#672 "There's no such thing as 'predatory pricing.' That's a liberal construct."
TODAY: We say goodbye to a normal world as the show initiates the Peak Season Option and goes patreon-only for the rest of the year. (patreon.com/miniondeathcult) ALSO: Bernie Sanders betrays the left by working to lower credit card interest rates... with Trump?? PLUS: "Anarchist" and Libertarian arguments for supporting these major financial institutions FINALY: US Postal Workers are in the middle of "contract negotiations" in which their abysmally weak union wants them to accept a ~1% pay raise and further entrenchment of horrible working conditions. We discuss some of those working conditions, discuss an active Vote No campaign, look back at the history of successful wildcat strikes and the possibility of one today, and address the continuous propaganda campaign against these workers and the USPS as a whole. Music: Kid Killowat- The Scope Enumclaw- Change
Conservative humor gone awry is going to fascist for you today.
So stay tuned.
We're going to take a few pictures of the desert and how their policies are actually messing it up.
It's not beautiful when you go across that border.
But stay tuned, guys.
I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And we are Minion Death Cult.
The world is ending.
Forcing credit cards to lower their interest rates is responsible.
Despicable and responsible.
And we're documenting.
Don't worry, folks.
We will hold them to task.
What's up everybody?
It is your regular episode of Minion Death Cult.
Unfortunately, not to become regular for the remainder of the rest of this year because avid listeners may know it is peak season and my regular job takes a lot more hours of my time during this time of year and so we go to Patreon only for the remainder of November and December.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
So if you want to party with that new raw, rugged stuff, you got to hop on the Patreon.
Still delivering sweet hot fire over there.
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And remember, if you really don't like that this has to happen...
Before next year, before next holiday season, we need to go ahead and just dismantle the consumerist, capitalistic structure we have now.
And I need you guys to really just...
We kind of got to burn it all down by next year if you want to avoid Alexander not having time during peak season.
So, you know, a little motivation, a little incentive there for you.
Well, and just with how much pain and misery and hard times there are in the world, wouldn't it be nice to do something good, like giving me enough money so that I can quit my job?
Yeah, exactly.
That's so real.
Put a little light back in this awful, awful timeline of ours, right?
No, but yeah, thank you for everybody for your support.
You help us do the show.
We never run ads.
We're totally independent.
It's just me and Tony.
And, of course, we have a talented editor and a talented graphic designer who...
What do you call it?
Don't work for us.
They're not our employees.
They're just great artists who contract with us, I guess you could say.
Part of the team.
Part of the family.
We're a family over here.
Yeah, we make sure they're not our employees so we don't have to pay them a living wage.
Just kidding.
We pay them far above minimum wage.
Anyway, this episode, you know, man...
We had a lot of worries about what the Trump administration is going to do.
We saw a lot of the freaks and weirdos he is going to try to put into his cabinet and surround himself with his team of advisors, just a real kaleidoscope of insane people.
I didn't think he would go this far, though, because apparently Trump and Bernie Sanders are going to limit credit card rates to only 10%, Tony.
Honestly, I'm pretty upset about this.
I can't believe Bernie Sanders would work with that man.
That is the thing here.
I mean, come on, folks.
You never have to hand it to Trump, okay?
That's not like...
A take I expected to see from, like, leftists.
Like, I expected liberals to be like, oh, well, yeah, they're both white, so that's why they want to work together, or whatever.
I did see this.
I think I follow this person.
I don't know.
I see this person all the time in my feed, and I think they're, like, on the left or something.
Their name's Cassie, who quote tweets this.
Breaking.
Senator Bernie Sanders announces he will work with Trump to cap the credit card interest rates at 10%.
Cassie says, moronic move from Bernie.
You don't cooperate with the enemy while they're in office.
How has everyone learned that lesson from watching the GOP? Stop unilaterally disarming.
Don't give them anything.
The president's party is the one held accountable for gridlock.
Stupid.
Oh yeah, totally.
You know what?
Honestly, good on Cassie for not having any credit card debt.
That is good on her.
Yeah, well, I don't think this would abolish debt, but it would just lower the interest rate on new credit cards.
I think Cassie is highlighting a good strategy if your number one priority is trying to make the Democrats look good or trying to make the American people suffer under Republican presidents so that they elect the Democrats next time.
I don't know how you could be like...
Any sort of a leftist and have loyalty to the Democratic Party?
Yeah.
That's kind of a joke, right?
Yeah.
From where I'm sitting, I don't really care who's doing it if it does actually benefit me.
If it actually benefits me, that's great.
I don't have any fucking team here.
No way.
I'm reading here...
Where was this?
I don't remember what news outlet this was.
Sorry, folks.
I think it was probably MSNBC or Yahoo or maybe Washington Examiner.
That's probably who it was.
If Trump, for example, follows through on his proposal to limit interest rates on credit cards to 10%, which is what he campaigned on, absolutely, I will be there, Sanders said.
So Sanders was talking to the New York Times Daily Podcast, I just remembered.
And a lot of people are picking up on this quote now.
There was the quote about, can't remember what he said, just like about Democrats abandoning the working class.
That's kind of like what the conversation was about.
And this was like a wrap up.
Oh, will you work on, will you work with Trump on anything?
And I remember when Trump said, Trump did say this on the campaign trail.
And we almost did a segment about it.
I collected a lot—not a lot, but it wasn't hard to do.
I think, like, some right-wing Facebook page, like Occupy Democrats Logic, like, you know, the opposition to Occupy Democrats Facebook page on— Facebook, they posted about it, you know, like, hey, here's another cool populist thing Trump wants to do, like, you know, cutting taxes for waitresses or whatever.
And the comment section was just filled with, well, actually, bros saying how it would be bad for banks if they couldn't charge 25%, 30% interest rates.
Phenomenal thing to see, which is why I wanted to cover in the first place.
I'm glad we kind of held off till right now because these takes are even greater.
