Speaker 1: How technology makes the current form of government obsolete. Now,
Speaker 1: I just finished reading an amazing book called The Revolt
Speaker 1: of the Public, which goes back through history, which you
Speaker 1: know I love, talking about how technology changes the way
Speaker 1: we communicate and act, and it goes to explain how
Speaker 1: all the problems, well many of the problems that we
Speaker 1: see today, specifically the problems with the loss of trust
Speaker 1: of institutions and the way that this top down control works,
Speaker 1: and of course the way that the economic model is
Speaker 1: mimicking the complex system of information. I sat down with
Speaker 1: the author of the book for an awesome conversation. Martin
Speaker 1: Gurry joins me, and we are going to discuss the
Speaker 1: book itself, what were the fourth and fifth wave of communication,
Speaker 1: How the parabolic increase and the rise of information is
Speaker 1: making the current forms of government obsolete. We go through
Speaker 1: recent history to look at revolutions that happened from twenty
Speaker 1: eleven forward, Occupy Wall Street, and so much more to
Speaker 1: break this down so you can understand exactly what's going on.
Speaker 1: It'll give you a framework to figure out where we're
Speaker 1: going and how you should be managing your life. And
Speaker 1: this is something that you should know specifically with the
Speaker 1: restrict Act that's going into place right now, is ramping
Speaker 1: up this war, this battle because government is not compatible
Speaker 1: with what's going on anyway. It was an awesome conversation
Speaker 1: with Martin Gurry, with the author of this book. We
Speaker 1: do spend a little bit of time kind of setting
Speaker 1: up the book before we really dive into the revolutions.
Speaker 1: So check out the time stamps down below if you
Speaker 1: want to jump ahead, but I'd encourage you to listen
Speaker 1: to the whole thing with that. Let's jump right in,
Speaker 1: all right, Martin, thanks so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to dig in and talk to you about
Speaker 1: your book and learn so much. So thanks for joining me.
Speaker 2: My pleasure. Mark.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, I just read this book here, The Revolt
Speaker 1: of the Public, and you know I love books like this.
Speaker 1: It was a big, thick book. I had a lot
Speaker 1: of good information, a lot of stuff that I have
Speaker 1: been seeing, a lot of stuff I have been saying.
Speaker 1: But man, you really dug in deep to it. I guess,
Speaker 1: maybe just give us the quick thesis of the book
Speaker 1: before we start digging into what it's about. From your words,
Speaker 1: I guess yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, the origin of the book goes way back
Speaker 2: when I was still in CIA, I was an analyst
Speaker 2: of global media, and I and a number of people
Speaker 2: with me noticed this just radical transformation of the information sphere.
Speaker 2: Once that digital tsunami of information hit and we noticed
Speaker 2: further were behind that, there was this political turbulence. Now
Speaker 2: it seems very naive now, but we thought, we asked ourselves,
Speaker 2: what's the connection. Right, we have the Internet, which is
Speaker 2: kind of like this fun communications thing, and you have
Speaker 2: politics over here. Right. And now, of course we know
Speaker 2: the mutual influence is powerful, determinative, but at the time
Speaker 2: none of us do that. So after I left government,
Speaker 2: I dedicated myself to research of that, and it became
Speaker 2: clear to me that essentially the profound transformation in the
Speaker 2: structure of information was changing completely the institutional environment in
Speaker 2: which we had evolved from the twentieth century underward, institutions
Speaker 2: that were all shaped by the twentieth century ideal of
Speaker 2: top down. I talked, you listen, there's no talking back
Speaker 2: from the public, and that a lot of the categories
Speaker 2: in politics, such as liberal and conservative and the right
Speaker 2: and left, which go back one hundred and fifty to
Speaker 2: two hundred years, really had lost a lot of meaning
Speaker 2: and what I saw was that there was an eruption
Speaker 2: leaping into the center stage as a political actor of
Speaker 2: the network public, people who had suddenly gained voice because
Speaker 2: of their ability to link up to the digital platforms,
Speaker 2: and that almost every political conflict in the world today,
Speaker 2: some exceptions in some countries, almost everyone really maps down
Speaker 2: to the network public against the elites who run those
Speaker 2: institutions that were shaped in the twentieth century, who initially
Speaker 2: had no understanding what was happening. After certain events like
Speaker 2: Trump and Brexit, understood what was happening, but did not
Speaker 2: like it and wanted it to stop happening. So almost
Speaker 2: every conflict you have, and every eruption of change and
Speaker 2: around the world, around the world, can be mapped to
Speaker 2: this profound, profound through tectonic collision between the public and
Speaker 2: the elites.
Speaker 1: I guess since the beginning of time, that's how it's been,
Speaker 1: the public verse, since the beginning of time, that's what
Speaker 1: it's been, right, the public versus the elites.
Speaker 2: And how not at all, not at all, I think.
Speaker 2: I think in the olden days, the public just kind
Speaker 2: of knuckled its forehead and said yes, sir.
Speaker 1: But it was still the elites trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how they could control the masses. Uh, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a part in the Bible in Exodus where Pharaoh looks
Speaker 1: out over all the Israelites in Egypt and said, they
Speaker 1: outnumber us. What will we do? And they said, here's
Speaker 1: what we'll do. Let's work them so hard that they'll
Speaker 1: never have a chance to uprise again. So, I mean
Speaker 1: that was written thousands of thousands of years ago, so
Speaker 1: it's maybe always been a way that they try to
Speaker 1: kind of somehow manage the people.
Speaker 2: Only insert the qualification that you can be an elite
Speaker 2: in an institution that has legitimacy, and whether that you
Speaker 2: should have it or not are that's a separate conversation.
Speaker 2: But you have legitimacy, meaning you have authority, meaning that
Speaker 2: I can tell you what to do and you will
Speaker 2: probably do it without me having to point a gunna,
Speaker 2: do you right? For example? And there are elites who
Speaker 2: need to point a gunna or you're not going to
Speaker 2: do it. And we're slowly coming to the point where
Speaker 2: if the elites don't have a whole lot of compulsion,
Speaker 2: nobody's going to listen to them. Yeah, you can see
Speaker 2: that you saw it with COVID for example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's definitely a topic we're going to dive into.
Speaker 1: And you're right, you made that point very clear in
Speaker 1: your book, kind of breaking down the trust in these institutions.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to that. But looking back
Speaker 1: throughout history, we see that it's always some piece of
Speaker 1: technological innovation that seems to kind of change the way
Speaker 1: that we communicate and organize. A point that I had
Speaker 1: talked a lot a lot about and you talked about
Speaker 1: as well, was about five hundred years ago we had
Speaker 1: the Protestant Reformation that really seemed to have been driven
Speaker 1: by a catalyst about seventy years previous, which was the
Speaker 1: printing press, and sort of this dissemination of information that
Speaker 1: then led to this I think you would call it
Speaker 1: like this democratic access to information that changed so sort
Speaker 1: of like that times like a thousand or times a million.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't even know. I actually think the printing
Speaker 2: press was probably the most disruptive innovation in terms of
Speaker 2: information change. I mean, it's still early days with the internet, right,
Speaker 2: so we may get there and surpass that one, but no, no,
Speaker 2: I think I think and it's instructive to go back
Speaker 2: to that time because you know it. The results were brutal.
Speaker 2: The results, the consequences, the immediate consequences of the printing
Speaker 2: press were brutal. If you went to the Thirty Years War,
Speaker 2: which was kind of an offshoot of their Reformation, in which,
Speaker 2: for example, if you know, if you went to church
Speaker 2: and the church next door had three different words than
Speaker 2: what your hymnal did or creed had, you now had
Speaker 2: those words in your book. You knew them there they were,
Speaker 2: they had So the other guy who didn't have those
Speaker 2: words or who had different words, they had to die.
Speaker 2: The Thirty Years War was the bloodiest war in the
Speaker 2: history of Europe. And if you had gone there and
Speaker 2: asked those people what do you think of the printing press,
Speaker 2: that would have said it's the most horrible invention ever,
Speaker 2: take it back, destroy it. Well, today we know it
Speaker 2: was probably the most liberating, not only because of the Reformation,
Speaker 2: but because of the scientific revolution. You could not have
Speaker 2: had that with manuscripts. And then the French and American
Speaker 2: revolutions that brought democracy to the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And if we frame that up in context of
Speaker 1: kind of what the book is and how we want
Speaker 1: to kind of move forward, it was basically the state,
Speaker 1: the church and state. At the time, we're basically controlling
Speaker 1: the information, telling the people what the Bible said, but
Speaker 1: they had no access to it. But once it was democratized,
Speaker 1: once the people were able to get it and read
Speaker 1: it for themselves, they said, wait a minute, you've been
Speaker 1: lying to us whole time. And now even though the
Speaker 1: Church labeled them heretics and heresy and killed them, if
Speaker 1: they spoke out about it, it didn't matter. I mean,
Speaker 1: would that be a right way to frame true?
