TrueLife - Diversified Nepotism leads to stagnation, decadence, & revolt

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Ladies & Gentleman I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is we have more medicine the bad news is the medicine doesn’t work.

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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. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back

to the True Life podcast. We are here with part two of Benjamin C. George diversified nepotism. I heard a good quote that was, if you don't have a seat at the table, then you're on the menu. Oh, yeah.

And, I mean, how many people really have a seat at the table? You can argue the table has just been getting smaller and smaller, and everyone's at, if you're at the table, you're probably at the kids' table. Well, we just witnessed the greatest redistribution of wealth in modern time. Yeah. And it's not even talked about. I mean, you know, it's like,

The largest heist movie. It's like Oceans 11 on a global scale. And we don't even talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very interesting. It is. And it just seems,

you know, it seems that the earliest I can remember paying attention was like the dot-com boom. You know, and it was just this, it was the first time I really noticed like the whole bubble economy and this larger idea of just scam. Like it's probably always been this way where you just blow everything up and then, you know, you suck in all the profits.

You blow everything up and you suck in all the profits. And it's every time it becomes a bigger distribution of wealth until the people on the bottom have nothing. I was talking to this guy in, I think he was in Switzerland. And I had asked him this question about technology. He's a, he, he's a very fascinating guy. And I had asked him, I said, you know, and I'll ask you the same question. Let me, let me present you with the question. and see what you think.

So I saw an interesting conversation between Peter Thiel and one of the Weinstein brothers. And they were saying in that conversation that we as a society have bet the farm on automation and technology and it never shows up. It's always five years away. If you took out every screen in your room,

your room would look almost the same as it did in 1950. And when I asked that guy this question, he said that in the world of technology, you have seen the world's biggest fraud take place. Not that technology is not moving forward because it is. But it's this promise of technology. Like technology moves at a good clip and it will and it's progressing nicely. But you're not going to have the flying cars and you're not going to have these giant self-sustaining. cities coming up next year.

But we're on the path to move forward. But in the way he described it was if the promises about technology were promised to any shareholders, they would be, these people promising would be in prison, you know, because it's just this ultimate fraud. And so I know we've talked about the promise of technology before, but how is it that we have gotten and what's the relationship between this promise, this fraudulent promise, and this blowing of bubbles and this transferring of wealth how do all those things fit together well so there's i mean there's there's there's a lot to impact there for sure um i i would start with you know

we have we've taken technology and the promise of it saying oh yeah you know a computer is going to be doing all the work you were doing you're never going to have to work again the reality of that situation is is our society has never been structured for that to become a reality. Because you all of a sudden can't have a whole city's worth of people not working. And so, you know, you know, for a variety of reasons. And, you know, each individual personal company, you know, the government involved, you know, the regulators involved, all of them are going to have their different perspectives on why that is.

But at the end of the day, our society was never structured for that to be a reality. So what does that mean for the promise of technology or the promise of pharmacology for that matter or the promise of all these things that we're supposed to be better living through our scientific endeavor? Well, it turns out that when we're all looking to make a buck, we're not, you know, who actually makes that buck doesn't really trickle down as much as we were led to believe it. Right. Right. And it usually stops at the very high level. And so now, yeah, I can, I can automate just about anything, given a little bit of time and resources. But if I start building, you know, if I start building automated factories, well, I'm going to have worker revolts. Or, you know, like when McDonald's rolled out their fully automated McDonald's, they had a whole big, you know, HR problem.

Because now all of a sudden those people are like, oh, my job's disappeared. Why do I want to invest any more time with you guys? Even if it's just cast a paycheck, I'd rather go cast a paycheck that somebody who's not going to replace me with a robot. Right. So there's a lot of societal perception that comes into it as well. And so, you know, I think, you know, those multitude of factors end us up in a point where the money doesn't dictate that the average Joe or Jane should,

be have their time to themselves have freedom be able to just you know embark on their lives no it actually works out better for all of the people all of the powers in play that you know their work in 15 16 hours a day both of them to maintain just the household of four etc etc etc that we see played out just about everywhere these days yeah when we think about that. It seems to me that whether we, it seems to me that whether we have a radical shift in the structure of our society where less people work, or we continue to force people to work ever more hours to funnel up to the top. Either way, what I see is the, there's no social mobility. And we

in a world where there's no social mobility, the only social mobility is fictitious. And when that is a fact. Yeah. That's so true, man. They've already thought about it. They've already thought about it. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the whole idea behind your, you'll own nothing and like it. So you'll have a fictitious social mobility where you can carry a sword and live in a pod and have an ever in. Million coins. Yeah. I conquered.

I killed four dragons this month. Mm-hmm. Which, don't get me wrong. I love video games. I grew up on video games. And I, you know, I appreciate all that stuff. But did you ever see the movie Ready Player 1? I saw, I tried to watch the movie.

