Leadership coach Keith J. Corbin and I talk about what's missing from mainstream leadership advice — and why the inspirational messages we see on LinkedIn and in bestselling business books often obscure the structural realities of work. And that’s putting it way too nicely.

What We Discuss

The Simon Sinek problem

Keith tells the story of working for a CEO who was a devoted Simon Sinek fan — who quoted Start With Why constantly — and then did a massive layoff right before IPO. How can you believe in "taking care of your people" and then respond to investor pressure in ways that contradict that belief? The answer: leaders aren't free agents. They operate within systems that constrain their choices.

Why "Start With Why" landed when it did

The book arrived in late 2009, just as the economy was recovering from the 2008 crash and entering a long hiring boom. Caring about employees became structurally important because retention mattered. The message was real — but it was also enabled by market conditions.

Missionaries vs. mercenaries

Leaders love to say they want people who believe in the mission, not people who just want a paycheck. But we're all both. And when people over-identify with the cause, they can neglect their own material interests — which allows the system to extract more from them.

The problem with universal advice

When someone on LinkedIn says "here's how to stand out" or "here's how to push back on your boss," Keith asks: who is the particular person being turned into the universal? It's usually someone with privilege, social capital, and easy job mobility — and the advice doesn't transfer to everyone else's lived experience.

Fakey language

I remember reading Chip Conley's book Peak (I forgot the name during the conversation, but my Amazon orders list always remembers) about treating hotel customers as "guests" — and realizing that guests don't get a bill at the end. Keith shares Simon Sinek's story about a happy Four Seasons employee who also worked a second job at another hotel — and Sinek never asked why he needed two jobs.

Individualism vs. solidarity

The dominant message in coaching and career advice is about individual optimization — how you can get ahead. Keith pushes back: if you're standing out to get ahead, you're getting ahead over someone else in your same position. How do we think about showing up in solidarity with coworkers rather than competing for scarce resources?

The rise and fall of DEI

Corporate social justice movements — from BLM to Me Too to DEI — operated on the margins. DEI was often less about decreasing inequality and more about making sure inequality was evenly distributed. When it got tied to profitability ("diverse teams are more profitable"), it became easy to cut once it didn't deliver on that promise.

Freedom vs. choice, solidarity vs. individualism

Keith draws on the French Revolution's ideals — equality, liberty, fraternity — and argues that freedom has been replaced by consumer choice, solidarity by individualism, and equality by an even distribution of inequality.

Democracy in the workplace

If we believe in democracy, why don't we bring it to work? You don't choose your manager, you often don't choose what you work on, and you certainly don't vote on layoffs. Keith advocates for employee representation on boards, more democratic structures, and greater worker power — especially as AI reshapes the landscape.

AI and the future of labor

The same de-skilling forces that have shaped blue-collar work since the Industrial Revolution are now coming for white-collar knowledge workers. This could create new precarity — or new opportunities for solidarity and collective action.

The archeology of the future

Keith shares Fredric Jameson's idea that instead of forecasting from the past, we should look for "the archeology of the future" — finding undeveloped seeds in the present moment that could grow into something radically different.

Resources

Books

1. Start With Why by Simon Sinek
2. Peak by Chip Conley
3. In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters
4. The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
5. The Engineers and the Price System by Thorstein Veblen (better known for The Theory of the Leisure Class)

Other Thinkers & Authors Referenced

1. Jim Collins — Business author (referenced alongside Peters for cherry-picked research)
2. Fredric Jameson — Marxist literary critic; "easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism"; "archeology of the future"
3. Erik Olin Wright — Sociologist; conflicting class positions
4. Peter Bregman — Author and leadership coach (mutual friend of Howie and Keith)
5. Michael Moore — Filmmaker (on capitalism funding its own critique)
6. Bill Mollison — Co-founder of permaculture ("all the world's problems can be solved in a garden")
7. Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Stephen Porges — Referenced in the discussion of Polyvagal Theory and whose voices dominate the conversation

Connect with Keith

1. LinkedIn: Keith J. Corbin
2. Website: evolutioncoach.org

Sometimes it happens, but often really well run companies like Google and Meta and Microsoft end up. Doing evil.

And so I got to wondering, is there something about the advice we give and the guidance and the coaching that we provide to people that's somehow missing something important?

So to answer that question, I turn to my friend Keith J Corbin, who's also an executive coach, and we talk about the type of management advice and leadership lessons you're likely to get from people in our class of. Executive influencers and what's wrong with it and what's missing, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I do.