Speaker 2: I think the parallel is good in many different ways, right.
Speaker 2: I mean number one, yes, the church and you know,
Speaker 2: you get inquisitions, right, and I mean we are not
Speaker 2: at the thirty years War level. We're not killing each other.
Speaker 2: But there are the minor, not not real inquisitions. But
Speaker 2: but I mean, you're not gonna get burned at the stake,
Speaker 2: but you might lose your job, you might get you know,
Speaker 2: all the platformed called out by digital mobs. You your
Speaker 2: reputation could be tord to shreds overnight by saying the
Speaker 2: wrong words, right, So that's one thing. The other one
Speaker 2: is that once you start that process though, of well,
Speaker 2: I am breaking off from the Church and the next
Speaker 2: thing that happens is some group inside you. Your group says, well,
Speaker 2: I'm breaking off from you, and another group says I'm
Speaker 2: breaking up from that, and you get this kind of
Speaker 2: process of specialization where at the end you arrive at
Speaker 2: almost a chaos and you have to work out at
Speaker 2: what point do you put a boundary around that and
Speaker 2: try to make that thing work? Right. The Reformation basically
Speaker 2: exhausted itself in the Thirty Years War and essentially resulted
Speaker 2: in our system of nation states, the nation states in
Speaker 2: both order that religious groups that sort of deserred the
Speaker 2: way in my opinion.
Speaker 1: And if you go back before that, it was the
Speaker 1: religious groups that recreated the social order. Right, So we
Speaker 1: kind of had this decentralized kind of world, and the
Speaker 1: churches kind of came into power by bringing order, right.
Speaker 1: They brought order through chivalry and acts of kindness, and
Speaker 1: then they also rebuilt public infrastructure, which then kind of
Speaker 1: created that centralization. Then the printing press tore that apart,
Speaker 1: and then the nation and states kind of brought it
Speaker 1: back together.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and there were different you know that the
Speaker 2: nation state at a certain point, particularly when it got
Speaker 2: to the industrial state and the industrial democratic states like
Speaker 2: the United States, say in the nineteenth century, then you
Speaker 2: had to you have to somehow provide for the fact
Speaker 2: that you know, just printing books or having access to
Speaker 2: a printing press, which only a few people could have,
Speaker 2: was not really enough. So then mass media came into
Speaker 2: being as a way of bringing, you know, bringing into
Speaker 2: the fold the tens of millions of citizens who had
Speaker 2: essentially entered history. They had become educated, they had become
Speaker 2: relatively affluent, they understood the world, but it had no
Speaker 2: access to the current information. And so you had the
Speaker 2: mass media movement that you know, I'm old enough, that
Speaker 2: was the world I was born into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the mass media where you had had a few
Speaker 1: new sources to choose from it. We'll get to that now.
Speaker 1: You talked about in the book. A couple of things
Speaker 1: that you talked about the book was one was sort
Speaker 1: of like this fourth wave and then fifth wave of information.
Speaker 1: I do want to go back to just kind of
Speaker 1: one thing that you said, just kind of for everybody,
Speaker 1: kind of reiterate this since I've read the book. You
Speaker 1: talked about in the book, and you have a chart
Speaker 1: to illustrate this, and maybe this was the catalyst for
Speaker 1: you writing the book. That you said in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, all of a sudden you realize that more
Speaker 1: information was created in two thousand and one than all
Speaker 1: of humanity before, and then double that amount happened in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. And when you realize that, you
Speaker 1: realize that everything was going to be different. So that's
Speaker 1: the key piece, and I think it's super powerful. Actually
Speaker 1: just tweeted that out earlier today as I was preparing
Speaker 1: for this. That's a massive movement, and I could only
Speaker 1: imagine it must be going parabolic for me, especially now.
Speaker 2: Exactly that's exactly right. And you have to add to
Speaker 2: that that are institutions, and by that I mean not
Speaker 2: just government, but political part but corporations, the media, the academia,
Speaker 2: all these essentially nine twentieth century institutions were developed with
Speaker 2: a small trickle of information in mind, most of which
Speaker 2: they control, and that the gigantic doubling upon doubling up
Speaker 2: on doubling of information has just battered them away. The
Speaker 2: institutions are in a state of absolute prostration because they
Speaker 2: weren't set up for this. They were not set up
Speaker 2: for the world that we live in today. They are
Speaker 2: like the dinosaurs. So the media are coming down. They're
Speaker 2: just maladapted. They were big in the twentieth century, they
Speaker 2: are looking at going extinct in the twenty first. Wow.
Speaker 1: So what was the fourth wave and then what's the
Speaker 1: fifth wave?
Speaker 2: Right? Let me go quickly through them all so that
Speaker 2: the whole thing makes sense. The first wave first was
Speaker 2: the invention of writing, which required sort of like a
Speaker 2: priestly or each wave of information, each structure of information
Speaker 2: accommodates or delivers a certain political and social system. So
Speaker 2: you have the the invention of writing. You need a
Speaker 2: mandarin or a priestly cast like in Egypt to do
Speaker 2: this very elaborate system of writing with thousands of symbols.
Speaker 2: The alphabet is the second wave. You could not have
Speaker 2: had the classic republics of say Rome and Athens without
Speaker 2: an alphabet. The third one we just spoke about is
Speaker 2: the printing press. The most is eruptive ball in my opinion.
Speaker 2: The fourth was mass media. I also mentioned that. And
Speaker 2: then the fifth is where we are today. You're right
Speaker 2: in two thousand and one. Two thousand and one doubled
Speaker 2: all previous information in history. Two thousand and two doubled
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, And I'm not sure that it's
Speaker 2: one hundred percent doubling, but it has continued. Parabolic is
Speaker 2: a good word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, so when you look at it
Speaker 1: from that zoomed out frame, and then you realize that
Speaker 1: technology changed the way that we communicate, which then change
Speaker 1: the way that we organize, and so then the state
Speaker 1: also changes how it organizes and manages us. And so
Speaker 1: one of the points that you made in the book
Speaker 1: was that really through the Industrial Age, it kind of
Speaker 1: brought us from the farms into the cities and the factories,
Speaker 1: and then we started having this kind of mass movement
Speaker 1: of really Henry Ford kind of created this assembly line
Speaker 1: and it was a way to control the masses and
Speaker 1: kind of equalize the masses. And then you talked about
Speaker 1: how then we needed sort of like a governance system
Speaker 1: and an information system on top of that to kind
Speaker 1: of manage that was that, right? Can you explain that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty close. I mean, you're talking about the
Speaker 2: Industrial Age. Industrial age was the profit of the Industrial
Speaker 2: Age was this guy who's sort of been forgotten but
Speaker 2: was very important as important still Ferrick Taylor, who believed
Speaker 2: that he did all kinds of time and motion studies
Speaker 2: and essentially treated workers like like pieces of equipment right
Speaker 2: for for the sake of efficiency. So everything was delivered
Speaker 2: by the brilliant engineer at the top gave all the
Speaker 2: instructions where all the tools are going to be. The
Speaker 2: workers had no say in anything. They just they just
Speaker 2: basically moved. There could have been robots. That is the
Speaker 2: model for the industrial age.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: The mass movements, particularly the totalitarian mass movements like like Marxism, Leninism,
Speaker 2: like Nazism, like fascism, resembled that model very much. They
Speaker 2: had the brilliant fewer at the top or or you know,
Speaker 2: the polic bureau, and basically they decided everything all the
Speaker 2: way down to as Gorbashoff used to say, women's women's stocking.
Speaker 2: How many women's stocking is you're going to manufacture in
Speaker 2: a year?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Uh? And that system can only function and democracy wasn't
Speaker 2: quite that that brutal, but it was a version of that. Okay,
Speaker 2: there were two three four TV channels, there were two
Speaker 2: three four carmakers. You had very limited choices. You were
Speaker 2: a mass consumer, and industry found it very comfortable to
Speaker 2: say this mass product is exactly what you want. Right.
