Empires, Elites, & AI: The No Ramble Guide to Doomsday

Can you just, can you just go through that? Sure. I mean, honestly, you could literally read your message right now. Okay. And good. And then you make some we’ll from there. So many good points from I don’t, I don’t even, yeah, I mean, there’s like a ton of good points in here. I can like, no, my head Well, but like let’s, can you go through there?

I mean Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I literally just want you to Okay. Maybe take a break every little bit for a little comment. I, I can chime in. Sure. I think what you’ve put together is really great and I think it’s, it’s, it is worth you and I talking about it. Cool. All right. Well, we talked last time, I believe about the British Empire because you had reminded me as you were talking about how, um, yeah, I think you’re just, Remi you know, we were talking about the administration of the US right now, the craziness, and it just occurred to me as a, as you were talking last time, that had just washed some sort of snippet of the messiness of Henry.

What was the Henry, the VI don’t know. He Henry vii. I don’t know one of those. Henry’s the guy who, Henry VIII is the one who, uh, uh, created, uh, the Church of England. Yes, that’s the guy, Henry vi. Thank you. See yeah. Eddie, you are effectively my Wikipedia, Henry The fifth is the one from the, is the one from a Asian core.

The, you know, once more into the breach. Dear friends, once more, he invaded, uh, Northern. Am I talking to an LM or am I talking to a real person? Right. I think I’m talking to an lm. Um, I’m gonna say something. You would never say I am the cyber Hitler. Oh, you are? No, wait. There is one’s that No, don’t, uh, nevermind.

Keep going. There’s no way to know, like, no word no made up. I could be having a really, yeah. This could be me, just by myself having a conversation with an LLM every time, every week. And I don’t know it. Um, anyway, I was just thinking about Henry the eighth and what, I guess what occurred to me is as does, yeah.

That’s what does what occurred to me as, as like, as dads do. I have a lot time on my hands. It’s such a dad conversation, but please continue. Good point. A lot of time on my hands with my children. Um, but I, I was just thinking, okay, so to step back. I follow a guy named Ryan Holiday. He’s really into stoicism.

Maybe he got me not, he really didn’t get me into sto, but I definitely follow his, his writings ’cause he’s really into the stoics and he’ll often say things like, Hey, don’t worry about the craziness going on because the Roman Empire, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They weren’t, they went through a lot of craz stuff and I’m always like, yeah, you know, I could kind of relate to that.

But honestly I can’t, I can’t relate to the Romans. They’re way too long ago. I can’t re relate to the Persians, any of these great empires because I wasn’t there. I have no idea. But I can relate a little bit more to more recent history of, of England. ’cause I think it’s a little fresher and other, other empires.

And one thing was simply that, what would it be like as my thought experiment to live during the time of Henry vii? You are, you’re a Christian, which means basically the home base is, is Rome. You are ca the pope is closest thing to God. This is your world. There’s no context outside of that. And you suddenly, your king suddenly decides he’s gonna break up with them because he doesn’t like that they won’t let him get divorced.

And he is pissed about that. And you’re like, what the fuck? You can’t just take our whole, my whole life and turn it upside down like that. And I, so I just as a thought experiment, just thought that would’ve been very disorienting as a person. Um, anyway, so that’s kind of what led me to think about this stuff.

And the other thing to, to jump ahead, ’cause I don’t want to go too much into that, is just like, what is the, the difference between, um, you know, so can you get through those as a, as a country, can you get through a crazy king? Yeah, there’s lots of examples of countries having gone through crazy, uh, royals that were out of their minds.

Um, some smarter than others. Many, not many, many were very poorly, uh, poor leaders actually. And. What then leads to the decline specifically of Great Britain, which has this massive peak in the 16 to, uh, 16 hundreds to 18 hundreds. It’s just at the, at the, the height of its, uh, power is that necessarily, can we necessarily assume that the same will happen to the US Because I think what a lot of times what the US mindset is, is often based on our so-called ancestral connection to, to England being a colony of England.

And so as we’ve talked about, um, the u as we’ve talked about the US decline, it’s always, sometimes it’s, it’s kind almost hidden lee or it in the background connected with the assumption that just like England fell so shall we, uh, to spec to, to, um, case in point, and I was gonna look this up and I forgot, um, there was a quote about three or four years ago right after COD where.

Where England, this is when China was taking over Hong Kong, kind of like fully, right? So there’s, so Hong Kong is having protests and the rebelling and England decides at that moment, uh, to say to all folks of Hong Kong, Hey, if you ever want citizenship or, or visa status, whatever, you have it. If you, because you’re a former English colony, you can come to England and we’ll help you speed up the process.

You can become a resident of, of the UK and China, the Chinese government’s response was very upset. And basically like England, you’re, you’re an old aging, archaic, decrepit empire. Nobody cares about you anyway. You’re worthless or not, you’re weren’t worthless, but you’re basically non-significant. So whatever you wanna do, who cares?

You’re about to die anyway. And the second part of that, that was not said by the Chinese government, but that I heard in my head and I’m sure. Maybe they heard it in their heads as they spoke. It was, and us, you guys aren’t far behind. You’re, you know, all y’all are about to fall. This is the century of China, century of the East, et cetera.

And I thought to myself at the time, yeah, that’s probably true. I mean, that’s basically the, the, the, the statement that’s not being said here is that yeah, UK falls and guess who’s right next to up to bat is the, is the US US is about the empire of the US is on, has a ticking time bomb. It’s not gonna last forever.

