Episode 13 Elite Overproduction

Law, finance, and MBA tracks are examined alongside shortages in trades, housing construction, and medicine, with attention to how education, politics, and social status shape those outcomes. The conversation also looks at the postwar expansion of STEM education, the role of government programs in building Silicon Valley, and the broader question of what a more balanced economy would require.

Episode Show Notes:

• Kevin and Emanuel explore the idea of elite overproduction and what happens when societies generate more credentialed professionals than the labor market can absorb.
  
• They discuss the overproduction of lawyers, MBAs, and finance professionals.
  
• They compare white-collar prestige with the social undervaluing of trades such as plumbing, roofing, and carpentry.
  
• Mike Rowe and Dirty Jobs are referenced in relation to attitudes toward blue-collar work.
  
• The conversation considers how AI and automation may affect both white-collar and blue-collar jobs.
  
• Kevin argues for more working-class and engineering representation in politics.
  
• They discuss post-World War II America, the GI Bill, Sputnik, and the overproduction of STEM graduates.
  
• Silicon Valley is described as emerging from government programs, STEM education, and defense industry activity.
  
• The discussion turns to balanced economies, including the mismatch between production and consumption.
  
• They consider shortages in doctors, housing, and construction workers.
  Canada’s recognition of foreign medical credentials is raised as a barrier.
  
• Apprenticeship, followership, and practical experience are discussed as alternatives to purely academic advancement.
  
• The episode closes with reflections on work, stress, happiness, and the trade-offs people make in choosing careers.

Episode Timestamps:

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:18 Welcome & Topic Introduction
• 0:25 What is Elite Overproduction?
• 1:32 Too Many Lawyers & MBAs
• 2:41 Mike Rowe & the Blue Collar Stigma
• 4:08 Blue Collar Work in Communist Romania
• 4:44 Would You Be OK If Your Kid Became a Plumber?
• 5:11 Happiness vs. Career Prestige
• 6:50 AI, Robotics & the Future of Work
• 8:00 Lawyers in Congress & the Political Problem
• 8:35 Hannah Spencer: The Plumber Who Won Parliament
• 10:08 Overproduction of Finance Bros
• 11:09 Solutions vs. Arguments: Who Should Lead?
• 12:47 When Elite Overproduction Was a Good Thing
• 12:57 The GI Bill, Sputnik & the STEM Boom
• 14:02 The Real Origin of Silicon Valley
• 15:56 The Rocket Paint Anecdote
• 18:12 You Can’t Let Engineers Run the System Alone
• 18:27 The Curse of Knowledge
• 21:37 The Balanced Economy
• 24:55 Neoclassical Economics: The Problems
• 25:44 The Supply & Demand Myth
• 29:01 Credential Recognition for Immigrant Doctors
• 29:58 The Value of Going to School
• 34:58 The Underproduction Problem: Housing & Construction
• 37:31 Central Planning: The Uncomfortable Truth
• 40:36 The 2008 Bailout: Banks vs. Homeowners
• 42:42 Wrapping Up Elite Overproduction
• 44:54 What Should a 25-Year-Old Graduate Do?
• 46:03 Find What Makes You Happy
• 48:24 The Fertilizer Problem & Food Security
• 51:04 Outro & Where to Follow
• 51:31 Thanks for Listening

Entities mentioned:

People

• Mike Rowe / Dirty Jobs
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Bill Gates
• Richard Thaler
• Elizabeth Warren
• Timothy Geithner
• Mark Carney
• Quinn Slobodian
• Peter Thiel
• Donald Trump

Places

• Silicon Valley
• Saskatchewan

Companies

• Boston Dynamics
• Lockheed Missile and Space
• Google
• Palantir

Books

• Crack-Up Capitalism

Government programs

• GI Bill

Other

• Sputnik

About the Podcast:

Hosted by Kevin Carney and Emanuel Petrescu, two curious minds exploring ideas, culture, and everything in between. Curious Pundits is a conversational podcast where each episode starts with a topic that caught our attention and unfolds into thoughtful, unscripted discussion. We follow curiosity wherever it leads, across disciplines, opinions, and perspectives, without pretending to have all the answers.

Their main ventures are https://1307.digital/ (Emanuel) and https://organicgrowth.biz/ (Kevin)

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Kevin: Hello, this is another episode of the Curious Pundits podcast. I’m Kevin. 

[00:00:05] Emanuel: And I’m Emanuel. 

[00:00:07] Kevin: And today’s topic is Elite Overproduction, which is a topic that Emmanuel suggested, and it’s one that I think we both have pretty strong and hopefully interesting opinions about.

[00:00:21] Emanuel: And the reason why I suggested it is because I read an interesting article or at least saw a video and a few other data points suggested that this is a trend. It’s not something that’s new. It’s been around for a while, but in a more contained settings, but right now it tends to be global and it tends to be at an all time high.

Before we dive right in, we like to remind everyone that curiouspundits.com is the place where you can like, follow, share, and leave us a comment if you agree or disagree with some of the things that we’re saying. Now, back to today’s topic, elite overproduction. Kevin, what does this mean, essentially?

[00:01:06] Kevin: The specific examples that you provided as we were zeroing in on this as a topic is that in the United States and probably in Canada, we have an economy that overproduces lawyers and MBAs and these guys graduate at rates far in excess of jobs available for them. So as a result, you have guys with law degrees working as baristas in coffee shops, driving for Uber, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s basically this weird imbalance in the economy.

