Vladimir Kontorovich
Subject: American Glasnost
Bio: Professor of Economics at Haverford College
Eugene Kontorovich
Subject: American Glasnost
Bio: Professor of Law at George Mason University
Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and culture.
Today’s topic is American Glasnost.
Our speakers are Eugene Kontorovich who is a Professor of Law at George Mason and his father Vladimir Kontorovich who is a Professor of Economics at Haverford. Eugene and Vladimir have observed that topics which were forbidden to be discussed can now be debated openly, and that this parallels the Gorbachev-era in the Soviet Union.
Vladimir can you please begin with six minutes of opening remarks.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
Before I retired, I've been earning my living studying the Soviet economy, Soviet society, and now I amuse myself by comparing Soviet society with the United States. I've been reading American media last half a year and I was reminded of Soviet media. In 1988, the Soviets introduced their famous policy of Glasnost, which was openness. At the time, it was a big deal. And what this openness did, the media, which were all state run, were allowed to report crimes, failed policies, and corruption. What was allowed to be reported and discussed publicly and what was not, started broadening fast. At first, the leading item was atrocities of Stalin’s era, millions of people killed, exiled and imprisoned. But everything else followed was not the way we were taught, and the feeling people expressed at reading those revelations was paradoxically one of excitement. So, you are told about how your nation tortured people, and you are excited. That is a strange reaction.
Publications started competing for who reveals what new ideas and facts within the allowed limits and print runs of literary magazines went into the millions from hundreds.
I detect this feeling of exhilaration now in American media. And this feeling of exhilaration is strange because we knew these things happened, we just were not allowed to read or talk about them publicly. Look at the latest example of rape gangs in Britain. I read about this stuff on the internet 20 years ago, and I told Eugene about it. Eugene said, you are reading too much right-wing internet. It cannot be true.
Eugene Kontorovich:
I said, it couldn't be true otherwise it'll be on the front page of The New York Times.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
For me it opens an interesting discussion about how do people know things? What does it mean to know?
Eugene Kontorovich:
My father and I wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, there's this sense now of American Glasnost because multiple topics that had been suppressed that were put off from the limits of what could be published. And now the truth is pouring out. And organs who previously were involved in the suppression of the material are now actively seeking to bring it out and people are fascinated by it.
For example, now the leading newspapers are talking about this revelation that coronavirus may have been cooked up by the Chinese government. That the closing of school for an extended period might've been a bad idea. That the mutilation of children in the service of the trans ideology might be harmful, and that the laptop that Hunter Biden brought into a New Jersey computer repair place might in fact belong to Hunter Biden. These are all things which have been explicitly described as hoaxes. Now they are being talked about.
Larry Bernstein:
It is natural to defend the indefensible because you need to support your political ally. And then when that political ally no longer needs support, we can go back to telling the truth. What you're saying is that as an ally, you had to defend Hunter Biden's computer when you want Biden to be the leader of the free world, but when he retires, then it's no longer necessary to defend that position when in fact it's obvious it's not true.
Eugene Kontorovich:
That is a fair point. I want to differentiate the Hunter Biden computer example because Hunter Biden is the son of the president. It is inherently political.
That was an example where newspapers acted to suppress the Hunter Biden story for political reasons on the news side which are designed to be neutral and not be party organs.
Some of the other examples like COVID or the British grooming gangs, these should not be political stories. What is the other political side from a Chinese Communist Party engineered virus?
Larry Bernstein:
I will defend that one. In April 2020, President Trump referred to COVID as the Chinese virus and the anti-Trump world instinctively said, if Trump says it, then it must be the opposite. And even though we do not know the truth, instinctively it can't be what Trump is saying which is ridiculous. Therefore, let's put out a paper saying that this is nonsense. What is our best guess? Let's go with the bats in the Wuhan market. That must be it. Call 20 guys and get something out that morning. No problem.