We can see that, um, the writings on the wall. So anyway, it just made me think about that. And, and, and one of the things that came to me was simply, but what was different about the uk and the only thing that comes to me again is, well, what happens when 60 to 70% of your so-called land disappears, which is what happened after World War II to England.

They go from a massive empire where the sun never sets on their empire. To basically a teeny island again, where they started, and therefore, what kind of impact does it have on the GDP, on the economy. So that’s why I kind of looked up and was just like, I’d like to compare some, you know, another, another power in Europe, similar maybe culturally, you know, uh, so I looked up France versus the UK 40 years before World War II and 40 years after to see like what was the trajectory of both nations.

And it was interesting to see just that they kind of start similar. Of course, UK is in a much better place, you know, 40 years before World War ii. They’re very dominant power, very industrial, but u but France is getting up there too. They’re becoming more industrial. And then after World War ii, you see a massive decline in the uk and you see kind of nothing really interesting happening with the FRA with France.

They just kind of have this great. You know, the period from the, the sixties to eighties. After that, they started to decline a little bit, but not massively. I think they just kinda kept it going. So anyway, that was just my thought and my observation threw it into the chat room. And, um, I’m curious your thoughts, just because there’s a lot of, I think there’s a lot of hang hand ringing and expectations from the whole world, including ourselves as the US that we are on this trajectory of decline.

Just like, yeah, no, no, man, I, and I appreciate you kind of having this thought and putting it out there. I think that’s one of my favorite parts about our conversation. I also hope it’s something that we can share with other people. Not that our thoughts are authoritative or the most well-informed, it’s just that we’re just thinking these things out loud.

Yeah. It would be great to have an expert here on a panel, but honestly, um, AI can play that role if we’re very careful about how we use it. Good point. You just can’t ask it Things You have to have well developed questions. Um, so yeah, we could have AI be like a, uh, an expert. We could have it personify that.

It could be the, it could be, it could be challenging our assumptions and then just kind of introducing new narratives. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Pushing back maybe a little bit Yeah. On the things we say, which absolutely. Which is I think my biggest complaint about a lot of, some of my favorite podcasts actually. Mm.

Like, I enjoy real time with Bill Maher. I, I do enjoy, depending who the guest is. Joe Rogan’s podcast. Yeah, me too. Cer for certain guests. It’s really good. Sean Ryan is another one. Probably not as popular as either one of those, but he does a lot of, um, he does a lot of, of Special forces guys. It’s turned political recently, which I think is really sad.

Interesting because, um, the political stuff, it just kind of splits your audience. And before, I think he had an audience that had values that transcended partisanship and I, that was my favorite part about him. And some of his guests were that they were practical. They were like, look at this problem and no one’s fixing it.

Politicians have let us down. Right. Which I think is the correct political attitude they have. Um, you, we, I said this before, man. This is my central thesis about this whole podcast. Partisanship and ideology are designed to split us. Yeah. We have interests, economic, real, practical interests as real people.

And I think politicians take advantage of our natural ability to, to band. Yeah. Together according to whatever we perceive our interests are. So they change our interests. Yeah. My interests, you know, my kids. A livelihood being, you know, I have values, uh, about political expression, being able to participate politically.

Those are values people in the world don’t have. Um, and other parts of the country and other parts of the world, uh, how Europeans. Envision their political participation is different than how we do. Wouldn’t say more or less free. It’s just different. I don’t like it. I do like the American system. Mm. I like, you know, the Federalist, um, system with, I have a state local government.

Right. I like that it can be tailored to my needs. Needs in my family, my community. I like the fact that we have a federal government. It is stronger maybe than it should be, and I think we’re seeing Yeah. That in this administration, because this particular president really flexes executive power, but he’s not the only one that do that.

He’s not the only one that do that. Others have done it. This is not a partisan issue. It’s not ideological power. Power’s sake is part of our political landscape. You’ve seen it from all parts. Mitch McConnell, right? Uh, he mm-hmm. He’s one of the most consequential Senate majority leaders we’ve ever had.

That’s true. Whether you like it or not, the Supreme Court and the decisions the Supreme Court has made is a direct legacy of his hard work in this area. He has been unabashed about how he has seized power in the Senate. It’s broken norms to do it. Mm-hmm. As president as well. Absolutely. By the presidents.

You know, I remember when people used to actively talk about the Obama administration’s drone program, they killed American. Hmm. Um, no due process. And, uh, the, his attorney general defended that. Right. Oh, what’s a due process? ’cause we have a kill list and we talk about it at NSC meetings. Right. Okay. So Eric Holder, so like the executive has gotten more and more power accumulated.

Yeah. As other branches of government has shrunk away from responsibility and become less popular. Everyone now expects a president to do everything. And now we’ve gotten to the point in this country where we are basically, and I say this, I love Guatemala, but basically the Central American countries are so tired of the corruption, so tired of the government not really serving the people.

Right. They’ll take a strong man and accept that he’s corrupt and maybe a dictator if the strong man, uh, produces results. That’s what’s happening in El Salvador. Right. That’s what’s happened in Nicaragua. Um, Guatemala is more complicated, it’s more sophisticated landscape in this regard, but people are desperate there too.

And they, I mean, and so it’s even, uh, it’s even Korea. I mean, if you look at the, the recent history of Korea after world Wari, and then I shouldn’t say right after, I would say more after the Korean War, I should say maybe a decade or so later. You had a very strong, um, dictator running practically dict dictate, I’ll put it in quotes, running that place.

