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Aug. 28, 2024 - Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy
50:34
Zuckerberg Apologizes for Throttling Laptop Story | Lewis Bollard | TRUTH Podcast #61
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Hey, everybody.
We are joined this week by actually a longtime friend of mine who I've been looking forward to catching up with on a lot of things, but we're going to have a good discussion on today's podcast.
My friend Lewis Bollard, who I know dating back to my days at Harvard College, where he was, I think, about two years younger than me.
We lived in the same house, Kirkland House, and he has gone in some very interesting directions after leaving college, and we're going to explore some of them.
So, Lewis, welcome to the podcast, man.
Thanks, Vivek.
It's great to be here.
Yeah, thanks for doing this.
So I was going to cover a number of topics relating to what you're doing now and what you've been doing in the world of philanthropy and animal rights advocacy, which I think is going to be fascinating.
But a news item in this week that I thought was pretty interesting, and I'm curious if you either saw it or what your reaction to it is.
Mark Zuckerberg, who by the way, was also another Kirkland House guy.
He was there when I was a freshman.
I don't think you were quite there yet.
But he was a guy who obviously dropped out, found a Facebook, became this big company most people might have heard of.
He said something this week that I thought was pretty remarkable.
And there's actually a funny backstory on it that I haven't talked about publicly, but which I could share here.
Where he was responding to a letter from the House Judiciary Committee and responding to Jim Jordan about some of the censorship decisions, content moderation decisions, whatever you want to call them, Facebook made in 2020, including in the run up to the presidential election.
And the thing I thought was most remarkable about it, both in reference to certain COVID related topics, as well as relating to their throttling of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
You remember this?
Yeah, I remember reading about it.
Yeah, so the issue was basically there was this claim that Hunter Biden's laptop, which contained all of this potentially compromising information, was just Russian disinformation.
And a bunch of intelligence experts said that.
And so Facebook, in response to that feedback, throttled.
That is to say, it didn't totally suppress, but it limited the reach of those stories.
Now we know that actually wasn't Russian disinformation, but it was actually true.
But I think Mark Zuckerberg did something interesting, which is that he came out this week in this letter and just basically openly said, I regret a lot of the decisions that we made.
And if we had the same facts that we do now, that we would have made different decisions and that we should have been more vocal in standing up to what were, he openly admitted, government demands that they censor certain information related to COVID-19.
Which, putting the politics of it to one side, I thought was just a fascinating move on a personal level to be able to do something that I don't think you see that much from leaders inside or outside of politics, which is to say that I had a big decision I had to make.
It was an important decision and I got it wrong.
And I would have done it differently.
And I just thought that was kind of interesting.
And it was different, I think, than certainly what a lot of people were expecting of him.
I have a backstory on this, which I'll share in a second, but curious for your reactions to that, given a lot of our shared background and some of our own perspectives on free speech.
I think something we absolutely agree on is the importance of free speech and the importance of open debate.
And indeed, something I think that's been a basis of our friendship is even when we disagree on issues, we can have a really fair-minded, open debate.
And I think that's how you reach progress on these issues.
Yeah.
When did you join Facebook?
Were you at Harvard?
Yes.
It was actually right before I started.
It was opening up.
It was like right before freshman year.
Yes, it was during my freshman year, Mark Zuckerberg was a sophomore.
So here's a funny backstory.
I think that a lot of audiences may misunderstand figures and the psychology of figures like Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg.
So I was at...
Funny enough, UFC 300. It was the first UFC fight I'd been to.
And Mark Zuckerberg's a big mixed martial arts fan.
So we were both sitting, you know, ringside, cage-side right there that day.
And we ended up striking up a conversation.
We had never met before.
He and Priscilla were actually very gracious.
They were warm.
They came over and introduced themselves to Purvin and myself.
We ended up chatting about a lot of things.
It's a funny story I haven't told, but in light of what he did this week, which I thought was pretty admirable, it was an interesting interaction.
Where he talked about, hey, shouldn't we actually have more of this, right?
Aren't we a little bit too guarded?
And isn't it great to just see the gladiatorial competitive spirits come on out?
He's a big fan, right?
I haven't historically been to MMA fights as much as Mark has.
But I said, yeah, no, it's great.
I mean, we had a great time that night.
I said, I agree with you.
But what do you think about applying that to the spirit of free exchange of ideas and free speech as well?
And he visibly recoiled a little bit.
Because I think part of him is, and I think the same is true for Jack Dorsey, for example, is a lot of that Silicon Valley 1.0 generation did view themselves, and even in some sense do view themselves, as As the guardians of free speech through fostering a free and open internet.
And I do think he struggled with a lot of those decisions, and that was evident in my conversation with him as well.
So this is about three or four months ago.
But what I told him was, listen, I think it would actually go a long way, if you mean it, right?
You don't have to mean it, but I think there's very little downside to you.
If you came out and just said, I'm sorry, we screwed up.
You're a human being, and we're all human beings.
And I think that would go a long way.
He was visibly uncomfortable, but I think what he said at the time was, I'll think about it.
I think it's a decent idea, and I'll think about it.
And so when I opened the newspapers yesterday and saw him come out with exactly that quote, you know, I'm sure other people have told him the same thing.
I doubt it was just my conversation with him.
Maybe it was.
I don't know.
But regardless, I think it's a good thing for the healing of a country where, regardless of the issue of free speech or not, where we're all able to say...
You know what?
I'll take a look at a different perspective, and if I've changed my mind, I'm going to be able to apologize for actions I might have taken in the past.
I just thought that was a pretty beautiful thing this week.
That is.
No, that's a lovely thing.
Yeah, we should consider doing it more.