I read the book and I tried to watch the movie, but it was so like, here's all these white people living in trailers. Like, it was just, it was so much of like, the book was awesome because I got to make my own movie in my head. I hated the stereotypes and stuff that they put in that movie. It was very stereotyped. The book was amazing. The overarching premise of the story, right?

Agreed. It's kind of, I think somebody who was way high up at Facebook saw that movie and was like, we can do that. Yeah, that was the business plan. And they're like, okay, let's put it out in the, let's put it out to the people in the book, then we'll put it out in the movie. Right. Like all they have mosquitoes, you know, jabbing people with the next vaccine. Like it's uncanny about all the things that were happening.

And I would almost say that they have all that technology and then they wrote that book and then, you know, made the movie for the masses. But yeah, like all those ideas are there, right? That is the future according to people want to. Yeah. And I mean, it's nothing. It's not like there was any novel technology in that book. I mean, we've had, you know, omnidirectional treadmills. We've had full system haptic feedback.

We've had a lot of these things for quite a number of years. You know, a kid in the trailer is not going to be able to ever afford one in our reality. But, yeah, you know, I mean, that technology is nothing novel for sure. And, you know, especially some of these digital worlds. some of these, you know, immersive, massive digital worlds that people have created these days, you know, it's not a far, it's not really a far stretch to be able to just start plugging in people virtually to those things and giving them a little bit more freedom of access. I mean, just look at what Fortnite did for all the kids of that age. You know, that was just a massive thing. Yeah, those sandbox games, I mean, you can, you can explore entire worlds.

there's probably more square footage in virtual space than there is on the planet. Oh, that's an interesting quandary. You know, I mean... I would imagine so. Yeah. Especially if you took in like instances, right? Because a lot of those worlds are instance out

by however many players. If you took all of those instances, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like we're in some ways were drowning in abstraction, which opens the door to so many possibilities. You know, I remember about two years ago, I was just enamored by people opening up shops in metaverse-like worlds

and selling skins or selling weapons or selling, you know, you can use your NFTs to become, could use Popeye in the world of Zelda, you know, like you can just sell these things. And it's like, on some level, I'm like, wow, this is going to change everything. But then I'm like, I really doesn't change anything. But it kind of changes everything, you know, but it's fascinating. Instead of going to the mall, you're just, you know, you're just going to the digital mall. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

So, I mean, it's the same, it's the same game played out just on a digital space or maybe a digital slash analog space. Yeah, it reminds me. I was talking to this cat, uh, ranga, rongara john. And he was, he had told me about this meme that he saw. And the meme that he saw was like two dogs talking to each other. And one dog is like, man, I've always wanted to be a human. You know, it seems like such an amazing time and such an amazing person. And like, they do so much cool stuff. And so the dog dresses up and becomes a human for like a month. And then he comes back and he becomes a dog again. And the other dog's like, how was it? And he He goes, you know, I thought it was going to be amazing, but it's just a complicated game of fetch. It's not too far off the mark. Yeah. Not too far off the mark. Yeah. So I guess getting back to the idea of transfers of wealth and the metaverse and social mobility, has there, looking back on it, has the opportunity for social mobility been concerned?

strained since the 1500s or is it just something that's in high gear now or how do you see that? I think it's, you know, as far back as we have good history, it's always been constrained realistically. I mean, there's always been a glass ceiling for people. Right. You know, if you were born on the wrong side of a mountain way back in the day, that was, that was it, right? Yeah. So, and it's the same thing today. You know, even when you have, you know, these massive successes or whatnot, like even like a like a Kanye West, right, billionaire right now, you know, massively successful, creativity, can't argue it.

You know, he's done all sorts of cool business stuff. But that, that, that even that, that new money thing, that whole idea that you can do that, that's just a, it's just a blink of a blink of the eye in the grander picture. of the scale of wealth that exists on the planet. And that thing is, that thing has so much momentum. And the only people who are on the, on the train of that massive wealth are the people who are born there pretty much. You don't really run and catch up to it. There's probably been a few throughout the, throughout the years, but by and large,

it's a very small select group of people. and it's all been lineage driven. And, you know, even today, people are very, very interested in lineage. You know, we have all these things, 23 and me and DNA and all this stuff, which kind of, it took a little of the edge off of it, you could say, but at the same time, it invited an entire different, you know, marketplace of ideas for this, the idea of lineage. And so, you know, in terms of social mobility, I think it's pretty much always been pretty restricted. You know, carrying us to today where even if you become like a Kanye West, yeah, you might have a few bucks.

But your capacity to do something in the world is, yeah, you know, he can make another song. He can put out more sneakers. But that's that's it. You know, Kanye West isn't going to usher in. a dramatic revolutionary change in society. You know, neither is, neither you or I most likely, right? It's just the nature of the, of the beast, of the reality of the situation that we're involved in.