Speaker 2: What the digital age has done just sweep all of
Speaker 2: that away and lay bare the fact that, no, it
Speaker 2: turns out we're very divided. We want all kinds of things, right,
Speaker 2: we want all kinds of things. The mass consumer of information.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I was born into that. It was
Speaker 2: like looking into this gigantic mirror and we were all there.
Speaker 2: We were all the same picture, the public in the
Speaker 2: digital age. It's just if that mirror has fallen and
Speaker 2: shattered and we all live on different pieces. So it's
Speaker 2: a very divided, very fragmented, very conflicted world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I wonder for me growing up in
Speaker 1: the eighties and the nineties, the same way, we all
Speaker 1: listened to the same songs, we all watched the same movies.
Speaker 1: You know, bands got really big and they could fill
Speaker 1: out a stadium, And now today there's you know, a
Speaker 1: million bands and they're just streaming on some station. Right.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's I mean, I guess it's just
Speaker 1: natural progression. I don't know if it's a chicken or
Speaker 1: the egg. I think you kind of made the point
Speaker 1: of the book that, like, our choices were limited, so
Speaker 1: our tastes were limited. But as we've been given more
Speaker 1: choices now, our tastes have grown. I guess that's just
Speaker 1: a natural evolution.
Speaker 2: I actually think, I actually think we have now rediscovered
Speaker 2: our actual tastes. In other words, it was never the
Speaker 2: case that we wanted three kinds of car. It was
Speaker 2: never the case that we wanted three TV channels. That's
Speaker 2: just what there was. And since we had no voice,
Speaker 2: the public had no voice, we just took it. I mean,
Speaker 2: their alternative was you walked if you didn't like any
Speaker 2: of them, or you turned off the TV if you
Speaker 2: didn't like any show. Right, So it was all or nothing,
Speaker 2: and most people just went along with it. But I
Speaker 2: don't think it was any any moment where any anybody,
Speaker 2: any large number of people within the mass audience actually
Speaker 2: believe that being part of a mass audience was what
Speaker 2: they were meant to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you talked about I think you called it
Speaker 1: rather Gate. Explain Rathergate for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's see if I remember that one that was
Speaker 2: essentially a report during the trying to remember what year
Speaker 2: it was. It was two thousand elections, was it? When
Speaker 2: essentially it was very critical of George W. Bush for
Speaker 2: basically using his privilege to avoid going to just go
Speaker 2: to the National Guard, leaving the guard early and all
Speaker 2: kinds of what might be construed as abuse of power.
Speaker 2: And this is a TV broadcast of which Dan Rather,
Speaker 2: who was the heir to Walter Cronkid, who was like
Speaker 2: the great figure of authority in the news world.
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's a key piece. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was seen as this trusted authority, right totally.
Speaker 2: Dan Rather stood behind this report saying all these things
Speaker 2: about George W. Bush. And what happened was the bloggers
Speaker 2: got a hold of that report and within literally hours,
Speaker 2: somebody had put it online and showed that it was
Speaker 2: in Times New Roman Fund. And this was supposed to
Speaker 2: have happened way back in you know, I think in
Speaker 2: the Vietnam War, and there was no New Times New
Speaker 2: Roman Fund in the Vietnam era. This is a digital fund,
Speaker 2: all right. So it showed that this supposedly type written
Speaker 2: document i'd actually been printed off a computer. The whole
Speaker 2: thing was a hoax, all right. And then Rather sort
Speaker 2: of lost his job over that one. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 2: the credibility, of course of the anchorman never regained what
Speaker 2: it was doing. What the krunkitees day.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how fast that happens today, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: on Twitter way too much these days, and I'll see
Speaker 1: someone post something that seems real, authentic, believable, and then
Speaker 1: I'll just read through the comments and just so quickly
Speaker 1: people will just start to disprove it or argue it
Speaker 1: or whatever. And it's amazing how fast that crowdsourced information
Speaker 1: can change. But so you can see it's very hard
Speaker 1: for an institution to put that trying to be a
Speaker 1: trusted institution put that out there and being constantly fact
Speaker 1: checked by the crowd in real time.
Speaker 2: Well, part part of the problem, I think is the mode.
Speaker 2: The rhetorical style of the twentieth century institution, authoritative institution
Speaker 2: was we are run by experts, which is whatever field
Speaker 2: you have, right, we know. So the problem with the
Speaker 2: digital world is now we know that we don't know, okay,
Speaker 2: and these institutions are still telling us you know that.
Speaker 2: I sort of call it the Anthony Fauci syndrome. Right,
Speaker 2: you know, this is really what science tells you, But wait,
Speaker 2: two weeks ago, you told us the exact opposite. So
Speaker 2: people get very confused, and trust in that rhetorical style
Speaker 2: has evaporated. It's zero, right, and the elites that run
Speaker 2: the institutions have not learned and do not want to
Speaker 2: learn to speak in a more conditional way that have
Speaker 2: not learned to say we think this is the way
Speaker 2: things are, correct us if we're wrong, right, which is
Speaker 2: the way most of us speak, But that would that
Speaker 2: goes against the green of that style of vehetoric.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that with access to that information,
Speaker 1: so you know, a doctor would used to have to
Speaker 1: go through all this medical school to learn this stuff,
Speaker 1: and none of us had any access to that information,
Speaker 1: so then we would just have to trust that they
Speaker 1: had read it. But today I could spend an hour
Speaker 1: or two online and probably learn more about a specific
Speaker 1: something very specific related to my health than my average
Speaker 1: practitioner would probably know. I might know more about it
Speaker 1: than he will. And we haven't had that before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, at least you think you know more.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that that's necessarily the case. I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You know, in some topics, like an average practitioner like
Speaker 1: they didn't they haven't studied everything, right, And so you know,
Speaker 1: for me, if I have something concerning my own health,
Speaker 1: I could spend a couple hours and probably learn more
Speaker 1: about something very specific than that average practitioner might know,
Speaker 1: for example.
Speaker 2: Essentially your doctor is going to encounter a much more educated,
Speaker 2: much more opinionated, and much more prepared you. Right, So
Speaker 2: whereas before we were just like as with television, as
Speaker 2: with the cars, we were the passive recipients of information.
Speaker 2: I'm your doctor, I'm telling you to do this. Now
Speaker 2: people say, well, wait a minute, I just read that.
Speaker 2: And this, by the way, cuts all across society, all
Speaker 2: across society. Precedent, for example, used to have as what
Speaker 2: used to call it his news paper was the CIA
Speaker 2: Daily Brief, Right, And CIA came and had we have
Speaker 2: all these secrets, and we're going to tell you, mister president,
Speaker 2: what's going on. We're going to tell you the future.
Speaker 2: Because part of CI's thing is that if it tries
Speaker 2: to foretell events. And it came the moment when the
Speaker 2: President started saying, but wait, I just read something here,
Speaker 2: and I just read something there, and you could just
Speaker 2: see the authority of the CIA leaking out, leaking out
Speaker 2: to where it probably is very low. Right now, precedents
Speaker 2: can go online just if you and me and they
Speaker 2: they can question what their geopolitical doctors in CIA tell them.
Speaker 2: And CIA has never learned to deal with this.
Speaker 1: Hm. That's a great point, you know it It reminds me,
Speaker 1: you know, basically what we have as an economic situation
Speaker 1: really or it's an information problem. And you kind of
Speaker 1: referenced the centralization of some with these previous you know,
Speaker 1: whether that be the Russian, the Russian or the or
Speaker 1: what happened in Hitler's Germany or you know what Mao's
Speaker 1: greatly before he tried to do. And really the overall
Speaker 1: problem with central planning is that they don't. Gorbachev doesn't
Speaker 1: have enough information to figure out how many girls pantehos
Speaker 1: need to be made. They don't have enough information. The
Speaker 1: free market has the information. They don't have the information,
Speaker 1: and so that's why central planning of an economy can
Speaker 1: never work. And sort of what you're I guess now,
Speaker 1: I'm starting to think about as the CIA is a
Speaker 1: central planner of information for the president or the night
Speaker 1: the news is the central planner of information for us.
Speaker 2: But they can't. They can't.
Speaker 1: They don't have enough data, enough information to control that
Speaker 1: for the public, of what the public wants and needs
Speaker 1: at any given time.