Yeah. They had, they’ve had very authoritarian government, but they’re, it’s a country run by the, the strongest economic families. Right. But I mean, even if you think about the miracle of Korea’s e economy was initiated by one of the strongest dictatorial like presidents. I mean, on paper he was president.

Yeah, exactly. It’s not a, yeah, it’s not an unusual story because it, it requires coordination. It does digital for China. Right, exactly. Uh, central planning organization and a complete run of the table politically. If you make the right decisions can lead to success, economic, and uh, which again, I would say is interesting because if we look at, again, the empires of, of Europe, a lot of them were started and initiated during a time where the monarchs had a lot of power.

Um, now, I mean, England’s kind of like an exception in that, um, very early on in, I mean, early on. Yeah. I mean, for them history is very long. So for American, I feel like early on they had a strong problem. I mean, parliament had an army that fought the King’s army Interesting. At one time, right? Yeah.

England’s an interesting case. Well, anyway, all this is to bring it back to this idea that, um, just kind of vibing off of some of the things you said. I agree with a lot of the things you said in the, the, the outline of the picture mm-hmm. Is the, the Decline of America. People talk about it. Ray Dalio has a really great video space on this actually, and since he’s, you know.

I think some of the best political philosophers are actually economists and talk about the economy are what? Oh, economists? Yes. I thought you said con artists. I was like, whoa. Uh, or, or journalists, I guess. So Carl Marx was a journalist. He talked about the economic roots of political history. Um, you know, people who took up the mantle of his analysis and called their system Marxism or talked about communism.

That comes from the Communist manifesto. Uh, wr written for, um, an England, an English, uh, union. Those ideas of like, well, this is how we solve the problems of economic and equality and the errors of the capitalist system. This is how we fix it. It wasn’t workable. What a nice thought. It’s just not workable.

So, um, and we, you know, it’s been tried. People always argue, but Yeah. But it would, they didn’t do it right. I’m like, yeah, man, that’s how the world works. There is no utopia. There is no like, let’s try again under different circumstances. This is the world we have. Right. And in this world that we have capitalism as it’s, as it’s played itself out in the United States, inherited deeply from the, from the uk, from the United Kingdom.

Yeah. Capitalism at is as it has worked itself out here in the United States, has led to, first of all, because of capitalism. A a country of immigrants, a country. Mm-hmm. Where despite the political flavors of the day that hate immigrants, not new, it’s a wave. Right. America goes through many different kinds of cycles.

One of them is this religious fervor. It has this religious Christian revival since the colonial period that is cyclical. Sure. People turn to God and get mystical and they, you know, millennia society, they talk about like the end of the world on a cyclical basis. It, it, it, it, it happens here in America all the time.

Uh, the other thing that happens is an anti-immigrant settlement. Immigration is the engine of this country. Oh my gosh. Um, just like the capitalist engine is tied to the capitalist engine, the capitalist engine goes through cycles. Capitalism has cycles, boom and bust. It’s point Competition. Competition and monopoly.

And that’s what makes capitalism vulnerable to forces like communism. Mm. The whole point of the Marxist analysis is that capitalism has these built-in weaknesses and one of the built-in weaknesses is that the capitalist owning class needs an educated workforce to work in their factories. But that very education is what makes them conscious to their flight and helps them organize, which goes against the interest of the capitalistic powers, which makes sense.

All of human history is just a competition for resources and power. Yeah. I think we’ve become a lot more enlightened and conscious as a society, as our brains have developed about what that can look like and different levels of technology. Um, sure. Both, both societal organization has changed as technology hasn’t changed, and we are capable of a lot more than we used to be.

Yeah. We’re capable of law and organization on a level. That was not possible. 3000. Absolutely. I mean, I think that, that you’re hitting the nail on the head, which is, I just saw a reel today by, how did I see this? I don’t know, but it was a no cho recent Nom Cho Chomsky. Right. Um, interview. And he’s going on.

He’s Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m curious. He’s going on about, he makes, Hey, look, man, makes some points. He makes some really good points. He does points his points about manufacturing consent. That’s real. Yeah. And that’s a playbook that gets, that gets used pretty well by authoritarian, even capitalist states that aren’t authoritarian democratic states.

Yeah. He was going off about how every single job is tyranny. Every single job is like worse. It’s more tyrannical than a government da da going on. Yeah. This thing is hilarious coming from an academic, by the way. Yeah, I know. That’s, and I, and I was sitting there and I was just thinking, you know, I, I get what he’s saying and I kind of wanna feel the injustice as he is talking.

I can definitely tap into that. Like, oh, this is terrible. Yeah, of course. But I, but at the same time, if you look at it from a first principle’s attitude, if you take away all the. It’s almost like he’s making some things really that are simple, very complicated and other things that are complicated, really simple.

Um, yep. One of, one of them is all companies are tyrannical. That’s making a, a more complicated, nuanced situation into something black and white, which is not the case. On the other hand, he’s making is companies. Yeah. And then I think the other thing he is doing is making something simple, really complicated, which is what we’re doing as a society is extracting resources from the earth and figuring out how to share them in a way that’s as, I guess I won’t say equal, because I don’t think we’re shooting for equal all the time, but it’s, we’re trying to at least Yeah, fair to some degree.

Different things. Yeah. I would say fair. Fair to some degree. And that has been not just any kind of recent, you know, like the US or anything, it’s, that’s been the effort of humanity since, for thousands of years. How do we take the resources from the ground and with technology and innovation? How do we make them more accessible so that more of us can survive easier?

