TrueLife - Benjamin C. George - 2023 Trend Forecasting

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://benjamincgeorge.com/https://benjamincgeorge.com/product/no-absolutes-a-framework-for-life/Today Benjamin C. George a.k.a. Mr. Wizard and I will be trying our hand at trends forecasting. We will be giving our 2023 predictions. What will become of:A.I.? The Russian/Ukraine conflict? Crypto Currency? The Great Reset? And much more!Be sure to visit the links above to learn more about Benjamin C. George. (Word on the street is, that if you mention this podcast he may give you a free copy of his latest book, “No Absolutes.”) One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast These and gentlemen,

Welcome to 2023. Welcome back to the True Life podcast. We're here with the first episode this year It's going to be a good one. It is. with Benjamin George, George and George, aka Mr. Wizard. We're going to get into the world of trend forecasting,

tell you about some ideas that we have and some things that we have read upon and some things that we see coming. But before we jump into that, Benjamin, would you be so kind as to maybe give the people the lowdown on who you are for those who may not know? Benjamin C. George, aka Mr. Wizard, Benjamin C.George.com is where you can find me

all my shenanigans. I wrote a book, No Absolutes. Do a lot of research, have a lot of fun, and starting to have a lot more great conversations with people like you, George. You're just saying that because it's true. Yeah, it's right. You're right. You're not wrong. So as we start to move into some predictions here, I think it's important to give people a little bit of background. Ben is a entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, a podcaster. Many hats. He's big into the world of.

coding and he's started multiple businesses and so just wanted to put that out there so that people can kind of get an idea of where we're coming from and what we're going to talk about. So predictions is there, is there, let me just throw one out of here and then we can kind of move between them at all, but, you know, we have seen a lot of turmoil that's happened in the last year, from COVID to the Ukraine war to education to artificial intelligence. And I'm curious as let's just start off with the idea of artificial intelligence. What do you see happening in the advancement and adoption of artificial intelligence in 2023? Well, I think the trends are going to continue.

I mean, we've seen a lot of really interesting things in the past couple of years with stuff like chat GPT. We have, you know, all the image AI creation tools are out there now. You know, I just saw one that used chat GPT to integrate as kind of like a lawyer. And so it was writing legal documents. So, you know, I think we'll probably see a continued trend with this machine learning, which AI is kind of a misnomer when it comes to that. You know, what they're doing is taking massive datasets and then putting machine learning algorithms on it.

And then, you know, it basically is a weighted balance type situation. where then it spits out something. Artificial intelligence, I think, in terms of like general artificial intelligence is still a bit off. But, you know, these massive data sets that now they're accumulating, you know, these, I think they set that law AI to take the bar exam and it almost passed the bar exam. Wow. So just so people who may not know, can you explain what chat GPT is for people? Yeah, let's see. I can't remember the exact number, but I want to say they took, it was in the billions, I think, of different data sets of, you know, like literature and conversations and things like that. And they put it all into this massive database and then ran machine learning algorithms on it. So essentially when somebody asked it a question, it has this massive data set to pull from and then, you know, pick out things that are most relevant to that topic and, you know, create articles. have conversations with people and do many other interesting things too. It's part of a whole suite of stuff.

I think I actually have access to it. I was granted beta access to it a while ago. I haven't played with it though. Yeah. So this is what I want to pick your brain a little bit more because we've been hearing for the last 10 years about automation and how it's going to strip away a large part of the working, people's jobs, whatever working means, it's kind of a, you know, subjective term. But at least in my

mind, some of the stuff I was reading was that you're going to see these self-driving trucks and these machines that do manual labor. But it seems what's beginning to happen is that the white collar jobs are being taken by automation. Like you said, lawyers. You see a lot of doctors going online now. Education is somewhat going online. But it seems to be that it's not so much the menial jobs as it is, or maybe it's both, but it seems to be there's an influx of like finance jobs and white collar jobs and lawyer jobs. Has that been your, has that been something you've noticed as well? Yeah, it's basically across the board. You know, I worked a long time on building automated trading platforms and, you know, to decent success as well. So, you know, to your point, the white collar

jobs are right up there with the blue collar jobs in the sense of automation. In fact, I think simply because most white collar jobs are data driven these days, it actually makes them a bit more susceptible to being supplanted by an artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithm. Okay, so that brings us to another potential. If we can agree, we're going to, so would you say in that prediction we're going to be seeing more of that trend? Yeah, 100%. And I think, you know, and I think a lot, these aren't going to be, you know, overnight people's jobs are gone. I think there's going to be an intermediary step there where it's basically computer assisted type things. So, you know, the truck driver is still going to be a truck driver, except there's going to be, you know, it's a whole automation system.

And then trailers that are behind them are integrated into this automation system. So now one truck driver can pull seven trailers. Or, you know, in terms of like a white collar job, like a trading job, you know, you have all of this data being pumped out by the algorithm. And then you have like a final decision process coming from, you know, a single trader. And so basically you're leveraging instead of, you know, having seven truck drivers or seven traders, now all you need is one. So I think that'll be kind of intermediary step that we see with a lot of these this year. Yeah, it's fascinating to think about. So I would agree.

I think you're going to see much more of this trend coming. And I think you're going to see in the race for profit and production, and I think you're going to see a lot of despair from that. Like I think that this world of automation is going to not really pan out the way people think. And the reason I think that is the technology that we have been working on, while technology is neutral, the technology we've been working on, is not to better society, it's to increase the profit. And when you increase profit, you simultaneously depress wages

and you depress the living standards of other people so that you can raise the profit for this. And at least that's what it seems to me. So I think in the future, 2023, you're going to see a lot more of that particular style of automation, not so much automation that makes society better as it does increase the profit and continued dividing of the wage gap.

out there. So moving on, yeah, go ahead. Well, I was going to say that's what happens when, you know, we're a profit-driven society. Yes. Yeah, that's, yeah, I mean, you know, when the underlying motivating factor is more profits and a piece in shareholders, just like you said, those things about improving society, you know, uplifting communities, things like that. Yeah, they might, they might make the talking points for the talking head on a television set, but they're not going to actually. at the end of the day, where the rubber meets the road,

that's not what's actually going to happen. Yeah. Okay, so let's like, I want to move on to the, uh, 20, 23. What do you think the world art looks like? You have previously mentioned these tools about, uh, AI driven artwork. And I, I think a lot of people out there have begun to maybe see them or some of us

have begun to use them where you can type into a box, describe what it is that you would like to have made for you. And it will produce that for you. In fact, it'll give you, you know, 20 different styles and you can choose the back. And you can choose everything about it. And it's getting really good to the point where it's almost only limited to your imagination. So what do you see happening in the world of art in 2023? Well, it's interesting.

I mean, you know, it raises a lot of like ownership problems, first of all. You have a lot of really angry artists and illustrators already, you know, because I can go ahead and type in, show me a picture of the True Live podcast in the style of, you know, some modern artist. And all of a sudden, I'll get, you know, like you said, I'll get 20 results to choose from. And they're in the style of somebody else's artwork, right? Does that artist have any, you know, do they have rights to that at some level? I think in 2023, we'll see the legal challenges come up for this. Yeah, that may have wide-ranging ideas for intellectual property and copywriting. That could get really interesting.

