The Breakdown - State Power & Authoritarianism After Coronavirus featuring Peter McCormack

Episode Date: March 20, 2020

Peter McCormack is the host of What Bitcoin Did and the Defiance podcast. He recently returned from travel to a number of countries in South America including Venezuela and Colombia as well as the Turkey-Greece border.  In this off-the-cuff and wide ranging conversation, Peter and @NLW discuss Bitcoiner politics and the bitcoin community’s reaction to the potential for increased state power in the wake of Coronavirus Which types of state power growth we should be most concerned with  How to push governments to retract power growth on the other side of crisis  How travel around the world has informed Peter’s perspective on bitcoin and politics Why nuance is both disincentivized and sorely needed in times of crisis

Welcome back to The Breakdown, an everyday analysis breaking down the most important stories in Bitcoin, crypto, and beyond, with your host, NLW. The breakdown is distributed by CoinDesk. All right, so I am here with the infamous Peter McCormick. How are you doing, man? I'm doing very well. How are you, Nathaniel? Very strange times right now. It is strange times. Like, man, I feel like our younger selves talked about strange times. last year probably and you know whatever like it's it's it's officially crazy times and it seems like it's been especially crazy for you lately well yeah but well I think it's strange for everyone now and I think the situation that we all feared I don't know

actually I kind of get the feeling some people I'm gonna I'm gonna try and pick my words carefully but some people are watching this situation and seeing things they expected to play out in terms of governments and the centralised control play out exactly as they've always said it would and I'm very fearful right now of getting into the whole extended reach of the state that this is going to be used by the government to exert bigger control over us they're going to put the army on the streets and reduce our civil liberties reduce our civil liberties and take control of our money blah blah blah all those things that people in our field have been talking about for quite a long time that's been happening anyway that seems to be accelerating right now.

My view is that I understand why some of this is accelerating now in terms of the armies on the streets. And I'd like to unwrap that with you actually and go into that. And I think it's a natural reaction by the government. And I just think we need to be very careful to hold them to an account that when we come out at the end of this, this doesn't change the way we are treated as humans. And it doesn't change our relationship between us and the government. Yeah, I mean, this is, you and I were starting to chat about this the other day, but this is, uh, it is not good for Twitter engagement, but this is a time that really, really calls for nuance in the way that we, because there's so many things that are not mutually exclusive. You can believe that it is a time for extraordinary measures, while also wanting very ardently to ensure that the, those extraordinary measures in those extraordinary times aren't just kind of casually, uh, filtered to normal. right? And the problem is that a lot of the dialogue around those things is going to be totally binary. Either a fear, panic-based reaction of, you know, we'll give away all our liberty for

the sake of security, or on the other hand, a dismissive almost, you know, like the government shouldn't be helping at all because it's going to just lead to this. It's also the slippery slope, right? The slippery slope argument. And there is a big, big middle space that is about specifics. And I think that's what I keep coming back to. It's like, let's not, for me, what I'm watching personally is specific instances of, you know, even to the granularity of like what is the nature of the conversation that the U.S. government is having right now with Facebook, Google. What's the type of data? What are they looking in aggregate data? Is their person? Like, you know, these things, these nuances are important. Even if you're coming from a position of

a very strong kind of personal privacy and personal liberty. And unfortunately, I think that it's hard to have nuanced calm discussions in a time where honestly, the volume is, you know, this time goes to 11, but it's actually like 13, you know, or 14 right now. I think nuance is important here, like you said. I saw something on Twitter the other day where somebody, or even today, somebody said, and I think it might have been in San Francisco, certainly California. that somebody was fined $400 for walking their dog or being with a friend or something.

And again, I don't know if that's true. It sounds believable. And if it hasn't happened, sounds like the type of thing that is going to happen. But I think it's a bit unnecessary. I think it's one of those situations where the person, the police officers, could have said, look, we need people off the streets and this is why. But where I get really stuck at the moment is I've been led down the road, a new road in my life with libertarians and anarcho-capitalists who talk about personal freedom

and nobody should tell anyone what to do, etc, etc. And I fully understand that. And there's a lot I agree with. I talked to Jack and Mozuka about this other day. I agree with a lot of it. But also at the same time, we don't have anywhere in anarcho-capitalist society. We don't have anywhere have a libertarian government. So we are in a world where we have the state and the state is going to respond to a

situation like this. And watching the footage in Italy, which is quite frankly terrifying, I've watched the footage in the hospital today. We've also just had a news announcement from in London where, listen to this. This is a critical incident at London Hospital after surge in coronavirus cases. Basically, they've hit capacity. Their ICU has hit capacity. So if the ICU is at capacity, they're going to have to be at that point where they choose who's to treat. If you don't have enough ventilators, you're going to have to give somebody another option, perhaps that's some kind of hand ventilator, or perhaps you don't have a machine, or perhaps you have to turn around to a 92-year-old and give their machine to a 46-year-old because they've got more chance

of survival, and that's the decisions they're going to have to be making. And I've got a friend who works at an ICU in Australia, and he said, we're very early now, but we are preparing for wartime triage, where we are going to have to be choosing about who to give machines to and who we help survive and who we may have to let go. And he says he's terrified. So we are at this situation where we've seen something expand rapidly, globally, and the space of a few months has gone from patient zero in China to thousands of people dying, like over a thousand people dying now per 24 hours. I think we've hit that point. Infection rates are obscene. So if the government is going to respond, whilst we don't want infringements on our civil liberties

and we want everyone to have personal freedom, personal choice, I can still understand why the government is thinking, well, we perhaps need to put the army on the streets and say to people stay home. And this is why, because you're going to get sick and you might make other people sick. And I guess a tough nuance in that is, well, somebody who's a libertarian might say,

well, I observe the non-aggression principle. I'm not going to go near anybody else and I'm not going to spread this, because I don't want to make anyone sick. and I'm just going to keep myself to myself. But what happens if they get on a bus or go somewhere and they leave, you know, they are infected and they're infected and they leave, you know, the virus on the surface for three days and infect somebody else? So I'm very much want to support civil liberties and freedom and not have an extension of the state. But right now, I really understand why some of the governments are doing what they're doing.

