TRASHFUTURE - Heaven’s Gate Café Team feat. Brigham Young Money

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Riley and Alice speak with Jordan and Greg from the Brigham Young Money podcast (@BYMPodcast) about the tech industry in Utah, its hand-in-glove relationship with both the state and the Mormon church, and the ways in which they’re trying to make Silicon Slope a real thing. We also discuss a startup that would have seemed far more at home in season one of TF, which none of us could have predicted or imagined.   Support Brigham Young Money on Patreon here! https://www.patreon.com/brighamyoungmoney   If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture   *SCOTLAND ALERT* Get tickets to our live show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on 4th August here! https://www.trashfuture.co.uk/event-details/trashfuture-live-at-the-edinburgh-fringe   *LIVE SHOW ALERT* We're going to be recording a live podcast in London on July 26! Get tickets here: https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/trashfuture-live-in-london/   *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hi everyone and welcome to this free episode of TF. It is Riley and Alice in studio today. It's the free one. It's the free one. There's no hootin' in hollarin' because who's saying in Milo are both at undisclosed locations. However, to bring the hooding and much of the hollering, almost all of it really, we are very glad to be joined by Greg and Jordan from Brigham Young Money all the way over in Utah.

Guys, how's it going? Hello. I'm the meme of the hooding and the hollering at the soda fountain right now. Yeah, he brings all the hood and all the hollering. I just I don't know what I bring to the equation on the sleep. Yeah, if he's bringing all the hooding and all the hollering, what you are my friend is you are the best. What is the Utah bez? From Happy Mondays? Yeah.

Okay, I wasn't expecting a Happy Mondays for me, to be honest. That's not the kind of music I associate with. Well, I don't know anything about the Happy Mondays as a band. I know them because I like Steve Cougan's films. Ah, but you were aware of bez from the Happy Mondays. The one who used to be there in order to take drugs and nominally be part of the band. Yes. Yeah, the guy who's the guy in the happy Mondays whose job was to be on stage really

high, dancing around and not playing any music. So we have the Alex Ryder bringing the Hutt and the Holler and we have the best play in his Maracas. The dream. I can live with that. Yeah, I'm glad to just bring you guys a little bit of a British culture that I've internalized from being here for so long, but I know I I could neither of you are the best. You're you're both the Alex Riders. We are here to talk just a fantastic interpersonal No one. Thank you. Yeah. No, so we're going to talk all about this, a very interesting phenomenon, which is how the Mormon church and the sort of state of Utah have managed to, as they have been for the last like 100 years, be the perfect capitalist subjects and the perfect agents within capitalism to ride every successive

wave and adapt every change they need to to create a tech industry in Utah, basically. That's right, utology. Have they invented a sort of silicon geographic feature for this yet? Because I know there's like a Silicon Valley like for real and then in West Virginia they talk about like the Silicon Hall or and stuff and it's like is there a Silicon Salt Lake or what do they call it? They call it Silicon slopes which is exactly. Oh that sucks so bad. Just like Britain we had the Olympics once and we made it our entire identity. Okay right got you. I will also say that my mom was a nurse in Utah County for a lot of years at a

hospital that per capita did more boob jobs than anywhere in the world. So Silicon. Silicon slope takes on a double meaning. It's a bit of a double on-tongue right here in Utah. Yeah. I want to ask all of you to tell me what you think valid fill. Oh, no, we've abruptly moved into the star sub segment. It's right. Valid fill. You said fill. Okay. That's right. I want to start with Greg. Is that Lisa and new venture? Yeah. Well, it's actually what's going to happen is that's her new venture. And then it's good. She's going to be aqua hired by Twitter. Yeah, and then she's going to be made the CMO. No, I do not believe Lisa Ann is involved with valid fill.

Yeah. Jordan, what do you think valid fill? Okay. For valid fill, I'm going to go with it's an ESG approved landfill service. Oh, interesting. How would that? So what we think it's like, we've chosen the most deserving place to be a new landfill. We are putting a landfill outside this. Yeah. We do a traditional land acknowledgement of the fall we dump a bunch of garbage into the

land. The air dumping, toxic chemicals on stolen novel. Yeah. This landfill recognizes the first people to inherit this land. This is crazy. This sort of like rollers guardians and stewards of it, which was terminated by us dumping a bunch of chemical waste into it. Yeah.

You know what's really funny about it before we go on about ESG is how much of the ESG rating is stuff that all of the people who are the various, you know, like Twitter, BlueTick people or the Vivek Ramaswami or whatever, it was like ESG is a Marxist plot from Davos to blah, blah, blah. Is how much of your ESG score is actually just like, yes, your chief executive is that a sufficient is that a sufficient removed from your board of governors and stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean, it's remarkable how much like very, very corporate inside baseball, people who do should not be exposed to it know about like genuinely, I saw some like anti-LGBT charts talking about DEI and it's like, you't, why do you know what DEI is? Well, that's, I think they don't actually know what it is. They know the acronym. Just like with ESG, the story of it is this will be a thing that realigns the incentives of the capitalist with society in general, but, right,

and actually what's in it is something that's very, very dry and very technical, but it occupies this place in the right-wing imaginary. It's bizarre. Anyway, no, I'm afraid it is not an ESG landfill, but that's a great idea, and I will be taking Alice valid fill. All right, I'm just thinking, I'm in mind of like parking validation here. So, oh, God, if you park illegally or inconsiderately, a sewage truck comes along and fills, like it sticks a sewage thing into the vents of your car and just fills it with like shit. That's justice.