Speaker 2: They are very different modes of conveying information, and I
Speaker 2: think as much as anything. I think there's there's a
Speaker 2: definitely structural problem here, and the structural problem is the
Speaker 2: one that has to be tackled. But there's also a
Speaker 2: rhetorical or a style model. I mean, who do you
Speaker 2: get your information from?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: That you trust? Right, It's usually some person and you
Speaker 2: and you trust that person because of personal characteristics. What's
Speaker 2: happened with the internet is in my youth. Uh, that
Speaker 2: was not the way it happened. It happened from authority.
Speaker 2: I am the institution, you know, And so there was
Speaker 2: it was depersonalized, and it became you know, newspapers spoke
Speaker 2: with a completely impersonal voice. Presidents stood behind great big
Speaker 2: podiums and you know, basically looked down and and and
Speaker 2: gave us truth. The professors did the same. The Internet
Speaker 2: has re personalized information. So in other words, yeah, I
Speaker 2: think there's still people out there who provide information and
Speaker 2: are very good at it. And you can be somebody
Speaker 2: like Barry Wise or or Matt Taibe on Substack for example,
Speaker 2: and the personality of the human doing writing just shines
Speaker 2: through and you go, this is the person I can trust,
Speaker 2: you know, So I in part the difficulty is that
Speaker 2: the people in authority don't want to do that, I
Speaker 2: think in part because they have no personalities. These are
Speaker 2: people who are exceedingly they're just climbers. They're just institutional climbers.
Speaker 2: And if they were to let their instant their personalities
Speaker 2: to shine, we would they would have nobody listened to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's uh, Matt Tybee, you know, or Barry
Speaker 1: White you're talking about. It's almost like a meritocracy right
Speaker 1: to the people who are better writers and who do
Speaker 1: more research and who present more of truth and facts
Speaker 1: get risen up, and the people who are trying to
Speaker 1: hide behind some bacade of fake authority, they quickly get
Speaker 1: found out in discredit. It's sort of almost like the
Speaker 1: industrial Revolution. So, as you were saying, like, the one
Speaker 1: way I've looked at it is we had this assembly line,
Speaker 1: right and as you said earlier, like they kind of
Speaker 1: put everybody down into like a number and they can
Speaker 1: kind of control everybody. And if we were on the
Speaker 1: assembly line, you know, I put my part on you
Speaker 1: put your part on it, and you may be way
Speaker 1: smarter than me, but we basically do the same work.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's obviously economic reasons and geopolitical reasons
Speaker 1: why the US middle class has been haulowed out. But
Speaker 1: a big piece of it is that we went from
Speaker 1: the mass you know, mass assembly lines into the information age,
Speaker 1: and in the information age, if you're smarter than me,
Speaker 1: you really start to rise up faster, and now I
Speaker 1: start falling behind. And so kind of back to this meritocracy.
Speaker 1: The Matt Taibe's they can rise up, while the Dan
Speaker 1: rathers they just start falling behind. Like CNN, they can't
Speaker 1: just live on those laurels of being trusted anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hesitate there. We call it buddy smarter or
Speaker 2: less smart, and that being a reason for success. I
Speaker 2: think what Taibi does and what Barry Wise does and
Speaker 2: several others that I follow, is they put their product
Speaker 2: out there on substack. Right. That is a very talk
Speaker 2: about in the marketplace. That is there is no advertising
Speaker 2: right so that you can't be kept afloat. There's no subsidy.
Speaker 2: The government doesn't give you money, foundations don't give you money.
Speaker 2: You're out there by yourself, and then you either have
Speaker 2: readers or you don't. Now substack it was a relatively
Speaker 2: small number of readers fifteen twenty thousands by Internet standards
Speaker 2: is nothing. It's going to make you a wealthy man.
Speaker 2: So you are now being given by your readers the
Speaker 2: freedom to be an independent writer. So if you don't,
Speaker 2: if you don't attract that, then then basically you may
Speaker 2: be smart, but you lost the race.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what we have now going on, I don't
Speaker 1: want to go dive down those rabbit hoax. I want
Speaker 1: to jump into revolutions and the follow USSR and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But just real quickly, we're at a point
Speaker 1: now with technology and where we're at at the friends
Speaker 1: right now of really going to a model with substack
Speaker 1: type models of what we call value for value. So
Speaker 1: if I as a subscriber like Mytt Taibi, I can
Speaker 1: pay him directly. He doesn't need sponsors because the sponsors
Speaker 1: can still co opt them and they could still kind
Speaker 1: of force his direction. But now we the people can
Speaker 1: pay directly to the creator and get that value for value,
Speaker 1: which is then really starting to drive that even faster.
Speaker 1: I want to jump into. So you spent a lot
Speaker 1: of the book talking about these revolutions that happened mostly
Speaker 1: around twenty eleven and kind of kind of around the
Speaker 1: Arab spring I think Era and you drew a lot
Speaker 1: of connections that happened, you know, Tunisia and Egypt and Syria,
Speaker 1: and you drew a lot of connections there, mainly about
Speaker 1: how really one person with an Internet connection and a
Speaker 1: Facebook group or something like that could really start to
Speaker 1: mobilize the masses and kind of get this uprising. I
Speaker 1: want to dig into some of the relationships between those
Speaker 1: and then some things that I thought about as I
Speaker 1: was listening to that. But before, do you kind of
Speaker 1: spend some time trying to separate the distinctions between what
Speaker 1: you call the public and the people and the masses?
Speaker 2: Right, right? So the public guy that I didn't come
Speaker 2: up with my definition for the public, I borrowed Walter Lippmann's.
Speaker 2: Lipmann is one of the great political writers of the
Speaker 2: twentieth century, and he basically he was he thought that
Speaker 2: the public ought to have, should be synonymous as a citizen,
Speaker 2: and should have a tremendous engagement in democracy and so
Speaker 2: forth in our government. And he was very disappointed in
Speaker 2: all his researches and the fact that no, the public
Speaker 2: just seemed to be the people who are pursuing a
Speaker 2: specific affair, I think is what he called it. Uh
Speaker 2: And use their you know, their their voice, their voice
Speaker 2: under influence to support on that side of that affair,
Speaker 2: of their side of their affair. So you know, if
Speaker 2: you are an anti Hosni Mubarak person, young person in
Speaker 2: Egypt in the year twenty eleven, your affair is to
Speaker 2: get rid of Obarak, right, And so the people in
Speaker 2: Tyree were square. That we saw with all that drama
Speaker 2: were the public in Egypt that had gathered there because
Speaker 2: they had all met each other online. And there were
Speaker 2: several groups that did that. I highlighted one in my
Speaker 2: book that continued. That continued not just twenty eleven, it
Speaker 2: was pretty much through twenty nineteen, twenty nineteen. In fact,
Speaker 2: it was probably the most turbulent year for those who
Speaker 2: of There were like at least twenty five major street
Speaker 2: revolts in twenty nineteen. It all kind of came to
Speaker 2: a screeching halt in twenty twenty. Mysterious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, magically there was. There was ten countries with over
Speaker 1: one million people each in protesting previous to the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty silence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I mean the interesting thing about it,
Speaker 2: you've got to touched on economics. This included rich countries.
Speaker 2: They included poor countries, you know, very rich countries, very
Speaker 2: poor countries. They included very healthy democracies and pretty terrible dictatorships.
Speaker 2: So the revolt of the public it doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: be completely or even maybe primarily about economics or about democracy.
Speaker 2: There seems to be something else that people are after.
Speaker 1: And what is that.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good question. If you had if you
Speaker 2: had the answer to that, you know, you could probably
Speaker 2: make a lot of money.
Speaker 1: I think I have the answer. Okay, maybe I can
Speaker 1: make Maybe I can make a lot of money with it. Well,
Speaker 1: I think, I think. I think Ultimately, people want to
Speaker 1: be able to pursue their own life, right, pursue their
Speaker 1: own life. And the problem is that my definition of
Speaker 1: utopia isn't the same as your definition of utopia, and
Speaker 1: so I need to be free to pursue my direction,
Speaker 1: my life, my version of utopia, and you should be
Speaker 1: free to pursue yours as well. The problem is when
Speaker 1: we have these authoritarian figures who want to In the
Speaker 1: United States, three hundred and thirty million people have to
Speaker 1: live under one single regime and let's just way too
Speaker 1: many people. We can't live under that regime, and so
Speaker 1: I think you hinted in your book about you know,
Speaker 1: smaller regions.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah. I think the tendency of the twentieth century,
Speaker 2: which is still the tendency of our institutions because they
Speaker 2: live mentally in the twentieth century, is to centralize and
Speaker 2: standardize everything. Right, as you say, I think we have
Speaker 2: reached the point in that experiment where we can say
Speaker 2: it's failed. We can't do that, not at this level.
