Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. Okie dokie, here we go. Episode two, Star, Star Kenobi one, Obi. John Kenobi. Wars. Is he, is he, he's not John Kenobi yet. Jedi evolved. Oh yeah, that's probably something we didn't know about in the last episode.  How's all Kenobi? And it's like, it's fine. It's fine so far.  I don't really know if I'm the same person. Like he has doubts. I can, I can see that happening. I think it's impossible not to portray him in a bad state personally because of what's happened after episode three. I think that's totally fine because I don't think we should see him as the guy he is in A New Hope, much more confident and kind of like cheeky and happy about blah, blah, blah, because I think it's fair to use this show as the thing that takes him to there, depending on, because I'm assuming this is one and done. I'm assuming there's not going to be like a Kenobi season two. I guess we'll find out. Maybe that will. I feel like they're not going to close the doors on a Kenobi season two, surely. To be fair, if I were in the company, I'd be like, you probably shouldn't because this is going to be the kind of thing that everyone wants to see. I think it is being presented as a limited series, though. Maybe they can change their mind later, but I think this is meant to be one and done. I guess, yeah, we need more to work with before I can say what I'm thinking about.   Why would you do that? Like, ever? Yeah, they did a cool trailer shot. Yes, they did. Yeah, they could do. They could just film a shot that looks good in the trailer and then not even put it in the show. I would be more happy about that. I wanted it there. They thought it was cool when he probably should just get a blaster or something. He probably shouldn't even take his lightsaber, because if he gets captioned, like, God damn, you're in a lot of trouble. I swear. This is a blaster. If you have to get on public transportation, like Mando told us, you can't bring your weapons on. That's right. He needs to leave his weapons and then he puts his lightsaber in the tub. It's like, what is that? Oh, it's just it's it's just like a little baton. Yes, a little baton. It's like only like handles stick around everywhere. Well, into my possession, I am going to trade it for lots of money. Oh, in the desert. I guess you could say that. But then the guy might be like, you know what? I think I want to trade you to the Empire for lots of money. You know, he's like, well, I've got a lightsaber. He says that really loudly as well. Who are you? Oh, Shadow. Whoa. Oh, my God. Do we get it for a minute? Previously, they've skipped the previously on the prequels. I need to see it again. See it again. They definitely did that for a while. It's a bizarre way to make sure you had him by his belly. You're like, what? What are these huge creatures on Tatooine eat to sustain their massive titanic bodies? And maybe and they eat sand, the sand nibblers. And you know what? I'm just thinking about it. What's the security of the planet? Like they just were able to enter their airspace, land and just do whatever they wanted to take her and go back up. Well, they're an empire, right? Like I think they just well, no. They're mercenaries. Well, a palace would have guards. They were mercenaries supposed to be an empire. No, no, not spoiled by the Empire. She's doing this secretly. She's doing that. You know, remember, they don't like reckless and impulsive there's no way to prove this. No, you can tell by how they let her do it. But then they're like, don't do that at the end. Well, yeah, because imagine if they found out that the inquisitors did it. That, of course, tons of problems. Yeah. Did they show like a little mouse droid? I think so. I think they did. They always had new things each time. Oh, cool. The stall will stuff, Rags. Appreciate it. I love it. I hope it's a gonk droid next. Oh, yeah. Oh, OK, we're off to when they, I guess maybe we'll get a flashback to the temple again later on. I feel like we're done with that stuff, maybe. I don't think we're done with it. How could we be done with it? That felt like it was. Why would they show it and then have a dead end? It didn't go anywhere as far as I feel like we're going to get the reveal that one of these people that is in the show now, probably the Black Incasal Lady was one of those kids, right? That's going to be there. Presumably, is Fringy saying that we'd get that in the form of a flashback, though? I think we're going to get the flashback that explains how she gets brought into the fold. And why she hates him. Why is everyone wearing these massive goggles? At least we're on a new planet. Yeah, I'm happy to be. Oh, my God.  Look at those worms. God, it's been so long since we've been in like a city in Star Wars, you know? We've wasted his potential for so long. I guess we have the half halo ring. That was kind of a city. Yeah, very brief. Does he have any leads? He's headed for Daayu. They hid their signature behind a freight transport. The ship is on its way there now. I'm looking for a ship. I was tracking its signature. You're in Daayu now. All signals in or out are blocked. I want to see a story of a dude who lives in this city. I just want to see like how people live in the Star Wars world. Yeah. Oh, my God, he's so conspicuous, though. Like, that is the Jedi outfit, man. This is where I expect to see the body mod people, not on Tatooine. I don't ironically rather... Oh! Look, it's a zombie. It's a clone. It's a zombie. It's a clone. Yeah. Oh, shoot. Not only that, he's a fiber first clone. He was in the shoot-up on the Jedi temple. He's a fiber first. Man, it's a good chance he would recognize Kenobi. That's... Well, he did a really bad job of hiding your face there, bud. I guess this guy doesn't care anymore, though. He's being discarded.  Well, that's like a whole story.  Yeah, it's like we've used you to serve our purposes. Now, we don't care. We've got stormtroopers in, you know. Yeah, because they're cycling in the stormtroopers. You want some spice, old man? What do you need? Some information. I'm looking for my daughter, but she was taken and she's on this planet. Planet? You're never going to see her again. I like her response, yeah, you're probably never going to see her again.  I was someone's daughter once, too. That one's free. A couple more of those and you'll forget she ever existed. I wonder if that'll be relevant. There's a Jedi. He helps people for the right price. Give him the drugs. Yeah, give him the drugs. Why do I want to meet another Jedi? Wait, why would I say yes to this? I don't know. Okay, you're safe now. Oh, I guess he has a Jedi, okay. It's not a great secret cap, though, is it? No. Yeah, apparently not. Who's this fucker? Should I? You're supposed to know him? Dinesh from Silicon Valley. He's in a couple things. He was in Eternals. Yeah, he was in Eternals, yeah. I meant more like from Star Wars. Oh, he's here. I would imagine I would be mine to meet. I'm sending a mother and son to your gate. You will let them through when they arrive. I'll let them through. Can you do this over this distance?  He's a fraud. Yeah, he's a fraud, right? Yeah, he's got to be. The force is so strong with you. Yeah, yeah. OK, yeah, that's fine. I like it. There's an idea. Yeah, I like that as an idea. It's risky, though.  I was going to say, you're going to get yourself killed. They will come for him. Yeah, I guess. I guess if the inquisitors show up, it will just be like, no, I actually don't know how to use the force. That's going to be a bit late.  I don't be hard to prove. Like, how do you prove to someone I can't use the force? You know, like, how do you prove that? You must. My safety depends upon it. I actually really like the touch. Yeah, the Jedi grift, or just a grifter in general. Like, that's a fun idea. I like it.  Put down the automatic blinds. Like, that's just a control on them. Yeah, exactly. All right. It's really fun. Take a quick break, OK? Call you in a little bit. Man, it would have been a good idea to check if someone. I'm just going for a Jedi. Man, it took a while for him to notice him. A girl has been kidnapped. I need your help to find her. Did he just actually buy, like? I am Haja S3. Has everyone followed for this? Wasn't what he just said in the earshot of. Like, he knows that Kenobi would have heard him. How much? I think he's maiming. 500 to locate the girl. Well, Kenobi is, yeah. 300 to take you to her. Goodness, that light is unforgiving. I mean, that's a really good deal. Oh, make it a thousand. I'll even show you some tricks. What do you know of the fourth, my friend? Just that there's a lot of remotes and magnets. Oh, OK. I know how this looks. Yes, it looks like it just took money from that family. I got them say. And you let him do it. Yeah. What are you, a bounty hunter?  A rat. These rats know more about the sewers than anyone else. I'm not sure about this from Obi-Wan. This feels a little bit unlike him. I'm going to help me find this girl. It's a little quick for him to get here. Well, I feel like we would have need to have seen the development, right? Can I trust you? Definitely. Because, like, it's been 10 years. I'm happy to believe he got here, but he didn't see it. All right, if it's the sewers you want, there's only one place to go. But you'll never get it. Well, but as Rags pointed out, it's weird to have righteous indignation about taking money from the family when he was right there. He could have done anything about that. You let him do it. You let him do that. You could have stopped him.  Look at that, buddy. Look at that. Oh, no. On my way to Roswell right now, in fact. Oh, this outfit is what he should be wearing at all times. Yeah, I was I was avoiding just pointing out Breaking Bad, but in Star Wars, that's it's been raised. Breaking Bad Batch is of drugs. Nice. He's just sort of got in here, I guess.  Oh, God, the Il and Maya flask. I reckon he did that on purpose. And he's chill about this. Oh, wow, that was so obvious.  Well, you should use the if your whole goal is not to be seen, then maybe you should use the force for that and then really settle. Keep the mask on. What are you doing back here? Fighting. I fell inventory. Oh, look, he's like Dothman. Yeah, get back to work. Right. He is like Dothman. Man, you waited a while that. Wow. Just let him hit him. Why not just give him a little bit of choke so they pass out? Did you stab yourself in the head with that? Yeah, hit the horse. Only you could use the force to make it look like you're just really good at hand-to-hand combat, like you. Probably could. If you're subtle with the force, it's insanely useful. That's what I think their opportunity is. Yeah, they should be doing that.  It's fake. It's a yeah. That's not Leia. Oh, my God, it's the Wadblas. Well, this went really bad, huh? Yeah. I didn't know that Jedi could bleed. Oh, I only know he's a Jedi. I'm surprised you fell for it. I figured you'd be smarter than to risk everything for a spoiled little blah. Yeah, same. Yeah.  Thank you so much, man. Oh, lame, lame, lame. I've been told to a toss-in. Inquisitor. Dude, use the force. I figured you out. Yeah, you have to now. You have to. They already know he's a Jedi. It's too late. Use the force. Yeah. Also, they also know he can use the force, right?  