Yeah, exactly. It's street justice. It's street justice. It's street justice. It's just below street justice. I mean, this is, I'm, it's wishful thinking, right? This is a start of that I would invest in, and that I'd be happy to see made real. I want to see a cop car that's parked across like three disabled parking spaces, a bike lane and a bus lane at once somehow. The NYPD's stretch home.

Hell yeah. What for going to police prom? Yes. I would love to go to police. If I could see that like filled up by like a septic truck, that would I think make my life. I like what we, one of the, one of the garbage men in New York that gets like the epilots in the metal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They gotta give you a special like metal for that. I'm a garbage man operator. Yeah, and that's, that's what Valid Hitler's, Valid Phil will fill your vehicle with shit and piss. I'm afraid again, another good idea, it's not that. Fuck, I'm gonna ask you all the y'all to. What was the other y'all just?

What if you could play self-serve beverage dispensers in locations you never considered before? That's, okay. That's an incredible set. First of all, okay, places I've never can, how broadly are we drawing this? Can I put a self-serve beverage dispenser on like one of the moons of Venus?

Are we? That's only limited by I suppose how much thrust you can generate. We put a diving belt together. We're dropping a self-serve beverage machine onto the wreck of the Titanic. It's gonna like take out the fucking bell. Just like a really misguided person who wants to help. Like I bet those Titan people even stuck down there for a while. They're probably hung up there. I saw the first piece of news that said they were trapped and they hadn't heard a thing, stopped seeing the news after that. So I assume they're still down there.

And they need, I need to empower them. Sorry, excuse me. Yeah, we need to empower the one person in that sub who is the kind of person who gets a hot chocolate from a coffee machine. What's an American company, sorry to interrupt? It is, yeah. Because I can't think of anything more American than like American cities getting sweet

treat dispensers on every corner before public bathrooms. Well, see, that's the also the thing. It's promising to me self-serve beverage dispensers in places I'd never considered, but I can consider self-serve beverage dispensers in a lot of places. If the answer is just more stores, I'm going to be pretty furious because I want places I've genuinely never considered. I want to see one like teetering on the top of the Washington Monument. Yeah, this is...

Riley, where is this company located at? I'll tell... Well, I'll look for that on this site. I'm going to give you the next hypothetical, which is, what if you can empower pre-paid coffee customers with an express line? I love to go to... Oh, it's in Brayden, Florida. Yeah.

Okay, that's perfect. Yes, that's... I was about to say, that sounds like an incredible, Florida invention. Yeah. So wait, I have like TSA pre-check to get a coffee machine. It's what you're telling me. That is right. Yes.

I hate when I have to go through like airport security to get my little hot chocolate. Well, what if you could offer new levels of premium service for guests or develop new offers, you never thought possible? Why is this word like a sort of a coffee machine cult? Well, I like the idea actually that you brought up earlier, which is one of these paradoxes about the nature of God, like could God create a rock so heavy he himself could not lift it. Could you imagine a new coffee machine related offer in a place that you could not possibly have imagined

hitherto. You sort of break your own mind on this sort of love crafty and Lee. Genuinely, I'm all in on this. I love the Heaven's Gate Cafe team. Yeah. We have placed a self-serve coffee machine like on top of K2 and what it offers you is, is eternal wisdom.

We've done a sort of like, city and the city thing where the coffee machine is technically placed on your street but it's like placed in a way that's like beyond seeing and you have to like go around if from another direction in order to sort of like perceive it. Well, here's another question for you. What if you could deliver a new profit platforms with refill vessels?

What then? What then? What then would you do? Fuck, I don't know, I've never thought about this. Hmm. This proposal's amazing. I've never thought of any of this. I just want this selfishly because, you know, famously Mormons don't drink coffee, so I need,

Oh, of course. I need a self-serve coffee dispenser on like every square inch of temple square right by the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City. Yeah, it does look really shoving it in your face. Absolutely. We are pushing the coffee agenda on the Gentiles. That is something, I mean, honestly, that's something that like, yeah, that's a place you'd never considered putting a coffee machine before is in the holy of holies. Yeah, I needed on tap, then maronaise trumpet on top of the Salt Lake City Temple.

Yeah, we have, and we developed an offer you never thought possible, which is like constant grinding temptation. He just made sure he's not wanting more. He just got worked in. Thank you, Valid Phil. I actually had never imagined putting a coffee machine there or that offer related to a coffee machine. So we relate it to the book of Job. See, you know, like most people just go across the street from Temple Square to the church's multi-billion dollar shopping mall and just go to Starbucks there, but you know, that's

more fun to just be right outside like the visitor shop. This is the thing, I thought in my mind about someone doing like, oh well why don't you do like equal opportunity offensive-ness, why don't you, why don't you say, what if you put a coffee machine in the car, and I'm like, that's fucking hysterical. I would absolutely be all right. I think that's the funniest thing you could possibly do. There's like three five guys, like within 10 meters of the car, but already it's fine.

That you can't desecrate it anymore that it already has been. As soon as we get as MBS just approves some drone delivery company, you're gonna be able to get like deliver room to the car. Yeah. So here's another question for you. What if you had real time data available,

the performance of every beverage refill offer at any location? Uh, I would consider this to be, I would do like bush era leftism and be like, this is like the Patriot Act to me. The government or anyone else should not know how many times I order a little hot chocolate. All right, all right. I think you, I probably need to tell you now what valid fail actually is. And this was sent in to me because friend and coworker of the show, Tom sent in to me

a, a, a, a, an experience of going to Oppenheimer, where now at the cinema in London, one of the cinemas is using valid Phil technology. And it's an RFID chip embedded in a cup that makes sure that you don't get free refills. Oh, that sucks. Great. Great. After all that, after you promised me a hot beverage self-serve machine somewhere that no human mind could comprehend it.

