Yeah.

Welcome to the Aaron Harbor show.

This is part two of our special two part series with former presidential candidate and current co-chair of the New Forward Party, Andrew Yang.

Andrew, again, great having you.

Yeah, it's great to be here.

And one of the things I want to talk about, we just touched on reall briefly, in the first segment, is the potential for artificial intelligence to disrupt politics.

And let me give you a couple of thoughts I really like, because I'm sure you've you've consider this.

I mean, AI is progress to the point where we can develop, we can develop video of you doing and saying anything we want.

This is all AI generated, right?

Exactly.

All my questions were AI generated.

We can have you doing anything we want.

It looks exactly like you.

It sounds exactly like you.

And it has you saying or doing things which destroy your career politically.

And which one someone sees is totally, 100% believable.

How do we counter that kind of technology?

It's going to be a mess.

Honestly.

So there are some technical fixes.

But it would require a real robust public private partnership in terms of, for example, having a watermark on the origin of various videos and images.

So if I take a video on my phone and then I in that it says, hey, this was actually taken on this phone and it was unaltered.

But even that would require a degree of trust that I can fake that watermark.

I used to run a software company that I can handle.

I can and run that easy.

And I'll use AI to do it, by the way.

But you are describing the very real concern in the 2024 cycle, becaus there could be this cacophony of AI generated videos and audi tape of my saying crazy things.

No.

Not me.

Whoever's in the race and crazy things.

And those can.

You would never say crazy things anyway, so.

Sure.

Or people would be like, that's just Yang Andrew again.

Yes.

So the question is the right one, which is how the heck do you combat that?

In an age where things spread so quickly on social media, it can be seen by millions of people, and then later you say, oh, it turns out that thing, might not have been real, but by you.

And by the time you come out with that message, there could be ten other, images or videos.

One of the things that that that President Trump did, Donald Trump did especially during the campaign.

And while he was president, which I thought was a very effective strategy, he would he would throw something out which may not have been accurate, to put it politely.

But before anybody reacted t it, there were ten more things following that.

So by the time anyone reacted everybody else was all the way down the line on number nine or whatever.

Yeah, I called it the, you know, squirrel chasing the nut or whatnot, or just being like, hey, here's a crazy thing.

And then you'd be like, man, and you run after it.

And that's news cycle after news cycle.

We're seeing miniature versions of that on social media right now.

It's very dangerous.

It's one of the reasons why what we're doing with the forward party is so core and central, because how can you get your way out of this mess?

And, I sai in, in the first segment, like, you have three layers of this dysfunction.

So when you have the political polarization which we're all experiencing, but then you have the media, segmentation and then you have social media splintering the American consciousness into a thousan different versions of reality.

Now, those are all very real problems.

Is going to make the third one much hairier?

Believe it or not, Aaron, as I'm here with you, this political government layer is actually the most fixable of the three layers.

And also, if you succeed in mending government, then you have a chance at addressing both media and social media.

All right.

So, two quick things and top of that and bottom certainly on the social media side.

This is our monetary this is our money driven in terms of, you know, different companies, everything Facebook, Google, whomever.

It's all about generating revenue, generating clicks, generating attention, driving you using algorithms to drive you to material that they think will interest you.

So you stay online so you see different ads.

So, I'll let you answer two questions.

One is how do we address that?

Number one, but the lower leve of the pyramid with government, how do we make the changes there?

And you're saying it's fixable, but start with, the folks at the top who are making billions and billions of dollars by driving us apart.

A lot of it is algorithm driven.

To your point, is maximizing engagement, which is maximizing revenue and profits.

So imagine if you had an algorithm that actually punished people for saying things that are infuriating or false or, you know, insulting or, now, not not saying you're banned or anything like that.

It's just we're not going to amplify that as much.

And so by the way, right now the reverse is true, where if you do crazy things, it does get amplified and augmented, and then that drives engagement, that drives time and attention and everything else.

There's some companies at different points in time have, have put the brakes or have put a governor on certain types of a malicious activity.

But that represents a tin fraction of, of the transactions which occur.

You know, this is based on the work of a guy named Jonathan Hite, who you probably have read his work is a book coming out called Tower of Babel.

And he argues that it's imagine an algorithm of calm, which sounds so counterintuitive because we're so used to the algorithm of outrage.

But that could be one of the ways out of this, because so many players follow the money.