To me there’s a lot of really interesting facets about this. And there’s also a larger topic, which I’m going to get to a little bit later. Overproduction of elites leads to an imbalance in the economy and it leads to emphasizing certain things above other things.

There’s really a lot to it. Yes, we have too many lawyers and maybe that’s why we live in such a litigious society. We have too many MBAs, and maybe that’s why we have too many people running around trying to figure out how to put up barriers to competition relative to other people.

[00:02:19] Emanuel: Optimize the system. 

[00:02:20] Kevin: Optimizes. I’m going to bring up something that Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy, talks about every once in a while, and that’s that we’ve placed an emphasis on white collar work as being good and blue collar work as being bad.

Every economy needs plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and the idea that this is not the ideal way to make a living in and of itself is problematic. He spoke about when he was in high school and he would go to his guidance counselor who was helping him with career planning.

The idea that you would work with your hands after you graduated from high school and college… that was what people did, who couldn’t succeed in the quote unquote good jobs. And then of course, he ultimately created a career highlighting the necessity and the diversity of these quote unquote dirty jobs.

But fundamentally, his idea is correct. There’s no reason why being a plumber or a carpenter or a stone mason or whatever that these are in any way unrespectable, disrespectable, denigrated, like, we need these people. Why are we taking this attitude that this is not ideal work? 

[00:03:50] Emanuel: I keep going to speak on this because I have also the communist perspective as well. Plumbers, roofers, and tradesmen were doing more than okay even in a communist society as well. I remember back in Romania there was a, not necessarily a shortage, but whoever was good with his hands. It kind of like fixed stuff. We always had some extra job, getting paid some extra, making a bonus or getting some incentive for it as well, so they wouldn’t starve either.

On the other hand. Would you be okay if your kids would say I want to become a plumber, instead of I want to become a lawyer, doctor, or a pilot, or anything in that white collar as opposed to blue collar? That’s another question that… 

[00:04:43] Kevin: One of my kids is a fireman and one of my kids is a personal trainer.

And I’m fine with that. 

[00:04:52] Emanuel: Most likely, and the most important thing for everyone essentially, is to be happy, right? That’s the end. At the end of the day, whatever makes them, I can tell you for sure that not having money doesn’t make you happy not being able to produce much. And I’m talking about the MBAs or the lawyers or over achievers right now that I can see them in today’s economy. Because I interact with a lot of people due to the nature of my work, and I can tell you for sure they are unhappy.

I’ve seen them in a official setting, but also in the private settings as well. So again, if we’re talking about at the human level, happiness is the most important thing.

But within the concept, because you mentioned Mike Rowe’s description about blue collar jobs having a negative connotation. I grew up with the same thing like everyone else grew up with. We should all become a doctor or something else. 

[00:05:51] Kevin: Mm-hmm. 

[00:05:52] Emanuel: So there is a negative connotation.

Nevertheless, we know that at least around these days. Throughout time, plumbers are not doing bad, roofers are not doing bad. To an extent, these will be the last jobs that will be taken by AI. And I suspect personally that these will be taken by AI as well, sooner than many people expect.

And also, as a plumber you might actually do the work, but it’ll be an AI or an an executive MBA behind an AI company that will filter all the leads that you’ll be getting as well. So indirectly you’ll be impacted by AI.

Nevertheless, what’s happening today? 

[00:06:31] Kevin: Well, automation, AI, robotics, is as we discussed in a previous episode, being extremely disruptive to the future of work. There’s no two ways about that.

But until robots and AI can do plumbing and carpentry, they’ve got to have much better manual dexterity than they have now, and they’re getting better… I’ve seen some videos of the robots at Boston Dynamics and they’re impressive in the manual dexterity that they’ve developed to date, and it’s probably going to continue to get better.

So… 

[00:07:05] Emanuel: I would want to see them in person about Boston Dynamics. I have my own theory about them.

[00:07:09] Kevin: Yeah, that’s true too. I think it’s a safe bet that sooner or later it’s going to happen, we just don’t know exactly when. Self-driving cars are already a thing. So blue collar jobs are going to get caught up in the job losses as AI and robotics takes over the world of work.

But that doesn’t change the fact that people doing that kind of work… that’s not something to be ashamed of or to hide. 

[00:07:38] Emanuel: By no means. By no means. 

[00:07:38] Kevin: And in fact, I would say that our emphasis on what I’m going to call elite skills, lawyers and stuff is part of the current political problem in the United States.

Most members of Congress are lawyers. Lawyers are trained in how to argue cases. We have a very combative legal system.

And I was personally really encouraged by a recent election in the United Kingdom. Do you know the name Hannah Spencer? 

[00:08:15] Emanuel: Sounds familiar. Please tell us. 

[00:08:17] Kevin: She’s the plumber who won a seat in parliament in, I think it’s Manchester. I may have the city wrong. And I’m just enthralled by the idea of a plumber having defeated candidates who are much better funded. She has a very good way of engaging with her audience. She’s really good on camera, but fundamentally, she doesn’t come from that elite population group. She’s a plumber. In fact, my favorite part of her acceptance speech was, she won and she’s talking to people and she says, and I have to apologize to my customers who have booked work that I’m probably not going to be able to get to now because I’m going to parliament. 

[00:09:05] Emanuel: Well, to an extent to make a joke.

She’s going to drain out some more shit moving forward.

[00:09:12] Kevin: It’s actually not a bad joke.

