The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 410. Discussing Impact Investment and ESG's with a BlackRock Executive | Terrence Keeley

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with investment expert and author Terrence Keeley. They discuss the recent success of the ARC conference, the reality of climate narratives and the ESG mafia, the cost effective solutions to some of our most pressing problems, and the positive side of societal betterment via impact investing. Terrence Keeley is an American investment expert and author who has worked with and managed some of the largest investment organizations in the world. Besides having been an executive at Blackrock, Terrence also founded and served as the Senior Managing Principal of Sovereign Trends, LLC, an advisory firm for and about sovereign institutions. From 1987-2010 he was a senior managing director at UBS Investment Bank, where he oversaw the firm’s transactional and advisory relations with central banks, sovereign wealth funds, ministries of finance, public pension funds, and multilateral organizations, including the IMF and World Bank. Terrence served as a consultant to Pope Francis’ financial reform commission, overseeing the Vatican bank. He is also a founding director of the Financial Hippocratic Oath movement. From 1982-85 he served as one of the first young trustees on the Notre Dame Board. Today he is also a frequent commentator/author on all issues relating to international finance, cross-border capital movements and global financial governance. He is married to Saskia Bory of Geneva, Switzerland. Their two sons attended the Lycée Français de New York.​ This episode was recorded on October 13th, 2023  - Links - 2024 tour details can be found here - https://jordanbpeterson.com/events For Terrence Keeley:Learn about how to go beyond ESG investing here  https://www.1pointsix.com/ Sustainable (Book)Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Moving-Beyond-Impact-Investing/dp/0231206801Columbia University Press https://cup.columbia.edu/book/sustainable/9780231206808

Hello, everyone. Today I have the privilege of talking to Mr. Terrence Keely. Terri was a speaker at the recent art conference in London in the business stream. He's an expert on so-called ESG investing of which he is quite skeptical, perhaps the world's most foremost skeptical, things considered. We talked about the idea of ethical investing, exactly what that means, the perils, pitfalls and promises of pursuing so-called ethical investing strategies, investment strategies. We talked about the necessity of formulating a positive vision for the future, financial and otherwise, and delved into the details of the 2008 financial crisis, and the role played in that by the blindness,

willful and otherwise of people who were responsible for managing the world's money. Welcome to the discussion. So Terry, let's start this out with, I'd like to ask you some questions about your experience at ARK. Maybe you could tell everybody watching and listening what you experienced there and what the consequences for you generally were with regard to the conference as a whole before we turn our attention to the specific topics that you addressed in the panel that you participated in in London. Well, as you remember, Jordan, we met just this summer at Heather Higgins' home

and we ended up having a very interesting conversation on the role of business and finance in fashioning a better world. And you kindly extended an invitation to me to be part of an ESG panel. But what I didn't realize in accepting that invitation, it was that I was going to be in the company of 1,500 wonderful people from how many 60 countries?

I can't remember. 72 countries. 72 countries with a very like mind. And that is how can we tell a better story and get humanity on a better path for the very severe challenges that lie in the decades ahead. And I have to say, you know, through you and to all of the other organizers, I just have a profound sense of gratitude. I felt frankly like I was coming home. I live in a world where I have to be more careful with you about your pronouns and you have to be

with me about my religious beliefs. And yet I found in London that I was with many like-minded people who share a reverence for God and a reverence for humanity and a great desire to keep the planet on the right path, a sustainable path, but a path of growth and greater inclusivity. And the way you and Philippa and others brought together the themes of art, music, poetry,

religion, as well as business themes, political themes. It was just a huge privilege for me in many ways. And I don't know what the status is for many of your listeners, but it's difficult to be a conservative in America today. You don't really have a political party. You don't really have a common home to go to. And at Ark and London, I felt I was with a global community of like believers, Jordan. And I came through very, very hopeful two weeks earlier,

I had been at Mitt Romney's E2 conference. I don't know if you know, but Mitt Romney sponsors and annual events in Park City, E2 stands for enthusiasts and experts. And I felt similarly there that, you know, again, men and women of faith who have a very deep concern for humanity, a very deep concern for the trajectory that we're on, but have solutions and ideas

for a better way forward, as I wrote in that article for Real Clear Politics, a better story. Maybe I can share a very personal story already, which is that my niece who went to Stanford and graduated the 4.0 is one of many thousands, if not to say hundreds of thousands, of individuals who are in their mid-20s who don't want to have children Jordan, don't want to have children because how could you imagine bringing children into a world when on January 1st, 2050, the whole world's going to blow up because of climate change.

How could we be so thoughtless? And so to have a clear narrative, a much better narrative about how our future is not disastrous, our future is up to us. We're going to get the globe that we deserve. And quite candidly with greater mindfulness, it's going to be the greatest possible human achievement ever. And so that's how I felt coming out of London and how I felt with the great program that you and your colleagues put together.

Do you do you think this takes us off our topic a bit, but I'm going to go there anyways. I mean, you stress two things that struck you when you were at the art conference and that that was that you were surrounded by people of faith and you could read that religiously to some degree, but you could also read it as being surrounded by people who are willing to have the courage to put forward a positive vision of the future because that's a form of faith too. And it's very important for people who are watching and listening to understand that you can't take a step into the future without faith because you can't predict with anything

approximating certainty what's going to happen as you move forward. And so you have to adopt an attitude a priori that sees you through regardless of what happens. And you can adopt an attitude of corrosive cynicism and bitterness and pessimism and defend yourself that way. And there are times when that's appropriate. But as a general stance towards the world, it tends to be counterproductive. And it's also the case that what a fragmented or misplaced faith, religious faith, even tends to, seems to have as a consequence the development of something like an anti-human stance, as things that aren't human, like nature itself, become worshiped instead of what's properly put first and foremost.

And there is a remarkable concordance, I would say, between the religious belief that each person is a divine locus of being, let's say, and made in the image of God and a pro-human stance. And one of the things that's really terrified me about the environmentalist movement, which purports to be about the sanctity and security of the planet, is easily transformed into something that is clearly and demonstrably and human. Like I've watched in absolute open mouthed amazement over the last 10 years as the greens and the radical leftists when push comes to shove immediately demonstrate their willingness to sacrifice the poor to their planetary salvation delusions.

And it's so interesting, eh, because in principle, the left is being the party that puts forward the demand for compassion towards the marginalized and the oppressed economically and otherwise. But man, when you stack up the oppressed and marginalized against the hypothetical interests of the planet as such, the lefties will sacrifice the poor in a tenth of a second. And they do that not least with their insistence that energy costs have to skyrocket. And consumption come down, which to me is tantamount to saying, when consumption comes down, the poor starve. That's a necessary consequence of decreased consumption.

And anyone who thinks otherwise is either willfully blind or ignorant beyond any, what would you say, any morally acceptable degree. So all right, so it was very, it was very, Let me take a moment to respond to that, though, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, world relativism becomes what in fact is what they worshiped. I stood in awe of you speaking on the stage at a couple of times about Jacob's ladder and the book of Job. And you know, Jordan, what's fascinating about you and I know this is your podcast, but priests and I come from a Catholic background. I worked for Pope Francis. I co-chaired in the Vatican Financial Reform Commission. I have quite a Catholic background, but priests cannot put people in pews, and yet you can fill the O2 Arena

with tens of thousands of young men to talk about the Book of Job and talk about Jacob's ladder and talk about the uphill struggle as being the moral struggle of our times. I just congratulate you and your colleagues, and I know you give a lot of credit to those around you as well. For just being able, Jordan, to enunciate this message in a way where it resonates to those who are genuinely lost, to those who are genuinely looking for a roadmap of how to have a better and more productive life.

And I want to establish, early on this call, I'm not a climate denier. I do believe that there are human influences that are very much putting our land, our air and our water at risk. By the way, the planet has never had 8 billion inhabitants before. We're about to be 10 billion inhabitants. We're going to have to find ways to behave much more sustainably.

But I was looking through my book of notes from the art conference and one of the things that I wrote down is it's not the climate deniers, it's the trade-off deniers. And even in La Dautosie, in the Papal Encyclical written by Pope Francis on the climate crisis, he is very clear, Jordan, very clear, that there are trade-offs, that we need to have more prosperity. There are too many people that are left behind. The vast majority of human beings

still use less electricity than one refrigerator uses in a year in the West. We need to find ways to improve access, improve availability, improve abundance of, and we've just finished this COP28 conference this morning, as you know, and they've come off and finally been able to say let's do let's phase out fossil fuels. But they're very quick, right? They're very quick to add that this must be done in a just way. Well, if it's done in a just way, the only way we're going to be able to get ourselves off of fossil fuels is by massively increasing nuclear, by massively increasing some other

sources. And that is not plausible from now to 2050. We are simply going to be continuing to utilize this mix of fossil fuels that we're dependent on. For reasons of justice, for reasons of human need, for reasons of human necessity, and as you pointed out in others at the conference, if you look around the globe, the wealthiest countries

are the ones that actually have the cleanest energy mix. So we must prioritize continued economic growth. This is the mantra that I come to in my book repeatedly. Yes, we need more economic growth, but it the mantra that I come to in my book repeatedly. Yes, we need more economic growth, but it needs to be more inclusive, and it does need to be more sustainable. And I am a member of the church that says, let's optimize between these various trade-offs, growth and clelliness and sustainability. There are trade-offs, and we're going to have to navigate them. It's multi-variable calculus. It's not as easy as the only thing that matters is net zero by 2050.