And I think when social mobility gets lower is also when you see unrest in the populace, too, which I think we're seeing a lot of current people. Right. And so if, if we look at, look at history and we look at today, and we project into the future the continued degradation of nation states and the upstart city states and different kind of projects like that, what do you think that does for social mobility? Does that either, does that A represent a new form of social mobility? Or does that just make the divide and conquer and the squeezing of social

mobility more prevalent? It's going to dramatically depend on how that, on how that plays out from a, from a growth level of those nation states and communities and things like that. If what I suspect is going to happen, if it kind of all fractures out, but everybody realizes that, hey, the investment in the time, the technology, the infrastructure that we put in to have a global communication system, to have internet, to have supply chains, to have these things. These are good things beneficial to a lot of people.

Let's figure out how to keep these things while we go our separate ways type idea, which is what I suspect will happen more often than not. I think there'll be a couple warm and hot places, but I don't think it'll be as many as people suspect. I think if that happens, then you have almost a renaissance, because now you have to imagine you're going to have pockets of people who are just dedicated to causes. But not only dedicated the causes,

they're enabled by the technology and resources in supply chains and networks that have been fostered over the past 120, 130-some year. And that will allow massive social mobility in certain places and probably almost no social mobility in other places.

I can very much, much see a place where you have, you know, like a, like a New York type city center, where it is kind of like a ready player one. Yeah. Where, you know, it's just people who are given a stipend every single month who live in, you know, a box. And their only escape is to escape reality into these virtual worlds. And that's where they kind of live out their lives, their fantasies, their dreams and whatnot, probably to a very detrimental living state and, you know, early death and whatnot. But I think we'll see a lot of those larger city centers kind of devolve into those types of welfare

states, if you will. Sort of like a new opium den. Kind of. Yeah. Man. You know what? When you put it like that, I can see that. And then, you know, you mix in some of these lectures from like, Noel.

Harari that talking about, you know, humans are hackable animals. And if we don't do something, the rats will take over. And, you know, I just, I don't really know that guy well enough to judge him on, on who he is a person. However, I've read his books. And I'm not impressed with his books. I feel like he's almost, I feel like he just rewrote gun germs and steel for his first book.

And then the, the, the, anybody who. sits back and calls out human beings as rats or and maybe I'm taking him out of context. I don't know that I listen to him and this is just my opinion of what he said. However, anybody who just explains people like hackable animals to me is someone who has never been fond of humanity, who has never truly seen the beauty and what is possible of humankind if they're given the ability to express themselves. And it just makes me despise everything that guy works on. And maybe this is unfair.

But when I think about him, I think about the World Economic Forum. And if this guy's advising the World Economic Forum, he doesn't see people as people. He sees him as numbers. You know, that's the reality of a lot of those people. When you're born into those circles, you know, we're indoctrinated just as those people are indoctrinated. When I was, I had a fishing business for a few years out of my travels where I'd bring people on luxurious fully chartered two-week vacations in foreign countries and I would be their host

essentially nice I got to meet some very interesting and you know relatively powerful people from different places in the world and there was definitely some common themes amongst them and one of them was just a simple lack of perspective of what it is to live a day-to-day life for the common individual yeah uh you know they have they you have to imagine if you've never been exposed to that. You're just kind of watching it from the outside looking in like going to the zoo. Yeah. And that's and then

consequently that's kind of the adoption of the pathology of a lot of those people is they feel like they are, you know, the zookeeper and they're just at the zoo and the other people are just animals or they're just, you know, you know, rats

or what have. Yeah. And it's a very interesting thing to be able to have one foot in and one foot out of a world like that. And getting to see that at the age I got to see it was really, you know, fascinated to me. Completely broke down the remaining loss I had about the world. And I realized that, oh, okay, you can't even see that this is a problem because you don't even perceive this as a problem because it's not even registering sensually to you or emotionally to you at any level.

it's just not there. You know, they, you know, even though somebody's experienced tragedy in their life, even though they've experienced these things, it's just a different thing because it's not the same kind of, it's not the same type of burden placed upon everyday life, you know, from any angle, whether that be a tragedy or whether that be a resources, you know, perspective, or whether that be, oh, what am I going to do with my life? No, no, no, no, no, no. you're going to go here, Daddy already arranged this for you,

you're going to be an intern here. You have a, by, you know, 27, you'll be a partner here. Don't worry about it, right? And that's the reality of a lot of those people's world. You know, there has never been the question of, well, what am I going to do with my life? Or, you know, and so that removes just such a huge perspective of, you know, exploring life, right? Because we know you're going to go be a junior partner at the law firm. There's not a whole lot of reason to go take basket leaving in college.