I think if we had more working class people in Congress and parliament that in aggregate, we would all be better off. Fewer lawyers, more working class people, more engineers.

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest… now before we started recording, you and I were talking, and this is for the benefit of the viewers and the listeners. I’m not saying that elite overproduction is always a bad thing. There has been a time in American history when it was a very good thing, and I’ll get to that in a bit.

But we have a, I would say, pretty significant overproduction of finance people, which I think has contributed significantly to the hyper financialization of the American economy that started in the early 1980s. Like all of this creative finance and the fact that there’s so much money that just sloshes around in financial markets and doesn’t actually fund production and or consumption.

There’s a lot of reasons why that’s a huge problem. And we have all of these guys and all of these finance companies thinking of creative ways to do all this stuff. And it’s been highly beneficial to the banks and the finance companies and the finance bros, but not so much to the rest of us.

[00:10:35] Emanuel: Coming back to what you said, you’ll want more plumbers, more roofers, more people like that in the parliament, essentially proletariats what you’re saying, in other words. 

[00:10:46] Kevin: I suppose you could use that word, but that’s not the framing that came to my mind. I want people who look at problems and think in terms of solutions.

I don’t want people who look at problems and think in terms of arguments. 

[00:11:02] Emanuel: Or what’s the financial benefit I can pull from this one? 

[00:11:07] Kevin: That’s another big part of it. The combination of lawyers and finance bros has been pretty disruptive to the economy over the last 40, 50 years. 

[00:11:17] Emanuel: Because on one hand we have an overproduction of lawyers and financiers and all those things.

And on the other hand, those are the main jobs that AI is taking over and is doing a pretty good job on covering what they are doing. So… 

[00:11:34] Kevin: That’s a really interesting perspective that hadn’t occurred to me. 

[00:11:37] Emanuel: Yeah, talking about disruptiveness, right? So take it with a grain of salt, I suppose we’re going to all drink more coffees.

I’m just being mean a little bit here, but we need to understand that the world is not just North America and not Canada or the US. We need to understand that the world is spinning, has been and will be for many thousands of years after our time right now. And many people, especially from the young generations, tend to take some of the things too much for granted.

And that’s part of why some of the things don’t progress the way they should. And school and education and having a career in one field can be one of those things that are taken for granted and that can result in overproduction.

You mentioned something earlier Kevin, that I’m more intriguing.

Maybe you can elaborate more about the a time where elite overproduction was highly beneficial for the society. 

[00:12:38] Kevin: Yeah. After World War II.

So the United States instituted a program of higher education for veterans called the GI Bill, and at the same time the United States fell behind when the USSR launched Sputnik and it was a national, oh my God, what are we going to do moment?

So the combination of freaking out over the Soviet Union, launching the first satellite into orbit, and the GI Bill led directly to an overproduction of engineers. STEM, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. 

[00:13:19] Emanuel: To an extent. What are we missing today?

Because many leaders will tell you that we don’t have enough STEMs. 

[00:13:25] Kevin: And they’re right, we don’t.

But this overproduction of STEM graduates helped us put men on the moon but also birthed significant segments of our modern economy that literally wouldn’t exist without it.

A lot of people think that Silicon Valley was some kind of a spontaneous, bottoms up kind of thing, and nothing could be further from the truth.

It’s a direct result of two distinct government programs. One being the GI Bill, which resulted in so many STEM graduates and the other being what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex, where Lockheed Missile and Space relocated themselves from somewhere in Southern California to… I think it was two facilities, one in Sunnyvale and one in Palo Alto, but the combination of those two things… Now there’s good paying jobs in the Santa Clara Valley for STEM graduates. Because of the GI Bill it’s pretty inexpensive to become a STEM graduates, and a ton of people did so. So initially they got jobs at Lockheed Missile and Space, but at some point there was a downturn in the economy for a variety of reasons.

And now you’ve got a bunch of unemployed engineers looking for things to do and they start inventing things and selling them. And the net result is what we’ve come to think of as Silicon Valley. It’s a direct result of two government programs and the overproduction of STEM graduates. 

[00:15:02] Emanuel: I want to make two notes here.

One, I do suspect also that for a period of time, and this sounds weird because we’re talking about California, there was a tax incentive for software companies to build and have their headquarters around there. Don’t quote me on that, but I think that must be true. The other thing I want to say is an anecdote I heard that talks specifically to what you said, that this elite overproduction of engineers and STEM and so forth, help us put a man on the moon and, win us as in the Western society, win the space race.

I suspect it’s about going to the moon and all these white colors… had a really difficult time with the weight of the rocket. It didn’t match the weight to go into space. And at one point the janitor or the person who was cleaning there saw one of the engineers saying, why are you upset?

Or, we can’t figure out why this rocket is weighing so much, we cannot lose any more kilos. And the actually the janitor said, how about that paint? That paint must weigh a couple of good hundreds, if not thousands of kilograms. A couple of tons. Why don’t you remove the paint? And that was essentially the brilliant idea that help lift the rocket from the ground.

Obviously, I might have done some details mixed up, but the irony is that still the white collar gave the solution to the overproductive elite. I want to add another thing I just like about two things. I’m going to add the third thing as well, because this is something that I’ve observed for the past couple of months.

We know that any system, when I say system is society, business, software, whatever, cannot run well without engineers. You need engineers to create it, to be there to optimize the system and so forth, but you cannot also let some engineers run the system. One positive examples are the Facebook Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, Microsoft.