It's not the only thing that matters. Many things matter. Well, that only thing that matters narrative, I've been thinking that through in some detail. And so part of what we're facing on the pathological culture war front is over simplification that occurs for two reasons. The first reason is purely factual is that there are human effects on the environment, some of which are deleterious. I was struck most particularly when investigating such effects on the effects of unrestricted coastal

fishing on fish stocks, because I think that's something we've done particularly disasterously. There's a variety of problems like that, but the important thing is there's a variety and that the solutions to those problems are actually, well, they're multi-dimensional and complex. And you can collapse all that into a single theory, which is that there's one fundamental environmental emergency that's climate-related, and that can be attributed more or less solely to carbon dioxide. And so the temptation there is to take this overwhelming complexity on the factual side

and reduce it to the kind of simple mantra that anyone can master really in about 15 minutes. And then you're done with that whole problem. It's like, well, no, the important thing is climate and the solution is carbon dioxide reductions. Like, no, now the benefit to you is that you don't have to think anymore. But there's an additional benefit to the oversimplification, which I think is even more nefarious. And it's analogous to the oversimplification that's part and parcel of the victim victimizer narrative. If you view the world through a lens of power and you assume that every human relationship

can be understood in terms of victim and victimizer, then all you have to do is a moral agent is claim your ally ship with the victim and you've solved your moral problem. The same thing applies on the environmental front is once you've established that Carma Doxide is the villain, then you can make yourself not only a moral agent, but something akin to the Redeemer himself by merely proclaiming your, what would you say, your moral commitment to the goal of carbon dioxide reduction. And so you eliminate having to think in the factual world and you eliminate actually having to do all the work that accompanies genuine moral effort by swallowing in the environmentalist

narrative. And then there's even a darker part of it as far as I'm concerned. And this is where things go from merely ignorant and blind to outright malevolent, which is that once you've identified the problem in the moral solution, you can also take aim at anyone who hypothetically stands in the way. And you can demonize them. And as a consequence of your demonization, you can let the worst elements in your character have full reign in relationship to how you treat those people.

And you certainly see that with the victim victimizer narrative that's being played out with Hamas at the moment. The Jews are the victimizers. The Palestinians are the victims. And so that means the Jews are properly subject to whatever punishment you feel inclined to meet out. It's the same with those who hypothetically are compromising the environment. And so it's such an ugly mess, say, because it's over simplification factually. It's ridiculous reductionism on the moral side, and then it's the provision of a world that allows your desire for vengeful

resentment-driven hypothetical justice to have full reign over those you deem to be enemies of you in the planet. A very, very toxic combination. And so that's the sort of thing. It's that combination, I believe, that actually presents the apocalyptic danger and not whatever other problems, severe as they are that might confront us on the environmental side. Well, I have to give, again, credit to the arc organizers because I think you had the most definitive speaker, Stephen Koonen, talk about the science. And when I'm in, I just spoke at a climate symposium at Harvard two weeks ago, you know, Jordan. And I always try to present facts calmly. There have been

five mass extinction events on planet Earth in the last 500 million years. Every single one of them were caused by the planet cooling too quickly. That's how we lost the dinosaurs as you know. You can actually give a litany of statistics, some of which I've gotten from Bjorn Lomborg over the years from the Copenhagen think tank. The polar bear population is five times what it was 50 years ago. Total sea rise in the last hundred years has only been 23 centimeters, 23 centimeters. Meaning, meanwhile, a lot of these A-tools and these island nations,

they've grown 123 centimeters. Many of them are actually in better position than they were. We are having less violent storms, but I think the Stephen Koon-and-oonen argument, which is really an important one, is, yes, human beings have an impact. Yes, carbon dioxide matters. But it matters in such a small level relative to many other factors that are actually impacting the climate, many of which we don't understand. So where I take that, and I try to not oversimplify the climate mess, but I always say that it's a complicated two-part problem.

One is a collective action problem that is to say the greenhouse gases that are admitted by three countries only, China, India, and Russia. Right now are two and a half times that, admitted by the entire North American continent and European Union combined. So until India, China, and Russia are as serious about greenhouse gases as the rest of us are supposed to be, let's not kid ourselves. We still have a greenhouse gas problem.

And then the other one is the La D'Arto-C Pope Francis. This is a multi-variable calculus problem. What we have is people who are denying that there are tradeoffs. Let's recognize that there are tradeoffs. Let's recognize that there are tradeoffs. And let's have a con-inclusive fact-based conversation about what's the best thing to do. I brought a prop today. This is a plastic bottle, right? It has water in it. Well, so I was telling the crew before we started. This bottle today, Jordan, has won through the amount of plastic that had in it

three years ago. That's not because of an ESG regulation. That's because it's cheaper to make it with less plastic and you can do it with less plastic. This is the kind of progress that is being made because we are more mindful. Consumers are changing their investment decisions. We are seeing people that want to have greater sustainability. We can look at Patagonia, this company that now only does close that if you bring them back, they repair them for you. Patagonia products are flying off the shelves. People want to have a sustainable future. This is one of the reasons why we can be optimistic about humanity's future. Jordan and I, I don't downplay human influences. We have to worry about our air, land and water for sure.

10 billion people on the planet. There were 1 billion and 1800, 2 billion and 1900, 4 billion and 1985, 8 billion in 2022 and will peak out at 10 billion by 2073 according to the Lancet. How are we all going to stay here on this planet together, allowing everyone to achieve their full potential? We're going to have to live differently. We're also going to have to live in an era of aging. In 2035, there will be more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 18.

We've never had that circumstance before, Jordan. We're going to have to find ways to live differently, more inclusively and more sustainably, while we continue to grow. And all of that is possible. I wrote a book on it, and I'm just so incredibly optimistic about humanity's future,

and the art conference really helped, for me, underscore a lot of those themes. Well, and so one of the things that we could derive from, let's say, your discussion of Patagonia is that these new ways that we're going to be required to find to live need to be offered to people as an invitation and not forced on them. And so here's one of the things that happened in the aftermath of the art conference that I found extremely interesting. And so we had quite a range of speakers and the and a quite a range of approach from speakers

and political attitude. And what happened was that the speakers who were the most political and who were the most tendentious and accusatory, let's say in their approach, produced the speeches that are you thinking of? Is that John Howard? Who are you thinking of? McCurley. McCurley.

Okay. Yeah. Particularly. And this isn't an insult. He's a politician. But what happens, it's so interesting to see is because the talks that really offered a invitational metaphysical vision, got exponentially more views in the aftermath of the art conference, that's yeah, yeah. And so, but I think this is very much well worth noting is that as you point out, people

do understand quite broadly that we have to live in something approximating harmony with the broad natural environment. And people are interested in finding ways to do that. But if they're forced or manipulated into doing that, which I think tends to be the approach of organizations like the WEF and the UN and even the European Union to a large degree, if they're forced to do that or connived into it or even nudged into it, which is a very manipulative way of going about things, they're going to resist, they're going to fight back, and we're not going to get anywhere, whereas if people are invited and offered an alternative that they can undertake voluntarily, the probability that they're going to first attend and then

comply is extraordinarily high, not comply. That's not the right word, but, but participate. You know, you see this in psychotherapy, it's a psychotherapeutic truism is that if you are setting up a situation where someone is pursuing positive behavioral change, they have to determine the direction of that change and come to develop and accept the strategies voluntarily or all they do is kick back in all sorts of ways that are counterproductive and produce resistance. But it was so interesting to see that unfold at the art conference because the speakers who were visionary and invitational had by far the biggest effect. And they really set the tone for the conference too.

And so we really tried to learn that lesson, right? This has to be an invitation. That could bring us to our discussion of ESGs. Do you want to, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, I just love to give an exclamation point. Yes. Some of the points you're making, though, Jordan, because you worry about a top-down solution.

And there's every reason for you to worry about top-down solutions. We see it right now. I don't know if you know, but clean energy stocks this year are down 25 percent, while the stock market is up 25 percent. We've been forcing so much money into some clean energy solution, windmills off the coast of Maine and others that are simply not working out similarly. All these incentives to go by electric vehicles are not working. So there's General Motors Ford's

Talentists. Yes, they're worried about a UAW strike, but they're even more worried about the fact that California is mandating them to create electric vehicles that people are not buying Jordan. People are not buying those cars. So what are we gonna do? Have a bunch of EVs out in parking lots that nobody's willing to buy and think that we're solving our global climate crisis? We're not. So there is this danger, as you say,

as you enunciate of top-down solutions that are not being met by bottom-up. And this is the beauty of the market. Friedrich Hayek has a lot to say to us still. You know, I was thinking as I was preparing for this show this morning that God himself could not create a better system than the free markets. And the reason is that the free markets consists of billions, unbillions of decisions that are being made by consumers out of their own free will that are ultimately going to drive where we're going to end up.