You don't cooperate with the enemy while they're in...
Like, I don't like the Republicans, right?
I do consider them my enemies, but I consider, like...
Capitalists in general are my enemies.
You know, people who organize against the working class are my enemies.
So if you're participating in this sort of electoral system at all, how are you thinking of it in those terms, right?
Like, this argument of, like, whatever you do, do not try to help Americans during Trump's presidency.
Because, like, I don't know, you're going to punish...
It's not even, like, a punishment for Americans.
It's like, it's like a, you know, don't give the other team a win thing.
But it's like, again...
I wouldn't see that as a win for Republican politics.
I would see that as a win for people who don't have to pay 25% credit card interest rate anymore.
But it's like a weird inverse of the argument where it's like, well, don't accept any bad from the party you're voting for.
Like, you're voting for this party.
Well, did you know they did this bad thing or this bad thing or they're doing this bad thing or whatever, which is an argument like I understand.
But it's like the inverse of that where it's like, don't accept anything good from the party you didn't vote for.
I don't know what you have to lose.
Are you going to go out there and organize against lowering credit card interest rates?
Of course you're not.
You can't do that.
You might as well enjoy it, I guess.
I don't know.
But yeah, this argument, it sounds like you shouldn't let America do anything good for anyone because then the act would be tainted by association with America.
But I don't see America as a person.
I don't see America as a pedophile director you can get cancelled from making movies or something like that.
America as a government and as a nation is a set.
It's a group of people who are all fighting for, to get their shit, to get their way.
You know, it's like, it's a process.
I'm not saying like, I'm not arguing for incrementalism or whatever.
That shit's all going to happen with or without you.
The nation is like a set of people trying to push the country in different directions.
And I think there's a shit ton of good people here who are trying to push the country in better directions, whether it's through the electoral system or, you know, more likely through, like, material aid to other people and grassroots organizing and that sort of thing.
And I don't think it, like, makes sense to abandon America.
Like, I don't know.
This was the...
The number one argument against Bernie Sanders to me when he was running in 2016 was, I can't remember who tweeted it, but somebody said the best argument against Bernie Sanders is that Americans don't deserve good things.
And that is, that's like the most salient argument against like a social democracy or whatever.
But it's still not that salient.
You know, it's still not that real.
Like there's people I love in this country.
There's people we all love in this country.
There's great people in this country.
And so I don't...
It's not like you're working with Jeff Bezos when you petition the government for stuff.
You're like...
You're fucking trying to dab on the landlord.
You're trying to own the landlord and get less rent.
You know what I'm saying?
You're trying to get what you can to help people out of a really bad system that we're all trying to work our way out of.
But I don't think you should wait to regulate credit card companies until you can have full communism.
That doesn't quite make sense to me because it's like, well, if you don't have the power to even regulate credit cards, are you going to be able to do communism?
What are you talking about?
Yeah, exactly.
It's kind of like that.
They're not really about it.
It's so just optics-driven.
It's not principle-driven, because if it really was, then they really would have dropped out of capitalism.
They won't accept the idea of no ethical consumption of capitalism.
They have to go all for it.
Because if it's just the optics of what's getting you this thing, making something a tiny bit better, which is a rare W in America, if it's just the optics that are keeping you there, you better be fucking thorough.
And you know they're not.
It's just this team game we play.
It's just these weird optics that we decide to care about for some reason.
They're allowing to taint it.
It's really silly.
Yeah, I mean, it seems like the principle is we have to get Democrats back in charge.
That's not my principle.
We've seen the Democrats in charge a lot, in my lifetime at least.
And yeah, when they are in charge, we should absolutely try to make them do what we want them to do.
I don't think there's any hypocrisy in that at all or any immorality in that at all.
Yeah.
But, like, working as an end?
Like, as a means to an end?
Sure.
But as the end itself, it makes no sense to be like, well, we shouldn't do any of the good things because then how are we going to re-elect Democrats?
And it's like you're looking at something...
Well, the reporting I was reading said that the Biden administration...
President Joe Biden's administration tried to lower credit card...
Late fees earlier this year, but a federal judge put a stop to his plans.
Womp womp.
Yeah, I mean, Democrats couldn't get it done with whoever's in there.
That's kind of how I look at it, because if...
If you're opposed to this as a Democrat based on cynical terms, you don't think that that's going to be an ad against you when you're trying to run as a proponent of the working class or whatever.
Oh, here's my voting history where I voted down something that would limit credit card companies' ability to fuck me in the ass.
Hmm.
Yeah.
You know?
But yeah, some of these responses, yeah, Cassie's was like kind of the number one, just like, wow, what a crazy thing to say.
But yeah, Jason here, who's like a lib econ guy.
I wish I would have seen that because I actually know them.
They're like a friend.
Jason is?
No, Cassie.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I don't know.
Talk to your friends.
Make sure they're okay, Tony.
Yeah.
Jason says, honestly, this is good.
So about Bernie trying to lower credit card interest rates, destroying the credit of working class Americans and making them turn to loan sharks could get us a few more house seats in 2026.
So yeah, just like saying, you know, the quiet part, loud, good.
Okay, I hope they suffered under the Republican because that means we'll get a Democrat next time and then things will be good, right?
And if you like look at Jason Dean, I think his avatar is Paul Krugman.
Uh, who's like a lib economist.
Uh, I wonder what Paul Krugman would say about low.
I think Paul Krugman would probably be in favor of holding credit card interest rates to 10%, which is still very high interest rates.
A lot.
That's still, they can still make their precious interest rate.
Okay.
Folks like, man, um, But yeah, Jason said, honestly, this is good.
Yeah, destroying the credit, yada, yada, yada.
I went to his profile and his pinned tweet was like, wow, I'm shocked that Kamala lost the race.
She really did run a great campaign and now is not the time for finger pointing.
And then another one of his tweets was like, I had to go to the doctor because of how badly my election prediction failed.