Trademarks. Yeah. In some ways, I think you could argue that those particular backstops have limited artwork. Maybe there'll be an explosion in creativity. Yeah. I mean, and the other side of that is now you have. people who might not be able to paint like Van Gogh, but have a really good concept of an idea and, you know, or maybe a writer who's writing a fiction book, but now all of a sudden they can

make it a graphic novel. And, you know, so there's, there's opportunity. And then there's also, you know, if artists stop, then that selection of art that you have, you know, it doesn't expand. It stagnates. But I don't think artists are going to stop. But artists seem to be, compelled to continue on despite all the odds, right? Yeah, it seems that way. I think the artists usually tend to be at the forefront of change, and whether it's using an AI tool in a way they're not supposed to, whether they're a culture jammer or whether they're someone that's painting out in the forest

or whatever, it's the backbone. We need more artists out there. So I agree. I think that the world of artwork is going to not only become more interesting and filled with legal challenges, but I think that the world of art is set to explode in ways that we can't imagine. I'm looking forward to that. So that's a, I would put that one in the W column for a win. Artwork, 2023 going to explode. And it's, you know, it's not just visual artwork either. Right now, you know, it's audio as well. There was just somebody made a completely

AI-driven podcast between Joe Rogan and Apple guy. I'm blanking on the name. No, the guy who's dead, Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs. Wow. Yeah, and it was completely AI-driven. And you could tell there was that little uncanny valley in there a bit. But by and large, if you were just listening to it and glancing at it, you think that this was a real podcast happened.

Wow. So, I mean, imagine like a conversation between, you know, we probably don't have enough text for people like George Washington's and stuff like that. But, you know, anybody since kind of like the televised age, you could probably aggregate enough of their, you know, their mannerisms, their sound bites. And you could have conversations between people that would, you know, are completely AIA driven or even one side being human and the other side being AI. So that could be interesting. Yeah, that could be fascinating. And in some ways, the whole world of propaganda has got a lot more interesting. Indeed.

Which is an interesting aspect of 2023. When you look at artwork and when you look at the wars we're in, you know, obviously information or the truth is always the first casualty of war. So we could see how, you know, AI and artwork may contribute to another prediction that we can get into is like the world of conflict happening. Like what do you see playing out in the world of conflict? I guess we could start with what do you see happening maybe in your mind to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and then if you broadened it out to a bigger scope of the world.

Let's start with the Ukrainian-Russian conflict first. I don't see this thing dying down anytime soon. As it's as it's protracted itself, it's gotten more and more entrenched on both sides. you have hundreds of billions of dollars flowing to Ukraine from the Western world. And now you have Putin on the other side saying, you know, declaring it an actual war instead of, you know, an operation. And it doesn't seem to have any end in sight. I mean, you know, the amount of people that Russia could throw at this is pretty much almost endless, relatively speaking. And then the amount of money that the West seems in resources that the West seems to be willing to put into this also doesn't seem to have any sort of stop point to it.

So I think that continues to quagmire out. And in doing so, I think that will actually pull in other nations and other conflicts into it. I saw today in Pakistan, there's a bank that gave up their traditional banking license, and they adopted a Sharia law banking license. And apparently that's now 20% of that country is now in this new banking license, which is, you know, they're kind of spreading through the Middle East and all the Islamic states. So, you know, and, you know, as well as I do money funds. war on both sides and when you have something like that I think that is a right situation to be

pulled into you know just this kind of regional conflict that seems to be brewing over there yeah now I'm not real familiar with the Sharia banking but it sounds like there might not be any usury in that type of banking any idea on that well they they already have 20% of the banking in the entire country of Pakistan so I mean and then you figure uh in the Muslim world. I think what, it's, it's estimated to be 1.6 billion, 1.7 billion people. So, you know, that's not a small percent of the global population. Yeah. And that, that may be underscores what's, you know, that may be underscores another battle that's happening through the Ukrainian Russian war. And that's the, the financial war that's happening. You know, it's interesting to think how finance

play a part in the Ukrainian-Russian War. You know, we've seen billions of dollars from the United States flow to the Ukrainian war. And it seems like a percentage of those billions of dollars had flowed right over to our friend SBF over there and was just kind of being laundered over there. So what's your take on the financial aspect of this war? Well, I think, you know, if you look historically,

finance is underpin just about every war, every conflict that we have. minus maybe a few religious wars, but even then, you know, you could still make an argument that it was definitely money driven at at least some level. So from a financial perspective, it's definitely a financial war. And money laundering is happening at the largest scales that I'm aware of, you know, that the whole FTX situation is quite the kerfuffle, to put it mildly, you know, not only was money laundered over there, but then it was laundered back to the country in the tunes of, you know, potentially billions of dollars to influence directly political, you know, outcomes.

You know, there's supposed to be laws against this, right? There's supposed to be stopgaps for this, but all of a sudden, those just kind of, they didn't exist. And, you know, ever since we have, you know, lobbying in the state that it is today, you know, through citizens, United, you know, basically just took all of the, all of the stopgaps out of the equation and just is letting it run rampant. And I think we're seeing the fallout of that right now. And we'll continue in 2023. Yeah. I think so too. I think that the Russian-Ukrainian war is indeed a banker's war. I think you're seeing the banks fund both sides of it. I think that there is, you know, A lot of it is a war of necessity in that the United States is driven by the military industrial complex.

And in order for us to continue to move forward as an economy, we must continue to make weapons at a breakneck speed. So I've been reading some articles that talked about a lot of the money that's being signed into going over to. And I think this is similar the way that America runs wars is we, we, we, take the money, we give it to Ukraine. Ukraine buys our weapons and we get that money back. So we're kind of recycling it back into our economy. Only it seems like every year less and less gets back to our economy. It starts going into family funds. You know, it's interesting how many politicians have a family office that are part of a lobbying firm that are helping Ukraine. It's like they're all taking their little piece of the pie. By the time that money gets recycled back into the

United States working person's pocketbook, it's pennies on the dollar. But yeah, I see that same. Yeah, if it even gets to pennies on the dollar. Oftentimes, I would argue that most of it doesn't even get even close to the working class people in this country. Yeah. And you know what? As we're on this topic, I wanted to ask you this idea. My theory is this.

And I want to know if you think this is true, but you have probably a better understanding of history than me. And that is that it used to be that the United States funded all of these ideas. of technology through your taxes and through, you know, whether it's the payroll tax or your tax on housing, but all these taxes went into our research facilities, be it like the DARPA or the military industrial complex. And then those technologies belong to the American people. And that's what made us so prosperous. But over time, we still started building these technologies. Like we built Facebook. We built these weapons. But now those profits no longer go to the American people. They get sold off to a privately owned.

corporation and those corporations now own that technology that was funded and built by American taxpayers. Is that somewhat accurate? Yeah. And that's been happening at least for the past 20-some years in mass. Probably happened before that too. But yeah, it used to be where like the innovations of NASA, for instance, you know, everybody claims, oh, it led to, you know, our invention of the microprocessor being able to do all these interesting things. Well, yeah, but where all the microprocessors are made now. They're all made outside of the country, right? We don't directly profit from those or benefit from those. Yeah, sure, everybody has a cell phone in their pocket, but, you know, it's just as easy to argue that that's a detriment more so than a benefit.

And yeah, there's moves to bring semi-conducting back, semi-conducting manufacturing back to the United States. They're actually opening one up here in Colorado Springs. However, you know, It's just kind of like a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, you know, because that's just one of the many factors of all these things. And, you know, what goes into all of that is the supply chains. Where do all these resources come from? You know, most people don't, the whole green energy movement is, you know, idealistically, it's an interesting concept. And it should be something that we strive for.

But when you look at, you know, what it takes to make a lithium-ion battery, you're mining with. the in cobalt, nickel. These are things that are pretty rare in the earth, and the chemicals to extract them from ore are just entirely toxic to the environment. Then you look at the conditions of how those things are mined. It's often slave labor, and many times it's child labor as well. So there's a lot of problems with, like, you know, 20-30, you know, everybody in California is going to drive an electric car.

realistically I don't think those are going to come to fruition but that's probably predictions past 2023 well I think it's a good place to start because if you were to listen to Gavin Newsome or you look at a lot of people that are that are you know charging the field on green energy there's been a really big push for you know the demand for electric cars And it seems that at least on some level, they're beginning to get the auto industry to move along with them. You're seeing the idea of, you know, I'm seeing F-150s go for like $120,000. And it seems to me that there is also a push to not only the green economy getting people to drive electric cars,

but it seems that there's an underlying plan to get people to stop driving. It seems that there's a to take us back. Only the really wealthy people should be able to afford cars. Who can afford a $100,000 truck or a $65,000 two-door electric car? And it just seems to me that there's multiple fronts happening with this green energy. In some ways, it almost seems panicked to me. It seems like they're reaching a point where, hey, look at all these coal. Like you said, there's these cobalt mine.