Surely these forces would pay for a dead Jedi.  Oh, wow. You copied a breaking band. This is not a myth. Well, everybody bleeds. Oh, they're going to forget. Remember, they're going to forget because of the drugs. That's incredible.  That's not reliable. Like, you can't rely on that for them to forget. But he can't. No, I know he can't. He said you would have to take multiple of those to forget he she ever existed. What if there's a camera in there? He's got an enlarged room on the floor. Wait, let go of me. Wait. Oh, there she is. OK. Your father sent me. I'm here to help you. Where's the army? That's a great question. Where's the army? Also, that so that drug knocks you out as well, then. I guess. I guess so. What a great recreational.  It fills the whole room, too.  Do you want to go to his face?  Well, she sent she gave him that because he was trying to get his daughter and she's like, just forget your daughter with this. I mean, this won't really make them forget anything there. I like there must be cameras in this place. And at that point, it's over, surely. Oh, man, lucky she wasn't here at the time. Where is he? Why? Here, give me the orange one. You take.  That's nice. Well, they have Jawa as the work from, I'm sure. Don't show her.   You have no idea what I'm risking being here, your highness.  Because you're short. OK. You would kidnap an imperial senator's child. Oh, they found out. Oh, she will have no right. I've found a link between him and Organa in the archives. And you did this without informing me? You left me no choice. She thinks she will get it. He didn't. Show choice, not tell you. Wait, how come they didn't know? It will not change what you are. And what is that? The least of us. Racism. You came to us from the gutter. Your ability gave you station. Why are you telling her things she knows? Because we need to know. Come on. How else will we get a dog? Ask the stench beneath. Maybe that stench is your failure. That's not a great comeback. Yeah, that's not a great comeback. You are no longer required, sister. I brought Kenobi here. You've been fired. It's so much better if she's just cold and fresh. Yeah.  Based on a connection she found in the archives that she didn't let them know about, which is so odd mechanically. That's like what a fort told them, I guess. Why wouldn't she tell them about that connection? Like, seriously? And then why didn't everyone know already? I don't want them to catch him. I want them to squeeze him. He'll reveal himself eventually. And I will be waiting. Unless he leaves the planet before. I don't want them to catch him. I want them to squeeze him. I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means, either. Wow, we're kind of doing like the John Wick thing. Nice, the John Wick scene, yeah. Yeah. Man, he just gets you. He's like, here I go, killing. T-Rex. I just love killing. Put your thing on. Put your hood on. If you have that mask, you'd still be OK. He's walking around with his face on it. You should know this already. Dude, he treats that so casually, like, oh, man. I got a bounty on me. He's like, dude.  Like, it doesn't matter where you go now. They know who you are. And they send it out to everyone. It was bad enough before just by being Obi-Wan Kenobi. But now, yeah, there's a bounty on you. Oh, I don't know what you're. You don't need those and the gloves. How about something to cover the face? Well, wait, is he spending his own money or did Bale actually help him out in any way? He doesn't actually give him such a thing.    I hope so. He didn't spend any money on anything else, so... If anyone asks, we're farmers from tall and you're my daughter. Granddaughter, maybe. What? Nothing. Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! But what are you wearing? We're just... The carpet. What are you wearing?  And they're just like, whatever. Now that's happening. You sound like my parent.  Yeah, just let her. Why aren't you using your lightsaber? Right now?  Because you're not really a Jedi. I don't care if you stop announcing that. I read that Jedi can make things float. Make me float.  Oh, wait, wait, wait. I...  Surely she, like, understands that this is a serious situation. The show? I know she's young, but she has to know that this is not, like, this is dangerous. She's just been captured and taken to a strange planet. Well, I think that what they've done is they're, like, lay a signature trait, is being cheeky to people. And it's like, yep, but... You think the less you say, the less you give away. It's the opposite. How old are you? Ten. Don't sound like you're ten.  Wait, was that supposed to be insightful? Thank you.   Look at this remorse.  Oh, okay. He loves killing too. Let me get him. Don't take my books there. Don't take my books there. Keep it on. Like, how does he keep doing that? Where's the person? Where's the person? Oh, wow. He's right at the corner. He's an awkward cut at him. Can I take his clothes? Make sure the port is shut down. I want to garrison here within the island. I feel like he could just book a hotel and stay here for, like, you know, weeks. Yeah, just lay low. Especially if we're going to shut down the port, yeah. And it's like, surely there's more than one port in this whole city, right?  No school, sir. Yeah, that's Pinobi. Yeah, okay. That's who we're looking for. I remember. Oh, wait, hang on. Are they saying she did this and not the other guys? Like, they didn't want the bounty off for some reason. She did that.  And they only just now found out about the bounty?  You figured that they would have seen everywhere. No noise from that. They let her keep the robot? Good. I let your parents know you're safe. We'll be back in the palace back to normal. She's not safe. She is definitely not safe. Like, say, I have her at this location, but, like, we have everyone looking for us.  So Bail Organa and his family should be under close scrutiny from now on. If not captured and tried for treason. At this stage, yeah. What is that? Why is there a picture of you? Because they're trying to find us? That's what you were hiding. You're the reason I'm here. They took me to get to you here. What? Wow, that's an inference and a half. How do I know you're not the real kidnapper? You have to trust me, Leia. You're on a journey. Your father is a very old friend. I don't believe you.  You're not serious.  You're not serious. Oh my god. You are not serious. You can't... We're not doing this again. Why would he bust you out of there and hide from everyone? How did you fall behind so far? She was right there.  Oh my god. How did you beat like this? I can't believe this. This is his name. I swear to god, if this leads... I've never hated a child so much. If this leads somewhere significant, I'm gonna be so upset. Of course it will. This is...  Well, now you're fucked. Yeah. Thanks, Leia. Yeah, good job. Grab her. I was here. Grab her right now. Why would he... Oh my god! Why would he... He did it.   He was right there. How did she get this far away? What is that? What is... Ugh. This is where we come from. Wait, now what's happening? We saw the float creatures in the lineup. How are you this far behind? We're right next to her. What is happening? Oh my god.  It's not often I hate a child as much as this.   Is this what people really wanted to see?  God. Why is he even here? Use... How did you miss? Again and again and again. Oh, what a... One of the odds. Oh, you were... Why are you even out there? It's a good take. How's she gonna get over there? Oh, use your helicopter blade. Oh, look. It's a T-Rex. Did those close? What are you doing? What is that?  Okay. What? Wait, why? What are we doing? What is this? What are you doing? What are you doing?  This is a matrix, yeah. This crouching tiger hidden dragon. Finally, my favorite movie, when 2004 gets more appreciation. Leia, do you see how she's getting shot? He misses you, right? This is unreal, yeah. We've actually managed to get plot armor down when he doesn't need it because he's a Jedi. I mean, you can't make that shot, so... By the way, they already know that he is a Jedi.  It's already over. Come on, come on. No reason not to at this point. Oh, he's here too. Everyone's here. Everyone's just here. Of course. Okay, is he gonna catch her with the force? What?  Okay. This lady's funny.  Why does Obi-Wan not realize he has the force? Unless... Oh, that looks so bad. Oh, yeah. Oh, you can't. You can't do that.  Oh my god, it does look so bad. Oh, let go. I did bless you. Use your other arm. Why isn't he using the force? Can you not use the force? Roll credits. I guess because he hasn't used the force a long time or... Is that how it works? Can you unlearn the force? He got de-forced, and so now he's got it back. Oh, that's why she asked him to make a float for this payoff. So now that's proof he's a Jedi, but... Man. Okay, but why did the other one stop shooting him while he wasn't looking? Wow, look at that little Jedi girl. How did he get down? There were two people shooting you. What's going on with those guys?  I mean, you don't even need that. He's trying to help you this whole time. And he could have given her loads of information about her dad to be like... He could have tried so many things. Also, I busted you out of the people in there. He could have run faster as well. Yeah, I guess. That was always an option, just run a little bit faster. They showed us all of that in quizzes to Lady trying to catch up to just not have that go anywhere. For nothing? Yeah. Maybe there was a fight scene or something, and they caught it. It feels like something got cut there, yeah, for sure, because we didn't even see what happened to the... The grifter guy either. Yeah. Oh, that's good. Whoa. All right, there we are. Listen carefully. You need another exit. It's a cargo port. It's fully automated. Go to transport it. What are you talking about? It'll take you to Mapuso. They'll be waiting. Who will be waiting? I'm trying to make amends. I got that family. Why? And I'm gonna do the same thing. But why? Why would you flip like this? I know what you are. I'm so... When it's insanely dangerous for you to help him. I just need to get the girl home.  Every person... They're also just... You can see them, you know? Everyone Obi-Wan meets and every item he gets relating to them is just really handy. Oh, God. Oh, God. Spinny blade! Spinny blade! Where is he? All right, okay. I guess that's him. She's still doing a big ride. She's still doing... He just... So they killed the people that she hired? Fuck, she's in so much goddamn trouble. Oh, yeah. I can't wait to play as... I can't wait to play as her in a video game. Finally, we meet. Amarja Estre, you found me. Why would you do this? He's got a gun, like... Why? Yeah, this character would have killed this guy already. You're no Jedi, but you know where one is. What's going on? Why did you do this? Yeah, that was a really bad move, dude. Why? He was holding a gun that entire time. What? Cheetah. Bull's torture. Like Kylo. Why didn't you do this with Owen? You didn't have it back then. Yeah, she's just pulled... She's just pulled Obi-Wan's location out of this guy's head. All because he just turned up for no reason at all. Wow. Okay, shitty writing right there. Yeah, which is very likely to be honest with you. I almost fell to my death. This is all your fault. Yeah.  