Now, you've worked with one of Mark's former colleagues, right, in the world of philanthropy?
That's right.
That's right.
So I work for the philanthropy of Dustin Moskowitz, who was one of the other co-founders of Facebook.
You don't work there now, or you did?
I still do.
I still do.
Oh, that's still what you're doing?
Okay, got it.
Yep, absolutely.
Yeah, so tell me what some of your experiences are in the world of philanthropy, right?
Because I've gone the business track, tried to be philanthropic in my activities, but a lot of that's giving to philanthropic organizations where I have very little visibility what's actually happening or being done with the money.
You're in that world, and I know you think with a business-oriented mindset, with a very pragmatic mindset, What are some of your learnings, right, coming from the background that you have, right?
Educated at Harvard, you have parents who have come from an economic background or economics-oriented background.
You're now in the world of philanthropy.
What do you see that you think the rest of the world doesn't see in the way the philanthropy industrial complex operates, both for the better and for the worse?
Sure.
I mean, I think philanthropy is an essential part of our society because it's able and willing to do things that government won't and maybe government shouldn't.
So there are areas, there are issues that are too controversial, they're too new, it's too novel.
Whatever reason, the government's not going to do something about it.
I think philanthropy has an incredible track record of addressing those issues.
The Green Revolution came thanks to the philanthropy of the Rockefeller Foundation decades ago.
Now, I think there's a trap philanthropy falls into where it often becomes an end in itself.
It often becomes you get these bureaucratic institutions, giant foundations who just exist to justify their own existence.
But I also think there's a really exciting area of philanthropy where people are overwhelmingly focused on impact and overwhelmingly focused on whatever vehicle, whether it is philanthropic, political, government, corporate, that can achieve the best results.
And so what has been your area of focus when you're working at this organization?
Yeah, so I'm focused on factory farming.
And for those who are new to it, I guess, this is the system that produces much of the meat we eat.
And I think in recent years, there have been increasing people across the political aisle saying there's something wrong with the system.
We need to do something about it.
And I think that's where the philanthropy can come in.
Now, you say across the political aisle.
That's actually kind of one of the topics I was interested in discussing with you and why I wanted to have you on, because I think it's an interesting, you know, it's an interesting political dynamic.
Most people may think about animal rights activism as a traditionally left-wing or liberal issue.
But you've made reference in our conversations over the years as well to this actually being more of an issue of bipartisan concern than people might appreciate.
Tell me more about what you think is the conservative case for animal welfare and concern about animal rights and where you think that comes from.
Yeah, I mean, conservatives have always opposed animal cruelty.
You know, you see these people saying, oh, only liberals care about animal cruelty.
That's crazy.
We've had animal cruelty laws almost since the founding.
These were uncontroversial laws to ban the worst forms of cruelty to all animals.
In recent times, the strongest federal law we have, the Humane Slaughter Act.
When was the old ones?
I'm actually not familiar with this.
1820s.
1820s.
So you've got laws in the early states back in the 1820s.
You've got these laws existing for hundreds of years.
And the crazy thing that's happened in modern times is factory farming lobby came along and created exemptions under these laws.
They said, we know we're violating the animal cruelty laws, but we're going to create some exemptions to allow us to do it.
On your point of conservative support, I mean, the strongest federal law we have, the Humane Slaughter Act, was signed into law by President Eisenhower.
It was upgraded in a push, spearheaded by Senator Bob Dole.
More recently, Tucker Carlson has said that he dislikes the way factory farms treat animals.
Joe Rogan has talked about this a whole lot on his podcast.
You've got people in other parts of the aisle.
Robert Kennedy Jr., he started a group to sue factory farms.
I mean, that's how he got started.
When we had a ballot measure in Arizona years ago to ban one of the worst practices, gestation crates, the chief cheerleader for that ballot measure was Sheriff Joe Apaya.
So this is not an issue.
Oh, really?
I wasn't aware of that.
Yeah, Sheriff Joe ran ads and he said, you know, he said, I eat bacon, I eat this meat, but I don't want the animals to be tortured.
I don't think they need to be tortured in the process.
This is easily caricatured as a left-right issue, but there are plenty of Democrats who have been terrible on this issue, like Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and there are plenty of Republicans who have been really stellar on this issue and have been absolute leaders.
So let's talk a little bit about the moral underpinning for the case for...
Animal protection, or at least protection against cruelty.
How do you define what counts and what doesn't count as torture?
Let's get the definitions on the table, and then let's back into what we think is actually wrong or not wrong about it.
What actually constitutes torture versus non-torture in the case of what you call factory farming?
I think for most of us, it's pretty common sense.
You know it when you see it.
So I would encourage people, you know, go and do your own research.
Go online, look up images of factory farms.
Look up common practices and say, does that seem like animal abuse to you?
Another way is, look at the way that our animal cruelty laws define it.
So they say, if you torture an animal, if you abandon an animal, if you starve an animal, all of these things are cruelty.
One of the most basic reforms I think we need is to just get rid of the loopholes in the state cruelty laws for factory farms.
And if we did, I mean, again, we've been doing this for hundreds of years.
as courts know how to define animal cruelty within those confines, we don't need to create any special new rights.
We don't need to create any special new laws.
We just need to get rid of the exemptions that the factory farmers have gotten themselves in the existing state laws.
So that's actually fascinating.
I didn't know that.
So you're saying we have existing state laws, some of which you say are dating back to the 1820s, which have generally defined cruelty against animals relating to starvation, abandonment, overcrowding, perhaps, and infliction of pain.
Exactly.
All of those.
You've just said.
And your point is that actually the laws that were passed after that were not generally expanding the scope of limiting what people could do, but instead were exemptions built into the law for what exactly?