There's all these rare earth energy. And the way we're extracting them is maybe not as good as this other way or at least on par with ruining the environment. but there's so much money involved, it'll be interesting to see what continues to happen in 2023 when it comes to the green energy idealism. So let's talk about that a little bit. On the idea of green energy, what do you see happening in 2023?

Well, I mean, you know, from the people who are really pushing the green energy kind of narrative, if you will, you have individual carbon credit tax coming to, a couple nations, not in the United States yet, but it'll definitely be happening in like your Commonwealth places, a couple of European countries. And, you know, that's going to correspond with, you know, the whole idea, the scare tactic for this is the climate change. And as this gets pushed out, as people are discouraged to own vehicles and things like that, you know, there's

another there's another group of cities called the C30 group I think it is. Are you familiar with that? No, I'm not familiar with that. So this is a group of mayors who have pledged basically like a carbon neutral type thing for their cities, some of the biggest cities in the world. And then the idea is that they're all going to be interconnected with public transportation and people won't be able to drive in them and things like this. And they're also going to cordon places off. There's a town in London. I think they're doing a pilot program on this, where they will actually have basically entry and exit from certain communities. And you're only allowed to drive outside for X amount of numbers per week.

So, yeah. And I can't remember the town in England that they're doing it. But they already passed it. It's already set for a rollout. think that rollouts was either later this year or 2024 that's it sounds like Palestine or something well i mean it's in terms of like uh you know liberty and freedom it's definitely counter to the idea uh if all of a sudden somebody can dictate where you can go how long you can go for what you know uh how long you can drive during the week uh now you have you know immigration kind of falls

of the picture, right? So now you can cordon people off into little sections, little communities. And I think that'll kind of correspond with the central bank digital currencies that are going to be being rolled out. There's another. Yeah. Yeah. Because now how do you keep all of this in line if people aren't, you know, commuting to London for work from this community, for instance, well, the community is going to go to pot. Well, what do you do? Well, we're going to give everybody a, you know, 3,000 pounds stipend for our, you know, new central bank digital currency of the digital pound and you know most commonwealth countries are already trying to roll that out um Biden mandated by 2025 that uh the Fed actually have some sort of

working model to roll that out in the United States um you know China already did theirs last year so I think we're going to see a lot more of the central central bank digital digital currency is actually coming into people's lives a fascinating concept and it's a it's fascinating and frightening at the same time it's fascinating in that it's possible that a digital monetary system could be much more effective and efficient if it's built for the people by the people and could create prosperity for everyone the frightening part to me is that the people who often build the monetary system usually don't have the best interest of the people in mind. You know, and you just look at the people that are on top with all the

money. They, they seem to, you know, if you want to build wealth forever, then you build around the resources that create wealth. And if you're there at the beginning, there's a good chance you'll be there forever. You know, like if you look at, and we can argue that's kind of what's happening. Another factor of these wars is a war for supply chains and resources like you talked about. And I think that those are connected to the central bank currencies. You know, it's fascinating to think how, in a way, the resources that we use on the planet and the monetary system are somewhat merging. You know, the dollar used to be backed by gold, but now it's just backed by confidence. And in a way, the idea of a central bank currency is sort of the evolution of resource management.

You know, it seems like they're trying to tie it together, but very loosely so they can manipulate it however they want. I don't know. What do you see coming for that? Is it possible it could be a better system? I mean, potentially it could be if it was a fair and equal and transparent system. You know, one of the, this was the central bank digital currencies seems to me to be an answer to cryptocurrencies. And the idea behind cryptocurrencies is it did level the playing field in certain aspects. And one of those was transparency and the ability to have a distributed network where you have a game theory that kind of plays out, which makes it a bit more of a fair system in totality. When you have a central bank digital currency, there's no transparency. And instead of having to print off an extra trillion dollars at the mint,

All you have to do is go into the program and add a couple zeros. And so when we're talking like debt-based economics, which is pretty much the entire Western world these days, you know, it creates a very dangerous situation that can be abused almost indefinitely and without recourse. So, you know, it could be if it was managed right and set up properly. But I don't think that that's the motivation underlying. what's driving this, this creation of these central bank digital currencies. That's a good point. And it brings this thought to my mind. If we look at the dollar, today's dollar, you know, as a medium of transfer,

or if we look at it as a placeholder for goods, could we, do you think that the idea of a CBDC is, is redefining what money is? And if so, what would be the new definition of money? No, I don't think so. I think it's just putting a different paint job on it. Because it's still going to be a debt-based system. I see. And so, you know, like if you look on U.S. dollars and says this is to settle debts, right?

Right. And I think it'll just be the same thing under a different veneer, really. And one that, you know, kind of like what's happening in China with like the social credit system. If you don't play ball with, you know, whoever's polling. the strings all of a sudden you can't go to buy a burger at the burger joint you can't get on the train you can't get on the plane uh and so i think you know you combine that with the push for individual carbon tax credits and things like that and it brings us back to you know people not being able to drive anymore uh you know not being able to afford these things because it's uh it's

kind of an insidious thing but if you magnify your scope and and fast forward through time you can see how all of a sudden it ends up as just this monoculture of control. So rather than use, rather than redefine money to change the game, they're just building a bigger walls around the game so that everyone has, they can't leave the field. So they can't leave the field exactly. Yep. Wow.

And I think we probably won't see it in 2023, but I imagine by 2025 as or so, you know, your larger cities will be to a point because of automation and artificial intelligence and all of these things that we've been talking about to where, you know, there's such a significant portion of the populace that they're going to roll out a universal basic income type idea, except the only way you'll be able to have access to this is by downloading the app using the central bank digital currencies, creating this feedback loop that just continually sucks more and more people into that walled game field that we're talking about. Yeah, it's in some ways, you know, you could probably see the infrastructure. You know, we've seen the takeover of Twitter,

which I'm on the fence about, like I really think that Elon Musk has done a good job at, at least bringing back some of the ideas about free speech. The consolidation of power seems a little troubling to me. But like I said, I'm on the fence because I think I would rather have I would rather have someone that at least appears to be on the side of transparency than people that are making a conscious decision to make

opaque moves. But I do kind of think that Twitter can become, and I think Elon Musk had talked about, using Twitter to become the Wii chat of the United States. And for those that don't know, chat is the it's the do all be all app in China where you know you can do your banking you can do your shopping you can do everything on there it's probably really really convenient and if there's one

thing that tends to succeed in the world of e-commerce is is convenient so you know it's interesting to see how that might play out what are your thoughts yeah um i well watching the whole thing unfold the twitter files and all that stuff has been fascinating yeah uh you know we talked about it what it first happened and I said I don't think Elon's a hero or a devil in the situation. I think he's a capitalist. I think, you know, his motivations to do this is ultimately profit driven and to exactly your point, if it turns into a wee chat, imagine all of the profits of, you know, of Amazon, of Apple Pay, of all of these massive, massive institutions being just in one little place, you know, you would be very, very, very, very, very, very wealthy.

Yeah. So I think that's, you know, the idea behind free speech is interesting because at the same time, you know, he's gone off and, you know, people post, you know, bad pictures of him and he bans those people, you know, the guy who he said he wouldn't ban, who tracked his private jet, you know, he shut that, that kid down. So, you know, there's definitely evidence to suggest it's not a free speech platform as so proclaimed. Yeah, maybe just a switching of the sides to. Yeah, it's fascinating to think about it.