If somebody is offering us help, I think we should take it. Now come on.  Yeah, exactly. Um, he was offering you help and you didn't take it. I think you'd just remind me of someone. No, you'd... who? Jar Jar? Jar Jar. Was your friend a Jedi too? He was once. All my friends were Jedi. No, she was a leader. Yeah, she's talking about Padme. Wait, when does Padme do like a... We should accept help from those who offer it? You remind me of the other woman. Because I guess Padme was... Yeah, I know her. I'm scared. So cute. Why did you flourish like that? What are you... what? What are you doing? Stop it.  All she needs is the little glass bottles to stack together. I can feel you. What is this? I'm so excited. Um, we're going to get you. Why don't you just run? Yeah, he could literally have ran with her to the gym. But oh well. Your fear betrayed you. Yeah, I feel like you could have just ran. She's funny. How can your lightsaber on reveals where you are coming up, right? Yeah, like, she's literally lost. She doesn't know where he is. Look, she's already over there. Yeah, you walked past the thing. I... it'd be so funny if he actually wasn't here. Yeah, they literally left and she's just like, How long does it take? How long does it take for her to realize? Anakin Skywalker is alive. I'm surprised he wouldn't know. Vader should be pretty public at this point. Vader should be pretty well known, yeah. Yeah. Bale would know and they're in contact. If they expect them to know who the inquisitors are on Tatooine, surely they'd know Vader. Deliver you to him. Sister, I can stand the reek of your ambition no longer. Really? Obi-Wan isn't a meter away from you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For fuck's sake.   Oh, okay. Really think I let you take all the credit? What? So, you were in so much trouble. Maddie, you're finished. Yeah, just could one of the grand inquisitors. I think we're team her. I'm going to be so mad. Oh, they will.  What is this? Like, what was all of that?     It must have eye world fighting energy, doesn't it? Yeah. Plown woman. Dude, this was awful. Like, this is horrible. This episode is way worse than the first episode. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So many awful right-in choices. God damn. I feel like that only take away from this is going to be, hey, maybe don't make the children as annoying. That's going to be the thing below. Yeah, you didn't kill him. Remember that time you didn't kill him? I don't believe this is him finding it out for the first time. It doesn't make any sense to me. I thought they'd have him in the tub in episode two. I had a feeling. Have him in the tub. Hey, Hayden. How you doing? God damn. What happened?   That was so bad. That was awful.  Yeah, that was so much of that. That was horribly bad. Man, they are rushing too. We are here. We're already done with the mercenary group that kidnapped Leia. That's done. That's out. And I think that indicates to me sort of what this show will be like, which is like the other shows, but maybe a little more serialized. Unfortunately, I'm almost sitting at Vader and Kenobi will meet next episode now, isn't it? They probably, absolutely. I mean, the next episode. Yeah, they have to. There's no space for them to have three jewels if they don't, right? But here's, I can see it being like this. They meet in episode three at like the end. They fight in episode four. Then we have one episode break and five, and then they fight again in episode six. Because I presume now we're sending him on a plot that may lead him to like the rebellion, maybe?  Oh, yeah. Everything that's like, good thing that that lady just gave him a free drive, but like knocks people out and makes their memories float. You know, he didn't have the force, right? But that was part of my problem with that scene, is that they should be killing him because of how dangerous he is. It was so video game plot. He was given his quest item by the NPC he spoke to. Yeah, he approached it. He approached it like it was a video game. He arrived in his new location and started speaking to NPCs.  I guess you'll give information on my quest. This is the problem. There was no useless information on or no useless interaction. All of it was purposeful. And it's just like, you didn't have a single NPC just say, hello. Good morning. Simple as that. Looking back, it didn't matter that it was a forget me drug. Like that didn't matter at all. It was more so just a knock me out. I thought that was like some semblance of a payoff work. Because the payoff is that he uses that and they're still they're hazy on things. Or you set it up that it's like a forget me drug. And she said something like, don't take it all at once though. You know, like that kind of thing, which sets up that he uses all of it against them. They have like amnesia for a while.  And he's like, where's who? Who are you? Where am I? Which I think in a format would make sense if because like this thing, him being Obi-Wan Kenobi and him being after her is big info because they have no leads on Obi-Wan Kenobi. But now they do. And these aren't these are big ripples. We know that Obi-Wan Kenobi is rescuing Leia just like half a day, if not hours after she was initially kidnapped, meaning he must have been alerted to it by Bale, which means Bale must have direct connection to him, which means Leia is screwed now. Well, the whole family is. And if Vader gets anywhere near like any of this, it's just it's like, oh, you're ruining everything. You got so close to it. And then it took like nine extra years. I actually think it should be possible to be like, when did he arrive on this planet? It's like, it would have been with this time frame. Where did these ships come from? And if they got like an actual passenger sort of directory. Just manifest for all ships. If they find out he's from Tatooine, it's fucked. It's all fucked. That's over. Because if you're like, Tatooine, oh, man.  I wonder if they like fully appreciate the challenges that you need to navigate when it comes to telling a story like this. You have to be able to reasonably have. The status quo is Luke basically lived completely unknown in terms of like his, you know, that he was Anakin's son. And he lived his whole life unknown, undiscovered. There was no connection at all. And seemingly Obi-Wan had nothing going on either. But like now I don't know how easy it is to get back to that status quo. Yeah, we gotta go. This show has to end with Ben being back on Tatooine, everything being chill and his connection with Luke actually being established. Because he needs to actually be chill with them for a new hope to all make sense. Get him back there at this point. That's going to be hard. That's going to be very hard. And I think that they've totally forgotten about that because the impression I get is that we're probably going to get an explanation of how like the beginning of Leia's path to where she is in a new hope. That seems to be what they're doing here. I can't believe she's round off again. This is just, it's... Well, yeah, I mean, like...   She's released from it and is aware that this guy is fought to get her out of there.  Pretty sure you're my kidnapper. She's like, oh wow. Because I saw your face on like a thing, a transponder. Guy who literally has you freed and walking freely, like with the capacity to actually escape. And a guy who keeps telling you about your father having sent him. Like what? Well, yeah.   Can't do both of these things. It's really annoying. It's like, it's almost like she's only here because it's like, ah, conflict, because she doesn't understand some things.  And then that's going to mean we have an action scene and tension and then it will lead us to R.C. He can use the force again. Use like a meter behind her and suddenly... It's the meme where he keeps catching up to her, but then as soon as we cut, he's really far behind. When you play it from there, he just waits for a second so she can go away for a bit. And it's like, oh no, I have to go behind her. And then she starts climbing the ladder and then he's nowhere to be seen. And then five, six, seven, oh, there she is. How are you with an arm's reach only to then be like miles away? Yeah, I like how he points the laser right at her as well. Oh, yeah, he does. Yeah, he... And so, yeah, it's established then. Up to this point, he had no use of the force, which seems arbitrary as far as I'm concerned. I don't know, but that's a... Is that what they're establishing with that? Yeah, up to now he wasn't using the force at all. He wasn't able to because he had lost something that a component that would facilitate that. I don't know. The sports pipes were clogged. Well, because remember, Luke is like that in TLJ, right? Yeah. Hey, so at least that being consistent... Well, the problem is that I need better reasoning. It's like, why am I supposed to infer that he's... Because he's sad? Or was it to hide from the... From inquisitors so they can't sense the force on you? That doesn't matter because you have a face. That's yours. So... Well, yeah, and that's kind of what we were looking for was clever uses of the force in order to hide the fact that you have it, but also utilize it. Instead, they were just like, now he just doesn't have it. Oh, now he does. And they make sure to show you that his first act with the force is seen by everyone. And they're like, whoa. Ugh. Let's see how those screenshots are made. So, if you look at the first one without any arrows, it's like, oh, so... She fell down. Obi-Wan grabs her and then he just appears downstairs. So, I don't even know where he went down. Like, I don't see anything to go down except all the way back where the robot guy is. And then he just has to go down. He should have parkoured down like that clown lady does.   Well, because he's shot. Yeah. And this guy, like...  Yeah, because that guy's still alive now. Yeah, the red one is like, okay, maybe this thing is upstairs like, okay, then just go two steps to his right and then you can see him. Oh, it's just, he shot the T-Rex, but like the green eyed robot was still there and he just like... And then like, he stopped shooting him.  What was he doing? I don't know. I don't know. Fringe, I can explain that. He was out of shot. Yes, he was out of shot, so he doesn't exist. There's a lot of that in this show. It's funny because he's a plot armor of not getting hit. Because where the green eyed robot thing is, this looks like the only way down into a building where you couldn't go down, where I guess Obi-Wan had to go through to get down maybe. About that robot, he's killed like five meters away from this whole bustling area. Nobody cares about a giant. And it's not even just the sound of it. It's the sparking explosion of fireworks of a robot being blown up right in front of three stormtroopers and none of them care. Four stormtroopers, actually. This inquisitive lady as well. How was she not finished? Like, how was she not in so much trouble? I imagine she's just permanently going road now, or will she claim Obi-Wan did that? So now she's going to get hunted down by the inquisitor. What is that? Is that it for the inquisitor, do you think? Or is he going to come back? I think that's it for him. I think that's it. That's Rupert Friend, right? Like, what are the higher billing people? Well, I thought that was his name in the universe. And I was like, oh, okay. No, he's in the universe. He is the grand inquisitor, like the grand. So he's the main one. The grand wizard. Maybe they're going to make up a Mandalorian rule.  