And that’s what, if you look at technology, that’s what it consistently does is make basically, it de it depreciates the value of all of, you know, if it took 10, if it took a thousand people to get a crop of whatever, uh, of corn in the old days, now it takes 10. Yeah. And then now it takes one, it creates efficiencies, it creates a, it creates efficiencies.

It lowers the cost of, of valuable services and commodities. Absolutely. Uh, and then it, which makes them, you look at the, you know, supply and demand curve, now you have a lot more supply. Yeah. Um, you fill the demand and then the cost goes down. Right. I mean, so this and the cost is basically representation of how easy it’s to pull this Yes, exactly.

These resources out and distribute them. If you think about a company, you could call it on one hand, Tyra tyrannical, on the other hand, you can call it a very efficient machine. And again, yeah. Extracting resources and distributing them. Very hard. Would I want the government, I always think like, do I want the government to be running my Safeway?

Do I want to do, I wanna replace my grocery store, which is extremely efficient. I mean, you can argue, you know, don’t like this or that, but effectively it’s a fairly efficient system. Has a lot of variety. It’s fairly cheap. It’s all available for me. I don’t have to go kill a chicken and, and cut its head off when I want a chicken.

Yep. Do I want that system to be replaced by a government? No, we’ve seen that. You’ve seen what happens to the, you know, you, you look at the reservations of the Native Americans and, and when they were put on land where they couldn’t grow their own crops, the only way to get them food in these terribly re desolate areas was government cheese, government flour, government sugar.

And the result of that was fry bread. I mean, that’s how Fry bread got created was government supplies. And then what’s the result of that? Long term, it’s sky high Diabetes got high, uh uh, diseases, chronic diseases that. We’re not there before. Suddenly they’re there suddenly, and it’s because the government is now the distributor of, of food.

They don’t have any choices. Here’s your, you know, we’re acting like the grocery store. So that’s the negative aspect of that. So this fuels my view on what you just said. Right. It’s a lot of context, but, you know, we can edit that out, I guess. Yeah. Uh, that I, that I try to add for, so I’m coming from that space of, I, I view things practically.

I zoom out, I look at the history, uh, as I, as far as I understand it, of humanity. That’s, I mean, I’m curious about humanity. When people talk about wage slaves, I’m like, okay, but I’m sorry. But like, then what is Noam Chomsky’s solution? He’s talked, he’s pointed to a handful of things, and mostly are anarcho, ous forms of government, like what Catalonia had for a very brief period during Spanish Civil War.

Okay. And if you’ve read homage to Catalonia Orwell, who was, Hmm. It had inclinations to be like, this is great. He was a communist, right? Mm-hmm. Sure. He believed in that idea that we could do it. And back then, I think it was to me very wow. Like this is a new concept. We had a very limited idea of what was happening in the Soviet Union.

And so it was like, wow, maybe they’re pulling this amazing thing off. Right. Um, they weren’t, and very good intention. People didn’t know it until they knew it. And Georgia Oil found out during the Spanish Civil War, and that’s when he came back to the uk. Interesting. His whole, his whole motivation was anti-fascist.

He knew what oppression looked like, and he could hear it coming towards Europe. And he went to Spanish to defend liberty and democracy. Um, and he believed that communism could work. It’s a new idea. He found out, oh wait, these communists, these Stalinists who’ve come here are oppressive, authoritarian, and he is the one who came outta that.

There’s a debate about who coined it, but this idea of totalitarian states. Uh, came outta that. He’s like, oh wait a second. Like this is basically the same total result of fascism is oppression. Right? And so I like that he’s non-ideological. He’s nonpartisan. He’s like, Hey man, this communist thing sounds like it makes a lot of sense.

I see there’s people over there making it work. It looks like it works. He’s like, oh wait, no it doesn’t. Let’s try something else. And then the fight beco, then people group up against fascism and defeat fascism is a terrible idea. But people have forgotten that. And now we’re in that moment again, yes, where all these ideas are out there.

So when I hear, I hear people complain about the MAGA movement, I hear people in the, in the MAGA movement, and it’s like, to me it’s like I feel like a lot of people who are new to voting for Republicans who come in through the MAGA movement, I think are in this George Orwell moment of, well, hey look, I know this idea.

Interesting. Sounds like, oh wow, maybe it’s unworkable, but you know, maybe the president can make this happen. And what’s the alternative? There’s this other alternative that I don’t like the way it feels to me. Let’s try it. And I, and I’m, and I’m, what I’m hoping is that people will lose their faith in politicians, lose their faith in parties and in ideology, and come back to the sensible middle where, which is where America was made.

America was made in the sensible middle. Right. And there have always been powerful interest trying to get what they want and take more and more from common people in America. That’s always how it’s happened. And yes, they’re the ones who prefer immigrant labor. They’re the ones who prefer illegal immigration.

Uncontrolled immigration is always the powerful capitalist classes. Mm-hmm. And it’s always the middle America who sees the threat to their economic base. Um, and now middle meaning middle in the country or middle? Uh, political? I’m demo median. The median. Median. Okay. Economic, uh, you know, median on wage, middle class on possessions.

Okay. On resources, on access. Mm-hmm. You know, to, so to me it’s like. Yeah. They capitalist classes bring in immigrants. They don’t care if it’s legal or not. They want bottom line costs. They want second class citizens. And after the 1920s and the United States made a grand social bargain that like, you know what, actually, like you have to take care of people.