So the most common exemption is for what's called common agricultural practices.
And this is a great Orwellian game because a common agricultural practice is anything that you make common.
So, you know, there was this case of a farm in Ohio, sorry, in Ohio, actually, where there was these sickening abuses on the farm where they'd been picking pigs up with forklifters and then lifting them up in the air.
The kind of thing no one thinks is acceptable.
Local prosecutor brought them to court and said, this is crazy.
This is not how you need to...
Just to push on the other side here, why is the idea of lifting a pig unacceptable?
Sure, yeah.
No, I mean, I don't have anything wrong with how someone wants to lift their pig.
I think in this case, they were putting nooses around their necks and then hoisting them in the air.
So it was clear it would cause great pain to the animal.
Clara would cause great pain, exactly.
Clara would cause great pain.
And why were they doing it?
I mean, clearly it's not to torture the animal.
I mean, these were just- Oh, just for fun.
Some bored guys out on a farm.
There was no commercial reason to be doing this.
This was just a bunch of guys who- So it's not for efficiency of food production or killing the animals.
They were just doing it for fun.
No.
But here they're just doing it for fun.
A lot of the worst practices are, right?
So, you know, putting an animal into a crate- But let's talk about this case, though.
Let's talk about this case.
Yeah, but in this particular case, this was just wanton fruit.
This was just a bunch of young guys who thought it would be fun to abuse a bunch of pigs.
They went to court and the prosecutor says, clearly this violates the state animal cruelty statute.
Well, the farmer comes into court and he says, no, this is a common agricultural practice.
This is done on farms all over the state.
And then he manages to get a couple of his buddies to come and say, yeah, we do that too.
And enough of them say yes, that the court says, well, it's a common agricultural practice, so it must be legal.
Even though it has nothing to do with the business of agriculture?
Nothing to do with the business of agriculture.
But they said it's common and it's on an agricultural property.
That's all you need.
So it's this industry that operates with almost complete legal immunity.
If it decides it wants to do something, if it does it enough, it becomes legal.
So, why do you think that has been so persistent in the face of, you know, basic human intuitions?
I think most people are against the idea of harming animals for their own sake.
It's one thing to say that you're going to do it for sustenance, or for nutritive value, or for even commercial purposes, but the idea of just basically, you know, going out, there's a big controversy about this in the Republican Party earlier this year, by the way, of just going out and shooting your dog, or whatever, right?
It shocked the conscience of a lot of people, so much so that Even amongst conservatives, it really launched a backlash against that type of brazen toughness to cruelty on animals.
So against the backdrop of those basic intuitions, the ones that resulted in the passage of those laws as early as the 1820s in the United States, why do you think it is that these exemptions then have been so persistent?
I think it's two things.
It's lack of transparency and it's political corruption.
So on the lack of transparency side, you have these industries that have prevented any exposure of what's going on.
So they have gone around the country passing into law, special laws called ag-gag laws that make it a crime.
Yeah, ag-gag.
Ag-gag laws.
I mean, obviously that's the nickname.
That's not what they call them.
But they make it a crime.
to film or record in factory farms and to share that footage and the only reason you want to do that is because you don't want people seeing the way these animals are being treated.
The same thing we've seen on the corruption side Where you get these practices tend to be regulated by state and federal departments of agriculture who are thoroughly infiltrated by people from the industry.
So Tom Vilsack, first he was Secretary of Agriculture under Obama, then he went and became a lobbyist for the dairy industry, and then he came back and became Secretary of Agriculture under Biden.
And you see that the whole way down.
You see these people who have worked for industry go straight back in, there's a revolving door, And there's a huge amount being paid to legislators to not legislate on this issue.
So you think it's an old school case of bought and paid for politics?
I think it is.
I think it's pretty straightforward.
On both sides?
On both sides.
On both sides.
This is not, again, not Democrat or Republican.
I could tell you so many Democrats who have been terrible on this issue.
And so it really is just, the industry is bipartisan.
I mean, the industry is bipartisan in their desire to corrupt people, in their desire to stop speech.
But this does not need to be a partisan issue.
It's fascinating.
So let's maybe take a rewind on the linkage between certain conservative commitments and where you might find that common cause with animal rights activism.
How closely...
How familiar are you with sort of the arguments around the abortion debate and what do you think that has to do with this?
Because I think there are deep linkages here at work in the conservative movement.
Some prominent conservatives have linked their pro-life views to even some of their animal protection related views.
But what's your perspective on that genesis of the conservative commitment here?
It certainly exists.
I mean, one of the books that made me most compelled to work on factory farming was this beautiful book called Dominion by a man, Matthew Scully, who was a speechwriter to President Bush.
He was an editor for the National Review, and he wrote the conservative case for caring about animal protection, including farm animals.
And he is someone who is devoutly pro-life.
And in his mind, and it's joined, I think, by his Catholicism, In his mind, there is a very clear connection about protecting the vulnerable, protecting the speechless, protecting those who can't defend themselves.
So make that case a little bit further from a Catholic perspective.
You know, that looks, we as human beings are made in the image of God, but that doesn't include animals from a Christian or Catholic perspective.
So where does that moral commitment arise to somebody who is not made in the image of God?
Yeah, so I, I mean, I'm not a Catholic, so I won't play my Catholic case.
But, you know, I can tell you, I mean, the last Pope, Pope Benedict, spoke out against factory farming and said this is not in line with Scripture.
This is not the image of the relationship with animals that God wants us to have.
C.S. Lewis had a great line where he said, God has entrusted us with dominion for the animals, which means what we're doing is either rightfully sanctioned stewardship, or it's blasphemy.
