places that you own. And I think that cloud servers should be treated the same way.

Shawn (46:45.62)
Matt, I just don't like the idea that if I decide X is my favorite platform, I don't like the idea that Elon Musk and his team of whatevers are being the judge of what is appropriate content and what is not. I don't trust his moral compass. so if I'm.

Matt (47:01.486)
But we do that in every other space in our life, Sean. A newspaper decides what content is allowed on the news. A television, right, a television station decides what's, and an internet site should have the same obligation to say, we are going to decide what content is here and what content is not here.

Shawn (47:09.948)
No one reads newspapers.

Shawn (47:21.468)
I, but we've had this discussion in the past and you, you consider social media or internet the same as a journalist's publication. So you, you feel like there's a, there's a standard and a, there's a code that it needs to step by, but I think many of us disagree, Matt, that they're the same thing. It's not the same thing. Like it's, it's, it's one is providing a platform for people to self publish. The other is saying we are publishers and so we are responsible for our content that we publish.

X is not that. X is we're just a platform to give people freedom of speech. You go and say the things you want. Consequences should follow. So I know you have a belief that they're the same category. I just don't think they are.

Matt (48:05.079)
Yeah, I-

Levi (48:05.191)
I wanted to go back to this newspaper. that two O's? News? Newspaper? Noose-paper?

Matt (48:08.822)
you

Shawn (48:09.177)
Nuts.

Matt (48:12.398)
So I just, have empathy for the women who have images or videos of them that were taken when they were children or younger, and it's out there forever and it can never be gotten rid of. Because if I have to always go to the site and say, take this off of your site, by the time I go through the legal process to get that site to take it down, it's on 20 other websites. But there's only a handful of servers in the world.

Levi (48:19.945)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (48:38.7)
And so if I can just go to the people that are providing the cloud storage, then I can make it be gone forever and nobody else can pick it up.

Shawn (48:48.02)
Yeah, I mean.

Matt (48:50.082)
Same thing if you've got videos on your iCloud, right, from your phone on that iCloud account and somebody reports and says, hey, there's a video of me on this person's individual iCloud. Apple should be required to go delete that content from your, you should not be allowed to own content that you should, and store it on somebody else's server that is inappropriate content.

Shawn (49:09.64)
Matt, let's say just as an example, you are visiting me here in San Diego and you're so thrilled, this beautiful place and you start taking, you take your camera out and you start filming me, but there's all kinds of people walking in the background and all of a sudden the police knock on your door and say, Hey man, you've got content on your phone that 15 people don't want.

Matt (49:30.818)
Yeah, well, it depends on what the content is, but like this has been adjudicated all the way to the Supreme Court when it comes to celebrities. You cannot take a picture of a celebrity and own that content. You don't own their image. And the church does this before general conference. Everybody has to sign a waiver saying, you can use my image in church videos or whatever. I agree to that when I come into this venue. So why shouldn't every other person have to abide by the same thing?

Shawn (49:32.124)
You think?

Shawn (49:42.398)
That's right. That's right.

Shawn (49:56.434)
Hmm, interesting, interesting.

Matt (49:58.092)
Yeah, and I think that the people that own those servers have an obligation. So Sean, you and I were talking about Plex the other day, right? How I have content on my home hard drive that I have access to online. Fine, if it's a person's home hard drive, I understand why you would have to go through a legal process to get that removed from a person's individual hard drive. But if the same thing should apply, if you can come and take it off of my personal hard drive,

through legal process, then I should be able to take it off of every hard drive of every company I know that has it through that same legal process.

Shawn (50:35.42)
Okay, that's interesting. All right. Yeah, I'll give you points, Matt.

Levi (50:37.972)
Points to Matt. Word.

Matt (50:40.812)
All right, thanks you guys. Okay, this is the big question. So just a background on the big question. I do this research methods class and I make students collect data as part of that class. And during the pandemic when we were...

Shawn (50:42.429)
Yeah.

Shawn (50:52.66)
It matters the database on surveys.

Matt (50:56.846)
Not always. You know, there are times I make them stand in line as people vote and record how long it takes people to actually cast their vote. Like we did that as a research project one time. Yeah, there's all kinds of, but during the pandemic, when we were doing remote learning, I was like, I've got to find a way that they can do research remotely. So they would contact their friends and family on zoom and they would do these interviews that I had. The people would do a survey so that they could get a randomized number and then they would do an interview.

And interview data is just tedious to go through. So it's taken me a long time to kind of go through the survey, the interview data, but in the end it's around 150 to 200 people that did these interviews and all of them have friends or family that go to BYU Idaho and took my class. So that's kind of who these people are. as I've been going through, I found some really interesting kind of patterns. And so for the next little while, as we do the big question, we're going to talk about like patterns I saw in the data. And so,

Shawn (51:38.823)
Okay.