Does that make sense? Listen, absolutely. I think, too, again, since I've already screwed myself, by saying that the theme of the conversation is going to be nuanced. Let's keep going with this theme, right? Like there is, there's a very strong argument if you are kind of a small government oriented person that one of the functions of the state should be to, to be able to exert power in this sort of situation, right? To be able to have effective state power deployed. In fact, Tyler Cowen, who is one of probably the most widely read, you know, popular libertarians, right,

General Revolution. He's not on the fringes of intellectual society. He's right in the mainstream, right? He's interviewed everyone. He wrote about this. He has a term for it that I'll pull up at some point when you're talking because it's worth looking. But this is part of his argument is that it's not a, it's not mutually exclusive to be a small L. Libertarian, but also think that this sort of, the state being able to deploy the right type of power in these situations is correct. Now, the interesting thing is what does it look like to be correct one thing that's been really fascinating for me to watch uh over the last week so i'm in new york right i'm in uh in the hudson valley so i'm outside of new york city there's been a huge kind of disagreement between quomo and de blasio de blasio keeps talking

about shelter in place he wants shelter in place and quomo has been aggressive about that in every press conference he said words matter and he's he's you know so basically new york for those who haven't been paying attention has decreased uh on wednesday they said that only 50% of the workforce of non-essential businesses could go into work, right? So, you know, this is, and this is after restaurants had gone takeout only, and certain types of businesses had been closed down where there's a lot of, you know, interaction and things like that. But even deciding all that, any other business, Wednesday it was 50%,

Thursday it was 75%, today it went to 100%. And he said, this is the most severe thing. And he was like, you know, basically the point that he was made. making is that shelter in place is a specific term that now refers to an active shooter. It came from when, from the nuclear era, when it meant literally go to the center of your house and stay there until you hear clear. What he's, his point was that when we say shelter in place, it scares people. Like, we're not in the business of imprisoning people in their homes.

What we're saying is that what we can do, and there's plenty of people who argue that this is still too extreme from a business perspective, but he's like, what we can do is say businesses can't operate right now. And what we can do is we can say, please don't leave your home for anything other than essential. But like a walk is essential for some people's mental health. Walking your dog, you're not going to be fine for that, right? And so it's an interesting little tightrope where he's trying to get as much voluntary contribution from people so that there doesn't have to be draconian measures, you know. But at the same time, he kind of went off on young people who aren't taking this seriously.

So there's this tightrope act, but there is a possibility of getting that tightrope act right. I think one thing that I haven't seen from the conversation that's been frustrating me is, okay, so let's play this out. We're talking about what are the real economic impacts of this? And we're talking about how does the state retreat from that authority right later? And it seems very clear to me that the reason that this thing is so deadly is the only, overwhelming of the health care system, right? It is not just, you know, like it is about the way that the health care system gets overwhelmed.

I just heard of a friend right before this call who lost her 99-year-old mother or grandmother because, not because of coronavirus, but because the hospital wouldn't let her in. They didn't have any space for her. So, like, that is, it's a hospital capacity question. We need a friggin, like, very fast Marshall plan right now for getting all of the medical supplies, for getting the field hospitals, for deploying that full might, so that because we will have to resume life, but we need this new infrastructure. And guess what? Like we could be potentially putting people to work, building that infrastructure. Like that's, that is the key thing.

And that's the point at which, how do we get to transition back to a different life? We have the infrastructure to be able to deal with this as what it is, which is a very virulent but addressable virus. It's a very, very complicated situation. I mean, do you know what, the other thing? Are we the same age? I can remember if I'm a bit older. I'm 41. I'm 35.

You're 35, so you're a bit younger, but like similar-ish. It's such a strange situation. It's almost overwhelming in that about two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago, I called my father because he's 72 and he's a smoker and has bronchitis. So he is prime candidate for contracting, if he contracts coronavirus, that he would almost certainly need a ventilator and possibly die. You know, he's a prime candidate because it's a respiratory virus. So I phoned him two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago.

Actually, I phoned my brother first. I said, I think we need to put Dad into lockdown. And my brother wasn't sure. And then about two days later he agreed. And I said, Dad, now's the time. And he said, I can't. I've got all my golf stuff on. I was like, hold on, Dad.

You need to really understand this. And I took him through it. And then I also found my ex-wife's parents and did the same. and I think I realize how serious this was probably a little bit ahead of my friends because of the world we live and work in. Yeah, yeah. We're attached to the news a bit more, we follow a bit more. But it's this kind of weird kind of spectrum of wanting to take it seriously as possible

without looking ridiculous to other people who think you're panicking. And I think everybody's eventually going to get on the spectrum to the, to the extreme end where they realize how serious this is, it's just going to take them a lot of time. But as we get there, we've got to make some serious decisions. And I don't know if, I don't want to be the person who stands there and says,

well, I think the state should take control of us and put the army on the streets and tell us what to do. Because we live in this Bitcoin world, whereas if you ever show any form of statism, it's used as an insult against you. Oh, you bloody status. You're a status. You're a bootlicker.

You're a government-loving status. Any kind of insight. So you're almost questioning yourself saying, well, I am. I'm thinking, fuck, I think there's a lot the state can do right now. I think there's certain things the state can do better than individuals can do on their own, right? Because I believe they just put some enforcement in place and it's gross and it's scary and it's terrifying. And you made a really good use of language when you said, how does the state retract from this position? which is very, I think you've articulated that perfectly.

But right now, if we were to just give advice to people and tell them what to do, we saw what happened in Nashville or on the beaches of Florida, people ignoring it. And I just feel like I almost don't want to have the state argument now, the libertarian argument now. I want to say, what is the best thing we can do? And I'm not going to get over-upset by certain actions of the state. because just because so many fucking people are going to die and I think and then I try and measure it

and I try and question it to myself and I think all right well if freedom is the most important thing to me civil liberties then we should give everyone the advice but let everyone have free will to choose what they will do but does that ultimately lead to many more people dying Jack and Ozuco will come and give a very good nuanced argument about why I'm wrong

I just my gut feel thinks that this is a situation where we have no choice but the state to put into some draconian measures. But I say it with this kind of Bitcoin of guilt, thinking, I'm not meant to stand for this. I'm meant to be against this. I'm meant to say, no, this isn't right. And almost certainly a lot of the stuff they're going to do is wrong.

I think the UK government's initial decision seemed brave. And within two days, I was like, no, you got this wrong. You fuck that up. I think almost certainly Trump has got an awful lot wrong. And I really don't like his rebranding. of the virus as the Chinese virus. I think he's running every press conference like a PR exercise with the 2020 election.

I don't like that. And that doesn't mean I support China or I'm a CCC bootlicker. I just don't like that. So I think the governments are going to make a lot of fucking mistakes because they're dealing with something unprecedented and it's really, really hard. But at the same time, I don't know.

I don't feel like I'm in this place that I can give some... I don't know. I don't think now is the time to be arguing over civil liberties in terms of some of the decisions the states making now. I think now's the time to say, how do we ensure when this is over that they do retract from these positions, that we don't lose a bunch of freedoms, well, the limited freedoms we already have, we don't lose them. And I think that's a more practical place to approach it from.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I think my feeling is almost always, and certainly in this case, is that everyone gets to have a different voice and a different importance. One of the things that I've always loved about Bitcoiners much more extreme than I am, whether it's about the crypto industry or whether it's about libertarian politics or anything like that, is that they provide an unflappably clear pull of the discourse, right? That is an anchor point that you can go to. And I think that a free, open society only works if you can have perspectives at both extremes screaming at each other. Now, where I usually find myself is wanting, I tend by nature to be radically more pragmatic than I would like to be even.