Without further ado.

Keith Corbin: Uh, thanks for having me, Howie. I'm really excited to be here and to get a chance to talk with you.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Likewise, likewise. Let's start by introduce yourself. Set the scene.

Keith Corbin: Sure. Um, I am a leadership coach focusing on really directors to VP and tech roles, and that's where I spent most of my career of 25 year career as an engineer, product leader and business development leader at multiple high growth startups as well as some larger public companies. And so now I'm helping leaders in those types of roles navigate the complexity and the contradictions that come along with trying to lead a team while also trying to, uh, manage your, your superiors and making it all work.

And that's kind of what I would love to, uh, to explore with you today. So first, first I kind of want to ask you like, when did you become aware that, um, the standard wisdom around leadership and inclusion and lovey wyness and, you know, so lowercase kumbaya was covering up something a little bit, uh, rotten.

Keith Corbin: Yeah. You know, I, I think I started like most people in this space and most people in leadership, and I read a lot of leadership books. It really bought into all of that, right? I, I loved the idea that, hey, I can just treat my people well and be kind, and everything will work out wonderfully. And I worked for a CEO at one point, who was a huge Simon Sinek fan.

And then at the end of the day, you are really responding to, you know, IPO pricing and other things outside of that. And that led me down a path and a journey to understanding more about complexity and more about systems and more about. Um, the structures that are at play. And, you know, I always like to go back and say, it's not that I think that CEO was a, a bad person or a hypocrite, it was more the reality of they were in a position where they had some strong beliefs about what they'd like to do, and then those ended up in conflict with external pressures that were critical for their role.

It isn't just about, um, kindness and compassion. I think those things are extremely important and they tend to miss some of the core of what's really going on and why there's those challenge. This?

And, and you know, one, one of the things I find difficult is like the baby bath water thing. Like, there's definitely huge value in what a lot of what Simon Sinek is saying. Um, and yet there it's, it's problematic. And I, and I find it, you know, I find it difficult to kind of hold the good once I discover the, you know, the, the, the underbelly.

Um, like, can maybe talk about like why, what about Simon Sinek in particular, kind of, you know, what in his message did you feel got, um, thrown under the bus during this IPO?

And so it entered at a time where caring about employees became more structurally important for organizations because hiring was harder, retention was important, and therefore this message landed. And I do think the message is valuable, I would say. What it misses is often people work for two reasons.

And so I think that meaning part is really valuable and it's important to talk about. And. Unfortunately, it's led to this kind of notion. Often, you know, leaders will say, we want missionaries and not mercenaries. This idea that they want people who are gonna be there because they believe in the cause and not because they want to get paid.

We want you to work harder, we want you to do more. And when you care about something, there ends up being this greater external, call it super egoic pressure to perform to do more because you find it meaningful and that can work against your own interests of. What do you need to do to actually make a living and make sure that you're supporting your family in those aspects? And I think this partly gets at, I, I guess maybe the one other thing I would add in there is, you know, when we go to, starts with why that book was interesting because it went from everything to Steve Jobs who, uh, notoriously was not necessarily a people first leader in a lot of the ways he treated, treated individuals, uh, to Martin Luther King.

And in that nuance is where these structural issues come up. Right? And to tie this back to the CEO. I think he, you know, he maybe did wanna see himself as that leader that people chose to follow and were there. But he had pressures from investors to make sure that how the company performed, met their expectations and they got their return on investment.

Dr Howie Jacobson: So I remember the first time I started thinking about this, um, and it wore off 'cause I, I, I, you know, drank the Kool-Aid again, but it was many, many years ago, maybe 15 or even 20. Um, I read a book by Chip Conley, who was a big guy in, in, in hospitality, in, in, uh, in hotel management. And yeah, I think the book was Peak or Peak something or other.

I'll include it in the show notes. And he talked about how the, you know, they, they would, um, in all these incredible hotels, you know, top of the line places they would. Speak of the customers as guests, and it was so important to treat them as guests. And, and, and at some point I'm reading it and going, you know, I've been a guest and no one's ever like made me pay when I'm a guest, like my friend, I, when I stay at a friend's house, like they, they're not, they don't gimme the bill at the end.

Keith Corbin: Uh, that's, it is true. And I think there's a great Simon Sinek example about hospitality. He talks about, um, I forget which book it was in, but he talks about staying at the Four Seasons and there was a concierge or someone and they were so lovely and so great to work with. And, you know, he asked them why.

