WEBVTT 00:56.030 --> 00:57.970 This is Paul Graham. 00:57.970 --> 01:01.310 He's going to be speaking on inequality and risk. 01:04.570 --> 01:06.050 That was quick. 01:07.030 --> 01:08.290 Hey, guys. 01:11.600 --> 01:12.400 Hello! 01:13.820 --> 01:14.300 Well... 01:14.800 --> 01:22.980 The last speaker in here trained the audience to chant, fuck you, in unison, whenever authority commanded them to do anything. 01:23.100 --> 01:30.460 Then at the end of the talk, everybody said, okay, talk's over, and the guys in the red shirts said, everybody out that into the room, and they just filed out as meekly as sheep. 01:33.460 --> 01:36.260 All right, so... 01:40.670 --> 01:42.530 Are we ready to start? 01:43.210 --> 01:44.510 I think we're ready to start. 01:44.510 --> 01:45.610 All right, let's go. 01:47.870 --> 01:50.830 Suppose you wanted to get rid of economic inequality. 01:50.830 --> 01:52.570 By the way, I have no slides. 01:55.370 --> 01:57.710 Asking is what I do for talks. 02:00.230 --> 02:03.070 Suppose you wanted to get rid of economic inequality. 02:03.570 --> 02:05.870 There are two ways to do it, basically. 02:05.950 --> 02:09.550 You can give money to the poor, or take it away from the rich. 02:09.970 --> 02:12.250 But they both amount to the same thing. 02:12.370 --> 02:15.930 Because if you want to give money to the poor, you've got to get it from somewhere. 02:16.750 --> 02:19.710 And if you take it from the poor, they end up just where they started. 02:19.810 --> 02:22.130 So you basically have to take it from the rich. 02:22.730 --> 02:28.950 There is, of course, a way to make the poor richer, without merely shifting money from the rich to them. 02:29.210 --> 02:36.210 You could make the poor more productive, for example, by giving everybody equal access to education. 02:36.790 --> 02:45.150 That is, instead of taking money from engineers and giving it to checkout clerks, you could enable the people who would have become checkout clerks to become engineers. 02:45.250 --> 02:47.390 Well, that works. 02:47.750 --> 02:51.030 That's an excellent strategy for making the poor richer. 02:51.330 --> 03:01.810 But the evidence of the last 200 years shows that it doesn't reduce economic inequality, because it tends to make the rich richer, too. 03:02.490 --> 03:08.350 If there are more engineers, then there are more opportunities to hire them, to sell them things. 03:08.630 --> 03:19.510 Henry Ford couldn't have made a fortune making cars in a society in which people were all still subsistence farmers, because there would have been no one to buy his products and no one to build them. 03:19.510 --> 03:29.350 If you want to reduce economic inequality, instead of just improving the overall standard of living, it's not enough just to raise up the poor. 03:29.650 --> 03:34.190 What if one of your newly minted engineers goes on to become the next Bill Gates? 03:34.350 --> 03:37.090 Economic inequality will be as bad as ever. 03:38.430 --> 03:39.990 Whoa, dudes! 03:40.970 --> 03:42.470 Yes, go ahead. 03:44.630 --> 03:45.250 Really? 03:45.250 --> 03:46.470 Can people not hear? 03:46.470 --> 03:47.850 Oh, God. 03:51.950 --> 03:54.690 This talk, Inequality and Risk. 03:54.690 --> 03:56.190 Are you guys in the wrong place? 03:57.310 --> 03:58.770 Am I? 03:58.930 --> 04:00.910 I'm where they brought me. 04:11.130 --> 04:12.850 There's been a rescheduling. 04:12.850 --> 04:14.250 That's at 2 o'clock. 04:14.250 --> 04:15.970 This is Paul Graham. 04:18.810 --> 04:20.990 It's all on the website. 04:25.660 --> 04:27.220 Okay, guys. 04:27.220 --> 04:35.180 I was supposed to talk today, and then they switched me to yesterday, but they didn't tell me. 04:35.180 --> 04:44.740 So, I look on the website yesterday to find out where the hotel is, and I'm astonished to discover I'm supposed to speak four hours before my plane arrives. 04:46.240 --> 04:48.940 So, they put me in this lot today. 04:50.280 --> 04:52.700 I'm also not even in the printed thing. 04:53.940 --> 04:55.220 I'm on the website. 04:55.220 --> 04:56.480 There's a description of the talk. 04:56.480 --> 04:58.800 Let me tell you what the talk's going to be about. 05:00.480 --> 05:01.600 Sorry, what? 05:02.840 --> 05:04.000 What's the talk about? 05:04.100 --> 05:07.520 I'll tell you what the talk's about, and you can tell me. 05:07.540 --> 05:10.400 Well, actually, you can decide if you want to hear it. 05:11.380 --> 05:13.380 What did the abstract say? 05:14.180 --> 05:21.960 The abstract was about, where's the right place to hack the connection between power and wealth? 