Speaker 2: Not yeah, right, if you're even Switzerland, I me, Switzerland's
Speaker 2: like ten million, twelve billion people, and they live on
Speaker 2: their valleys. They don't live in Switzerland's is the federal
Speaker 2: government of Switzerland, My goodness, it has almost no power.
Speaker 2: So yes, the US is on a different scale, but
Speaker 2: most any scale quickly registers up to the point where
Speaker 2: you cannot centralize it to that degree.
Speaker 1: I have another theory too. I'm going to come back
Speaker 1: to that though, because I want to go back to
Speaker 1: these revolutions. So you kind of talked about these different
Speaker 1: revolutions that happen around twenty eleven, and to your point, yes,
Speaker 1: they're continuing, et cetera. And you talked about I want
Speaker 1: to kind of go back to that though. The public
Speaker 1: is all the people, but they identify with different causes
Speaker 1: that don't always interrelate. So I care about what's going
Speaker 1: on with surfer with surfing and motorcycle riding and health food,
Speaker 1: but not always at the same time. And other people
Speaker 1: that are interested in health food don't necessarily care about
Speaker 1: the motorcycle right in the surfey right, So we're we
Speaker 1: all have these different interests that don't necessarily overlap. That's
Speaker 1: the public or that the people.
Speaker 2: There is the people, it doesn't exist, Okay.
Speaker 1: So it's just the public, and then what's the masses?
Speaker 1: The public are the people are part of the masses.
Speaker 1: That then the public.
Speaker 2: The public is not the people, although every protest you
Speaker 2: will ever see it claims to represent the people, but
Speaker 2: the people the people essentially is a category of political
Speaker 2: philosophy that there's no such thing as the people. The
Speaker 2: masses was just a twentieth century sociological term. It was useful,
Speaker 2: then it's not so useful anymore. It doesn't really get
Speaker 2: to use.
Speaker 1: So maybe the masses and the people are kind of
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 2: It's just just.
Speaker 1: A group of people that don't really identify themselves, whereas
Speaker 1: the public are a group from within the public or
Speaker 1: the are people over the masses that step up to
Speaker 1: identify themselves with a movement.
Speaker 2: The public is born from friction. Okay, if if the
Speaker 2: elites are legitimate and the public is content, and the
Speaker 2: people within who are not elites, non elites, are content,
Speaker 2: there will be no public. At some point, something done
Speaker 2: by the elites or some circumstance of life rubbs enough
Speaker 2: people the wrong way that they break off from the
Speaker 2: elites and say, I don't like the way things are headed.
Speaker 2: And that's how the public is born. In the old days,
Speaker 2: they would have had, you know, radical parties that are
Speaker 2: organize them or whatever. Today they go online and they
Speaker 2: organize that way.
Speaker 1: So we have these revolutions that were happening, and not
Speaker 1: just over in the Middle East. Obviously we most of
Speaker 1: it in the Middle East that you talked about, but
Speaker 1: then you even talked about Occupy Wall Street happened in
Speaker 1: the United States and it wasn't near as big of
Speaker 1: a movement. But one thing that you had drawn some
Speaker 1: ties between these groups was that they weren't like a
Speaker 1: poor class. They were typically kind of more of a
Speaker 1: middle class, educated class of people that that that seemed
Speaker 1: to kind of how how how they were You also
Speaker 1: kind of drew some conclusions that maybe they weren't organized
Speaker 1: or agitated or placed there by the left. You talked
Speaker 1: about the left versus the right, and you said that
Speaker 1: maybe the left wasn't the ones that had put them
Speaker 1: up to they seem to have kind of moved more
Speaker 1: organically something like that.
Speaker 2: Is that right? Yeah, I mean the reaction of the
Speaker 2: opposite side. But first of all, these groups are not
Speaker 2: left or right. They have lefties flavor, and for example,
Speaker 2: the Indignalois and Spain were sort of like leftish and
Speaker 2: when they finally after years organized a minor particle, but
Speaker 2: then it was definitely a left party, and some like
Speaker 2: for example the Yellow vest in France have kind of
Speaker 2: like a rightish flavor. Okay, but the politicians from those
Speaker 2: sides have tried tried to draw them in on their
Speaker 2: side and they rejected them. They're really anti establishment, anti
Speaker 2: status cool. They want a radical change. The problem is
Speaker 2: they have no leaders, they have no organizational structures, they
Speaker 2: have no programs, no idea. Yeah yeah, yeah, so they
Speaker 2: are against but they are not necessarily they can't articulate
Speaker 2: what they are for.
Speaker 1: They'refore there. It's not what they're for, it's what they're against.
Speaker 1: How would you define the left versus the right in
Speaker 1: that context.
Speaker 2: That's a really good question. I would just almost genealogically
Speaker 2: right people who claim to be that and descend from
Speaker 2: from left. For example, both the Indignado's and and the
Speaker 2: Occupiers had a very strong anarchistic element. Right, so the
Speaker 2: anarchists are real good organizing these street protests and and
Speaker 2: their system. See all these are our model after like
Speaker 2: online discussion groups, and the anarchistic model of discussion fits
Speaker 2: that very well, the model where everybody's allowed to talk
Speaker 2: and there's no votes, no decision making process or anything
Speaker 2: like that. So that you know, basically those those movements
Speaker 2: had a slightly leftish flavor because they were slightly leftish,
Speaker 2: you know, the genealogically leftish people in them. But the
Speaker 2: vast you could put i mean, not Occupy Wall Street.
Speaker 2: That was a slightly different group because they never generated
Speaker 2: large numbers, but the indignology could put a million people
Speaker 2: on the street. And there aren't that many anarchists in
Speaker 2: all Spain, right, So and they got opinion polls showed large,
Speaker 2: large majorities approving of them, even though they stood for
Speaker 2: nothing everybody wanted against.
Speaker 1: Would you say that left tends to want to have
Speaker 1: more government control and right wants to have less government control.
Speaker 2: I mean that's true here. I guess generically, I see
Speaker 2: what is? What is? Uh? What's Emmanuel macronan France? For example?
Speaker 2: Emmanel Macron was sort of born in the Socialist Party,
Speaker 2: but he was a he was with the Rothschild Bank. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's not your idea of what a socialist should be doing.
Speaker 2: And then he broke away from the social he created
Speaker 2: his own party. What was that party? Was it left?
Speaker 2: Was it right? Well? He is turned out to be
Speaker 2: a very undemocratic president. He basically just ram this this
Speaker 2: law without getting a vote of the National Assembly in France.
Speaker 2: But is he right? Is he left? He definitely wants
Speaker 2: more government power. I don't know. I do not know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the problem, you know. You know they say
Speaker 1: fascism is right and socialism is left, but to me,
Speaker 1: they're both authoritarian governments. So uh, it's hard. It's hard
Speaker 1: to draw a line. I recently wrote a book, shameless plug.
Speaker 1: I wrote it last last August. Nowhere near like your book.
Speaker 1: It's titled The Uncommunist manifesto.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard of with it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the uncommiss Manifesto, and in it I have
Speaker 1: a diagram. It's it's too small to show you, but
Speaker 1: I drew a diagram here in the book. And basically
Speaker 1: what this did, it's what we framed as the real spectrum.
Speaker 1: And over on the right hand side we show politics,
Speaker 1: and we have you know, communism being on the left
Speaker 1: and fascism being on the right, but all of it
Speaker 1: is on the politics side. And then over here, all
Speaker 1: the way over here is where we have individualism. So
Speaker 1: fascism is right, socialism is left, whatever right, they're both
Speaker 1: authoritarian governments trying to tell us what to do and
Speaker 1: tell somebody paneo as we could have. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the differences of the flavors are. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: going back to this, so the one thing that I
Speaker 1: was thinking is I was listening to frame up all
Speaker 1: of these is you had talked about how really this
Speaker 1: top down central planning fell, It really collapsed with the
Speaker 1: fall of the USSR. So you kind of made that case. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, in my book the COMMSS Manifesto, we talk
Speaker 1: about how Marxism, communism really never kind of went away.
Speaker 1: It's still kind of here, kind of almost went underground.