Like I have this very strong and weird combination of incredibly kind of frustrated and passionate, but then like want to hone in on the thing that can be addressed. So right now, for example, I'm looking at this bill that was happening before coronavirus that is trying to get end-to-end encryption out of the way, right? And this has been, Attorney General Barr has been fighting this fight since a while ago, right? It's been him versus Apple. And Apple has been fighting, but they've, you know, they've kowtowed in certain ways at certain points. But that's a, that is a specific, discreet thing, right? That doesn't really necessarily have to do.

I think smart people can argue about how much tracking and surveillance is really necessary for this, you know? And although in some ways, I'm much more worried about the tracking and surveilling of every citizen via their mobile app than I am about local police forces enforcing a curfew, even if I think, like, you know, curfews seem like a weird, you know, choice to me, right? Like, in some ways, those are different things. So I'm going to be flying the flag of and screaming about them. that other thing, that specific thing. But, you know, I also think that right now there is a little bit of a pick your battles situation in the sense of there are some things that have left the station. Like no one, like we have gone from a, there is no longer any political space for not

direct intervention in people's bank accounts in this. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. I think that the biggest reason is that there's also no political will in Congress or the Senate to not bail out companies, but they also, having lived through 2008, know that they can't not bail out regular people and bail out companies as well. Or they can't bail out companies and not bail out regular people as well. There's no way that anyone will get voted. But perhaps they can, you know, they're very scared to let industries to let companies die, right? Like this is a system that feels fragile to everyone that they're going to try to preserve with whatever they can.

So like us screaming about UBI and things like this or whatever, you know, or, you know, quantitative easing and the money printer, like these are the new narratives, the new memes. But the reality is is that this is a situation where we already had an answer to that, which is Bitcoin and participation in the Bitcoin ecosystem. And for the first time, this crisis is the first one that's happened where there is a voluntary opt-out mechanism, at least on some level. Now, we all live in society, so I think it's overstated to say that we're opting out entirely. But there is this other thing, right? So I feel like a lot of this has to do with, with one, picking your battles, two, figuring out where there's actually levers of change to pull. And the reality is that when people are dying, when hospitals are being overwhelmed and when people are losing their jobs, you're not going to win most arguments about not intervening. So I go far, I go right to the other side of that conversation and say there will be a time at which this has gotten more under control.

right where the healthcare system has gotten more under control what do we what can we not give up on the way yeah do you know can i talk about something as well that i still haven't seen the answer for because so we're at this point now where we're having to put if every every almost country is going through the same steps just at a different time and i'm seeing the u.s is doing it if you think each state is more like a country they're going through a similar process whereby it's okay we've got some infections okay the infections are going up we've had a death

now we've had double figures deaths now now the uptick's starting to happen so the UK is in the real uptick right now Italy is way ahead of everybody France and Spain Germany aren't looking great you know US is starting to pick up and during that process they go through a you have concerns

from the politicians that initially they start talking about perhaps we won't have enough ventilators enough machines and then they start talking about, okay, we're probably going to have to consider social distancing and people start to make some of their own choices, a little bit of panic buying, you know, maybe telling their parents to lock themselves down. And then the government comes in and says, okay, we need to enforce some social distancing. We're going to close down the schools. Okay, now you can't

go to work. Everyone should work from home and now it's full lockdown. Every country appears to be following a very similar trajectory with all of this. And the reason they're following that trajectory is because of the infection rates are so rapid that as you said earlier the health systems are coming under so much pressure what i don't understand is and what nobody has explained is how do we come out of this because even if in say say the UK can reduce the flaten the curve we've heard this flatten the curve say they can do it in 12 weeks or even 16 we've got 3rd three to four months of lockdown. Suppose they flatten the curve.

Then what? What do you do there? If we're talking about not having a vaccine for, say, 18 months, even a year. Let's say even a year. What happens between month three and four and month 12? Are a handful of people allowed to go to work? Is specific towns allowed to go to work? Do we have to have in some place, some way of tracking who has an infection and who they've

coming to touch with and if a new infection happens then then anyone who's coming to touch that person has to be locked down again. If you do that, we're going to have schizophrenic businesses that pop up and shut down very quickly. So that's not going to be operational. We're never going to get children back to school. So it feels like realistically, we're in this until there's a vaccine. I can't see how we come out of it. And I'll be honest, this is the first time in my life. I've actually been really scared, not personally, just more scared generally for people and what's going to happen over the next 12 months because you've got entire industries of, I mean the airline industry is done right now, pretty much. Nobody's going to go on a cruise right now.

Hotels are screwed and then all the knock on businesses from there. What about the restaurants in the hotels? What about the companies that supply the parts to the airlines? What about the engineers who work for the airlines? What about the what about the airports themselves? What about the taxi drivers that take people from the airport home? The knock on effect from this I think is frightening. And I don't know the answer but I just don't see are we in this? Are we all locked down now for a year? Well I do think so a couple of thoughts. First is that there is going to be some precedent right we can watch how Asia is trying to manage this and see what works. And the thing that's clear is that they redesigned, I mean, they were already

way ahead of us on this, but you don't go into a building right now in Singapore without having your temperature checked, right? It is just a totally different experience of life where everything is about controlling potential outbreaks, right? And being able to get that cluster. There's still, I think there's still really good questions about school and how that's working and everything else. but I think that it's going to be an extreme amount of vigilant data gathering and information. So that's kind of like part one. I mean, but at least if nothing else, there will be some, we have a couple months of, we're behind by enough time to see what's working, right?

I mean, for better or worse, they get to be the guinea pigs, you know, in this. I think the second part is, you know, we've largely, because it's really, I mean, let's be clear about what our timeline is. It has really only been a few weeks since the U.S. started to take this seriously. February 24th was literally the first day that markets reacted to this at all in the U.S. I know because it was the day that Caitlin Long announced Devonty, and I interviewed her, and we were talking about how the markets had just started to react for the first time. February 12th, meanwhile, was all-time highs, right?

So 12 days between that and less trading days, obviously. And now we're only, we are only, we're at the end right now of the first full week where the U.S. president acknowledged the severity of this thing and wasn't just calling it another flu, right? If you go back not to two Mondays ago, right? So four days ago and then seven days before that, he put out a tweet about how the flu kills so many more people, right? It wasn't until Wednesday of that week that Tom Hanks got it, the NBA shut down, and Trump got on TV and said we actually had to do something about this. So we're really still like in the U.S. We're like seven working days, you know, nine days total into the leadership of the country, not being totally insane about this thing. And we've done, it's almost like I'm watching this weird thing. Like this is a, to me, this is a health issue that creates a financial markets issue, that creates an economic issue, that potentially creates a geopolitical issue.