And, and of course it was about the purpose that was in Bud in, in their job and how they talked about it and all of these things. And then he made a comment, I work at another hotel across town and it's totally different and I'm miserable there. And Simon Sinek points to this is why, starts with Why is so great and see how happy he is.

Same as you're seeing, it's like it's great to call them a guest, but they're paying, they're paying customers. There's, there's a, the language doesn't necessarily fix the structural reality.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Can you talk about, um, I don't have off the top of my head, you know, my favorite genre of yours is the comment on somebody else's post. Like, someone like me would make a post about, you know, let's say for employees about how to be a great employee and how to go the extra mile or for managers to, you know, this and that.

Keith Corbin: Yeah, I think one thing that often stands out is they're always speaking, and we tend to do this in coaching, right? We're speaking to an individual, they're speaking to, okay. You know, as an employee, do these things and it'll help you stand out and not necessarily questioning, okay, if you're standing out to get ahead, you're getting ahead over whom, over somebody else in your exact same position.

And this is one of the things that often happens in organizations is there is a power dynamic. Those who are in, in, uh, leadership have greater power than those who are working beneath them. And rather than people tending to fight against that power dynamic and try to achieve more that way, they end up being positioned to fight against each other for scarce resources as opposed to thinking about.

But how do we make the situation better? How do we change the context we're all operating in, in a way that supports people more?

Enough people get what they want, then you get what you want. And like at first blush, I'm like, yeah, that's how it works. And yeah, and, and it could, but you know, very often the people like, who are the richest, like, are making everybody else miserable. There's some, there's something about saying that actually what we're doing is we're playing a game of musical chairs here and we're, we're flowering it up.

It's kind of depressing.

Keith Corbin: It, it can be. And I think that's why, um, we see so many more of the messages about you can do this, you can achieve, because there's, there's a, an ideology of achievement, right? When we think about ourselves and just making ourselves whole or, or. Self-improvement. It gives us a degree of autonomy that makes us feel better to a point.

It's the recognition that if, if this is the way things are, then there is freedom within that to try something new to try and break out because it isn't as, um, you know, when, when all hope is lost, when, when, I'm trying to think of the phrase when. When hope is lost, it doesn't mean that we are, it means that we can start from there.

Because by holding onto them, we can do something about them.

You know, like I, I have a friend who, um, in Tri Trigger warning was abused terribly in his childhood in all sorts of ways, by his family, by the house of worship, by the community things. Uh, frankly, I did not entirely believe when he was telling me like, how could people be like this? And I've spoken to him recently and he is like, I'm so happy now.

Like, the people believe me, like, like my experience has been normalized and I'm thinking like, you know, we're the people we, we talk to in LinkedIn and in our sales conversations tend to be of a very high class, upper class, even within organizations. Um, and. And it's easy for us to ignore the people who have always been suffering in, in, in these structures.

Dr Howie Jacobson: I mean, that reminds me of over the last, say, five or seven years, the rise and fall of social justice movements within corporations from Black Lives Matter to me too, to DEI, like at this point in time, they've all been jettison and, you know, and the people who made their living doing them were, you know, like I, you know, they're told like, don't talk about diversity, talk about like strength together.

Like Right. We like those things for their own sake are no longer valid, which means they never were important and.

Everything would be better rather than what if everybody had a, you know, the same opportunities in a working wage and all of these benefits, which then naturally helps everyone. Um, and there's been some critiques on it of, you know, the people that are often helped by those move movements are those that are, you know, in the middle class already and it's not really evenly distributed.

And that is the end into itself. And now we can operate differently with it. And so I think I, I was very disappointed to see all of the cutbacks on DEI. I think it does create an opportunity where when we build it back, how do we build it back differently and in a way that can be even more impactful than the first go was.

Um, and I, you know, I still don't know the answer to any of those questions as to, you know, how progress really gets made.

Keith Corbin: And I think it's an important point though, right? It's the, the, um, having more women in leadership positions is supposed to be a change of that great. Like more caring, more empathy, the, the, the things that, um, traditionally women have been better at. And instead it's had women shift to try to behave the same way as, as men in those positions and didn't change some of the underlying things.