It's something that is out of line with the divine plan.
And I think that's right.
I think most of us have a sense, most of us who believe in God have a sense that God wants us to observe moral limits, that we can't just do what we want because it's the most fun, because it's the cheapest, because it's convenient.
Instead, we need to observe some basic moral limits.
And I think when most of us think about those limits, we realize, yes, certainly humans are going to be the object of first concern, but there are things we can't do to animals and things we shouldn't allow other people to do to animals either.
Do you draw distinctions between different types of animals?
Yeah, so I mean, look, people will.
And I think that's, I don't have a great answer for where you should draw the line.
But I'll give you this example.
You know, if your neighbor got a pet pig, so if your neighbor came home with a pet pig, you know, I don't think you'd be surprised if he kept him outside in the paddock or something, you know, just fed him every now and then.
But if he then said, you know, I've decided to castrate this piglet, and I'm not going to use any paintbrush.
And I've decided that I want to put him in a crate.
No bigger than the pig.
I just want to put him in a crate that same size.
And he kept doing things like that.
There'd be some point where you would say, I don't care it's not a dog.
Even a pig.
I'm not cool with that level of mistreatment.
You know, I'm going to call the cops.
Well, and in fact, you'd be right to do so.
I mean, that would be violating all state animal cruelty laws.
That would be a felony cruelty.
Except if he was running a farm, except if he was running a factory farm specifically.
And then he could say, this is my standard common practice.
So I think that we all have this intuition.
Yes, we love dogs.
We love cats.
But I think we also have that intuition that even when you cross species into a pig, maybe even a chicken, there are certain things we're still not comfortable with being done in our name.
What about a fish?
Yeah, look, people are going to reach different- Just to play it out, yeah.
People are going to reach different frontiers, right?
So they're going to reach different conclusions for themselves.
I personally don't want to see fish tortured.
I don't think it's necessary, but I would say don't let the full extent of this- I think sometimes you get these animal advocates who just focus on the most marginal cases.
They say, let's go and talk about the mouse or something.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that we shouldn't be torturing the majority of animals.
And so, you know, if that's just pigs, if that's just chickens, people are going to reach a sense in their mind of where their circle of concern ends.
But I think for most of us, it goes a lot broader than humans.
Yeah, but just for the sake of, you know, understanding, not to say that the core cases aren't the ones that deserve the most attention, but just to understand sort of the moral basis, you go straight down the line, right?
All the way to, you go to fish, you go to...
Mice, you could go to bugs.
Is there some case for, is it emergent consciousness?
Does that heighten the moral stakes versus sentience, versus not actually even feeling the same level of pain, which is what we presume for bugs and certain sorts of insects?
There have to be some type of moral categories where we say this is a greater moral offense than something else that we're not going to really...
prioritization for focus on animal rights, right?
So what do you think that dividing line is?
Is it sentience?
Is it consciousness?
What evidence do we have for consciousness?
For brain function?
Is it brain function?
Talk to me about what you think those lines are that raise the stakes of, or ought to raise the stakes of our concern. - Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
That sentience is the key piece here.
Does this animal have the ability to suffer?
Do they have the ability not just to react negatively to something, but to really suffer, to feel pain, to feel fear in a way we would recognize?
And, you know, we don't know where that ends, candidly.
We don't know.
The science tells us very clearly that at least all mammals, at least all birds, have this thing called sentience.
Fish probably have it too.
When it comes to bugs, we don't know.
There's still a lot of uncertainty about that.
And so I'm not saying, you know, we need to go into those marginal cases where we're uncertain and we need to do anything.
I think where we should focus is, here are the cases where we're confident.
Here are the cases where we know that mammals are capable of feeling pain.
We know that birds are capable of feeling pain.
So let's focus on those cases and let's oppose as much of that cruelty as we can.
And the one thing I say is I'm okay with a moral hierarchy.
So I don't think it means, you know, just once you accept sentience, you don't need to accept all animals are equal.
I think it's absolutely fine to say humans are at the top of the pyramid.
And indeed it's because we're at the top of the pyramid that we have moral responsibilities.
I don't think a chicken has a moral responsibility.
I don't think they're capable of feeling one.
I certainly don't think they have rights in the way that a human does.
But I do think that they absolutely deserve to live free of unnecessary pain and fear.
And so I think even those basic protections can apply down the hierarchy.
And you're drawing a real distinction between the act of killing for the sake of food production or sustenance as distinct from torturing prior to the period that said animals actually killed.
That's absolutely right.
That's absolutely right.
And so to me, the issue here is the torture.
I really don't have a problem.
If someone wants to go out and hunt a deer and feed their family with an animal that they shot themselves, I don't have a problem with that.
I'll tell you, even when you look at the cattle industry, most of that is based around giant ranches where the cows basically get to live their life out on the ranch.
Now, you know, it's not ideal in every way, but I don't really have a lot of problems with that either.
My problems are with the factory farms.
We've taken these animals, we've crammed them indoors, we've put them in cages, we've cut off farms.
So you're really fine with the idea of just in free-range nature, hunting, killing an animal for your own self-sustenance and use, and or even selling it commercially in that context even?
Sure, sure.
You're fine with all that?
Yeah, that's right.
You have no moral objection to it?
Well, look, I personally wouldn't go out there.
I don't feel called to go out and wield the gun and do that.
But I also don't feel called to judge someone else who does that.
And to me, the question is, I think at that point, you get down to people's personal moral intuitions.
You get down to people who are going to have different intuitions, and that's fine.
But your issue is with the torture on a large scale of animals before that production.
So let me ask you this.
What kind of steps do you think we could take to limit that while not having a major impact on the way that human beings are able to live their lives, either from a quality of life or economic or health perspective?
