Hey, what's up, Toby? Hey, buddy. Happy Friday.
Yeah, we made it through another one. We did
indeed. We've made it to year two of the Processed
It podcast. Oh, man. We're only picking up steam,
brother. Look out. The process that I want to
talk about today is the process in which the
United States government shuts down. I feel like
it's timely. That is timely as we sit here in
the autumn of 2025. I think we're about a week
down into the current, a week into the current
shutdown. Talking about the process, you think
there's a formal protocol by which we shut down
the government? You think they just turn off
the lights and turn off everybody's key cards
for the following Monday? I don't, I mean, how
do you, you turn off the money? Remaking machine.
It's funny. So on this topic, and then I want
to hear where you were going with it, but I recently
read something that said the only reason the
last shutdown was arrested at 35 days was because
air traffic controllers finally said enough.
Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. It just started
calling in sick. And I thought, well, I'm a...
I know who to throw my support behind. If that's
how we get stuff, get people back to the table
and move things forward, you know, support your
local air traffic controller. Well, they weren't
they weren't being paid, right? No. Yeah. Like
so many different, you know, I think everybody
has a spouse, somebody in their home or in their
family or in their close friend network that's
involved with the federal government. So many
roles people are like, oh, yeah, it's okay. We'll
catch up on the back end. Just work for free
for now. Yeah, you know Okay Well, what's what's
interesting about this is it's Or at least where
I come at it is like, how do you talk critically
about it? Like how do you talk to both sides?
So that yeah, there can be at least a conversation
And what what? You know, I think I told you right
before the podcast started, I'd been thinking
about this little acronym that I came up, which,
you know, yeah, maybe the first and last time
it's ever used in history, but it's it's pump,
right, which is process. Yeah. The unintended
consequences. Money, like, where does the money
go and where does the power go? And it's an,
you know, it's an interesting, you know, it's
interesting to just a framework to look at it
from multiple sides. Yeah, talk me about talk
to me about this acronym pump for a second and
then let's go back to the federal shut down Yeah,
so I see the moving parts. Yep. How are you?
How are you? Thinking about the relationship
between process Unintended consequences money
and power. I mean I could string those together
in a variety of ways I'm just here. I think they're
talking points like it just allows you to think
about it in ways that you don't that allows you
to slow down and not just dig into your confirmation
bias. Because whether you believe it's the left
or the right doing something, the reality is
it's a little bit more complex. For sure. Because
if you're a senator in a blue state or a senator
in a red state, the process by which turning
the government on or off means that you account
for the money and the power. Because if you go
against your base, you're against the money in
your next election, and you've got against your
power that you have, which is your base. And
so it's a little bit more simple than like, oh,
we'll just turn it on. I think you make a really
good point that in the sound bite world we live
in, where everybody's listening to highly filtered
content, whether it's streaming services or social
media. All been, it's all been, uh, algo to pieces.
So we only hear what we want to hear. Yeah. Um,
but yeah, the unintended consequences are, are
enormous. And so I would put you at the end.
I would put the, you, the unintended consequences
at the end, because then you would have to think
about it, but then it doesn't spell word. And
then becomes who you're looking at is strange.
But it is interesting as we're thinking about
the government, like, you know, what processes
are in play, right? They've got to basically
increase the money supply or the ability to take
on more debt, which we have been really good
at that over the last couple decades. Yeah. When
you reduce income and increase outflow, the only
way you fill that hole is debt. It doesn't matter
whether you're a single household or a nation.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, what's interesting, what's
interesting is everybody's like, well, I don't
want taxes. You're like, no, we should just do
smart taxes. Well, I mean, so back to your point
about about process, money, power and unintended
consequences. When you say smart taxes, I'm curious,
what does that mean to you? We, I believe for
the most part, when we cut tax. Yeah. We basically
are going away from this, from a baseline that
no first world country has ever been able to
get away from. Like there's a baseline of infrastructure
and support that your people want. And, and,
you know, you might be able to go up or down
2%, but the reality is, is like, there's not
a whole lot of movement and everybody's like,
well, I want to cut taxes. And if you give them
the actual exercise of cutting taxes and where
to do it, not so easy. Yeah. My favorite is I
want things to be nice like they were back in
the 50s and 60s. And single income, you can afford
a home, you can afford a vehicle. You can live
in a safe place and even take a family vacation.
But that kind of Halcyon era that predated a
lot of us, parents grew up in, also had one of
our highest tax bases. You're in the U .S., and
so you're absolutely right. It's a devil's task
to balance all the competing interests and still
provide the tax base that we all need. I guess
you're saying we can't have our cake and eat
it too. Correct. Which is disappointing, Chris.
Correct. And also, taxing the little guy isn't
going to add up too much. That's the funny thing.