And if you're losing money by, being, like, jerk, ultimately, then maybe you'll see a little bit less, jerkiness.

Now the social media companies, have taken advantage o essentially a regulatory void, for 23 year and then built, in some cases, trillion dollar franchise on the backs of us in our data, our data is worth hundred of billions of dollars a year.

None of us are seeing a dime.

It's making our kids particularly, particularly teenage girls, anxious and depressed.

Their massive social costs to these enterprises.

And our government's been asleep at the switch the whole time.

It's really, really.

It should be infuriating to people.

How do we address the issue of personal data?

Because essentiall what we've done as individuals is we've tacitly and actually by clicking on licenses and user agreements that none of us read.

We've essentially said, yeah, you can know all about it, so you can watch what we're doing.

You can follow us on a location basis wherever we are.

In some cases, you know, you can see with whom we're communicating.

And in exchange, I get to use your website, or I get to use, you know what?

Whatever app that I want.

How do we reverse that?

Because one of my perspectives is, it seems to me that while most Americans ar concerned about their privacy, they're really not.

Well, this is the great opportunity, the great need.

And I know you've talked to, folks who are leading on this and other parts of the world.

But our data should be ours, regardless of whether we're loaning it to Facebook or whomever.

If you're going to make money on it, then I should get some of that money, o I should be able to turn it off.

I should be able to leave your company, bring my data with me, and start afresh.

We need to fundamentally invert the power relationship between the billion dolla tech company treating us like, essentially, rats in a digital maze.

And then say, wait a minute.

I'm actually the boss.

And this hundreds of billions of dollars like, that's on on my data.

Now, if you were to do this this would fundamentally change the business models of these companies.

So obviously, they hate it.

And our government is too dumb to take our side on this in this particular fight.

And so what do we do left with.

We just have this, I agree.

I consent to your point.

It's just like, well, I just want to use your site or your app.

And because it's all advertising and engagement driven, it's free to me.

But there are actually massive, massive social costs, some of which I just, went through.

So that is wha we should be doing differently.

It'd be very pro-consumer, very pro citizen.

And that's what an invigorated government would be doing.

By the way, you know who' already doing a version of this?

The EU, the EU is saying, look, your data is yours.

And we have these essentially data caps.

The state of California is trying to follow suit.

The tech companies are, of course, trying to neuter this and, water it down.

And the our government at the federal level is in this bizarre wait and see mode because it can't get its act together.

By the way, how many years are we in on this now?

I mean, like, Facebook's 20 years old.

Speaking of Faceboo and other, companies like that, I mean, they not only collect our data and use it for their internal marketing and for targeting us.

They use it to sell advertising for other people.

Other companies.

A lot of these companies also sell our data.

Yeah.

So, so, so if you had a law that said, okay, I have the right to, to leave you Facebook and take my data with me.

What happens to all the other other people who are companie or entities who got that data?

Our data is getting sold and resold countless times.

There's an entire data brokerage industry.

And if you had this, our data is ours regime.

And then these different players would have to comply or notify or compensate.

It would be a lot for them.

And some of them would say look, my business doesn't work.

If you make me do all these things.

To which I woul say, well, you had a good run.

But some of the players woul say, okay, what do I need to do?

Because I'm making tons of money still.

So if I need to cut you in on the action, great.

If I need to figure out how to notify you.

Okay.

And the fact is, if we had this regime, it's still a lot for any of us as consumers to go through.

So what you woul ideally give rise to is, proxy universe where I build this data cop universe.

And I say to you, Aaron, look, your data is yours.

I'm going to be your agent.

I'm going to fight it out with these guys, get you the best deal possible.

I'm going to gather you and hundreds of thousands of other Americans together and negotiate in all your behalf.

And, I' going to take a, like, 15% fee.

What do you think?

And then you might say, well, are you the best, you know, negotiator on my behalf?

And then be like, yes, I am.

And here's, you know here's how you can demonstrate.

Then you have different data unions, competing for you to say, okay, I'm going to choose you as my proxy, and then you can fight fire with fire, because right now we are so outgunned.

It's ridiculous.

And I, I'm I'm a parent.

And I get frustrated when people say, like, look, why don't you figure it out for your kids?

And I know that it's not a fair fight.

I mean, you have billion and trillion dollar companies with the smartest engineers in the world trying to, you know, like, like, pelt our kids, all the time in a way that's incredibly addict.