And it's almost like we're watching these things like, so, you know, the people are finally taking the health issue seriously. However, we're dealing right now with the still testing dimension of it, right? Not the, not the overwhelmed the health care system yet, which is what's right around the corner, which is why people are so scared and they should be from an infrastructure perspective. With the financial markets, obviously we've seen a huge sell-off, but the Fed is using every tool that it has.

The federal government is obviously using every tool that it has to try to keep this in check. What we haven't experienced yet is the economic knock on really, right? Because again, people haven't been out of work for long. Again, if you go back to Cuomo, he went from 50% of the workforce to 75% of the workforce to 100% over three days. He knew the math. He knew exactly how much this was going to go. He used that time, I believe, to get people more and more used to the idea, right, rather than going zero to 100 and scaring the shit out of people. That was a specific psychological tactic, you know, which honestly I applaud him for. I think in some ways, is the correct call, although maybe a week earlier or whatever, right? So you've got just the

beginnings of the economic hardship that this is going to represent. And we have never had anything this fast, you know, and like the only hope is that it's, you know, someone called it World War III for 90 days. And that would be the best case scenario where by July 15th, when U.S. taxes are due and, you know, that we actually have gotten the health care system under control, people can start to go back to work. And the big money printing machine, has helps people get through that part or whatever it is, right? People have done it together. I'm more worried because I see like you, I think that it's everything, that it's so much more than just the 20% of, 20% of people are in the service industry, right? So you've already got that.

But there's a million more things that aren't accounted for that. And I think that you come across this, like you just think for a little bit, right? Like, you know, we've joked about this before, but our family's favorite hobby is Magic the Gathering. There are thousands of and thousands of local game stores all around the country who are for tons of different games, but they're anchored around that, who are just cooked. There's no, they're, they're already hanging on by a thread because they're from a different time, right, where we went to stores and, you know, played games together rather than doing it online, which is so much more convenient. Like the number of that, that companies in that space, small businesses that are

going to shut down is going to be enormous. And like, I don't know, card stores, like your local bath and body shop, that's just someone who had a dream, like florists, you name it. You know what I mean? Like I think we haven't even begun to grapple with what that might mean. Now, the thing that I think that we're extra not grappling with, though, is the what might happen geopolitically globally, right? Like, we are already at the tail end of the U.S. designed post-World War II order where we are retreating. We are aggressively retreating from the world. You know, I mean, this has been Trump, you know, he's continuing things. He's accelerated certainly, but this has been going on for a while, is a retreat from the world.

And as that happens. I was going to say, that's one of the few things I actually like about what Trump's been doing. He seems to want to get away from wars and intervention, which is one of the few things I actually admire about him. Well, I agree. I am, I am no fan of war. But I do think, too, that there is a, there are untold consequences, right? in terms of like when you start to unwind an order where everything is interconnected from a global shipping, what you do is you create a scenario where all of a sudden there are really rich countries and really poor countries,

not based on where they sit in the global order, but based on their actual resources. And it does not look, I mean, this is, I'm literally just a parrot for Peter Zahan right now, who just wrote Disunited Nations. But this is my background, too. This is where, like, when I first, you know, I was in global change systems and things like that. I thought I was going to spend my life working in Israel, Palestine, or Uganda and Rwanda. And I think that we haven't grappled that except maybe a little in the, like, even the Chinese virus thing, which I feel very similar to you about. The cynical brilliance of this guy when it comes to manipulating the news cycle is unfathomable.

And this is, I thought for sure, the in. incalculably bad response that he has had to coronavirus was going to be his undoing. But I think the ability to shift it to a us versus them at a time when everyone's angry, it plays right into the rights narrative that liberals are just, you know, social justice warriors who are concerned about racism. Like this is a thing that is basically definitionally racist, but that's not the point. He's not doing it as a dog whistle racism thing. That's just a fun byproduct, right? The reason that he's doing this is a, is two things. One is that the CCP is in a fight for their life because the Chinese citizens have never been as closer to, to rebelling as they

are now after this situation. And so they are desperately trying to put that narrative of the U.S. actually starting it, right? So there's one, there's a geopolitical brinksmanship being played there signals the rest of the world. That's one thing that's going on. Now, I think that there's a lot of very smart, savvy geopolitical thinkers who think that like responding to that in kind is a really stupid strategy. So I'm not commenting on the quality of the strategy. I'm just saying that's part of it. The second part of it is this fucker has to, excuse me, listeners,

but he has to, he has to shift the narrative from literally, like I said, two Mondays ago he was saying it was as bad as the flu, to I've always taken this seriously. And in fact, if you go back, the one thing he did do is close the borders to China real fast, that was fine with him, right? That was played into what he did. He wants everyone to say, like, it was a Chinese virus. I closed the borders to China. We did everything, you know, like that end. And it plays perfectly to his political base. It's an easier narrative. You know,

it's an easier narrative than me in October going back and showing, well, like, this was the death toll at this time and this is what they said and this was the death toll. Like, no one's going to care. They're just going to like when the other option is Chinese virus. It was their fault. Right. So I find Ben Shapiro an interesting character. I disagree with a lot of what he says. I think his delivery sometimes is a little bit sinister, and I think he likes to be angry about things. But I also admire some of the things he does,

and the way of things he explains. And one of the things I like he does with Trump is he will say about the things he thinks he's done well, and he'll criticize him. One of the real problems I have with politics right now is the, you know, I said it on Twitter the other day, somebody who was like Trump derangement syndrome, but there is a Trump defensive syndrome

whereby anything he does, however agrarious can be defended. And I think the most interesting people who are able to politically observe and criticize and compliments and give credit we're due to both sides. Rather than just say always, like, oh, that's just the liberal left wing way

or just say, or just that unilateral hate for Trump. Neither work for me. And the reason they don't work, because it's just completely intellectually dishonest. There is no world which suits, there is no world where everything is correct right or everything's correct left because it doesn't account for different personality types and different economic positions.

And I think the most intellectually honest thing you can ever do is be fair and be critical. And I was, I've defended Trump sometimes, which by the way, in the UK is a really hard thing to do. It's really hard. You're not talking about 50% of the nation. You're talking about 5% of the nation who won't agree with you. Everyone thinks he's a fucking war. Honestly, everyone thinks he's a moron.

I tried it with my brother and my dad over Christmas, and my brother refused to talk to me. And I said to him, well, the thing about Trump is I don't love him, but I think he would, I'd rather him as the leader of the US than Hillary if I had to choose. Just because I think Hillary is crooked and evil, whereas I think Trump is just at times stupid. But so I said the other day, when he's called it the China Various, I said the rebranding. I think it's a disgrace.