I think that's the fear that a lot of people have.
Agreeing with you that human beings are at the top of the hierarchy, we as a human species are to view ourselves as pro-human in that regard, but how do we achieve said goal that's your concern without actually compromising what our own quality of life actually is for most human beings?
Yeah, it's a tough question.
I'd say first, Let's acknowledge the place we agree.
We all agree when we look at these images, this is wrong.
And I would encourage people first to go and do their research to say, you know, if I'm skeptical about this, go and look it up online.
Once we agree, there's something wrong here.
There's going to be debate about the best way to do this.
One option, John Mackey, who I'm sure you know is a libertarian, John Mackey at Whole Foods said, I'm not going to let factory farm meat in the store.
I'm not going to let the worst kind of meat in the store.
I'm going to set some basic standards for my store and people can trust when they go to Whole Foods that they're getting meat from animals who were treated better.
And he was the leader in that.
Neck is just through the market itself, for example.
Through the market itself.
So there's a simple, there's a market solution right there.
And that's also, I think, what people like Joe Rogan argue for is, you know, go hunt the animal yourself or make sure you get meat from a very high-welfare animal.
I do think, though, there's a role for the government.
And I think there's a role for the government in setting basic standards, in saying, for instance, in Arizona, where we had this ballot measure to ban gestation crates, which are these tiny crates that pigs are confined to.
That's wrong.
And again, this was where Sheriff Joe Apayot came on television and said, even if you're like me, this is something we can agree is wrong.
What ended up happening with that measure in Arizona?
Well, you know, it's fascinating.
So it passed.
It passed overwhelmingly, over 60% support.
A similar measure passed in Florida.
And now a dozen or so states have laws like this.
They are the subject of ongoing...
First, there was litigation that made its way up to the Supreme Court.
So the pork producer said, you can't do this.
The Supreme Court, Justice Gorsuch, running for the majority, said, no, these state laws are totally permissible.
This is up to the states.
How recent was that?
That's interesting.
This was in the last year.
Just in the last year.
So it went up to the Supreme Court.
And even in Florida, for example, that was a state ballot measure.
So it went directly to the voters.
That's right.
And this tells you a lot.
In almost every case where we have effectively regulated the worst qualities of factory farming, it's been for a ballot measure.
What's happened in each of these cases is people go to the state legislature, whether it is liberal or conservative, it doesn't matter.
The state legislature kills the bill in the Agriculture Committee.
They kill it before it even gets started.
So then you have to go to the ballot.
And every time we've gone to the ballot, we've won.
I mean, every time.
Well, I don't think that that's actually such a bad thing, Lewis.
In a certain sense, it puts the matter to the people, right, in deciding what their relationship is with animals.
I think it's a great thing.
I think it's a great thing to let the people decide on this.
The threat right now is the latest measure from the pork industry is they've gone to Congress and said, stop letting states be able to do this.
So let's preempt all these state laws.
And they knew they wouldn't get this in a standalone bill through Congress.
So what did they do?
They slipped it into the Farm Bill.
And the draft of the Farm Bill now has language that would wipe out these state laws that says states can't do this anymore.
So that's the problem.
So I agree.
I think this is a great example of citizen democracy in action where people are saying, it's something we disagree with.
We want to set moral standards.
We want to stop it.
But you've got this problem with the poor country.
First, they go through the courts.
They lose in the courts.
Then they go to Congress.
They always have an additional political route because they have so much political power.
And so what would be the constitutional hook wearing our old law school?
Actually, I forgot to mention, we were not only classmates, we were not only overlapped in college, but we were classmates in law school.
So that was fun, along with J.D. Vance and others who people know now.
So anyway, but even wearing our law school classmate day classes, we were in our small groups, we were in the same constitutional law class together.
So...
What would be the alleged or at least purported Article I basis for Congress to pass such legislation that would go so far as to preempt state ballot measures?
Because that's a pretty striking step to take.
Is this going to be some sort of expansive reading of the Commerce Clause, which is certainly something that no conservative is on paper supposed to be a fan of?
I'm not a fan of it.
Is it a Commerce Clause sweep here or what is it?
It's exactly a commerce clause.
And this is exactly why Justice Gorsuch was so opposed to it.
I mean, this is why we had Lawrence Thomas on our side.
I just want the conservative viewers here to just pause and understand this, right?
So conservatives have long stood against the overexpansive reading of the Commerce Clause.
That's a portion of Article 1 of the Constitution that says Congress can only pass a law, right?
The Constitution is designed to...
Constrain the scope of the federal government.
The combination of Article I as well as the Tenth Amendment wants to leave as much power as possible reserved to the states and to the people.
So it says, here are the specific areas that Congress can legislate.
If it's not one of these areas, Congress doesn't have the power to do it.
And then they put the Tenth Amendment back as an insurance policy to really codify that and be clear about it from both angles.
But one of the areas is Congress has the ability to pass laws that regulate interstate commerce.
But that was designed originally in the literal sense of commerce between one state and another, not applying to what was happening within one state, but which could have a market effect on a neighboring state.
Over the years, and this has been a liberal move, both in jurisprudence in the court system as well as in Congress, to say that, okay, because anything that happens in one state has some economic impact of what happens in a different state, That still counts as regulating interstate commerce, something that our founders never envisioned.
And so the classically small government conservative point of view has been, no, no, we don't want to run a truck through that crack of the commerce clause.
We want to keep that as narrowly constrained as possible.
But when people hear this about industry then going to Congress to pass laws that preempt what the states want to do, some conservatives, I suppose, listening to this may have the perspective to say, yeah, well, we need to stop the craziness even if it's happening through the states.