And it's so important to remember that consumers attitudes change. Consumers are going to want to have, for example, Louis Vuitton is right now designing all of these new luxury leather goods that are made out of mushrooms so that they can say this most, this next very luxurious bag is carbon negative. And I promised you, they're gonna sell a lot of those bags to people out there who really wants to be able to say,

look, I have a carbon negative bag. The beauty of the free markets governed by men and women of conscience who are mindful with their consumption patterns and investment patterns. And that's why I say mindfulness. We're going to get the world we deserve either in this world or the next. Greater mindfulness will lead to greater outcomes. But we should let the markets, let the markets work because they are better at delivering the future than anybody who's guessing what the future will be. We're going to have way too many EVs.

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That's BalancedOfNature.com promo code Jordan for 35% off your first preferred order. Plus, a free bottle of fiber and spice. Let's delve into that a little bit. So the technical reason for that, so that everybody watching and listening understands when people promote the free market, that can be an ideological promotion, or it can be an observation of sheer computational power. So imagine that you're, you're trying to make pricing decisions and purchasing decisions, which you

have to do all the time in this world when you're trading one thing off against another. You could imagine, either, that you set up a system, just think about it computationally. You could set up a situation where there are literally millions or even billions of local computers gathering data about local circumstances, making trade-offs with regard to everything that's available to them in terms of data in that local environment, and then communicating in a network fashion to indicate trends and future probabilities. So what needs to be produced, for example, or you could replace that by a single computer or 10 of them that are trying to gather all of that information with no

eyes on the ground, relying on their hypothetical ideological expertise. And that's the central planning model. It's like, why the hell would you exchange billions of distributed computers with sensory apparatus on the ground for a handful of centralized computers that can't even in principle have access to the proper data. It's a preposterous claim. It's an absurd claim. And it's not like there's something magic about the free market, except for the fact that it's an optimized system of distributed computation.

And there is no replacing that with centralized view. And you do get this problem that you just described. I mean, I think with regards to EVs, I've wondered this for a long time, electric vehicles, is like, we know perfectly well, not least, because of what happened to California, when they announced that everybody couldn't plug in their electric cars at the same time,

because the grid didn't have the capacity. It's like, I've been wondering, why are we being enjoined to buy electric cars at the same time because the grid didn't have the capacity. It's like, I've been wondering, well, why are we being enjoined to buy electric cars when they, when we don't have the grid power to recharge them? Then I thought, oh, well, if the plan is actually like the C40 plan, which is the plan put forward by a consortium of large cities, If the plan is to reduce autumn and be a ownership by 95% anyways, it doesn't matter if you force people to buy electric cars that no one wants and that we won't be able to recharge

because the bloody plan is for people not to have cars at all. Anyway. And that's, that's, well, right. And that's such a terrible plan because cars, there's very little difference between a car and freedom and wealth. It gives you such an unbelievable range of options at any given time, ridiculously efficient use of private time.

And anybody who objects to that, I think, is immediately to be viewed with extreme suspicion, especially if they're trying to implement top down compulsory controls. You know, one of our principles at ARC is no policy that requires compulsion is optimized. There's a mistake in it somewhere. You know, that gets tricky when you're dealing with criminals, you know, because sometimes people are in situations where they won't behave socially or in a psychologically, in a manner that reflects psychological integrity without compulsion. But most of the time the rule of thumb has to be, if I have to force you to do something,

I'm putting forward the proposition improperly at minimum improperly. Well, as you're speaking, I'll talk about a couple of different books today if I'm allowed to, but one that really did reach me, it was written by Rog Rajan, who's a professor of finance at the University of Chicago, and it's called the Third Pillar. And what the thesis that Rog Rajan has, he's also the former chief economist of the IMF and former governor of the Reserve Bank of India. But Jordan, what his thesis is, is that society's thrive when they have the three primary pillars of societal good in balance.

One is the markets. If you don't have markets, you're not driving prosperity. The second is the state. You need good government. I don't know about you, but I like getting my driver's license on time. I like it when the stop lights actually work. We need good government. The government that governs the least is not necessarily the one that governs best.

And I think Canada is an example of that. But the third one is actually community or civic society. And what the thesis that that that raw garage and puts out, I think, very effectively, is that if you have societies that have either one of those out of kilter, where markets are too strong, then we run into environmental problems, or we run into issues of distribution. We do have externalities, negative externalities in markets that need to be corrected by proper current. But the role of community and the role of NGOs and the role of the volunteer sector,

the role of faith in a community, the role is equally important. If societies have any one of those missing, they are not in optimal balance. They tend towards crony capitalism, which is this topic that Paul Marshall spoke about. As you know at ARC or they tend towards inefficiencies, you have to have all three.

We need markets, we need an optimal state, and we need a community thriving NGO sector, thrive at non-for-profits, which we do have in the United States. In the United States, we could use slightly better governments. This is where we're falling down quite candidly. I bring up Poemarshall. I wrote two articles after the art conference and one was inspired by poem, Marshall, but not in the way that he thinks. He actually spoke from the stage

about the negative impact of Uber as if it had demolished the lives of many delivery drivers, which it has. It has interrupted the lives of many delivery drivers. But Jordan, it has vastly expanded the market for livery driving around the world. There have been 4.2 billion Uber rides since it was first and the number of markets,

there are 5.5 million Uber drivers that turn on and off when they want to go to work. This was a wonderful market innovation, but it's what you have Schumacher calls, creative destruction. Markets need to be destructive, just as they need to be creative in order to maintain that efficiency. There's going to be disruptions that take place. Uber is a good disruption. I was talking to Philippa about this afterwards. He said, well, it helps if you're Paul Marshall, because

you always have a driver waiting for you. Those schmucks like me that come to Phoenix and need to find a way to get in from the airport. I'd rather just do it on my Uber app. But while the advantage to the market too is that it allows those disruptive forces to operate in a comparatively, at a comparatively micro level. I mean, there's still radical transformations in market economies, but the problem with the centralized economy is that they're so stodgy and blind that adaptation only occurs in catastrophic fits. Whereas in a dynamic market, there can be local, small revolutions that are continuous. And like, the way of conceptualizing it technically is that the environment transforms at a rate

that slightly exceeds our adaptation. So there's always unexpected things happening as a consequence of the action of reality itself. And then we have to fight to keep up. And we're always a little slow on the uptake. And so the adaptation process can be disruptive. But the wider the distribution of responsibility for adaptation, the larger variety of revolutionary adaptations that can be on offer and the smaller and more matched they are to the environmental transformation they can be. And so, you know, it is frightening when you see a novel technological move forward like Uber, which does disrupt industries and cause a certain number of people grief, but that's much better than refusing to adapt to the necessity for change and then having to uninvoluntarily undergo a cataclysmic form of re-adaptation. I mean, that's really what happened when the Soviet Union

collapsed. It was that so many things had gone wrong, that the only solution was that the whole system had to die. Well, that's an obvious evidence of market failure. When huge things die, small things didn't die fast enough. That's really the rule of thumb. So I think there's so many interesting lessons too right now, Jordan, from AI and from the effective altruism movement. Many things that we can learn about the governance issues that just came out of open AI. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. But a lot of them again, I think our highlight, the principal points we've been making,

markets are important. Let capital move freely. Let there be innovation, as you know, the whole idea between OpenAI was to have an open source platform that everyone was contributing to make it all trueistic so that it could be done in a good way. And then they found about we still need billions of dollars. How are we going to raise the billions of dollars to create the computational capacity that AI and chat GBT really requires? And they knew they had to have that in a for-profit arm. If they did not have that in a for-profit arm, they would not have found the capital. So important lessons, I think, yes, of course, we need to be mindful, but there's no way to build the world that we want to build,

where the needs and aspirations of the trillions of people yet to come, because by the way, if you actually look at where Homo sapiens sapiens are in the normal course, there are trillions of human beings yet to be born. This is the William McAllister arguments are in the normal course, there are trillions of human beings yet to be born. This is the William McAllister arguments that you probably what we owe the future. A famous philosopher from Oxford University that you need to have on your show, if you haven't had them on yet. And so, and this is something that the Pope speaks about very, very eloquently also in La Dato Sea, which is that we do have, in many

ways, Jordan, we do have responsibilities to future generations. And we need to think how often do you think about your grandchildren? How often do you think about your grandchildren's grandchildren? Do you care about them? Do you love them? Is the life of your great, great, great, great grandchild any less important than your life. No, it's not. So let's go about this process of thinking how it is that we're going to create this sustainable planet. And I spent a little bit of time talking about the broad philosophy of Raghrajan, but where I have spent a great deal of my life and work in Catholic social teaching.

