I have to be honest. When you sent over this
file, the Brown Equity papers, I thought we were
looking at, I don't know, paint samples. Right.
It sounds like an interior design pamphlet or
something. Exactly. But then you open it and,
wow. This is not a design brochure. It reads
more like a crime scene investigation. It really
is a forensic audit. The author, Nimrod Allen
III, he calls it a parabolic parable. It's this
story that digs into the past to explain the
present. And the central claim is just. It's
huge. The paper argues that the specific brown
color UPS... uses pullman brown right pullman
brown that it isn't just branding they call it
crystallized social capital that was what extracted
from black labor extracted and now they've sent
a bill for it a bill for how much a very specific
bill an invoice for exactly 200 billion dollars
okay wait 200 billion? That, I mean, it sounds
like a number you just pull out of thin air.
How does an auditor even start to justify that
over a color? To get the math, you have to go
back to the source. So 1867, George Pullman,
he invents the luxury sleeping car. But the cars
don't run themselves. He needs to create an entire
servant class. And he specifically targets men
who were just emancipated from slavery to be
his porters. And that's where this first concept
comes in, the chattel discount. What is that
exactly? Well, it's brutal arithmetic. In the
1920s, a living wage was around $166 a month.
Pullman paid these men a base wage of just $78.
That's less than half of what they needed to
live. Not even half. He knowingly built a business
model that forced them to survive on tips. So
Pullman was essentially making the American public
subsidize his company's payroll. So the public
pays the wages, the corporation keeps the profit.
But it was more than just carrying bags, right?
The report says they created the brand itself.
Exactly. These men, who were often just called
George, no matter their real name, they performed
this immaculate emotional labor. They created
the feeling of safety, of luxury. They made Brown
mean trust. That's the social capital. And that's
where UPS comes into the picture. Yeah, that's
the part I didn't get at first, the jump from
trains to delivery trucks. It happens in 1916.
A guy at UPS named Charlie Soderstrom... needs
a color for his fleet. And the papers argue he
didn't just pick brown because it hides dirt.
No, he chose Pullman Brown specifically to appropriate
that entire reputation the porters had built
over decades. So he's borrowing the feeling.
A transference of trust. Complete transference.
Then, much later, 1998, UPS trademarks the color.
The report calls it enclosing the commons. They
legally privatized a public reputation. And this
is where it gets into... Like a spy novel for
me. You don't just steal a reputation. You have
to control the people who built it. This Faye
Five protocol. That was their espionage machine
to stop the porters from unionizing. It was a
full on surveillance state. You had the spotter
or the eye. The eye. Yeah. And imagine this.
A passenger is just sitting there holding a hotel
guidebook flat against the train window. And
that's a signal. That's the signal. It told any
porter who saw it, you are being watched by the
company. It was about creating constant paranoia.
And there were others besides the spotter, right?
Oh, yeah. You had the Judas Goat, who was an
internal traitor snitching on his co -workers,
the O -Fay agent, basically Pinkerton detectives
undercover, and then, maybe the worst one, the
Whisperer. The Whisperer. that sounds ominous
it was psychological warfare the whisperer's
only job was to spread rumors and propaganda
to destroy solidarity and the report's argument
is that the money spent suppressing the labor
proves how valuable that labor really was which
brings us all the way back to that two hundred
billion dollar invoice now that we have the history
How do they get to that number? It's a three
-part calculation. First, $66 billion in straight
-up wage theft. That's the chattel discount compounded
over time. Okay, that makes sense. Second is
brand royalty. The report levies a 5 % royalty
on UPS revenue for using the brown identity.
That's the biggest piece. Eighty five billion.
Rend on the reputation. Precisely. And the last
forty nine billion is punitive damages for the
Faye five surveillance for the trauma it caused.
So this whole thing, the Brown equity papers,
it's not a history lesson. It's an actual demand.
It's a demand for what they call a Chapter 7
liquidation of history. They propose using eminent
domain to seize the trademark for Brown. Seize
it from UPS. And return it to what they call
the coin collective, the descendants of the original
porters. It just flips the entire script. There's
this metaphor they use, a coin. For a century,
it always landed on heads for capital for the
corporation. And this report is demanding that
the coin finally, finally be flipped to tails
for labor, for the porters. It really challenges
you, doesn't it, to look at one of those trucks
and see something totally different. It definitely
changes how I'll see the next package that shows
up at my door. Does the brand belong to the person
who buys the paint or the people who built the
feeling? Thanks for listening to this deep dive.