Cenk Uygur

No, it is. It's 98%. I'll go on mainstream media and they'll be like, oh, I see what you're saying. I can see how that influences politicians about 10%. I'm like, no, no, it's 98%. So, and even a lot of good people think it's 50-50. They have principles and they have money. No, they have money and a smidge of principles. That's why I wanted to clarify 98 too.

Yeah, so in the book, I call it democratic capitalism as opposed to Bernie's democratic socialism, right? We can get into that distinction in a minute. So as Adam Smith said, and anyone who studies capitalism knows, you need the government to protect the market as well as the people. Because so like, why do we have cops?

Because if we don't have cops, somebody's going to go, well, I like Lex's equipment. Why don't I just go into his house and take it? Right. So you need the cops to protect you. And that's the government. So people say, oh, I hate big government. Do you? Right. It depends. Right.

If your house is getting robbed, all of a sudden you like the government, but you also need cops on wall street because if you allow insider trading, the powerful are going to rob you blind and the little guy's going to get screwed. So that's this easy example. And so, If you don't have those cops, the bad guys are going to take over. They're going to set the rules, rig the rules in their favor.

So that's why you need regulation. And so the Republicans on purpose made regulation a dirty word.

And then sometimes on the left, people fall for the trap of all regulation is good. A guy I like has a great analogy on this, Matt Stoller. He's one of the original, I would argue, progressives. And there's about four of us. I'm sure there's more, but... that have stayed true to the original meaning of progressivism and populism. Me, Matt Stoller, David Sirota, Ryan Grimm. Okay.

And it used to be in that original blogger group, there was guys like Glenn Greenwald and other interesting cats, right? But they went in different directions. So Matt has a great line. He says, if somebody comes up to you and says, how big a pipe do you want? There is no answer for that. It depends on the job, doesn't it? Right? What are we doing? What are we building?

I'm going to tell you the size of the pipe, depending on the project. So when people say, are you in favor of regulation or against it? That's an absurd question. Of course you need regulation. It just means laws, right? So don't kill your neighbor is a regulation, right? So my idea is a simple one and one we're going to keep coming back to balance.

So when my dad was a small business owner in New Jersey and they inspected the elevator six times a year, that was over-regulation. And I said to my dad, so should they not inspect it at all? I'm a young kid growing up. And he said, no, no, no, you got to inspect it at least twice a year. I said, why? He said, because in Turkey, sometimes they don't inspect it and then the elevator falls.

So bounds are reason, correct regulation to protect the markets and to protect the American people.

Yeah.

Yeah, but that's a former regulation.

So Lex, here's the deal. There is no way around the laws are made by politicians, okay? So you can't give up then and go, oh, it's a bunch of schmucks. I think most politicians are just servants for the donor class, all right? The media makes it sound like they're the best of us. Oh, they deserve a lot of honor and respect and they kiss their ass, et cetera.

I think generally speaking, they're usually the worst of us, especially in this corporatist structure, right? Because they're the guys who their number one talent is. Yes, sir. No, sir. What would you like me to do with your donor money, sir? Absolutely. I'll serve you completely or 98%, right? So in this structure, the politicians are the worst of us.

But at some point, you need somebody elected to be your representative, right? to do democratic capitalism so that you have capitalism, but it's checked by the government on behalf of the people. It's the people that are saying these are the rules of the land and you have to abide by them.

So how do you get to the best possible answer, which is related to an earlier question you asked, Lex, which is the number one thing you have to do is get big money out of politics. Everything else is near impossible as long as we are drowned in money and whoever has more money wins. And by the way, when it comes to legislation, again, that's true about 98% of the time.

Like we predict things ahead of time. People are like, wow, how did you know that that bill wasn't going to pass or was going to pass? It's the easiest thing in the world. And we like literally like teach our audience on the young Turks. Watch, you'll be able to see for yourself. And now like our members comment in, they do these predictions. They're almost always right. Right.

Because it's so simple. Follow the money. So if you get big money out of politics and I can explain how to do that in a sec. Um, Then you're at a place where you got your best shot at honest representatives that are going to try their best to get to the right answer. Are they going to get to the right answer out of the gate? Usually not. So they pass a law. There's something wrong with the law.

They then fix that part. it's a pendulum. You know, you don't want it to swing too wildly, but you do need a little bit of oscillation in that pendulum to get to the right balance.

Yeah, so we did a video on our TikTok channel then and now of Joe Biden. This is when I was trying to push Biden out. We should say you were one of the people early on saying Biden needs to step down. Yeah, I started about a year ago because I was positive that Biden had a 0% chance of winning.