And I'd love to come to Catholic social teaching at some point on this podcast because, as I say, it happens to be extraordinarily resonant and pertinent for the times we live in. Not because it's Catholic, it just happens to be Catholic. It's actually about 150 years old. And I think the broad principles of human dignity, subsidiary, which you spoke about very eloquently

from the stage, responsibility, personal responsibility. And I think the broad principles of human dignity, subsidiaryity, which you spoke about very eloquently from the stage, responsibility, personal responsibility. And then solidarity, the third principle of Catholic social teaching, which is that we are our brothers and sisters keepers. There are too many people, Jordan, that cannot take care of themselves. And it is the responsibility of the strong to help the weak.

It is the responsibility for those of us who have more capacities and more capabilities to give that hand up to those who do not have it. That is Catholic social teaching of what's interesting is that subsidiary the argument, you know, turns out the declaration of independence is right. All men and women are created equal. They're obviously in the image of God and they are entitled to a life of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their own fulfillment. But the simple fact of matter is that that cannot be achieved without people taking personal responsibility and families taking responsibilities for their own families and then communities beyond that. That is how the systems can work. Subsidiarity and solidarity that are going to live in constant tension were never going to have them resolved.

There's always going to be somebody else who needs to be helped. There's always going to be somebody else who needs to have more responsibility. And that is that struggle uphill that you spoke so eloquently about time and again at ARC. Starting a business can be tough, especially knowing how to run your online storefront. Thanks to Shopify, it's easier than ever. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the, did we just hit a million

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So the idea of responsibility for future generations, Let's wander into the Catholic social teaching domain for a moment. So I spent a lot of time recently writing this book, We Who Ressel With God, and one of the chapters in that book deals with the story of Abraham. So Abraham is portrayed as the father of nations. And so my sense is that the story of Abraham contains it within it, the seeds of what would you say. It contains within it a representation of what it means to live in the light of eternity. So imagine that you could adopt an ethos that set you up in the best possible manner to increase the probability that your children would survive and thrive. But then let's extend that.

Because that's not sufficient. You could even make an evolutionary biology argument in this direction. You want to develop an ethos that not only increases the probability that you will have children and that your children will thrive and survive, but that establishes a pattern that they imitate, that increases the probability that their children and their children will thrive and survive. So, it's an ethos that has to have a multi-generational implication. So, that's exactly what Abraham does.

Now, and that's the manner in which that's to be done is actually laid out in the narrative. So the first thing that happens, that's very, very interesting, because it has to do with material satiation. At the beginning of the story, Abraham is already, he's already in the arms of the infantile utopia, right?

Because Abraham has rich parents and he's privileged and he has everything material that anyone could ever want. And yet this voice comes to him. It's the voice of his ancestors and God. And it says, go out away from what is secure and have the adventure of your life. And there's a call, that's the calling. And Abraham attends to that calling and moves out into the world to cataclysmic end, right? Because he encounters famine and slavery and the connivance of the aristocrats to steal

his wife and battles with his in-laws and like the whole terrible array of potential catastrophes in life present themselves to Abraham. But he maintains a sacrificial attitude, right? That's emphasized throughout the text because every time Abraham embarks on a new adventure starts something new, he rekindles his affiliation with what is highest and moves forward in faith. And that's presented as part of a multi-generational vision. And so one of the things that I find very exciting about the potential union of something like evolutionary biology and deep theology is the idea that if we oriented ourselves properly

to the highest good, which is by the way the message that's in the sermon on the mount, we would see in that good the manifestation of the pathway that would enable us to live in a way that would ensure that respect for multi-generational continuity that you just spoke about as the soul of sustainability. And so what that means is that it's the adoption of individual ethical responsibility in the highest manner that constitutes the proper pathway to sustainability and not top down manipulation of the political, economic, and social systems to bring about some form of what plans stability, which we can't do, right?

We can't do that. No, well, you mean you said, the mere fact that you said earlier, it's like if you look at China and Russian India, first of all, we have absolutely no right to tell them that they can't take the same pathway to wealth that we took. And that was going to involve the use of coal, and it's gonna involve the use of fossil fuels. And we might as well bloody well, just get used to that

because that's going to happen. And then maybe in the Western countries, we could be laying the groundwork for a nuclear revolution and show the pathway forward for these countries that will have to transition through fossil fuel. But there's no bloody way we're going to be able to do that by imposing our idiot utopian views on China and Russia. And India, they're just going to tell us to go to hell, which is what they should do. imposing our idiot utopian views on China and Russia and India.

They're just going to tell us to go to hell, which is what they should do. Well, surely I'm thinking of your Abraham story, you know, Jordan, and just the importance of it and focus on future generations. And one of the lines that you used repeatedly in London, which has been inscribed into my brain, is about tilting the world towards heaven and not towards hell. How do we tilt? There's a lot that we can't do, but how do we, if the arc of humanity bends towards justice to what degree can we help get that justice arc going in the right direction? And another book that I wanted to give a shout out to

that I know you have read, and so many people is pure and momboards most recent book best things first. And you know, let's just be very clear in this book, pure and momboard points out 12 different policies, five of which are related to health, two of which are related to nutrition, one of education, and four of which are economic. That would cost $36 billion a year in a global economy that has $120 trillion in 120 depending on P.P. purchasing power parity. But less than one third of one percent would actually save 4.2 million lives

and would generate a higher GDP of $1.1 trillion, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where this growth is most needed. And these are simple tuberculosis, malaria, ending neglected tropical diseases, agricultural abundance. You just look through, you know, I would, I don't know, one thing I'd love to do is give a copy of that book to literally every single policymaker, that is to say every single Abraham on Earth saying, look, here are things that we can do right now.

They're very practical, ending the galactic tropical diseases, doing e-procurement so that there's a much greater transparency, free trade, we're all against it right now, everyone's clamping down on free trade. No, free trade benefits We're all against it right now. Everyone's clamping down on free trade. No, free trade benefits humanity overall. We've got to continue to find ways where we can trade in accordance with comparative advantage. This will in fact lift these billions of people who are not yet within the cycle of abundance, not yet in in in free of energy insecurity. I said another topic that we touched upon in London, but that we need to return to.

There are three billion human beings on Earth that live in energy poverty. They can't turn on the lights. What they want more than anything, there's not air conditioning. They actually would like to have a lamp to read their books at night. They can't even read their books.

So these types of Bjorn Longberg policies, these types of, I have many of them in my book as well as a concept I call exemplars of hope, very huge returns on investment. Some of those investments have to be done human to human. And I always say, Jordan, there is no marginal tax rate that gets you to heaven. If you are earnings or taxed at 100%, there's no moral, paying them, yes, it's legal,

but that doesn't get you to heaven. To get to heaven, it will be by your works alone. What you do and how you care for those who are most in need and how you can do that at a societal level, which I believe you do with your podcasts, which I believe you do with your teaching. I was listening to one of your Joe Rogan conversations recently, and you were talking with joy, absolute joy, about how people come to you and talk about how their lives have been transformed because of the type of self-help advice that you've given to them. I look at these things much more from a, what is an economic solution? As you know, I've written this book on ESG.

I'm sure we'll get into ESG a little bit. I'm probably the number one critic on the face of the Earth of ESG, not because of what it's trying to do. I believe that ESG was born of something very good that I think there's a lot of great intentions out there. I really don't want to discourage or disdain the intentions. Even people who are out there protesting for zero carbon emissions, their intentions are

good, Jordan. We need to work with those intentions. But what will actually work? What practically will create a globe of greater economic growth that is simultaneously more inclusive, welcoming in those who have not yet had the great benefits that they need and should have and have every God given right to have,

just like you and I do, to have the types of material abundance where they can pursue all their other dreams, as well as sustainability. Sustainability is not going away. We're going to, you talk about the fisheries, and how much God is off the shore. If we're not going to be mindful about these things, we're screwed.

We're going to be screwed. So I make that case, but I can talk about homelessness, I can talk about solutions for recidivism, I can talk about solutions for infant and mother nutrition. There are solutions out there that just like Bjorn Lomborg points out in his book are not that expensive relative to the huge benefits that we can get from them. And this is something I would like to do. Let's do two things.

Let's wander through the ESG territory. So maybe you can illuminate my guests as to exactly what ESG means and why it came about and then why you're leery about it. And then let's turn to a discussion of solutions. So let you go ahead with the ESG to begin with, to educate people to begin with, because it's not easy for people to understand even what ESG is. I appreciate that. So the truth of the matter is that the environmental, social, and governance movement, the ESG movement, which is all the rage, could not be understood without the context that's provided by the United Nations and everything that has happened since the Second World War.

