WTF Do Think Tanks Actually Do? | How Money Works

0:00When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply. If you need a hiring hero, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling, smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Covered options are selected by the customer. The ability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Fall has never looked or tasted this good.

1:00Sweet Greens Fall Harvest Menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed brussels, and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate, and roasted bacon brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to sweet green. Featuring falls best dressed. Make your move. Order on the sweet green app. Think tanks are legitimately some of the most powerful organizations you have never heard of. They play a key role in influencing local, state, national, and even global policy by hiring the smartest people in the world and paying them huge salaries to argue their point of view into the ears of people with power. Some of the big think tanks in America have more power over legislation than our elected officials and have become so integrated into the political process that Washington would grind to a halt without them. It's easy to see why people believe that think tanks are shadowy organizations pulling the strings of power, while insiders claim that they are just a coug in the machine keeping democracy intact.

2:02But what the f**k do these organizations actually do? I think think tanks have always had a really important role in policymaking and politics. Think tanks will work hard to ensure that a member of their staff is present to put across the views of their employer. You actually have leaders in a major party that want to define the most important law enforcement operation in America. Politicians create laws in so many diverse fields that it's literally impossible for them to actually understand most of it. If you woke up one day and found yourself elected to Congress, then you are going to need to review bills that get introduced so you can make an informed decision to pass or block it. If that law proposes a parts per million limitation on nitrates in aerial dispersed fertilizers on farms receiving USDA agricultural risk coverage subsidies, then well, unless you are a farmer or a chemist, you probably have no idea what the f**k any of that actually means. Most politicians are NOT experts in the field they are legislating.

3:03In theory, a think tank is a non-profit entity that does employ experts for times just like this. An agriculture or chemical supply think tank will have highly experienced farmers and chemists on staff to advise lawmakers on matters just like this. They do this by producing lots of studies, surveys, and collecting stacks of data about everything in their field which can be an expensive process. Ask any career academic or scientist and you will learn that a lot of their time is spent writing proposals just to get the funding to conduct their real studies. Think tanks handle that for them, allowing their scientists, economists, sociologists, and sector experts to create reports without the budget constraints of normal research. They also do their job by just being a friendly service that lawmakers can call up if they need their questions answered about a certain issue or talking points for an upcoming debate. It can be a great opportunity for scientists and a great tool for a politician, but the money still has to be coming from somewhere. Nobody is spending billions of dollars every year for research just because they are interested in community-led data infrastructure or the congestion benefits of e-scooters.

4:05These anonymous donors want to see a return on their investment, and the growing amount of money going towards these institutions suggests they are getting it. According to MIT, there are over 800 think tanks operating in America today, and according to KAS, the number of think tanks operating in America has increased by 58% in just the past 25 years. Nowadays, there really is a think tank for just about anything that laws can be made for. So politicians are just a phone call away from someone who can help them understand what they are going to pass into law. If this is done properly, then think tanks can pass better laws than if elected officials were just googling or guessing the pros and cons of the bills before them. But when the men and women who decide how the country is being run rely on unelected experts getting huge salaries from somewhere, you already know that there is going to be bad outcomes, but I am here to tell you that it's even worse than you think. So it's time to learn how money works to find out what the fuck think tanks actually do. This week's lesson is sponsored by Brilliant. Brilliant stands out as an educational platform tailored for a deep understanding of learned

5:08concepts. It adopts a foundational approach, emphasizing learning from the basics upwards and engaging learners through active problem solving tasks. This method allows for immediate application of acquired knowledge, making it six times more effective than traditional video lectures. Content on Brilliant is meticulously developed by a distinguished team of comprising educators, scholars, and industry experts hailing from prestigious institutions and companies like MIT, Caltech, Duke, Microsoft, Google, and others. Offering an array of outstanding courses in data-related subjects, Brilliant covers topics such as introduction to probability, data visualization, probability prediction, and multivariable modeling. These courses provide learners of all levels with the tools to excel in data analysis, covering everything from base theorem to multilinear regression. They include practical exercises using actual data from renowned companies like Starbucks, Formerly Twitter, Spotify, and methods for analyzing and presenting large data sets. With Brilliant, you can learn from anywhere, whether on your computer, phone, or tablet. Brilliant offers the chance to gain genuine knowledge in just minutes of your day through

6:11engaging and enjoyable lessons, fitting easily into your schedule whenever you find the time. To try everything Brilliant has to offer for free for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org for slash how money works, or click on the link in the description. You'll also get 20% off an annual Premium subscription. Some think tanks operate as semi-independent government agencies, like the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, but most have nothing officially to do with the government at all. Funding for most of these think tanks comes primarily from companies in the industries they represent, but it doesn't stop there. Doonating millions of dollars to political campaigns to influence policy is arguably a bit too easy in America, but there are still rules, and major donations are still public record. Venetians to think tanks are treated no differently than donations to any other 501C nonprofit organization, like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders, which means any amount of money can be given with complete anonymity, and anybody can give money. A report by the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International

7:14Policy found that foreign governments donated at least $175 million to the top 50 Washington think tanks between 2014 and 2018. The report stress at this number was the minimum. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen, and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching, and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply. You need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home an auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state.

8:16Covered options are selected by the customer. Ability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweet Greens Fall Harvest Menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed brussels, and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate, and roasted bacon brussel side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to sweet green. Featuring falls best dressed. Make your move. Order on the sweet green app. And the real number could be as high as $500 million to just these top 50 organizations, but accessing these donation records was made intentionally difficult. Oh, and yes, in case you were wondering, the Center for International Policy is also a think tank. Now, businesses and governments are only spending this money because think tanks are shockingly effective at getting favorable loss pass for their donors.