Um, because I think it is more about, you know, it's going back to the French Revolution, right? The, uh, equality, liberty and, and fraternity as sort of key fundamental beliefs. And I think over time all of those have slipped away where freedom has been exchanged for choice. Um, and solidarity has been replaced by individualism.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Yeah. Um, got any other, um, favorite sacred cows as well as this, you know, the fight over scarce resources we get, see, get a few more of these before, before we start. Um, like the upward trajectory of, of, uh, of positive opportunities.

And you know, oftentimes we don't question the context, right? What does improvement mean? organization is different. Every place in life is different. There are different way, you know, what does it mean to be the best leader? Well, that's very contextual for the role in the company and the people that you're with.

And it's like, okay, so what do you care about? And it's like, where did that caring come from? Where did that belief come from? It probably came from something somebody thought, we can't escape how we're interrelated with others. We can't escape the ways in which what we desire is influenced by the desires of others.

And so the question becomes how do we respond to it? And how do we live in relation to others rather than thinking that we're, you know, individuals optimizing ourselves. Devoid of the system. And I think that's part of what I, I try to work on with clients is thinking about themselves in connection and in relation rather than thinking of themselves as atomic individuals that are, that are just trying to, uh, you know, optimize

Keith Corbin: Yeah. I think, um, I think some of it comes when I see anything that's, that's posing itself as universal advice. Right. Um. As if there is some sort of universal answer. And I think, you know, one thing, um, one idea that, that, that really struck me when I learned it as important is the universal. This idea that, you know, all workers are all leaders should do a certain thing, is never really about something that's best for everyone.

Because it's usually representing some power structure, somebody who already has. Authority or somebody who already has, um, a privileged position that is now being put in a position to represent the whole and everybody should do what they do without recognizing that that privilege that they have is based on power structures and biases and other things that are built into the system.

And often it paints the picture of a fairly, you know, upper middle class white male who then can go and do these things without recognizing that not everybody's lived experience has been the same. And they may not be in a position where they can do the same thing in the same way and have it be received the same way as this other person.

And so that's one thing I always look for is when I see things that are universal, I try to pick out who's the particular person they're really addressing. And what is that saying about how they're seeing power in structures that are revolving around

What I finally realized, I think Peter Bregman, our mutual friend, kind of told me like, he doesn't trust business books that, that, that have research in them by and large, because it's always like, okay, let's pick these 20 companies. Like, you know, like the Tom Peters in Search of Excellence or, uh, Jim Collins.

You just pick a bunch of companies that already prove your thesis. It's like in health research, you, you know, that's called a bad study, right? You wanna do something, uh, prospective where you get like a thousand people in condition A and a thousand people in condition B, and you don't know what the outcome is going to be in advance.

Keith Corbin: Right. Yeah. You can find examples that make it work. And I think calling it research, I think is always a little bit questionable. I mean, it's, it's looking for examples that find it, but your point is, it's important, right? Scientific research usually is about coming up with a hypothesis, something you believe, and then figuring out how to disprove it. And if you can't disprove it, then you have some confidence that it might be true. oftentimes in management literature, it's the exact opposite. I've come up with a hypothesis and now I'm gonna seek out all the examples I can that prove it. And anything that doesn't will be ignored or dismissed or, or pushed to the side.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Yeah, it reminds me of my first couple of months getting my Master's of public health and you know, I went into public health because I really wanted to. Help people. And it was obvious to me what was gonna help people. And then I kept coming across these studies that, that showed that, like, dare, the Drug Education Program was leading to more people being on Dr.

More kids on drugs, scared straight, was actually backfiring. That, that, uh, people who were exposed to, scared straight, ended up going to jail at higher rates. Um, you know, the, the, that all so many of these programs, um, that people passionately believed in when someone did actually put them to the test, um, proved harmful.

Keith Corbin: I'm curious what that shifted for you. Like when you started noticing that and you saw like, okay, these studies are not showing what they think. What did that change in your approach as you were moving forward?

Dr Howie Jacobson: Um, I mean, it, it made me angry at first. Like, I didn't, I didn't wanna hear this, like, you know, like I'm just a boy whose intentions are good. Like, obviously, like I was, you know, at that point I was trying to figure out my, uh, uh, master's thesis, and I was gonna work with a summer camp for at risk inner city youth.

And I wanted to do this whole thing on AIDS education. And I was, you know, upper middle class white male coming in with all my, my attitudes and beliefs and, and you know, frankly, I was, I was insulted that people were pushing back on it. I said, don't you know how important this is? And when I started like this, this just started softening me.

