In this episode of Trigonometry: Nice to be here, we're joined by Twitch streamer and YouTuber Pippa Paik. We talk about how she got her start in the gaming industry, how she became a streamer, and what it's like to work for a big company like Twitch.
00:06:17.000I wanted something that I could call my own.
00:06:20.000I wanted a sense of community for myself.
00:06:23.000Uh, I didn't want to be under the umbrella of the young Turks as much as I was.
00:06:27.000So, uh, I thought to myself, I play video games already when I'm not working.
00:06:33.000Might as well go to this platform called Twitch.
00:06:36.000Uh, it was a video gaming platform at the time, even though there was some commentary happening there as well.
00:06:42.000And I decided I'm just going to strap on a PlayStation camera onto my PlayStation 4 at the time and start live broadcasting.
00:06:50.000And, uh, while I play Fortnite and I have a bunch of other friends who are journalists, activists, organizers, and whatnot that I play Fortnite with anyway.
00:06:58.000So we'll just talk about political issues while I do this.
00:07:01.000Now there's a couple of different reasons why I did that.
00:07:03.000Like I said, one, because I wanted to have something of my own, a media property of my own.
00:07:08.000Uh, the other reason was because I recognized that the gaming side of things like the gaming culture side of that space was heavily dominated by right-wing commentary.
00:07:22.000Whereas gamers were much more diverse in their opinion, myself included.
00:07:28.000And I wanted to, to, to present an alternative.
00:07:32.000I also wanted to go against the grain because at the time, this is, we're talking like 2016, 2017 at the peak of like woke SJW cartoonish depictions of what the left represented.
00:07:45.000Uh, and there was some validity to the, uh, arguments that were being presented.
00:07:49.000Obviously it was like the most maximalist, most ridiculous, uh, depiction of the left.
00:07:54.000But, uh, some people would lean into that a little bit where they were like, no, we are like this.
00:08:37.000And then I would actually, uh, take the writing on my videos and turn it into, uh, a Huffington Post article.
00:08:44.000So I would just like reformat my, my scripts into an actual article.
00:08:48.000And that was fine, but I wasn't very good off the cuff.
00:08:52.000So I thought to myself, if I can play a video game and talk about politics at the same time and be able to entertain people, maybe 30 at a time, maybe 300 at a time, if I'm lucky.
00:09:00.000Then I can get a lot better, uh, at, at public speaking and speaking off the cuff.
00:09:06.000And as you guys might've figured out by now, I never shut the fuck up.
00:09:18.000I think progressive values for me, at least, uh, are, are, uh, founded around empathy first and foremost to try and uplift everyone's material conditions to the best of our ability.
00:09:29.000Uh, and, uh, and focusing on, on protecting those who need protection and, uh, simultaneously, uh, advancing a cause of, of, uh, the way I think about it, advancing the cause of unlocking the potential of every single person, no matter where they are.
00:09:49.000Because right now there are probably billions of brilliant people that never actually get the opportunity to, to unlock their true potential because of where they're born.
00:10:02.000Like, am I born in Sudan, uh, in a village that is being overtaken by the RSF?
00:10:08.000They might be, uh, born in India to an impoverished neighborhood and are not going to have the access to, uh, education and, uh, and therefore be able to truly, uh, revolutionize whatever sector they might be interested in revolutionizing.
00:10:24.000And I, I think that's what I, uh, want to do with the world.
00:10:28.000And what, what do you think is the way to, cause I think that's probably something the left and right actually agree on in my experience, you know, the center left, the center right, the kind of moderate.
00:10:35.000But I, I suppose the disagreement probably is about what you think is the way by which that happens.
00:10:41.000So the right might say, well, the answer to that is capitalism, right?
00:10:46.000So what, how do you think, how do you think those things get those people who don't currently have opportunity, both in this country, in other Western countries, but around the world, what's the mechanism by which they get those opportunities?
00:10:58.000I think creating a robust base of support, like a, like a minimum, uh, a minimum social safety net for all is the way to do it.
00:11:10.000And, um, there are many different ways of achieving that result.
00:11:14.000I don't think capitalism has been able to do that.
00:11:17.000Uh, what I mean by that is capitalism still revolves around, uh, the, the, the inherent contradiction of, of, at, uh,
00:11:28.000at its most reductive way to put it, uh, someone's got to clean the toilet and in an effort to make sure that there is, uh, always going to be people that are wage laborers.
00:11:39.000Um, there is this, um, there is this dynamic where, uh, we can't, we can't advance, uh, humanity too much.