The answer is you can't cheat the refills anymore. Yeah, I remember when you used to make a suicide by putting all of the different flavors in, right? No more. We are finally going to end, we are finally going to end people getting too crazy with the Coca-Cola freestyle machine, not that free of style, I think. We'll find Coca-Cola. So we're just going back to the thesis of the show too.

What if your soda can, can just call the cops? Yeah, genuinely. This is like the final stage of Reaganism the my feel. But this is, we've gone from, you know, welfare queens to now, no refills on your sodas. What's though ever? Yeah. So, for example, they give is at Binghamton University, even the States, go Binghamton fighting Bingham's. Bear cats.

Yeah. The Binghamton fighting bear cats.'s. Bearcats. Uh-huh. The Binghamton Facing Bearcats. You too can support the Bearcats. You have to buy the electric coffee mug. This is such a season one startup, I love it. Oh yeah. So buy the electric mug and then you buy a, you like put your money on your mug and you buy a package

for your mug. Oh, this sucks so fucking bad dude. So you can get a two drink recharge for $2.29, a five drink recharge for $4.99 or unlimited refills for $24.99 a semester as opposed to what you used to have, which was just a cup. The thing about going to university, particularly in the United States, right, is it's famously, it's very cheap. So the universities which don't have big endowments, right? They're really quite strapped for cash. They have to do this.

They have to sort of like nickel and dime you, right? Yeah. Oh yeah, you can't be getting free. I mean, that's money that you're robbing from the fighting Bingham's like programs, you know? We need that new stadium for the fighting Bingham's. Yeah, that's right. So for example, like the example they give is,

a university, like, hey, hey, welcome to Binghamton University. Go Bingham's, here's your cup. It's Fising Bay, you have to say the whole thing every time. Oh, fighting Bingham's. And then, here's your cup, and then that's like, that's your what, and then you have to put money on your account.

This is my cup, there are many like it, but this one is mine. So, as they say, what does this offer my business? Without my cup, I am useless. That would be... Private pile, you will salute the fighting Bingham. I just, it's a, he's sitting in the bathroom at night. The music is playing is rocking back and forth.

He's just like three ounces of Coca Cola, two ounces of Sprite topped up with iced iced tea and then fill with orange phantom. Yeah, they find an orange phantom is locker and make everybody do push ups while he swings a 64 answer. He swings a 60 more answer with no RFID kick at all. Sir, it's an orange pantasur. I didn't know they failed but it was just at that time. I think you're doing the Kubrick stat at spitting image. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool.

I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool.

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I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not up. It's a good episode title, candidate full metal soda perfect. So here are some of the other things they offer. Right. So campus retail, it's a campus retail operators can now leverage prepaid fountain as an engine to boost retail profit. Do we have to monetize everything? Yes. Yeah, especially at the college.

Like as if if the college bookstore wasn't the most exploitative thing on campus to begin with, good hell. Well, now they're just getting constant gambling for advertisements, and now they're like, oh yeah, don't worry, you can subscribe to Coca-Cola.

When campus operators deliver a network of controlled dispensers, they create an opportunity to offer the proven good, all semester vessel. So you buy a cup that lets you drink. I mean, it's basically like sorting people, like in Elysium, like the grand, the grand aristocrats with their good, all semester class. Well, this is the thing, like whenever we've tried

to like tokenize this stuff in fiction, it's always been like, oh, you have a little wristband, or you have a little jewel embedded in the back of your hand, or you have a custom colored jumpsuit that says, oh, you're on clearance code, parrowink or so you're allowed up here. And it turns out it's just the cup that you get your coffee in. Yeah, it's a keep cup, basically. So not only does this offer have a very high price per serving, it's a, it's a, it's a keep cup, basically. So not only does this offer have a very high price per serving, it offers convenience-valid consumers,

and is the engine by which successful operators increase their margin. If you try and like put any other liquid in the good all semester cup, it gets sent immediately to campus police. Yeah, don't just, it just bursts into flames now. Yeah, they like deploy the SWAT theme, you know. This sounds like, like something that Philip K. Dick would have

like pitched to his editors and got sent back because it was like too far fetched. Like, yeah, it's like one of his updates. Rooted in some sort of reality here, Philip. Can you take it down just like a few notches? And you know if people get upset about this or anything like that, they're just going to point to like, well, we had to do this because people have impirating books because we were selling them at like an outrageous amount to begin with anyway.

So, so now you get to have some kid on work study just upsell you on Coca-Cola as you buy like a t-shirt and two books. I mean, if this is RFID or the thing has a QR code on the bottom, that doesn't sound very secure, which opens up the possibility of legitimately Coke-free style machine hacking. Yes. I hate that these are the cybersecurity challenges of our new age.

Guy getting free refills with a QR code that fucking uploads something to the machine. I really want to, I really would love if like to get another cyberpunk novel that really engages with how fucking stupid it all ended up being. Well, I can recommend in the meantime as Boys Weekend by Massey Lev Chansky, which covers a lot of things around. Boys Weekend, that sounds like a book I can buy. You can buy it at almost any good bookstore.