And, you know, I've noticed, now that you talked about the evolution of Twitter as we chat and the point of view from a capitalist, I've noticed that on Twitter they're allowing like live streaming, you know, so they're starting to pull from YouTube. They're starting to pull from Rumble. And, you know, if they started, if they started paying, if they started paying the content creators in a manner that TikTok pays content creators, they could be a real threat to a lot of different, you know, areas. And, you know, they've talked about making their own phone to kind of turn over the Apple cart. But, you know, it's, there's some real possibilities there that it could become sort of a giant monolith. And you factor in Tesla as a car company. You factor in the satellite system. You know, it's really got the bones to become a very centralized, powerful, encompassing machine.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out and what it does get used. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the elections this year when different people use Twitter to move on to there. So that takes us to another idea about how about the world of politics. as far as we've seen a lot of turmoil. We've seen a lot of revolutionary type events happen over the last year. Do you see that continuing to accelerate in 2023? I think we're going to see a lot more of stuff like that. And I think it's not to the tune of one side winning against the other side.

I think it's to the tune of a continual fracturing of the Democratic West. you know because now all of a sudden where there used to be a decent amount of trust in the system of you know the fairness of it and the application of it you have a polarizing difference between sides with you know massive distrust and accusations on both sides going back and forth and so I think we'll continue to see you know evolutions in this but I think ultimately you know the idea of you the Republic of Texas becoming a real thing in and of itself, I think gains more and more traction this year especially, but it probably won't happen for a while, I don't think. Yeah, it does seem that, you know, we had a very contentious presidential election.

We've seen some very interesting things take place in Arizona with the Kerry Lake trial. We've seen a lot of pushback from a lot of upset people who seem to be going to, in the direction of my team lost and I'm not going to take it anymore because I see the corruption. And it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in the future, to see what kind of role technology plays in that. And I do agree with you in that I think it is a death and a rebirth of the system. I can't, I'm probably going to butcher this quote, but it's something along the lines of the tree of democracy must be refreshed with the blood of revolution from time to

time in order for it to grow. Maybe Thomas Payne or something like that. I probably probably butchered that whole thing. Sorry everybody. You were pretty close I think. Yeah. So yeah, I'm curious as to the demographics of the world itself, the United States. And before I jump wholeheartedly into demographics, something I've been looking at in a prediction I want to continue to talk about or at least make a prediction here is the labor force participation in the western world. And my ideas on that are that you're going to continue to see less and less labor participation. And that is based on my idea of demographics. I think that we have an aging

demographic population. We have a lot of boomers out there. We have a lot of people that for whatever reason may be consumed by the welfare state, but it seems to me the level of job participation seems to be falling. Whenever the job report comes out, it's always way more than they expect. And then two weeks after that, it's revised up because they don't want to come out and tell the people how few jobs or how many jobs are out there, how many openings. And it seems to dovetail with, you know, when I'm watching the Federal Reserve, and I'm watching some of their speeches

or I'm listening to some of the pundits talk about economics. They talk a lot about people being laid off. And it seems to me, and I'm not an economist, this is just me throwing out my ideas, but I think that what you're seeing is for the first time in probably 60 years, labor has the upper hand on corporations. There's not enough people to run. The level of productivity is,

While it's gone up over the years, the people haven't been paid for the level of all the profits have been kicked upstairs. And now there's no longer enough people to create or to fulfill the demand that's being asked by the populace. And I think that the big corporations are having a real tough time with that. They've been buying back their stocks. They've been buying all this stuff back. They've been going to the Fed for free money. And that's why you're seeing the Fed come out and saying, look, we've got to crash the economy somehow. We have to just we have to run rates way up.

So people lay off and we lay off demand. So my prediction, you're going to see it's not going to work. You're going to continue to see labor demand rise. Prices for the average worker go through the roof. And you're going to see a continued headbutting with more strikes, more battles between labor and corporations. And I know that UPS has a big strike. Well, I don't know if they have a strike coming up, but they have a contract coming up. And there's a lot of rhetoric out right now about the working conditions.

There was just a railroad strike where the President Biden had to step in. And these are things that are kind of under the radar. You don't see them on the television. You don't hear them on the radio. But they're happening more and more frequently. And I think you're going to continue to see that over the next 10 or 15 years. What's your take on labor participation in the economy? I think you're pretty damn right on that.

And there's other factors in there as well. A lot of these big corporations, they're ran on legacy systems. Yeah. And I have some inside knowledge for quite a few of different Fortune 100 companies. And they're ran on stuff that still runs on MS DOS. You know, they're still using cobalt-backed systems. And these are technologies that aren't even taught really that much anymore in universities, let alone actually pursued by, you know, people who are trying to establish themselves in the tech sphere.

So there's a big technical debt issue that's a very technical debt issue that's, also we're going to rear its head here pretty soon and already is for a lot of different companies and so that compounds what you're talking about because now in order for us to find that those engineers that could actually keep this system of float that you know supports 10 million people we're kind of up shit creek without a paddle there there's no more engineers and even if there are now they have to go and decode something that was written 20 years ago and you know depending on how it was commented and how good the code is, sometimes that's easier or harder than others, but it's still a different animal because there's different thought processes in how to build these systems that are taught now. And so just the way that you would logically construct the system as somebody new coming into the tech world, it might not directly apply to how this system was built.

So there's a massive technical debt problem as well for all these corporations. And I don't think you're going to see like, oh, you know, all of a sudden, you know, like a big insurance company just shuts their doors because they can't operate anymore. They'll try to adjust, of course. And a lot of them are. They're spending billions of dollars to try to upgrade these systems. But, you know, for everyone that's spending billions of dollars, there's probably five or six that can't afford to. And you're just kind of riding it out until it dies. It blows my mind

To think about what kind of patchwork Must be on these legacy systems You have some sort of like DOS You got some Ruby on the rails over here It's wild Yeah I've gone in some of these systems Because I've been asked to help on some stuff

And I mean you know It's things I'm like wow I haven't even thought about that In 12 15 years Like you guys use this for daily business Oh my goodness Yeah, don't call me. I don't want to touch that. Well, this brings us to another topic, the topic of education.

We have seen education really get a giant makeover with COVID come through. And in some ways, it was this natural experiment of trying to bring a unique style of education to the masses. A lot of kids today go on YouTube myself. A lot of us can go on YouTube and learn almost anything we want. But I'm not sure that transfers over from a state school or a public school or even a private school to a five-year-old, a six-year-old or a seven-year-old kid. It doesn't seem to me that distance learning works in the same manner that someone watching a YouTube video would work. And I know that seems kind of counterintuitive, but for me, I think it's a problem. Yeah, there's context that's missing.

Okay. Yeah, you can learn how to specifically, you know, repair your washing machine. But, you know, that's just going to tell you what board you need to order, what tools you need to have. And this is the process A through Z on how to do it. It doesn't explain the principles behind, you know, electronics around the engineering of the systems and things like that, which, you know, that context allows, you know, a lot more mobility and ability to learn and, you know, gain more knowledge, applicable knowledge, to interface with systems, build cars, repair things, things like that. So while you get those little individual bits of knowledge, it kind of fails to have the context

that threads them all together. Yeah, it's fascinating to think about, you know, I'm a big fan of science fiction. And when I read Ready Player 1, I felt like I was looking into the future. a little bit. And in some ways, you were. You were getting to see the ideas that were presented to people in, you know, South by Southwest or all these different trade shows trying to be implemented. And I think that, you know, I think it was Rahm Emanuel who said, never let a good crisis go to waste. And I think that we got to see a lot of these ideas rolled out when COVID came through because it was, it was the perfect time. However, I think according to my own research, which is my

child, the school she goes to, some of the kids and parents that I've talked to, the teachers that I've spoken with, is that it had a damning effect on smaller children. And what I took away from it, and I think a lot of other teachers did, is that there's something to be said about the felt presence of the other in childhood education. A child should be in the presence of somebody and multiple people, not just a teacher, but other children around them. Because what they learn through other people's reaction is more than what they learn online. So like the, you know, the parts are more than the sum or, you know, I'm not sure I'm saying that accurately, but it's important that the kids get to be in an environment where they can use not only

their sense of sight, but their sense of touch and feel and be in this totally immersion learning environment. And technology is just just not there yet. And also from a psychology point in you know, you're not getting that socialization aspect, which that creates, and, you know, there's been a lot of experiments about that over the years and what sort of things can arise, what sort of detriments that creates in terms of, you know, people interacting with other people, you know, responses to situations, responses to adversity, you know, mob mentalities, a lot of these things that all of a sudden become, you know, once you look at them at scale and over time, become very, very large issues. Yeah. And I don't think we're going to see the true effects of this for a few years.