Yeah. You know, I often wonder to, like, I've been fortunate enough to travel a little bit. However, I've never, and I lived in Mexico for about six months, and I lived in like this really, I lived at a surf camp where everyone would leave and it would just be me. and I sometimes some people from the little Hito would come down and I would talk to them and I that's where I learned Spanish and you know I got to see how people lived pretty much without any technology without a lot of technology or definitely not technology from the first world and while it's a more simple life you know I realized that those people knew so so much more than I knew especially

when it came to survival and how to live life and they all seem pretty. fulfilled and they all seemed like they were not a whole lot different than me in a lot of ways. And so when I look, when I put my, my hat on as a philanthropist, not that I could ever understand what that's like, but in my mind, I see people going to maybe a third world country, say like in Africa somewhere and like trying to help out this group of people. I guess I could see how I'll just I'll just hypothetically I could see how John Kerry could go to the third world and be like we've got to help these people and the way we're going to help them is by stealing all the money from the people in my country and giving it to these people like I could see on some level how people like people like people like they are people like they are doing good and maybe they are helping people but at what cost and who are they to decide like we're going to just steal all the money from this people in this country because they have enough we need to help. these people but the people on top it seems to me they never ever they never ever follow their own path like they're like we think these people on the bottom should have less but we're not going to have

less when it comes to the topic of climate change that people are saying like they fly around in all their jets and they have all these grand visions of how they're helping people but they never not one of them none of them ever follow the rules they set for other people and it seems to me it's easy If you guys want to have change, follow your own rules. Rules for the, not for me. Yes. Yeah. How do they justify that in their minds?

Well, it's because they don't have the perspective. They've never given up everything. They never sold everything. They never packed their shit up into a bag or two and just went for it. They've never even had the opportunity to think about doing that. So it forms a completely different lens on the world. They're completely different lens on reality. And yeah, they, oh, well, these people have nothing.

Oh, clear. They're in a house. We can take money from them. Yeah, they're $50,000 in debt. And they can't afford. They're about to lose the damn house because, you know, they can't keep a job for more than 20 hours a week. Yeah.

Because they're trying to keep health care, you know, or whatever. There's all sorts of wild. things you know when you start to work at the lower economic brackets of how the west operates it is it's a travesty and you know what every single one of those people think when they see the next 60 billion dollars going to ukraine or going you know money going here or going there well gosh a thousand bucks would change my life right now there is there's probably i would estimate 50 to a hundred million people in this country that $1,000 would change their month. Now, there's also probably a billion to three billion people that $1,000 would change their

year. But the other side of that equation or another side of those equations is that, you know, where are those people located? Is the, you know, is that thousand, what's that thousand dollars going to go to? And then the reality of a lot of those situations is it gets funneled up to the corrupt top. Yeah, just like it does everywhere else. And so, you know, yeah, oh, we sent, you know, X amount of money over there. Guess how much the people actually benefited from it? You know, it's kind of the same sham as the non-profits in this country. You're required to spend 5% of your intake of money on your on your purported cause for your nonprofit. That's probably about what ends up, maybe 5% to the to the bottom line of what people are trying to help. Oftentimes none. And oftentimes those people end up in worse states. Yeah. Because now instead of their sustainable ways that they've been utilizing for generations, they got sold some shammie, scummy, crappy product that's supposed to replace and change their world of life.

And it breaks down after two years. And, you know, nobody has been cultivating the crop that allowed us to get through these times. Or, you know, all these other little tiny things that downriver nobody really looks at because, hey, I did good. Yeah. Yeah, it blows my mind to think about it. It kind of reminds me of that. You ever see that movie a long time ago called The Gods Must Be Crazy? And all of a sudden this Coke bottle falls from some plane somewhere on this tribe.

And like one guy uses it as a hammer. One guy uses it to play music. One lady uses it to roll stuff. And I always started fighting over this technology. You know, and it's almost like the story of Prometheus, how like this technology fell into their hand and like just did nothing but create chaos and yeah and at the same time where we're almost unexplicably compelled to explore our and you know reinvent our environment yeah yeah you know it's it's like we're the soars of our own

destruction but we're we're like edging it out by a percent or two every every generation so we're okay so far yeah yeah i don't One thing I see, and I think it's becoming more obvious is just the facade of this thing we call democracy. And I'm hopeful that it leads maybe to an actual type of democracy where, you know, the act of foreign aid is like you take, you take money from poor people in rich countries and you give it to. to rich people in poor countries. And it never pans out for any people. Well, there's another part of that equation. You give it to rich people in poor countries because then they take the resources from

the poor countries and give it to you. Yes. I do see. Yeah. You know, I heard of something interesting that was talking about these billions of dollars that's going to Ukraine. Like, how many of our politicians have like an NGO or some sort of. special economic zone and it just gets funneled right back into their family office you know and every