So it's a story I need to tell. So as you probably remember at the end of the Second World War, Eleanor Roosevelt brought together 42, 43 nations, and they devised the universal declaration of human rights. And this was a very utopic document, Jordan, that said that every human being is entitled to, to, to, to, to, to, to freedom. There's a whole range of, of, of, of, inalienable rights are talked about,

but then there are inalienable rights. They're entitled to food, they're entitled to shelter, they're entitled to education, they're entitled to education. So this was quite something ambitious to do at the end of the Second World War because the world was devastated. Well, we didn't know how we were going to rebuild the European continent. Japan was a complete mess. And yet here was this utopian statement of how humanity should ultimately be striving for. Fast forward 50 years from the signing of the United Nations and you have the United Nations then espousing millennial development goals, the United Nations sustainable development

goals of which there are now 17. And what happened over the course of that 50 years is something that is insufficiently celebrated. Since the end of the Second World War, it's about 2000, the economic transformation of the globe was beyond anything anyone had possibly imagined possible. The actual material abundance that's actually emerged since the Second World War is simply unfathomable to your grandparents or your great grandparents. They would have no idea.

So per capita income since 1980 alone went from $2,500 to $12,000. What comes with all of the growth, here's a statistic that I love, Jordan, from 1990 until COVID, 128,000 human souls escaped abject poverty every day. Every day, the number of human beings on the planet that were living on a dollar 91 a day,

which is how the World Bank defines abject poverty. In 1980, was one out of every two. One out of every two human beings on the planet struggled to find a meal, struggled to find where they're going to live, were they have any heat overnight. That statistic today is one out of ten. And of course that's transpired at a time when when population growth was massive. Along with all of this material and economic abundance has come what always happens, greater social, educational, and health advancements. So we've had a circumstance where life expectancy

has expanded by 22% over that same period. Infant mortality dropped from 81 out of every 100,000 births to 25. So infant mortality has fell of 70 100,000 births to 25. So infant mortality is felt 70%. Literacy rates, massively improved. What happens when prosperity grows is other aspects of human existence improve as well. So what happened then, and I'm coming to ESG, I'm sorry for the prelude, but it's necessary to have, there is no ESG without this material abundance.

In 1999 and 2000, the United Nations convened the greatest collection of political leaders in history. And that collection included kings and prime ministers. And they designed the millennial development goals. Do you remember the millennial development goals? At 2000. And the millennial development goals was, let's get rid of poverty completely. Let's have a K-12 universal education around the globe. Things that were unfathomable 50 years earlier.

And let's find a way to make sure that there is greater political freedoms, broadly speaking. What ended up happening, though, is continued progress was being made on those, Jordan, and tell about 2005 when Kofi Anon, who is the Secretary General of the United Nations, convened a group of financiers. And he said, listen, I want there to be a group of financiers that come up with investment principles that would help promote these United Nations sustainable development goals and millennial development goals.

Why don't you very smart people, 70 of me, he picked going to room and come back and tell me what those principles for responsible investing are. This is where ESG came from. ESG emerged in 2005 with Kofi Anon ringing the bell at this New York Stock Exchange announcing these investment principles. What were these investment principles? There were series of principles relating to environmental, social, and governance

factors that this group of financiers had assessed could present material risks. Material risks, if we don't handle these things well enough, they will lead to financial failure. Stocks will go down. There was, so ESG actually came out of the United Nations Declaration for Human Rights, the millennial, the millennial sustainable and the millennial development goals and the sustainable development goals, and the United Nations principles for

responsible investing that first went public in 2005. Today, there are more than 6,000 signatories to the United Nations principles for responsible investment, Jordan. Those institutions collectively manage $120 trillion in assets. That is to say, they manage one half of all the institutional assets that are available for investment in the world. What are these people doing? Well, they've come up with a series of products and ideas

and corporate resolutions and any number of things that are intended to highlight various elements of these environmental, social, and governance issues of pertinence to them. So we tell the Bud Light story, right? Someone decided that it was very important for Bud Light to expand its market share. They need to be expanding in a DEI-sensitive way. What do they do? They have a commercial that was misconceived.

It pissed off two-thirds of the people who were actually drinking their beer and didn't result in any... So the ESG rules, as they have actually been applied, have had a very, very, a very serious of unintended consequences that haven't always been, well, that happened eleterious. My principal criticism, though, of ESG as a financier, and the work that I write about

in the book, and the reason why I believe ESG has neither done well nor much good is what I say. That was a Wall Street Journal op-ed that I wrote that was read 4.2 million times. It hasn't done well because in actual practice, Jordan, what people have done is, here's these ESG rules. In the S&P 500, which of course is comprised of the, ostensibly the 500 best companies in the United States, typically what the ESG enthusiasts do is they take out 400 of those and only invest in 100 of the remaining stops. the key thing that I'm going to do is to get a new job.

And so, the key thing that I'm going to do is get a new job. And so, the key thing that I'm going to do is get a new job. And so,

the key thing that I'm going to do is to get a new job. And so, the key thing that I'm going to do is to get a new job. And so, the key thing that I'm going to get a new job. And so not owning Exxon mobile is going to somehow change the temperature of the earth is just the silliest thing, imagine. In fact, it has the entire thesis on its head. There's been this concept of socially responsible investing

that has been around for centuries, have been for centuries. Many people avoided investing in the slave trade, right? Many people, religious groups, sounded absolutely abhorrent. But the slave trade continued, didn't it? Why? It continued because one quarter of humanity was still willing to invest in it and turned out as abhorrent as it was, it was incredibly lucrative. The same thing is true in modern society. There have been a number of investors, likely, most likely religiously based,

that have avoided what are called syn-stocks. The syn-stocks are in four areas, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. So many religiously organized religious organizations have not invested in these sorts, but has that stock smoking, has that stopped people drinking, has that stopped people from buying a firearm, has that stopped people from gambling?

Of course it hasn't. So the ESG movement, investment movement, is based on the same principle of, if I don't invest an ex-on-mobile, somehow the temperature of the earth is going to improve, it's pure silliness, Jordan. It's pure silliness. So I gave quite a, quite an exposition there,

where I wanted to come out is that my criticism of the ESG as an investment movement is not that it shouldn't be trying to solve the problems of our times, but that it hasn't. It's done exactly the opposite of what it needs to be done. And I'm a big proponent of impact investing. And I can give you literally 100 examples

of affordable housing, DEI opportunities for female minority entrepreneurs that genuinely address some of these issues of inclusivity and sustainability. There are ways to invest that genuinely takes carbon out of the air. You can do that with a green bond fund, but you cannot do it with these ESG equity funds. So, let me ask you what might be a more fundamental question. I mean, it seems to me that Anand's recommendations were ill-founded a priority. And let me walk through this and tell me what you think about it. So because he's making the assumption that there is already irresponsible investing that can be

rectified by conscious attention to a set of ethical principles. And see, this strikes me as ill as an ill pose problem because if you have any sense and you're investing, you invest as wisely as you possibly can. And the reason you all things considered, and the reason you do that is because, well, you don't want to lose your money, your hard-earned money, and so you're already very much motivated to invest wisely. Now, you could say, well, that would open the door to people making a short-term killing at other people's expense, and maybe that's what the door to people making a short term killing at other people's expense. And maybe that's what happens with so-called sin investing. But my sense is that

while you can get away with making a short term investment at other people's expense once or twice, but you're going to get hammered for it sooner or later. And so a non-notion was predicated on the idea that there was a way of imposing an apriori ethical framework on the problem of investment that would produce investments that would somehow do better, which strikes me as highly improbable, and that would actually increase what would you say ethical behavior as such. I would say that people are ready as motivated to invest wisely as they possibly can be if they're investing their own money or money they take stewardship up.

And the imposition of some top down ideological framework is only going to compromise the investment strategy and not only the investment strategy, but also the market strategy of companies. I mean, look, we've seen, well, Budweiser is a great example of an absolute bloody catastrophe. Target put their neck in the same news. I think Disney's stock is down something like 50% because they fired everybody who could actually tell a story and brought in people who did nothing but, you know, produce second rate ideologically oriented narratives of the sort that flew in the face of what their

customers demanded and undermined their entire brand. And so how deep do you think the conflict between the ESG attitude and the fundamental free market principles of responsible investing actually runs? Because I think, like it looks to me, that a non-took what was essentially a socialist or even a communist view, which is that, well, the market itself can't be trusted, and it's necessary to generate these a priori ideological frameworks, because that would direct everything much more effectively than it would be otherwise in a, you know, honest free market economy. The whole thing to me just strikes, first of all, there's no bloody way you're going to beat the market with a strategy like that. Nobody can beat the market, not continuously, because they just have all the

money. So there is this problem that it doesn't work in practice, but I also think there's a problem that it doesn't work in principle, that it's the wrong way to go about it. It is certainly the wrong way to go about it, so much so that I have this article that I just shared with you. It's coming out next week with AI that I co-authored with Senator Phil Graham, where we call for the end of ESG. It's an irredeemable project at this stage, Jordan, because it is, as you say, falsely premised.