Social security, income tax, capitalist classes hated the income. Oh yeah. They still do. Yeah. Grover Norquist still is out there banging on about the income tax president Trump is talking about tariffs paying out for, that’s how, that’s how capitalist classes think. They think like, how can I lower the cost of production and then ha and take as much as I possibly can.

Yeah, yeah. Right. As much margin as can get. And so when you, when you lend your faith to an ideology or a, or a party, you are basically handing the keys over to a group of elites who will, the very first moment they can. Uh, take advantage of the common people. That’s how it happens. Interesting. And that’s fine.

That’s greed. It keeps the system going. It keeps people honest. It’s our job as the people in the middle, the median to be greedy back and be like, no, I won’t give you that. No, I’m voting you out of office democracy. The, the, the voting booth is supposed to be our, our ability to counteract their high amount of resource allocation and power.

It is a very small amount of power we have as a, as a democratic voting block. It really is. The system is designed mm-hmm. To give us only an in, in, into, into like a incremental small amount of power. More than we had maybe a hundred years ago. But we use it and we leverage it. But the system gives you the choices.

Right. And the system did not wanna give the United States the choice of Donald Trump. ’cause the system didn’t think Donald Trump. Would give to the system the benefits it wanted. ’cause he talked like someone who was gonna give it all to the people, and the system didn’t like that. And the system did try to disqualify him and push him away.

It really did. Right. You could see it work. I mean, you don’t have to be conspiracy theorist. Yeah. To see how different least elites in his own party and the o and and the only other party that exists. Mm-hmm. Try to push him out. Mm-hmm. Right, right. In ways that they don’t try to push out others. George W.

Bush, George Bush, w Bush, bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, these are not candidates who the system tried to destroy. True. And so President Trump came in talking about how, oh look, I’m not attached to a party, I’m not attached to an ideology. And people were like, people understand the thing I’m talking about.

Ideology and party are dangerous. The people know that. Mm-hmm. This is not, this is not a country that easily lends itself to personality of cult. But it transformed into that. The system adopted him. The system took him in. And now. It. Anything that looks like he’s not part of the system is theater. It’s powerful factions fighting against each other.

This is the kind of shit that happens in China. Powerful factions fight against each other. They do corruption sweeps. That’s Xi Jinping came to Power, made his faction the most powerful faction by an anti-corruption sweep. Right, right, right. Um, so like that’s, we’re in the consolidation phase of power now where someone who was a populist has been adopted by the system and now we’re seeing the system via the Supreme Court, via the Congress via powerful economic elites embrace him.

Especially in this last election. Right. And so to me it is very interesting. You look at these waves that, and we talk about the decline of America. There are white supremacists who talk about the decline of America racially. Ray Dalio talks about the decline of America economically. Right. He, his biggest measure of this is the adoption of the US dollar and the strength of the US dollar.

And he is a great radio on this. And he has, yeah, I’ve seen it put together a team that has historically analyzed. This. He says, forget empire, forget colonies. Forget all that exists for economical reasons. So it’s almost like a Marxist materialist reading of, he would never call it that. ’cause it scares people away.

Sure. Because people only know what they know. Right. They hear Marxist and they’re like, oh, it’s a communist. And you can’t be that. Right. I mean, you shouldn’t. It’s a terrible idea. But yeah, you can if you want to, gives a shit. The point is, Ray Dalio comes at this from Marxist point of view, which is, let’s look at the material, uh, analysis of history.

You’re talking about the core Marxist ideology, which is less, I’m talking about Marxist analysis. Yeah, yeah. Which, which it, it comes from historical. The historical dialectic, which he did not, he invent, he did not invent the dialectic. Okay. This is an old philosophical idea. I’m blanking. If someone is actually listening to this, they’ll probably be able to tell us who, I’m not gonna look it up because we don’t plan for that right now.

Send it to us. But this, this idea that history is a combination of opposing forces. Philosophically, yeah. Uh, intellectually, thesis and antithesis fighting and resulting in what they call as synthesis. So Marx took this idea and applied its economics and said, there are opposing forces in every economic system.

And then a new result comes from that. And so the economic organization of human societies have gone through the medieval phase. The medieval system is an economic system. We know it, right? It’s a political system with the king and nobles and vassals who belong to the land. Mm. But it’s an economic system.

You have a bunch of people working for subsistence whose entire political and economic futures is, uh, provided by a baron. A a, a titled mm-hmm. Uh, aristocrat, who then has obligations to the vassals that are on his land. The nobles participate in a political sphere that is completely exclusive of vassals.

Only Nobles play in this game. Mm. It is among nobles. That the Magna Carta was created. People talk about Magna Carta is like a, a, a precursor to the Constitution. No, the constitution of the United States, of America’s unique document because it talks about a political organization based off the idea that all men are created equal just because they were born.

Yeah. Right. Then later people added, that was the Declaration of Independence, but then later people added to the Constitution, which is an actual political framework. Oh. But not slaves, because if you don’t say slaves, then you’ll lose half the country. Okay. Political compromise. Right. So to me, I agree with Ray Dalio.

I agree with the Marx analysis. I agree with the materialist explanation that materialism won’t tell you everything you need to know about a society. Values matter ideology, as I’ve complained about, um, affects how we make our choices and they’re non-rational. But I think that the, the economic idea of what decline is is very powerful here because if you look at it through that, instead of like, oh, you lost.

Power and hegemony throughout the world. Mm-hmm. That’s when people, I think that’s what most people talk about when they talk about the US decline. We won’t be able to have, we have embassies throughout the world. Right. The United States is one of the only diplomatic, uh, forces in the world that has an embassy in most countries.