And the reason I think it's a disgrace is for a couple of reasons. I think firstly, I think all his press conferences are run as PR exercises. For him to be calling... That's for sure of it. Yeah.

You know, partway through one of them, somebody said something about Joe Biden, he said, yeah, sleepy Joe this. I just think it's so immature, pathetic, a time when he's addressing the nation, and the biggest crisis the US may ever face, the world may ever have faced. At a time where he needs to be addressing the nation, he's putting his little childish dixon about Joe Biden.

And I think that was pathetic. I think calling it the China virus was totally a deflection exercise. And the really important thing for me, and I would have been equally critical if this had been a UK leader, is that during the biggest crisis a country has ever faced, or one of the top crises a country has ever faced, that you are still entirely focused. on your personal reputation that right now all you're clearly thinking about is will I win the 2020 election firstly if it goes ahead

let's just assume it's going to go ahead and by the way three months ago it was a slam dunk I think even a month ago it was a slam dunk he was winning the next election I don't think even Biden or Bernie Sanders

would have the ability to remove him I think this I think this coronavirus and what happens puts under threat. I think it makes it more debatable about whether he'll win the next election because he's going to be judged entirely on this.

And it might be out of his hands. He might have done the best things possible. He might have put in the best policies possible straight away. Either way, a lot of people are going to die and there's going to be an economic crisis. And because of that, people might hold him accountable even though he couldn't have done anything anyone else had done. But for him at this time

to be using the most important time in the country as a continual and very obvious PR exercise. I think that's disgraceful because I understand a small amount of it's going to happen, but for each time for him to come out and said, we've done a perfect job. We've got these people, they're amazing. They're tremendous.

They're doing a perfect job. I think it's great to talk people up. But every time he refers back to himself, he said, well, I did the best job possible here. He's got universal belief that everything he does is perfect and right, without any self-awareness, and I just think it's a dangerous time to be starting a war of words with the Chinese. And just in response, because if people listen to this, they might give some of the response I got on Twitter.

Firstly, they said, you're just a typical liberal left focus on racism. Okay, firstly, I'm not lefty. Secondly, I never even once mentioned racism. This to me was never about racism. This to me was about leadership. and I just thought it demonstrated weak leadership. Also, people were saying, well, such and such at the CCP had blamed the US. I said, fine.

Then turn around and say, there's been accusations in the press from X who said this is a US engineered virus. This is obviously ridiculous. We won't entertain such knowledge and we will be speaking to their ambassador. I think there's more mature and better ways to deal with in it than just start going, the China virus. like he runs his every single policy and every decision is like how can he meme it and I don't know dude

I just personally it's actually whereas he'd grown in my estimation as somebody where I just I thought it was an idiot when he first came in and after four years I thought you know what he's not as bad as I thought he's done he's done some good things there

and I can understand what people like him right now he's lost some credibility with me which I know some people to go we don't fucking matter Who cares? You're a Brit and you're a nobody. At the same time, I can imagine others will be feeling this as well. No, I mean, listen, I think that the hard thing in American politics right now,

which spills into politics everywhere, is that it is internecine warfare. There are religious cults on both sides. And if you are someone who feels, like, likes people from both sides, has different opinions from both sides. It's not even center. Unfortunately, center is not a really good term. It's more like a bouncer, right? Like you're like a ping pong ball because there's got like people are big and diverse

and their experiences make them feel different things, you know? And it is, you know, I think that's the challenge for people is that when when everything becomes politicized, but how can it not be, you know? Let me ask you a question actually, because I want to touch on this a little bit. you just spent you just had a big trip where you went to places that were having a hard time of it even before the coronavirus how how have the last couple weeks well one like you know what what was that trip about and what what were some of your takeaways but how has the last couple weeks of seeing the world respond to coronavirus re contextualized it for you like that's the type of thing where I have

trips that I took that I thought meant one thing, but in retrospect, the thing that I learned was very different, you know? Yeah, good question. So the transition from having a Bitcoin podcast, having two podcasts was very much about wanting to expand outside of just being able to talk to people about Bitcoin. I did it a few times on the Bitcoin podcast, but there were subjects I wanted to touch on. And so I launched the other one, Defiance. And really, that was just for me to learn, you know,

It was an education process for me, but also, yeah, just to expand outside of the Bitcoin. And what I found very quickly in doing defiance and traveling, because I used to travel to cities where I could cover Bitcoin and defiance. And what I realized traveling was that actually the defiance stuff is sometimes more visual. It's things you need to see. You know, you need to visually see what is at Hong Kong. I couldn't do an interview with somebody about Hong Kong, but really what's going to be much more effective, much more powerful is a video of people protesting and maybe short, snappier interviews with people there. So I realised that actually Defiance needs to be at least a film brand alongside it,

potentially only a film brand. Perhaps it isn't a podcast in the future. That I don't know. So I just, and I also just wanted to become a filmmaker myself, just ambition-wise. I really enjoy doing the podcasts. I've really enjoyed doing the specials like the one of Mount Gox. And in doing Mount Gox, I realize, sorry, I'm going off on a tangent, but bear with me, it all comes back together. Doing the Mount Gox, I realize. You know what we're doing? You know what we're doing right now? We're basically doing the thing that, like, you know, all of our elected leaders are now advising us to, which is, like, the way that you deal with social distancing is you just, like, call up your friends, do a video chat and talk about things that you wouldn't have normally talked about.

So for anyone, anyone who's listening, like, treat it as such. When I do my intro for the show, I'll make sure to make that point that it's not like, we're going to go over the recent price action and what it all means. it's definitely not that. So go off on any tangent is my point. But yeah, so when I did the Mount Gok's series, straight away afterwards, I wanted to do it again because it was just a sequential set of interviews.

It was six interviews. Actually, what I really wanted to do was research the story, create a narrative and an arc, do the interviews, knit them together, and run it like a documentary. And I've been working on one about Bitcoin as well,

which I'm deep into. And the natural progression is, I can produce audio documentaries, that's fine. But I'd like to produce video documentaries, just a personal ambition. So I bought all the equipment, all the camera equipment, and I decided I was going to head back to South America because I really wanted to go to Venezuela because I could do two things. I could cover Bitcoin because it's always seen as a Bitcoin use case,

and I could cover the economic crisis. But as I was going there, I was like, right, I'll go to Colombia, I'll go to Bolivia and I'll go to Chile. I'll do them all together. So I went out there with this intention of just starting filming and making some film work. And then I've been talking to this producer slash camera operator for a while. And he said, look, I'll come out with you.

So I was like, fine, I'll pay for you. And it was really just meant to be a test. Go out to these four countries, film a bunch of stuff, see what we've got at the end of it. We struck gold a few times. We got very lucky with what we stumbled across and the content we were able to make. But what resonated for me was like two things that came together at the same point. Somebody had said to me, you're going to really have to really have to make. to figure out what it is

you're making Pete and why you're making it, what's your angle, you know, what is it about you that people should watch your videos and what you care about? And that was a really stuck with me. I was like, yeah, you're right. I can't just film shit and put it out there. You know, what is it I do care about? And I know like in my heart, I know it's human stories.