So, before we move on to the sort of the Utah chat, I want to say the last little thing about Valadfil. This is from the Rebaudes page, it's really fun. Valadfil uses the magic of RFID technology. Okay, that's not very new. Oh, no. And not very secure, like I'm saying, you could get a little flip of zero and just be like,

okay, the machine is now going gonna like puke orange phanta until someone comes and tries to turn it off I mean I for one love a whimsical startup. I do this is I do too This is like very season one for us. This is this is old school This is it's a lot of fun So you use the magic of RFID technology placed on drinkware to deliver a new level of intelligence and business opportunity. Through its patented solution, ValidFil makes it possible to control your dispensed beverage business and customize a viable prepaid refill program. ValidFil, colon, and've spent a large part of my career as a marketing copywriter and just writing bullshit

and getting checks. And I've worked for a few local startups and I kind of have like a, I don't know if you call it a fetish, more of like a fascination with just shitty marketing copy. And that's about as good as I've ever heard. Dispensing wisdom for an RFID is just chef's kiss. It's really, when I saw it and I knew it had to be in. Yeah. They have two partners.

Worly drink works are strategic drink-wear partner. Excuse me? Worly drink work. Worly drink-wear partner. That's what I would call a bar after I've suffered a huge injury to the language center of my brain. Yeah.

The drugs described making a cocktail. It's a worthy, yeah. The word, the revolving bar, the Worly They're roving by, the woolly drink was. That's what like woolly wonka would call to you like, a Coca-Cola if he bought it. It's like, it's no longer Coke. It's now, worldy drink works, everybody. But, it's drugs.

And then their other partner is the Coca-Cola company. Oh, that's a big partner. Okay. Hell yes. You don't really need a second partner once you have the partner is Coke. That's right. Anyway, that's all for the larking about with the startup.

A chilling portent of things to come. Let's talk about Utah. The Beehive state. Let's dispense some wisdom. Yeah, let's dispense a little bit of wisdom. Let's talk about silicon slopes and what fascinates me most, I think, about the silicon slopes phenomenon is how, with everywhere else, there is some feature

of the government or just real estate prices, right? Like, Texas made itself very attractive to, like, libertarian, libertarian capitalists that run, I don't know, big tech companies, but saying we're not gonna charge you any tax in California's super woke. Other places like in West Virginia, they're like,

real estate here is basically free. You can't go wrong. But with Utah, what is so interesting is it is the presence of the Mormon church, it seems to the presence of the Mormon church, the network of the Mormon society and the facts of Mormon life have in fact made it a very attractive place for these people to start scale or set up big tech companies in the way that we talk about them. Yeah, I mean, it's the perfect sort of start to like a weird grind mindset industry that's just kind of taken over the entire, almost the entire economy of the state at this point. Also, I think there are also certain things that you talked about with Texas and West Virginia,

like appealing to the non-woke libertarian as well as just having super cheap real estate. If you rewind the tape back to Utah 10, 15 years ago, when all of this was really in its infancy, that was also a huge part of the appeal, was like Utah's cost of living was dirt cheap in comparison to the East Coast or California or other places, as well as Utah's one of the most deregulated states in the nation.

And then on top of it, Utah, because of the Mormon Church, is incredibly insular and you have a built-in network. So it's kind of this like just best of both world scenario for outsiders as well as like appealing to other Mormons. So it's kind of this like, I guess, perfect blend of libertarian tech startup world. Yeah, I mean, yeah. So the ideal population for a libertarian tech CEO to move somewhere is a lot of white

people who fall for multi-level marketing scams all the time. Yes. And also, one of the reasons why Utah has invested so much in tech and in the last 20 years or so is that the old industries that used to be big inside Utah are showing signs of stress. I mean, the top three I think before tech started becoming big was tourism, mineral extraction and also multi-level marketing. So, yeah. Tourism is going to be a problem because all of our national parks in southern Utah

might not be hospitable in about 10 years. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times.

It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. It was a hundred and twenty-six times. This is on Earth, I gotta go back before it gets too hot. Yeah, go in November. Yeah. We need a soda dispensing machine. Yeah. Yeah, we've dumped a soda machine into the narrows

and just like floating like face down like a corpse. Good luck. That's what you get at the summit of Angel's Landing. You make one of the most difficult hikes in the nation and you can get a nice sweet treat at the top. So I wanna rewind a little bit, right? We talk about these original industries in Utah, so resource extraction, tourism,

multi-level marketing. And then the history of Utah, I think, also is worth going into a bit as a place that has consistently negotiated its own, negotiated itself into a favorable position among more powerful neighbors and peers. American Switzerland. Yeah, this is precisely, right?

This is a place. A lot of Y people with a lot of guns who like falling from multi-level marketing scams. Two places I've been that seemed very similar to me. Can we get some healthcare please? How are the trains, you know, those those run on time. Somewhat, I mean, we are, we are pretty decent union Pacific hub and also we have somewhat of a light rail system. Yeah, see Americans with the best, but it's there. Hey, unlike anywhere else in America, it's not the best, but it is there. But this is this the history of the Mormon,

Mormon church in Utah, in particular, as a kind of quasi-theocracy inside the states, consistently like coming into conflict sometimes with the sort of growing power of the United States, at the same time negotiating its own beliefs to be like, okay, the Civil Rights Act happened. Black people are now fully human. Listen, God said that to the president of the church, some 15 years after that happened. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. God answered the call that black people were human two years after my parents graduated from high school. It's fantastic stuff. He had been like leaving it on red this whole time. So like, oh shit, I typed it before I got to send it.