Now you are the biggest one. Here's your dark saber. How do you maintain a level of order in your own system if you just reward people for killing? It's so bad. I could imagine that the thing they're trying to do is that she's going to, I don't know. Maybe this would actually be too smart for them if she says, oh yeah, Obi-Wan was here. And he killed the grand inquisitor. And that's proof that I was on his trail. And we need to find him. But then I guess the question would be, so it killed him. Like, what about you? What happened with you? Also, like, it doesn't matter. Or doesn't he mind trying to find out if that's true? The other two know that he's in trouble. Well, the other two wouldn't know. Because it would be so easy to be like, he was really mad with you, like, because of the stuff that you sent out. Yeah. And he went to go get you. And he got stabbed. So you've broken all of the rules recently. And nothing's happening to you. It's kind of weird. There's no reason to believe. Oh, man.  The first one wasn't, like, good or anything. It was fine, I guess. I feel like it's a bit below fine. It was, I would say it was below fine. But below fine is not. I don't know. That's incredible for Disney. That's incredible for Disney. I think I'd like give like a four. And I would happily watch an entire show of it, right? If we got to the end, I'd be like, yeah, you know. I don't know if I'd happily watch that. But like, I guess I wouldn't be as annoyed. If we got to the end of that, I'd be like, fine, sure. Now it's like just nervous, like really nervous. Well, yeah, because Obi-Wan's incompetence assassination portion of him has been pretty high up.  Yeah, that's the one that they can't even stop themselves from assassinating characters in terms of their incompetence because they don't know how to write them intelligently anymore. But this is really bad, this whole episode, unfortunately. Pretty standard bad writing. Lots of it everywhere. You can't escape him. But I'm thinking from the perspective of the high inquisitor, you have these guys who got an order from an inquisitor and then they did it and it's not their fault. It's not really their fault, yeah. I don't even know why you would kill them out of like frustration or to send a message. They just, they did what an inquisitor told them to do. Why are you upset? I wonder if people are happy about the grand inquisitor just getting yeeted like that. Surely not, because when the trailer came out, people were like, oh, it's a guy. Oh my gosh.  He's in the animated shows, right? I think so, I think. Oh, wow. This is his end?  They've done that before. He's in Rebels, I think. He's in Rebels, which comes after this. Rebels is after this. Oh, so like he's not dead then? Maybe not. Even though he got stabbed in the gut. But then again, he might be. Who knows what they're going to do? I mean, Darth Maul survived. He did. That's true. So everything's on the table.  He's going to go to a mod parlor on Tatooine and get a new spleen. I can't wait for Kachuku to come back. With a robot, with robot hands and a robot head. Oh, is he? They don't keep his head. What if it's both? What if there are no two versions of Dooku? One with a robot head and one with a robot head? Oh, they're on head and one with a robot body. I mean, he renames himself Count Duke, too. There we go. The show, make it happen. Oh, Christopher Lee is unfortunately no longer with us. And I dare not have Disney use the horrors of CGI to bring back. They're going to use a mix of archive footage and CGI to bring back Christopher Lee.  Yes.  But the Susan Quidzo was so badass and cool plummeted. When she was doing it. Paw cool. So true. It looked so goofy. It really was like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but worse. I knew it. We knew they would ruin Kenobi.  But wow, the amount of it's just like this. This Kenobi that we see is just not the same guy. And so I just don't care. The reason why Obi-Wan escaped is because of the Grand Inquisitor right when she was about to find him. It was like, hey, stop it.   Episode two, everyone. Yeah. Episode two. That was the last one, right? We're done now forever. No, we're not. Yeah, no. That was the end of the Kenobi series. Bull bull. It's been resolved because we're on that layback. That's the third episode. Okay, bye. See you next time. Bye. Good boy. They keep doing this. Oh. What did you bring? Rilla!


It's a great pleasure and honor to be back here to lecture you. This is my second Mises University as a lecturer, but just around 20 years ago, I was here in the audience as a student, and it was an absolutely life-changing experience for me. And I started my last time I lectured at Mises University this way, and I will, again, this time, of saying what it was like as a student because it relates to the topic I'm going to talk about today. I remember sitting there, and Rich Vetter was the speaker at the time. He was giving a lecture on multinational economics or something like that. He was talking about trade issues or what have you. And I remember watching him lecture. He was a little overweight at the time. His hair kind of went both ways. He had big, thick glasses. As he talked, Christian, you'd be in trouble. As he talked, he'd get more and more excited and sly.  He's talking, and he says, and I was doing this radio show, and someone calls in, and they said, but what about sweatshops? And he was like Tony the Tiger with his hand. He's like, sweatshops? I love sweatshops. I remember sitting there, and as I'm watching this, I'm like, someday I want to be just like that guy. And now I'm really happy to be with you here today. And to talk about this top sweatshops, I became interested actually at that MISI's U, but it was at least a half dozen years or so later that it started as a research program for me. And it was at the time, economists had said various defenses of sweatshops. But nobody had kind of really systematically dug into the data of how they operate, how they compare to other alternatives. And that's what I started doing. And I'm going to give my talk a little bit different than usual today. But it's worth at least making sure we're all on the same page to begin with what we're talking about here. Sweatshops, in the pejorative sense, in the international arena. Places that have really low pay by US standards. Long working hours, bad health and safety conditions. And otherwise, generally, conditions that we'd find a part here in the United States or other parts of the developed world. But where people voluntarily choose to work. Now by voluntarily, I mean from a bad set of options, otherwise you wouldn't choose this. But that choice is important. It's important on both moral grounds and on economic grounds. On economic grounds, it demonstrates to us that the worker in their mind, it's their best available among the bad alternatives. If we want to do something to improve their lives, it doesn't improve their lives by taking away options, by getting them more options and helping them graduate from sweatshops. That's fine, but we've got to make sure that we're not going to do something that jeopardize the currently least bad option. This is different than forced labor. There's some people who conflate this, when they're given their talks as a guy, Jim Keady, he goes around college campuses and he wears a T-shirt with a, and it says slavery and the V is a Nike swoosh. This is not slavery, it's not coerced labor. I think it's a tremendous injustice to the millions that have actually been held in bondage when you conflate these two things. Slave labor does exist on small scales in the world today, but it's not in the garment industry. In the garment industry, these are places where people choose these lousy conditions from their bad set of alternatives. So my approach to this has actually been a very Missessian value-free one in that I take the ends of the activist, the better lives for the workers, it's I'm going to embrace that and I'll let you use economics to talk about how we can improve their lives. So among the coalition of different groups that talk about these issues, the AFL, CIO, Unite, some of you on your college campuses might have a United Students Against Sweatshop Labor chapter, the National Labor Committee, ILO, various celebrities, ministers, others have been involved in this. There's kind of a common core set of policies that they talk about, a minimum wage or a living wage, meaning tied to a local cost of living in one of these countries, rather than imposing a US-style one. Improving safety and working condition laws, unionization for them, they're almost all against child labor, enforcing whatever labor laws happen to exist in these countries. This is the kind of package of laws that they tend to advocate. As one activist sociology student, by the way, not so eloquently put it, everybody wants to have a living wage, everybody wants to be able to take care of themselves and their family, everybody wants to retire, feel good, enjoy life, breathe, live, eat.  