Taking money away from the tax, from the little
guy, isn't going to add much. No. Unless you
grew up through Medicaid. Yeah. If we want to
talk about untouchable topics, let's just get
into that retirement focused budget and the military
and see where that lands us. Well, that's what
I found. That's what I find really funny about,
you know, people and, you know, the whole Doge
thing, which was like, Hey, we're going to go
and do a thing. And you're like, all right, I'm
a data nerd. And you want to find, if you want
to find where you can go grab the money, take
your budget, sort by line item, highest to smallest,
start at the top. And that's where the money
is. And what we as humans often do is we want
to see, we want to notice the scene. And so it's
the many, many whiplashy things. And you're like,
yeah, that's like such a small, infinitesimal,
whatever that word is, like it's just so small
in comparison to the budget because we don't
do numbers well. No, it's, you know, the human
condition, I think even if we step back and take
it on a super personal level. It's like, I want
to feel better. I want to be more fit. I want
to be more trim. But I don't want to, you know,
sleep with a CPAP on my face, even though I stopped
breathing all night. And I don't want to eat
healthy food because McDonald's is so tasty and
easy and exercise when I can binge watch Netflix.
Yeah. And, you know, to your point, all of those
like high impact. High -cost areas are well known
But if we take those off the table now, we're
splitting hairs over should I have more? Nuts
and raisins in my trail mix, you know, you know
sure knock yourself out Yeah for sure. All right,
what's what are the what's the unintended consequences
of shutting the government down? Yeah, well so
thus far You know in my house. I haven't really
felt it. Yeah but I'm not drawing a a federal
wage and I'm not dependent on services. I'm the
boy. It feels like a tsunami of consequences.
Intentional and unintentional, you know? So,
the most frightening, I think, around the unintentional
goes back to that same interest group that we
were just talking about, which are those folks
that put in their decades of work. now are finally
tapping into the benefits that they were promised,
you know, retirees. What does this mean for social
security checks? I know personally, you know,
what does it mean for Medicare and getting those
payments out to all of our care providers? I
don't know. Well, one of the major unintended
consequences, I think, is interesting with, you
know, the Affordable Affordable Health Care Act,
the Obamacare. Basically, as of this this month,
a loss, or as of starting next month, it basically
will lose all those subsidies. And then, you
know, healthcare goes up. And I don't know the
specifics there, so I'm just kind of making stuff
up. So you should fact check me, Toby. You should,
you should go look that up. But like, it's interesting,
right? So, you know, the other thing that I find
fascinating is the federal government's pretty
big everywhere, and we're in a very large country,
and A lot of rural people are going to be impacted.
And at some point you switch who you're blaming,
then work. Well, and that's, I think if we step
back for a second, you know, at the beginning,
you spoke to a notion of complexity. And I think
when we talk about a machine as large and the
labor force that it takes to run the federal
government as a machine. That's a lot of complex
process. There's lots of handoffs and decisions
and protocols. And it's one thing to retire out
some percentage of a workforce every year. It's
totally different when everybody goes home. Or
people are asked to work for free and without
any certainty about what comes back next when...
Half the folks they were sitting with a year
ago have been challenged either quit or the consequences.
So, I don't know. I mean, is it unintended consequences?
Do you think there's intended consequences in
this? Well, I think there absolutely is. I do
think both sides have basically put their stakes
in the ground of what they think the intention
is going to be. And neither side is going to
be exactly right. Or though lucky or wrong is
how I see it. A little sad. Yeah. There's only
one reason why you're right. It's always lucky.
I think it's interesting that when well -defined
processes or protocols are ignored, they've usually
become well -defined for a reason. Yep. And it's
just like payment processing inside of a company
or inventory management. All these business processes,
there's a reason why we tend to do them a certain
way and that we see them done the same way across
companies and across industries. And it's just
that the risks are enormous. What could be worse
than accidentally forgetting to pay your frontline
labor force? And all of a sudden you've debilitated
them because... Those are often the lowest paid
folks and the ones that are most at risk are
disrupted, you know? Yeah, watch your business
collapse overnight. Well, what's interesting
is like some of these big businesses, like they
can be taken down in a flash, like with a little
thing. So it's been probably a couple of years
ago, but Microsoft forgot to pay one of their
SSL certs, which is literally like... $12 a year
or something like that, right? Yeah, basically
when that certificate goes down your SSL don't
work anymore And so you basically have this,
you know close to trillion dollar company. That's
just like want law Is it? Someone forgot to put
a backup payment like a credit card. So I mean,
but like I wonder I wonder if that that will
that could be the unintended consequence of where
you're teetering on such a fine line politically
where the house of cards collapses. To your point
about power and money being the other moving
parts in this, I think anytime we have persistent
disagreements or we have people that are anchored
so far apart with no room to negotiate, we should
be asking, what are the incentives for taking
such a hard perspective? And I think that there's