Yeah. Yeah. Damn. Okay, so there is this, there is this constant negotiation, which means to me it's not surprising that Utah, as the sort of the old industries of the states die, especially in the 90s, that it very quietly, is not not publicizing it as much as say, California, or laterally Florida or Texas

Begins generating companies that are tech companies that are initially serving the Mormon church like ancestry.com And then end up creating a lot of other companies that are Again quietly humming away in the backgrounds of lots of other businesses like Qualtrics for example It says that tech is sort of like another one of these powers with which you have to negotiate. Now that's not news, but I think about the movie Badoelot, which is about sort of Mexico and how one of the things that the Mexican government doesn't that movie is sell Baja California to Amazon because that's like a rational decision that you can make 10 years in the future. And yeah, it is the same idea, more or less, right? Yeah. I mean, going through

the history of like Utah in general, too, like they've been, they've been pretty early adapters and been very valuable to new trends or anything like that. And also when it comes to the structure of the government and also the structure of culture in there, like for example, when the gold rush was hit in California, you know that Utah didn't get involved in that too much, but they were more than happy to sell the picks and the axes and the pants, the people going over there to kind of start like a boom there. The same thing with like mineral rights

in the year like 1900s. I mean, when you did that sort of thing too, like you also kind of adopted more of like capitalistic approaches especially when they came like copper bosses and silver bosses and and Kind of Orienting the church has cultured more towards a more capitalistic approach than the like boot like the Kind of growing socialist and like late labor

Movement you had in Utah the time to I mean there's a reason why that Utah as a state where Joe Hill got executed in Mm-hmm, and it's just been kind of And it's just been kind of a system that generally it finds what's kind of where the trends are going and jumps into it and essentially does really well. What do you, what do you credit the, what is distinctive about it? Where they are able to hop. I have my own theories, right? But what is your theory as to how the structure and nature of Utah and the church allows them to do that?

I think personally it's the centralized structure of everything along with a very sort of it's a hard working state. There are a ton of people who are willing to like break their back for labor and anything like that too. And the mixture of both a centralized system that can kind of generally push trends along with a workforce that's willing to go along with it can lead to some pretty interesting trends. Yeah.

So my crackpot theory about this as well is just that unlike anywhere else in the States, what you have is a kind of hierarchy that is believed in fully by most people, but sits entirely outside the market. It is full of these non-commodified, non-alienated relations. So long as you take all the identity boxes, you're so long as you're white, you your man, you're straight, all that stuff. And that they are, and as part of that, you are actually able to rely on, you're able to rely on having that sort of thick society that's been kind of, well, we broke that everywhere else

that's why we had to destroy the mob because that was Italian's momentism. Yeah. It's a Mormon mob. He's a real thing, guys. I promise you. It's the one place where you're not, it's one place in America where

they're still not boulding alone as it were. Mm. One of the recurring themes on our pod when we talk, because we obviously focus a lot on Utah and culture and politics, is the insularity and just how homogenous Utah is. Like, if you're living in certain communities in Utah, you can go weeks without seeing a single person

who doesn't look like you. You go weeks not interacting or interacting with a whole group of people who look like you, who think like you, who attend the same church. And with that, you know, there are rules inside of that community, one of which like is the, you know, the pioneer spirit that is pretty pervasive throughout the Mormon culture, which is all about, you know, nose to the grindstone and working hard and being obedient and being diligent is the closest thing on earth that you can get to God. And when you put that into a professional context, you get amazing results

because you get people who just like from birth been drilled down like, this is the way that you're supposed to be. You're subservient, you say yes, you get all your work done, you work past hours, and there's a real glorification to that. Yeah, and to speak to some that Riley said to, yes, it is kind of like a not a relationship that's outside the market and I think at a certain point like the church started

Taking more steps to be more exploitative about the loop well like for example like Tything is a good one to like 10% your income goes to the church and everything like that too And then all of a sudden these general funds with the tie that goes into starts moving more and more towards like actual like for profit projects of the church runs as well. Like for example, I can't remember the name of the the investment firm that the church runs, but they were finding that there was a lot of money that was kind of intertwined within the same pool that was going into into this investment firm, the church run. Enzyne Peak. So, Enzyne Peak, there you go.

So at a certain point, it is outside the market, but it's having some mission creep towards the market. And I would add that on the whole exploitative point that Jordan made, the church, as it's been revealed, has up to, you know, $150 billion in downment. And it's a church that's run almost completely on free labor. Like there's the, you know, there's the core of the 70 likes, there's the top of the top who get paid, but everybody else from like,

bishops on down, don't get paid for any of their positions, despite spending hours upon hours every week doing that. I remember like, one one of like the great, the great joys, one of the great privileges of when I was young was going and like setting up the chairs before church and cleaning the church before service. And like all of that again, completely non-paid. Well, it's, and that goes back to this idea that like,

what you, one of the reasons it's attractive is it creates these perfect capitalists, it creates a perfect subject for capital to exploit as a 100% basically. And because it, and that's one of the reasons why, like, Brigham, BYU, they, the FBI, the CIA, fucking every big company goes there because they're like, these people

are inculturated to be, as you say, obedient and diligent. We have, I find me a doctrine and a moment who fails a background check. Yeah. Exactly. And that's one of the reasons I've come back to this. Why this was interesting to me because it is a, it is an ideological, a cultural ideological reason for a kind of nation, but again, often highly, that's usual, cynical and exploitative

technology sector that's built on the last bit of America that hasn't, or much of the developed world that hasn't had everything eroded out of it because it was able to respond like that. But I wanted to go a little into the history, right? It's the 1990s when everything changes. Can you talk a little bit about like what happened there and how it's gone on to like,

how it has gone on to affect things? Well, I think you have a few moments in the 90s and start changing a whole lot. Like you have Novel and WordPerfect start up in the hills of Utah County, which is where Silicon Slopes currently is. And that's kind of the precursor to much of the tech sector there. And you start having this growth of outside of that too, like ancestry.com starts up there too, and I think around 2001. And then you start having more and more of an infrastructure built that can actually maintain a lot of these tech companies most notably a national security agency