We're not asking for nothing extra special. And I largely agree, they're not asking for nothing extra special. The question is a means ends one. These ends, improving the lives of the workers, are those means on the second bullet point an efficient way to get there? Does it get you? Does it deliver on these things? So I take the standard when I'm working on sweatshop stuff of improving the lives of workers and for that matter, potential workers in these poorer countries as the ends. And now we're gonna talk about what are the better ways to do this? And at the start, and this is what I find when I deal with not only activists, but philosophy, professors, business, ethnic professors, et cetera, step one is understanding the economics of wage determination. I'll do this differently than I do in a different, you guys are kind of a weird audience to give this talk to. Most of the time, like Tom alluded to, I go into college campuses and like a third of the audience hates me. Two thirds of them are checked out maybe and come in with a kind of neutral attitude and maybe there's a small minority that likes this. But you all get wage determination. Upper bound is gonna be determined by worker productivity or in econ speak, right, marginal revenue product, how much they contribute to the firm's revenue. Lower bound is gonna be their next best alternative. So if we're gonna improve lives of workers, it's gotta be about moving these two bounds. Either things that make the workers more productive or that give them more opportunities. It's not just Nike bidding for their labor, Nike and Reebok are bidding against each other. It pushes you up towards that upper bound. In practice, the real game is gonna be at that upper bound worker productivity. When we look across countries, about 85% of the variation in wages is explained by productivity differences. So in terms of moving people from that $2 a day type standard of extreme poverty to middle income, it's not about just bargaining power or something, it's about making them more productive. Which by the way, I'm not gonna talk that much about unionization. I do it a little bit in the book, but not a ton in the book. And it's because at its best, unions are about narrowing that range from lower bound to upper bound and getting you up against your upper bound. There's not an argument that goes that they raise the worker productivity. That means we're not gonna transform lives and get them out of poverty by having unionization. And if we're counting all workers, the main way of course, unions raise wages is by excluding people from the industry and restricting supply, which is the benefit of the members, but hurts everybody else in that country who would rather be in the industry as well. Speaking of the book, by the way, I saw I think there's six copies left out in the bookstore. Don't run out while I'm lecturing, but when it's all over, go down there and get it, I'll sign it later. That was my best Tom Woods pitch. So, well, I'll do this a little bit different actually. The best criticism I've heard of my work on this, and this isn't exactly in the book, it's in there implicitly. Turns out philosophers and they're not very good price theorist people, but they wrote a critique up of me in Journal of Business Ethics, and it said that I embrace worker welfare as my standard, true, and said, but he argues against minimum wages, for example, for sweatshop workers because it unemployed some. So, standard what we have here, right? Upper bound, place a minimum wage higher than the upper bound, it's gonna unemployed any worker who's below that bound. So it's gonna throw them into worse alternatives. I'll get into the worst alternatives in a few minutes. And by the way, in terms of living versus minimum wage, there is a historical example of where we took a US style minimum wage to a third world country situation. The first US minimum wage in 1938 under the Fair Labor Standards Act set the US minimum wage, I believe, 25 cents per hour. At the time, average productivity in the United States was about 62 and a half cents per hour. This of course is 38, one of the double dip years of the Great Depression, so it did have negative consequences here, but it applied to the United States and all of its territories. At the time, Puerto Rico had productivity about three to four cents an hour. You got massive business closure and unemployment immediately in Puerto Rico. They had to change the law and exempt the territories from it. So that's an illustration of putting a US style minimum wage in a much poorer country. Most advocates of this realized they can't do that now. They said, no, it has to be a living wage. We tie it to their local cost of living in that country. I'm always confused by the way, but living wage, if the people are already alive, don't they have a living wage? But regardless, so the critique from the philosophers came, if we're gonna use worker welfare as our standard and it's gonna employ some, unemploy some, some people will keep their job though. Yes. And if the gains to those people who keep their job are bigger than the losses to those who lose, then if we're losing using worker welfare, not economic efficiency as our metric, then me, Powell should embrace minimum wages. Fair enough as a logical point. The question is, does it imply, apply empirically? Do more people keep their jobs and get the higher wages than who lose the jobs and become unemployed? So that we need to think about like elasticities of supply and demand, right? So think about price sensitivity of workers in the third world. What does the labor supply curve probably look like? You can work or you can starve. Most people aren't issuing you visas, in my mind, unfortunately, to move to other more productive countries. You got a pretty inelastic labor supply. Meanwhile, how do most garments get produced? It's contract work to factories that multinationals can switch between countries like this. Super elastic labor demand curve. So get an inelastic labor supply and elastic labor demand, who's gonna bear most of the burden of any imposition of a minimum wage?  And I go through some examples of illustrating some of this. And also, by the way, thinking about, since it was philosophers, I had to play the game. If worker welfare is our metric, we're explicitly not counting the utility of some people. First world consumers, first world capitalists. Why are we not doing that? Well, presumably it's because of some sort of Rawlsian care about the poor in this case. Well, once we're not counting everybody equally and we're counting the more poor, well, then if some of them lose their jobs and some keep their jobs, wouldn't we count the welfare of the ones who lose their jobs more than the ones who keep their jobs by the same logic? What is it that makes it zero one? Isn't there a continuum? Didn't really work. It's in the Journal of Business Ethics. And you don't have to pay for that like you do in the bookstore for the book. That was a bad Tom Woods. He wouldn't do that. All right, so some people will respond to this book. If we raise the price, you know, labor is such a small amount of the price of shoes. Can't it just come out of the employer's profits? Nike's not gonna just stop making shoes. Of course Nike's not gonna just stop making shoes, but they don't confront the choice of make shoes or not make shoes. They confront the choice of how do I make shoes? Increase the price of one of the inputs, third world labor. They are gonna use substitutes for it to now still maximize profits. They are still greedy profit maximizers. Most of my critics would agree with that. So what are the substitutes for it? Less third world labor, more first world labor, more expensive, but more productive, or fewer workers, more capital. It's still gonna substitute away and get this unemployment effect. Just identifying a pool of profits doesn't change that. So we've talked about minimum wages a little bit. I'll get to labor standards in a minute. I will say to their credit, increasingly they haven't advocated boycotts as much as they used to. If you wanna think about upper and lower bounds, right? The second that you start doing boycotts of products, those products become less valuable. If the product becomes less valuable, what happened to the worker's productivity? Just went down, right? They still stitch the same number of shoes, but those shoes are less valuable, which means the revenue they create for the firm is smaller. Their productivity just went down through no fault of their own. And a very effective boycott, of course, totally drives up demand for the product and firms just close up and throw them into worse alternatives. Activists have been kinda moving away from this. What got me into this research-wise was an empirical question about what are these worse alternatives? How do sweatshops stack up against it? There was a group of scholars who circulated a letter in the early 2000s to university presidents saying, don't ban sweatshop products from your bookstores. It's better than the alternatives. And what they specifically pointed out was multi-nationals in third world countries tend to pay more than domestic firms. And a group, out of, of course, UMass Amherst started a petition of scholars against sweatshop labor. And what they said is they said, it might be true that multi-nationals pay more than domestic firms in third world countries, but that doesn't speak to the situation in sweatshops because it's not Nike or Reebok that actually employ sweatshop workers. It's domestic subcontractors in these countries that do and then provide to the multi-nationals. So they basically said your empirical evidence that you're citing doesn't speak to the case, which is a fair enough point, particularly good for people from UMass Amherst. So what I decided to do is I'll set out to compare sweatshops to these other alternatives then. So there's the famous case with Kathie Lee Gifford. She was employing, in her line of clothing, a Honduran girl named Wendy Diaz in her sweatshop, and she was confronted by Charlie Kearnegan of the National Labor Committee on Television with who brought Wendy to the country and said, you're exploiting this poor girl, you're paying her 31 cents an hour. And Kathie Lee, she burst into tears and apologized. It's, I'm gonna change my ways, but everyone was comparing the 31 cents an hour to what we could earn in the United States. But that was $967 a year, that translates into $2.75 per day. At that time in Honduras, more than 15% of the population was living on less than $1 a day. Almost a third were living on less than $2 a day. And in fact, as a 15-year-old, this girl was earning 37% above the national average. Now, could we want her to do better, of course, but we have to compare it to the realistic alternatives in that economy.  In fact, people getting her job would be a step up for most of them. Incidentally, chapter four of the book is called Don't Cry for Me, Kathie Lee, sweatshop jobs and third world alternatives or something like that. I'm getting back to my Tom Wood stick, still in the book. So what I set out to do on the first article on this was try to systematically compare these sweatshop jobs to the alternatives because economists had made one-off comparisons of scavenging in a trash dump in Vietnam or Cambodia or something compared to what the wages of a sweatshop were. I said, well, let's look at it more systematically. So what we did, the problem, of course, why nobody did this was there's no nice neat database that you can download from the World Bank or something that says, hey, sweatshop jobs doesn't exist. And in fact, I started by giving you a list of characteristics of a sweatshop. But given those characteristics, we can all nod our head but it doesn't get us very far in putting our finger on that's a sweatshop in a pejorative term. Well, that's just production in a third world country. Like, how low do wages have to be? How bad do working conditions have to be? What if working conditions are bad but wages are high? My brother's a commercial diver. He swims up sewer pipes. I would call that pretty shitty conditions but he makes good wages. So now turn this to a sweatshop. Where do you draw the line? So what we did is we said, and by we, it's David Scarbeck, he's a professor at Brown now. He's my student at the time. What we did is we said, what we're gonna do is we're gonna just let protesters tell us what sweatshops are. We'll scan US and world popular news sources and look for all instances of activists protesting sweatshops that get reported in the popular press and whatever they say, that's a sweatshop. We'll say, that's a sweatshop. And we'll document the wages that they're talking about and then we'll start trying to compare it to the alternatives. Now this does introduce a little bit of a bias into our data because often the news reporter, their source for the wages is the activists themselves. But if you're an activist protesting a sweatshop, if you were going to misrepresent things, you would misrepresent it in, this is so bad in understate wages compared to what they really are, either by using the least favorable exchange rate or if you got quoted a peace rate to how you estimate how many garments an hour they produce, something like that. But to the extent I'm trying to show these jobs are better than the alternatives, if there's a systematic bias in the data, it cuts against what I'm trying to say. So I was about to show you the wages. This was in here. This is the face of various sweatshop employers that we found. It was Walmart, of course. The Olsen twins. And I thought that was p-ditty, but then someone told me when I was given this lecture that I picked the wrong wrapper because I just Googled names. It's, who is it? 50 cents. So he's not guilty. 