Carol Roth: You Will Own Nothing!

The proponent of "big hair and small government" explains how to flourish in a global financial universe that is indifferent to the individual.

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Carol Roth: You Will Own Nothing!

Carol Roth is a self-described recovering investment banker and bestselling author whose new book is You Will Own Nothing: Your War with a New Financial World Order and How To Fight Back.

"The United States has been at the center of the global financial universe for about 80 years," she tells me, but that's changing for a whole lot of reasons, most of which are beyond any regular person's ability to control. Yet she isn't one to despair. Instead, she counsels that we should all proactively "do things to control our personal resources and our wealth." Roth's analysis and advice are worth listening to.

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Comments

[Olivahunter]

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[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Well, so far so good. She started out with the same scoffing, this-is-a-conspiracy-theory position and then about two minutes of investigation led her to discover, no, this isn't some creepy "intellectual dark web" conspiracy theory, it's 176% real. So she at least has that going for her.

[mad.casual]

I haven’t listened, but the title/tone reminded me; remember about “two weeks” from 2013-2016 when Nick and Reason were all in on the “You will own nothing.”/”The *S*haring *E*conomy will win liberals* to our libertarian side!” moment?

Kinda seems like an early dry run of whole “You’re being a useful idiot.” vs. “You’re just being an evul, konspiratorial konservative.”, uh, ‘debate’.

*Not my term. This was back when, wittingly or not, people were still trying to enfold social(ist) progressives into Classical Liberal, "Civil Libertarian", or whatever ideology.

[JoeJoetheIdiotCircusBoy]

That was awhile ago, but I honestly can't think of a time when Gillespie (or Reason...well, maybe Dalmia) was arguing that we need to get to a world where we own nothing.

[mad.casual]

I know you're slow, but that's the whole point. They won't say "Own nothing.", that would be too plainly anti-libertarian, they'll argue "Rent everything", right down to ceding, if not handing, libertarian ideology to people who specifically oppose it:

In these brewing public policy battles, many advocates for limiting the role of government don't talk like libertarians. They refer to these new online marketplaces as "the sharing economy," a phrase that's clever branding but too broad to be very meaningful. They argue that these companies represent a new paradigm for American capitalism in which trade (at last!) benefits individuals instead of multinational corporations. The higher purpose of these sharing economy ventures, they assert, isn't making people freer, richer, and happier as customers, workers, and entrepreneurs, but reducing energy consumption and staving off the Malthusian apocalypse.

Sharing economy defenders may be on shaky ground intellectually, but their effort to rebrand capitalism is winning converts and swaying regulators. If mushy phrases and misguided ideas provide cover for, say, Occupy Wall Street protestors to turn up at a demonstration to save Airbnb, libertarians should rejoice.

From the first article in my Reason search for "sharing economy" titled All Hail the "Sharing Economy!" A Mushy Phrase Gives Liberals Cover to Join the Fight Against Big Government by Jim Epstein

[Eeyore]

Isn't the sharing economy dead? California put the literal gun of the state to its head and killed it.

[mad.casual]

No. Maybe not in CA, but you can still book a VRBO or Airbnb. You can still get an Uber or a Lyft. You can still rent-own a Macbook or Tesla.

What died, if anything actually did die, was the Silicon Valley sharing economy/product ecosystem/renting > owning hype machine. Uber and Lyft are no longer more valuable than all the automobile manufacturers, on which they critically depend, combined. People, for the most part, know that Apple is going to fuck you over in the service department or that when you sign on with Peloton or Tonal Mirror, you aren't buying a really good exercise bike or piece of gym equipment, you're really signing on to an expensive, fitness-based, streaming subscription and getting a really shitty screen with handles attached as part of the deal.

Again, some of this might seem obvious now or might not clearly run afoul of libertarian sensibilities but, at the time, we had people like Robert Poole and other Reason writers saying things like 'with autonomous vehicle technology, no one will ever have to own a car again' and 'with drone delivery technology you'll be able to lend and borrow everyday items from people on demand' pretty much in lock step with the way the WEF says/said the exact. same. thing.

[Eeyore]

Feels dead where I live.

I can't get food delivery. Restaurants tell you to come pick it up yourself. They refuse to work with DoorDash.

