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Rana Faroohar
Well, I think it's a little deeper even than cross-shareholding because, you know, the biggest three shareholders in Google are still the top Googlers, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt.
But what I think is so interesting is I think about it in terms of information asymmetry. So you go way back to Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism, and he would have said that in order for any market system to function properly and fairly, you need to have an understanding on both sides from buyers and sellers of what the transaction actually is.
Well, as we well know from the great financial crisis and any number of debacles before that, you know, most of the time when you're dealing with a big financial institution, they've got more information than you. That's why they're always winning, like the casino, the house always wins. Well, put that again on steroids in the era of big tech, because the major tech companies, as of yet, except in small ways, in places like France or Australia that are insisting on algorithmic auditing, they have total control of the black box in which the transactions in our increasingly digital world live. We don't even know what we're buying and selling. I mean, I'm giving data, and I have no idea what I'm getting back for it. I think I'm getting something free in quotation marks, a surge, the ability to do some silly social platform media thing. But what am I giving up? A whole hell of a lot. And it's more when it gets combined with other people's data.
Paul Jay
Mark, where do you think the financial preponderance of financial and big tech elites are on this election campaign? And how much control do they have about in the outcome?
Mark Blyth
Well, again, I'm not going to differ very much from what Rana just said at all. I'm not going to quote Smith. I'll quote, Keynes. Didn't Eric Schmit ever read Keynes, in the long run, we're all dead. The long-run is a succession of short runs, which, if they are shitty enough, ends up, it sums to a not long run. So that's an incredibly dangerous way to think about it.
To me. Although I'll tell you a little story, I used to do when I did finance conferences with big finance. And so you know you have 25 of them in the room, all of a sudden the big money in the room and I would say the following, talking about politicians and the quality of political capital, it's gone down over time, and that's a big problem level. And it's all right.
So how many of you folks would let the people that you run countries by funding them run money and your firm, and they would all burst out laughing? And then when the laughter died down, I would say, and now you can tell me what's funny about that because ultimately your firms are dependent on the governments of those countries, the policies that they provide. And it was almost a moment of shame where they went. Oh, and this points to something that are Marxists colleagues have known for the longest time that while it's irrational for any individual capitalist to maximize their short-run interests, it's collectively suicidal. If the older there is no ideal collective looking at the long run, no matter how big you are, you're most rational strategy is to grab what you can because you don't control enough to make sure that you can dictate the final outcome. So that leads to this general suboptimally of choices which manifests itself in everything from taxes to green to decarbonisation across a whole series of areas.
Are they aware of this? Yes, they are. They all understand perfectly well. Do they have a solution? Yes, they do. Basically, the government should step up, and that's never going to be allowed to happen.
Rana Faroohar
Indeed. And, you know, it's fascinating. I think that's why just to turn it to the markets for a minute, and I think that's why there's this weird bizarro world where essentially 50 percent of the biggest players in the global markets are in gold, and the other 50 percent are in stocks. Well, what is that about? Gold is, we basically think the world's falling apart, and it is going to be the 1930s, again. Stocks are you know; we think that central bankers can keep this party going a little bit longer, and we're going to stay here until the music is almost stopped playing.
And it's just fascinating that there's nothing in between right now.
Mark Blyth
Yeah, that's a really great observation. That's exactly right.
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