Shawn (51:44.006)
Wow. This is cool.

Shawn (51:55.956)
So just real quick, is just understand, because this is going to be really fun and I love what you're doing. Is it localized to Idaho?

Matt (51:58.072)
Yeah.

Matt (52:05.45)
No, no, no, no. So it's a student at BYU-Idaho. If you say like, where did the people who take the surveys live? Most of them lived in, I would say like Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, California. Most of them are in that area, but there are, I have international students. So some of them were from foreign countries. Some of them.

Shawn (52:20.052)
Shawn (52:25.14)
Okay, yeah, I was just wondering if it's geographically based because that would give us some insight, but it's okay, all right.

Matt (52:29.484)
Yeah, not really. But I mean, it's BYU, Idaho, right? So to the extent that I mean, BYU, Idaho is mostly kids from like Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona. Yeah.

Shawn (52:41.138)
Okay. And this is the latter day lens. So we want to view that within the lens of the religion.

Matt (52:46.636)
Yeah, so I think that's why it's interesting is because I think that this stuff already reflects maybe a latter day lens because these people all have a connection to BYU-Idaho in some way. So the first question I wanna talk about is racism. I asked them to do interview questions like talking about like cancel culture and racism and what is racism and what isn't racism and things like that. And broadly, one of the patterns I saw is that when a conservative talks about racism,

They more frequently emphasize intentionality and individual growth and learning over institutional responses. And in contrast, the liberals more frequently would emphasize the impact of actions, regardless of the intent. They more readily acknowledge systemic elements of racism, and then they would emphasize the need for formal consequences. So I can see elements of the gospel in both of these perspectives.

But my question is how should members of the church think about racism? Because clearly conservatives, and we see this in our podcast, conservatives is more about individual stuff and liberals tend to be more about institutional and systemic things. But is one of them more consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ when we think about racism?

Shawn (54:03.207)
Levi, you go.

Levi (54:05.972)
Well, I'm a liberal, right? And I do...

Shawn (54:06.622)
I want to hear from you.

Shawn (54:12.692)
Say, hey, hey, hey, wait, wait, wait, on. Do that again, but with a little, a little bit of confidence, man. Like, come on.

Levi (54:17.844)
I'm a liberal.

Shawn (54:22.984)
Ha ha ha ha!

Levi (54:23.828)
Here I am liberal. And I do prefer to think about racism from the perspective of the victims of racism. And so the victims of racism don't, for them it's probably less a concern whether you meant to deny me a job or whether you meant to make me feel excluded as a member of a marginalized group.

Shawn (54:26.002)
out

Levi (54:51.56)
Or whether you did it on accident. Either way, I've been excluded and marginalized and impoverished. So, but is that scriptural? I don't, I don't know. I mean, there's a scripture that says that the Lord, you know, the Lord looketh on the heart, right? From Samuel. and so maybe that, maybe that ought to be our perspective. But when we think about fixing society, I, of course, I think we should say, I know you didn't mean to. In fact, so in the family where I grew up,

The phrase, you know, I didn't mean to was kind of a get out of jail free card and it was only sort of in my marriage that that I learned that you know, love is being careful, right? That that that it's really important to say, you know what? I hurt you. I didn't mean to but because I love you, I'm going to take extra efforts to be very careful and to not accidentally hurt your feelings. It's not enough to say, well, I didn't set out to hurt your feelings this morning.

It's really important to say, I love you, that's why I'm careful. And that's what I would say in this situation.

Shawn (55:50.225)
Wow.

Shawn (55:54.045)
Levi, can I?

Can I just share that because the way that you say that, like sometimes we get blinded by whatever political affiliation we are pretending to be a part of and we hear words like that and we immediately put up a wall. But it's so powerful to hear you say what you just did coming from my standpoint. When we were mission companions in Ukraine, of course, I apologize for telling the story again. I told you pretty straight up when we got to be companions Levi, I don't like the fatty milk in this Russian.

culture and so we were making dinner or breakfast for each other every other day and one day I woke up and sure enough you made kasha and guess what you put in it Levi? That fatty sweet milk and I just thought as immature and as stupid as I was I just thought this guy, this selfish guy, now I'm gonna contaminate my body with this sugary fatty milk and I lost and I got mad at you and I was like come on dude I told you this. Now the way you reacted.

Levi (56:33.364)
Sweet milk.

Matt (56:33.614)
Fatty Milk?