Some of the literature that I have been reading on that same idea of psychology is that kids have fallen behind where, you know, they, and you could argue that with technology already, we've kind of become more egotistical. We've kind of become more in our own echo chambers. But when we took these kids out of school for two years and tried this idea of distance learning, in a form we've alienated them. You know, like you said, we have stopped them from learning the facial cues. We have stopped them from some people have argued. We have lowered the level of empathy from not being around other kids. And it's kind of tragic in a world where, you know, related. relationships are becoming more and more difficult. And, you know, in a world where we have almost 8 billion people, loneliness is one of the biggest problems that we see out there.

Yeah, but now they have, oh, sorry. No, yeah, go ahead. Well, but now they have that, what is it? It starts with eco-life or something like that, but it's an artificial womb. And they can pump out 30,000 babies in a building. Do you see that one? I saw a bit of that one, yeah, but maybe you can flesh it out for the people. Echo life.

Echo life. That's what it was. Yeah. So the idea is that they created an artificial uterus that then they can grow babies in to the tune of this building 30,000 in this building. And I think they're rolling it out this year. That sounds so Matrix. You know what I mean? It looks like Matrix, too.

If you look at the pictures that they posted with it, it looks like. straight out of the matrix. I don't know about this. So we got Random Rick review here. And he says, random Rick says, that sounds like it's all false. And I got to say Random Rick,

like I don't know the future, but I'm just throwing out my opinions here. I'm sure some of it's false. You should jump on here, Random Rick, and you should tell us what you think is false. I'd love to talk to you. And I think it would probably be an interesting discussion. So I'll put the link in the chat,

jump in and come and talk to us. I'd love to hear your opinion on it. That's what we're doing. We got these ideas about, the future and some of them may be right, some of them may be wrong, but it's an interesting conversation. I would like to be wrong. It would be nice if everything was going to be fairy tales and buttercups. But unfortunately, I think we have a good deal of evidence to suggest that that's not going to be the case. I think the trends show that we've seen declining living standards for

probably the last 10 years. And I think it has a lot to do with demographics. I think that you know, going back to the idea of demographics, the baby boomer generation was, you know, one of the largest generations. We see that there's almost not enough people to replace that working force right there. And so if you just look at it from that angle, then, you know, the baby boomers are not going to stop. The baby boomers are not going to stop consuming. In fact, they have an income coming in. They're going to continue to consume. But there's not enough people to pay the Social Security.

there's not enough people to make the products. There's not enough people to provide the services. So you're beginning to see the foundation crack a little bit, at least in my opinion. Yeah. And then if you look at, you know, we're just talking about it in the kids and the socializations, the relationship aspects of these things. Now fast forward this to when these kids are supposed to be having kids. We've already seen in Western countries.

I mean, look at Japan, their birth rate is under one, right? The United States, the only reason it's still maintaining about its 1.7 the two is because of immigration. Right. You know, so in the Western world, you know, these declining birth rates compounded with, you know, what we're doing to children in these past couple years of this educational experiment, compounded with the baby boomers, compounded with all these other demographic effects. And all of a sudden, you know, towns start shutting up shop.

You know, you're going to have just abandoned not necessarily cities, but it could be, you know, depending on how fast or how long you look down that timeline. Yeah, it's, you know, it's interesting to think about that because I think you can make the case that it's already happening. You know, when you, it wasn't too long ago that you could turn on the news and you just saw people rioting, you know, there was a lot of riots, I think, you know, what in 20, was it 2018 or 2019? I remember turning on the news and just seeing towns kind of burning down. And, you know, it's not that the people there are bad or are uneducated or horrible people. It's that all the resources have been sucked out of that town. And there's nothing left for the people to do, right?

And when people have nothing left, they lose it. And it doesn't matter your race or your creed or your sexual proclivities. When you live in a place that has zero resources, you've taken all the hope. You've taken all the... Hope's the word. Yeah, you've taken it all. all the way. And that's almost, that seems to be like cancerous in some ways. The same way that cancer attacks the body, so too does our cancerous sort of policies attack our country. And it

steals the life. It steals the hope. It sucks the life right out of us. And it's, it's, I think it's analogous. I think if we can learn to solve the problems of, of, you know, the body, then we can learn to solve the problems of our country right there. Let's talk about random Rick here says on the topic of empathy. He's just thinking about the empathy part of humans. If you look at the 50s and the horrible neglect and abuse that went on in the homes. And yeah, I think that, you know, that's hard for me because I grew up a lot with my aunt and uncle who were a product of the 50s. And, you know, my uncle Bruce wore the white T-shirt and Levi's.

and he worked all day. Annie Jane stayed home and made awesome food and they had two kids. And, you know, I'm sure that there was some neglect in the 50s. But when I look back at the 50s and I wasn't alive in the 50s, my only relationship to the 50s was being somewhat raised by products of the 50s. But it seemed more innocent. You know, I'm seeing like Arthur Fonzarelli and Happy Days.

And, you know, it seemed to me that it may have been a little bit safer in some ways. But I guess there could be more abuse. What do you think? I think that would be relative to where you are. Right. Right. You know, I think, you know, just like we're talking about how the socioeconomic foundation is really the problem. I think there was plenty of places in this country where, you know, the socioeconomic situation bred some very terrible things, right? Yeah. And, you know, it's always the grass is greeder argument a little bit, too.

You know, there, but at the same time, you know, it's the double ed sort of technology as well. Now we have this advent of, you know, a much larger capacity for communication. Yeah. And I think that has positively impacted the, those types of situations across the port. You know, if nothing else, people have the ability to find other like-minded people or like situation to people to have a conversation. and and you know hash things out and then from that they're able to take that back to their families and you know the family units have you know probably benefited on a level from it um but you know again now now you factor in the demographic aspect of this where family units aren't the six kids

now it's one or two and you know i think there's so there's so many different angles to view this at And I don't think it's all doom and gloom, even though most far predictions seem to suck. I know. Why are we so negative? Why are so negative? And I think there's definitely roads out of this, but I don't think there's a grand road out of it for everybody. I think we're going to start to see more and more of parallel economies arrive in this year. We're going to start to see more and more people who are saying, okay, well, you know, we're just going to kind of go off over here and create our own system, we won't bother you.

We just actually don't want any part of this anymore. We can't, you know, morally, ethically, you know, economically be a part of this any longer. And so I think we'll see more of that arriving this year as well. Yeah. And you know what? Now that I think about it, maybe that is part of the whole CBDC central bank currency ideas. You know, you talked about this network of new cities coming out.

Maybe what we're seeing is. is an attempt by, you know, people that are smarter than us and people that have more resources than us, experimenting with new ideas. Maybe they're saying, like, look, the system's broken. There's too much corruption. We need new ideas. In California, we're going to try this. In New York, we're going to try this.

In Texas, we're going to try this. And in some ways, it gets us back to the ideas of, you know, the human spirit and trying something new. You know, and some places might be more constrictive. Some people might be more freedom. And we get to these ideas of parallel economies. And maybe we find one that works well. Maybe we find, you know, and you could argue that's what's happening around the world. If you look at the Chinese form of capitalism, it is.