50 cent pays his workers more than 50 cents. And this in this room is gonna be too hard to read, but this is the table that we put together. And I should say we have to eliminate lots because the news sources, there's 15 articles for every one instance because other news sources all report the same one. So you have to sort them out so that you get the unique instances. I think it's 85 in the 1995 through 2010 range when I updated it for the book that we have. Bunch in Bangladesh, Brazil, couple in Burma.  You can't get reliable standard of living data which gives you an idea of what the sweatshops are compared to alternatives. Cambodia, tons in China throughout the period. Latin America, you got Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras. India kind of later on in the period. Bunch in Indonesia, most of them Nike, Laos. Then Mauritius which is kind of an odd one I'll come back to, Nicaragua, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam. Sometimes we have it weekly, sometimes we have it daily, sometimes we have it hourly in terms of how it was reported. Sometimes we have a multinational associated with it in the article, sometimes we don't. So first thing, take this list of countries and let's look where we can get data on extreme poverty. So percent of the population living under $1.25 or $2 per day adjusted for purchasing power differences. So adjusting by basically cost of living differences across countries. What you see is in these countries that have sweatshops, there's widespread extreme poverty. So Bangladesh, this is the one that's been in the news the most in recent years. Over this overall time period, 85% of the population on average living under $2 a day. 50% of the population under $1.25 a day. Even some of the better ones there, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, you're still dealing with 10 to 25%, one in 10, one in four people under $2 a day on average over the time period when the sweatshops are being reported. That's a lot of widespread extreme poverty. Well, let's take these numbers from this. Let's adjust them for purchasing power and let's look in these countries and see how the sweatshop jobs compare. So this is your average sweatshop job in each country, adjusting for purchasing power differences. Every single one of them, you get above the $2 a day threshold, including in Bangladesh where 85% of the population in this time period did not. Out of the 85 individual examples, I think 81 of them get you above that threshold. So this average isn't masking the outliers. Three of those outliers were Bangladesh where the extreme poverty is the worst and the other one was China in 1997 when there was literally almost a billion fewer people, billion more people in extreme poverty in China than there is today. So let's up the bar of comparison. This is doing it to extreme poverty. How about to average incomes? So for this one, we didn't have systematic data obviously from these news articles on how many hours the people worked. So we do it for 40, 50, 60 or 70 hours. Some of them, like you see Cambodia's flat across, that's because I think we had weekly data from them so doing different hourly estimates didn't change it. And for the most part, of course, one of the characteristics of a sweatshop is long working hours. 100% line going across that means they're earning as much as the average in that country, which of course when incomes are very unequal in these countries, average isn't necessarily representative of the median person in the country, but you see some of them, Cambodia, particularly Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, 150, 200, 250% of average national income. Not just doing as well on average, but way better than the average job. For a lot of them, say Bangladesh, Costa Rica, I guess Dominican Republic, El Salvador, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, they're hovering somewhere in that 80 to 110%, or 65 to 110% maybe of average income. So somewhere around normal in that country, but these, by the way, these are the ones being singled out for protests too, by the way. Somewhere around average. Now, some of them you've seen by now are way below the average. This is what the protesters would be saying, aha, see, these are really bad jobs. Now, of course, just because something's below average doesn't mean it's bad for that worker. Almost by definition, half of your jobs are gonna be below average. The key is that it's better than their next best alternative. However, you do see some, the point of the exercise is to look and say, how does it compare just to every other opportunity in the economy? Some of them Brazil, China to some extent, Mauritius definitely, South Africa, Thailand, these are way below average. What's going on in these ones? Well, Brazil, turns out when you look at the actual case, it's not Brazilians working in the sweatshop. It's illegal immigrants from Bolivia working in a Brazilian sweatshop. If you compare the income they're making in the Brazilian sweatshop to Bolivian average income, they're well over 100%. Brazil itself is a relatively wealthy country as this group goes. So average in Brazil happens to be relatively high. Mauritius, same game. Their average income is something like $12,000, $13,000 over this time period. It's immigrants from India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Again, home country income, well over 100%. That's why they're moving there to take the jobs. Each one of these had an immigration story. China's is a little bit unique. It's not international migration. It's vast inequalities between enterprise zones and cities and rural China. And it's migration from rural, poor areas of China to city areas that have higher income that's doing it. So it's not international migration, but the dynamics the same. South Africa was the lone exception. And there it was a single instance of a rural factory having an urban minimum wage applied to it. But the interesting thing about the news story is when the officials showed up to try to enforce it, the workers themselves rioted and threw the officials out. Apparently, they understood their jobs were at jeopardy. All right, so that's what got me into this. I've done a lot of debates on college. Actually, I love debates. They're more fun than giving the lecture because it's like academics is kind of boring. Like you work on your work, and by the time it gets published, you're like just so done with it. Like debates is as close as we get to like sports.  There's four seconds to go. I might win. The TV is kind of like that too. The judge has more fun than us academics on that. But I was giving, I was doing a debate. I think it was in Michigan, a labor rights activist. And the anti-switch shop group had picked her and the econ club had picked me. And she started the debate by saying, I'm not gonna dispute that wages aren't better in sweatshops than the alternative. And you should have seen all the unshowered people in the crowd kind of go like, oh, really? Like we invited her? Apparently she had seen some of my stuff and she didn't want to argue that. And what she said is it's the working conditions. The working conditions are the problem. And we have to mandate better working conditions. I said, well, it's kind of a problem with that because wages and working conditions are like intimately linked. They're all part of total compensation. I started to explain. And you guys, everybody knows this, by the way, right? So when you go out to a bar in Auburn, do you think the musicians paid very much? No, why? It's a kind of fun job, right? You don't have to pay them very much. You kind of like singing anyway. And in fact, total compensation. If they want to hook up with somebody from the opposite sex is a pretty good chance. They get to do it at the end of the show. So as a result, you don't have to pay them very much to get them to entertain, right? I think that's why Bob Murphy sings karaoke. Uh... Uh... Meanwhile, if you're a garbage man, it's an unpleasant job, it doesn't take very much skills, but its pay relative to the skill set is relatively high because it's an unpleasant job. So wages and working conditions are tied together. And I explained this during the debate, and she said, well, that's just economic theory. And I was like, yeah, but it's core micro. It's not macro. This is the nonfiction part of the discipline. But... But she inspired me then, she wanted evidence for it. So I said, okay, I'll do a study, not to her, but afterwards. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do a study on this, because this is easy enough to do, and I can kind of have fun. I'm gonna go explore the trade-off in workers' minds between wages and working conditions in sweatshops. So I chose Guatemala. Do I have any UFM students in the crowd? No University of Francisco Marrakeen students? I thought there was always one at Mises U. You guys missed out this year. UFM's an inspiring place in Guatemala. A university where every student, regardless of major, takes a course in the thought of Mises and the course in the thought of Hayek. It's a phenomenal place. I've been down there many times. And the National Labor Committee had done an expose on four different Guatemalan firms that they were protesting as sweatshops. One of them had since gone out of business. One was like an ag processing plant, so it doesn't fit the typical apparel sweatshop. The other two, Sandbridge and Nicotex, did. So I went down there, went to survey the workers and asked them, the National Labor Committee had a long list of things that they complained about. Inadequate pay, long hours, poor working conditions, Guatemalan law mandates that all of the workers had to be enrolled in the state health insurance. They were only enrolling like 20, 25% of the workers at any one time and changing who was enrolled. So like you could go for your annual checkup, but if you had an emergency at a non-other part of the time of the year, it didn't work out so well. Not giving them the mandated legal vacation time, being verbally abusive to the employees. So we took this list and we created a survey to ask the workers. Now there's a problem if you go to survey the workers. If you ask the company's permission and go in and do it on company property, you have to be worried that they're going to taint your sample by either intimidating the workers directly or the workers just thinking that the employer might be listening in or something or the firm choosing which sample of workers you get to choose. So we didn't want to get permission. In fact, we didn't want them to know it was doing it. So what we did is we surveyed the workers outside of the firms as they were coming or going at the beginning or end of the day from their job. And by we, I mean, I paid a Guatemalan survey firm to do this because I kind of stand out in Guatemala. So I had a survey firm who did this and we tried to get, it's not a statistically random sample, we tried to get a random sampling of workers as their representative sample of workers as they were coming in and out. And we collected demographic data on them and it looks like a relatively representative sample that we got. So we asked them a whole bunch of things actually, but for purposes of this talk, I wanted to do the working conditions part. We asked them about this trade-off between wages and working conditions. Are you willing to work for lower pay if you're employer? And then we went down a list of things that the National Labor Committee talked about. Reduce the number of hours you had to work.  