00:11:49.000This plays itself out in the international scale and unequal exchange, where if we were to allow a lot of the third world to develop to a certain degree, then things would be far too costly.
00:12:03.000We wouldn't get the cheap materials and the cheap, uh, natural resources that we need to extract so that we can have an iPhone for the reasonable price of $500.
00:12:11.000Or, I mean, even that's increasing now.
00:12:14.000Um, I personally think that, uh, if we were to do that, uh, if we were to do that by, by, uh, stopping our endless, uh, and, and needless and cruel militarism in the global south and, and allow these places to develop, uh, extend an open hand to them.
00:12:34.000Uh, that, uh, we would, uh, allow society to flourish in ways that we previously have not foreseen.
00:12:41.000Hmm. Uh, I guess your point about cleaning toilets is interesting because something we've addressed a lot on this trip with guests, right, left, center, et cetera, is the incredible wealth inequality and the speed at which the gap is, you know, that growing.
00:12:55.000There's a big problem. People on the right don't want to admit it. And it's true.
00:12:58.000But on the other hand, someone is always going to have to clean the toilets, right?
00:13:02.000Like we have a pretty big safety net in the UK and what that's mainly done is trapped a lot of people in a place where they don't have to work and they therefore don't.
00:13:15.000And also you talk about, you know, important people from other countries to work for less kind of the consequence of that is it suppresses wages for, for the people in the country as well.
00:13:23.000So who would clean the toilets if we...
00:13:26.000So great question. Let me address the, the wage depression aspect of this, because this is the one area where, uh, sometimes I hear Tucker Carlson talk about it and there's like some nuggets of truth in there.
00:13:38.000Because yes, um, importing labor into the country will always depress wages in the absence of good regulation and good regulation in that format would be, uh, demanding wage parity and also, uh, not creating any other external factors that actually cause you to have a, a, uh, more servile labor force.
00:14:03.000What I mean by this is I want to use the example of H-1B visas.
00:14:08.000The reason why H-1B visa system exists on paper is because there are certain, uh, highly skilled positions that, uh, as it stands, our American companies are unable to fulfill.
00:14:21.000They're not able to fill those roles with the domestic labor force, right? That's the, on paper. In practice, of course, it creates a more pliable labor force that you're bringing in, oftentimes from highly skilled countries that are still desperate, even if there is higher wages on average on the H-1B visa program.
00:14:40.000Because if you lose your job, you get deported. Nobody wants to get deported. So they will do everything in their power to stay and, and work as hard as they physically possibly can.
00:14:51.000So this creates an environment where I think our bosses, our capital owners in America are like, why would I get an American worker who is, uh, in comparison to an Indian worker that's coming into the country that is desperate to keep this job?
00:15:07.000Why would I hire the American worker? I can pay the same fee to the Indian worker or even a higher fee as a matter of fact, the Indian worker, because I know that he is going to work harder than the American labor force.
00:15:20.000So there is this, this competition. The way to solve that competition is through regulation.
00:15:26.000If the, uh, workers that were coming in from poorer countries were coming in, uh, with the knowledge that they are not going to be immediately deported, for example, and they have wage parity with the domestic labor force, this would actually make American companies think twice before hiring someone just as a replacement for the American worker, because they wouldn't get any additional benefits as a boss.
00:15:52.700Uh, they wouldn't get the additional benefit of like, I'm going to work you to the bone. Right. Um, because I know if you, if I fire, you're, you're gone, you're gone out of the country and you want to be here. Um, so that is a, that is a regulatory mechanism that we never implement in this country because we are, our capital owners actually enjoy the two tiered labor structure that we have here.
00:16:16.200And come back to the, who cleans the toilets, even when there's a social welfare system.
00:16:20.300I think that, um, ultimately there's going to be people that fulfill these roles no matter what.
00:16:24.860And, uh, increasingly with automation and with AI, we're getting to a point where the route tasks are already being delegated to robots to begin with.
00:16:34.340Um, so the way I see it is, uh, the person, there's always going to be someone that is tasked with this, tasked with either overseeing it, if it's a robot doing it, or directly doing it.
00:16:45.300Um, but since it's an important factor in the, the, uh, commodity production, uh, because someone has to, uh, someone has to engage in sanitation.
00:16:56.640I think it's much more valuable to ensure that they have a sense of autonomy and that those positions are hired, uh, and, and have enough, uh, they have enough, uh, replacement labor force.