And there were people in his replies, they're like, I know, bro.
I'm never trusting polling again.
I had Iowa going blue.
That's awesome.
That's so awesome.
Talk about posting L's.
Not only that you were wrong, but you're feeling that way about it.
Yeah, it's just so funny.
Why do Democrats lose elections?
Could it be because they're too scared to even say that credit card companies shouldn't charge us fucking 25% interest rates?
Yeah.
Incredible.
Like, what do you even want out of politics?
I don't even understand you.
B Strong says, how the fuck does dipshit Sanders, along with the orange shit stain, think they're going to accomplish this?
Better buckle up, America.
The next four years is going to be an absolute shit show.
That's democratic poison like I've never seen before.
I love this, like...
These guys are talking about doing a single piece of legislation?
Do you know how fucking crazy that is to hear in Congress?
Do you have any idea what you're fucking suggesting?
They're going to tear this place out by the roots by passing one piece of legislation that takes on credit cards.
Incredible.
And again, like...
First of all, I guess I should have said this earlier...
The idea that Trump is actually going to do this, fairly far-fetched, right?
This is like, this is kind of like my, I don't know, like, it gets back to why I'm not as persuaded by the argument, you shouldn't work with Trump, like, you know, he's a bad man or whatever.
Of course he is.
Of course he's an awful bad man.
But he's also kind of insane, right?
He's also kind of crazy.
He does crazy things all the time and there's a chance that he could do something good crazy as well as all the bad crazy stuff he's going to do, right?
I'm not...
I didn't advocate for voting for Trump for anybody who doesn't know me.
I don't pin my hopes on a future for the global population on Trump being a wild card who's going to pull out of NATO. That's never going to happen, guys.
But...
He does occasionally do things that are good sometimes, like fast-tracking the vaccine was good.
Cassie, did you abstain from getting a vaccine because it would give Trump a win?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, and another thing is, Trump did a good thing that was the vaccine, that his base actually doesn't like, that they hated him for doing, and he still won!
Still did it, yeah, yeah.
He still fucking won, so this whole argument is like, is wild to me.
But it's like, I don't know, for example, if Trump gets a wild hair up his ass and starts openly defying Benjamin Netanyahu publicly, like he has done before...
Trump is on the record more critical of Benjamin Netanyahu than the Biden administration, than Harris, than any of these other people.
Probably even Obama.
And Obama got shunned by AIPAC for how mean he was to Israel or Benjamin Netanyahu or whatever.
Trump came out and said Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't want a peace deal.
And that and that Palestine did want a peace deal.
And we're working to including Hamas.
We're working actually working towards a peace deal.
And Benjamin Netanyahu was the roadblock.
He didn't want it like there's video of Trump saying this shit.
So, yeah, in in in like the best of possible worlds.
Trump could decide like, oh, I want to be the president who solved the Middle East crisis, so I'm going to actually use the massive amount of leverage I have, both as American president and as like a popular political figure, like it or not, he is a popular American political figure, to make Israel do what Ronald Reagan made them do.
What other presidents in the past have actually...
Made Israel do.
Now, it wasn't a solution when Ronald Reagan did it, obviously, but I'm just saying, are you going to protest that if it happened?
Are you going to fight against Trump accidentally doing something good?
It's absurd.
I think it's childish.
It's silly, like you said, Tony.
Yeah, and this whole thing, too, where it's kind of the whole fallout of, like, the election where people really think that, like, it is an all-or-nothing game, you know?
Like, he won, so therefore everything is bad always, forever.
Everything has changed forever.
It's like, no, there's a system that's already happening.
It's been happening.
It's going in that direction.
Some things are going to come out.
Like, you're going to want to still pay attention in the next four years.
Something might actually good come of it.
I mean, it's not going to be great, but you...
You can't just like throw away it because you can't just like not participate or hate it because it is what it is.
Yeah, you can't throw away four years because you don't like the president.
Hey, welcome to my world, okay?
I never liked the president.
Um...
But yeah, this probably isn't going to happen because even if Trump wants to do it, you still have to get a majority of legislators on with this.
There's probably going to be a ton of Democrats pretending to not like this because Trump's doing it instead of because of the Wall Street donations they get every six years or every four years whenever they're running.
Yeah.
It's not going to happen.
But if it did, it would be good.
But Matthew Spira replies, it's obvious, even if it does get implemented, that credit card companies and banks will tie it down in very expensive litigation.
It is such an unbelievably stupid idea.
So don't do it.
You better not do it.
But even if you do do it, it's not going to matter.
It's not going to do anything.
So you better not try.
You better not even be seen trying to take on the banks.
Because do you know how bad that would look?
Do you know how...
If one of these anti-bank politicians ran and they were like, hey, I actually sponsored this legislation to cap interest rates and I fucking tried to hold them to task and we got this reactionary judiciary that's protecting the capitalist class, that's protecting these banks.
We need to get them out of here.
We need to get better judges in or whatever.
That's not going to fly with people.
All they're going to hear is, wow, this guy wasted my tax dollars with a frivolous piece of legislation that wouldn't even hold up to constitutional must.
You want to lose!
There's no political project here at all.
It's so funny watching these losers talk themselves into losing harder.
And the thing, too, is even if it doesn't...
Yeah, he's right.
It is going to get tied up.
It's not going to be easy.
But you want the banks to be seen publicly doing these things.
You want the fight.
You want to see the banks being shameless, being predatory.
You want to see them out there spending lots of money to fight this because they really do hate you.
We need to make that obvious.
We can't be like, well, they're just too powerful.
There's no point in giving it a shot.
That is the point.
And not only that, you want Trump-appointed judges to be seen striking down this populist legislation that would benefit working people.
And doing it against their leader.
That's a good thing to see.
Yeah, um...
So, now we're getting into the same topic here, but now we're getting into the sort of genre of replies that I'm calling libertarian bullshit.
You knew it was coming, folks.