single one of them every one of them every single lot of them i mean yeah you could probably make an argument that some of the newer ones maybe not as much um but any single career politician yeah every single one of them and if you could show me one that didn't i would be very surprised yeah it's it's living in hawai has been a real eye opener for me because you know you can really see what happens on a grand scale by seeing what happens right here. And because we're an island, everything is right in front of you. And we have the same national policies that are being, you know, you can see the, I can see the policies in my state that are being rolled out throughout the entire nation. And one of them has been this idea of mass transit. And I can

understand the reasons for mass transit. It alleviates traffic. It helps commercially. It is, it brings people together, you know, and it provides more time for things. And it, However, they began to implement the, they call it the rail. And it was fought over just tooth and nail. And it was, it was pushed through by lobbyists and money. And we didn't even get a, we didn't get like some kickass mag, you know, magnetic bullet train. We got like 1950 steel on steel. And then, and like it's gone like $150 billion over budget.

It didn't even go where it's supposed to go. It's not even done yet. You know, and like, it's so ridiculous. Yeah, that's the corruptness of the state, right? Because. Yeah. And then when you ask the question of, well, why the hell did that happen? And you start to pull back the layers.

Oh, it turns out that this contract was given to this city congressman's husband or their cousin or their blah, blah, blah, blah that runs ex company that does this. No, not the most qualified person, but just some more. of diversified nepotism. Diversified nepotism. That's so what it is. It seems like it to me. Without a doubt.

That might be the form of government that we're under right now. Well, it could be. I mean, you know, how many Bushes have we had? How many Clintons have we had? How many Kennedys have we had? How many, you know, Cheney's? How many, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. And so if you take it to that list, level, you know, you could almost, I could see when you look at it through that lens and the corruption, you know, you could almost make the argument that the Chinese model of state capitalism is better. I mean, from a purely, from an efficiency, from an efficiency perspective, absolutely. Yeah, there's, I mean, well, and that's always going to be the reality of authoritarian control. Right.

because it's a lot easier for one person to make up their mind and say, we're doing this than it is for a committee to say, we're doing this. And then, you know, even if that's the difference of two minutes, two minutes times 10,000 decisions adds up pretty damn fast. And it's usually much longer whenever you have bureaucracy involved, right?

Yeah. And so from, you know, it's also why corporatism has taken over the world. Yeah. Because you got one guy at the top. Yeah, he's beholden to a board. sometimes and a little bit, depending on contracts and whatnot,

at the end of the day, he can make decisions or she can make decisions and people say, how high should I jump and it'll be done tomorrow. And when you can enable that type of ability to execute, you can just move more efficiently. You can move faster. You're going to use less resources potentially to accomplish similar goals. And so just, you know, as you put the equation and run it over time, you're going to win is what it comes down to. And so the Chinese are aware of this.

I mean, they're very smart in their long-term game. They always have things. Minus when they killed all of the smart people in their country. I don't think that was the best idea. But, you know, I could be wrong. Yeah. It would be doing all right. So who am I the judge?

Yeah. I it brings up another point like I was I forgot what I was listening to yesterday but they brought up this point of the way the world is working right now in a way I had never thought of before and they they had they had approached the situation we're in right now as a currency war and I was listening to like oh well I wonder what this is about and the the narrator said if you look at the way the China is working working right now. Like they have their own version of the IMF where they're going to third world countries and they're building ports. They're building roads. They're building, you know, and they have structured their, their model in somewhat in dollars. So that, you know, whether it's treasury bonds. So they have they have all these treasury bonds. And so they have given, let's just say Ecuador, they've built, we're going to build a road all the way through for you guys. Now they know Ecuador is never going to be able to pay him back. So they're going to end up with that road. But. But. But especially they have structured it in a way where, okay, okay, United States, why don't you go ahead and make the dollar, if the dollar becomes strong, then there's no way these third world companies will ever pay us back. So by the United States having a strong dollar,

they're ruining their future because China's going to end up with all these ports. So they put, they put the United States in this catch 22 where it's like, okay, go ahead, make your dollar stronger against ours. Then we're going to own everything that these countries will never pay us back in because they can't afford you. Okay, go ahead and weaken your currency because now we're going to take you out on this other side. So it seems that.

And that other side, that other side is the petro dollar. So one of the things by and large that kept the United States hedge money in a position that it's been in has been the petro dollar, basically the vice grip on the balls of oil. Right. China is aiming to depeg the U.S. dollar as the petro dollar and institute to use. you won at least as a competing currency against the petro dollar, which the petro dollar in case anybody does know is just, you know, when you buy oil in the world, it's settled in dollars. You can't buy oil in the world and not settle in dollars. Now you can now these days with Russia and everything that's happening and bricks and all this

other stuff, but that was the status quo for quite some time. And so in a sense, it is a currency war, but it's not just a currency war. It's a cultural war. At the end of the day, it's not just the currency. It's the ideology behind the currency. It's the practices behind the currency. It's the processes. It's the broken, corrupted democracy.