It's sort of like the mesh of communism. It's like a state-run capitalism. And it seems that in the United States, they went, wow, that works pretty good. We should be trying to do that. And so, you know, you're seeing this different ideas. you're beginning to see Saudi Arabia move away or attempt to move away from extracting oil and become more of a different type of economy. And you're seeing the, in some ways, you're beginning to see the growth pains of a new system

trying to be born. I think that maybe we can pivot to something positive there. You know, if we listen, if we talk, if we, if we read a random Rick's review here, and he talks about how, you know, the minorities were worse off in the 50s, that means that the minorities are better now. Well, I don't know if that means that, but it seems to imply that. And so maybe we are moving forward. It's just that we have an eye for the problems and we're attracted to the things that

grab our attention. And that's the negative things that we're seeing right now. But we're also able to talk about them too. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Now we could actually, we could have the feedback and, you know, have these types of in-depth conversations about the totality of the scope of these things. You know, I mean, you know, there's, if the further you go back, it gets worse, too, for minority groups, right?

Yeah. So there's been a pretty good evolution in terms of minority groups across the board kind of being on a better platform. But at the same time, you know, I think we are reaching the kind of limits of the system that we ascribed ourselves. We've been in this experiment for 250 years in this country. And I think, you know, we're starting to see the fractures at scale. And so that's where those fissures opening those fractures, I think that's why we're seeing these moves towards new experiments and new ideas. And I also think that that, you know, correlates to what we're, what I was talking about earlier, which is kind of the fall of the Western democracy based systems. And I think, you know, as soon as there's a crack in a pipe, all of a sudden that becomes a hole in a pipe real fast.

And I think that's probably what we're going to see over the next two to three years. Yeah. You know, on my darker days, I think that the pipe has been broken and it has the same way that technology has had different technological patches slapped on it for the last 30 years. so too as our monetary system, so too as our education system. And it's just Band-Aid after duct tape plus some glue and some copper wire. You know, and it's just not holding together anymore. And it's like, okay, are we going to keep patching this thing? Are we going to scrap it and build a new one?

And I think that that's where the friction lies is there's two camps. Like, look, it's done. It's over. It doesn't work. And people are like, no, it does work. We just got to get back to this wave. People are like, it's never going to get back that way. So I think that that might be part of the friction.

And the reason that that particular argument brings a little bit of light to my heart is that ultimately both sides want the same thing. They want the thing to work. They just have different methods of fixing it. One person wants to fix the old system. One person wants to bring in a new system. But I think if we could start at the system's broken, I think that we can start gaining some common ground. And maybe the idea is to have different types of cities. Maybe the idea is to have different experiments happen from the ground up.

Because I really think that what's going to happen in the future, I think that all of these other systems, be it socialism or capitalism or, you know, these giant monoliths that seem to have run the multipolar and unipolar world for so long are like scaffolding on a rocket ship. And they're both falling away. and there's this new system that's going to be built. I think that they were pillars that were necessary. You ever hear people say, is that really necessary? I'll think the answer to that question is, yes, it's imperative. Those things had to happen for us to get here. And as painful as it is, as painful as it's going to be,

I really look at it like a rebirth. You know, the same way that a child can die in childbirth or a snake when it sheds its skin becomes vulnerable and can get eaten, And that's us right now. We are in this giant transitional period where there is real danger. There are real fractures. There are real threats coming our way. But it's important to understand it's a transformation.

And once we get through it, we're probably going to be better on the other side of it. Indeed. You know, now we're getting back into things like the huga cycles, the helicomotion of, you know, humanity in general. you know and I would agree with you and that was a very beautiful kind of metaphor with the rocket ship I like that because I think that's pretty much that sums it up very well of what's happening I think you know we're taking the scaffolding of what we've built our you know history of humanity upon and now we're going to look and pull apart all the pieces through this advent of mass communication and we're going to say this works This doesn't.

We can no longer oppress minorities. We can't do these things. We can't build economics this way. We can't have demographic situations move towards this place. You know, we have to, and in that, that's where we find the solutions that we put together new systems. And I think we're going to see that. Yeah, I agree. And I, random Rick had brought up a few good points.

He brought up a bunch of good points. Rick, thanks for joining in the conversation. I really appreciate it. And I like the ideas you're bringing up. One of the points you brought up earlier was that there's plenty of opportunities, but people aren't willing to move where the work is. And I think that that dovetails nice with this comment that says we are appalled until it's inconvenient for our life. And where I think that those two points come together, at least for me,

is that maybe the system, maybe this right now, you know, this inconvenience, maybe this is what freedom looks like. Maybe it's the first time Americans have been charged. truly free. And Ben, you would brought up this idea of the internet and how we can, we can talk about all the problems. You're in Colorado. I'm in Hawaii. And yet we have these conversations that talk about here's what's happening in my era. Here's what's happening in yours. Here's some solutions. Here's some solutions. And here we are to, you know, until a year ago, two random strangers coming together and building things. And we've built a pretty big network, all of us

together. And it's, it's always growing. And I think that this may be the greatest, opportunity for individuals in the history of the world. If you can harness the technology, then it is the great equalizer. You can reach millions of people. As a truck driver, I can reach millions of people. I can talk to Random Rick, and I can talk to Ben and Johnson and all these people participating in this conversation. And on some level, we are working together to influence one another.

And when that happens on a grand scale, you can change policy. You can change the directions of states, cities, countries. You can change the hearts and minds of people if you're willing to do the work. If you can do like Rick says and you can get up and go where the work is. Get up and go where you're passionate about. Lord knows what kind of opportunities are out there for you. Listen to this right now. If you're willing to take a chance.

If you're willing to believe in yourself and if you're willing to do the work, then you can make a difference. And there's never been a better time than now. it seems to me one reason it's so just corrupted at the top is because of there's been so much stagnation. It seems to me, while there's plenty of intelligent elite people, it seems this world of nepotism has been their downfall. You know, like you have all these people that just push their kids up and rightfully so. Why wouldn't you push your kids up? But it's not the best person for the job.

And when you start getting a stagnant pool of leaders, so too do their ideas become stagnant. And I just want to reiterate, I think that we could be staring at the biggest bout of freedom we've ever seen. There's so much opportunity right now. Well, and to add a little bit to that, we're also, you know, the marketplace of ideas has been driven from the top down for ever since mass communication has been a part of society. And this is the first time since that inception where now the marketplace of ideas is a massive network. of nodes. And I, you know, we've already seen the rise of Joe Rogan, right? We've already seen, you know, the rise of independent podcasters and ideas and thoughts that would normally never get any sort of airtime, would never get any sort of attention now being center points

of conversation. And I think that effect continues to grow through to 2020 and beyond. Yeah, that's well put. You know, and I, uh, as we talk about, freedom and we talk about the idea of changing demographics and we talk about the idea of parallel economies. Maybe you could share what the audience been. You have an idea for a parallel economy. In fact, you've started something up called the Terra Libre Project. Maybe you could share a little bit with the audience what a parallel economy could look like from your white paper. Yeah. We've actually covered a good chunk of it. Right. It's taking the pieces of the systems that we've employed for the past 250 years in looking at what works, looking at what benefits the individual, looking at what, you know, holds up freedom and liberty and what detracts from them.