Carolyn Meliar, so this is on Twitter, says, No!
No!
Period.
Government has no right to demand interest rate caps on credit cards.
And if they choose to do so, we will see reduced access to credit, higher borrowing costs in the form of additional fees, and increased consolidation.
Man, that's true.
If you fix this one part of the industry, other parts of the industry aren't going to be fixed, Tony.
You ever think of that?
And it's like, okay, again, you're right, but it's going to take care of this one part.
And they're not going to be able to weaponize those other things you're talking about as viciously.
Take a fucking...
Again, have these people never had a credit card bill?
Do they not understand how this is not a bad thing?
They did, and it made them a better person.
Yeah, they worked hard and they got through it.
They got another loan with a lower interest rate.
Yeah, I had a 25% interest rate on a laptop that I spent 12 years paying off.
And I'm better for it.
Yeah.
Not really.
But, you know, come on.
Come on, folks.
Ed Hansberry says, How about we encourage people to not spend money or not spend more than they have instead of making it easier to get into debt?
Love it.
So a lot of these arguments are...
We saw it earlier.
Working people need credit.
Do you guys...
Listen to yourselves out there.
Do you know how bad working people have it?
They need credit.
Their money doesn't go as far.
They're not getting paid as much at all anyway.
Yeah, they freaking need this system of predatory lending.
It's so fucking funny because why do you think we're in...
How do you think this crisis of capitalism has extended itself to Not only that, but areas in which prices have ballooned vehicles, housing, medical costs.
These are all, in my mind, artificially inflated prices and costs thanks to credit.
You think the private...
Medical industry could exist without healthcare insurance, as it is.
No.
It's only because of these middlemen leeching off of what people actually need that they can extend.
Yeah, sure.
The hospital can charge you a million dollars for a surgery, and that works because I can help you pay it off in $100 increments until you die.
Whereas if that credit weren't just a solid function of our economy, prices for these things would have to come down.
That's just the way technology advances, the way that manufacturing advances.
That is supposedly how the market is supposed to work.
The more we have this knowledge, the more we compound, we're able to produce things for cheaper, faster, yada, yada, yada.
Not when you get these fucking creditors in the middle of everything.
They keep everything out of reach for people intentionally because that's how they make money.
If that makes sense.
It's that whole thing, too, where, again, people forget that America, the country's supposed to serve its citizens.
It's supposed to serve the people that live here.
But we always blame it on them.
He's blaming us.
He's like, you're spending too much money.
He's not saying things cost too much.
You're not being paid enough.
He's saying, listen, you should live within your means.
Well, sometimes my means don't suffice for survival.
So, again, you've got to stop blaming.
Hey, don't ask the system to do anything to help you out because you should be able to help yourself out with the system that's keeping you down.
And the credit is like a Band-Aid.
It's keeping the whole thing propped up.
And I'm not saying like...
Our individual opinions about credit are what made credit happen.
It's just, you know, the capitalists at work trying to figure out how to extract more money out of us.
And I'm not saying, like, houses should be cheap enough that you can pay them with cash or whatever.
I mean, the fucking government should just flood the market with housing, first of all, anyway, and we'll see what fucking happens then.
But...
The way that credit has inserted itself into our lives for everything is extremely bad.
It's not a solid foundation for an economy, let alone a nation trying to progress.
When people take on credit, they think to themselves, myself included, like, okay, either my life's going to get better, I'm going to be able to pay this off, or I'm going to die.
So it's all good either way.
I've been lucky.
I've had to put stuff on credit cards occasionally.
Like, oh, I'm not getting paid until next week, so I need to put groceries on my credit card.
And then I'll just pay it off in a lump sum next week or whatever.
I've always had the luxury of being able to only rely on credit for the big things or for...
Small things here and there.
I can't imagine what it must be like for somebody who has to pay for everything with a credit card, you know?
Or most things with a credit card on a regular basis.
And I guess I'm not saying we should take credit away from people as a form of accelerationism because that'll help fix the system or whatever.
No, I'm saying we should force corporations and banks to help everybody.
Lower its 10%.
You still got to give credit to people.
You still got to underwrite all these loans and shit.
And also, in the meantime, we move away from a credit system by making sure people have a living income and have a place to live.
I'm actually proposing a bill so that what happened to me happens to everybody where what happens is your parents buy a house in your name when you're 14 so that you spend your whole life making a pretty mediocre income so you can't ever get past that credit card, that credit mark you have for buying a house of 14 so you can finally afford to buy a refrigerator on credit at 35.
And I think that really worked well for me because the thing about me is I don't have a lot of debt and it's just because I can't even get it.
And that's great for me.
How are you legally the owner of a house at 14?
You were like a hot man.
You were hustling as a kid.
There would have been TikTok videos about you if that was around.
No, it was literally just a really smart fudging.
See, what happens sometimes when parents name their kids with the same exact name they have, it can become malicious later on in life.
Oh, did I put down his social security number?
That's so weird.
It's so weird.
It's a secret tool that'll be helpful for us later.
Tony Boswell Jr.
Bummer.
That sucks so bad.
I'm sorry.
It's funny because it is kind of bittersweet.
It does work.
I don't have a good credit score or anything, but I also don't have a lot of debt.
Right.
And see, these people would be like, well, if you can't get credit cards at 20%, how are you supposed to develop good credit?
Exactly.
Why do I need to make the banks happy to get the money that everybody needs to buy a house or to buy a car or whatever?
Like, that should be illegal in and of itself, this fucking credit score system.
Think a little bigger, guys.
Yeah.
Yeah, please.
Like, I mean, Bernie Sanders, the guy we're talking about right now, also wants to run public banks, also wants to turn post offices into public banks, which I think would solve a lot of these issues you guys won't shut the fuck up about.
That'd be huge.
Stephen Walk, who has the Ukraine flag and the Israeli flag in his display name, says, I'm not at all surprised to see an octogenarian big government guy from Brooklyn who caucuses with Democrats agree with a septuagenarian big government Democrat from Queens.