And it's all of these things. It's taking the marketplace of ideas of what we call society and saying, they're saying, have a better one. And they've been moving forward with their plan to win that game. And nobody's really been playing against them. In fact, people were playing with them for quite some time up until very recently. You know, I mean, it wasn't, but five years ago where there wasn't a single product line that didn't touch some supply chain in China. You know, now those are starting to diversify out because people realize that it's bad to have all of that in one place. go figure you know it's not like everybody wasn't told never keep all your eggs in one basket as a kid

but here we are and so moving forward uh you know you have this now everybody's catching up and now they're realizing that oh these people are not going to stop instituting these practices they're not going to stop these things this is their policy this is their plan uh you know you watch what happened in Hong Kong. Hong Kong wasn't supposed to move back until China for another 20-some years, and then all of a sudden it was like overnight. Because they realized that they had the, you know, the advantage in the situation. They knew nobody was going to come drop bombs on Hong Kong because they weren't dropping bombs on Hong Kong, right? They just happened to take it over from a political perspective and, you know, an economic perspective. And then, you know,

all of those people were friendly with the government, friendly with the government. And so it just became a part of de facto part of China again. To your point about the Ecuadorian road, I was in Costa Rica. China donated a stadium, a whole police force worth of cars, police helicopter, built a couple bridges. And then about two and a half years, three years after that was done, Costa Rica, signs a free trade agreement with China gives away the rights to their fishing waters

all sorts of crazy stuff has happened since then most of the stores that you go to will be Chinese run now whether that be hardware grocery things like this things they all used to be locals and I saw that up and down the Pacific coast

from Chile on up and so they've been doing this for 20 plus years And so now you're hearing all these people talking about, oh, China's fishing fleet, they're murdering the seas and blah, blah, blah, blah. These are all sanctioned activities signed off on by corrupt governments who took out bribes from China. There's no legal recourse. Yeah. Yeah, it's legal.

I mean, isn't it, like I've seen some pretty interesting maps with the built and road initiative and how it comes all the way up from South America. But isn't that sort of a violation of the Monroe Doctrine? I thought the United States was pretty heavy-handed when it came to our sphere of influence in South America. But I guess we're connected. I guess we're taking money from them as well. Yeah. And to be frank, we shit that bet.

We did. Look at all the crap that we put on South America and Central America. You know, the past 50 years. It's just been a coup here, a coup there. It's been destabilization here. or destabilization there. It's been nothing but and nobody is risen economically. I mean, yeah, you know, some people, it's gone up a little bit.

But by and large, you know, most people are very, very poor in those countries still. And it's not like there's a lot of infrastructure and business, you know, investment and all this stuff happening. Now it's mostly just waiting for the next coup. Yeah. In some of these places. I mean, you know, and then you have. of places that, you know, once they got cooed out, you had instituted dictators that have been in

place for 20 some plus years. And so, of course, nothing's going to change. Yeah. You know, uh, so yeah, I, I don't think there's a lot of love lost between Central and South America and, in the United States. So it becomes a lot more difficult to say, hey, let us put 10,000 troops in this military base down here in this country, in your country. Well, we don't want your troops. We don't want your military base, fuck off. I mean, that's kind of the response you're going to get. And so I think that's why you're seeing it. And the Chinese, to their credit, they went about it in a smart way. It said, hey, would you like all of this money? Yep. Yeah. It's free. Yeah. We swear, it's free. Here, here, take it. Yeah.

We don't care how you govern. Just take the money. We're just going to build a road for you. Right. Well, and you know, the other thing was, is like, oh, one guy takes the free money and then tells China, oh, you know, we're not going to do that. Well, guess what? That guy is no longer in power or, you know, for a variety of reasons. Maybe he just disappeared in the jungle. Right. But the next guy, he's willing to sign off. Yeah. And, you know, we see this everywhere. And to the people who are looking for it and, you know, aware of these things. And so the question then becomes, well, what do you do about it? I mean, it's just, it seems, it seems rampant, right? And I think what's happening is that society culturally itself is kind of dealing with it.