206 countries I think I saw in their website, which is wild. Um, which is wild. Most people like here in Jakarta where I live, I know there’s an American Embassy, they send out little notices about like consular stuff, how you get your passport. Mm-hmm. But I mean, there’s only a handful of countries that really have an embassy here in the region in Southeast Asia.

There are countries that have the, um, emphasis here. ’cause they have direct relations with Indonesia. But you’re talking about like, I don’t know, Guatemala has a three person embassy, right? Hmm. Like Canada. Um, it’s just like a dozen people I think. Something like, that’s all right. Yeah. So like even very large powerful economic country countries with economic power have very small embassies here, but the US is present everywhere, right?

We have military bases overseas, we have diplomatic posts that, and we have, we influence multilateral organizations. We influence the WTO, we appoint the head of the World Bank. Were, uh, a board member in IMF. We direct a lot of its programs. We, uh, are the still, even with this administration, still the largest contributor to the un.

We could, we, you know, direct a lot of the work of these multilateral organizations and have set the pace for the American, uh, way in the international system. And we are losing ground to China. Sure we’re losing ground to Russia, um, in, in that sphere, in this political sphere of influence. But it is expensive and I think this is what the American people and the MAGA movement have complained about.

Like it is expensive to maintain this and, and who’s getting the benefit from that, right? Yeah. Some rich, well, that is a good question. Is. And so, you know, as we, I do agree. Well, I would say I, I would see a decline in the soft power that we have around the world as we start to pull back when we do reduce embassies and, and consults around the world.

And maybe that’s what the people want and that’s what the administration wants. Uh, that said again, I would say. Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, like if you lose land, you’re losing real GDP. Those are, that’s hard. You know what, what happened with England is, is they, when they had India, let’s say under their, uh, under their power, under their reign, was they could count that, all that activity as their own economy.

Yeah. They could say, that’s ours. Where, and you know Right. It was a, a great deal with it. But economy, the, but economies work differently now. And so you can have high productivity out of a land that no longer figures in, um, in an advanced economy, land is not related at all to GDP, it is for medium and low income countries.

So to me, well, land is not, but the activity that’s happening on that land and the people on that land, right highest do highest contribute to GDP highest. And so if you have the, you’re England and you have India producing the highest productivity activity happens on the computer. Well, that’s true too.

You don’t need that much. You do need energy. But if you think about it, if you wanna, energy is a better indicator. Yeah. Energy could be good, but I do think that that is, that’s where I would still say even with soft power, we’re still not, and it’s kind of a game, right? You can say, well, what, what’s the GDP of the us?

It’s still as many, as much soft power is going on. It doesn’t count activity in a place where it has influence as its own. Yeah. That’s activity. That’s right. It’s, it’s not counting that like, oh, okay, we have a great relationship with, with um, you know, uh, Panama. So we’ll count Panama’s, GDP as part of ours.

Right. Which was what was happening with, with England. Now that said, yeah, yeah. Like, right. Exactly. That’s true. Um, that said, I, I do see, you know, there, there is a question, of course, like you’re saying about what happens as we pull back our hands all over the world and pull back our economy and pull back our military.

What does, what is the result? And, and is that. Is that the same kind of level of decline that the, again, UK had or is it a different kind? Right. And this is the problem when you compare things. I mean, you know, so I actually do like the exercise of what does, let’s define it, what do we mean by decline?

Yeah, right. You could do economic, like Ray Dalio talks about. Um, you could talk about political, as we were just mentioning. I think most people think political. Um, what does decline mean? Influence, power territory. Mm-hmm. Is it the economic influence is a specific part of influence? Right. So for me, when I think of the decline, and then, you know, I think white supremacists talk about cultural decline.

Which is this weird ideological made up racial thing. Yeah. There is no white race. Like, sorry, I know it’s a checkbox and a government form, but it’s a made up thing. Yeah. It’s a powerful made up thing for a lot of people. Um, I was looking at, one of my clients is, uh, Pakistani and I was looking at an application.

She, you know, she was to applying to a, to a school and I mean, she checked white as the demographic. I just, I thought it was interesting. I was just like, you know, what do we, we think we have these numbers and they mean something as if we as if they’re like clear. It’s like, well, who knows what, you know, I mean, what all that means?

She probably should have checked Asian, but then that brings up its own problems. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. She just, she chose, she didn’t wanna, so, right. Well, ’cause there’s only like three races according to that form. Anyway, the point is, I’m serious, there’s three races and there’s like five ethnicities. Right?

And so yeah, the, it comes to me, I think this is a better conversation when we define what we mean. So you talk about Henry viii, I don’t think he was crazy. I think he did what’s in his own personal best interest. Sure. And completely changed the way society, culture, and politics works to suit his own personal needs.

Absolutely. I think that’s a really great comparison. And he’s not crazy. No. He’s bold. Um, very much and, and, and, and did not care about norms and defiance did not care about norms so much. Even his personal relationship with the bishop of, uh, Canterbury did not mean anything to him. Right. And he would execute whoever he had to execute for the raw political exercise of power that is in his direct interest that he could, if he wanted later, say that it was an interest of his country.

Mm-hmm. But, and you, he wouldn’t have said country, he would’ve said kingdom because it was a kingdom in America. Right. That’s a good point. And so that I think is comparable to now. Um, I think you have a leader, whether you like him or not. I think you could argue that he, for the sake of. Power has broken a lot of norms.