Shawn (56:52.978)
And I don't, get emotional about this Levi because it changed my life forever. It really did. The proper reaction should have been screw you a little punch to the face, make your own dang breakfast, you punk. But your reaction was this kid is wrong, but I'm going to choose to be humble and do the Christ-like thing and be love here. And you sat down and he says, dude, I'm really sorry. And you turned around and you started making a new bullet caution without the stupid.

Levi (57:22.831)
Matt (57:23.221)
Wow.

Shawn (57:23.492)
I had never seen such humility. had never experienced such unconditional love on my end. Never. Matt's Matt's Matt had a different way of love as companions. Yeah. But, but when you frame, so when you frame the idea of racism from the perspective of it,

Matt (57:29.036)
What about when I was your companion, Chong? What about when-

Levi (57:30.098)
Wow. Sean, I love you. I loved you then and I love you now. Thank you.

Shawn (57:48.564)
look, Sean, your intentions back then, you weren't a big prick. You didn't hate me or whatever, but you jumped on the side of I'm not going to judge this ignorant kid based on the wrongness that he's expressing here. I'm gonna be humble and just say, okay, he feels something. And he's experiencing something that I don't know about. So I'm going to be charitable and kind to him. Then that helps me understand your perspective that if a system who isn't intending to be

or a bureaucracy or a company that is not intending to be discriminatory towards someone who has a, maybe the proper response could be, I'm going to err on the side of love and charity and make sure. Well, I've never looked at it from that perspective. So that's powerful, Levi.

Matt (58:33.644)
Well, I'm going to defend the conservative perspective because because because I am a conservative. I know that people don't believe me, but I am. I think that what happens now, I, when we talk about how do we define racism, I agree with Levi, we should define racism by the outputs, not necessarily by the inputs, right? It doesn't matter if society intends to be racist, but because if from my perspective,

Levi (58:37.46)
Because you are a conservative.

Levi (58:54.292)
Well said.

Matt (59:00.302)
the intent is actually kind of unknowable, we can't really know, right? We can measure the outcome and we can measure if something is racist or not. We can't really measure the intent to which it became that way. So I think that when we measure intent, we should think about the outcome rather than the input. However, I think that the solutions that are institutional level or societal level solutions don't work. And so what happens when you say we have,

on inequality in society because of race. Therefore, let's take this institutional approach to try to fix that. It doesn't actually fix it. If you go back to the 1963 when John F. Kennedy is talking about the problems of race in the United States, and you look at the things that he cites in that, it's April 1963 address, every single one of those things that he mentioned in 1963 are still with us today.

African-Americans unemployment is twice as high as white Americans unemployment. If you look at education, same kind of problems. If you look at, the only thing that changed was the Jim Crow laws, like those things changed. And so I don't believe that the institutional level things fix it. I believe that the way you solve racism is you change the way people think about, and they have to be made aware that these thoughts and these actions are racist with or without the intent. When you behave this way,

This is racist behavior and you should not do it. And just like we correct all kinds of things in society by educating individuals, I feel like that's the only way to really solve racism is through education and teaching people and helping them to see where they're wrong in the way that they're thinking.

Shawn (01:00:40.788)
Wow, Matt, now you're going to make me cry. So can I share a quick, just to support that. So I'll leave all the names and people out of this, but I was with a group of teenagers a couple of years ago and they're all in the basketball world and all these teenagers, they, do you guys know who Kelly Ubre is? He's a basketball player.

Matt (01:00:45.614)
Yeah.

Matt (01:00:57.484)
Yeah, he's awesome. He went to University of Kansas. Yeah, of course. He's great.

Shawn (01:01:00.232)
Wow, Matt, dang. So Kelly Huber is a very handsome, handsome man. He's known as not only, I guess to some as being from Kansas or going to University of Kansas and others, he's known to be a very attractive NBA player. So this.

Matt (01:01:14.114)
I'm I didn't lead with that. I should have led with, he's a very handsome man.

Shawn (01:01:17.748)
Who went through University of So this group of teenagers, which is both boys and girls, they got off on this funny discussion about how attractive he is and how he's just such a good looking dude. And this is where the conversation turned and is relevant for this. They started to say,

Levi (01:01:20.36)
Yeah, I know him. I have a poster of him shirtless on my wall. Right, Matt?

Matt (01:01:23.342)
You

Matt (01:01:26.936)
You should see the deepfakes.

Shawn (01:01:41.584)
One kid was like, well, he's a light skinned, he's a light skinned black guy. And that's what everyone says is the light skinned black people are more attractive. And that was like a dagger. Like that hurt me. Like that was so heartbreaking to hear this ignorance because, and then I stopped them all and sat them down and I was like, okay, I have a question for you guys. If you guys are saying that light skinned black people are really, really attractive, what are you saying about dark skinned black people? And they were just like, what, what?