And if something is falsely premised from the beginning, there's no way to adjust it to make it work. And you've said something that's very, very wise and Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger recently passed away. They've lived their lives at a court into this maximum. It is extremely difficult to beat the S&P 500. You can own it for one basis point.

That's what most people should do. But I'm someone, you know, and my career has been about advising people what to do with their assets, their investments. And I'm somebody who deeply believes Jordan that if you're willing to make an investment that's going to have a lower return, but it's going to result in, I don't, you know, affordable housing or it's going to bring clean water to a village in Rwando or it's going to, and you're willing to take a lower return, my God, go at it.

And a $51 trillion in wealth is about to be passed from the current generation of billionaires to their, let's say, less hardworking children. And that particular group of individuals are very mindful for double bottom lines. That is to say, they do want their money to do well and to do good. And an important part of my new business and all the work that I'm doing is to provide investors who have this double bottom line mindset that want to do well and do good. That is somehow willing to take a lower return as long as they somehow benefit some corner of society. Well, there's going to be a lot of capital that's looking to do that.

And that's going to be an important part of what creates this inclusive, sustainable growth world that we're going to need. That's going to be this important part of that community, that community, you know, we said it's the market, it's the state and community that have to work together, and we're going to need that community to be part of the solution. So let me ask you a question about that. I mean, I certainly understand the direction

that you're trying to aim a certain percentage of investors in, and I can imagine that that would all be- That's a small percentage. A very small percentage. Right, well, and man, maybe a percentage of someone's portfolio, but I'm also wondering, you know, like one of the principles that I've

Abided by when attempting to produce even products that are of Particular benefit to people psychologically like I have a suite of Psychological interventions online that I've been marketing to people for about two and a half decades I mean one of the principles that we established my business partners and I before we created these interventions was that not only did they have to be useful, so to do good, not only did they have to have that they had to be of demonstrable good, but they also had to

do competitively well. So if I said, well, maybe so, so is it too much to ask for people, for example, who are providing affordable housing, let's say, that they do it in such a candy manner that they also equal or beat what you might expect for standard market returns. And couldn't you use that as an indication of the quality of their offering? Or do you feel that there are situations where placing both constraints on people, you know, you have to do good and you have to do well, makes movement forward too difficult? Well, let me give some numbers to frame the challenge and then answer your question directly.

So as you probably remember, the name of my company is 1.6. 1.6% of institutional assets is $3.5 trillion. So this is a little bit like the Beyond Learn Board number. If we actually, if institutional investors and ultra-high net worth individuals were to allocate 1.6% of their assets per year to these types of investments that we're talking about, true double bottom line investments, affordable housing, I can come up the number of health,

financial inclusion, education, there are any number of book notes, the number of online learning tools that are, we could actually achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals by 2030. So that is the amount of private capital that is needed to fill the gap. So just put that number out there so they frame that. But let me respond more specifically to your, I think the one area of investment that I've spent most of my time on in the United States, Jordan is affordable housing.

We are basically shy. I mean, we have a homelessness problem, we have a affordable housing problem. There are only three ways really genuinely to build wealth in a lifetime. One is to start a business or be an amazing professor like yourself. Two is to own the S&P 500 for 30 years, but the third one is to own your own home rather than rent. So we need to have, find a way for there to continue to be greater access to home ownership.

From those who right now come out of college with these student loans and can't make a down payment, we're going to have to find a turns out that the equity returns on some of these affordable housing programs in Nashville and Austin across the country, the equity returns to the investors are between 16 and 18 percent a year. Well, I'm sorry, dear friend. That is still 12% ahead of, you know, 14% ahead of the inflation rate, and well in line with the actuarial needs of a number of the retirees, if you can actually have a 15% return you double your money every five years, who doesn't want to do that.

So an important part of what we're doing at my company is highlighting where these opportunities for double bottom lines truly exist is something that I would love a future arc forum and we're talking about arc in the United States having, it's one thing that I would like there to be a thread on in arc in the United States because I think the United States has a far greater likelihood of leading in philanthropy and leading in these creative solutions than Europe where they expect governments to do everything. Europe, you know, there's hardly any philanthropic giving in Europe because everyone, well, it's the state, you know, there's zero philanthropic giving in Russia and China because the state

is the only thing. Imagine trying to be a nonprofit in China or Russia solving problems, you get outlawed. So the very interesting thing though, is a lot of creativity is coming from these various organizations. And I always give a shout out to my dear friend, Jim Sorensen, and the Sorensen Impact team, which is in Salt Lake City, you should also have Jim Sorensen on at some point. So he pivoted 100% of his portfolio

three years ago, Jordan, to impact. The only types of investments he makes now have to have verifiable impact. And he's outperforming the market. He's outperforming the market by 100. Now to me, this is the sweet spot. If you're outperforming the market and you're solving some major social

and environmental problem of the day, I'm all in. I'm all in. Right, right. So you are making the case that, like with sufficient judgment, you can have your cake and eat it too. Well, that was my sense with regards to yeah, emphasis on this, emphasis on the sufficient judgment. It's hard. You have to be mindful. And there's a lot of ho come out there. There's a lot of, there's a lot of pretenders and false gods and cryptocurrency traders that have these, you know, solutions,

you really must do your homework to make sure that there is verifiable additionality that is to say a dollar that is put into the strategy is gonna create a solution that absent that dollar does not happen. There needs to be real impact. And that's something that you can say in affordable housing. That's something you can say in affordable housing.

That's something you can say in some of these educational initiatives, financial inclusion initiatives, improving people's FICO scores, for example, gives them direct access to borrowing and directives. And there's a whole business operation hope in Atlanta, a great NGO, one of the organizations I call an exemplar of hope that has a proven pedagogy, Jordan, a proven pedagogy that improves inclusivity and sustainability without compromising economic growth. There are literally dozens of these organizations throughout the United States. And a lot of what they're doing can be replicated around the world. So I've kind of got the,

you know, Bjorn Lomborg has done a really good job on these top 12. I got the next ones down on homelessness, recidivism, job opportunities. Here's a great one from Catholic Charities Fort Worth and Dallas. So it turns out, as I'm sure you know, 95% of the community college courses that people take in the United States of America, which are free, basically, do not lead to a certification.

It turns out a lot of people taking those community college courses. 90%. It's a crazy waste of money. What did they learn at Catholic Charities Fort Worth? They learned that if they actually give a case worker to everyone who's trying to get a community college degree, which is an expense.

It's like a Bjorn Lornborg cost-benefit expense. But if you get that, the completion rates multiply fivefold. And then what happens? Those mothers, then they're usually single mothers, you know, in their teens or early 20s, they go from welfare dependency to work in independence. And this is where we got to do this is what the call for greater personal responsibility tells us. This is what the call for for Jacob's ladder tells us. This is what the call for greater

inclusivity tells us. This is what Abraham would do if he were alive today. Right. Okay. So that that program that you just described that something akin to a mentorship program is so that people are going to college, but they don't have guidance. They don't have any way of abouncing their plan of someone. And everyone needs that. And for me, you know, if you have mom, take care of little jujube on Tuesday afternoons, you can make this course. You're able to make it if you just adjust your schedule and drop off and here's another daycare program that you could use that you haven't heard of. That's right for the additional assistance. Let me give you one, though, that I love even more,

which is teenage recidivism. So's right for the additional assistance. Let me give you one though that I love even more, which is teenage recidivism. So it turns out the laboratory for economic opportunity at the University of Notre Dame, which is an anti-poverty lab studied what was going on with teenage truance in the state of Indiana. And you know what they found out, Jordan?

They found out that if they teach a course of Aristotelian ethics to these 13, 14, 15, 16-year-old kids, all of them are brighter than we give them credit for. Yeah. While they are going through these truancy programs, recidivism declines 70%. These poor children, God bless them, have never had anybody to tell them, this is good, this is evil. Right. This is what an examined life consists of. This is what an

unexamined life results in. And they're reading the original texts or reading Aristotle. They're reading Plato. I was very moved by Oz Guinness, for example, at Ark. It's the kind of thing that Oz Guinness would have designed himself. So when you think of these individual programs that I'm describing, another one that I love in here in New York City is Ready Willing and Abel. We're in a New York studio here. And I'm sure that folks here have seen there are these guys that are pushing buckets on the street corners around New York City and their job is to sweep up the streets.