Major working conditions more pleasant, made them safer, provided health insurance, gave you paid vacation, treated you more fairly. Reduced the risk of sexual harassment. The last one wasn't in the NLC's complaints, we just put it in there since we were asking anyway. There was a second follow-up question. If so, K. Mucho-Catzates turns out that the follow-up question was irrelevant because they weren't willing to trade off any pay for these things. If we go to the total column on the right that puts the two firms together. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not willing to trade off any pay to improve them. I'm gonna assume the 100% on the risk of sexual harassment is because there wasn't sexual harassment going on there. Otherwise, probably there would have been some answers for that. The one that gets the most agreement out of this is paid vacation, but still fully 81% say, no, I wouldn't trade any pay in order to be able to have paid time off. This tells me that, by and large, in terms of mix of compensation, the employers are largely hitting the mix, constrained by what total upper bound is gonna be, how it's divided, they're doing it, on average, to the preferences of their workers, which, guess what, for profit maximizers makes sense. If you're not giving the mix between wages and other working conditions that your employees prefer, you're giving a package of compensation that costs you more to give than the employee values. That means if you can remix it and give them more of the part that they value, you can save yourself money and be more profitable. So employers everywhere, whether in a sweatshop or in the Ludwig von Mises Institute, have an incentive to tailor the total compensation, the benefits and the wages in a way that the workers most prefer. And guess what, back to core micro theory, this is exactly what would predict. So it wasn't like a, wow, I can't believe I got this answer when I did the survey, but it was useful for the next time I have a debate with one of these people. All right, so we got this far. And if I was with a normal crowd and not you guys, maybe I've pulled them along a little bit and they understand that you can't just legislate higher wages, that it's better compared to the alternatives and that working conditions and wages are tied, but they got this residual and I'm, dude, save the children. You can't be for child labor, right? Wrong. And I guess, I mean, I'm against child labor in the aspirational sense. We'd like everybody to escape poverty and children to have a good life growing up, but that doesn't mean I'd pass a law against children working. So we have to be really clear about why children work. Because their families are desperately poor and need the meager income that the children provide. Otherwise, they would not have them work.  And when we outlaw it, you get bad consequences. So in the early 1990s, a Congressman Tom Harkin proposed banning imports from Bangladesh because they were being made with child labor. The bill never became law, but in response to it, firms fired thousands of child employees. Oxfam reported on it and said many of them became child prostitutes or starved. Clearly worse alternatives than working in a factory. In fact, that arch neoliberal economist, Paul Krugman, wrote an article at the time, I know Tom loves him, wrote an article at the time called Bad Jobs at Bad Wages Are Better Than No Jobs At All. I favorably quote Krugman in the introduction to this book. It was painful, but I did it. I don't know if that deters you from buying it or not. But he made the point of them going into child prostitution or starving is clearly worse than the alternatives. So we shouldn't outlaw child labor. Of course, where most children work are not factories, but in agriculture, this is a picture coming off actually a Katanango and Fuego. Fuego's the volcano that just had a major eruption in Guatemala. I was hiking there and coming down. These were children working on the fields in the lower part of the volcano. It's hard to kind of tell by this, but probably nine years old, 10 years old or so. This wasn't the weekend in the family farm. This was their job. They were working there. And this is typical of most child labor. So when we look at that list of sweatshop countries that I can get child labor data out of, which sectors do the children work in? The blue is agriculture. By far the most, where they work in these countries is in agriculture. Second most is services. That's the red lines. And by services, this doesn't mean like McDonald's. This typically means like households, nannying, gardening, cleaning, stuff around a house. The green line is manufacturing, the smallest in all of these countries. But how do we interact with child labor? For the most part, we don't consume the services unless you live in the country. The agriculture, a lot of it's subsistence agriculture and very little of it's exported to the first world anyway because of the awful agricultural barriers that we have on trade here in the United States and Europe. If we're gonna interact with the child labor, it's through the manufacturer of exported goods. So when we say child labor is icky, I don't wanna buy its products, we decrease the demand for children in manufacturing, but that means more of them go to ag and services. Which of these three do you think is the most renumerative manufacturing? Which one is the most human capital being built for upside future earnings? Manufacturing, and in fact, when it comes to danger for children, child injury rates in agriculture in the third world are higher than they are in manufacturing. Banning child labor or abstaining from buying products from child labor pushes children usually not into the dire prostitution or starvation of that Oxfam report, but into less renumerative and more dangerous working conditions. The argument that I've made for adults applies equally to children. Now the real cure for child labor is the process of economic development. So this is breaking down countries by income quintile and you see it, it's the poorest fifth of countries, a third of children work. As soon as you get out of that, child labor rates plummet. By the time you're up to the top 40%, there's basically no child labor. And that corresponds to an income of about 11,000 dollars or so per capita over this time period that I'm looking at. And really it's here, it's this under ballpark, $3,000 per capita. We see a significant chunk of child labor. And even this understates that the best study I've seen on this was a husband-wife team out of Dartmouth. And what they did is they tracked individual families in Vietnam throughout the 1990s. And the 1990s were a decade of tremendous growth in Vietnam. And there's not like a linear relationship as income goes up, how child labor goes down. The actions very segmented all around poverty lines. So what they found is families, I think it was 1800 or 2000 calories per day. As soon as they could afford that many calories per day for each family member, boom, big drop in children leaving the labor force. Next one was around Vietnam's poverty line. Boom, another big drop. Families who stayed below those thresholds, children kept working even as incomes went up. Families who were above those thresholds never had the children in the workplace to start with. So it was basically, can I feed my family? Children leave labor force. Can I feed and shelter my family? Rest of children leave labor force. That's where all of the action was. So some people will say that, when you look at this, yeah, but those richer countries, we all have laws against child labor. And it's the child labor laws why we don't have child labor. Well, no, most of the poor countries have laws against it too. They're just not enforced. But it's also the case that we didn't have anti-child labor laws the same way when we were as poor as they were. So the United States, this is various labor laws that came in. Child labor one for right now, 1938. Updated to $2,010. That's $10,000 per capita. That's when we put our first national anti-child labor law in place. Guess what? That corresponds just about to when we were here. We codified it after the child labor was already disappearing from the workplace. And we did have individual laws in states before we had the national one. The earliest one dates to the 1840s in my home state of Massachusetts. Here's what it said. Children under 12, so 12, 13, 14, that doesn't matter. Children under 12 can't work more than 10 hours per day in a factory. So the normal 60 hour work week at that time of Monday through Saturday, 10 hour shifts for eight year olds was perfectly fine. We put that law in. Other states passed similar laws from there until we got the national one. Basically they were non-binding. You look at England, its first child labor law, France, Germany, same things. They put in laws that were largely symbolic and non-binding. What happened? The labor unions of course, they were agitating for child labor laws because they want to outlaw competition throughout much of the 19th century. They didn't get them. Why? Think about interest group politics, right? Big business would lobby back and prevent it from happening. Why did we all of a sudden get anti-child labor laws? Because big business stopped lobbying against it. Why? Because they weren't employing children.  