Whenever this shit's going off, I just care about the human stories at the back of it. And to give a good example of that is just having been out to Turkey and Greece with the border. I think in that situation everyone's got a valid argument that the the Turkish government got a valid argument that they've got 3.7 million migrants in the country that's a lot of pressure how many can they take

and I think the Greek government are right when they turn around and say look we've already taken a million in we can't take anymore and I think the people who live in Germany or Sweden who've experienced mass social unrest from the integration of migrants have got a valid argument and saying this hasn't worked out well for us yet it doesn't doesn't matter who is right, in the middle of all this, there are a bunch of people who are fearful or don't want to live in their homes. Let's move away from the economic migrants. Let's just deal with the people who want to leave Iraq because the country is a basket case since the US war. Or let's talk about the people who've left Somalia, which is a very dangerous country.

Or let's talk about the people who've left maybe Burundi, or just all these different countries. whoever's right about their economic argument, there is a group of people here that were all stuck on the border between Greece and Turkey living in a field where women have no access to sanitary products, they've got babies they're feeding, they're all living on one or two meals handed out a day, they're trying to leave a country that doesn't want them, trying to get into another country that is firing tear gas at them, but these are just people, right? And that's the point I'm trying to get to. I wanted to make films about people, just the real struggles that some people will go through. But what I found is it doesn't matter where I go, Nathaniel, the pattern is the same and the stories are the same. In that there's this ongoing battle of left, right, rich, v. Porn. And this is where I end up questioning some of the libertarian staff, or when people say Bitcoin fixes this, because I don't believe in every single scenario, Bitcoin does fix everything. There is certainly a situation right now where if there is too much inequality and too much corruption,

you will see the poorer, poorer people tend to rise up, who tend to be a little bit more left wing because they tend to look at the world and say, it's a bit unfair. It's a bit unfair because we're poor, we don't have health care and we don't have education, so we think that should be provided,

because that's how they feel. And we somehow got to try and find a way and getting this balance right, because if we continue to have unequal society, it doesn't matter what you politically think is right here. It doesn't matter if you think these people are socialists and socialism is bad. You are still going to have violent uprisings and people are still going to die. And I'm seeing this pattern, the same argument, it doesn't matter if I'm in Santiago, Chile, in Venezuela or in San Francisco.

You have got the same problem of inequality leading to problems and you've got people feeling left out by society or, feeling that it's just a bit unfair because of because all the leaders are corrupt and and you know what are they meant to have and that pattern I'm seeing everywhere like everywhere I go and it's just a different story told in a different way in Venezuela it is because Maduro is essentially a ruthless dictator who took over from Chavez who himself slipped into authoritarianism of his social program started to fail, but you've still got a rich, free, poor corruption problem there.

It's the same in Chile. And I think we have very similar situations in Europe and the US. And I don't know. It's just, it's what I'm seeing everywhere. Oh, and I think that the... Sorry, sorry, I've gone on there a bit. I can't fully articulate it always

because I'm still trying to figure it out in my head. But you also ask, how does what's happening now, re-contextualize that. I'm not sure it does, but what I'm expecting is those situations or those countries with the highest inequality and the poorest countries are going to suffer even worse through this situation because what's going to happen is their health care systems are going to be overrun quicker. They're going to have higher numbers of people who can't get access to the healthcare system. They're going to have people whose health is maybe slightly worse because because those who are poorer tend tend to have poorer health generally and I know

it's a massive generalisation and ultimately I think in all of these situations the more wealthy you are the more wealthy you are the easier coronavirus is going to be few to survive because you're going to be able to get food you're going to be able to get excess to health and I just think it's going to disproportionately affect poorer people so if If anything, that's what I'm observing. So in 2010, Haiti had the huge, there's a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that was hugely devastating, right? And the reason that an earthquake like that is so much more devastating for Haiti than it would be in, say, San Francisco now, right? Who's due for one?

Is that what kills in an earthquake isn't the earth shaking. It's buildings falling down and fire starting. right and in a place where there is immense infrastructure even even if you're dealing with the same same magnitude of earthquake to wildly different outcomes and i tend to agree that my fear with with one of my fears geopolitically with the coronavirus is that like i just saw that there was a big increase in south africa um overnight and uh you know south africa is more uh has more infrastructure than most parts of the continent, but it's still, it's not most of Europe, right? It's certainly not Lombardi, Italy, which has one of the best health systems, you know, in the world.

It is a very different thing. And I think that if the equivalent of buildings falling down in this case is the health system coming under more pressure than it can, and the ripple effects, not just from people who die from coronavirus, but other people who can't get treatment for other things, you know, The death rate doesn't stop because of coronavirus, you know? The birth rate doesn't stop because of coronavirus. I think it does have the potential to disproportionately impact people. And I think that what you're feeling and seeing around the world, certainly I've observed this as well.

Like one of the, so the reason that I thought that I was going to go spend my life doing conflict or post-conflict reconstruction was the jarring disconnect between the feeling that everything was fine in the 90s and the Cold War was over and it was great. And the fact that it was it was the bloodiest decade since the 40s when it comes to violent conflict, right? In terms of numbers of people who were actually killed. And how could those two narratives didn't like exist, right? But most of the world post-Soviet war has been in this very, we are in a very weird, liminal in-between scenario and have been for a while.

And the challenge is that, and going back to your left versus war, right point. The problem in situations of desperation and inequality is power. And power seizes whatever narrative works based on that. What does left authoritarianism and socialist fascism? How does that look practically different than right authoritarianism and fascism? The answer is that it doesn't, really. It's just what's the narrative that's useful on the way? And, And I think, again, having that sort of, having that sort of nuance and the ability to, the ability to speak in those terms rather than just throw around, I mean, the problem is that we've, we've almost, we've lionized political words, right? We've made them capitals instead of lower cases. And they come with a preset of expectations that limit our ability to understand, right? It's easier to write off an entire country for being socialist than understanding the context in which people lived that made seeding authority to people over their lives.

Most people want to live their lives uninterrupted. This was my experience. So my formative years were spent basically between the Middle East and in East Africa. And the number one thing over and over again is that if you get into people that have lived with conflict for a long time, they don't speak. in these same generic political terms. They speak in terms of what allows them to live and move on with their lives, right? And that can be a dangerous situation.