All of those guys are homeless or former incarceration. And they're given a six month opportunity to decide if they stay clean, they stay off of drugs, they sleep in the home that are provided in there if there's a communal living circumstance. And they clean the streets for which they are paid by New York City. They can then choose from more than a dozen accreditation programs ranging from becoming a plumber to becoming a massage therapist to any other, and again, Jordan, they are moved from

dependency to independence from a life of despair to a life of meaning, fulfillment, and purpose. And these are oftentimes funded by the social bonds that are based on outcomes. The things that are going on in this sort of social engineering space, social entrepreneurial space, it's very exciting. It's very exciting. And something that I hope future arc forms will be able to, you know, really put in bright lives, solutions, things that are working, ways that we are changing individuals' lives in the moment that is verifiably not only fulfilling them, but lowering the burden on society. Taking people. Renown of Ada has halved homelessness in the last six months. Do you know how Renown of Ada halved the homeless rate? No, they built, they built

enough affordable housing, and then they made it a law you cannot sleep on the streets. You are arrested if you stay on the streets. So everybody had a place to go. They had to go to these places. Guess what happened when they went to these and forward with? They were then given career counseling. Those who had drug problems were given drug attention. Those who are mentally ill and a good part of our homeless problem in this country is mentally ill people. We let them ride the subways here.

It's crazy. No, they have to be put into programs, Jordan, that actually matches them with the needs that they might need to tell you this. And there's a so renown Nevada has done something that San Francisco and LA need to figure out. We have more than enough space in the city of New York to put homeless people. In fact, there's always enough beds in the city of New York for homeless people. But then combining that with the proper level of of of trading counseling to get to independence is what's necessary. Okay, so so I would like to hear some more of these solutions, but maybe right now you could also

I'm curious too. How are people how could people who are watching and listening participate in programs like this and where could they turn to for the kind of investment advice into these programs that you would regard as credible and reliable? Yeah, so I've got to be careful here because this has become very self-promotional. Well, that's okay. We can let people sort through that themselves. Okay, well, my website, www.1.6.com highlights a whole range of these investment possibilities.

And I have a, what I call a curated town square, which is called the solutions forum. And on the solutions forum, where I post, for example, my video from ARC, but any others is an open source, anyone who wants to put out their ideas for what they're doing on homelessness, what they're doing on these various social issues are able to do so. So that would be one area that I would suggest. An exemplar of hope, which is something that I've trademarked,

is, and it's global. They have a bunch of these, there's a wonderful one in the UK called Make It Click, which goes home to home and teaches people how to use internet services and how to actually gain access to the information that's already in their homes that they didn't know that was available to them. Make it click program.

These various exemplars have many opportunities for volunteerism, for other forms of time, or talent and treasure. That's what the philanthropic world needs, time, talent and treasure. All three are needed. But in terms of scaling some of the very, very best ideas, I mean, anybody out there wants to volunteer to teach Aristotelian ethics and their local delinquency center. There's ways to learn how to do that. And I will promise to you, Jordan, the people that choose to do this, what you do for a living,

by the way. But the people who do that will find those days to be the most fulfilling of their lives. Right. Definitely. The days that they're going to come home and just say, I did something today. You said something that I wrote down at the Art Conference of London, which is that there is no difference

between thinking about ourselves and being miserable. To the extent that we're focused on ourselves and our own needs and our wants, literally that is the recipe for human misery. You want to actually be non-missable, then operate with the third pillar of Catholic social teaching, which is solidarity. We are our brothers and sisters, keepers.

By the way, I put in that same category, civility. I think it's very, very, very possible for all of us to contribute to a greater culture of civility. By the way, that means being better listeners as a start. And trying to respond to, I've had my niece, the one that I worry about, not wanting to have children, I think she's changing her mind, come to my lectures and read my, and just say, please, you know, Claire, criticize me. What did I get wrong? Tell me what just, did you have a chance to read this? Did you see this?

And I can't give up, you know, I can't give up Jordan. It would be wrong for me to give up. And it's wrong for any of us to give up. Abraham didn't give up, did he? So this 1.6.com, is that written out? 1.0 and 1.1 is numeric. 0.6 is alphabetic. I also have my own book, Sustainable, which was endorsed by Pope Francis and Larry

Fink wrote the foreword that talks about these dozens of these exemplars of hope, just as examples, and also provides this criticism of the ESG, which I'm not going to leave. I believe that we would be better off just abandoning the whole project, moving on. acronym based investing, remember the bricks, we were supposed to only invest in the bricks for a while, Brazil, Russia, India, China, well, that's not the right investment strategy. Then there was the Fang, a Facebook, Alphabet, Netflix, Google,

that made no sense anymore. So we need to move on from ESG, understand that it was well-intended, but that there's better solutions. There's better ways for us to achieve greater inclusivity. There's better ways for us to achieve greater sustainability. And I put another fine point on this. I think B corporations, you probably know B corporations are these corporations that promise

to operate in accordance with very strict ethical rules, very strict environmental rules. I say great, working for a B corporation is wonderful, it leads to a great conscience. Just don't have any of those in your 401K because you can't be able to retire. Yeah, well, that shows is that what happens is that the appearance of moral effort is substituted for actual moral effort.

And that's why those companies underperform. Like one of the things we should point out to people who are watching and listening in keeping with what you just said is that there is no magic bullet to investing. It is no simpler to invest your money than it is to earn it. Those are equivalent problems. And you have to be one wise and awake person to figure out where to put your money so that it will generate a return. And that's probably the first thing you should be looking for. Because if the people who are who have your money can't do that, they probably

can't do anything else. And then the second thing you should consider is, well, is this the sort of enterprise that you believe in your soul is worth supporting. Because you're actually morally obligated to do wise things with your money as well. Not least to demonstrate to yourself that you believe in your soul is worth supporting because you're actually morally obligated to do wise things with your money as well. Not least to demonstrate to yourself that you have some respect for the time and effort you invested into generating the money to begin with. And I suppose not least because poorly invested money can do an awful lot of damage.

Right, the last thing you wanna do is give dangerous idiots money. I need to give you an A-man, a AA-manman, a triple A-man, and all of that, and just maybe add for listeners that we think a lot about our physical health. We think a lot about our emotional health. We think a lot about our mental health. We go to the gym. We're careful of what we eat.

We need to be equally mindful about our financial health, particularly in this age of aging. Almost everyone listening to this podcast is going to end up outliving their parents and they're going to be there in their 80s. And if all they have is social security, they do not have a meaningful life. You're going to have to have some type of nest egg. We are living longer and I'm saying this to everybody in the room as well. What you have to do with your 401k is put it in the stock market when you're young and forget about it. Don't even look at it until you turn 65. You turn 65, you're going to open and say, well, I've got $2 million in savings. How did I do that?

You did it by not bothering with it. You just let it go. Be mindful about your savings patterns. Be mindful about your investment patterns. Be mindful about your investment patterns. If you are so wealthy and you have so much time and you want to go for double bottom line investing or you have a desire to have your money do well and do good, well that's fine too, but it's still gonna require mindfulness, it's still gonna require deep care,

it's still gonna require discernment because there's no easy way to just like you have to be careful about your physical health, you have to be careful about your physical health, you have to be careful about your financial health. Yeah, well, I studied for a while the phenomenon of money managers because I was interested in investigating the possibility that there were statistical ways of predicting market behavior, and I basically concluded not that this was unique to me, but at least to my own satisfaction that that was actually a technically impossible outcome to perform, except in very rare cases. And so that your best bet, and this is the advice that you

gave earlier, is if you're, especially if you're the average investor, is to buy something like an index fund with a low manager fee and just leave it the hell alone, because you're not going to beat, you're not going to beat that. Now let me give you a statistic for that. Only one out of five managers beats the S&P 500 over a five-year period, only one out of 10 over a 10-year period, and they aren't the same manager. Right. They aren't the same manager.

So the idea that somehow you're smart enough, well, I'm going to buy Netflix and Google and hang on to it and see what I can, it's nuts. You cannot be smarter than the market. Something so easy. You can buy it for one basis point, at Vanguard, Fidelity, any number of places, and just put it in place and forget it. The older you get, start buying some bonds and having an income stream, and then more importantly, volunteer your time, look after your community, be involved with those in need around you, be there for your brothers and sisters, your grandkids, and

others. That's where you're going to want to spend your time. Right. Right. Right. Now, you said that Larry Fink wrote the intro to your book. And that's interesting because Larry Fink is probably the world's most famous proponent of the ESG strategy. And so how did that come about? And, well, I presume you obviously must know

Larry. And what does he think of your ideas? And why did he write the forward to your book? Well, this is how many people are listening to this podcast, Jordan, because this is quite a personal story. Oh, someone more than a 250,000 and a million. But, you know, obviously, I'm going to tell the story. I'm going to tell the story. I'm going to tell the story. The story we're telling and it reflects very well on Larry think and my colleagues at BlackRock.