Mm-hmm. Whether you like those norms or not can be debated. Yeah. And people have different opinions. I respect people’s opinions. They might differ from mine, but he has broken longstanding norms in political power. Every single administration, every single political organization in the United States has always followed its own naked power interests and has only been willing to break some norms.

Mm-hmm. There’s, there’s a strong hard limit how many norms, a lot of previous administrations were willing to break. Right. The Kennedy administration sent in the National Guard to integrate a school. True. Right. In the seventies, national Guard troops shot and killed students. Right. Yeah. It was it Kent State.

Um, that’s, and even if you think about the post, uh, civil War, I mean, that was a very, I mean, we’re talking about Well, you didn’t have to go back that far. Yeah. We’re talking about a very powerful unilateral mm-hmm. Uh, implementation of executive power. Mm-hmm. But Kennedy, then on top of. You know, integrating the school via force, via the army who had rifles by the way, you know, then broke a norm about, uh, nuclear diplomacy, right?

Mm-hmm. With Kche, and people blame Kennedy’s missteps for causing the Cuban missile crisis and the brinksmanship there could have ended the world. Right. And there’s a school of thought that there were so many norms and way that things are done that he broke. But even then there was a hard, bright line that it did not cross.

And every administration kind of like plays with that line. Yeah. We see this all the time, playing with that line constantly. The Congress, the Supreme Court, the president, uh, state governments playing with that line back and forth, back and forth. It’s a tussle. This administration is marked because of how much, how frequently Yeah.

And across how many different parts of society. That’s true. To to have a cultural takeover of museums, institutions of higher learning. They’re leveraging federal money. Right. And people are like, how can we leverage universities and tell ’em what to do? Well, ’cause they get federal money. Yeah. Why do they get federal money?

Because we’ve had decades of the federal government growing and being involved in everything. Right, right. Liberals who love this idea now are regretting it. Because now whoever’s in charge of the executive, so it’s just the historical forces of the gathering of executive power, the increase of the federal government’s power.

Up until now, liberals have been okay with it. ’cause they’re like, well, the DOJ is independent. So the, the fact that the DOJ goes into countries and it goes into states and tells ’em how they can and can’t vote and how they should hold elections. Liberals like that. When they’re desegregating schools, when they’re making elections more racially equal, when they’re, when they’re dismantling state rules about voting, that I make it harder for other races to vote.

Liberals like the fact that DOJ was everywhere and they thought, okay, well the DOJ though is separate. It’s independent, not legally, not right. In the way, way power is imposed in this system, it was a norm. The norm is that it’s independent. The norm is the Federal bank governors is independent. The norm.

Mm-hmm. Is that the Consumer Bureau Protection Agency? That the state, you know, all of these agencies and the federal government that are legally statutorily under the executive. Branch liberals have been building up their power because states don’t have policies they like. Right. So the federal government gets more powerful.

Guess what? It works the other way. Yeah. If Trump doesn’t like the way DC or Chicago or New York does policing, he can use the federal money. Mm-hmm. Emergency statutes, he can use all of these levers of power that conservatives for decades have been saying, don’t do that. Oh, interesting. And liberals were like, we’re gonna, ’cause we’re gonna solve racism.

Right. We’re gonna solve proper poverty. We’re gonna create equality by force unilaterally. Now it’s being used against liberals. Interest. Yeah. And now they’re like, how can he do this? He’s breaking a norm. Yeah. It shouldn’t have been a norm. It should’ve been like enshrined in law. That’s a good point. The way conservatives have wanted for so long.

Yeah. The irony is very palpable. The irony is palpable. There are very poor conservatives who are traditional Republicans who are actually, have been complaining about liberal overreach, the powerful executive for decades, and who don’t like this administration. Right. So they’re just always suffering, basically.

They’re never, they’re never quite happy. Yeah. Because the government never gets smaller. Yeah. You know, I’ll give you a little stupid example, right? Um, you’ve heard of the stories of government agencies that cut all this money. They, it went up on dojo’s. Sure. All of receipts. The government, the wash, you know, the, the, the spokesperson of the White House has been talking about all this money they’ve cut and spent, and government overreach.

Government overreach, uh, they slashed all money from the budget. In September, you’re gonna see that they’re gonna report that they have cut 300,000 people from the federal workforce. You’re gonna see that why in September. That’s the end of the federal budget year. Hmm. Um, the people who got RIFed, um, sorry.

They, they were subject to a reduction in force in federal government, which is when you fire people for non-personal reasons, which makes it legal. Mm-hmm. Um, you’ve eliminated a function. They got rid of U-S-A-I-D, uh, they shredded down the Consumer Protection Bureau to its legally statutorily minimum.

Mm. Interesting. Hard minimum. Same thing for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, by the way. That was conservative. That was a NeoCon thing. Um, they loved that pepfar, uh, AIDS in Africa, these programs, right? Mm. Um, those are done through a lot of these, uh, foreign aid, um, yeah. Places. Um, they’ve dismantled all of these agencies.

They’ve gutted them when, when they are, when they weren’t legally able to destroy it completely, they took it down to its bare minimum. Right. Makes sense. Um, right. And so they did all these things. Some of them are arguably illegal because they were created by statute, by congress and only statute can remove them, but they went ahead and did it because the executive has a ton of power.

Mm-hmm. Um, and so a lot of these firings take effect on September, at the end of the budget year. Hmm. Interesting. So they’re still working then? Or is that us? A ID was working right up until August 15th. Oh, interesting. Okay. I didn’t know that. Yep. And so, um, some of them were put on administrative leave as soon as the announced report was made back in like, was it May or something.