That's why Mubarak was in power in Egypt for 25 years, is that he was unbelievably good at more or less people were fine. They just didn't have autonomy over this one part of their life, right? I was in Egypt when George Bush was elected. And I was in a program basically because I was studying there. We had two types of kids, like the lefties save the world kids And going into the CIA, you got to study my enemy while I learn Arabic kids. And all of us were friends because we're human beings and human beings can be friends with people who disagree,

even though the media tells us differently now. And on the way home, we had gotten a hotel suite to watch the election results. People couldn't believe that this guy was going to get elected again. And he did, obviously. And it was really, really late. We saw those results at like 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. We were taking a cab home, and the taxi driver was going out of his way to tell us that, that he understood that we didn't have any control over this and not to feel about.

Meanwhile, we actually did, right? But the experience of having any actual hand and electing your leader was so foreign to them. Now, this is obviously, this is seven years before Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring. So it's different. It changed a little bit, although, you know, the legacy of that is still playing out. But the point of this is to say that everywhere I've ever been, what people care most about is, do I get to live my life? am I scared for my kids? Like, full stop and everything else.

And that's why, that's, the danger in that comes when people can come with promises and say, see this authority, see this control to me, and I will give you more of that, you know? Yeah. I think the, I mean, I don't want to say the one good thing that can come out of this. What I hope is when we come out of this, I think we've got two choices, right? As people, nations, politicians, we've got a chance to. to reassess how we got here and the mistakes we've made and try and learn from this and have a better world or it just gets worse. My fear is it will actually get worse.

But can we learn from this? Because I'm disenfranchised from the political process because it's so divisive. It's like you either agree with me or you agree with everything they agree with and you're bad. I didn't vote in the election because I couldn't vote for either. Boris or Corbyn because they were they were just so so poles apart but there were so many things in the world I'm also questioning and I think as a parent you question it more especially as your kids can ask questions yeah and and you can influence them like I've my son says things now that he only says because he's my son like when the government recently

a few days ago announced their massive spending plans he was like but dad if they keep printing money like that, it just, the money's going to be worth less, right? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, well, you buy more Bitcoin. Like, that's all come from him, him hearing me talk about it.

But it also makes me realize that if I talk to him about politics, I can really influence him. If I just sit there and say, you need to be conservative and the conservatives are better because they focus more on hard work, whereas the laborer are more socialist

and they want to help everyone and make everyone's life easy, he's going to come out thinking, potentially that poor people are lazy and we just stop helping them and that worries me as well and I don't know I'm not really articulate

this is kind of thing I wish I had some time to articulate and think about exactly what I wanted to say but all I know is that if I used to have a certain way of view in the world when I used to sit on my couch sit at home and live in Bedford and follow the news and talk to my friends

and I would almost pick a side like a football team that I'd want to be on and now as I've travelled the world and I've been so fortunate to do this and met so many amazing people and people in difficult situations

I don't now I don't want to be on a side because I realize most of the time the side you're on a lot of it's got to do with where you were born you know the fortune of being born in a country like the UK versus being born in Iraq

I don't know pre-gobes World War II. I mean, that's what a fortunate position to be in. And a lot of what we have is just down to just pure luck and chance. And I think we're in a world now where we've got too much about I want and me and focus on me and not enough about, not enough about the empathy for others and enough regard for human life, enough regard for the really shitty situations people have to live through. God, I'm probably sounding like a really soft left wing. liberal now. I mean, but isn't that, but isn't that a problem when wanting to encourage, like, empathy and

understanding the lived experience of people is relegated to one side or another? By the way, that used to be a small C conservative position. If you look back, right, like historically before the, you know, whatever, that was a traditionally conservative position, you know. So this is the problem, is that these things, they, there is inherently a, dynamic between leaders and the people who need to back them where it's a process of narrative making and freeing yourself from that. And I think there's a, there's a liberation to existing in a way where you're not afraid to not know things and you're not afraid to change your opinion.

And unfortunately, nothing, nothing in society really rewards you for that. But I, I'm, I'm interested at least, and part of the reason that I spend so much time creating these media spaces is like, I feel like I had a choice when it comes to the crypto space or political space or whatever. Like it is very clear. The path to engagement is picking a tribe always and just being the best at shouting that tribe's message. And this is all, by the way, this is not a Bitcoin or Ethereum thing, although that, it plays out a little bit like that. But honestly, crypto is, I think, light years ahead of most industries when it comes to this stuff. It just feels intense because we're in it.

But like if you think like left versus right identity politics and shit, makes bitcoins versus Ethereum kids look like absolutely nothing. And, you know, for, for me, though, like I was, I, you know, I just, I am firmly committed to this, to creating spaces where you get to say, like, this is, this is my incredibly strong, intense opinion based on what I know now. But if you got something else, whether it's new facts or a new way of looking at things, like bring it on. And I'm not scared of that conversation because you disagreeing doesn't fuck with who I

It doesn't hurt my soul. It is an interesting thing where maybe I'll learn from that, you know. Or maybe I'll think you're terrible. And, you know. You're just talking about the Roger Ailes playbook, right? Fox News, Roger Ailes, when he came in and he formed Fox News, yeah, here's strategy. He said, let's just be conservative.

Let's be conservative. Let's focus on Republican issues. And then we get 60% of the population. Yeah. Because if we do what CNN is doing and MSNBC is doing, then we're fighting for the same audience. We can have all of this audience. And therefore, and Fox News, for me it's an embarrassment.

It's an embarrassment of a TV channel because it is never impartial in any way at all about any decision of Trump or the Republicans. It can never step back and go, do you know what, this is wrong? We shouldn't be speaking like this or these kinds of policies are wrong. It's every single thing he does, they support.

And that for me is a really sad reflection on the world, because what it does, it does divide us all, and it puts us all in separate camps of hate. You know, it's not, it's not, what are the, what are the, what are the reasons that Trump should be president ahead of Joe Biden? What can he do better? What can we learn from?

It's no, let's hate Joe, sleepy Joe, let's humiliate him, let's really fucking humiliate him, and let's create hate for liberals, and let's get the liberals. And by the way, they do it the other way, and let's get the liberals hate the extent. Let's all just fucking hate each other, and go to war, and then want to win our election,

and then for four years, we're just going to laugh at you and create memes about you. Honestly, it's not how I want to live in the world anymore. In some ways, it's why I'm rejecting politics and stepping away from it. Or I'm setting a new stand of what I expect from politicians. And you're right. We're in the content space. I could very easily be a bitcoyner who's like,

I'm Bitcoin and I'm Bitcoin only. Fuck the stay. I'm all about freedom, civil liberties. But I can't do that because, you know, I, firstly, not everyone. I don't believe. anarcho-capitalism, I'm not convinced that creates a better world, a nicer world or a safer world. It potentially creates a crazier world where it's all for himself and everyone has to own a gun. And I don't want guns in the UK. I just don't. I appreciate why you have them in the US and I've come to learn about it.