And I've been seeing post, after post, after post about this, and it's almost all coming from women, coming from neurodivergent, people coming from people outside of Western cultures, uh, coming from people of color. And I'm like, huh? All the people that I have been studying and quoting have been upper middle class white men who's for whom English is their first language.

Keith Corbin: Yeah. And there it's easy to fall into that trap, right? And I think. I think it's important to recognize too, that it's not necessarily this individual failing that I, you know, that most of the voices I listened to were, were Western white men. Because when you look out, that's what's being presented to you.

That's what's most available in, you know, part of what we, this is where kind of the system's thinking comes in, right? It's making it easier to do those things. It becomes increasingly more difficult to seek out those other voices, and that systemic awareness allows you then to start recognizing that the system is making it hard.

And so it's not just about individuals being willing to make that effort, but how do we change it such that it isn't so much effort for those sources to be found? How do we shift those systems and how do we make those things more visible? And I think that's, you know, I think that's part of it. You can go out and, you know, the advantage of the internet, right?

Dr Howie Jacobson: You just made me realize that there is something so deliciously ironic about how I have been coming across them. It's because my algorithms are, which are designed to outrage and inflame me, have ironically brought me to these people. Like, you know, you spend enough time with Bessel VanDerKolk and Peter Levine and Stephen Porges, and then eventually you start getting women and queer folks and people of color just, you know, and I could feel myself getting more and more radicalized by these people because of the capitalist impulse to keep me scrolling.

'cause I, you know, I'd consumed as much Peter Levine as I could consume in one lifetime. So now they gotta gimme something else.

And, um, that's one of sort of the resiliency of, of, uh, capitalism and, and what's made it so successful and provided such growth that it's provided is, is it's found ways to, um, take the critiques of it and fold it into the system itself. Right? I mean, if you see my bookshelf behind me stacked with all of these books, it's like, I, how many of those books are about, you know, not consuming and yet there's a stack of them on, on the back shelf, right?

Twitter is never gonna say, um, that's it for today, Howie. We have no more content for you. They'll find something that's gonna keep you going. Um, and maybe there is something in that of, of the possibility that it opens.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Yeah, it reminds me of, I think Mi Michael Moore was talking about why they make, let him make, um, movies that are so antithetical to capitalism. He says, 'cause I make people money,

Keith Corbin: Yeah.

Dr Howie Jacobson: you

Keith Corbin: Right. I think that's the, the beauty perhaps, or the, the, uh, amazing thing about the system is it allows for critique to it, it just fashions it into commodities that can then be bought and sold and continue to do what it does.

Keith Corbin: Yeah. It, it, the, the system will absorb, right. I think and, uh. I think you do see that trend though too. Even, even in something like psychedelics or, or, um, where what will tend to proliferate will be less the here's how to grow mushrooms because there's not as much profit in it, as opposed to here is the carefully dosed, uh, chemically made version that is much easier to commercialize and sell and, and consume right there.

Dr Howie Jacobson: S so you, you, you work with people who are in the system and who are, you know, choosing in quotes to stay in the system. Like, you know, I have many days where I'm like, I just wanna find a plot of land and grow everything myself and like, opt out of the entire, you know, structure and just live off the land with a com, with a commune.

Keith Corbin: Yeah, I think part of how it helps is how they relate to the system. You know, I think there's. Um, I, I'll give an example. You know, recently there was someone talking about, um, you know, layoffs were coming and they were fearful, how do I get safe for layoffs? And, and there was somebody who was sharing all this great advice on the things you can do to, to make yourself more safe from layoffs.

When you can see the system and you can then make conscious choices about how you're relating to it, when you can make choices and see how the, the shoulds that show up in your day are, who are they serving? You know, when you say, I should really get this done tonight. Okay, who does that help? Does that, does that really help you or does that just make you feel better that you're moving towards something?

And it may not be what they really want. And they find meaning in what they do. The question is how to find that in a way that, uh, navigates the, the system as it exists, that they can relate to it differently, that they can be conscious of the choices that they make within it. That when they're leading a team, they can be honest about the fact that you know, what it takes to manage up and what it takes to manage your team and support them maybe directly in contradiction some of the time.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Hmm. It reminds me yesterday in my therapy, not to give too much information, I was, uh, I was talking about a position that I'm in that feels very difficult and I framed it as, uh, you know, a tension between two things and I don't know how to navigate it. And what the therapist said to me was, wow, that's a lot of responsibility you're carrying.