That is the beauty of an opposition. It could be left or the right, Israeli or Arab, it doesn't matter. We look to elites to help us in this debate. There it is in my news source with the talking points. Beautiful. I'm going to follow those talking points and go from there.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
In the political struggle, factions support their leaders and that is to be expected. What has the specifically Soviet feel to it is the ability to suppress most of the contrary views to make people shut up. I lie for my leader and that is all in the open. Everyone who takes the opposite position is ostracized, made to shut up or debunked. And in the end, it is one opinion that's allowed to be.
Larry Bernstein:
I did a podcast on the Wuhan lab leak. James Meigs from Commentary Magazine was the speaker and he said, all the evidence is pointing towards a Wuhan lab and to Vladimir's point, I am going to be censored for saying this.
There are still anti-lab leakers out there, a lot of them. They would say maybe the facts have not come in exactly as I thought, but I had a predisposition to believing those facts. And it is not neutral. Trump said it was a Wuhan lab leak that set off the whole process. If Trump had said that it was not a Wuhan lab leak, then I have a feeling that the opposition would have said it probably is a Wuhan Lab Leak.
Eugene Kontorovich:
We should be surprised that Nature Magazine published authoritative articles endorsing the evolutionary mutation hypothesis.
Larry Bernstein:
Why does that surprise you? Nature Magazine’s editorial staff is center-left and opposes what Trump says.
Eugene Kontorovich:
So, everything is political?
Larry Bernstein:
No, not necessarily. A lot of the ones you did mention were political. Hunter Biden was political, supporting the teachers’ unions is political, having a view on the Wuhan Lab Leak is political. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion have political overtones.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
What you are saying is that people naturally break up into factions supporting opinions, consonant with their politics, that is natural in any society. The Soviet element comes when one faction starts being afraid for its jobs. Sure, there are different views, and they are hotly debated and the opposite sides hate each other, but it's the administrative, economic, and other sanctions that mattered for Soviet revelations or lack thereof. And it is the removal of the sanctions expectation that produced our glasnost.
Larry Bernstein:
What is fascinating about the Soviet example is that it was state threats. What's interesting about the university is its non-state related. Imagine that you were working at Nature Magazine to go back to Eugene's previous example, and you disagreed with the editorial board's view, and you thought it was a Wuhan lab leak. What would happen? The Biden administration is not involved in this, but he would say, do I want to lose my job over this matter? Do I view this as so principled, or should I go back and focus on my area of expertise?
Vladimir Kontorovich:
There is a 18th century view that the only threat to the freedom of speech is the government. But for a society where everyone is an employee, the greatest threat to freedom of speech is your employer. As the HR department, our whole idea of how to protect free speech is obsolete. if you are drawing a salary, it is your colleagues and your bosses who are the greatest threat to freedom of speech. Hierarchical organizations like firms are built on suppressing the views and promoting other views. There is no freedom of speech within organizations, which becomes a social problem in our society.
Larry Bernstein:
Disney took political views in opposition to DeSantis in Florida, and there were two reasons they did it. One is they received pressure from some junior employees who wanted the organization to speak out. And second, Disney may have thought it was good for business.
DeSantis responded and attacked Disney and threatened to take away their tax benefits. And then he also went public and tried to persuade those who ideologically agreed with him and opposed Disney. And Disney was shocked that somehow that got themselves involved in a culture war. I'm in the business of providing entertainment for kids. Maybe on second thought we should just be quiet about cultural issues of our time. And this happened not only at Disney but at other major large corporations. And all of them appear to have retreated away from the political debate.
Eugene Kontorovich
In the case of Disney, when you enjoy unique privileges, you are vulnerable. And we see this most clearly in the case of social media and COVID where Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the government pressured social media companies to suppress what they called misinformation about COVID. And we found this out in several ways. We found this out through the litigation. We learned much more when Elon Musk took over Twitter and published the evidence. And Mark Zuckerberg felt he needed to make a Khrushchev-style confession. Yes, bad things happened, I was against it, and it could have been much worse. And so, we see the government was involved in COVID cases and other matters like LGBT issues.