So the political economy of it, they would allow you to codify what was the market process was already happening of getting children out of the labor force. Once it was, you know, of course, there's some industry laggards or something, but basically it codified what was already happening. The economists who have looked at progressive era labor laws and mandatory school attendance laws, what they find is once you account for economic growth, either mandatory school attendance or anti-child labor laws don't explain the reduction in child labor. It's all economic growth that's creating the action there. The laws were largely symbolic. So, not unlike child labor, the real cure for sweatshops is this process of economic development. These things are not new. My original home state is Massachusetts. I went to University of Massachusetts at Lowell. So I grew up around the factory. In fact, my hometown is Haverhill, Massachusetts. It was known as the shoe city. Lowell, of course, is the heart of the industrial revolution. What we had in those cities were sweatshops. In fact, my ancestors worked in places that today we would call sweatshops. So my great-grandmother worked in the Cardinal Shoe Factory in Lawrence, Massachusetts. But we no longer have them there. What happened? Well, as we became more productive, we accumulated the proximate causes of economic development, more physical capital, better technology, more human capital, upper bound started increasing, total compensation started increasing. We started switching what we were doing. Textiles started leaving New England. First, they came down to the South, and they left the South and started going international. We became more productive. We graduated sweatshops like the bottom rungs, one of the bottom rungs of the ladder of economic development. And sometimes people will talk about this process. Oh, it ticks so long in United States and Great Britain. Yeah, United States is probably about 100, depending what you date of start of industrial revolution to post-sweatshop, about 100 years. Britain may be 125, 130, depending precisely how you want to date this. But why did the United States go quicker than Britain? Well, where did we get our technology? Started by stealing it from Great Britain, right? Where did we get some of the physical capital? Well, investment from Great Britain. The process happened a little bit quicker. Sweatshop countries circa 1960, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea. What happens? They were pre-industrial 1950, like $300 per capita standard of living. In a generation, they shoot to first world standards of living. What happened? The world was so much wealthier. There was so much better technology capital. Once they got their institutions right, what I would call the fundamental causes of economic development, having strong property rights, a tolerable degree of the rule of law and a decent amount of economic freedom, once they get those right, those proximate causes can fly in and make the process happen so much quicker today than what it could before. Some people, when I talk about this tool, I'll say, yeah, okay, but they'll say, you know, it's a global race to the bottom. These companies keep going to poorer and poorer places. And I'm like, yeah, you know, better style, that's great. But they make it sound like, you know, Hong Kong got raped and pillaged. Like, what? No, what happened? It's circa, I don't know if you've ever seen, if we can say Milton Friedman here. If you've ever seen Milton Friedman's Free to Choose video series, the old 1978 one, he goes to like Hong Kong and shows like Manufacturing that if you see that today, he's talking about how advanced they've become. And you see it today, you're like, oh my God, they were so backwards that Hong Kong from 19th, you know, beacon of economic freedom in the world went from pre-industrial to what he thought was amazing development by 1978, 80, whenever the video was coming out. And today is launched far beyond that. It makes, you know, New York City look like, you know, child's play actually, when you look across from Kowloon to Central and see the skyline. It's actually awesome capitalist inspiring place to go up to the top of the tallest building on the mainland side and just watch the commerce and the harbor and the buildings in every direction. It's like, and think 1950, this was pre-industrial. It's a freaking rock with a deep port. We gave them a little bit, they gave themselves a little bit of economic freedom and boom, that's what she got. But what happened there, right? It was textile as workers became more productive the opportunity cost of employing them in garment manufacturing rose. The garment manufacturers couldn't bid enough to get their labor because they were being bid into more productive industries. So the garment manufacturers had to go elsewhere for their laborers. They start going somewhere. Hong Kong didn't get raped and pillaged. It graduated up and the garment manufacturers had to go somewhere. As they keep running this global race to the bottom, it's people are graduating up the level of development and doing better and they're resorting to going, finding other people who are even poorer and helping them start up the ladder. This is great, but it doesn't imply that there's like some last place in, you know, central sub-Saharan Africa that gets sweatshops and is like permanently at the sweatshop stage. At that point, there's no poorer country to go. Well, as the workers become more productive, they're gonna have to start getting better wages and working conditions just like everywhere else. But now there's nowhere for the employers to go. So garment manufacturing starts looking more like it does in say North Carolina today than what it does in Bangladesh today. And the relative price of clothes compared to other goods starts going up, but we're in a much wealthier world and everybody is better off. This is a wonderful process. So when they say it's a global race to the bottom, just remember it's great. It's a top mention that I've got protests on campuses and stuff when I've been there. This was from Florida State. They have a particular commie group there and they started a Facebook thing and they took this picture off my Facebook and put this meme on it, benefits from white privilege and doesn't advocate sweatshops and third world growth and the New England Patriots. The second part's right, but it's worth just mentioning the first part. Now I'm not gonna dispute about white privilege in the United States via each other here in the United States, but in a global context, in the context of sweatshops and development, it's not white privilege. It's the privilege of living in a place like the United States of Europe that has a tolerable degree of, semi tolerable degree of economic freedom and rule of law and has had it for a long time in whose ancestors accumulated physical capital, technology and made us a wealthier place. It ain't about your skin color. Take a Haitian out of Haiti, let them move to the United States today. On average, their income goes up 1000%. It ain't about black or white, 1000% Haiti moves. It's about the same for a Nigerian, about 150% for a Mexican. So it's the privilege of the institutions that better allow us to use our human capital. So when I talk about upper bound being limited in these countries, it's often through no fault of the worker themselves and their capital. It's the crappy environment that they operate in with their bad government that doesn't respect the rule and give them very much economic freedom. So when a firm goes in to employ them, they have to worry if their profits are gonna be inflated away, if their business is gonna be nationalized. And then all of this goes into estimating how much can I pay a worker? Take that same worker, let them match with other physical capital, other human capital in a better environment. They become much more productive. So it's not about skin color. This sweatshops have helped white people escape poverty. They've helped yellow people escape poverty. They've helped brown people escape poverty. They've helped black people escape poverty. It's not about skin color. All right, so as I wrap up here, what good connectivists do, this is air sweatshops. Someone had this stitched into a shoe. I swear it wasn't me. I can only assume that they were limited in the number of letters that they could use. There's nothing anti-market about some of these ethical branding campaigns necessarily. If, so why does Nike pay Michael Jordan so much? Because everyone wants to be like Mike, right? It creates extra subjective value in your brain so you're willing to pay more for the product. To the extent that people value products because they were air sweatshops and would be willing to pay a worker more because of it. Great, their upper bound just went up. You can market it that way. Except there's a whole lot of fraud in this. So just like the fair trade coffee stuff, often it's not making the workers better off. So there's a group called Shop with the Conscience Consumer Guide. They guarantee all products on their website are sourced from sweat-free facilities where the workers have a living wage, the right to unionize, and good working conditions. Rennie, here's their source factories. Feel like you're helping third world workers. It's a made in the USA campaign in disguise.  So there's a, when sweatshop activists ask me like, what can I do? I'd be like, create a non-profit that exposes the frauds that are this stuff if you really want to try to help workers. I did admit one factory. There was one in Asia, but it made the map smaller. All right, so what good they can they do? I'd be careful about this branding stuff. Say buy the products, but advocate for different things. Free trade. To the extent that goods can come into our markets without tariffs, that raises the upper bounds of the workers by increasing their marginal revenue products. In fact, for substitute goods like agriculture, let that come into the United States duty-free, and that gives them better alternatives than just working in the factory as well. It raises the upper bound in other industries. If you're really concerned about their next best alternative, instead of leaving them trapped in the impoverished country, give more of them visas to move to the United States, then their next best alternative isn't working in subsistence agriculture. It's moving to the United States and working in agriculture or something else here. What they really need, of course, is institutional reform. They need more economic freedom, better property rights. I'm very pessimistic about us in the West or outside activists to be able to do that in any third world country. I mean, I think the exchange of ideas is hugely important to the extent we have international students coming to places like Mises University and bringing books back and talking to people in their country. This is all crucial. This is why I love what University of Francisco Marrakeen does so much. But it's not something I think that can be done from the outside. It's a spontaneous bottom-up process that has to be the hearts and minds of citizens in these countries that enforce it on their bad governments. But until then, rule number one for all of us in the first world should be do no harm. And that means engage in commerce and trade with these people because it makes not just us better off, but them better off too. Thank you very much. Thank you.