I can't get an Uber or Lyft anymore - no cars available. Insurance companies refuse to cover the drivers without a commercial license and policy.

There is a 30 year wait list to get a short term rental license.

[mad.casual]

I can’t get food delivery.

Post up some GPS coordinates, every third TV commercial informs me that, with the new Dominos App, I can have a pizza delivered to virtually anywhere a GPS pin can fall. ????

Seriously, even for pickup, you used to walk in modestly clueless as to where to pickup your order and they’d point you to the bar and I’d tip because the bartender had to take the time to get my order. Now, UberEats, DoorDash, regular pickup? Doesn’t matter, it all gets the same dismissive hand gesture to the same table right inside the front door.

I can understand it's not true the sharing economy is everywhere but “does not live here” =/= “dead”.

[Eeyore]

No shit. I looked up Domino's and there is a location that will deliver to me. I didn't even know it was there.

[Mother's Lament]

"She started out with the same scoffing, this-is-a-conspiracy-theory position and then about two minutes of investigation led her to discover, no, this isn’t a conspiracy theory"

The fact that they're bragging about it all over their websites and some countries actually have whole ministries solely dedicated to it kind of makes it hard to say "not happening".

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

makes it hard to say “not happening”.

And yet so many people did.

[Fist of Etiquette]

You’ll Be Gaslit and Be Happy

[Mother's Lament]

Listened to the whole thing. A fairly insightful interview. She says not much different from what most of the commenter's have been saying recently, but packages it in a coherent, concise format.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland]

She got all her info from the commenters, but she's not an icky commenter so it's okay

[Jerry B.]

It’d sure be nice if they had transcripts of these podcasts so you didn’t have to listen to the whole 75 minute thing to find what you wanted to know.

[JesseAz]

I mean would you ever actually learn anything from it?

An ADA lawsuit might force them into it.

Apparently the Kochs are planting employees foe the Fox debate panel.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/busted-fox-news-and-martha-maccallum-caught-presenting-koch-brothers-activist-fake-desantis

[Mother's Lament]

Surprise!

Reason will stay corrupt until it stops taking Koch money.

[Chip I. Alhazred]

Jerry B. wrote "It’d sure be nice if they had transcripts of these podcasts so you didn’t have to listen to the whole 75 minute thing to find what you wanted to know."

I can help with one minute of that! Starting at 14:18 and continuing to 15:15 into the interview, Carol Roth says words fairly close to the following.

"What I do know is that if the U.S. gives up its place at the center of the global financial universe, that there’s no bastion of freedom and ideals and property rights that’s waiting to step into its place like the US was when Britain gave up its position.

The people who are trying to take more and more control, are Bastions of tyranny and dictatorship.

And I think this is one of the, you know, I am libertarian-ish, ha ha. I tend to be a generally free markets person, individualist.

But in order for this to work there has to be rules to the game, and I think that that’s the part that’s been bastardized both here in the US and on a global scale, is that we want to have these free markets, but somebody else is playing a different game, that doesn’t work. It only works when everyone is playing the same game.

And the reality is: there are a lot of big powerful entities that are not playing the same game, and so, you know, is it better for us to be in control and derive some benefits from that, at least try to make it seem closer to free market ism, or is it better to just give it that up entirely and just let everybody do their own thing? And then it becomes very chaotic. And I don’t have a perfect answer."

[Chip I. Alhazred]

I transcribed it because I had thought she was making a caveat to her support for free _trade_, and I had a zinger of a retort. But when I transcribed it, I found that she was making a caveat to her support for free _markets_, and my zinger was not as applicable. I hope I learned my lesson not to reply off the cuff!

Also, I left out a few of Nick’s words from my transcription. (P.S. How do we format comments to insert block quotes?)

[CE]

But if I own nothing, how do I get the prime crickets?

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

Bribes and knowing the right people.

[You're Kidding]

Nothing ain't worth nothing.....but it's free.

[middlefinger]

Japan is the plan. 263percent of gdp. lying about inflation for decades and mass suicides of young people who had stopped breeding. Nikkei never came back , lost decades and a depressed population.

[TheReEncogitationer]

It should be called The Sharon Economy because you have to be as wacked out as Ozzy Fuckin’ Osbourne to want anything to do with it.
🙂
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