And I can't tell you how good that made me feel.

Keith Corbin: Yeah.

Dr Howie Jacobson: no solution. It was simply an acknowledgement. And I think that's what I'm hearing you say to some extent out.

It's not that you created the responsibility and have to deal with all of it. It's that, nope, this is the position I'm in and this is the reality of it. And it's a lot. And sometimes just knowing that helps because you can then give yourself a little grace of recognizing that, you know, there isn't a perfect way to do this.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Hmm. So in, in the minutes we have left, um, I would love to fantasize about what organizations could look like. Um, you know, like us leadership coaches, we tend not to want to be leaders. Like, it's, it seems hard and annoying and maybe we don't feel like have the skills even though we can help other people with it.

But like, if you ran a, you know, started a company or you were, you know, elected, CEO or chairman of the board of some large organization, what would you do to like fundamentally make things more, you know, equality, equally distributed inclusion, fairness, like all the good stuff.

You know, we, we talked beginning at the beginning, you don't really choose your manager. Uh, there's so much advice on, on LinkedIn, you know, pick your don't, don't pick your job, pick your manager. And that's lovely advice except, you know, I was talking to someone the other day who, uh, in two years at a company's had five managers.

They picked their first one, but from there on they were assigned to who they got. You don't really have that freedom. Um, but you could, in a more democratically run organization, you could have choices over who represents you. You could gain some of that power. Um, you know, there's been movements of MP for public companies, employee representation on boards and employees having equal representation on board.

We don't often think about there are people who are, you know, investing 50% of their waking hours in a company and shouldn't they have as much say about where it goes and what it does as somebody who invested, you know, 5% of their net worth in it. Um, so I think that to me is part of the opportunity of bringing more democracy to the workplace, giving people more power over how companies function.

And even though it isn't necessarily, at least in the tech space, I'm in a command and control environment. Usually people are given some degree of freedom. It still is. It still is one where you don't really have freedom over your role in the way people think. You have freedom on the margins. You might get to pick which tools you use.

Dr Howie Jacobson: when I was a kid, my dad was a labor organizer for the United Auto Workers, and this was in the late, you know, early seventies. And he would tell me, you know, the Walter Ruther and some of the other, you know, the, the stars of the labor movement, the far left radicals were telling the big three in the late sixties.

Let's, we need to build smaller cars like. Like they, you know, the representatives of labor were seeing something. And the, the heads of gm, Ford, um, what's the other one? Uh, back then, uh,

Keith Corbin: Was that, I

So in terms, you know, like they were risking a lot more, it turns out than the people who were risking two or 5% of their net worth or had stock in, in the company.

Those jobs just don't exist. And so, um, people having those choices, I think, you know, unionization I do think is a crucial part. I think it played an important role historically. You know, we talked a little bit about DEI earlier, and I think, uh, historically the number one. Force that has led to, you know, better equality of wages between men and women and across races has actually been unions more than anything DEI achieved.

And perhaps there's some opportunity in that for, um. Uh, greater solidarity among those workers to shift how they think about things and, and in ways that could produce greater equality and serve some of the goals that, um, that we talked about earlier.

Dr Howie Jacobson: a politics class, in college, I was assigned a book by Thorston Lin, who was a socialist, who's active in the teens and twenties. I think he ran for president on the socialist ticket, and his most famous book was, uh, conspicuous Consumption. But he, this other book that I'd never heard of and almost nobody's ever heard of, it, was called The Engineers on the Price System.

And, and he was so hopeful because engineers were well educated. They were in, they had to be in touch with reality because of the nature of their jobs. And of course what happened was, and continued to happen through the, in, you know, the industrial revolution, the information revolution, it, it people, computer people wanted to be Zuckerberg and Bezos and, and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, as opposed to identifying as the labor.

And so they never, they never grab their power. And I think it might, you know, at this point it might be too late. You seem to think that, you know, AI might offer, uh, might reshuffle the deck in some way.

And especially in technology, we've seen it play out where, you know, engineers get a good amount of stock, right? And so suddenly you're, you are a little bit of a mix between, um, you're not quite on the same level as the executive team, but you're also not, you know, a worker who's just punching the clock.

You have something vested in the company's success in a different way. And so it has created this conflict and it has created, again, from, from the ideological position. Of everybody competing for themselves. Like, well, how do I get into that senior role? How do I get where I can really make a difference rather than seeing it as a, a greater worker collective?