That's why we saw like cancel culture for anything. Because you have to figure two years ago, nobody gave crap. You can do whatever you want, right? But now there's, oh, everybody's talking to each other. Everybody realizes that people are people and that, you know, oh, maybe we should actually be a bit more responsible about some things. And then so the backlash, the rubber band effect comes and cancel culture. is born. And I think we're kind of seeing the end of that rubber band effect and it's certainly

come back the other way. But I think we're going to continue to see these types of just fluctuations in society that are going to push it out to its breaking points and then kind of bring it back. And then eventually things will break off and fracture. And I don't see it being anything but inevitable at this point just because of the policies that we're making and the people that are in power and it's not like that changes rapidly and even if it did the changes that need to happen downstream from that there don't happen rapidly either and so you know now how do you garner such a public will such a social will to go after to go after those endeavors or would you rather just kind of say eh it is what it is i'll just look at my

tic-toc videos a lot of people are choosing the beat yeah yeah i agree it's there's so you know sometimes in the face of adversity people just don't want they've they've been like beaten dogs you know they just don't want to participate and i can see the point like on some level you know if you're a kid growing up right now and you live in a place where the average home price is 500,000 dollars you know you're like what do i dude i'll just be the wizard i'll just be the damn wizard killing dragons you know and how do how am i supposed to compete in this world and you know it kind of makes me sad in some ways to see that and maybe this is just inevitable

maybe this is how cultures work maybe it gets to a point where there's no social mobility and then things break down and that's kind of where we are now i wouldn't say that's the way cultures work i would say that's the way like systems work a system's only going to play out to its eventual and characteristics i mean you know And like, for instance, our starting system, the conditions that gave our system life is the Constitution. Right. You know, this is that system playing itself up. It lasted 250 years, did a pretty damn good job.

Yeah. Took over the world. I mean, so from me, you know, in terms of like a system, not so bad. Yeah. But at the end of the day, that system's characteristics, it's underlying, you know, you know, foundations in combination, determine where it stops, where it halts, where it breaks, where there's going to be fault.

And, you know, we could get in deep on the actual wordage of things and whatnot, but, you know, the words are important. And we've talked a lot about that. And those words being so important, and then having so many different arbitrary points of authority that are interpreting these words supposedly in our best interest, is a system that just doesn't work when we can talk 1,600 miles apart instantaneously. It starts to break down because now I know it's not my best interest and if it's not your best interest and if it's not their best interest,

whose best interest is it? Well, George, Nancy Pelosi's just to break it together. Yeah. So do you think that like, you know, we've talked to, you know, we've talked to, you know, You have said something that I keep thinking about, and that's that it's not that we go around in a circle. It's that we go around like in a helical. Helical? Is that the right way?

Helical. So it seems to me that the next rung on the helical ladder seems to be this idea of state capitalism. That's what the United States is trying to adopt. Is that sound accurate to you? Do you think that that is potentially the next rung on the helical ladder of systems? I mean, that's the, I wouldn't say the United States is just trying to adopt it. I would say that that's the adoption of the international monetary. That's the eye on that.

Okay. That makes sense. Their whole, and if you look at it, you know, the United States hasn't really been embroiled in any conflict in any place that did not have a central bank before we went into conflict with them and then ended up with one after we did. Right. And their declared goal is that by 2025, there will be central bank digital currencies rolled out in every country. And so Biden already signed an executive order charging the Treasury Department to do that. Canada's already rolled out theirs. Australia is rolling out theirs.

China has theirs rolled out last year. So this is where things are going for. sure. That's the intention of that group of people. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of evidence to say that that is a big part of where all this Ukrainian money is going is going to recapitalize the European banks or even to be the foundation for the new digital currency. I mean, you're talking about $700 billion at the stroke of a pen. you know like and and and maybe 10% goes to the you know there's soldiers and people in ukraine like yeah we're not getting any of this money oh they're not no they're definitely not getting any of the money i mean you know and then you know what and the other side about this is is that from a military

industrial complex uh perspective they're loving the hell out of it yeah they get to field test their weapons without having to actually risk lives of people that they're semi responsible to at some some level, some societal level. Yeah. And, you know, so now you just got a menagerie of fuckery going on. And, you know, it's really interesting watching it unfold. It's turning into quite the quagmire. Yeah.

And I don't think it stops being a quagmire for some time. No, I think that's baked into the cake. I think the bigger the quagmire, the bigger the opportunities for them. You know, the more muddy the waters. the better. What do you, like, let's say, how do you think the, how do you think the pension funds and these big sort of trusts end up by 2025? If there's a digital currency, does do the pension funds just get, they trade their paper,

IOUs for, for this digital currency? Right. So that's how they'll, they'll make it, they'll grease the wheels on every step of the way get people to adopt this. So for like the big pension funds, you know, they might even give them a rate, right? So, you know, you might get, you know, 90 cents to the dollar type thing for each conversion. So you're making 10 cents on every dollar, you know, every hundred dollars you convert or something like that. And then for individual people, it'll be, you know, a type of welfare thing. Well, if you sign up to the central bank digital currency and download the app, you're going to get $500 as a signup bonus.

And then stretching that out, that'll also be how they facilitate the adoption of things like more of a welfare state and cities like we were talking about before. Because now I can just add a couple digital zeros. My infrastructure cost to do so is minimal. And I can just send it out, you know, ad nauseum to everybody on this list. And so, hey, if you're in New York City and you have the central bank digital currency app and you've changed in cash this month, you're going to get a $200 stipend. So now you're going to get, now you're going to get people invested in the idea that I can get on the digital currency system. And if I bring other people, I can get money from it or if I turn in cash, I can get more money from it.