And again, bad for the mental health of, of a lot of them by the data.

And then you say, don't worry, parent like you can fight this off.

You know, I mean, I mean, parents, you know, we have our hand full, like, feeding and clothing like that, but much less try to, like, protect the information environment.

And I will say to, as a parent, it's hard for me because, you know what?

I'm doing a lot of the time when I'm with my famil on my smartphone.

You know why?

Because I'm the co-chair of the third biggest political party in the country.

I, you know, I have work to do.

So.

So your kids are, you know, following, that example.

We need help.

And our government should be fighting for us as opposed to just saying.

Well, I guess you're just going to get, run over by these mega tech companies.

You know, we'll hope for the best.

All right, how about, the concept of some type o universal, licensing agreement?

Universal user agreement instead of, you know, 28 pages of fine print tha they want you to click yes to.

And how about the concept that says, I can give you two levels of permission.

I can give you permission to collect my data, and you can use it, and I can separately give yo permission to, to sell my data to third parties.

But if I want, I'll.

Come on.

I'll go on Facebook.

But my deal with you is you can't disclose that data to anybody else.

Yeah.

That those those are the kinds of things that that we should be opting into our preferences.

And those are als the things that the data unions should be negotiating in our behalf.

Right.

Saying if you're going to sell the data, then we'll consider it.

If we get more.

Yeah, we we get 80% of the money.

And then Facebook's revenue would shrink, very dramatically.

Yeah.

But I mean, if you're making 100 billion and, you get cut to 80 billion, that's still 80 billion.

Yeah.

I mean, that's where I am.

I mean, the way you could think of this is a little bit like a chemical pollutant company where at some point in the past we went and said to these companies hey, guys, you're going to put, you know, you know, have to dispose of this stuff like they're going to be rules, going to regulations, you know, that did cost them money and they didn't make quite as much money.

There are massive negative externalities to the way these social media companies are using our data.

Let's talk quickly about the government level.

You know what?

What can we do there?

And one of the themes that that I saw with you in the forward party was the concept of making changes so that we have greater ethics in government and more ethical behavior.

How do we do that?

How can we create incentives for that?

Oh, I'm for term limits for, members of Congress.

74% of Americans are for the same.

This was not intended to be an environment where people disappear to DC for decades.

And then we don't know what the heck is going on.

And they live more there than wherever we are.

It's kind of common sense.

And I even have a clever way t make this happen in real life.

Aaron.

I'm listening.

Which is that they vote for, let's call it 12 year term limits in the House, in the Senate.

But current lawmakers are exempt.

So they're not even doing anything to themselves.

But the people that come after them will be subject to it.

They can have their cake and eat it too.

It's totally fine.

They can, you know, hang around as long as they want.

So so that's one thing that would have a big effect.

I'm for trying to get money out of politics, which requires a constitutional amendment, and I see, but the Forward Party has the honor to get there by fighting for various reforms.

That reconnects the people of this country to our representatives.

Right now.

That connection is getting badly broken and filtered through the two party system.

Kind of an overarching question.

A lot of things we've talked about our, in regard to the political process and how those things work.

I would argue that while many Americans are concerned about the political process, they're concerned about democracy.

When you ask them what are your greatest concerns?

They, I don't see them matching up with the top priorities of the forward party.

Tell me why I'm wrong.

Well if you have any major challenge and I would put in this bucket, I for sure climate change, immigration, education data just came out that show that our kids, are reall hurting now, and it's painful.

And ask yourself, okay, wh does it seem like our government is not going to be able to meaningfully address these challenges?

And what people who've really dug into the system understand is like, okay the precursor to our addressing those challenges is to change the workings of the system so that our leaders actually answered us again.

Now, you're right.

It might not be quite as sexy as, giving everyone a thousand bucks a month or, you know whatever the policy proposal is.

But I'm now convinced that those policy proposals will remain largely out of reach unless we do this Spadewor and reform our political system.

Other people have come to the same conclusion, including al Gore, who said, at this point democracy reform has to precede addressing climate change.

You can put anything in there, and, and then if right now some people watching this are saying like, oh, you know, why we can't get what we want?

It's because of the other team.

And there might be some kerne of truth to that, depending upon where you are.

But there are plenty of places around the country where one party is in charge and people are still very, very frustrated, with what is happening i their community and environment.

All right.