Speaker 1: And so what I was kind of hearing as you
Speaker 1: were talking about all these different movements that were going on,
Speaker 1: it was all very anti capitalist, very anti capitalist, and
Speaker 1: pro welfare. That's what it seemed to be what people
Speaker 1: wanted the well okay, actually, so it seemed like the
Speaker 1: main problem that they were all facing. And when I've
Speaker 1: studied the study some of these, it seems like when
Speaker 1: people can't eat, that's when they go revolt. And so
Speaker 1: they were all sparked by the rise of in christ
Speaker 1: increase of living standards. That girl that you talked about,
Speaker 1: I forget where, you know, she blogged about she couldn't
Speaker 1: afford her apartment anymore in Israel, right, real, she couldn't
Speaker 1: afford apartment anymore. So really it was the rise of
Speaker 1: prices you talked about all in Spain and Catalonia. What happened.
Speaker 1: It was the increase in living costs drove people past
Speaker 1: the point, past the brink, and then they seem to
Speaker 1: demand the government fixed that, fixed that by taking away
Speaker 1: capitalism which they think had caused that divide, and to
Speaker 1: give more welfare to help bridge that gap. Do you
Speaker 1: think that's a fair assumption.
Speaker 2: I think in some cases, yeah, I think I think
Speaker 2: that what the term was that that young woman whose
Speaker 2: name escapes me right now used was Swinish capitalism, which,
Speaker 2: of course, if you were in Israel, is rarely you know,
Speaker 2: anything associated with pork isn't a good thing. So and
Speaker 2: the Wall Street occupiers, who are very anti capitalistic, I
Speaker 2: think they're all anti system. They're all anti system.
Speaker 1: But they they wanted more welfare.
Speaker 2: Right, you can't even say that because there was there
Speaker 2: was no theay in terms of any programmatic demands. They
Speaker 2: had their never programmatic demands. They want the government to
Speaker 2: make life meaningful, they want the government to make it
Speaker 2: life interesting. They all had certain, uh more or less
Speaker 2: reasonable and reasonable economic demands, but they also had social demands.
Speaker 2: We in the US go for racial demands and you know,
Speaker 2: gender demands. So it is a sense in each one
Speaker 2: of these groups that the world is out of order,
Speaker 2: you know, it's out of kilter, and and the people
Speaker 2: in charge, the elites, are responsible for that. And then
Speaker 2: they turned to the same elites and you're right about
Speaker 2: that and say fix it. They had just accused them
Speaker 2: of destroying basically the meaning of life or whatever. And
Speaker 2: they have turned to the same people who have done
Speaker 2: that and they say, fix it.
Speaker 1: Do you think, but do you think the main catalyst
Speaker 1: was that? Back to kind of what I said, this
Speaker 1: cost of living, this quality of life was going down.
Speaker 1: So to the girl in Israel, right, she couldn't afford
Speaker 1: her apartment anymore, They couldn't afford food.
Speaker 2: She was. I don't agree with that all. I think
Speaker 2: she came from a wealthy Ashiknaz family.
Speaker 1: She had turned her back, but she had turned her back.
Speaker 2: On that, right she No, no, she had not. Israeli
Speaker 2: families are powerful. She was basically, I mean, everybody in
Speaker 2: life sometimes has to, you know, adjust to economic realities.
Speaker 2: She did not want to do that. She wanted the
Speaker 2: government to give her an apartment where she did not
Speaker 2: have to commute. And basically, this enormous protest, the largest
Speaker 2: ever in the history of Israel till these recent ones
Speaker 2: that we're having right now, arose from this one young
Speaker 2: woman not being able to afford her apartment.
Speaker 1: So, but that's my point. She came from the cost
Speaker 1: of living or the quality life. She couldn't afford apartment.
Speaker 1: She wanted the government to give her a better apartment, right.
Speaker 2: She wanted the govern to do something such that there
Speaker 2: would be you know, she could stay in a place
Speaker 2: where where she was close to her work. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: I mean in the motivation varied. In Spain, of course,
Speaker 2: there had been a tremendous decline in the standard of
Speaker 2: living after two thousand and eight. But in the US,
Speaker 2: the occupiers were just anti.
Speaker 1: It happened after the two thousand and eight great financial cracks.
Speaker 2: Well no, it was twenty eleven, so it was like
Speaker 2: three years later, all right, So it was an that
Speaker 2: would be.
Speaker 1: Called Arab spring was because massive inflation happened and they
Speaker 1: couldn't afford bread anymore.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that they were way more affluent in
Speaker 2: Egypt than they had been ever in their history. So
Speaker 2: that's not true either. And you know, a country like Chile,
Speaker 2: which has probably the most drastic of the revolts, because
Speaker 2: basically the street protesters ended up running the presidency and
Speaker 2: writing the constitution. Chile was a massively prosperous, prosperous the
Speaker 2: most prosperous, like in the American country, unbroken prosperity.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, yeah, I'm just trying anyway, and so
Speaker 1: then it seemed like, like I said, it seemed like
Speaker 1: they all were demanding the government give them this. So
Speaker 1: it's like, on one hand they wanted to dismantle the government,
Speaker 1: to your point, but on the other hand they wanted
Speaker 1: the government to fix it. And so it seemed like
Speaker 1: there was a socialist ties and so I was just
Speaker 1: curious if that's it seems like a lot of Marxism
Speaker 1: to me, right. Karl Marx himself talked about how he
Speaker 1: was so mad because he wanted to write philosophy, but
Speaker 1: the market didn't didn't value that, and he couldn't make
Speaker 1: any money, so he wanted to take from the rich.
Speaker 1: So he could, you know, each according to his ability,
Speaker 1: each court in their need, he could just write his
Speaker 1: philosophy get paid. And so it seems a lot of
Speaker 1: this kind of Marxist socialist kind of thinking that has
Speaker 1: spurred a lot of this.
Speaker 2: Well he got angles to basically write his meal tickets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly exactly. So on one hand, it's like seemed
Speaker 1: like the USSR collapsed, But then maybe the idea is
Speaker 1: the ideologies of Marxism still kind of seemed to do
Speaker 1: that seemed to kind of still stoke that and ultimately
Speaker 1: it seems like you know, I guess we could say categorically,
Speaker 1: when people aren't happy with their own lives, and typically
Speaker 1: when people can't afford to live the quality of life
Speaker 1: they went and ultimately can't afford to feed their families,
Speaker 1: that's when they really get crazy. This kind of goes
Speaker 1: back to this economic model. I'm curious. So you wrote
Speaker 1: a lot about, you know, what was going on in
Speaker 1: those days, obviously in our phone or conversation right now. Now,
Speaker 1: you wrote the book in twenty sixteen, is that right?
Speaker 2: The first edition was twenty fourteen. The second edition, which
Speaker 2: has a pretty large update, was not like December of
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Okay, because trust has seeming to be an eroding even faster,
Speaker 1: at a faster pace than we might have even imagined.
Speaker 1: And so I'm curious kind of what your take is.
Speaker 1: I mean, shoot, just in the last two years you
Speaker 1: already kind of mentioned the COVID complex and Fauci, what
Speaker 1: we've seen happening with the Canadian truckers. You know all
Speaker 1: of this, and now today you know the DeVos group
Speaker 1: met in February. The number one topic of Davos is missing.
Speaker 1: How do we handle misinformation and disinformation malinformation in the
Speaker 1: United States, it's a threat to our democracy misinformation. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, we can't. Every day find out
Speaker 1: more lies the government's telling to us, and so it's
Speaker 1: like they are telling us they have to combat misinformation,
Speaker 1: but every day we find out they're the purveyors of misinformation.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious how this is sort of escalated in
Speaker 1: your thinking since you've updated the book.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean that aspect doing to find really fascinating
Speaker 2: because what I love is dealing with information and how
Speaker 2: it intersects with politics and power. Right, So they're actually
Speaker 2: working on an article on that subject. Essentially, the elites
Speaker 2: want to return to a twentieth century, their reactionary twentieth
Speaker 2: century was a really good time.
Speaker 1: To be put the genie back in the bottle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could be John F. Kennedy and you know,
Speaker 2: have all these run ins with women, and they protected you.
Speaker 2: You were protected. Today of course everybody is out there.
Speaker 2: You know, the emperor is naked, and then nobody likes that.
Speaker 2: So so they have tried, in the most interesting way
Speaker 2: and not good, to control the source of all this,
Speaker 2: which is the digital domain, and really and truly over
Speaker 2: the last of since twenty sixteen, since since Trump got elected,
Speaker 2: there has been this coalescing of government agencies NGOs, you know,
Speaker 2: non governmental organizations, the media, the traditional media all kind
Speaker 2: of huddled together, uh, to influence. And I think in
Speaker 2: the end, censor that's not a word I use lightly.