And so you create an incentive structure behind it. And so I think we'll see those incentive structures roll out in every country, really, just depending on, you know, need and greed. Yeah. Yeah, there's, it's interesting to pay attention to all the different countries and how fast they're rolling things out. I just saw, like, I think in Australia, they're supposed to be, they've rolled out some crazy idea that they're going to be net zero in the next, like, 10 years.

You know, like, they're just going to, they're going to. Which is wild. That whole climate thing is just, I mean, you know, people are getting banned left and right talking about it. Yeah. Which is wild too. It's like you can't even talk about the scientific counterpoints without potentially subjecting yourself to losing all of your efforts. Now, do you see that as a form of weakness or a form of power? Because it seems to me when people become that militant, it's like they're.

It's always a form of weakness. Yeah, I agree. It's always a form of weakness. If you're not willing to listen to other people's ideas, especially ideas that run counter to yours, then your faith in your ideas for one, but your ability to reconcile them into the world, to argue that that's the better idea,

all of these things, well, you're not giving the idea. It's room to breathe. Every idea should be contested. You know, if we're all just going to follow somebody who says, I have an idea, well, we probably wouldn't be here. You know, I played that Lemming's game back in the day. I'm pretty sure that that's how that ends up. Yeah. Yeah, it seems that the best idea will win.

And if you, but if you don't allow those ideas to be fought over or, like you said, contested. Then the loudest idea win. Right. And the impiest barrel makes the loudest sound, right? We end up just being empty inside. Benjamin C. George, I love talking to you, man. This is fun. And it's always fascinating to me to see where we end up because we, you know,

we have really had some interesting conversation. Some of them more structured than others. And I really feel like it's a journey in itself, you know, like I never know where we're going to go. We might turn the wheel this way. We might turn it over that way. But I feel like I always learn. something and I've gotten some good feedback and I for those people paying attention

probably me and you the most like our conversations have gone from like we've we've doubled and tripled the amount of people that are watching you know and and we're getting questions coming in and I I'm really thankful to to get to to be in the passenger seat and ride with you for a while man I'm really I'm really thankful for that thank you yeah likewise brother it's been a good time. I've appreciated you bringing me on to the podcast scene. I've been wanting to do it for years and then finally have the proper motivation. When or when do you have a launch date for for when you got the no absolutes podcast starting up? I don't have a launch date yet. I've,

I've just been kind of putting things together. You got a lot of stuff on your plate. I do. It'll be one of those things where it'll probably be a weekend where I'm like, damn it, finally I'm going to do it. And then, you know, so. All right. But it should, I expect, I'm, my goal, rather, is by the end of September. Nice. Well, regarding, I know you got a lot on your plate, but I hope that you are able to at least carve out a few hours for me on Wednesdays because I don't want to give it up, brother. No, no, no.

This is fantastic. And I think, you know, the nature of our conversation, we've, we've touched on it offline a bit. But, you know, these are great conversations because you don't get to have them every day. It's a hard conversation to have in the community. It is. It's a hard conversation just to bring up with family members. So, you know, I hope that us having these types of conversations and continued conversations like this allows people to take part in these conversations and be like, aha, okay, I'm not the only person who thinks this way in the world. because that's always a nice comforting thought.

Nobody likes to think they're crazy. Yeah. And it's, you know, as it's growing too, like I've, I really think that there's something to be, like both of us,

and a lot of people listening to this, have a similar story where they have taken life as an adventure and they've packed their bags and they have said, you know what, I'm going to do this thing. And I think this is kind of a spot

where people can find each other. Like I've, I have, noticed that between you and a lot of other people I've been talking to, there's people all over the world, but we all have these things in common. And I feel like we're building this network somewhat. And that brings me to another idea. How would you feel about having a panel of people come on and maybe us having like three or four people talking? I would love it. I think the open discussion of ideas, there's really nothing like it. Yeah, because I've gotten a few other people

that are interested in doing it. So I'm thinking about maybe throwing something together like that where we could have a conversation and we could hear four interesting, different perspectives that we would probably all be like, I never thought about it. They would just enrich the conversation. So maybe in the future we can set something up like that.

Yeah, that sounds awesome. Okay, awesome. Oh, Benjamin George, where can they find you? What do you got coming up? And what would you like to say before we go? Benjamin C.George.com is hoping for everything I do these days. and everybody just have a great week. Okay, I love it.

I love it. And then links will be down below. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for spending time with us. We're looking forward to the next one, and we always have fun doing it. Feel free to jump in the conversation anytime on the live broadcast. And reach out to myself or either Benjamin at the links below,

and we'll talk to you again next week. Hello.