00:17:10.740So that they do less hours in general and still get a decent amount of pay and so that they can still feel human, uh, and, and have some sense of autonomy in the labor force where they can do that job and still make an honest living and be able to feed their family.
00:17:28.600And also have some free time on the side to do, to pursue whatever hobbies they want to pursue.
00:17:34.120So the way to achieve that would be like, what a really high minimum wage or like what, what's the, what's the way to get there?
00:17:40.280Like, cause I agree with the, with the idea that people who are working every kind of job should have free time and make a good living.
00:17:48.760Because in a market economy, what you are paid is a function of what you produce, right?
00:17:53.800Yeah. Well, I think in a market economy, what you are paid should be what you produce. Um, I don't think that that's how it works in the market economy.
00:18:02.540I think in the market economy, uh, your replaceability is what determines your wages, especially if you are replaceable by, uh, uh, a, a non-domestic labor force.
00:18:12.800For example, that depresses your wages even further on the domestic front for the, the, uh, citizen labor force.
00:18:19.720So I think you're right though. In the market economy, your output should be the determining factor.
00:18:26.460That's actually a socialist position. Ironically enough. Um, not all socialists are against the market.
00:18:33.740Uh, and, uh, I would say that, uh, the output is the most consequential factor in that regard. I agree.
00:18:40.460Uh, what that means, however, is that if the companies, uh, if the company is actually, for example, uh, increasing its output,
00:18:49.100and therefore generating more revenue overall, then everyone down to the, the, uh, down to the most replaceable aspect of labor,
00:19:00.860which would be sanitation in this regard, should still get paid a, a just wage, like fair compensation.
00:19:07.260Um, minimum wages is one way of doing as a bandaid solution. I mean, but there are Nordic countries, for example,
00:19:12.860where there is no minimum wage, because the minimum wage would ironically be a depressing factor on the overall average wages that people get.
00:19:19.780How have they achieved this though? They've achieved this through sectoral bargaining.
00:19:23.880They've achieved this through robust unions, uh, and, and, uh, labor participation in these, uh, in these wage negotiations.
00:19:30.640And that is the reason why they don't need to have a minimum wage.
00:19:34.300The minimum wage in and of itself is a big point of contention in the United States of America and a lot of other Western countries,
00:19:38.980only because our labor union participation, uh, in the United States is at, uh, less than 10% right now,
00:19:45.720which is unimaginably low. It's lower than countries that we have dominated, like Chile, uh,
00:19:52.300where we rewrote their constitution basically and wanted to, to unleash a wave of neoliberalism,
00:19:58.680um, sometimes in the hands of a dictator like Pinochet, uh, even in that country,
00:20:03.320there's still 15% labor union participation. So it's still higher than the United States of America,
00:20:07.580which is crazy to me. If you've been following the immigration debate,
00:20:11.420you'll know how different the headlines can look depending on where you get your news.
00:20:15.720We use ground news to help us step outside the echo chamber. It shows you how the same story is
00:20:22.260framed differently across the political spectrum. So you can compare headlines and decide for yourself.
00:20:27.980Take the story about a massive immigration raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, USA. Follow along at
00:20:34.920ground.news slash trigonometry. Using ground news straight away, we can quickly see that the story
00:20:42.200is being covered by outlets across the board. However, scrolling down the page, ground news allows me
00:20:48.600to easily compare the headlines. We can see CNN, which is firmly on the left, highlighted that nearly
00:20:54.880500 workers were taken, while Fox News on the right framed the raid as bold action. Ground news shows
00:21:03.020us that broadly left-leaning outlets focused on immigrants and workers, center-leaning outlets
00:21:09.340simply reported the number detained, and right-leaning outlets emphasized illegal workers.
00:21:16.100Ground news compiles these divergent perspectives into one place. Another feature we use heavily at
00:21:21.100trigonometry is their blind spot feed, which shows you where coverage is lopsided, lets you compare
00:21:26.960headlines across the political spectrum, and helps you identify what's being emphasized or ignored.
00:21:32.820If you care about getting to the truth by seeing things from all angles, ground news is essential.
00:21:37.700Go to ground.news slash trigonometry and get 40% off their unlimited vantage plan. That's the plan
00:21:45.200we use. That link again is ground.news slash trigonometry. Some say the bubbles in an arrow
00:21:51.980truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth. Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the
00:21:57.200same red light. Rich, creamy, chocolatey arrow truffle. Feel the arrow bubbles melt. It's mind bubbling.