They’re software engineers and they did kind of like a good job, Google as well, but all the others look at it throughout history, all of them that had just the engineering component and not either the business or the investor component that were in charge of things went sideways as well.

And I’m seeing it in my day-to-day life as well when I’m working with some of the clients who have this training background and they look at things from one specific perspective because this is how they are trained. Me as well, when I look at the website, I’m an SEO search engine professional. When I land on a website, I’m looking at from an SEO perspective. Does it have this? Does it have that? Does it block? Is it fast? Does it have the right keyword in the H1? And all those things. Whereas let’s say an engineer, that has a business, looks at his website and see things differently.

So not tied to today’s specifically, but one thing is you cannot have a system without engineers, but you also cannot let the engineers run that system completely. Hope that makes sense. 

[00:18:02] Kevin: It totally makes sense. There’s this concept I love. It’s a trap that I have fallen into many many times and it’s called the Curse of Knowledge.

And that’s when you believe that other people know things that you know. So for example, the paint, like what these guys knew to be true is that it’s just paint. 

[00:18:22] Emanuel: Yes. 

[00:18:22] Kevin: And then somebody else came along and said, well how much does it weigh? And that forced them to rethink the idea of just paint.

It’s something that could potentially contribute significantly to the weight. 

[00:18:34] Emanuel: And also we need to give the props to that engineer because as we know, we deal with humans. So sometimes it’s very hard to admit that we didn’t think about that and give credit to the right people.

I’ve been in many situations when many people didn’t want to realize the facts of the matter or accept a suggestion from somebody that’s not quote unquote in the field or doesn’t have the experience and so forth.

So obviously it’s important and probably it’s not a nice feeling when spend like hours and hours and lost probably relationships, lost nights, you didn’t party with your mates.

All those things to study to be in a position, and then the janitor comes in and gives you the solution that could be humanity’s future at stake. Probably it’s not the feeling if you are to take things too personal. That’s another thing.

[00:19:16] Kevin: I personally think in general, we are advantaged by engineers having these discussions than lawyers, because engineers are more open to… I just need a solution.

And if the problem is that the paint is too heavy, I’m open to that. Whereas lawyers… their whole career is arguing things. 

[00:19:36] Emanuel: Yeah. Oh my God, we have a solution. We need another problem now. 

[00:19:40] Kevin: Yeah. Exactly. 

[00:19:42] Emanuel: We know that’s how they make their living, right? So to an extent we understand. So that’s why it’s good to have a lawyer, an engineer, an accountant, but also somebody in the mix.

One of my previous bosses said something that stuck with me when we were discussing about me going into having my own business and sometimes you need to take the opportunity and do some of the things when you need to. And again, in North America, as you mentioned in a previous episodes, the laws are more leaning towards doing something.

So unless it’s specifically forbidden you can do it. Whereas in Europe, where I grew up, and in many other places, you can’t do it unless it’s specifically written. And he did the selling though. 

Imagine Bill Gates talking to a lawyer on an accountant before launching Microsoft. They would have most likely probably talked him out of it. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs with Apple as well.

So again, the secret is a mix. You can’t not have lawyers, can’t not have engineers, but you also don’t let them run the system. But again, to today’s topic, overproduction of elites, we talk about financials and politics and law.

Where else would you tend to see? Because unfortunately, there’s still a shortage of doctors. Out of all those things, why do people still go to finance or lawyers where we know that AI is actually hitting those hard, and not doctors, because arguably everywhere around the world is a shortage.

I don’t think there’s a place on earth where you said, you know what? We have too many doctors. Let’s stop medical school and just put… 

[00:21:19] Kevin: Yeah, it’s an excellent question and I wish I had an answer. I mean… 

[00:21:23] Emanuel: You don’t? 

[00:21:25] Kevin: Well, there should be more doctors, there should be fewer lawyers. How do we rebalance it?

But I mentioned earlier that there was a broader topic that I wanted to get to, and I’d like to get to it now. And the broader topic is the concept of a balanced economy.

We have this notion that what matters in an economy is that the government that creates the currency have a balanced budget.

And what matters much more than that is that there’s balance between production and consumption. If you produce more than is consumed, that creates problems. And if you produce less than consumption demand, that creates problems. So this concept of the overproduction of elites combined with the underproduction of roofers is just a part of this larger problem.

Now, balancing an economy in that way is challenging, which is why we collectively kind of suck at it. But I think in terms of economic thought and economic discussions, we should study that more and put more effort into figuring out how do we have more doctors when there’s a collective belief that we should and fewer lawyers when we believe that there’s a collective agreement that we have too many.

Part of the problem is that lawyers are disproportionately influential when it comes to making the laws and making up the rules of the economy. So while the general population might think there’s too many lawyers, the lawyers in Congress might disagree, or the lawyers in Parliament. Which in and of itself perpetuates the creation of too many damn lawyers.

[00:23:15] Emanuel: Something that we should have highlighted before… lawyers are not… financiers are not economists and to your point, since most of the Congress, and Canada is similar as well, are trained in law, they don’t necessarily understand the financial system as good, as not necessarily somebody from finance, but somebody that’s dealing with a business owner, and to an extent, most plumbers are business owners are self proprietors or just work for themselves. So they deal more with the tax man. They’re more their finances, then many of the people that run and set up the budget and creates the law as well, which creates another gap in the system itself.

For sure. Something that came to mind. 