People's fear that they will wind up on the wrong end of attempts to use civil rights laws and claims of employment discrimination. So, it's shadowed with government involvement.
Larry Bernstein:
The original couple examples that you gave combine sociological rigidities in combination with threats from the administration without the public being aware of it.
In Joe Rogan's interview with Zuckerberg, he defended his behavior. And what he said was when the Biden administration first called what they had to say was totally reasonable. There is a pandemic going on, we need to encourage vaccinations and encourage proper behavior. If people are out there doing stupid shit, we got to stop it. And Zuckerberg said, I'm totally on board, stop stupid shit.
And then it progressed what Zuckerberg said to asking me to remove things from my site that was true because it did not fit the political necessities of the Biden administration, and we felt torn because we both wanted to help the administration, but at the same time we wanted to also be an organ for truth.
The last part was, we need to get back to our roots. Let's just have free speech and let's not be a told what to do by any administration. How do you feel about Zuckerberg's 180-degree change in his behavior? We have a new administration starting out. He does not want to follow whatever Trump tells him to do, so he can now hold onto free speech. On the other hand, he is articulating a message that both Musk and Trump want him to say, be a free speech guy and get on Trump's good side. So how should we think about social media's decision to abandon administrative diktat?
Vladimir Kontorovich:
Public climate has changed before Trump was elected. You could feel a different attitude a month before the presidential election. Why did the public opinion change? Musk and Twitter files and Bari Weiss and new media arose, but that preceded the change of the political change and to some degree caused it.
Eugene Kontorovich:
The fact that Zuckerberg is sitting with Joe Rogan is itself indicative of a massive cultural change.
Larry Bernstein:
Why is that?
Eugene Kontorovich:
Because Joe Rogan is outside of the circle of Silicon Valley acceptability.
Larry Bernstein:
Can I push back on that? Joe Rogan is a long-form podcast discussion. Zuckerberg articulated his position in two forms. His opening gambit was a five-and-a-half-minute video that he released on Instagram where he spoke to the screen without an interviewer. Then afterwards, he did an hour interview with Joe Rogan. I watched them both. The first 5-minute video articulates his message. As I listened to it, I was asking myself where did this come from? Why is he saying this now? Do I believe him? There must be a backstory. I don't understand what this is all about.
Then Zuckerberg speaks on the form podcast and Joe Rogan is asking all the questions that I wanted to ask. You see Zuckerberg on his back feet initially. He comes clean by saying that he made a mistake, did the wrong thing, and wants to make it right going forward.
Joe Rogan is the number one podcast in the United States. Zuckerberg is not going to have a long form conversation on ABC News or any other old media site. He certainly is not going to chat on Call Her Daddy. This was the place to do it.
Eugene Kontorovich:
I do not give him much credit for his many points for his confession because it seems opportunistic. I have no idea what he believes about any of these issues. It seems that each time he very carefully and specifically seems to pick the position that aligns with what he identifies as the dominant cultural governmental power. So, when suppression was in, he went with suppression. He feels very badly about it. When Trump is in and there is a new atmosphere, he quickly pivots. It almost makes you dizzy the speed of the pivot.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
Eugene, that is exactly what the profit maximization model of a firm would predict. You pivot fast.
Larry Bernstein:
Well, you started by saying that there was a certain behavior pre-1988.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
Yes.
Larry Bernstein:
And why did people behave that way? Well, because it maximized their individual and collective decision making as family, firm, individual, whatever.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
So, are we talking Soviet situation?
Larry Bernstein:
Yeah, and then the facts on the ground changed politically, sociologically and boom, we can now have conversations and you do not know right away can we talk about this? We see other elites and their neighbors start to talk about it and I guess we could talk about it now. It's fine.