Speaker 2: I only use it in terms of when the government
Speaker 2: is involved, right, Uh, censor social media from using uh,
Speaker 2: you know, basically broadcasting opinions that that they disapprove of.
Speaker 2: And I mean that's happening right now. And of course,
Speaker 2: like the Twitter files, which you know was born when
Speaker 2: uh Elon Musk bought Twitter and then turned uh basically
Speaker 2: a lot of internal documents to Matt Taibi, Michael Schellenberger,
Speaker 2: and Barry Weiss, and they looked at what was going on,
Speaker 2: and they saw that the FBI was essentially the Biden
Speaker 2: White House was telling Twitter, get that expel, that that
Speaker 2: account expelled that American citizen from speaking on on Twitter,
Speaker 2: and Twitters saluted and said.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, And it's happening more and more and more,
Speaker 1: and now they're uh, you know, they're trying, they're trying
Speaker 1: everything it can. You talked about this conundrum that I
Speaker 1: thought was pretty interesting where you said, you know, governments
Speaker 1: would like to restrict speech and communication, but the problem
Speaker 1: is will stifle growth. So they want to have the
Speaker 1: communication and allow speech, but then they risk their power.
Speaker 1: Right now, if they stifle growth, they're going to risk
Speaker 1: their power too. So it's like they're kind of caught
Speaker 1: in this conundrum where like, really there's no win there.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they stifle growth, they're going to get overthrown,
Speaker 1: and if they don't stifle growth, they're going to get overthrown.
Speaker 1: You had said early in the book that you I
Speaker 1: think you made the statement, correct me if I'm getting
Speaker 1: it wrong, but that the current form of government today
Speaker 1: isn't compatible with this kind of technology that we have.
Speaker 2: Right, it's not just technology, it's a structure of information. Right,
Speaker 2: So are we are set up for a world with
Speaker 2: very thin streams of information that feed into each institution
Speaker 2: like the media for example, and and and it becomes
Speaker 2: a sert of as semi monopoly that then because there's
Speaker 2: so little this which is so scarce. When Walter Cronkite
Speaker 2: did go on television and say that's the way it
Speaker 2: was for you know, whatever date, we had no way
Speaker 2: of knowing anything. So if he gave us some information,
Speaker 2: we were happy he had authority. Right today that that
Speaker 2: that whole system has been has been battered down and essentially,
Speaker 2: I I mean, it's the battle has been joined. So
Speaker 2: I don't make predictions, but I find it hard to
Speaker 2: believe that you can put the Internet genie back in
Speaker 2: the bottle. It's too big. The Internet is essentially for
Speaker 2: any individual purpose, infinite right, and government is not very capable. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, even governments that specialized in repression aren't very
Speaker 2: good at it. So our government, thank goodness, has not
Speaker 2: specialized in that yet. Uh, it's terrible at it. So
Speaker 2: the idea that it can somehow deal with with the
Speaker 2: information world from a twentieth century perspective, it cannot. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, there are many ways in which we can change.
Speaker 2: These government structures can change. And you know, I'll tell it.
Speaker 2: I'll give you one, I mean one. The trust in
Speaker 2: our government organizations is collapsed right now. A lot of
Speaker 2: corporations the trust is collapsed. If you look at one
Speaker 2: corporation in which it hasn't collapsed is Amazon. Amazon, for
Speaker 2: all its you know, problems or questions, what you have
Speaker 2: gets from customers a gigantic amount of trust. It makes sense.
Speaker 2: I mean, who of us did not use Amazon during
Speaker 2: the pandemic? And what do you do when you do that?
Speaker 2: You put your credit card online. That's not massive active trust.
Speaker 2: And you expect something to show up on your doorstep
Speaker 2: a day later. That's another massive active trust, and you
Speaker 2: expect the thing to be of high quality a third
Speaker 2: massive active trust. Now Amazon is a gigantic bureaucracy, but
Speaker 2: that's not what you experience. You experience quick service with
Speaker 2: good products. The federal government is the most gigantic deliverer
Speaker 2: of services probably in the world, but that's not what
Speaker 2: you experience. What you experience is bureaucracy, condescension, arrogance. You
Speaker 2: know this this form that form, Who are you come
Speaker 2: back tomorrow? It's gonna take years. It's gonna take So
Speaker 2: if you want to change the federal government in the
Speaker 2: set services side, make it more like Amazon and a
Speaker 2: lot less like the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Speaker 1: While I'm certainly in agreement, and I sometimes hang some
Speaker 1: of my guests, some of my solace in the shearing
Speaker 1: competence of the government, to your point, they've look what happened.
Speaker 1: They tried to launch the Obamacare website, or they tried
Speaker 1: to overhaul the IRS website or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like the more control they lose, the more
Speaker 1: they're going to have to try to squeeze. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're following along with the latest technology.
Speaker 1: I'm a big bitcoin advocate. And we have these decentralized
Speaker 1: networks now that are outside of the hands of the government,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, not a brand new one, but
Speaker 1: like Napster I think you maybe reference in your book,
Speaker 1: But then we had like BitTorrent, and we could download
Speaker 1: music and movies on the web and there's just nothing
Speaker 1: they can just do about it. And so we have
Speaker 1: these decentralized networks.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Now we have Bitcoin and that's outside the hands of
Speaker 1: the government. They can't stop that. And now there's another one.
Speaker 1: It's called Noster and it's a decentralized communication platform where
Speaker 1: you can build decentralized Telegram or Twitter or YouTube clients
Speaker 1: on it. And this is just it's outside of their control.
Speaker 1: So in the past to your point where you know
Speaker 1: Twitter file is exposed that they were telling Twitter what
Speaker 1: to do, these are now new networks that that can't
Speaker 1: they can't impose their will on I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've if you've seen the rise of that, or if
Speaker 1: you have any prediction of how that changes things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean I won't make predictions because I don't.
Speaker 2: But that's part of what I'm talking about. The the
Speaker 2: the digital realm is too big and too elusive. It
Speaker 2: escapes like water. You can't grab it, you know. I
Speaker 2: don't know whether those those particular technologies and modes of
Speaker 2: communication will be the ones that permanently escape government control.
Speaker 2: They may just be at the moment in time, we
Speaker 2: are at the very very early stages of this cosmic
Speaker 2: transformation from the industrial age to something that doesn't even
Speaker 2: have a name yet, right, And these may just be
Speaker 2: moments in that, or it may be that, yes, indeed,
Speaker 2: you know, crypto and bitcoin and so forth, uh turned
Speaker 2: out to be a decisive change. I mean, if you have,
Speaker 2: if you have a way of essentially printing currency that
Speaker 2: the government has no control over it, you have radically
Speaker 2: changed the foundations of the nation state.
Speaker 1: Well, one thing I would say, and we don't need
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time on this, but just
Speaker 1: like to the point of your book, you talk about
Speaker 1: how what we considered information pre Internet era was you know,
Speaker 1: cronkite or rather either one you know, giving us the
Speaker 1: nightly news and three newspapers that were written by the
Speaker 1: same person. That was information, whereas today what we consider
Speaker 1: information has completely changed. And so a kid you know
Speaker 1: in Asia posts a picture on the beach, and I
Speaker 1: have this information about the weather, the waves, all this information.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin is a way that we can transfer value. What
Speaker 1: we would consider money would be like our we store
Speaker 1: our value on that, we can communicate value. But I
Speaker 1: think the definition of that has been expanded, and so
Speaker 1: that'd be interesting to watch. But what's interesting is so
Speaker 1: I recorded a video earlier today from my YouTube channel
Speaker 1: talking about this new bill that has been put forth.
Speaker 1: Bipartisan Democrats and Republicans are going for this, the Restrict Act.
Speaker 1: Have you heard about this Restrict Act? So basically it's
Speaker 1: called the Restrict Act, and it's basically to make TikTok illegal.
Speaker 1: So they want to make TikTok illegal. But if you
Speaker 1: dig into what the act is, just like all of these,
Speaker 1: you know, save the Puppy Act, it's not what they
Speaker 1: appear on the outside. This is the this is the
Speaker 1: Patriot Act. Times a thousand times a million. And basically
Speaker 1: I'll just read you a couple of things from this.