So, I was a very senior executive BlackRock. I went to the group executive board. I said, I wanted to write this book on ESG. I didn't know where it was going to take me, Jordan. ESG was a relatively new thing. I wanted to spend time. I didn't have my ideas so far. As I went into the book,

and as I started studying all these ESG ratings and the fact that they're completely uncorrelated and frankly, they're a bunch of nonsense. They made no sense. I ended up becoming more critical of what was coming out on ESG. And I'm still submitting all of these chapters to my colleagues in Columbia University Press,

Columbia's the my publisher. And I'm thinking that I'm a hunky-ki Dorian my way. Well, it turns out when the book finished, my senior executive of BlackRock said, you can't publish this book. This book is a little too racy. I said, well, I'm sorry. I think that we agreed that we would. Well, go speak to the boss. So I went to speak to Larry and said, Larry, Larry was, and he said, this is very simple. I have a simple solution. I'll write the forward to the boss. So I went to speak to Larry and I said Larry Larry was and he said this is very simple I have a simple solution. I'll write the forward to the book and what does Larry write in the forward to the book? I I commended to you. He's very complimentary of me. He's very complimentary of the work that you the book, but says I don't agree with everything Terry says

So very simple very very simple, you know get out of Joe and Larry his great credit, and I have nothing but great things to say about Larry think he is a close friend, always welcomes him the debate. Today, Larry think does not use the term ESG. He has stricken it from his vocabulary because he has decided it is overly politicized and it means the wrong thing. So I would say I probably get some credit for that. Larry thinks not using ESG, one down, four billion to go. Let's focus on impact investing.

Let's focus on true double bottom line. And let's focus on making sure that asset owners, those who investors, get what they really want. I mean, I advise the Pope on finances. I've advised the world's largest sub-and-run funds. I always only asked one question, Jordan. What are you trying to do? If I were your financial advisor, I would do the same thing. What are you, Jordan Peterson, trying to do? What are your goals? Lay it out. Give me your plan. What are you trying to do? And then it is my fiduciary duty

to make sure that I devise the most cost effective, efficient, and highest probability portfolio solution that will actually achieve what your goals are. That's what being a fiduciary means. And I can say with my hand on my heart that in the 13 years that I was at BlackRock, I never did anything but that.

I never sold a single ESG fund when I was at BlackRock, and I did more than $130 trillion worth of transactions, which is a lot of transactions, and never once sold in ESG fund, because they were never the right solution. They were never the right solution. You said that you had worked with Pope Francis and I've been struck and I would say Primarily negatively by what I've seen as his emphasis on

Climate responsibility, let's say my sancy is that the proper responsibility of the church is the salvation of individual souls. And that sort of thing is contentious and political enough so that it's actually not the proper business of the church. Now, I don't know much about Pope Francis. And apart from that particular criticism, I would say, and the small knowledge that was required to generate it, I'm quite ignorant. Would you tell me in your view and our viewers what your experience was in working with Pope Francis

on such ideas? And I will do so with joy. I always say, Jordan, that my Catholic church has the heart of Pope Francis, the brains of Benedict XVI and the fortitude of John Paul II. And it turns out those three individuals didn't agree on a lot. And Pope Francis is someone who has definitely veered into a number of economic and social topics that I do not personally agree with.

But having been a Catholic all 64 years of my life, I note that the church's teachings evolve. Let me tell you though a personal story about Pope Francis. So during the time that I was working on the Hispanic and financial reform commission, I lived in the exact same residence where he lived, which is Santa Marta within at the Vatican City State. And every morning I was allowed to go to mass.

And one morning I was at mass and there was just a horrible smell. And I couldn't figure out what this horrible smell was. This is a fairly curated audience. And I look over my right shoulder and I see there's a homeless guy with two dogs right behind me. And I'm thinking to myself, well, security was a little accident, not sure how this happened. So we go out to breakfast and breakfast

at Santa Marta, it served a cafeteria style. So the pope is helping himself to eggs just as you're leaning over for a piece of bacon and you're smiling with one another and it's a very cordial affair. But I sit down, I said, you know, there was some people in the back of the chapel this morning, does anybody know what's going on? Oh, yeah, you don't know. No, I don't know. I said, well, yes, every night,

Pope Francis sends one of his emissaries out to the bridges in Rome and finds homeless people and invites them to come to mass the next morning. They usually do that at between 11 and 1 o'clock in the morning, 11 p.m. 1 o'clock in the morning. And this particular individual said, well, I'd like to come, but I can't because I have two dogs. And they said, you're allowed to bring the dogs. So this person was the personal invite of Pope Francis to come and hear the word of the Lord.

By the way, he was also given a shower, a shampoo, and a shave at the end of it. Pope Francis instituted in the Vatican City State a free barbershop for anybody in Rome who wants to come in and get cleaned up. That's paid for by the Vatican. So I think this is a story that I hope reveals the heart of Pope Francis,

who is a good man. I don't know heart of Pope Francis, who is a good man. I don't know about you, Jordan, but being in charge of 1.2 billion souls on the planet, that's one hell of a burden. Being in charge of an organization that is as political as the church is with, as wide views politically as you can possibly imagine,

from liberation theologists who are full blown Marxists, to some of the most conservative people on planet, all of those people are Catholics under one roof, to actually try to beat the shepherd for that flock is not a task that I envy. And I'll also just point out that there are only three monarchies left on the planet. Pope Francis is one of them.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is another and the Sultan of Brunei. What these three guys say goes in their country, whatever they do, that's the law. And so the heavy is the head that bears the crown. Heavy is the head that bears the pontiff hats and my my my respect for Pope Francis and what he's trying to do is eternal. I respectfully disagree with him on things, but the Catholic church, like every church, like any any listener believer, it's it's the community of believers that ultimately make that community. There is such a thing as the congregation of the laity. The laity within the Catholic Church has a lot to say.

And those of us who have disagreements with Church, I'm writing this article with Erica Castelow right now on the issue of children. Erica, by the way, another wonderful speaker at the art conference in London, somebody I had dinner with two nights ago with her husband. And we believe that we can push the church a little bit further. We should not have unwanted children, Jordan.

We should not bring people into this world that we cannot properly take care of. If that involves some form of birth control, we'll so be it. And so we're going to have to have more of a grown-up conversation inspired by the teachings of Jesus, inspired by the teachings of Jesus, inspired by the teachings of the church that takes into account that we live in this new world of 10 billion people, 10 billion people,

trying to make this little ball of mud and water and a little, little, little sliver of air on top of it, work for centuries and centuries to come. Because like Abraham, we have to care about our great, great, great, great, great grandchildren. Well, you know, that's a pretty good place to end, and it's perfectly time, so I think we'll take that opportunity to do exactly that. I'm going to reiterate for the viewers and listeners the websites that you described. The first one was www.1.6.com with one numeric and six written out. I've got that right. I hope. One point is also written out. One is numeric. Point is written out. P-L-I-N-T-S-I-X. Okay. And you talk about the solutions for them there. You also mentioned a site in the UK. Make it click.com, if I got that right.

We'll put all this in the description of the video. Yeah, but that's so annoying. Speaker notes. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for the discussion today. It cleared up a lot of things for me. I was very particularly curious about your comments, about Larry Fink.

I'm very glad to hear that he had the largeness of mind, of spirit, let's say, to enthusiastically promote your book, despite the fact that you had substantive disagreements with him. I thought you did a remarkable job of being even handed in your discussion of the ESG movement, pointing out that it's a mistake to assume that the motivations that gave rise to the movement were all to be treated with cynicism, exactly. Yeah, well, and I think the same thing is true of the UN Millennium goals. I mean, we need ambitions and we need to figure out how to implement them without undue top-down control. And that's actually a very difficult problem, right? Something we're wrestling with at ARC is like, well, how can we provide leadership without

what, transforming across even a few short years into just another organization that issues top down in a moral pronouncements? It's a very difficult thing to get right for any length of time. So, I appreciate all that. I want to thank everybody who's watching and listening for your time in the tension. I repeat that after every episode, but it's always true. I'm very thrilled to have the privilege to talk to as many people as I do get to talk to. And I'm also heartened by the fact that these podcasts, which are very technically complex

and that I What put forward at the highest level of my intellectual ability that they meet with such a receptive audience and that all these people like you sir Who can bring their wisdom out into the world are being welcomed in their attempts to do so? I think that's absolutely remarkable and and another reason for hope in a in a Future that's going to be very challenging, but that is right with an unbelievable amount of opportunities, which is also something that you made clear today. And thank you again to the Daily Wire Plus people for making these conversations possible

and the film crew here on Vancouver Island, where I am with my family. I'm going to continue my discussion with Terry on the Daily Wire Plus platform. I'd like to delve a discussion with Terry on the daily wear plus platform. I'd like to delve a little bit into his personal background. Find out I want to find out where he came from and why and what motivates him. And so if you want to join us on the daily wear plus side, that also offers you an opportunity to throw some support the daily wear away.

And I think that's a useful thing to do given what they're attempting to accomplish in the world. There's an organization that's trying to do good and do well at the same time and my experience with them really indicates that that is what they're attempting to do and quite successfully. So hopefully we'll join some of you there. Thanks again, Mr. Kayley, much, much appreciated. It's an honor, Jordan, genuine in honor. Thank you so much for having me.