Fucking, you fucking nerd.
I hate you so much.
Yeah, man, they're both liberals.
Like, if you want to look at it in this context, every politician since, what, before Ronald Reagan has been a fucking standard neoliberal, you know, with variations on foreign policy here and there.
But, like...
Okay, cool.
Yeah, you realize Trump was a politician.
Imagine being like another big government political decision and it's like banning the right for credit card companies to field strip you if they come across you in public and you're overdue on your payment or whatever.
But yeah, I just love talking shit about big government, democracy.
The flag in your fucking display name only exists because of American big government.
I'd watch your fucking tongue, bro.
Yeah, brother.
Watch how you speak to American liberals.
I was like, so this guy should be okay with public banks, right?
He likes spending of American money, without question.
Sure, yeah.
So, Neuralcat replied, as a libertarian, and this is probably the best thing I've ever seen follow the phrase, as a libertarian, probably the only good thing I've ever seen follow, as a libertarian.
I don't believe in price controls, but I do see that the duopoly of V slash MC, uh, So, what is it, vulture capital?
You know, just like market capital?
I don't know.
Has too much power in predatory pricing slash rates.
This is a reasonable exception, and I hope Bernie repays by being reasonable during confirmations.
MAGA! As a libertarian, and then it ends with MAGA. MAGA, yeah.
Basin says, you're not a libertarian.
There were a ton of people saying you're not a libertarian.
To this guy because he wanted to slightly limit the power of credit card companies.
And Bill the Cat Guy replies, there's no such thing as predatory pricing.
That's a liberal construct.
What?
What?
It's a liberal construct.
It doesn't exist.
It's a social construct.
It's not predatory.
I'm just charging what I have to to make a hefty profit.
Did you know that predatory pricing doesn't exist in the wild?
It's actually just a social concept.
What the fuck are you talking about?
It's a liberal concept.
Everybody knows it's like one of the most innate human observances is this shit costs too much money.
Fuck you.
Yep.
Sorry, there is such a thing as predatory pricing.
Bill the Cat Guy.
Easy math, buddy.
Sorry.
It's a liberal construct.
It's so fucking funny.
Do you know that actually, if you look up the genetic markers for these credit card companies, it doesn't say anything at all about pricing or whatever.
That's just kind of developed when they all form a society, a cabal of a sort of financial network that rules the rest of the world.
No, continue to pay the predatory pricing, but don't call it that.
Don't observe it in that fashion, because that's just a construct.
You can't do that.
All pricing is good.
If it's not good, the market will fix it.
All right?
Trust the market.
It's working really well.
Kalishnikitty, who has black flags in their profile and their display name, so they're an anarchist.
They're definitely an anarchist.
It says, LOL, you're as libertarian as a socialist can be, I guess.
And so this is one of those anarchists that loves banks.
Yeah.
By which I mean anarcho-capitalist by an ANCAP. That always ends well.
That's always a good idea.
I think it makes sense.
KB22 says, Ah, the good ol', I'm a pro-free-market libertarian except for when Trump comes out with an anti-free-market policy, then I make an exception to the rule.
You're a hack.
Yeah.
So me, I would also get mad at somebody online if I saw them being like, I think the banks are like stealing money from people.
I would also call them a hack, call them a fraud.
I would actually start organizing my anarcho-capitalist commune against them.
I would find out where they lived and see what we could do about it.
It's funny because I kind of get it when they are cut by capitalism and they're like, oh no, it's okay that a car costs that much.
But you're doing this for banks?
You're doing this for banks.
Buddy, you're never going to own a bank.
You might make the next Tesla.
You might do it.
But you're never going to own a fucking bank.
That's for sure not people.
I think they see it as like a...
Libertarians, I think they see it as like a mark of pride, how stupid they are.
They're like, no, I'm being this stupid on principle.
I know it would have adverse effects for me and 99% of society, but I stand on business.
These are my principles, and I would be nothing if not for my principles.
Listen, I like it when my interest rates go up.
It just makes me grind harder.
And then finally, Socrates2023, verified, says no.
It means that both are leftists.
So both Trump and Sanders are leftists, and the poor won't have any credit cards.
Incredible.
I love it.
I love it.
They're both leftists because they don't want credit cards to exploit poor people, man.
Guy, is this where you're at?
Is this the kind of society you wanted, Socrates 2023, where you're arguing about the poor's right to have credit cards?
Yeah, thank you.
Are you missing the point here, bud?
Are you kind of missing the whole...
Seems kind of crazy that poor people have to rely on credit cards.
Wouldn't you say that?
And again, I don't know.
I don't find it like...
What do you call it?
Persuasive to be like, oh, well, they're going to stop lending money to poor people or people with bad credit or whatever, because the answer to that is obviously hurt them again.
Yeah.
Make them do more stuff.
Make the banks do more stuff that we want them to do.
You're talking about the market.
That is what the market is.
The thing is, they're going to have to do some 10% interest rate loans because they still have to make a profit somewhere.
They're going to have to do it somewhat.
Make it fix itself.
Make it do what you're talking about.
Honestly, the overhead for banks has never been cheaper.
How many brick-and-mortar bank...
Stores, locations are operating now versus 20, 30 years ago.
I can't imagine that the cost of having money has risen in the last 20 or 30 years.
Yeah.
Yeah, like you said, Tony, you actually do something about this problem and you tell the banks they're going to have to deal with only 10% interest on the rest of our money for the right to use our money.
Again, the banks, it's all of our money that they're using as leverage against the rest of us as well.
So, I don't know.
I think it makes perfect sense.
To force the banks to do whatever you want them to do as a democratic nation.
And I'll just say to everybody, everybody saying, you know, Bernie shouldn't work with Trump.
Don't do this.
You have 63 days.
You have 63 days until Trump takes office and lowers credit card interest rates for everybody.
Get to work.