Data center which is takes up pretty much a good chunk of the military basis right next to Silicon's work which which creates a lot of the abilities for like cooling towers and for power requirements that are needed to run these for like cooling towers and for power requirements that are needed to run massive data centers, not just for the NSA, but also for like Adobe or for or for massive. Like one or to in Utah pretty soon, I think, too. Yes, they are. They got massive tax breaks from the state to do that as well, which is funny because we're right in the middle of the state trying to regulate social media to a weird extent with miners. Well, they can, you know, the posts can happen elsewhere and then the data just gets handled,

you know? Exactly. This actually pretty... Well, I mean, it did true of the NSA, too. Like, what national security threats are there to Utah, you know, but all of the stuff that, you know that might threaten your interest gets handled or the data gets handled part through Utah. One of the other things I think you alluded to just now is how this creates a kind of

conflict almost because Utah has Utah and the church have seen, okay, we can negotiate our future by now adapting to the ongoing tech boom for the last 30 years. We've got these homegrown companies like Qualtrics and WordPerfect or Insight Sales or whatever. But then that creates a clash and demands, right? Because as we've talked about a lot on this show before, quite a bit of corporate progressivism, as you might call it, is again, it's obviously cynical,

it's obviously based on a business need, which is if we're going to be everywhere, we're gonna be able to potentially grow infinitely, we need to be able to work with, employ, or do business with literally anybody, which means that we have to then try and try and use the, almost like, diversity is a kind of wheel greaser for that kind of thing. And there, and as you say, like, these difficulty with wanting to, on the one hand, get meta in, and

on the other hand, wanting to have an extremely sort of draconian and strict social media regulation policy, like, how are they how are they gonna, what happens sort of when those two incentives come into opposition? Well, we already have one answer to that, which is you become California. Like that's how California became the way that it is culturally, in part, is a story of like that influence being exercised.

And you know, Texas is trying to do the anti-work version of that, and I guess Utah is what, trying to thread the needle between the two. Or essentially, yeah. I think what it mainly is is that you'll have the tech sectors make a lot of noise about issues that are important to the progressive issues, like for example, LGBTQ rights and that too, where, like like you'll have the packs that

represent like Silicon slopes, like Silicon slopes, and Utah Tech lead and Utah Tech pack, like they'll go and try and lobby like legislators like, hey, please don't put in this, this trans athlete band because this is stupid and makes us look bad to the world. And then they won't listen to them. And actually, like last week, like Cloud Flares CEO, Matthew Prince actually pretty much just had a quote on this when he talked about this. And he says, quote, I think Utah has some real challenges. It's a place that I love, but also there's a place

that still has the highest LGBT teen suicide rates in the country. And has an incredible challenge around some still very misogynistic practices and can be a very exclusionary place. But they're also not going to take their businesses out of there. No, it's sort of, I mean, it's interesting you mentioned, like DEI, we talked about earlier, you mentioned it as a kind of a wheel gracer, right? And it's along these same lines.

It's like, there's this tension in terms of like, who is legible and who is useful to capital in that way. Where on the one hand, you have this huge body of moments who are often very, very useful to capital. But on the other hand, if you as a tech firm, if you want to employ a trans person, for instance, or even if you want to employ someone who has a trans family member and you want to move them to Utah, that's a difficulty and there's this tension there. I don't know if you do resolve that, or if it's just something that they're content to let simmer. Yeah, I think the example I think is really perfect is in this situation is last year,

the Utah legislature came out with a full trans ban. Puberty blockers, trans folks can't compete in high school athletics, just the whole nine. Ryan Smith, the CEO of Qualtrics, is also the owner of the Utah Jazz partnered up with Tim Cook from Apple and did this big stand Against the legislature saying like we this is this is this is intolerable. We can't do this. This is in humane Which you know good on them great. I love it, but uh sure right? I don't love this The silver lining is the reason they did that is because the Utah Jazz The reason they did that is because the Utah Jazz and Salt Lake City were slated to host the All-Star game that next February. The year before Charlotte, North Carolina passed the bathroom ban and lost the All-Star

game. It's bad for business. It's really, really bad for business. So obviously Utah hosts the All-Star game, Spencer Cox, our governor, Vto's the Bill. And then the Utah legislature plays the long game and they bring up that same bill and make it even worse and even stricter in this last session. And it passes without the blink of an eye. And there is, you know, now that the All Star game

has passed and everybody's made their millions of dollars, the tech CEOs don't bat an eye and don't really say anything at all. What a great example of how I should play. Exactly. What a perfect short con. It's just like, it really is just that perfect example of like when it's convenient, they'll step up like ultimately the only thing that they'll advocate for is their own profits.

I've called it a few times a political K-fave because everyone is kind of in on the bid, too. 100%. Well, we can say that we're against it, but also the on the bit to 100% well we can't say that we're against it but also the same point to like we're not going to give up our tax breaks and also their our sandbox intuitive programs at the state of Utah's given us to they pretty much what hand away of a lot of like labor and corporate laws on that are lefty against us.

And like I think like a good example this too is also like love loud for example, like Tim Cook and Dan Reynolds for Imagine Dragons put on like a music festival every single year that's pretty much focused around like supporting LGBTQ people but also the same point too. Like they're not leaving the state. Like Apple's not gonna shut her at stores and like city Creek Mall or anything like that.

Like there's still more than willing to do business here, but it's just like, we just have to make it very loud that we're against it. It's also the case that like, you can kind of have it both ways for as long as the situation persists where either, you know, people can work remotely for one thing, but if you're someone like Apple, it doesn't matter. Like, if you have someone who you want to employ, who they cannot work in Utah, you can find somewhere for them in California. Sure. If you have someone who you want to employ, who they cannot work in Utah, you can find somewhere for them in California.