05:24.460 --> 05:30.240 Alright, so if that sounds interesting, there is no hardware component to this talk. 05:36.120 --> 05:37.740 Out you go. 05:39.980 --> 05:42.160 No, no, no, I totally understand. 05:42.160 --> 05:45.660 Believe me, I feel the same way you guys do. 05:53.090 --> 06:03.330 After these guys all leave, I'll tell you all the secret behind-the-scenes stories of the creation and launching of the internet worm of 1988. 06:05.390 --> 06:07.010 Just kidding. 06:10.150 --> 06:12.050 Robert would kill me. 06:16.500 --> 06:17.560 Alright. 06:18.840 --> 06:20.560 Let's start again. 06:20.960 --> 06:24.040 I feel like what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. 06:24.940 --> 06:28.600 And in the speaker department, this is definitely one of those experiences. 06:31.380 --> 06:33.660 So, inequality and risk. 06:33.660 --> 06:35.620 Does everybody remember where we are? 06:35.960 --> 06:38.980 I'll start somewhat over. 06:40.220 --> 06:41.120 Alright. 06:42.660 --> 06:44.260 Bill Gates. 06:44.520 --> 06:45.760 That's right. 06:49.900 --> 07:03.180 If you want to reduce economic inequality, instead of just improving the overall standard of living, it's not enough just to raise up the poor, because what if one of your newly minted engineers goes on to become the next Bill Gates? 07:03.380 --> 07:05.400 Or maybe in this case, Larry Ellison. 07:05.720 --> 07:08.320 Economic inequality will be as bad as ever. 07:09.000 --> 07:18.240 If you actually want to compress the gap between rich and poor, it's not enough to just push up on the bottom, you also have to push down on the top. 07:19.020 --> 07:21.920 So, how do you push down on the top? 07:22.180 --> 07:26.800 Well, you could try to decrease the productivity of the people who make the most money. 07:27.300 --> 07:35.260 You could make all the best surgeons operate with their left hands, force the most popular actors to overeat, and so on. 07:35.600 --> 07:39.700 But, this approach has implementation difficulties. 07:40.580 --> 07:52.980 It seems like the only practical approach is to let people do the best work they can, and then, either by taxation or by limiting what they can charge, to confiscate whatever you deem to be surplus. 07:53.920 --> 07:58.020 So, let's be clear what reducing economic inequality means. 07:58.020 --> 08:00.860 It's identical with taking money from the rich. 08:01.380 --> 08:07.720 When you transform a mathematical expression into a new form, you often notice new things about it. 08:07.720 --> 08:09.600 So it is in this case. 08:10.300 --> 08:19.660 Taking money from the rich turns out to have consequences you might not foresee when you phrase the same idea in terms of reducing economic inequality. 08:20.560 --> 08:25.920 The problem is, risk and reward have to be proportionate. 08:26.160 --> 08:35.620 A bet with only a 10% chance of winning has to pay a lot more, in fact, somewhat more than 5 times more, than a bet with a 50% chance of winning. 08:35.940 --> 08:42.360 So if you lop off the top of the possible rewards, you decrease people's willingness to take risks. 08:43.480 --> 08:54.740 Transposing into our original expression we get, decreasing economic inequality means decreasing the risk people are willing to take. 08:55.400 --> 09:02.220 There are whole classes of risks that are no longer worth taking if the maximum return is decreased. 09:02.420 --> 09:12.840 One reason high taxes are so disastrous, as the English found in the 1970s, is that this class of risks includes starting new companies. 09:13.700 --> 09:16.720 Startups are intrinsically risky. 09:16.720 --> 09:19.420 That's just what the deal is. 09:19.420 --> 09:25.240 A startup is like a small boat in the open sea, one big wave and you're sunk. 09:25.440 --> 09:38.280 A competing product, a downturn in the economy, a delay in getting funding or regulatory approval, the loss of a big account, a patent suit, changing technical standards, any one of these can sink you overnight. 09:39.020 --> 09:44.700 It seems like the odds of a startup succeeding are a little worse than 1 in 10, which is not very good. 09:44.700 --> 09:58.100 Our startup paid its first round of investors 36x, which meant, with current US tax rates, it made sense to invest in us if it seemed like we had a better than 1 in 18 chance of succeeding. 09:58.440 --> 10:03.400 That's probably roughly how we looked when we were a pair of nerds operating out of an apartment. 