probably a frightening amount of truth, regardless
of any direction you point, that there's money
and power that are dictating those. And it's
not always the stakeholders. It's interesting
too, even as we talk about just the money part
here, if you go macro, you stop paying the federal
workers, that's really easy. That's an easy thing
to know, right? It would roll up to the greater
economy in which that money is flowing less,
which would flow up and up and up, and it would
get too complex for us to think about. But then
if you go at the government level, they've got
to basically release more funds so that they
can take on more debt. And to be honest, I talk
about that, but I don't even understand how that
works. Money supply was a really painful class
that I have vague recollections from my undergrad
in. And you're right, it's a super complicated
process. And you know, let's say we pump money
or take on more debt or whatever, right, in which
we've got to pay, right? Someone's got to pay
the piper, right? And that means it either comes
out of the budget or comes comes through inflation,
like the Piper is going to be paid. Like that's,
that's how it works. Yeah. Well, I think, uh,
you know, the best case for us would be to have
folks running this country that understand the
casino model, right? Cause the house always wins
in theory. And I'm sure there's somebody out
there that's bankrupt a casino, but in general,
most folks can. If we can't find those folks
I'm sure there's somebody else that can help
us figure out how to run this damn thing because
there's to my way of thinking there's there's
really no reason why as Prosperous a country
as we have with all the reasons deserve talent
That are both homegrown and that we've traditionally
brought in to our economy. There's no reason
why We can't balance a budget. I think it's it's
simple reluctance. Yeah, you know You can't drive
an ass car and live in a mansion and only want
to work three hours a day at Circle K and still
have it all, you know, pens about. How long has
it been since we've had a surplus? Was it like...
I think the last surplus was Clinton's era. That's
what I was thinking. Where there might have been
one year with Obama, but... Yeah, balanced budgets
tricky. It's... Yeah, it's hard. It is. It is.
Well, I guess that the other question I would
ask is like, when was the last time that we ran
a surplus and had our needs met? And that probably
predates you and I by some good measure. Some
post -World War II kind of thing. So Chris, I
think I like your acronym, even if it's Pum -Poo.
We'll see if Pum -Poo takes off. It's more unique.
But I like that idea of pump. Our processes,
if they're not working, there's an easy way to
understand it. And it could be that we're just
living under the consequences, and we find ourselves
signed up for painful experiences that we didn't
know were coming our way. For sure. It's really
hard to restart a process, too, once you've neglected
it. I think about any piece of machinery, you
can't leave it out in the rain for years than
expect it to magically work again. I mean, if
you go back to just the process of our government,
which you've got, you know, the, you know, the
executive, the legislative and the judicial,
I was listening to something on McCarthyism,
you know, back, back after World War II and,
you know, talking about how crazy it was and
how the courts, you know, back then kind of bent
towards McCarthyism and then finally rebounded.
And that's, I'm like, Hey, look, History repeats
itself. Funny how that works. But it is interesting
that we have our process of our legislative part
of the government. It's what, a two year cycle
for congressmen and then a six year for the Senate?
You're like, I mean, I've started new jobs before
and it takes a good year and a half to kind of
get your bearings oftentimes. And I'm not having
to deal with... you know, who are the sharks
and who are the minnows and who can you play
with and who can you not play with in the halls
of Congress or Senate? And then the Senate's
crazy because it's all about how long you can
stay there. Yeah. Well, which is why the average
age of our elected officials is somewhere between
70 and dead. Yeah. You know, it is a strange,
it's a strange world. I had a friend point out
that That Gen Xers may end up being that one
generation that moves through without ever seeing
Oh, yeah, there is like it in their elected officials,
and I think that's largely been true You know,
especially in in love or hate them there's all
kinds of Electeds that continue well beyond we
might otherwise deem our age So it is an interesting
machine I'll be interested to see how we get
this thing oiled up and running again. Not just
the parts that we're operating before the shutdown,
but some of the parts that have been long neglected.
Maybe that pendulum will swing back towards center
here soon. Well, and the other thing that I think
is missing in government is just a flat out,
like a vision, like a long -term vision. Like
it just seems, anyway, like without that alignment,
Yeah, basically have a bunch of fractured folks
trying to do what they need to do to get reelected
Yeah, I mean hey bring it back, you know thing
about the government as an organization Every
other organization has to have a shared mission
and I don't quite know what our collective mission
is right now Yeah, so it's hard to get aligned
and you lose you live really close to that war
zone war -torn City, Portland. I mean There's
probably going to be ones of people out there.
People on the podcast can't see me in my flying
black jacket. You can't hardly go out for coffee
without leaves falling on you right now. Look
out for those pumpkin spice lattes. I mean, out
of control. You probably have maple syrup or
something on your waffles. It's really out of
hand. Yeah. Those lime bikes are everywhere.
Next. That's awesome, man. Well, thanks for meeting
again. Off to New York today. It should be a
good one. Yeah. Cheers to year two. Here we go,
man. Talk to you later.