[00:24:06] Kevin: Yeah. It’s quite common for political leaders to be clueless when it comes to how economies actually work. Yeah, I don’t know what to say. In fact, I would say that Canada lucked out in Mark Carney. He is trained in the school of thought that we call Neoclassical economics and there are some issues with some of their fundamental ideas, but fundamentally, you’re better off… 

[00:24:28] Emanuel: What are those issues to let our audience know… 

[00:24:31] Kevin: Oh my God, this is an entire episode.

[00:24:34] Emanuel: Sure. 2 minutes. 

[00:24:36] Kevin: Two minutes. So one of the core ideas of Neoclassical economists is that we make rational decisions with regards to spending money.

And I think it was 2017, a guy named Richard Thaler, who is an economist, was given the Nobel Prize in economics for his presentation of evidence that that’s just not true. We don’t rationalize our buying decisions for pretty much anything. We are creatures of habit.

Right? 

[00:25:08] Emanuel: You don’t need to another do too much digging or too much research on that. 

[00:25:12] Kevin: But he’s fundamentally right. But in spite of the fact that he has the credential of a Nobel Prize, the entire field of neoclassical economists is just sticking to their… we make rational decisions assumption.

And another one is the concept of supply and demand. Embedded in the concept of economics is the idea that the principle determinant of the price of things is supply and demand. That presumes that every market is what we call a spot market, where people are doing this constant stream of bid and ask, and that’s just not true.

You don’t go to the grocery store and, oh I see you’re asking $4 for a loaf of bread, I’m going to bid two. Those kind of conversations don’t happen, and if you tried to have that conversation, they would tell you to leave. They don’t have time for that kind of stuff. 

[00:26:03] Emanuel: In some parts of the world, it happens.

[00:26:05] Kevin: Well, there are a lot of spot markets, but they’re getting to be fewer. So like all financial markets are spot markets, stocks…

[00:26:12] Emanuel: This is the MBAs, right? You actually buy a loaf of bread at a huge markup with your credit card wrapped in plastic and you self checkout for it as well, thanks to the MBA as well.

No, but the reason I wanted to highlight this is because as you said, it’s a topic in itself and probably we should leave it for…

[00:26:30] Kevin: But let me finish this spot market one because this is really important. So it turns out that the primary determinant of what something costs is, what does it cost to make it?

And then the producer is like… can I sell bread for $4? Okay, $4 is the reasonable price for bread. I can make a loaf of bread for $2. It works. I’m going to make bread and sell it.

And there used to be spot markets for cattle, which was a primary determinant of beef prices.

So all the people who raised cows would show up at this place, and all the people who wanted to buy cows would show up at this place and they would have an auction. Increasingly, those cattles are pre-sold on futures contracts. So when you show up at the auction, there’s no auction. It’s all been determined in advance, and by virtue of determining it in advance and beef prices being determined by the futures contracts, the spot market aspect of it has gone away.

And now the cost of beef is primarily two things. What does it cost to grow that cow? How much can I add on top of that?

The concept that supply and demand is a primary determinant of the price of things is fundamental to the whole neoclassical economic thinking and appears to be true in limited cases only. 

[00:27:52] Emanuel: Appears to be true.

I wanted to say you had to had an MBA to be able to come up with those kind of schemes. With the beef price and all those things. 

[00:28:02] Kevin: Oh yeah. That’s part of the problem, eliminating the cattle auctions in favor of future contracts because that locked in the profits of the meat processors… yeah… some MBA thought that up. 

[00:28:15] Emanuel: Now back to today’s topic.

Where else do you see… we talk about finance, we talk about law, we talk about being a lack of shortage in medicine. Actually I wanted to say one thing. Do we have the solution? No, but there’s something… some propositions that some people make, and I almost almost tend to agree.

I’m not agreeing a hundred percent because after living in Canada for a while, I understand and realize some of things. For example, there’s many people who came to Canada that were medical doctors, that were trained in their home country and have been practicing for years and years. That cannot equivalent their studies unless they either go to take some exams and some courses that are I understand 70% to 80% of getting a new degree altogether.

So you might as well start from scratch then equivalent your studies. So that could potentially be one solution for some countries, and I am thinking of looking at it for sure, and somebody told me this when I came to Canada.

It’s important to go to school, not because you learn something. No. You learn things on the job. School’s purpose is not necessarily to teach you how to do some things or after you graduate, you should be able to do anything. No, you shouldn’t. It has other purposes. And I highly encourage everyone to take and do college, do university, do whatever you can.

The sooner, the better. I’m a big proposer, especially if you’re at the right age, because it might cost a lot, but being a 20-year-old in a college campus is priceless with the experience that you have altogether.

Many people don’t do that anymore. And that’s also part of the problem… part of today’s society about over optimization, over studying, over doing all those things, because they don’t have the human interaction. You get so many degrees, yet you lack the basic concept of walking into a room and saying, “Hello, how are you?”.

How was your day? And that team… change completely. And you don’t do that by studying in school. You learn that in school, of course, but by interacting with other folks, getting drunk and partying and doing some crazy stuff, have their benefits. And I think that’s priceless. But again, somebody told me that.

Also being in Canada and going to school in Canada, prepare and train you for the system that’s in North America. I can tell you for sure in other places of the world, even in Europe, even in the UK, things are fairly different. And it’s not just one person who said that, obviously they adapted quite fast, but it wasn’t as they expected to initially.

That’s one thing too… that can be reviewed at least making a little bit more accessible to equivalent some of those studies for the people who are already trained.