Well, I mean, I was kind of making the argument that it seems a lot of the tenants of the Forward Party are, you know, what could be described as inside baseball?

That wonky.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, not just wonky, but.

Well, yes, wonky.

And also focus on the process.

And while it's logical and rational to say, hey, if you improve the process, you'r going to improve the outcomes.

And I totally agree with that.

I'm just my sense is most people are focuse on, hey, what are we doing about the economy?

What are we doing about jobs?

What are we doing about inflation?

What are we doing about climate change?

What are we doing about social justice?

Or whatever the case may be?

We stand for free people, thriving communities, and a vibrant democracy.

And we think that Mayor Jenny Art in, Fort Collins has a better sense as to what to do to address homelessness or education or whatnot than we do.

Maybe that's traumatic.

Oh, a party that stands for nothing.

Well, a party that stands for delivering results, based upon what the people want.

And what the leaders who are closest to the situation want as opposed to playing, the game that the two parties have trie to trap us in, which is to say, look, there's this left right spectrum, pick a spot.

Oh, you pick that spot.

Well then this half the country now wants nothing to do with, you know, I mean, like, I want to help the people in Massachusetts and Missouri.

And I think that they all deserve a better form of representation and government and playing the spectrum game is what the parties want, because then they can just pat you on the head and say, you know what you are, you're a suburb of this party or that party, and we can now proceed to ignore you.

But is that kind of a cop out in the sense of the same description you gave of the senator who said hey, if I don't take a position on an issue, I don't alienate anyone.

For example, using climate change as an example of certainly a very significant number of of scientists of the population who see climate change as an existential issue.

You have to share that.

Yeah, that, you know, you look at what's happening in terms of, you know, the literally desertification of the West.

You look at some, you know, wildfires an how people have been suffering.

That you look at what's happening with any even the most conservative projections of sea ris and how that's going to impact not just the U.S.

I mean, when you go down the line of what's happening, how can the forward party not take a position on climate change?

Well, I'm going to sugges that the vast majority of people who support forwar probably agree with everything you just said on climate change, including marriage, any art.

And for us, our job is to say look, let's make a system work well enough so that we can address that challenge and address this challenge.

Is it fair to sa that the Forward Party is about how do we move forwar from a process perspective from, involving everyone?

It's in part saying, we will work with anyone who wants to solve problems.

We are the party of grace and tolerance.

You can disagree with me on something that I might feel very strongly about, but let's say even in this, in this lens, let's say I'm sitting with someone who says, you know what?

I don't believe in climate change.

It's bunk.

I disagree with that.

I think that they're wrong, but I still respect and appreciate them because they are my fellow human being, an American.

And that is the forward party.

We're running out of time.

There were some process issues that we didn't get to, but I want to talk about quickly.

See if we can cover that ballot access.

What's the forward party's take on?

How do we increase ballot access?

How do we make it easier for all Americans to vote?

I would love to make it easier for all Americans to vote.

But, you know, the greatest way we're being disenfranchized, is that in a lot of places around the country, Colorado, not in this category.

Independents can vote i primaries, you know, in Nevada, that they said, you know what?

You have to be a registered member of the party.

So independents are paying for election they can't even participate in.

This is the most pervasive form of disenfranchisement nationwide that we just don't talk enough about, where you have these two parties that are using essentially taxpayer dollars to run their race and in many, many places saying if you're an independent, you can't even participate.

But how do we make redistricting fairer?

Because clearly both parties, both major parties do their best.

I mean, it's not like the Republicans are the only ones at faul or the Democrats, both parties do their best to jury rig the system, to gerrymander the system, to cut up congressional districts in manner that some of you look at and it's like how did they come up with that?

And the reason is it gave them, an electoral advantage.

How do we sell them?

You mean the parties play games like that?

I, I heard that I don't know if I have any proof.

You need the independent redistricting commissions, which I believe they have here in Colorado.

But both parties dislike them because it means they have to actually compete.

If there is anything the two parties can agree on is that competition is bad.

And if there's one thing the forward party stands for is that a lack of competition lead to bad results and lets compete.

What is the Forward Party's position on issues such as dropboxes and mail balloting?

We're going to be pro anything that makes democracy more, more accessible and active.

So, you know, mail in ballots.

Great.

Dropbox here.

And how about ballot harvesting allowing people which in most states is still legal, where people can collect ballots from friends and family and deliver them?