Remember, our core constitutional principles commit us, I believe, to having a limited view of what that federal government is able to do in the first place.
And so if we don't like the Commerce Clause and its expanded readings when the left uses it, then we've got to be careful to make sure the same shoe doesn't fit the other foot.
Because if we use it when it conveniences us, then that principle is then lost even when it favors the other side.
So I just wanted to offer some perspective to people who may not have gone through the same con law class you and I did.
But that being said, how successful have they been in advancing that?
Well, they've gotten pretty far.
And the point you made was absolutely right.
So they managed to get the Biden administration, the pork industry managed to get the Biden administration on their side in the Supreme Court.
Oh, they got the Biden administration, of course, because the Biden administration loved the Commerce Clause.
Because they wanted the expensive Commerce Clause.
They wanted to be able to say, yeah, we can knock down all state regulations.
So the Biden administration actually is the one that came down on the side of allowing for this preemptive legislation at the federal level to say these state ballot measures could be overridden by a federal law.
That's right.
Unbelievable.
That's right.
That's right.
So they had the Biden, they had the Biden DOJ alongside of, you know, the classic groups like the Chamber of Commerce and stuff.
Yeah, they got industry, you know, they also got the industry groups on board.
But it was this bizarre alignment between people on the right and the left who didn't care about the Commerce Clause, who just wanted to stop state laws.
And unfortunately, the same thing has happened in Congress.
Now, to their credit, the Freedom Caucus has opposed this.
They are the primary group opposing this in the House.
But you've got Republicans and you've got Democrats who don't care a lot about the broader principle.
What they care about is they want to knock out these state laws that are interfering with an industry that they care a lot about.
And one other thing that I would say there is normally when Congress comes in and preempts an area, it's because it establishes its own regulatory framework.
It comes in and it says, okay, here's the new rules.
Now let's get those inconsistent state ones out of the way.
That's not what it's doing here.
Here it's just coming in and saying, we're just going to stop the states from regulating and we're not going to regulate either.
We just want a total free-for-all.
We don't want any regulations ever.
And we think this is the most efficient way to achieve that.
So there's a double irony here, because on one hand, you have the left, which will wax eloquent about animal rights.
Yet the members of which come in to say, no, no, no, we're actually going to take what the people, even if conservative or right leaning states like Florida have said they don't want to allow in their own state.
As members of the left and the Democratic Party say we're going to use federal power to override what these otherwise conservative states that we lambast regularly, like Florida, the people of that state have chosen to do.
And then on the other hand, you have conservatives who say, hey, we favor small government and we want a limited reading of the Commerce Clause.
And we want the federal government to do as little as possible because we want to shut down the Department of Education and move it to the states, as I favor, for example.
But except this particular case where we're lobbied, we actually want the federal government to override what the states are otherwise empowered to do.
It's unbelievable hypocrisy actually from both sides the way I see it.
That's exactly, no, spot on.
So it's interesting.
Here's a very Florida-specific question, because you brought up the state of Florida.
I think I find it fascinating.
Do you have a sense for how much the ballot measure passed by in Florida?
Was it like a wide margin?
You know, I think it was around, it was a little while back now.
I think it was around 60%.
That's a pretty wide margin, if you're thinking about a state for a ballot measure like this.
So they put it to the people and said, are you against the use of single-size crates for housing swine, basically?
Yep, that's why.
Yeah.
And the people of the state said, yes, we're against it.
We don't want that.
We don't do that in Florida, is what the people of Florida said.
I'm curious.
This requires a little bit of speculation, but there may be some examples to draw from.
Do you think if it had gone through the legislative process and shown up on a governor's desk and go through the normal process of lawmaking, do you think they would have arrived at that same place?
No, absolutely.
I mean, I think this is the problem.
I mean, they tried.
And, you know, this is, advocates have gone to conservative states and liberal states alike.
They've gone to the legislature.
They've presented them with opinion polls saying, hey, you know, oftentimes 80% of the population supports these measures.
You get a level of agreement you can't find on any other issue.
Everyone says, yeah, this is wrong.
They show that to politicians, and the politicians say, I'm not interested.
You know, this is just...
Yeah, this is something I'm not willing to deal with.
I'm interested in this particularly because it's a controlled experiment of what the people said versus another law.
It happens to have been Florida specific and I talked about it on a prior week's podcast, which is why it interested me to ask you about this.
So I don't know if you're familiar with this.
You must be.
I mean, this is an area you're following closely.
There's a company called Memphis Meats.
Have you heard of Memphis Meats?
Yes, absolutely.
Okay, yeah.
So I actually met their founder years ago while we were racing cars.
Like literally, we were like a car racing event.
It was fun.
He and I got paired.
And he was telling me about his company.
I was telling him about my company.
I was biotech CEO at the time.
And so we're like literally racing cars down the winding cliffs of California.
It was awesome.
We had a great time.
So I stayed in touch, watched his company.
Apparently it's done pretty well.
And what they're doing is they're basically engineering meat for, you know, nutritive value.
they claim for taste, for other reasons that might be commercial in nature.
They're not killing animals to do it, but they're using cells derived from animals.
So they're from the animals, but that doesn't require torturing or killing them.
But they actually make what they claim to be.
I have no idea whether or not I can't vouch for the factual specifics of the product, but could in the long run, and there's other companies like them that are making meat that could be better than normally derived meat from factory farming or from other forms of traditional meat production.
And what I thought was fascinating was, this is just a food that's out there.
Maybe you want it, maybe you don't.
It's being served as a delicacy in some restaurants across the country, as I understand from reading the news and knowing the guy who I've stayed in touch with where they are.