[00:31:04] Kevin: That’s a big part of any society. People who do something or know how to do something, they guide newcomers into the profession, into the discipline, into the fold.

This is always happened and it’s a little different today because society is so much larger and so many people interact with people they don’t know. But the basic concept is the same. Lawyers bring other people into the law, doctors bring other people into the field of medicine. Plumbers bring other people into the plumbing trade.

[00:31:36] Emanuel: You said something that’s very important, especially in the trade business. There’s this thing called apprenticeship. So actually it’s embedded in the law. So you cannot be a plumber without being an apprentice for a couple years. 

[00:31:47] Kevin: Right. 

[00:31:48] Emanuel: And that means a lot. Now there’s an industry altogether.

You know how many plumbers have like tens or 20 or a hundred apprentices because they just pay the money to have them sign the papers or whatever. That’s a topic for another conversation. But there’s this concept, I think it comes from ancient Greece. Translated in English would be followership as well, leadership and followership and apprenticeship.

So there are a few stages before you’re going in straight at the top. And we have seen throughout history and throughout the experiences that I had with other people, other businesses, other entities that whenever you follow these steps, things tend to be better and come more natural.

It’s not just one time. I’ve been to an event or a conference where 22-year-old were talking about leadership and what does it mean to lead and all those things, which is perfectly fine and I encourage them. But many times some don’t know how to tie their shoes.

I’m not… don’t want to be one of those people because there’s plenty out there that… gates some access to something just because of the age or something like that. We need to remember that Alexander the Great was fairly young when he essentially conquered the world but most people are not Alexander the Great, he’s fair to say that.

And when you lack some of the basic knowledge and some of the basic focus, I think that’s when you create this gap, this void, this nothingness essentially that results in the unhappiness of today’s society. There’s many people who will tell you that they’re unhappy with you name it, or some of the major problems as well come from that.

Why am I saying this? I keep emphasizing on this aspect because I’ve seen them more and more and I’m trying also to offer this solution. No one asks for it, but hey, this is our podcast, so we do whatever we want on one end. And I hope that part of the reason why I’m doing this podcast is also to share my knowledge, share my experience, share my ideas, and to help at least one person.

And by helping, I don’t necessarily mean that they’re going to change. Hopefully they’re going to change their lives for sure, not by listening to this podcast. And they go in and do like a million dollar because they found an idea on this podcast, no.

But if they start thinking or asking and seeing a different perspective and asking the different questions, things will change for sure, and mostly for the better.

I do believe that’s my intent behind all these extra comments, all the effort behind the podcast and the topics. And of course to learn myself… to learn about some things that I wasn’t aware of. 

[00:34:31] Kevin: I hope we are able to help people think things through.

I don’t know what to say beyond that. 

[00:34:36] Emanuel: There’s nothing to say. 

Elite overproduction. Let’s… 

[00:34:41] Kevin: I’d like to flip the paradigm a little. So I know that everybody talks about elite overproduction, but the flip side of the coin is the underproduction of others.

There’s a variety of reasons why housing is so expensive around the world, zoning rules and the way homes are financed.

But one of the reasons is we just need more. If we need more housing, we need more housing to be built. We need more people who build housing to exist in society.

Are we under-producing construction workers? Probably. I don’t have definitive numbers at my fingertips, but I have a feeling that if you…

It doesn’t matter which government, the United States or Canada. But if the government was to say we are going to go on a national home building spree, we’re going to change zoning laws through legislation, we’re going to change how properties are financed through legislation and we’re going to marshal as many construction workers as we can get, and we’re just going to build enough housing.

Would there be enough construction workers? 

[00:35:50] Emanuel: And there has been, this has been done in the past in the US and Canada to an extent as well. And especially, I wasn’t here, but during the 2008 financial crisis, I understand that Canada saw little to none of the effects of the economy downturn. And especially because the Prime Minister at that time, I forgot his name, simply emphasized a lot on the construction.

So he give the green lights to start building… some of the highways were built… a lot houses were built around that time as well with his vision essentially and his not permission, but he kind of gave the green light to have the economy stimulate this.

Given the fact that also Canada has all that it needs internally, so you don’t necessarily rely a lot on materials, wood and all the other stuff that you need to build the houses where you build them here in North America.

Because if I tell my friends from Europe how houses are built here, they’re going to say, no that’s not true. It’s unbelievable. No, you can’t do that. No, it’s not so. But it is what it is.

They don’t believe me. I showed them picture. They’re saying they was making fun, but nevertheless that’s a topic for another conversation. I wasn’t here, but I understand that was one of the things that helped the economy in Canada not being affected that much. I’m assuming he was affected by the economic downturn of 2008.

[00:37:10] Kevin: This gets us into another topic, which I think is really interesting. If a government is going to influence how much of what is produced, even skills in people, you’re open to the argument that this is central planning and that this is bad. But the irony of that argument is Parliament and Congress are bodies of central planning. We just like to pretend that’s not the case. Now ideally, they will plan for economies in which economic decision making is highly decentralized. Ideally. They don’t always do that.

So what we typically mean when we talk about central planning, is the Soviet Union tried to intentionally design an economy where economic decision making was highly centralized, didn’t work. It’s probably never going to work. The United States, Canada is attempting to intentionally design centrally planned economies where the central planning includes economic decisions being distributed throughout the economy.