There is this exuberance, the wall comes down, Gorbachev resigns, but then we a new regime takes over and then we cannot talk about controversial matters anymore.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
The Soviet case is simpler to me than the American case. Before ’88, there are clear administrative restrictions on government-run media. You do not have this job if you don't do what you were told by the authorities. And this sends a clear signal to everyone who holds government jobs, so only very brave or crazy people would violate this. Then the authorities decided to loosen the restrictions on what can be said. One month you can discuss the problems with collectivization, but you cannot say anything about corrupt foreign policy and so on. In America the rules about topics of conversations are much more open.
Larry Bernstein:
Is there going to be a political price to pay for members of the Biden administration who were telling Zuckerberg what he could and could not say, are those individuals going to get called out? Is there a cost to having behaved?
Eugene Kontorovich:
This gets to the broader question facing the Trump administration of whether they should seek to retaliate in kind for what they perceive as the warfare attempts directed at them.
In general, it's probably good for our democracy for there not to be cycles of legal criminal recrimination from one administration to another, but we don't want to be Venezuela or South Korea or any other country where a change of government also means that rotation of the prison population and you just take the people from one government and put them in the jail cells and spring the others. That is a bad system.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
What is needed is full investigation and airing the findings
Eugene Kontorovich:
Many of the people involved in this may retain positions in the civil service. Nobody has a right to that. And there is a big difference between when you read in Politico. They talk about officials in the Justice Department leaving their jobs as if it were giving up their ancestral fiefdom.
Zuckerberg thinks he can confess and it is okay. He confessed to bad things. He suppressed information about life and death, things that affect the mental health of millions of children. It's weird that he thinks he can simply continue on. He does not have to resign. He does not have to give another billion dollars to children's mental health centers.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
Oops, that’s it.
Larry Bernstein:
Maybe this is what we are supposed to do when we make a mistake. Let me take the other side. I recognize individually that I behaved badly, and I made a mistake. Do you want me just to suppress it and not admit it and move on? Do you want me to go with the Vladimir's approach of full transparency? I mean what’s better than full transparency than self-admission? Here is what happened. Here are those emails and it was wrong. I sort of knew it at the time, but now I really recognize it. I have learned my lesson; I'm moving forward. I mean that sounds exactly what Vladimir wants. He doesn't want his head on a pike.
Eugene Kontorovich:
Forget the pike on the head. There used to be a principle of resigning in disgrace, and if anybody could be a role model for this, it is Mark Zuckerberg. He can survive without running Meta.
Larry Bernstein:
We also believe in redemption and rehabilitation. So, this idea of resigning from one organization to run another is meaningless. Why can't we admit our wrongs and say, we'll be better, and then if you're not better, we can do something about it. What is wrong with that model?
Eugene Kontorovich:
Two strikes rule.
Larry Bernstein:
If you want to do two minutes each in conclusion.
Eugene Kontorovich:
One of the most fascinating things that has come up is the power and the efficacy of non-coercive forms of social discipline to get broad compliance with norms about what people say. Very small sanctions or unpleasantness turns out to be extremely powerful.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
The lesson for me is to learn how even in the country with unique safeguards like the First Amendment Freedom of Speech is still a very fragile thing. I recall 40 years ago reading John Stuart Mill’s book On Liberty, and he argued that liberty is not just from the government coercion, but also from communal coercion and social coercion. And I did not understand what he was talking about. Then I worked at a college for 35 years.
Eugene Kontorovich:
A small liberal arts college.
Vladimir Kontorovich:
And now I appreciate John Stuart Mill was onto something. In the world of employees, we need to protect and promote freedom of speech where the government may not be the biggest threat. If it is a socially valuable thing, then more safeguards would be welcome.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks to Eugene and Vladimor for joining us.
If you missed our previous podcast, the topic was The Birth Dearth. Our speaker was Nicholas Eberstadt who described the current collapse in the global birthrate to well below replacement and what the implications are for business, housing, and warfare.
I would like to make a plug for our next podcast with Christine Rosen who will discuss her new book The Extinction of Experience. I want to learn from Christine about the consequences of the smartphone on our interaction with the world.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining us today, goodbye.
Check out our previous episode, The Birth Dearth, here.
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