00:22:05.360Hasan, I've got a lot of empathy for some of your positions, particularly when you talk about low-skilled
00:22:10.840labor. So for context, my mother is a Venezuelan immigrant to the UK. When she was in the UK, she was a
00:22:17.160childminder. There was no minimum wage. My mom, roughly, I remember earning £2.20 an hour. There
00:22:22.000were no pension rights. So thankfully, I helped my parents out. My dad helps my mom out, so she's not
00:22:28.640destitute. But that's what my mom's position would be if she didn't have me or my father.
00:22:33.460As somebody who is from Venezuela, I worry when people mention socialism because I've seen what's
00:22:39.960happened to my country. How would you assuage the fears of people like me or people who come from a
00:22:45.660Cuban background who've seen the socialist dream, as it were, descend into authoritarianism?
00:22:52.420Well, first and foremost, I would say that all countries, to varying degrees, engage in
00:22:58.720authoritarianism in general. It's just something that it's a function of the government. It obviously
00:23:06.060has the capacity to get out of hand due to external factors in many instances, like combating
00:23:12.740much more powerful forces that want to cause instability in your country. It's not a justification
00:23:19.900for it, but it is analysis in terms of like why these guys engage in the actions that they do in
00:23:26.280terms of suppression of all dissent or even censorship and sometimes even jail time. And the example I
00:23:34.820always uses is the United States of America, not only in the Cold War, but even preceding the Cold
00:23:41.100War during World War I and World War II, actually had a practice of jailing all conscientious objectors,
00:23:47.480for example, who said, I don't want to fight in this war. They were like, all right, well, this is a
00:23:50.600world war. Sucks to suck. You're going to jail. One of the famous examples is Eugene Debs,
00:23:54.720a socialist who actually ran from prison and I think achieved like 1.3 million votes at the time,
00:24:01.620which was probably the most electoral success socialists had ever achieved. He was a conscientious
00:24:06.780objector of World War I, which was the international Marxist position at the time. There was some
00:24:11.500deviation there. So I see it in a similar vein when these countries also engage in authoritarian actions,
00:24:19.800suppressing dissent, censorship, or trying to manage this dynamic of trying to continue doing
00:24:26.980governance while at the same time they have to make sure that they're avoiding American intervention
00:24:32.540or Western intervention in general. As far as the fears that people have, assuaging the fears that
00:24:39.640people have in terms of what they've seen in their countries, whether it be Venezuela or Cuba,
00:24:44.040I think each country is different. Each successful and unsuccessful revolution is different. And I think
00:24:51.880it's important to understand the lessons and the failures as well as some of the areas of success
00:24:58.360that these countries have been able to implement. Avoid the failures and try to focus on the successes
00:25:05.760and hopefully you'll be able to have a long-standing and relatively happy form of governance.
00:25:14.000I mean, I take your point as to the conscientious objective, but you look at Venezuela, for example,
00:25:19.760and the reason I'm using it is because that's the example I know best. You've got rigged elections,
00:25:24.700you've got politicians who go up against Maduro, they're either thrown in jail, as in the case of
00:25:31.200Leopoldo Lopez, solitary confinement for two years, or you have, I think it's Corina Machado,
00:25:36.240who got nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, but she is currently in hiding in her own country because
00:25:41.880she knows the moment that her whereabouts are known, she's going to get thrown into jail,
00:25:45.920may not be seen again. Yeah. I'm not going to defend Maduro, but I would say that the logical
00:25:55.020through line, and it's important to understand the opposition's logical through line in this instance,
00:26:01.620is that these are forces that are very directly working with the United States of America that
00:26:09.280have tried to facilitate coups, even had an unsuccessful one all the way back in 2002,
00:26:14.760with Chavez and numerous other instances, openly talked about implementing coups under the first
00:26:22.200Trump administration, and is openly now waging war, or at least threatening to wage war with Venezuela
00:26:27.240right now, encircling the entire coastline of Venezuela with some of the most sophisticated
00:26:34.040weaponry known to man. In that regard, I think they see it as treason. I would go so far as say
00:26:42.980in a similar scenario in the United States of America, I think, and this is not even a one-to-one
00:26:48.040dynamic because America is the most powerful nation on the planet, but China is getting up there,
00:26:52.420right? Let's see if China had, in a hypothetical, if China had encircled the United States of America,
00:26:57.940America, and let's say in this hypothetical, I'm like very clearly someone who is going to China
00:27:05.240and talking to the CPC and saying like, we want Chinese intervention in this country because I
00:27:13.600hate Donald Trump, please. I think in that regard, America would probably treat me in the exact same
00:27:19.900way, if not in a worse way, ironically enough. But would they throw you in jail for trying to run
00:27:25.500democratically? I don't think personally that they would. Oh, they absolutely would, I think.