But I don't want that situation. So, I don't know. I tend to get in a lot of fights or shout out on Twitter because I don't follow the Bitcoin narrative all the time. I don't. I just don't always agree with everything. This kind of narrative where you have to be this anarcho-capitalist. I think it's immature, actually, and I think it's impractical. I think it's much more mature to just try and say, look, we do live in a world with a state. How do we make it better? Like what Eric Voorhe said to me when I said about, I can't see this world of libertarianism.

He said, we don't need to. The starting point is less government. Let's just try and have 5% less government and see where we get. and then another 5%. And does that make it a world? And that, I think that's a much more mature and practical place to go. But just to sit there and, you know,

we're going to have the armies on the streets in the UK, probably within a week. I don't want to just go, it's just bad because it's authoritarianism. I want to just have a fair debate and say, hold on, is this a good thing? Could this actually save lives and can we retract from it? And will this be a good short-term measure? And that's something I'm really struggling with right now

because and if anything people are going to go oh you're a snowflake or you've got no bollocks you're not going to you're not you're not really willing to take a side you're just sitting on the fence and i don't think it's that i'm sitting on the fence i think i'm genuinely concerned about how we've got to where we've got to and and how we debate these issues yeah funny times man yeah i also it's it's no it's weird times i mean that i like i am uh i'm like um i'm like unfortunately, the question I ask, every person I've had on for the last couple weeks has been, you know, where are you kind of in an optimism or pessimism cycle? And for me, you know, my answer is, I'm, like, the short-term optimism is that like at least literally this is, we're at the end of the

first week where everyone was acknowledging this is a real thing, right? It's literally been only, we have one full week on our, on our docket of actually acknowledging it. That's short-term optimistic. short-term pessimistic is that I think that we're accepting, we're in the acceptance phase that there's going to be some disruption. We haven't yet accepted for how long it's going to be disrupted, and we haven't probably really dealt with the economic ramifications for just regular people, not just stock markets. And I also think that we haven't even begun to experience or understand the long-term geopolitical issues that come out of this. If there is a cause for some amount of long-term optimism,

it's that when you have, when the world gets turned upside down, you can either reconstruct it exactly as it was, or you can try to find new narratives, new stories, new tribes, new ways to organize tribes that don't match the old way of thinking. and you know it's it's not a nothing signal I actually I joked on Twitter this morning I said one of my top five thoughts during this crisis is wait I agree with who and it was actually in the context of Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson going hard on on Burr and Kelly Loughler and a couple others about the potential that they use privilege information about to get out of the stock market

you know when they were publicly talking to Kelly do as well she's been she's been fighting fighting for her whole life. This is a very complicated, so here's the nuance side. immensely complicated question because you have to figure out, like, does she actually have any control over her money? And there's a much larger question about how politics should deal with having assets that are outside the market, because politicians are going to have advanced information on almost every scenario. Secondly, like look back at all of our conversations on Bitcoin Twitter since the end of January. It wasn't like this was only politicians who knew how bad this thing could be. We all made decisions in our personal

finances. So those are the sides that are kind of like it's overblown and people are looking for someone to blame. And I do think people are looking for someone to be angry on. The flip side and why people are angry and I believe legitimately angry is that when you spend six weeks telling people publicly that it's just the flu and that it's nothing and that we're doing a great job and it's all contained and it's not a thing to worry about and keep going to work. And then meanwhile, you are making an entirely different set of decisions for your life if that's actually the case. That's just, it's not just to, it's not just to It's lying and underlying all of this is the endangerment of the public, right?

Which is, I think, is for me the biggest issue. Like, I don't care that $3 million was moved, although I think it is a little fucked and hypocritical. What I care about is that you spent six weeks endangering the lives of people because I just heard from a friend that they lost their 99-year-old grandmother because she couldn't get in. And maybe that would have happened no matter what. But if we'd started building, you know, field hospitals and gotten ventilators and all the or things that we needed six weeks ago, like maybe it wouldn't. And so I think, but anyways, like I said, two people who I basically disagree with on almost everything, Ben Shapiro and Tucker

Carlson, were both very, like, hardcore about this, you know? Now, I don't pay attention to them enough to know if they have other beef with these people, and this is just a convenient media thing either. So it's not so much that I'm like, go those guys now, you know, although you're, you know, you had some interesting things to say about Ben Shapiro at least. It's more just that I think that living in a world where you're not going to cut off something that someone says because you think in advance that you don't agree with them is a weirdly healthy place to be, I think, if one that is also can feel destabilizing sometimes because you're out of the path.

So I don't know how to as we reconstruct and re-architect the new world, which I do believe that this is like a fucking forest fire for us. But I hope that we can, my fear is that it just does the same thing that happens in power vacuums, which is authoritarianism. My hope is that we have a chance to kind of organize it differently. Yeah. I think that's a really good place to end it, to be honest,

because I don't want to add to that. I think you've just given a summary that, you've kind of re-articulated my point that is and I'm just going to repeat what you said earlier is I think it's only natural that we're going to see an overreach of the government

right now and we're going to see this globally and back to what you said is how do they retract from that position because it might be hard for them through the temptations of power and corruption but rather than try and fight what they're doing now because we can't. How do we make it vocal? How do we ensure, as we come out the back end of this, that we don't lose our civil liberties? Because if they're using our phones to track us right now,

because on the track the movement of the virus, fine. It's not that I like it, but if it happens, it happens. How do we ensure when we come out the back of this that they don't continue doing that? And that's, you've actually shifted my thinking here in that that's almost why I think my personal focus would be is acceptance of what's going to happen because I can't change it, but what we can do is influence how we come out of this. That's kind of where I am. Yeah. I don't know if we can, but I, yeah, it's a, you know, when the going gets weird, the

weird turn pro. So, you know. Well, well, dude, listen, it's always a pleasure. We should do this more often. I don't know why we don't. We should talk more often. Yeah. I always enjoy our conversations.

You make me rethink. things you make me reconsider my firmly held position sometimes and look it's a strange world all i'm going to say to you is i say to everyone stay safe bro it's um yeah concerning times stay safe in terms of personal health but also mental health i think somebody i won't name them because they might not have want me to say it but somebody also shifted my thinking yesterday they said why isn't anyone talked about the mental health impacts of this at a level where we need to come to an acceptance, we are going to see a higher level of suicide through this process. It's only natural that that will happen.

We have suicide rates. The suicide rate is almost certainly going to go up through this as people face very, very tough situations. So that's something we need to be aware of. But just as a friend, just stay safe, stay healthy and stay mentally healthy and everyone listening. If anyone who's struggling, my DMs are always open. My phone's always available. If someone wants to talk and if I can help in any way, please let me know. But yeah, stay safe, bro.

You too, man. Dude, I'm into, hold on, why do I? I'm concluding your interview like, this is mine. I felt like this is the end of mine. No, I like it. I like it. You interview me. That's what happens.

You could put two podcasters in a room. What happens? Yeah.