No, I can see why some people are dubious, of that, but in some cases, you might have elderly folks, or, people in circumstances where, where that's helpful.

You were in a presidential primary.

And one of the things that fascinated me, on both sides of the aisle, and I'd be interested in the forward party's kind of position on this, and it may be just ranked choice voting.

But what fascinated me is that in most states, with jus a couple of exceptions, really, whoever wins a plurality of the vote in the world simply wins more votes than anybody else.

But not necessarily.

The majority gets 100% of the delegates for presidential campaigns.

So in theory, if you have, you know, 20 people running and your statistical average is 5%, a person, you know, five times 20 is 10 and someone gets, you know, 14 or 15%, that perso could get 100% of the delegates.

How do you address that?

Especially since under the Constitution, each political party gets to make those decisions, not state legislatures.

There's a lot of frustration with, the Electoral College, it not being fair represent representative.

The best fix that you could actually get states on boar for is proportional allocation of electors which would make it, by the way, so that presidential candidate might show up in the 42 states that are not swing states.

Why should only the eight swing states get all the fun of getting bombarded with advertisements and having presidential candidates come and campaign?

They might show up in, you know, Idaho or Missouri if they thought they could nudge the populatio and get another electoral vote, you'd see candidates going all over the place.

And that's something you might be able to talk, two thirds or three quarters of states in the adopting.

Whereas if you say, hey, let's get rid of the Electoral College, it's a nonstarter.

So how about, the, the concept being promoted and making progress state by state, called the National Popular vote, where the idea is there's a compact amongst states.

And what those states agree is that whichever presidential candidat wins a majority or a plurality actually of the popular vote, they will cast their electoral votes, their electoral college votes for that candidate.

And if enough states get together that add up to 270 votes, that would mean that if a candidate or whichever candidate wins, a plurality of the vote wins more votes than anyone else running for president that person would get elected.

What's your take on that concept?

No, I prefer the proportional, allocation, because I think it mor genuinely reflects popular will, in a, in each state.

And I think there is something to having to campaign in different parts of the country.

Also tha compact, as far as I can tell, is going to fall short of reaching, that level of 270 electoral votes, at least for likely it won't make it for 20.

It's possible, but unlikely for 2024.

But as I said, I like the fact that people are looking at trying to innovate.

Because one of the issues we have is that, by the way, what we're living righ now, this two party system is, one of the Founding father worst nightmares come to life.

John Adams had two parties would be a great evil across the land.

Washington warned against Partizanship on his way out.

And here we are in the most polarized environment since the US Civil War and not doing what we should be to both bring people together and also get rid of the party primaries and empower the rest of us.

I mean, you know, 8 billion, 1 billion beating each other up.

What should we be spending on trying to innovate within our democracy?

So I'm, I like the fact that people are trying to find fixes to perceived problems.

I'm a big fan of th proportional allocation approach as opposed to the the popular vote compact, with the proportional allocation probably more complex.

The pass with national popular vote.

Well, not ideal.

What would be reall interesting is to see, I mean, that would mean that a state that votes one way.

So for example, if Colorado voted for.

Let's just for the sake of our discussion, yes, say that it's Trump versus Biden.

Let's say Colorado votes for Biden.

But Trump gets the the wins the popular vote.

Colorado would have agreed to cast its electoral college votes for Trump.

So, I mean, even if they get to 270, I'm really curious to see if when push comes to shove, you know all the states actually do that.

But as he said, it's not, you know, it's a they're not I mean, they're I think they're closing in on 200 votes or something like that.

So they've made substantial progress.

But I think they're at the point now where it's going to be kind of tough.

Well, I want to call attention to something called the American Promise, where they're trying to get a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and they are not even at that level.

I think they've got maybe ten states signed up.

But again, that's the kind of innovation we should be looking at instead of just lying here saying, oh, why are things so broken?

Yeah, why give up?

And of course, Citizens United opened the floodgates of of dark private money.

Corporate money, dark money.

Now, 85% of Americans would like to get some of that money out of politics.

But we're at a point now, unfortunately, where what we think doesn't really matter.

And that's what the Forward Party's fighting for change.

All right.

Well good luck Andrew.

Aaron, such a pleasure.

You're fighting a great fight.

Well thank you.

That was Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate who is now the co-chair of the Forward Party.

Remember, this is part two of our special two part series, so be sure to watch part one.

I'm Erin Harbor.

Thanks for watching.

And.