And then putting those pieces together into a model of a system where now it's, you know, it's the individual that gets elevated in the system. it's not a top-down system, abandoning crazy concepts like trickle-down economics, because that's absolutely asinine. And instead, you know, by harnessing technology, creating systems where everybody can have equal representation. You know, it can be a one-person, one-vote system, you know, and it has transparency. It has meritocracy built into it. It has pieces of socialism, into it because, you know, the group helping the individual thereby helps the group. But, you know, it doesn't steal from the individual to uphold the socialism. You know, it high, you know, it elevates the individuals so that, you know, their efforts,

you know, their merit that they bring to the table, they're directly rewarded for. And but yet all, but yet a rising tide raises all ships concept. applied into a business model that can be applied out of worldwide scale. Yeah. I think that that is the model. It is, in a way, that same model alleviates all the middlemen. It alleviates the people that are not being productive. And, you know, like, imagine how much money and how much actual labor is just wasted

or alleviate or stolen or profit stolen by middlemen that don't do anything they just they introduced peter to paul okay i'll take 30 percent and in a way is that like when you just pan back and we look at what we've talked about so far when we look at technology we've already talking about how AI seems to be coming for the financial jobs you know it's it's siphoning off those middlemen okay we don't need we don't need this insurance company anymore now we have a smart contract we don't need this particular HR firm over here because we have we have these algorithm that can find the right person. And it seems that in some ways we're seeing a thinning out of irrelevant jobs. And that's very uncomfortable for a lot of people.

It's very uncomfortable. You know, when we talk about COVID, we had people that were essential workers. There's a very interesting concept to think about it. It began to give people a label on what they do. You're essential. you're not essential. And in some ways, that's scary because, you know, what a non-essential people do? Do they go to a work camp?

Do they get some goggles and go into the metaverse? Or, you know, what happens to your psyche when you're told you're not essential? You know, can you, how does that affect the birth rate if you're not essential, you know? But yeah, I think that the Terra Libre project and the ideas that you've put forth in previous podcasts are a growing sign of a free world being born. And I'm looking forward to not only participating in it, but seeing and contributing to it. I think it's a fascinating concept. And Random Rick comes in here with a few more ideas that they kind of flow together.

One is that when we were talking on the topic of freedom, he said that we have it good here. But we've been indoctrinated to be workers for the most of us. You know, we have the 40-hour work week, eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep. But, you know, how much time does that leave you to really pursue any other types of ideas or how much more time do you have to improve yourself or work on your dreams? And then he follows that up with the idea about the pandemic and how the pandemic showed folks that they didn't have to go back to bad jobs, but he's thinking that eventually it kind of flowed back into that model.

I would almost disagree with that a little bit, Rick. And here's the reason why I agree with the indoctrination and how we've kind of become victims of the Prussian school model and become obedient workers. But I would say that the pandemic has woken up, not everybody, but a lot of people. I've seen a lot of people who have transformed their life. I've seen guys lose 100 pounds. I've seen guys lose 80 pounds.

I started a podcast and my wife has begun working from home because the workers put pressure on the states. They look, we want to work from home now. And so while I would agree that there hasn't been, I wish there was more change, Rick. I wish that the pandemic continued to inspire people to change their lives, or at least continue to shake them and wake them up. But I think that there has been a significant change. And I've seen a lot of positive things come from that. And I sometimes I wonder if maybe that was part of the hopes of COVID. But what do you think about this idea of eight hours of work, the pandemic and jobs and dreams? What do you think about that, Ben?

Well, I mean, absolutely agree. The indoctrination of the Prussian school model to create wonderful little worker bees has been completely abused ever since it was implemented. You know, to tag on to that, there was a statistic that, what was it? I think it was Stanford. They make so much money from their investments that they've created over the years that they could afford to give everybody who attends Stanford free education. And still make a profit from all of their ventures through the school. Because, you know, they get, you know, the government contracts to research X, Y, and Z.

then that gets spun out into a product. Stanford has a stake in that as part of the contract. And apparently that was the majority of the Ivy League schools. So, you know, I think there's a great opportunity for different education models to arise. And, you know, maybe this was the thing that broke the camel's back. You know, now people finally seeing the cracks, there'll be a demand for a change in the education. So, yeah, you know, I think it definitely indoctrinated. And I think the pandemic definitely opened up some minds.

Enough. I guess we'll find out. Yeah. You know, it brings, I'm glad you brought that up about Stanford. I was unaware of really how much of a business model they had that goes hand in hand with their education model. I've been talking to a, you know, I did a podcast a while back about, primary school kids, you know, K through 12. I don't think there's any reason why kids K through 12 couldn't graduate with a residual income.

And it may not be something that could start off with in the public schools, but the private schools could definitely start up a similar model like Stanford where the kids could have ideas. They could start a business. And that school could fund half of it. The kid could get half of it. And by the time that kid graduated, the school would make money and the kid would make money. If you have a group of caring educators and parents that surround the kid, let the kids come up with a business in class and let the parents and the school fund it somewhat to see if it would even be plausible. And if it is plausible, I bet you one in 50 of them work.

And if you could get one in 50 to work, I mean, look, you can start really pumping out the ideas of what an education is and what monetary value is in economic. You could rewrite the world of economics. If you could get children to graduate with a residual income, right? That would be real freedom there. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, I remember doing a lemonade stand as a kid. There you go. And then I also remember being in elementary school and making colored glue

out of taking the marker out of the back of the marker and putting it in the glue. And then Elmer's glue came out with colored glue and I was devastated because I thought somebody was spying. I mean, they stole my idea. But now imagine, and I did this probably a year and a half before Elmer just came out with it. But to your point, now imagine if I was surrounded by people who said, oh, this could be a good idea, let's set up a business. Obviously, you know, there's some mechanics there that need to be very, very finely tuned. But, you know, once could assume that all that could be taken care of, all of a sudden, yeah, you could have kids coming out.

And even if it's not a necessary residual income, you know, maybe they sell a. product idea to a large company. Something like this. All of a sudden, you're drastically changing the socioeconomic situation for a vast majority of younger people. I mean, that is a monumental change in and of itself. Yeah. Imagine a group of fifth graders selling a product to a business. Like what have you taught them?

You've taught them how to build and sell a business by the age of 12. You know what I mean? Like now you're creating some real entrepreneurship. You're creating some real ideas and you're creating a better world is what you're doing. You're creating inspiration and motivation because the other 12-year-olds are going to hear about that and they're like, damn, I'm going to think of a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. You get rid of the Prussian school model and build a, you know, a financial powerhouse, which, you know, maybe, I mean, it's probably being done in some school somewhere.

I mean, it's just just not in my community. I think the higher-end private schools kind of operate on a similar, you know, maybe not that direct, right? But I think they, they kind of institute those types of models and that type of thinking. And, you know, just the understanding of what's possible. You know, most kids get out of high school and they don't, they couldn't start a LLC. I mean, yeah, maybe they could go to legal Zoom these days and type in a few things. but probably 90% of them don't even know what legal zoom is. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe even more. Yeah. And that's, I think that gets us back to the, you know, the fractured system. As much as there's, there is opportunity out there. There's a lot of people that, for whatever reason, don't seem to seize that opportunity. And my hope is that more people will find their own way and seize the opportunities that are out there.

and become better for it. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about one of my favorite subjects in the future of it, and that is psychedelic medicine, in theogen, psychedelics. Ben, I am excited for the future of these things that are happening, and you're right there in the mecca of it.

You've got legalized psilocybin, and what's it like out there now since that happened? Well, I don't get out that much these days, but from the people who, who I know who are, you know, we're already on that path. You just took a massive roadblock out of the road. Because, you know, people were determined to go down that path despite the roadblock. But now all of a sudden you turned it into a highway.

And I think, yeah, I think it's going to be pretty fascinating this year to see how that kind of evolves. I have some holdups, I would say, in terms of what they're trying to do with it, and like not at the personal level, but at a corporate level, you know, especially things like reporting data to other agencies and outside of, you know, the, you know, centers and all of these things like this, the licensing aspects of it, you know, people trademarking, you know, adding a hydrogen molecule and trademarking a new, quote-unquote, psychedelic drug. So I think there's questions that remain for that.