Get to work.
It'll be over for you in 63 days.
My life is here.
Okay, moving on.
This is something that I've been meaning to bring up on the show for a while, and I am able to do so kind of conveniently with this Epoch Times post that was shared into one of my Teamsters Facebook groups, which in and of itself is very funny.
But it's a post about the USPS, the post office.
The Epoch Times post is just word art.
So just a big square, red, big red square with white text on it.
It says UPS incurs $9.5 billion loss.
So for people who don't know, USPS postal carriers are currently in contract negotiations.
I reached out because the postal workers are being expected to swallow an extremely bad contract right now.
They're in the middle of negotiations.
And it's funny because I followed the president of the NACL, National Association of NALC, of letter carriers.
I followed the union president on Twitter.
Every time he posts, the replies are nothing but letter carriers cursing him out and telling him to go fuck himself because he is asking the members to accept a contract that has, I believe, less than 1% raise.
Wow.
I think it's like a point something percent raise.
If not, maybe it's like a 1.3 percent raise or something.
Something ridiculous.
Something atrocious.
We weren't able to hear back from one of the organizers of the Vote No campaign before recording this.
Hopefully we can talk to him at some point.
But I'd love to be able to ask him questions about the details of this contract and I've been talking to letter carriers on my route and in my neighborhood and stuff, and none of them are happy with this new contract, but U.S. legislation prevents them from striking.
This is something that people probably know, but...
Letter carriers, postal workers are actually legally prohibited from striking, which sounds like a crazy thing.
Well, they're workers.
Shouldn't they have the legal right to strike?
Well, there's legislation that in theory prevents them from ever going on strike, except that they already have gone on strike in 1970.
Where they were offered a raise that was less than even inflation.
Sound familiar?
And letter carriers in New York walked out and that became a nationwide what's called a wildcat strike, meaning that it's a strike that's not authorized by union leadership, but the members take it upon themselves to conduct worker action anyway.
This is...
Not like common, because we're talking about America here, but this is a historically useful and utilized strike tactic, the Wildcat Strike, even in the 2000s.
Maybe 2010s, there was a huge teacher wildcat strike where the union leadership did not authorize a strike, but the teachers organized on Facebook and other social media groups and things like that and were able to successfully organize a walkout that did result in benefits for them as a group of employees.
So I've been telling my...
Fellow postal carrier.
I'm not a postal carrier, but I've been telling my fellow package handlers about the idea of a wildcat strike.
And I know that there is a very high turnover within the post office right now because of how awful it is to work for the post office right now.
That's another big factor that's generating a lot of this pushback among the rank and file postal carriers and postal workers.
It's insane.
They have like this two-tier system where you're not a full mail carrier for however many years.
You have to do the same exact work as all the other mail carriers.
And it's even worse because you don't have your own route.
You get put over here.
You get put over there.
You got to figure it out the morning of, how to deliver to hundreds of houses or whatever it is.
And so with that being the reality for, I'm assuming a lot of these Postal workers now are younger.
I'm assuming there's not a lot of people willing to do how shitty of a job it is anymore.
And so you're getting younger and younger people.
I've seen a lot of young mail carriers, maybe just because I'm getting older.
And I wonder if because of the maybe age of these workers and the precarity that their shitty employment situation, the job description and all that is right now, is it not more possible now than ever to do a worker action?
Is this going to be the type of employees who are more amenable to a wildcat strike?
I think they might be.
Yeah, I hope so.
Like you said, I think there might be.
I think that now is this time where there is more discussion and fervor around organizing, organizing tactics.
And that's kind of the beauty of the strike.
The beauty of the strike is that you're doing it because no one does want you to.
And that's kind of the whole point.
And so, yeah, hopefully they can get something together.
That'd be good because they deserve it.
Yeah, I know we have a lot of letter carrier listeners, and I love hearing from all you folks.
And Chris just, yeah, reached out recently to try and hook me up with a member of the Vote No campaign for the NALC tentative agreement.
Yeah, and so hopefully we can work that out in the future.
I'd love to be able to help you guys signal boost what appears to be a very bad contract that they just expect...
Membership to swallow like they have for years and years.
Are we ripe for direct action of the post office?
That would be amazing.
I mean, UPS isn't going to cross the picket line, guys.
We are a unionized workforce.
We won't cross the picket line.
Who else is going to be able to do your jobs?
Who else could possibly, even back in 1970 when postal workers struck, Nixon tried to put in the army to deliver mail and it lasted one day.
They can't do it.
They would have gotten rid of the post office already if they could have.
They're trying to do a death by a thousand cuts, which we'll get to in just a second, which is kind of a reason for this post in general.
Um, I think you're still good.
If you do it like Amazon...
Amazon...
Like, no!
What?
100,000 subcontractors are going to figure out how to deliver the mail?
No.
No way.
Um...
Yeah, so this post here, though, USPS incurs $9.5 billion loss.
This was posted by the Epoch Times just like a day or two ago.
100% as anti-union propaganda, as anti-post office propaganda, as anti-postal worker propaganda.
This is designed to make postal workers look ridiculous when they deign to demand more than a 0.8% raise.
Well, look at how much money the USPS is losing already.
We should pay you guys less.
That's kind of what Epoch Times wants to foment with this.
And it was really kind of dispiriting to see it shared into my Teamsters Facebook group by a guy who is a...
I think he's like a business agent or I think he's a shop steward or something.
Oh, wow.
He's got like Teamster polos on in some of his photos and he was apparently a package car driver or is a package car driver.
Very weird to see someone like that who had like really good pro union stuff on their page.
Like I went to check.
And this was one of the posts from a day ago.
It's a meme with a golden retriever wearing a shysty, wearing a ski mask, and the text says, Rob you?
What?
No, I'm really here to tell you who's robbing you.
The five corporations that control 80% of the food supply are actively working with each other to raise prices.
Don't even get me started on energy.
Beautiful.