And the problem is we’re getting farther and farther away from that distribution of economic decision making through the economy as we get more and more mega corporations. If you go inside a mega corporation like Walmart or Amazon, it’s not a democracy. They don’t vote on stuff. So central planning is good as long as it’s done in a corporate boardroom, but it’s not good if it’s done in a government bureaucrat conference room.

[00:38:55] Emanuel: You open up a conversation for another podcast for sure. I’m reading right now Crack-Up Capitalism. Quinn Slobodian, I believe the author. Essentially what he talks about is the vision of many of the private business leaders. They envision society, a capitalist society without democracy, essentially. That’s what they propose.

And Peter Thiel, CEO of Palantir… is not CEO… founder… CEO is another guy… is pushing towards this. So that will be probably a topic in itself, but you just named that.

And talking about central decision, central economy. Can you imagine not even the biggest communist Mao Zedong and, Che Guevara and all these romantic figures of communism, if you can say.

Thinking about when during the pandemic President Donald Trump, actually printed out and handed out checks to the people.

Can you believe, I don’t think there’s ever been something more centralized and something more socialist, communist than actually giving up checks thousands of dollars by the government during the pandemic.

Not to mention that even during 2008 how the state interfere and bail out some of the banks and make some decisions that affected directly the… 

[00:40:16] Kevin: It’s very easy to describe the… 

[00:40:19] Emanuel: When it’s convenient, that’s the way, that’s the word that we’re looking for.

[00:40:22] Kevin: Convenient may not be the right word, but deemed necessary.

So back in 2008, the Treasury secretary was Timothy Geitner and he had a conversation with Elizabeth Warren. Now this is from Elizabeth Warren’s perspective. She said, I was in this conversation. This is what he said. And I was like, oh my God… Are you serious?

So the Treasury Secretary, or the plan of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve was to do a bailout of the banks rather than a bailout of the homeowners.

And Elizabeth Warren was like, hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their homes and this is bad, and blah, blah, blah. And according to her, Timothy Geithner’s response was, we’ve run the scenarios and the banks will survive. So this was, I have a hard time believing that this is not a form of central planning because you can’t get much more central than the Central Bank and the treasury having emergency meetings about how to deal with a massive financial crisis.

But having come to the decision now, what mattered most was that the bank survived. They then implemented solution to do that. Yet, we want people to believe that this is not a centrally planned economy. 

[00:41:36] Emanuel: But again, obviously it works, right? Because… centralized economy… North Korea has a centralized economy, but mm-hmm.

I would argue that there’s a difference between Canada, North Korea.

[00:41:50] Kevin: Very big difference. Very big difference.

[00:41:51] Emanuel: Yeah. A big difference. And to an extent, I was watching a journalist that travel all over the world, and he said that he would probably, because he was also up in the communist period.

He would rather choose to live in a hut or in a war zone like Palestine or Afghanistan or North Korea, he would choose… grab with two hands either Afghanistan or Palestine or Ukraine or any other war zone, than North Korea. And people still don’t understand what that means. But that’s topic for another conversation.

[00:42:23] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:42:23] Emanuel: Coming back and let’s come to a conclusion on today’s topic, elite overproduction. Let’s say you are in that position, or let’s say you’re a graduate, you are 25, you spend a quarter of million dollars, you have your degree, you lost nights on studying. You are as close as you can get from having all the knowledge that you have.

What essentially do you do? And to that note, I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do. I’m actually considering getting a job or at least getting into some courses or learning something about I think food, for example, because I realized that I don’t necessarily know how to do many things that are not on a computer personally.

I probably do more than a lot of people, but I’m not necessarily, I build a shelf and I do some fixes every now and then in the house myself. The traditional male things that some people expect. But I don’t know how to cook a meal that will blow someone’s mind or stuff like that.

So I might actually consider even coffee. I’m doing an okay coffee, but I’m far from knowing something like a barista. So I’m actually considering getting a job because of courses… they help of course, but these kind of things you don’t learn through course, you learn by actually go ahead and fortunately…

[00:43:35] Kevin: Yeah, learn by doing.

[00:43:36] Emanuel: There’s lots of opportunities. I don’t think there’s a pizza place that doesn’t need help. I don’t think there’s a burger place that doesn’t help. I don’t think there’s a blue color place that doesn’t need, so for me, probably I’ll go into learning a little bit about the food business because I know how to eat it.

I’m very good at how to eat it and how to consume it. Yeah, I’m number one. I can teach, I can write a PhD thesis on it. But how you make it, how you produce it, that’s what something I want to learn in case things goes down and I don’t have any other alternative. I don’t know how to do much that’s not on a computer.

Fortunately, I know how to do many things that are on a computer, a little bit of programming, the marketing and all the other stuff. But let’s say you’re 25. 

[00:44:19] Kevin: One thing that I definitely know about you is you are not going to have time to do what you just said. I appreciate the thought and the ambition and the desire, but you’re not going to have time for that. 

[00:44:32] Emanuel: Most likely.

[00:44:33] Kevin: Yeah. 

[00:44:34] Emanuel: I’ll stick to eating, but let’s say, let’s do this scenario. You are 25, 26, you just graduated. You spend a lot of money, you are in debt and you are just finished law school and you realize that ChatGPT will actually be able to provide the information that you would research. I know days in a couple of seconds. What do you do?