9:16If you are a major industry leader that needs the government on your side, you will quickly find out that political lobbying has become a highly competitive game and just making big donations to election campaigns is not enough to get favorable loss pass. Unfortunately for you, voters still have some power over the government. So you need to ensure that your fundraise politicians also have the right talking points. If a think tank produces a report that won't support the political argument of a business benefactor, they are under no obligation to publish it. They can also adjust the reporting methods as much as they want until they get a result that supports their argument without the oversight of peer review. If you were a morally dubious venture capitalist with big investments in eScooter rental companies, then throwing a few hundred thousand dollars towards something like the Adam Smith Institute to produce a report on how eScooters will save lives, bus congestion, and help the environment, it will be immensely useful to you. If a city decides they want to ban your scooter company because people are sick of inexperienced riders dangerously crowding sidewalks and dumping scooters directly into local waterways,

10:17then you can use this report to push your agenda. In a political debate, your side will be able to wheel out the study as proof of all the good eScooters are doing and your politicians can attack the opposition by asking them for data and evidence that they probably won't have. You can win even the most unreasonable debates if your side is the only one that can afford to make evidence. Signing research like this is expensive, and the side with the profit motive can produce a lot more data than the side of public interest. But that problem is nothing compared to what Think Tank Research has been used to argue for. The link between smoking and cancer, sugar and obesity, CO2 and climate change, and military spending has all been subverted thanks to Think Tank Research over the decades to delay regulations coming down on harmful industries. Elite correspondents between tobacco executives and a public health Think Tank accidentally said the quiet part out loud. Out is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the minds of the general public. Bicep reporting like this is highly effective at slowing down any political change that we cut into profit.

11:18The influence that Think Tanks have is only ever really challenged when they go up against other Think Tanks. Just so this video doesn't get too depressing, I want to tell you about a funny little battle that is being had for the hearts and minds of our politicians right now. On one side are the pharmaceutical companies producing those Zempoch and its alternatives. An appetite suppressant that could be highly profitable for these companies if they are allowed to prescribe it to people to combat obesity. The public health Think Tanks on the side of Big Pharma are producing reports about the benefits of losing weight for individuals and the healthcare system itself. They have also started advocating that this medicine should be covered by insurance because it will decrease the lifetime cost of medical care. However, the fast food, soda and snack companies are looking at a Zempoch as a threat that could take away their biggest customers. Though they are getting their Think Tanks to publish just as many articles about the unknown health risks of lifelong medication. When the product is uncertainty, no claim is too wild. A 2018 report by the Journal of Public Choice found that Think Tanks with more extreme

12:18leanings on both sides of the political aisle were more likely to be cited in floor speeches in Congress. But wait, it gets worse. Benning the truth in the name of profit at the expense of public health and safety isn't even the strangest things these organizations get up to. The research and development or rant corporation is one of the largest and best funded Think Tanks in the world. According to its own data, it received nearly $360 million in 2022 from donors like the US military, the Department of Homeland Security and other governments, charities and donors. The rant corporation and its subsidiaries like the Hudson Institute produce policy advice for international affairs and it has been directly involved in things like the space race, the Vietnam War, National Healthcare and Nuclear Strategy. The Cold War was dictated by a policy known as Mutually Sure Destruction. The theory was that both sides had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other several times over so nobody would shoot first, because they would also secure their own fate when the other side returned fire. This idea was not created by the military.

13:18It was coined by a researcher at the Hudson Institute, a division of the rant corporation and they still published research on managing nuclear escalations. The idea conveniently necessitated a huge military build-up to maintain the balance of global power. The military was facing slash budgets after the end of the Second World War, but they saw an opportunity. Funding the kind of independent research done by the rant corporation that argued for a big military would let politicians justify expanding military budgets even during peacetime. Think Tanks served as a way for the government to lobby the government. The rant corporation is just one example out of many, but wait, it gets even worse. Think Tanks are technically non-profits, but that doesn't stop them from paying huge salaries to their staff. Since the role of Think Tanks is to consult on public policy, a lot of people they employ are people who have previously worked in the public sector. Think Tanks jobs are a cushy retirement plan for politicians, which is another reason why they are personally incentivized to work closely with them to make policy. But maybe the worst thing of all is simply how necessary they have made themselves.

14:21In a perfect world, politicians would just as their constituents for advice on the issues they were legislating. Instead of relying on industry-funded researchers, they could just talk to the experts themselves. The book What Should Think Tanks Do By Andrew C. Lee says that one of the key rules that modern Think Tanks do is draft legislation that politicians can try to pass into law. Most politicians don't have the time, expertise, or resources to write effective bills, so they have just started to rely on the advice of these well-funded organizations to do their homework for them. And there is one other group that relies on them, too. The media. But all Think Tanks are created equal. And the 1000 or so that have sprung up in the last 25 years have done it because big money has moved into the space. Think Tanks could do a lot of good and help our politicians make better decisions. But they have been corrupted by the money coming in from big companies because there is nobody fact-checking the fact-checkers. The media doesn't want to do this, because they rely on Think Tanks just as much as politicians. Think Tanks reports are featured heavily in the press because doing the same sort of investigations

15:21in house is impossible for most journalists these days. There is more to this story than just the internet making newspapers irrelevant. So go and watch my video over on how history works on the 2000 year decline of journalism. And if you want to get these videos a day early and read articles that will never be made into videos for YouTube, then subscribe to my totally free email newsletter compounded daily to keep on learning how money works. Apple has never looked or tasted this good. Sweet Greens Fall Harvest Menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed brussels, and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate, and roasted bacon brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to sweet green. Featuring falls best dressed. Make your move. Order on the sweet green app. Close your eyes, exhale, fill your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

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