10:03.960 --> 10:08.660 If that kind of risk doesn't pay, venture investing as we know it doesn't happen. 10:09.120 --> 10:14.160 Now, that might be okay if there were other sources of capital for startups. 10:14.440 --> 10:23.960 So, for example, why not just have the government or some almost government organization like Fannie Mae be in charge of supplying venture capital for new companies? 10:24.400 --> 10:26.560 Well, I'll tell you why that wouldn't work. 10:26.740 --> 10:34.960 Because then you're asking the government or almost government employees to do the one thing they're least able to do, take risks. 10:35.700 --> 10:42.960 As anyone who's worked for the government knows, the important thing in the government is not to make the right choices. 10:43.300 --> 10:47.980 It's to make choices that can be justified later if they fail. 10:49.220 --> 10:53.120 If there's a safe option, that's the one a bureaucrat will choose. 10:54.000 --> 10:57.660 But that is exactly the wrong way to do venture investing. 10:57.800 --> 11:02.440 You want to take the most risky choices you can find if the upside looks good enough. 11:03.580 --> 11:07.820 VCs currently get paid in a way that makes them focus on the upside. 11:07.820 --> 11:10.260 They get a percentage of the fund's gains. 11:10.260 --> 11:19.840 And this is what enables them to overcome their understandable reluctance in investing in a company that seems to be run by a pair of college students. 11:20.700 --> 11:25.260 If VCs weren't allowed to get rich, they'd behave like bureaucrats. 11:25.260 --> 11:29.220 Without hope of gain, they'd have only fear of loss. 11:29.760 --> 11:32.760 And so they would make the wrong choices. 11:32.760 --> 11:42.580 They'd turn down the nerds in favor of the smooth-talking MBA in a business suit because that choice would be easier to justify later if it failed. 11:43.880 --> 11:53.300 Even if you could somehow redesign venture funding to work without letting VCs get rich, there's another kind of investor you really can't do without. 11:53.380 --> 11:56.260 The startup's founders and early employees. 11:56.800 --> 11:59.340 What they invest is their time and ideas. 11:59.340 --> 12:11.100 But these are equivalent to money, as you can tell from the fact that the VCs, if forced, will grant the same status to sweat equity that they do to the equity they've paid for with cold cash. 12:11.800 --> 12:17.720 The fact that you're investing time and ideas doesn't change the ratio between risk and reward. 12:18.200 --> 12:24.080 If you're going to invest your time in something, you'll only do it if the payoff is proportionate to the risk. 12:25.800 --> 12:30.340 If large payoffs aren't allowed, you may as well play it safe. 12:30.340 --> 12:39.720 So, for example, most people who start startups do it with the hope that as a result, if it pays off, they'll end up much richer than they were before. 12:39.720 --> 12:55.360 So if your society has some kind of policy designed to prevent anyone from being much richer than anyone else, then unless your startup founders were before the only poor people in the country, your economic policy is going to be tending to prevent startups from even happening. 12:55.980 --> 12:58.760 Like many startup founders, I did it to get rich. 12:58.760 --> 13:02.860 Not because I wanted expensive things, but because I wanted security. 13:03.340 --> 13:10.400 If I'd been forbidden to make enough from a startup to do this, I would have sought security by some other means. 13:10.460 --> 13:16.840 For example, by going to work for a big, stable organization from which it would have been hard to get fired. 13:16.840 --> 13:25.980 Instead of busting my ass in a startup, I would have tried to get a nice, low-stress job in a big research lab or tenure at a university. 13:26.240 --> 13:30.000 That's what everyone does in societies where risk isn't rewarded. 13:30.020 --> 13:40.880 If you can't ensure your own security, the next best thing is to make a nest for yourself in some large organization where your status depends mostly on seniority. 13:41.240 --> 13:42.800 So it's interesting, actually. 13:42.800 --> 13:49.820 You'll find in societies you either get economic inequality or a world where seniority counts for a lot. 13:49.820 --> 13:51.940 You'll always get one or the other. 13:55.250 --> 14:00.550 Even if we could somehow replace VCs, I don't see how we could replace founders. 