[00:44:57] Kevin: Oh, God, it’s tough. So I mentioned two of my children. One’s a fireman, one’s a personal trainer. The third one, a daughter works in marketing at a very large tech firm, and she makes the most money and she carries the highest stress. So what’s the right trade off? And it’s not that she makes like a little bit more than her brothers. She makes a lot more than her brothers, but the stress level is off the charts for her.

As a parent I’m like, maybe become a fireman. I don’t know. It’s tough. I wish I had better answers, but I don’t.

[00:45:40] Emanuel: Fair. Fair. So no answer essentially, but just one. Be happy. Be happy. 

[00:45:45] Kevin: Yeah. 

[00:45:46] Emanuel: Find something that makes you happy. And..;.

[00:45:48] Kevin: We’ve all got to cover our bills, so having enough money come in… matters. But we don’t want to take on a lifestyle that’s so stressful that it just eats us up from the inside, and there are people who live those kind of lives.

So there’s trade offs to be made. 

[00:46:09] Emanuel: Most people, or at least many people, unfortunately, and I’ve been one of them for many, many years. One thing I learned for sure is that even when you do something that you like, you’ll still find stuff that you’ll detest. For example, I was in the music business and I really didn’t like the part where you actually set everything up.

I wasn’t minded because I know what the outcome would be. Let’s say we’re preparing for the session. This singer comes, you need to set up his prefer mic. What’s the best mic for his voice. Sometimes you need to do some testing before set up the room, set up the software, the plugins, predetermine, some of the EQs and all those things.

And that can take time from 10 minutes to 2, 3 hours. But I wasn’t minding it that much. When I was envisioning the end result and also the process of getting into the studio and recording and working with the artists and so forth. And that’s when I realized that even when it’s something that you like to do, you’ll inevitably find points that you’ll hate with the passion, right?

Even right now, I like to do SEO, but sometimes I don’t want to set everything up. I don’t want to create, replicate the templates and put everything into place and all those things that can take even half an hour. And the fact that I know the outcome and the process will help me overcome this.

So even if you find something that you love doing you’ll find things that will stress you out. But at the end of the day, aim for being happy. That’s why what I want for my kids, being happy. A certain amount of stress is beneficial. We know from a muscle, if you don’t apply some pressure, some stress, it won’t grow.

But don’t let the stress be larger than what you’re trying to achieve itself, because…

[00:47:44] Kevin: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:47:44] Emanuel: You become about the job, it’ll become about managing the stress that comes with the job. Then you’re better off doing whatever, or essentially do nothing. I promise, at least in North America. It’s unlikely you will starve. 

[00:47:59] Kevin: Um, God, you opened up a can of worms with that one.

[00:48:05] Emanuel: I don’t want to eat can of worms.

[00:48:06] Kevin: In order to sustain the level of human population that we have on Earth today, we need fertilizer. If we didn’t have artificial or synthetic fertilizer, we couldn’t produce enough food for 8 billion people.

I don’t understand the chemistry behind it, but fertilizer is a byproduct of natural gas production and we just shut down a major conduit for fertilizer during planting season.

So could this result in starvation later? It’s not impossible. Hopefully saner minds will prevail. But… 

[00:48:49] Emanuel: Maybe, you know, drill, maybe drill, maybe there’s something to it then. 

[00:48:53] Kevin: We’re generating enough natural gas around the world to produce enough fertilizer. It’s just a disproportionate amount of it is produced in the Persian Gulf, because they’re refining a lot of oil and dealing with a lot of natural gas. It’s just a natural byproduct. 

[00:49:07] Emanuel: Yeah. So that’s a topic in itself for another conversation that we should tackle, of course, in feminine starvation is actually in my book, the biggest threat that we face as humanity.

But given the fact that the… So you will starve in a doomsday scenario, you’ll starve regardless if you are on the streets.

[00:49:24] Kevin: Yeah, yeah. In a doomsday scenario. Yeah. 

[00:49:26] Emanuel: On the streets. Or if you’re the top paying lawyer, you’ll be in the same boat essentially because these things happen.

It’s not just one thing that happens. Okay? You have a pandemic every now and then you have an economic downturn, but you also have a natural phenomenon that destroys crops and all those things. Most of the North America is highly dependent on the Saskatchewan for grains, right?

It’s a province in Canada. So imagine something happened, just one crop, you need to have it compromised and then that’s it. Yet again there’s a difference between starvation and rationing the food. So obviously…

[00:49:57] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:49:57] Emanuel: Arguably all of us overeat, right? We eat more than we actually need, I enjoy, not today because I’m fasting, but, burger, fries, salad and just, that’s just want me a right pizza in the evening, eggs or whatever in the morning.

And especially right now with the globalism, we have access to all the cuisines in the world. So it’s fair to say that without disregarding the doomsday scenario, most people won’t starve, and somebody said, at the tech convention here in Toronto, listen, if you just go to all the free events in Toronto, you’ll get at least three slices of pizza and a couple of beers for free every night, year round.

So even if you just do that.

[00:50:39] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:50:40] Emanuel: That being said, elite overproduction. I don’t think there, there’s necessarily a conclusion. We had an interesting conversation.

Curiouspundits.com is the place where you can like, follow, share, subscribe, listen to our previous episodes, listen to the next episodes that will be putting up, leave us a comment if you agree or disagree with what we said maybe if we made a mistake and we make made a few of those, for sure that happens.

So let us know. That being said, my name is Emanuel. 

[00:51:09] Kevin: My name is Kevin. 

[00:51:10] Emanuel: And until the next time. 

[00:51:12] Kevin: Thank you for listening.