It's a great meme.
I would share this meme.
It's funny.
It's cute.
And it's right.
So, you know, no shots at Jim here for sharing this.
Just I'm a little confused as to why, like, should be able to maybe see through, first of all, the Epoch Times.
Like, what are you even doing touching that?
Yeah, leave that to us, bud.
You don't got to do that.
Like, this is corporate propaganda that you just shared.
Yeah.
The reason USPS has incurred a quote 9.5 billion loss.
There's no link to an article.
There's nothing.
It's just a blanket statement.
The only reason USPS ever loses money is because of legislation passed in 2006 by Congress that forces them to fund pensions 75 years into the future.
So fund pensions for employees that they haven't even hired yet.
Yes.
Yes.
People who don't...
Employees that don't even exist yet.
And this is something that no other business would ever do.
This is something that no other company has to do.
It is specifically levied against the USPS to make them look bad, to make them look like they're losing money, to hobble them, and then to eventually privatize them, right?
So people...
In this comment section, in Teamsters, it was a little bit of a mixed bag.
Most of the comments were pretty fucking good.
Most of the comments were explaining what I just explained or were just making this point.
Alex says, it's a service.
It's not designed to make money.
That's not the point.
Which is true.
I like the analogy that I've seen recently about roads and freeways.
Those cost money every year to maintain.
They cost money to build.
And they don't profit anybody.
That's not why they're there.
Yeah.
Dan says, yeah, that's the truth.
And then Davey says, it's not designed to make money, but it's sure not designed to lose that much either.
And again, I'll just say, it literally is designed to lose that much money.
It loses that much money because of legislation that was designed to make it lose money.
But then if you zoom in on Davey's...
Profile pic?
It's Anne Frank, which I spotted from a distance.
It's like the photo of Anne Frank.
And so I was like, okay, maybe they're Jewish or maybe they're remembering the Holocaust or whatever.
I did a double take.
I zoomed in because there's something over Anne Frank's face.
Oh, it's a M95 mask with a Star of David on it.
Yep.
So, probably somebody, one of the frequent right-wingers comparing wearing a mask to prevent yourself from coughing on other people to the Juden's mark.
Remember when people were wearing the Star of David because they were forced to wear a mask?
Yeah.
Wow, what a timeline.
What a timeline.
Yeah, we covered a guy who was like making these and selling them.
Jace says, Conservatives rallying to end mail, so they have to pay UPS $13 every time they want to send a birthday card.
Beautiful.
Yes, exactly.
That's exactly what's happening.
Christian replies, though, says, Sounds good to me, LOL. In 32 years of living, I've never sent mail, actually.
And I only check my mail four times a year because the mailbox becomes so full that the mail guy gets angry.
It really does seem like an obsolete thing.
I want to just get rid of my mailbox so I don't have to fucking empty it out at all.
Brother, I think you have something else going on.
You got a whole other thing happening.
You only have to empty your mailbox four times a year?
That's pretty...
He just doesn't engage in the mailbox.
Like, what do you mean you don't engage in the mailbox?
You know, like, jury someone's coming there.
Yeah, you're 32.
You grew up before paperless existed.
You grew up, like, before everything was able to be paid online, man.
What are you talking about?
He's like, I've gone full paperless.
I don't even acknowledge the mail.
Yeah.
I love it.
Sounds good.
I've never sent mail, so I'm totally fine with a movement to destroy and privatize and raise the prices on the service that a shit ton of other people use.
How big of an asshole are you, bro?
I've never used the mail once, so yeah, you could drop a nuke on them for all I care.
I've never sent a card.
I've never received a card.
What is mail for anyway?
I don't get it.
I don't understand.
That's so funny.
I've never wanted to say anything to somebody in a different state or send like a gift.
Like even if you're shipping something, the USPS is typically the cheapest option, bro.
You're not even like sending a Christmas present to anybody.
He doesn't send anything either.
He doesn't do anything.
Scott says, it's not really a business, basically a branch of the military.
Sure.
A lot of people were using, I wouldn't say basically the same.
I would say it's similar to the military in that it provides a service without worrying about whether you're, quote, losing money or whatever.
But Brian says, not the military I served in.
Well, yeah, you're right.
And I like to think he thinks the military is too woke now because I saw one of them wearing shorts.
Another one had what I can only describe as a giant purse.
They were flipping through magazines in there.
What's up with this gay shit from our military, bro?
Also, they're always wearing headphones.
I couldn't wear headphones.
I wasn't allowed to listen to headphones when I was in the military.
Also, I've never seen him kill a guy.
I've never once seen anybody kill a guy while delivering mail.
Oh, well, welcome to Seattle.
All right.
Happens every day just to survive.
Postal workers and UPS drivers have to kill a customer every day.
Every day.
It's not easy.
They're using European work vehicles.
They got the steering wheel on the opposite side.
We're just letting this thing fucking fall apart.
It's not cool.
It's not my military.
Doesn't the military even have people who that is their job is to be mail carriers around base?
Yeah, I think they still have telegraph telegrams.
They do singing telegrams in the military still.
And then here's just like a couple of the pro privatization, you know, like anti USPS comments in the Teamsters Facebook group.
Marcus says the government will always mess it up.
And I like that comment because, yes, if workers get too much power, the government does, you know, when it's operated by capitalists, by the ruling class, they do tend to step in and mess it up.
They do kind of try to like to, whoa, whoa, you guys are getting a little too big for your britches.
We're going to draft legislation saying that you have to give us all your money.
Um, Alto says, privatize this thing.
Privatize this bitch right now.
Freaking privatize it already, bro.
I like how it's just like a snap of a finger, too.
Privatize it.
Like, so, you do know what you're saying is, take this branch of the government and sell it to somebody?
Like, you know that's what you're saying, right?
Right.
Do they realize that?
They're just like, maybe Elon wants to do it.
Okay, so I mean, there's multiple ways you could privatize it.