But then I wake up one day and see that the state of Florida, the same state where the ballot measure went to the people to say that we're against certain practices used in factory farming, where the people of Florida, hard red Florida, have said they're against it.
And I would have voted accordingly as well.
That is the same state that actually banned, just like outright banned, the sale of any lab-based meat or any engineered meat from being sold.
So not to say that you get to choose to do it, but to say that actually you don't have the choice as a consumer in the free state of Florida to be able to make that choice, which I thought was fascinating because it's the same state that actually went in the other direction.
When it came to this other question on factory farming.
So what do you make of all of that?
Because I think it's just so interesting.
Yeah, I think these state bans on the sale of growing meat are just crazy.
I mean, they're so obviously.
How many are there?
Well, there are two states that have already done it.
So Alabama is the other one.
And there are a whole bunch of states that have got bills in the legislature now.
So there are a whole bunch of these states where it's in the legislature.
What's the argument for it?
You're a guy who can always offer the argument for the other side.
What's the best argument for it?
Well, I mean, honestly, they've been transparent about it.
The argument is that this is bad for the incumbent industry.
I mean, this is...
Are you kidding me?
So it's not that it's going to be like unhealthy for people or there's some sort of like health...
There's been a little bit of that.
But I mean, honestly, if you go and look at the legislative session in Florida where they were deliberating this, there was no pretense.
I mean, there was a little bit of like, oh, you know, this hasn't been tested by the FDA or something, you know?
But like, mostly...
Suddenly we all want everything to be tested by the FDA. Interesting how that works.
The failed drug administration.
Yeah, but the...
You know, otherwise it was really just saying, this is going to hurt an incumbent industry.
This is bad for my constituents.
I mean, we have a name for that.
It's called...
It's not called capitalism.
It's called...
Crony capitalism.
Yeah.
The other people who are pushing these bans are European socialists.
So in Europe, you've got a whole bunch of socialists pushing this and saying, oh, we don't think that this is good.
We like maintaining the heritage.
We want to protect this group of farmers and so on.
And then you've got these conservatives in Florida.
And so it is this bizarre coalition where you have got anyone who just feels uncomfortable with something new, uncomfortable with innovation, uncomfortable with a new industry coming in, seems to have teamed up together to say, it's not just that I don't want to buy this, which, fair enough, but I want to ban it, which is just a crazy thing.
I mean, look, I think as somebody who is sympathetic to some of the points you're making, and, you know, I think you and I are, I mean, I don't know if you're still, I remember you were in law school, are you still vegetarian yourself?
Yeah, that's right.
Okay, yeah.
I mean, you know, somebody who makes myself also a similar life choice, I am happy to say with clarity that I am dead set against any ban on meat in the United States at the state or federal level.
Are you in a similar place?
Sure, yeah.
Yeah, don't ban— So it would be silly to like, I mean, it was like a ludicrous idea to idea of like banning a particular type of food.
But then why on earth are we going out of our way to ban a particular type of meat?
It just doesn't, it actually doesn't make sense to me.
And it's fascinating.
It raises real dilemmas for the future of the conservative movement, I think.
It doesn't make sense to me either.
And I think you see it is a bipartisan play.
So one of the people who was most excited about DeSantis' ban on meat growing was Senator Fetterman.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Oh, really?
Interesting.
He has his own bills to try and do similar things at the federal level.
Using the Commerce Clause, to be sure, I'm sure.
Using the Commerce Clause.
You know, so does Senator Klobuchar has something she calls the Dairy Pride Act.
And what the Dairy Pride Act would do is almond milk, soy milk would have to stop calling itself almond milk and soy milk because there are all these poor, confused consumers out there who just keep buying almond milk when they meant to buy cow milk.
You know what I mean?
Is that going to be part of Pride Month now?
That's right.
During the month of June.
Very interesting.
So Amy Klobuchar is in favor of that.
She's sponsoring that legislation.
She's sponsoring that legislation.
Yeah, so this really scrambles politics.
What you see instead is who is beholden to the industry?
And my guess is the Freedom Caucus, which I actually admire the spine that many members of the Freedom Caucus actually reflect, my guess is the Freedom Caucus would be against something like this.
That's absolutely right.
That's absolutely right.
So we've seen a number of people, Rand Paul, for instance, has been strongly against this kind of- He's been great on these issues, yep.
Has been very opposed to it.
So no, I think you've absolutely seen that, where you've got principled conservatives and principled liberals who are opposing this based on Simple grounds of free markets, avoiding government bans on things that present innovation and hope for the future.
So what would be sort of your perspective, let's just say 40 years from now, right?
Let's not talk about 40 years from now because that's trodden ground and who knows, right?
But let's just say, I guess, 40 or 50 years from now.
What do you think the American perspective will be looking back on the present moment we're in to say, okay, here's how we dealt with issues relating to factory farming, animal cruelty, animal torture, and how do you think Americans in the year 2080, 2075 will look back at this moment today?
I think we'll be horrified.
I think that when we've had the distance to look back at these practices objectively, we will be shocked at what we allowed.
I think we will view this as a moral atrocity that we allowed on our watch.
And I'm not the only person who thinks that.
I mean, there was actually, there was a podcast episode of Tucker Carlson and Greg Cutfield where they compared this.
They said, will this be the thing we look back on like slavery?
Will this be that issue we look back on and feel totally ashamed at where we stood or where we failed to stand?
I think once people have had the time to step back and look at the truth and the reality of conditions, they are just going to be appalled at what we allow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what do you see now, bringing it back less to a 40-year time horizon, but even to the next few years and the last few years?
What do you see as the momentum?
Where do you see the momentum shifting?
Because I have trouble reading the tea leaves on this.