But overall, I think it's going to be a renaissance. Yeah, I do too. And I think, you know, it's, I don't think it's a coincidence that it's happening at this time where we need an incredible explosion in creativity. You know, now we're seeing this explosion in mind expanding substances. And, you know, while nothing's ever goes quite to plan or nothing goes perfect, I think it's the most perfect catalyst to create change in society. And it just seems to me to build on so much of what makes the human condition beautiful,

like intuition and creativity and imagination. and, you know, I really see, you know, the same way that maybe we saw the death of, you know, Detroit being the motor city. I think we're seeing a new type of psychedelic motor city being built where, you know, there's all these new crazy things and awesome things happening. And I'm really excited to see that happening. One prediction that I think may happen in the world of psychedelics is the transformation of clinical trials. I think that we no longer really need these, you know, giant fundraising.

I must ask for permission in order to get funding to do this thing and, you know, all this regulation. I think that you're going to start to see it get subbed out a little bit. Like there's no reason why you couldn't have a magician, an incredible individual like Cole Butler design a clinical trial. You know, someone like Abigail called or come in and start working there. And you could do it all over the internet. And you may not have the explicit,

perfect results that you would get in a lab, but I think that you could have data true enough to prove a claim. And I think that that's good enough. I think that so much of the claims made in a lab are still somewhat subjective. And I think that if you had a group of experts working around the world, even via Zoom, you know, even with. you know, something like a survey. Like, you know, I think James Fateman did an incredible survey about microdosing and the data he got from that is almost unparalleled. And if you get these large

data sets, you can really dig down and find some great things. So I think you're going to see the world of clinical trials begin to unfold in a way that is beneficial for all of medicine across the board. I think it'll happen with psychedelics and move to other drugs and sort of decentralized the pharmaceutical industry. That's my big prediction. Oh, boy. That's a heck of a prediction. Decentralizing the pharmaceutical industry.

Oh, buddy. You're really walking on some thin ice. I don't know. I don't know if I could get behind that one, George. Dare to dream. The first part of it, I like. I like. Yeah, it's, you know,

in another interesting aspect about psychedelics is, you know, one of the foundational aspects of that is being back in touch with reality. You know, it's that, it's a very visceral experience. And if you're doing it in a clinical setting, there is a piece of that missing. And so I think the decentralized nature of it actually out in the wild being used by people who, you know, are well versed in it or who are, you know, willing to contribute to

these types of decentralized studies, I think that is actually a pretty important. important piece to the overall growth of this whole kind of industry, if you will. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see some of the, I'm also excited to see some of the concentrates or the analogs that come about the same way that you saw the explosion and the, you know, cannabis explodes and then all of a sudden you have the, the isolation of cannabinoids. I'm curious if you're going to begin to see the isolation of certain types of psilocyluses. and analogs of that coming out that become, you know, into a liquid or some sort of, you know,

it'll be interesting to see that. And another thing that I think is different, some way similar to cannabis, is that I think you're going to see different strains of psilocybin be used for different ailments in people. I think that, you know, we're just beginning to scratch the surface of what's really happening in the psychedelic environment. And I do think that different strains may have different sort of healing potential for different ailments. I don't know what those are, but I could see, and maybe it comes down to blood type, or maybe it comes down to having a DNA test and understanding what sort of, you know, genes you have that would interact with different strains. But I think that

that world of medicine is exciting, not just for psychedelics, but other medicine as well. Well, I'm pretty sure, you know, the main constituent that we attribute to the psychedelic effects is psilocybin, right? But there's compound effects from the other. Obviously, when you have a mushroom, you know, depending on the substrate, you grew it in, depending on, you know, the environment it was grown in, depending on the strain that it was, you're going to have different compounds in there. And I think just like cannabis, you know, those are going to be synergistic and antagonistic compounds in different sets and settings and environments and situations, blood types, genetic profiles, etc.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the idea of like designer psychedelics, though, I don't like that one so much. I know we're going to see it. I agree with the prediction. Yeah. But the inner shaman in me, you know, says that there's something. important to all of those other pieces of that puzzle, of that, that ceremony, if you will.

Yeah. I would agree that there's something to be said. And I think that's the difference. Entheogens are the actual plants and the psychedelics are something that's made in a lab. And, you know, in some ways, I think that psychedelics are a way of taking the spirituality out of entheogens, you know, because with the entheogens, come. the background it comes the growing of the plant or the inoculating of the rye and the summer solstice or the group ceremony or the icaros or the songs and when you just when you take all that out you know

you you sort of strip the spirituality out of the entire experience and i think that there's something to be said about the healing of the experience itself you know it goes hand in hand with that so i like the way you put that i would have to agree with that there yeah and i think you know that that ceremony that spiritual aspect of what it means to be a human. That's something that we've, and it's interesting that this renaissance is happening now, because that's something that, you know, it used to be a very strong component of humanity at a pretty global level. And through the advent of, you know, technology and just capitalism running rampant over the past,

you know, 70-some years, a lot of that's vanished. And so I think, you know, not only is it a renaissance of thought, but I think it's a renaissance of spirituality in general. Yeah. I would agree. And I think that that has been, there's been a void for quite some time, you know, and it's been filled by consumerism. It's been filled by, you know, egoism. And it's just, it's been, it's attempted to be filled by everything that could fill it and everything that Handfill it has filled.

Yeah, yeah, that's well put. And I think with spirituality comes a sort of self-love that makes everyone around you feel a little bit more secure. And I'm looking forward to seeing more of that in the future. And like you said, we may have to dive down a little bit deeper before we come back up for air. But I see it happening. And I see the possibilities of a better future. being laid out before us. And it's not going to be without work. It's not going to be without trials and tribulations. But I think if people are willing to, like I said, do the work

and see the opportunity that's in front of you and you're willing to seize it, I think that 2023 becomes a pivotal year for positive change. Bold prediction. I like it. Thank you. Yeah, I would I would just put it a little a little adendum on that. that it'll probably be localized. I don't think it's going to be, you know, a pivotal year like a global scale. But I do think that locally it will be a pivotal year for, you know, in different areas. In even different industries and aspects of everything that we've been talking about today. Yeah.

One for the positive for sure. Now, again, I think, you know, on the grand scale of things, I do think there is a bit more of the abyss that has to be. trudged through, but we are a stubborn species. This is very true, very true. And there's, you know, old habits die hard, they say. Indeed. And so, yeah. Well, as we're landing the plane here, Ben, what, would you have any other predictions or

is there anything else that you want to throw out there before we land this bad boy? Well, I predict our little network of shenan-producing podcasters. and growers and bee farmers and psychedelic entrepreneurs and explorers are going to have a pretty awesome 2023. Yeah, I agree. I would also say that the future belongs to those who are brave enough to seize it. And now is the time. And it doesn't matter what school you went to. doesn't matter how rich your parents were.

What matters is that you believe in yourself and that you're willing to do the work. And I think if you got those two things, if you got your freedom, your health, confidence in yourself, and the willingness to work, I think you got everything. And I think the year the rabbit is the year for us. So that's what I got for 2023. Ben, before we go, what do you got coming up? Where can people find you? And what are you excited about?

Benjamin C.george.com is where people can find me. I do have a whole bunch of new podcasts coming out. I've been invited on a few interesting shows, so that'll be fun. And I'm looking forward to getting back into the podcast, see it a lot more this year. Finally, the holidays are behind. Have some free time. And I'm really excited to start presenting more of the Tara Libre project out on a wider scale.

So things are getting there. It's just that. I'll tell you, that last 10% sometimes can be a real pain in the ass. Man, yeah. Yeah, every percent after that is just infinitely harder. It seems like it sometimes. I swear. Awesome.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in to the True Life podcast. Thank you for spending time with George and George. I hope you enjoyed our 2023 predictions. Random Rick, super awesome to talk to you. Thank you for participating in everybody who participated in the chat and in the comments on all the different platforms. I really appreciate your time. I look forward to talking to people more.

True Life podcast, Benjamin C. George, everything's in the show notes. That's what we got for today. I hope you have a phenomenal day and a phenomenal 2023. Aloha.