De-skilling, which then moves some of what was the knowledge that people had into machines. Right? And it happened in, in engineering. And I think that's what we're seeing in software development now a little bit with ai, that as the machines can do more of it, the role of the individual becomes one that, um, is the tool of the machines.

And I think. does seem to be the trend we're seeing. I don't know. I think, um, AI is a little different in that it can be both used as a tool and it can use you as a tool, um, used as a tool. It can create great power and you can do a lot of things that you maybe couldn't have done otherwise, but it could also, um, de-skill a lot of jobs in the same way.

And I think those are things that we'll be kind of watching for. And depending on the direction of that, it could create opportunities for some workers to say, Hey, this might be a time where if we banded together, we could, uh, change the flow or at least. Maintain some rights in the, in the workplace that we're currently losing.

Dr Howie Jacobson: And I, you know, I think the, um, as we wrap up, the thing that gives me the most hope, and one of the reasons I keep reading your stuff, it's not because I'm just like enjoying, you know, taking down, uh, sacred cows, although I definitely do. It's like there's a lot of hope when you nail things the way you do, when you kind of call out what's actually going on, it gives us a certain type of freedom to imagine something else.

The number one is the freedom to move, to be able to leave one place and go to another and be received to, you know, to have hospitality elsewhere. The second is the freedom to, um, to disobey. To refuse certain things without, you know, terrible consequences. And the third is the freedom to imagine and create new ways of doing things.

And I think, you know, at its core, I think that's, that's kind of what you're talking about. And, um, I can't remember who first said it, but the first step in breaking out a prison is recognizing that you're in prison. And so I think a lot of what I enjoy about the way you think about things is you're pointing out that things aren't optimal they don't have to stay that way.

You can't often say to your boss, no, I don't wanna do that. Um, and, um, you have some ability to imagine other ways of doing things, but within, within constraints. And I think for me, uh, I've thought a lot about, uh, the concept of utopia and utopia, not as it's often envisioned of like, let's picture this perfect world that we can all get to and, and, you know, everything will be grand.

Um, and it's something that has been, is oftentimes limited. You know, Frederick Jameson is a great quote. It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And, and even if one is leading to the other, um, we seem content with figuring out how the end's gonna be rather than the alternatives.

And instead find the archeology of the future. Right? And this is the idea. Let's not just see where things are trending based on what's happened. Let's find the seeds that are undeveloped in this moment, and how could they be something radically different going forward? And I think that's also what I try to help people do is like, what are the seeds of something new that's yet to blossom and yet to be uncovered that we can water and see where it goes, rather than just how do we optimize based on what has been historically true?

Dr Howie Jacobson: I love that. And who, whose, whose quote is that again?

Keith Corbin: Uh, Frederick Jameson,

Dr Howie Jacobson: Okay. I'll include the

Keith Corbin: I can send you the quote for the

Dr Howie Jacobson: Excellent, I'll include it in the show notes. Um, before we head out, how can people who are fascinated, intrigued, and inspired to follow you? Get more, be in touch.

Keith Corbin: Uh, yeah. LinkedIn is probably the best place. That's where I'm most active. Um,

Dr Howie Jacobson: name so people can find it easily.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Excellent. Keith j Corbin, thank you so much for all of the insights, um, and education you have given me over the years. And thank you for taking the time today.

Keith Corbin: Thank you, Howie. I've always learned so much from you, from all of our interactions over the years, uh, and this was another wonderful conversation, so thank you for, for bringing your stories too.

Dr Howie Jacobson: Thank you for inviting them.

And we've got another tournament coming up in less than three weeks in Ali. Again, the bar, how barbaric. Tournament. Uh, so hopefully I will be in fine metal for that. I'm gonna start, uh, working on cardio. Uh, so two and a half weeks is, is enough to, to do a, uh, a fairly good showing we're gonna have a larger.

I don't know if it was also. Triggered in part by the war and energy prices and questions about self-sufficiency. But, uh, you know, all those things together as, uh, bill Mollison, one of the founders of Permaculture, used to say, all the world's problems can be solved in a garden. And there might be a little facile, but I think there's something to that, something about grounding ourselves in and of nature rather than standing above it.

That is speaking to me. So if anybody knows any, um, you know, beautiful lands ready for cultivation in, uh, in Spain, that, um, that could use a loving touch, a loving hand. And, uh, we're keeping an eye out. So that's about it for this week. Talk to you next time. As always, be well, my friends.