And they were, we had this long conversation and at first they were defensive and they were shocked. But by the end they were like, wow, that's really racist what we're talking about. And it was really heartbreaking to me to hear that kind of ignorance and how it permeates actually in the young people. And we had this argument that meant, I think the younger generation is more racist than we were. We, I think so because of this ignorance, but the education that took place, I think was the way for them to, so for years now, whenever I see them, we talk about that.

And they're all like, like they learned. They understood. So I think you're right. You're as well right. I think the education is the way to do it and get people to think differently. What do think about that Levi?

Levi (01:02:52.372)
Wait, but let me suggest one more thing. Maybe we can solve racism by taking it out of all our history textbooks. Can we solve racism that way? If we just stop talking about it? That's usually the solution to a problem, isn't it? To stop talking about it? And then they go...

Matt (01:02:52.462)
So the.

Matt (01:03:01.742)
by not teaching racism anymore? No. No, that would be opposing the latter-day lens,

Shawn (01:03:05.501)
No, heck no.

Matt (01:03:11.214)
This is Levi being sarcastic. This is Levi jabbing conservatives in a little way. But listen, there are plenty of things liberals don't want to talk about, like the failures of their policies when it comes to race. We don't put that in the textbooks either, right? We don't say, look what Kennedy said and look how none of this stuff has actually fixed the problem. We don't put that in the textbooks. Maybe we should.

Shawn (01:03:12.296)
No way. Yeah, yeah.

Shawn (01:03:27.922)
Great point.

Shawn (01:03:33.812)
Great point.

Levi (01:03:34.558)
So, but you don't think race has gotten any better since, since 1963.

Shawn (01:03:38.925)
What is happening right now? Matt is arguing the conservative and now Levi's taking the... What is happening right now?

Matt (01:03:39.15)
I don't I

Matt (01:03:43.685)
I'm saying look at Martin Luther King's juniors. have a dream speech that was in 1963. That was like August of 1963 because the civil rights speech in May of 19, like if you look at the problems they identify, you can go line by line. The only one that's different. Yeah, the only thing that's different is that white people and black people graduate high school at similar rates today, which.

Shawn (01:04:00.648)
The outputs, you're talking about the outputs, right? The rates of poverty.

Matt (01:04:11.854)
I think the value of a high school degree has just declined since 1963. And then Jim Crow laws were done away. But if you look at the problems, if you were an African American in America in 1963, and you said there is inequality in society, we have not fixed that problem. Those problems are still with us today. And I don't think, I really don't think we talk about that very often in our public education or in our history books about the failure of the liberal policies that were supposed to end racism in America.

Shawn (01:04:41.492)
Did matches touché you, Levi? Did you just get touchéed?

Levi (01:04:42.908)
Hmm. Which were the policies that were implemented?

Matt (01:04:47.244)
We can talk about affirmative action policies, right? Affirmative action policies have not led to greater equality in employment.

Levi (01:04:54.494)
Well, but of course they have.

Matt (01:04:57.166)
well then why do African Americans still have twice the rate of unemployment as white people?

Levi (01:05:03.048)
Let's see what it used to be. Let's see what the wealth gap has done.

Matt (01:05:05.166)
twice. You can go to 1963 and you can look at black unemployment compared to white unemployment. yeah, sorry. So the gap is, yeah, I don't want to end the podcast on a statistical fight.

Shawn (01:05:15.54)
You're back. You're back. You're Well.

Well, I got, okay, then I got a good one to end it on. And I think it's embarrassing that we have to read this, but it is the latter day lens, right? So let's bring in a scripture. This is 2 Nephi 26. And I think it is important to read this because I've been in too many discussions about the race. Your question is how should LDS people look at racism? So to me, this is simple and a kind of embarrassing scripture to read, but I'm reading it. For none of these unities come unto the Lord.

He doth that which is good among the children of men, and he doth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men. Okay, he's about to speak real plain here. He inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness. He denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female, and he remembereth the heathen, and all are alike unto God for both Jew and Gentile. It's odd that we'd have to read that and remind each other that in the church.

God has created all of His children. It doesn't matter how I look. It doesn't matter if I'm, it doesn't matter. God loves us all. He's called all of us to come unto Him. So this racism issue, any racist within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I don't know what's the right, it's sin. It's a sin, absolutely.

Matt (01:06:34.892)
is sinning, is sinning, needs to change their way of thinking.

Okay, well we're gonna end on that, Sean. That's a great last word for the podcast this week. Thank you, Levi, for joining us and thank you, listener, for listening to us. We hope you'll let us know what you think and hope you'll join us again next week. Have a good day.