I usually have a good finger on the pulse.
But when I see the ballot measures that you mentioned going in one direction versus the state bans on engineered meat going in a different direction, I don't have a good sense.
And I think it's because even the conservative base of voters or even broader base of voters on the left and the right maybe don't yet know what they actually think yet either.
And so this may be an area where people—there's times where politicians need to follow what the people tell them to do.
There's occasionally moments and issues on which you have to lead the people to do what actually is right and tell them what they need to be told.
And it does feel like one of those issues where people are looking to be led a little bit rather than demanding something of leadership.
So what do you sort of feel on the ground in terms of the direction the winds are blowing or is it as yet indeterminate and they're kind of in a couple of different directions still?
I think the winds are slowly going in the right direction, but it's going to be tough.
So the things we have on our side is first that almost everyone agrees with us.
When you survey people about these practices, you say, are you okay with gestation crates?
Are you okay with battery cages?
Are you okay with mutilating animals without pain relief?
Overwhelmingly, people say, no, cross the political aisle.
They say, this is something I'm not comfortable with.
Now, the advantage the industry has on their side is the status quo.
It's the fact that they are just seeking to change nothing.
And so they can just keep going.
They've got a fierce lobbying arm.
They can go to states, they can go to the federal government, and anytime there's a push for reform or regulation, they can kill it.
And so I think we're in that phase now where we are in the midst of the battle.
For years, they were able to just ignore this issue.
This is how we got factory farming in the first place was no one was paying attention when they brought in these practices.
It doesn't go back that far.
So they're no longer ignoring us.
They're now engaged in the battle.
I think that we're seeing some real progress in terms of states bringing these measures forward in terms of innovators bringing new products forward.
But yeah, there is a long way to go and it is absolutely going to depend on the actions of individuals.
It is going to depend on the actions of individuals.
Do you choose to talk about factory farming, to do something about factory farming?
And yes, absolutely, to push their political leaders to do something about it too.
Very interesting.
Are you atheist or do you believe in God?
I believe in God.
I believe in God.
Yeah, one God.
One God.
Yeah.
And does that inform your views on this or do you think you would get there even on secular grounds alone?
I think you can get there either way, but honestly it does.
I mean, I don't talk about this much, but for me, a lot of the progression was I came to believe in God when I was a child.
So I was born, raised agnostic and came to believe in God.
And it was when I came to believe in God that I felt a far greater moral urgency.
To get rid of suffering in the world, to try and get rid of the worst things in the world, to spread compassion, to spread values that I believe God wants us to spread.
And so I absolutely feel like working against cruelty to animals is something that God wants us to do.
Certainly something I believe God wants me to do.
And how do you classify yourself politically today?
Maybe we'll close on that.
Yeah, I'm an independent.
And overwhelmingly, because I vote on this issue of factory farming.
And as we've discussed- So you've voted for Democrats and Republicans, or supported Democrats and Republicans in the past?
Well, I mean, countably, I haven't been voting for many elections, given I've been on a green card for years.
Oh, right, right, right.
Okay.
But yes, certainly in terms of who I support.
So I would support anyone who is willing to do something about factory farming.
Interesting.
Interesting.
And I guess the last question is, even just to take a very, very specific question, because you've used this expression a couple of times without pain relief, right?
It's one thing to kill an animal, another to do it, or torture an animal without pain relief.
What's the best objection against the use of pain relief?
It costs money.
I mean, it's really...
Oh, it's really that.
It's just a cost issue.
Yes, I remember talking to someone, you know, and I said, isn't it like five cents?
Like, we've got these drugs.
We've got this drug called Molexiocam.
We use it on horses.
It's amazing how much they want to give painkillers to people.
Yeah, right.
That's right.
They'll give painkillers to people and get them addicted.
But if you want to give them to an animal who's going to die anyway, you don't want to give it to them.
Interesting.
Yeah, that's right.
No, so I mean, it's like sometimes we're literally talking five cents per animal.
But if you add that up, there are so many animals involved.
So it ends up being a cost question.
That's right.
Got it.
Yeah, I think maybe if some of the pharma companies of the world that might have been, you know, peddling some of the opioids, maybe give a little bit less to people who might not have needed them or benefited from them, and maybe a little bit more to animals who could have avoided that right before they had their heads chopped off, maybe it would actually be a double win.
And I'm only saying this, you know, half-jokingly, actually, in the first place.
I would love that, I think.
Interesting.
Funny how these things work.
That's right.
Well, I appreciate your passion for this issue and I appreciate that you were able to illuminate for me, I had some sense of this, but even coming out of this conversation, how much less partisan this issue is than someone might assume, thinking about Remixing the partisan boundaries.
It allows people to think independently for themselves, right?
I think that too often there's almost even a guilt to feel like you are selling out your own tribe if you take a position with such passion on an issue that otherwise falls outside of where your partisan team is on the question.
And, you know, people know where I'm at on this.
I ran for U.S. president as a Republican.
But I think when you run into, when you encounter issues, I mean, you could put a number of other issues on this list, right?
How do you deal with the future of AI in the country, right?
How do you deal with a range of other questions that, you know, that relate to the foreign policy of the United States?
A lot of these defy traditional partisan boundaries.
But this issue is one of those that's less covered, that defies and even dissolves those traditional partisan boundaries.
And I think the dialogue around this, therefore, presents actually the possibility for national unity at a time where we're, We're struggling to find areas where we might find national unity in our discourse.
This might actually be one of the more underappreciated ones.
And so I thank you for enlightening people about it.
And, you know, hopefully we'll continue this conversation.
I'd love that.
Thanks, Vic.
Yeah.
Good seeing you, man.
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