Sure. Anywhere else that you have an office which is everywhere. So, it's just this thing where you just absorb it, you know? And it's so grim. And even more so with tech being such a boom, you know, it's really the thing that's bolstering the economy right now. And like, you know, if like you can't employ a trans person, well, there are 17 other resumes that you can go through

from, you know, just local white people. For a moment. For a newt moment, Kim Robinson, yeah. Yeah. And so like, you're, what on what? white people from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old

from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old

from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old from old old from old from old from from old from old old from old from diverse, you're still getting butts and seeds. And so this comes back to, right, like this, this uneasy negotiation that happens where this group, more Mormons in Utah, the Mormon Church in Utah in general, are able to, as they always have, maintain exactly as much, at the exact balance between trying to

make sure they're staying ahead of the next thing Well keeping as much of that hierarchy that they sort of so value as intact as possible Listen if they lose this one then in 20 years time God is gonna say that it's okay to be trans. Yeah I mean honestly that's what to happen a few times As God came down to think, well, no more polygamy. We're done with that. And then it was, well, you lose the cultural, you go into the temple, you go into the Holy Fathers, you get yourself a coffee from the coffee machine in there,

and you have a sit down and you have a think, and you come out and you're like, okay, God said that we have to stop doing this. I mean, there was, there was the perfect example of that just a couple of years ago where the Mormon church came out and said, if you have a gay family member, you have to denounce them. They're not allowed. I mean, it was a real hard line in the sand.

And there was obviously, it made international headlines, and there was all sorts of backlash. And then there was a string of LGBTQ Mormons who committed suicide, like a large number, like just this awful, awful backlash. And then the church just comes out and it was like, oh, whoopsie, dude, oh, you don't have to do that anymore. God works in mysterious ways.

And then, so you, it also, you can wonder, right? Like, there are a couple more things I wanna touch on here as well. You can wonder, we've sort of seen the, how much the tech bubble was driven by the era of cheap everything and free money, right? As that has now come to an end, you know, the question I suppose is,

how is the Mormon church going to navigate something like Bidenomics? Are we going to see manufacturing come back? Are we going to see more action against labor unions, such as the rule or any? How does that work when we have that big paradigm change? Well, I think what it is, you can see what happened after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, too, because almost every Utah tech firm was banking with them as well, including the biggest bank in Utah, Zion's Bank, who was a fairly big shareholder in SVB who lost

40% of its stock right after its collapse, which is always fun. You love a good bank run that could cause a regional crisis. But you also sound like the state of Utah preparing to intervene to make sure that all these companies would still be whole. So I think at a certain point, like a lot of these institutions inside the state are gonna play the long game when it comes to tech as well. And maybe shore up any sort of losses that may happen

in the short term because they think in the long term it's gonna be okay. Because I mean, after interest rates are getting cranked up in Utah, you saw pretty much every company just shedding 20, 25% of its workforce overnight. We're going to bring back polygamy to deal with the problem of people being unemployed. We have to make sure everyone in the community is taking care of, so we marry them. The old polygamy chip fab is, you know, that's the future. Everyone works in that.

That's what you sort of come to the all polygamy chip fab from two different directions politically. Yeah, everyone's married to each other. No one's in a union. Yeah. Or it's the difference is there's ones, the polycule chip fab and ones, the polygamy chip fab. Like only one has people wearing hatty, or so I'll play it that much.

Yeah, the real horseshoe theory is polygamy. Yeah, that's right. And so you just wonder, they're going to see the writing on the wall. And as they have always done, they're going to just keep pivoting. But every time that pivot happens, it just so happens to benefit all the people shockingly, it tends to benefit the people at the top and the church's investment fund and things of that nature, right?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, Mitt Romney was one of the biggest proponents for bailing out SVB to pretty much just to ensure the state economy didn't collapse. And he's also the same person who famously wrote that op at the New York Times, said, let Detroit go bankrupt. But it's a little bit different when it's your own constituency. And also, Bain Capital had a fair amount of share in SVB as well.

So he had his own personal interest as well. But beyond that, like, it's a lot of the people that support the state that also go into the same people that support the Romneys and the leaves. And the, and all the same people that support the Romneys and the Lies and all the prominent families were the ones that settled the state in the first place. One more thing I want to talk about on the Utah subject, which is, this is written about extensively in an article that you sent me, called How Mormons Built the Next Silicon Valley, Well, No One Was Looking,

which talks about the specific importance of the fact that every Mormon is taught to go to is taught how to be a hoxster for two years in early 20s. We teach the world how to whitewash offense. So can you go into that a little bit, right? Like how that how that works and how it's sort of selling belief in a religion is quite a bit like selling belief that my little doohickey is going to alter a prepaid beverage forever. So missions are an interesting thing because it's one of those voluntary but also kind of mandatory things that people in the church have to do. Since me and Greg are by any stretch active members anymore, it does not matter for us.

We neither of us did it because we wanted to do other things in our 20s, but for the most part, 18 year olds, and I think 19 year old females, so 18 year old males, 19 year old females, are mandate to do either a 24 month mission for going anywhere and females have to do an 18th month mission. And essentially the entire time is you are based on metrics. How many people that you meet, how many contacts that you meet, how many reference cards did you get, how many people that you go

tracked on, how many people did you convert, how many people did you give first, second, third discussions with or something like that? It's a very metric driven sales process. Google Analytics for Salvation. You see some weird shit like that, like alternate means of reaching people. You see like moment tick-tock, a missionary tick-tock and stuff like that. And it's like, yeah, this is very, very adaptable, you know? Oh, absolutely. And it's very hierarchical too, because you have like these missions that are geographically

based under like one mission president who has district leaders and then zone leaders and then down to your individual missionary who is the one that's making contact with people. But it's those district and zone leaders that keep track of the metrics for every single missionary who's going out and converting people and giving discussions and meeting people and all that. So it's like I said, it's a very sales-based thing. So of course, like once they're done with that mission, they have the sales mentality, except for instead of for the Lord, it's for Viv and going door-to-door selling security systems.