14:00.550 --> 14:04.910 VCs mainly contribute money, which in principle is the same no matter where you get it. 14:04.910 --> 14:06.610 Founders contribute ideas. 14:06.610 --> 14:08.530 Those are not interchangeable. 14:08.970 --> 14:16.790 So let's rehearse the chain of arguments, because I'm heading to a conclusion many people will have to be dragged, kicking, and screaming towards. 14:17.230 --> 14:19.950 I've tried to make every link unbreakable. 14:20.090 --> 14:24.230 Decreasing economic inequality means taking money from the rich. 14:24.230 --> 14:31.090 Since risk and reward are interchangeable, decreasing potential rewards decreases people's appetite for risk. 14:31.090 --> 14:33.670 Startups are intrinsically risky. 14:33.930 --> 14:39.870 Without the prospect of rewards proportionate to the risk, founders won't start them. 14:39.870 --> 14:41.990 Founders are irreplaceable. 14:42.030 --> 14:46.950 So eliminating economic inequality means eliminating startups. 14:47.610 --> 14:50.610 This argument applies proportionately. 14:50.610 --> 14:55.290 It's not just that if you eliminate economic inequality, you get no startups. 14:55.290 --> 15:02.310 To the extent that you reduce economic inequality, you decrease people's appetite for risk. 15:02.470 --> 15:05.210 And that seems bad for a lot of people. 15:05.210 --> 15:09.530 New technology and new jobs both come disproportionately from new companies. 15:09.530 --> 15:19.010 In fact, if you don't have startups, you'll find, just as if you didn't have any more children, you wouldn't have any established companies either after a while. 15:19.290 --> 15:23.770 It sounds benevolent to say we ought to reduce economic inequality. 15:24.450 --> 15:27.650 But when you phrase it like that, who can argue with you? 15:27.730 --> 15:30.130 Inequality has to be bad, right? 15:31.330 --> 15:41.110 It sounds a good deal less benevolent to say that we ought to reduce the rate at which new companies are founded, and yet the one implies the other. 15:42.390 --> 15:52.410 Indeed, it may be that reducing investors' appetite for risk doesn't merely kill off larval startups, but kills off the most promising ones disproportionately. 15:52.990 --> 15:57.150 Startups yield faster growth at greater risk than big companies. 15:57.550 --> 16:00.930 Does this trend also apply within startups? 16:00.930 --> 16:04.290 Are the riskiest startups also the ones that pay off the most? 16:04.290 --> 16:06.730 I mean for everyone, not just for the investors. 16:07.110 --> 16:09.170 I suspect the answer is yes. 16:09.170 --> 16:18.190 And if so, that is a chilling thought, because it means if you cut investors' appetite for risk, the most beneficial startups are the first to go. 16:20.870 --> 16:24.630 Well, not all rich people get that way from startups, of course. 16:26.630 --> 16:32.710 What if we let people get rich by starting startups, but taxed away all other surplus wealth? 16:32.710 --> 16:35.070 Wouldn't that at least decrease inequality? 16:36.370 --> 16:38.030 Less than you might think. 16:38.150 --> 16:44.310 If you made it so that people could only get rich by starting startups, people who wanted to get rich would all start startups. 16:44.570 --> 16:49.870 And that might be a great thing, but I don't think it would change the distribution of wealth a lot. 16:50.230 --> 16:53.130 People who want to get rich will do whatever they have to do. 16:53.330 --> 16:57.470 If startups are the only way to do it, you'll just get a lot more people starting startups. 16:57.470 --> 17:05.570 That is, if you write the laws very carefully, more likely what you'll get is a lot of people doing stuff that can be described on paper as startups. 17:06.410 --> 17:11.070 If we're determined to eliminate economic inequality, there's still one way out. 17:11.330 --> 17:14.470 We could say that we're willing to go ahead and do without startups. 17:14.610 --> 17:16.290 What would happen if we did? 17:16.690 --> 17:20.410 At a minimum, we get lower rates of technological growth. 17:20.710 --> 17:30.510 If you believe that large companies could somehow be made to develop technology as fast as startups, the ball's in your court to explain how. 17:31.030 --> 17:40.050 The good news is, if you can come up with even a remotely plausible explanation, you can make a fortune writing books and consulting for large companies. 17:41.090 --> 17:43.170 Okay, so we get slower growth. 