I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm

I'm All right. It is my pleasure to welcome for the first time on Bad Fave podcast, Professor Rob Larson.

He is a professor of economics at Tacoma Community College and the author of Bit Tyrants,

The Political Economy of Silicon Valley and Capitalism versus Freedom and the book I have in my hand, which I was so glad to read, called Mastering the Universe, the Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, what they do with their money, and why you should hate them even more. Welcome to the pod.

Thanks, Brianna. My pleasure. I'm curious why you chose to write this specific book. I think many people who listened to this

podcast are very familiar with this 99 versus 1% language that came out of the Occupy

Wall Street movement and then was further popularized by the Bernie 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

In fact, just last week, he put out a statement invaying against the growing wealth gap at a moment

when I think it's very welcome, but at which time many people are thinking, well, why now

after you have just spent an election cycle throwing your rhetorical weight and your

substantive political weight behind a candidate that very much is bought into the systems of inequity that are

criticized in his statement and in your book. So for you, why now the choice to write this book?

Writing the book is just based on what we're all seeing every day, which is, you know,

we've all these twisted problems in the world right now. And I mean, you know, you can pick

the issue,

...