00:27:30.480You think the American government would not throw me in jail if I was in a comparable scenario where
00:27:36.160China had encircled the United States of America and I was saying, I want to run democratically,
00:27:41.520I want to be, and I'm demanding that China intervene, I think they would do the same,
00:27:46.980if not worse, for sure. Because like I said, it's all a matter of the conditions on the ground.
00:27:53.720With respect to Eugene Debs, as I was talking about before, America felt threatened even at that
00:28:01.460time. You're talking about wartime. This is not a fair comparison, in my opinion, because wartime is
00:28:07.040wartime. It's about survival. Britain suspended elections during wartime, right? America didn't
00:28:12.600actually, even during the Civil War. But Britain did. America wasn't in war in the same way that
00:28:17.500Britain was. That's why is it during the Civil War? Yeah. Well, yeah, that's fair. But again,
00:28:22.620it's different. I guess you said something interesting because, you know, I was born in
00:28:26.820the Soviet Union, so we both have direct experience of socialism in various shapes and forms. You
00:28:31.940talked about, well, there's positives and there's negatives. So is there a country that's done
00:28:37.720socialism the way that you like? I would say that I am hypercritical of all forms of governance,
00:28:46.800including the American one. I think that's not a surprise to you guys, right? And in that same
00:28:54.860vein, I think, like, there is critiques to apply to all forms of governance, even socialist ones.
00:29:00.720Yeah. And as far as, like, getting closer to what I think has been relatively successful, because if
00:29:07.440ultimately the point of government is to improve the material conditions of all people to the best of
00:29:13.760your ability, it's not always going to be perfect. But when you are getting, I don't know, the poorest
00:29:19.120people, the poorest of the dispossessed masses out of a situation where they were servile, the landed
00:29:27.620gentry, or they were peasants from an agrarian society, or they were, you know, dominated by the
00:29:34.420landlords. But then ultimately they were able to come into modernity and become like a powerhouse,
00:29:40.160an industrial powerhouse that is competitive with the largest superpower on the planet.
00:29:44.020I would say if that's the point of good governance, and I think you guys might agree with me on that,
00:29:49.140I would say China is probably the closest. And there are still plenty of failures within
00:29:53.580the Chinese system as well, plenty of issues within the Chinese system as well. But that's probably the
00:29:58.860closest, I would say, to an example that we should follow and lessons that we should learn from.
00:30:06.440This is something that I talk about quite a bit. Ironically enough, we only utilize some of the
00:30:11.420most repressive elements of Chinese governance here in the United States of America, especially in the
00:30:15.540second Trump administration, and none of the good stuff. We don't have any high-speed rail. We don't
00:30:20.480have any even development. There is seemingly nothing to look forward to in America in terms of economic
00:30:27.900prosperity, in terms of overall health of society, in terms of scientific achievements. And I think a lot
00:30:36.740of younger people also feel the same way, where they feel like there's nothing to look forward to
00:30:42.300here. And I'll give you guys an example from the UK. I remember seeing this TikTok of this guy that goes
00:30:48.180around and is like asking young British people, would they serve in the British military? And I am not even
00:30:56.540remotely nationalistic by any measure. I don't care about those sorts of things. But I think it's
00:31:02.740important to understand, like, it's a good way to see the temperature of society. And a lot of the
00:31:08.580British people were like, no, why would I fight for England? Why would I fight for the UK, when it seems
00:31:15.400like my government's not even fighting for me at all? And...
00:31:18.540See, the reason a lot of them will say that, though, is it's not so much about that we're not
00:31:24.580like China in terms of building high-speed rail, although that is a big issue in the UK. I agree
00:31:29.880with you. The main reason is they feel like they've been let down by mass immigration that's eroding the
00:31:35.540values of their country. And of course, you know, this is where I think people on the right are very
00:31:41.360blind to this issue that we already raised, which is wealth inequality and opportunity.
00:31:46.120I'm sure there are some people who feel that way, of course. But...
00:31:49.260Well, think about this first hand. Hold on. Let me just finish the point. Like,
00:31:52.360stereotypically speaking, is it left-of-center people or right-of-center people that are going
00:31:56.780to go and fight for their country? Typically, it's going to be right-of-center people because of the