17:43.170 --> 17:44.630 Is that so bad? 17:44.910 --> 17:51.550 Well, one reason it's bad in practice is that other countries might not agree to slow down and jog alongside us. 17:51.550 --> 18:00.270 If you're content to develop new technologies at a slower rate than everyone else, what actually ends up happening is you don't invent anything at all. 18:00.770 --> 18:04.250 Anything you might discover has already been discovered elsewhere. 18:04.390 --> 18:10.730 And the only thing you can offer in return is cheap labor and raw materials. 18:11.130 --> 18:14.790 Once you sink that low, other countries can do whatever they want with you. 18:14.990 --> 18:28.470 Install puppet governments, come and pacify you, siphon off your best workers, use your women as prostitutes, dump their toxic waste on your territory, all the things we do to poor countries now. 18:29.270 --> 18:35.170 The only defense is to isolate yourself, as communist countries did in the 20th century. 18:35.370 --> 18:40.230 But the problem then is, you have to become a police state to enforce the isolation. 18:41.790 --> 18:48.150 Eliminating economic inequality means eliminating startups, and to the extent you do that, you're hosed. 18:48.350 --> 18:53.730 I realize startups are not the main target of those who want to eliminate inequality. 18:53.830 --> 19:00.990 What they really dislike is the sort of wealth that becomes self-perpetuating through an alliance with political power. 19:00.990 --> 19:07.610 For example, the construction firm that funds a politician's campaign in return for government contracts. 19:07.610 --> 19:17.830 But if you try to attack this type of wealth through economic policy, it's hard to hit without destroying startups as collateral damage. 19:18.390 --> 19:21.690 The problem here is not wealth, but corruption. 19:21.770 --> 19:24.510 So why not go after corruption directly? 19:25.030 --> 19:31.810 We don't need to prevent people from becoming rich if we can prevent wealth from translating into power. 19:32.090 --> 19:36.510 And there has been progress on that front. 19:36.510 --> 19:48.550 Before he died of drink in 1925, Commodore Vanderbilt's wasteful grandson Reggie ran down pedestrians on five separate occasions, killing two of them. 19:48.690 --> 19:56.570 By 1969, when Ted Kennedy drove off the bridge at Chappaquiddick, the bag limit seemed to be down to one. 19:56.890 --> 19:59.570 Today, it may well be zero. 19:59.730 --> 20:02.770 But what's changed is not variation in wealth. 20:02.770 --> 20:05.930 That's as bad, or as extreme, as ever. 20:06.070 --> 20:09.770 What's changed is the ability to translate wealth into power. 20:09.790 --> 20:12.650 Rich people can't get away with as much, he assured. 20:12.950 --> 20:16.850 How do you break the connection between wealth and power? 20:17.270 --> 20:19.210 Demand transparency. 20:19.710 --> 20:25.390 Watch closely how power is exercised and demand an account of how decisions are made. 20:25.570 --> 20:29.230 Why aren't all police interrogations videotaped? 20:29.230 --> 20:38.930 Why did 36% of Princeton's class of 2007 come from prep schools when only 1.7% of American kids attend them? 20:39.050 --> 20:43.350 Why did George Bush make it harder to see previous presidents' papers? 20:43.750 --> 20:45.110 Why does the U.S. 20:45.110 --> 20:48.210 so often put Israel's interests before its own? 20:48.590 --> 20:52.230 Why don't government officials disclose more of their finances? 20:52.230 --> 20:54.490 And why only during their term of office? 20:54.490 --> 20:56.390 Why not for 10 years after? 20:57.110 --> 21:05.510 A friend of mine who knows a lot about computer security says the single most important step is to log everything. 21:05.810 --> 21:11.950 Back when he was a kid trying to break into computers, what worried him most was the idea of leaving a trail. 21:12.410 --> 21:18.810 He was more inconvenienced by the need to avoid that than by any obstacle deliberately put in his path. 21:19.270 --> 21:24.970 Like all illicit connections, the connection between wealth and power flourishes in secret. 21:25.350 --> 21:30.190 Expose all transactions and you will greatly reduce it. 21:30.190 --> 21:31.510 Log everything. 21:31.510 --> 21:38.570 That's a strategy that already seems to be working and it doesn't have the unintended side effect of making your entire country poor. 21:38.870 --> 21:44.450 I don't think many people realize there's a connection between economic inequality and risk. 21:44.450 --> 21:47.210 I didn't fully grasp it until recently. 