You know, it's really funny is that one thing I've noticed is that they've been able to presale size a great deal outside showing off the book of Mormon, which is just a fantastic example of how sassar just collapses in the face of like persistence, you know. Yeah, the church actually bought an ad in the play bill for the Book of Mormon in its first run. That's another example of just like the world's most adaptable organization. Yeah, also, I'm fascinated because I want to get inside the mind of someone who laughs at the joke about, you know, I believe the, you know, the Garden of Eden is an upset New

York or whatever. It's a missus, I think. Missouri, excuse me, the Garden of Eden is a Missouri, you know, Golden plates on Hell, New York, all of this. And then goes outside talks to a missionary one time. Talks to a 19 year old girl who has never looked at a beer and is like, sign me the fuck up. I mean, you know, for a while, Mormonism was the fastest growing religion in the UK. Yes, it was. Very surprising. Yeah.

Right. Because it's almost as if we have a lot of people who are despairing about everything and need the kind of comfort that religion can offer them. Because I, in fact, yeah, I did use to think it was like, well, it's insane that a religion based on having friendly conversations with strangers and not drinking would take off here. But you have to think about this, right? You're the most alienated. You've ever been in your life and someone who looks like they've never been unhappy in their life and has never even looked to the beer. Like, express is an interest in you and talks to you.

It's possibly the first person who's done so in like years. Well, I guess it's the thing of, it goes back to what I was talking about about the decommodified relations because what you've just described, right, with the mission control basically is that is a completely decommodified sales organization. That is these institutions getting, getting built and then adhere to and then beloved by people. But it's ultimately, right, it's what you, what that gets signed up to is a

deeply hierarchical, quite arguably exploitative version of non-aliination where you trade away so much of yourself. Yeah, I would also, I'd also like to add that I think that a mission and why it transfers so well to a sales position at Vivint or Qualtricks or wherever bullshit tech company they end up at is, it's a pretty easy trial ground. And, you know, especially like what you're ultimately selling is your selling

good community, you're selling a belonging, you know, for a lot of people say if they're living in like a third world country, you know, there's, there's a whole welfare system that the, the church overseas, you know, so you can get help paying your bills and putting food on the table. As well as like, you're selling the answers to the big questions. You're selling salvation. You're selling, who are we? Where did we come from?

What's happening to us after death? And ultimately for a lot of people, you know, that's pretty enticing. You know, I know what's gonna happen to me after death. Oh, I get to go to church every week and I have this built-in community who's very supportive and very loving and you know, it just, for a lot of people, it can help elevate their lives in a lot of ways.

Yeah, I mean, like, it's hard to say no if you're at your lowest level of your life. Right, absolutely. You have a 19-year-old blonde hair blue-eyed kid from Provo. Just love bombing you. Yeah, and then, you know, like on the missionary side of things, you're able to spend two years cultivating those skills that are then completely transferable to the tech and corporate world when you go into sales. As a way of tying things up a little bit, I want to go back to something you said a couple

of minutes ago, which is what they essentially offer and how they talk about it, how they offer these answers, how they offer community answers sort of this whole comprehensive package. And you've got to remember, that's how all the big technology companies talked about themselves, especially in the period between 2012 and 2020. Like, minus the after death bit, they didn't so much address the offer and we work.

We worked, they did. Yeah, the job. If you just replaced God with WeWork, basically, it's the same sales pitch. Yes, absolutely. Because ultimately, all of these things, whether it is the various tech companies that are inside or outside Utah

and the relationship between those companies and the Utah government is quite distinctive, right? They're all ultimately talking about the same thing, which is nothing is working. You are alienated. Here is a set of answers, whether that's in a pitch deck or whether that's in like a missionary conversation. It's kind of much of a muchness. Yeah, I think you're completely right, too. It's, it does swap it out, too. And I think also just like why missionaries make good salesman, too, is that you've had them in 24 months of the most adverse conditions you could possibly has as a salesperson because you have them pretty much living off of the charity of others top ramen and having to live

with another person 24 or seven no matter what. Like at a certain point, if you can handle that, you can probably handle having a ton of phones slammed on you and having doors slammed in your face. Imagine a two-year sales bootcamp with a bunch of people you've never met that you have to pretend that you're like that you love. Not just like you have to pretend that you love them and that they are a part of your family. Yeah. It's, it's, I guess we can see how this just fits into the, into that whole long history

of producing people who are just crazy enough to stay one step ahead of the person. Do I say people? I mean, a people, not the individual people, of course. Anyway, anyway, I think that's probably a pretty good place to, to land. Greg Jordan, Br him young money. Thank you so much for coming on today. Absolutely. It was a gigantic pleasure.

May God bless those all else. That's right, heavenly father. And also, I want to thank you, the listener, for listening to the show. Don't forget, there is a Patreon. $5 a month, you get a second episode. $10 a month, there are a few more episodes. At some point soon, you will hear a review of spitting image if you are a Patreon subscriber. I'm sure it was a terrible time.

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Bye. Thank you so much and we'll see you on the premium episode in a couple of days. Bye! Bye! you