Speaker 1: Inside this Restrict Act, it allows the Director of National
Speaker 1: Intelligence and Secretary of Commerce, so two people we didn't
Speaker 1: vote in the authority to universally designate new foreign adversaries
Speaker 1: without notifying Congress, without a fifteen day window to notify
Speaker 1: the president, and it would require a joint resolution of
Speaker 1: Congress to overturn it.
Speaker 2: I have not heard.
Speaker 1: Now you might know from the Patriot Act that foreign
Speaker 1: individuals can now also be US citizens that are deemed
Speaker 1: a national security threat. Once designated, the bill grant's authority
Speaker 1: to enforce any action deemed necessary to mitigate the threat,
Speaker 1: with no due process and few limits on punishment. The
Speaker 1: Restrict Act will allow the government to access all of
Speaker 1: the data on your video devices if it has more
Speaker 1: than one million people using it iPhones, ring cameras, etc.
Speaker 1: So now they can access all of that information. What
Speaker 1: kind of punishments? A million dollar fine, twenty years in prison,
Speaker 1: and the forfeiture of everything you own. You use a
Speaker 1: VPN to get around this boom, you go to jail,
Speaker 1: twenty years, you lose everything. This act also grants unlimited
Speaker 1: hiring position to to power to positions of enforcement, unlimited funds,
Speaker 1: and little to no review of immunity with no Foyer requests.
Speaker 2: Well that's why I like these conversations. You have taught
Speaker 2: me something I had not heard of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is bad. It is like really bad.
Speaker 1: So this is if you can't beat them, might as
Speaker 1: well just cut the internet lines like they tried in Egypt.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of what this is saying, because
Speaker 1: it seems like they see these decentralized protocols that are
Speaker 1: popping up and they know they can't control them. So
Speaker 1: then we just have unlimited access to everything, and if
Speaker 1: we catch you even looking like you're going to use
Speaker 1: it with a VPN, we're going to put you in
Speaker 1: prison for twenty years with no due process.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't imagine that's going to pass.
Speaker 1: It's got bipartisan support by big names including uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll read you, I'll read you a couple here. It's
Speaker 1: got a lot of firepower behind it. It's got Mark Warner, Democrat,
Speaker 1: Virginia Senator Warner. It's got a couple of big ones here,
Speaker 1: Tommy Baldwin Wisconsin, Joe Manchin, Democrat, West Virginia mansions on it.
Speaker 1: Jerry Moran represented from Kansas, A couple other big ones here,
Speaker 1: Kristin Gilbrand from New York, Mitt Romney, Republican from Utah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's got, it's got, It's got twenty or
Speaker 1: so people on here, both sides of the aisle.
Speaker 2: This is this is the elites. Yeah, of course, I
Speaker 2: mean this is the I mean every one of those names,
Speaker 2: I would say, you can you can reproduce their behavior
Speaker 2: almost endlessly as elites for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's, uh, it's back to that conundrum.
Speaker 1: You know, if we don't allow this technology, we're going
Speaker 1: to put ourselves in the back into you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to restrict our growth. If we do, we're going
Speaker 1: to constantly be overthrown here. So yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely a massive ratchet up in this uh, in
Speaker 1: this communication game, to say the least.
Speaker 2: I'll look it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well, you don't make predictions, and you've
Speaker 1: already said that. In the final part of your book,
Speaker 1: you kind of give your thesis of where this where
Speaker 1: you think this kind of goes though, do you want
Speaker 1: to summarize kind of where you think that goes or
Speaker 1: kind of how you summarize the thesis in the end.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what you mean by that.
Speaker 1: What was it called the finale for skeptics and you
Speaker 1: had a.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well basically what I say is, actually that was
Speaker 2: my sort of like, you know, if you do an experiment,
Speaker 2: you need to have well X happens, then you know
Speaker 2: this it means this. But if why happens is.
Speaker 3: The no hypothesis you called it, Yeah, no hypothesis, right,
Speaker 3: and and you know I have to say, I, as
Speaker 3: you put it, I think earlier the one thing I
Speaker 3: got wrong was the speed at which this was coming
Speaker 3: at us, right.
Speaker 2: I definitely didn't realize how fast it was moving. But
Speaker 2: I think in terms of the substance of it, when
Speaker 2: you look at us, I said, if my hypothesis correct,
Speaker 2: these are the things that need to be happening. If
Speaker 2: not that this is the opposite. Here's a no Our
Speaker 2: world today looks nothing like the no hypothesis. It looks
Speaker 2: like they were bolts of the public in steroids. Got it,
Speaker 2: got it?
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's certainly interesting. What a time to be alive?
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I often say that.
Speaker 2: If you're if you're a geopolitical analyst. It is kind
Speaker 2: of fun, but I mean, what a mess. I also
Speaker 2: fear feel kind of like doctor death because my book
Speaker 2: and my people wanted to talk to me wretch it up.
Speaker 2: Every time something horrible happens somewhere, everybody feels like I
Speaker 2: can explain it, and of course I mostly can't. But
Speaker 2: happy to drive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I definitely recommend getting the book. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: reading it. Have you read the book The Sovereign Individual?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, really good book.
Speaker 1: It's good, fits together, fits together well with this, you know,
Speaker 1: So recommend to anyone listening check out The Sovereign Individual
Speaker 1: check out this book if you want an idea. I
Speaker 1: think I think it helps. It helps show what's going
Speaker 1: on in the world today. So it kind of brings
Speaker 1: some clarity to what's going on, and it helps you
Speaker 1: develop some frameworks to think about where we're going into
Speaker 1: the future and how you can navigate that.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: The problem I have with with this act, this act,
Speaker 1: this restrict Act, is like, this is anybody in the world,
Speaker 1: Like this is the long arm of the government, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's against foreign individuals, which can also be you
Speaker 1: as citizens. But like you can't just move to another
Speaker 1: country and get away from this. So it's going to
Speaker 1: be interesting anyway. Man, it has been awesome reading the book,
Speaker 1: it's been awesome talking to you about it. Anything that
Speaker 1: you'd like to point attention to that people should go
Speaker 1: check out?
Speaker 2: No, I mean, like I said, the whole disinformation. You
Speaker 2: know what Michael Schldenberger calls it a information the censorship
Speaker 2: industrial complex. He calls it censorship industrial complex, which is
Speaker 2: really not industrial. Is bore like a protection racket. I
Speaker 2: would say, I think anybody who who values freedom ought
Speaker 2: to be watching that. I mean, it really is. It happened.
Speaker 2: It happened without debate, It happened without laws being enacted.
Speaker 2: It happens without warrants. It happens without judges being involved.
Speaker 2: It happened without formal investigations. Suddenly we have this apparatus
Speaker 2: of control that the government has implemented, and I think
Speaker 2: we as citizens need to push back.
Speaker 1: On that definitely. Well that we'll get and sign it off.
Speaker 1: We're gonna link to everything down in the show notes
Speaker 1: down below, so you can check out the book, check
Speaker 1: out his blog, and with that will sign off. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much, Martin. All Right, that's a wrap. Hopefully enjoyed
Speaker 1: this conversation I had with Martin gurry It. It was
Speaker 1: a good conversation, it was an even better book. I
Speaker 1: highly advised checking it out. We'll put a link down
Speaker 1: to the description in the show notes below. As I said,
Speaker 1: there's new technologies that are going to make this state
Speaker 1: incompetent at trying to enforce this Bitcoin, decentralized monetary net works,
Speaker 1: NOSTER decentralized information protocols. If you want to check it out,
Speaker 1: you should come check out the Bitcoin Conference in Miami
Speaker 1: coming up soon. I'll be a speaker there. I have
Speaker 1: a link for discount tickets if you'd want to come,
Speaker 1: I can get you a discount on some tickets, and
Speaker 1: if you send me send me a message showing that
Speaker 1: you bought it with my link. I'll put it down below.
Speaker 1: I'm going to organize little meetup with some people. So
Speaker 1: if you want to come check out the Big Coin Conference,
Speaker 1: get at discount on tickets, there's a link in the description. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: leave me a comment, let me know what you think
Speaker 1: about this conversation. Let me know what you think about
Speaker 1: what the future of government looks like with this new
Speaker 1: technology that allows us to communicate without censorship. I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear what you think as always hit that like
Speaker 1: button if you like it, the dislike if you don't subscribe,
Speaker 1: if you're not already subscribed, And that's what I got
Speaker 1: to your success. I'm out.