21:47.210 --> 21:57.810 I'd known for years, of course, that if one didn't score in a startup, the next best alternative was to get a cozy research position somewhere where they couldn't fire you. 21:57.810 --> 22:01.330 But I didn't understand the equation governing my behavior. 22:01.790 --> 22:10.990 Likewise, it's obvious empirically that a country that doesn't let people get rich is headed for disaster, whether it's Diocletian's Rome or Harold Wilson's Britain. 22:11.430 --> 22:15.310 But I didn't until recently understand the role that risk played. 22:15.870 --> 22:21.650 If you try to attack wealth, you end up nailing risk as well, and with it, growth. 22:21.990 --> 22:29.510 If you want a fairer world, I think you're better off attacking one step downstream where wealth turns into power. 22:30.710 --> 22:33.110 Thank you for listening to this talk. 22:33.110 --> 22:35.090 Sorry about the circumstances. 22:35.390 --> 22:36.330 Thank you. 22:45.360 --> 22:46.820 That was hair-raising. 22:46.820 --> 22:47.960 Do we have any time left? 22:47.960 --> 22:48.860 Are we done? 22:48.860 --> 22:50.900 Are we done? 22:50.900 --> 22:51.860 We are done? 22:52.820 --> 22:54.820 We have two minutes left. 22:54.820 --> 23:00.280 Should anybody have any questions about this talk that was obviously so enthralling, by all means, let me know. 23:13.630 --> 23:18.150 The question is, why do you want to reduce economic inequality in the first place? 23:18.310 --> 23:22.790 Well, actually, I'm saying you don't have to. 23:23.030 --> 23:26.050 But a lot of people seem to think that it's a really bad idea. 23:26.050 --> 23:33.830 I mean, it's one of those things you see in newspaper stories, not as a statement, but as an axiom underlying the story. 23:33.830 --> 23:39.370 They say inequality has increased, as if this were ipso facto bad. 23:39.730 --> 23:41.650 I think it's not necessarily. 23:51.140 --> 23:55.420 If government control can't result in growth, how do I explain what's happening in China? 23:55.420 --> 23:59.460 What's happening in China is the government has a lot less control than it did in the time of Mao. 23:59.460 --> 24:01.500 That's why China is growing faster. 24:02.040 --> 24:02.700 Yes? 24:19.370 --> 24:22.030 Oh, okay, that's an interesting question. 24:25.070 --> 24:30.570 I think what you're saying is, should you have this sort of wild west economy where everybody can do what they want? 24:31.010 --> 24:33.690 Or would it be better to have some kinds of protections? 24:49.280 --> 24:54.820 How much is an acceptable level of damage to startups in order to reduce economic inequality? 24:54.820 --> 24:55.720 I don't know. 24:55.720 --> 24:56.440 I don't know. 24:56.440 --> 25:03.720 I just discovered this equation relating these two things. 25:03.920 --> 25:09.380 You yank on the bed sheet here, and someone on the other end of the bed gets their covers pulled off. 25:09.700 --> 25:16.300 People yanking on the economic inequality end of the bed sheet don't often realize that it's attached to all these other things. 25:16.400 --> 25:18.440 But what's the right relationship? 25:18.440 --> 25:19.820 God only knows. 25:19.820 --> 25:24.280 It's enough for me to point out that this relationship exists. 25:27.280 --> 25:28.260 All right. 25:28.260 --> 25:29.100 Yes? 25:47.610 --> 25:57.670 Well, for example, I think bloggers have put a little bit of a fire under government that didn't used to be there before. 25:58.190 --> 26:05.950 If everybody demanded more, asked more hard questions of politicians, that would be a good thing. 26:05.950 --> 26:07.790 Is everybody going to do it? 26:07.810 --> 26:08.770 No. 26:08.770 --> 26:13.410 But, you know, these things might change slowly in the right direction. 26:21.940 --> 26:23.800 Would the politicians just ignore you? 26:23.800 --> 26:25.060 Well, they'll try. 26:25.920 --> 26:27.860 But look what happened in Northern Ireland. 26:27.860 --> 26:37.520 I just read recently that an analyst looking at what was happening in Northern Ireland said basically the people got tired of the violence and the politicians were forced to go along with them. 26:37.920 --> 26:41.240 That bumper sticker, if the people leave, the politicians will follow. 26:41.240 --> 26:42.900 I definitely agree with that one. 26:44.160 --> 26:44.760 All right. 26:44.760 --> 26:45.600 We are done. 26:45.600 --> 26:46.600 Thank you very much. 26:46.600 --> 26:48.580 Sorry about the strange circumstances.