Like, you could just be like, everyone here is fired, and we're going to contract Jeff Bezos to do it.
Or we're going to try to contract UPS to do it.
Or...
What?
Like, right?
It's either that or it's sell the infrastructure, like you're saying, Tony, to another private company who then gets to use the infrastructure.
And theoretically, like all the employees, because you can't just run a company with just infrastructure.
You need the labor as well.
Unfortunately, they're working on that too, though, guys.
Which means you're still at an impasse because those guys would still be on strike.
They're not going to work for you.
They're not going to work for Jeff Bezos either.
You know?
So yeah, again, like, easier said than done.
Last thing, I wanted to get to actual comments on the Epoch Times comment section.
I'm glad I looked because I knew what it would be.
I knew it would be a lot of people saying basically what we just read.
The government is bad.
It only does bad things.
And we need to make sure that all these uppity postal workers lose their jobs for even thinking about asking for more money.
Yeah.
But these were pretty good.
James Eli, again in the Epoch Times comment section, says, Well, I live in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
I mail a letter across town.
It first goes to Nashville, Tennessee, and then comes back to where it originally started.
So it ends up taking three days to get to my neighbor up the street?
Also, if you're really that upset about it, drive across town.
You can put things in your neighbor's mailbox.
So funny.
How dare you ask James Eli to get up off the couch and open the front door and go outside?
Do you know what crime is like in Bowling Green, Kentucky right now?
Yeah.
The mail carrier has to kill a customer every day, like I said, and then strap their body to their vehicle as a means of protection and dissuasion to dissuade the rest of the unrest, unruly populace.
It's so silly.
Incredibly funny.
Yeah.
So it ends up taking three days to get to my neighbor up the street.
It still costs you 45 cents.
Yeah.
Shut the fuck up.
Shut up.
Three days is pretty great.
Not only that, like, so do you want, like, a mail, a boutique post office just for your town that only delivers stuff to your town?
From your town?
You know what I mean?
Like, what you're saying, well, that doesn't make any frickin' sense.
Why would you send it to a large distribution center that handles all the mail for this county?
That doesn't make any sense at all.
Actually, it does.
Yeah, a little bit.
Unless you want a post office that only handles three letters a year...
From people in that city sending a letter to somebody else also in that city.
This is just how it works.
I don't know.
Very, very odd.
Wow, it seems like their supply chain is too, like, what do you call it?
Too networked together?
Yeah.
Seems like we should be pulling the copper wire out of it.
We should be pulling apart the connections to these things.
This was great, though.
Last one.
Don Teeters.
Don Teeters says, well, duh!
So about them losing $5.9 million.
Can't wait until President Trump makes them, quote, at will employees and then can be fired for not showing up or calling in.
If you think somebody can't be fired from the post office, I don't know what you're fucking smoking.
I asked my mail person why they won't get rid of the no-shows, and she told me because no one can because they're federal employees.
That's going to change real quick.
Smiley face.
Okay, first of all, you can absolutely be fired from the post office.
I'm sure it happens every day.
Second of all, I gotta assume here, because this isn't even a story.
You're not even explaining what the fuck you're talking about.
I asked my mail person why they won't get rid of the no-shows.
So I guess you're referring to a conversation you had with the mail person, where the mail person said, we have a lot of no-shows, and that's why I gave you the wrong mail?
Something like that?
I don't understand.
I'm willing to bet that the reason they haven't gotten rid of, quote, the no-shows is because they can't, is because nobody else wants the fucking job, is because the job is so bad that you have to take on a brand new hire who doesn't know what they're getting into and hope they stay.
Yeah, if you get rid of the no-shows, you have to have someone who's going to show up.
And that's the part that's not happening.
Just getting rid of them doesn't fill the spot.
Yeah, so I don't know how you're like, yeah, me and my mail carrier, we just stopped to gab about how much we fucking hate all of her co-workers, including the job she does in general, right?
Can we get a robot to do this or something, please?
Honestly, she seemed pretty miserable.
I think we should just fire them just because of their attitude.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Sick people, folks.
These are some sick people.
But this is what we're up against.
I think they're fairly poor arguments.
I think a lot of these arguments don't really hold water, especially when you are aware of the full story.
And it was very heartening to see a lot of Teamsters stepping up to not just say why the USPS had lost, quote, lost the So much money, but also stepping forward to say the Epoch Times will ruin your brain.
Please don't read it.
It's a crazy, like, capitalistic, anti-communist cult in the U.S., and they only put out bad things, so don't read them.
It's nice to see that level of media awareness from fellow workers and fellow union members.
So, yeah, shout out to them.
Shout out to you for listening.
Again, if you want to support the show, Patreon.com slash MinionDeathCult.
Five bucks a month gets you a bonus episode every week, as well as the peak season episodes that will, unfortunately, until the end of this year, be only appearing for Patreon subscribers.
But we'll be unlocking some previous Patreon episodes for the main feed to keep everybody busy during this busy holiday season.
And if you're able to, consider subscribing to us over on Patreon.
Help us do the show.
And get some great material for it.
Anything else to add, Tony?
Always a pleasure.
Thanks for coming through.
We've got some heat coming down the Patreon pipeline, though, so come hang out.
Oh, and shout out to postal workers, obviously.
Vote no.
Tell your postal, even if you're not a postal worker, tell your mail carrier that you have heard that a lot of people aren't happy with the contract and that a lot of people are voting no, apparently.
And, you know, there might be a chance to actually do something.
If the postal workers vote no on the contract, they could have the chance to do one of the funniest things in the world.
And I support them.
I support them.
Let them know that you support them and you're okay with not getting mail for a couple of weeks.
Yeah, it won't last that long.
A couple of days, probably.
But anyway, yeah, thanks for listening, folks.
Bye.
This time I want to take, take what you want me to take, take what you want take what you want me to take.
Somewhere.
down the line, when we're doing fine, I'ma find some peace of mind.