Got it. In July, a lot of them were fired, but paid money and then a lot of them worked until August 15th to help shut it down. Wow. Now the only remaining U-S-A-I-D employees are on administrative leave until September. Then that’s when the government will very giggly report that they have cut 300,000 people from the federal workforce.

You know what, they’re not gonna say, they’re not gonna say how much money they’ve had to reestablish for programs that they cut. They’re not gonna, they’re not gonna say that because it’s new money to replace money in programs. They cut. So they did cut meaning new programs that they’ve started you’re talking about?

Yeah. Got it. So think about this. In the last year, I have lost 50 pounds. Mm-hmm. Go congrats. By the way. You look great. I gained 60 pounds. Oh, right. That’s what you’re gonna hear in September. Yeah. We lost 300,000 jobs. We cut those, we cut x billion dollars of money. But you weren’t supposed to say the second part.

That’s the, uh, that’s the trick that they’re using. They added 200,000 jobs. Yeah. Right. Because they realized they cut a bunch of stuff. They didn’t know what it did. Yeah. Yeah. I actually have sympathy for this. The federal government is too large. It has grown with every administration. Yeah. They add their own little piece of it.

Absolutely. And it, it, it becomes this like Frankenstein’s monster of all these pieces outta the federal government contractors programs. Yeah. And even the New York Times, I mean, if you listen to the Daily on some of these episodes, they’ll plainly admit that fairly liberal news organization like, well, you know, I can’t blame them wanting to cut the government.

It has gotten over blown, bloated, and all this stuff. And I think there’s a certain aspect of society where we relate to that. You know, you look at. A good, a good example is the uk they’re, they, yes, they declined, but they’re also massively bureaucratic. They’re famous for being bureaucratic and inefficient.

I mean, it’s one of the worst bureaucratics over bloated systems in the world. Um, so there’s certainly an argument. I mean, I I’m a You couldn’t open a lemonade stand without filling out rims of paperwork. Exactly. And, and you think about it, there’s just so much, like you say, what does that do to, what does that do to business?

What does that, you know, and you’re talking about China, a place like China, a place like Indonesia, where if you wanna start a business, you know, there’s not much red tape. You just start it. You just go. And does that lead to a lot of innovation and growth? It does it, it often does. Uh, when I was, when I moved from California.

Which I had lived in for 1213, well, Southern California. I lived in about 12 years. I do not remember a single, maybe one single, um, skyscraper being built. I remember the cranes and stuff, and I was, and maybe it was a remodel too. It was not even like a brand new building. I remember going to, to Asia and I could not believe everywhere you look, everywhere you turn, there was a new skyscraper going up everywhere, even in a small town, a small city.

And then we moved back to Texas. Um, and I was like, wow. I, it’s not to the level of Asia for sure. It’s nothing compared to Asia, but I had to admit there was, there were many skyscrapers being built in Austin, Texas and in Dallas where I was, uh, spending time. And I had just had not seen that in California.

Uh, it just, it there, that era was over. Things were on the decline, if anything, and in a place where there really weren’t many rules and a lot of red tape. Business is booming in, in, in Texas. So I do think that there’s a reality to that, which is the more red tape you put on stuff, the more bureaucratic you have a a system.

Um, it will slow down growth. It will, I mean, look at the, I mean, look at the, um, famous example of like, uh, the bullet train in California. I mean, that’s a joke. It’s a complete joke. Can’t they built a single mile? I think going to Bakersfield. I mean, uh, there’s a quote of even Gavin Newsom saying, sitting on a PO stand on a podium and saying, you know, we’re so happy and proud to be here.

We’ve got the first mile done. He even says in that speech, yes, some say that a bullet train to to Bakersfield is a place, is a train to nowhere, but still. And it’s just like, why would you say that out loud? Well, anyway. No, no, I, I hear you. I hear you. And so we’re, we’re getting back to economics, right?

Which is, yeah. The reason why I like economics as like the center of mass for a conversation is because it often bends politics to its will more often than the opposite. And every time, every time politics has tried to bend economics to its will, um, it is eventually failed my opinion. It depends how you define these terms.

So you could argue it either way. But my point is this, my point is that, you know, my little breakdown of the administration and all these other things, these are huge forces that have been acting on the American, on the American political system for, for, for decades. Yeah. It’s an accumulation. None of this, um, there’s a lot of stuff here that’s unique and, and novel.

Um, but the overall trends are what created the situation we’re in right now. When liberals complain that executive is unilaterally doing all these things, it’s because it is accumulated power often through liberal overreach interest when it comes to, to what I think are perfectly fine goals. Um, of, you know, racial equality, of helping, uh, underserved economic people, et cetera.

But once again, how you do things matters. And because it was done through executive overreach. Through executive orders, because it was done in like court battles and not through, um, mass democracy, people didn’t show up to a voting booth and vote for integration in some places. And the federal government didn’t like that.

Right. People who were in charge of the federal government. And so, okay, well that matters less now. Okay. But the problem is liberals, it matters less now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And now you, and so to me, you know, when I zoom out, that’s why I say I can, I can argue against the MAGA movement or the progressive movement.

Why? ’cause it’s ideology based, because it’s partisan. Mm-hmm. It forms initially in this kind of gaseous environment where people just are discontent and people don’t think that the elites are running things well for them. And we wanna change the system and pick someone who will come in from the outside.

And the more desperate they get, the more extreme the outsider is. And that’s what we have right now. Yeah. Um, I think the elites of this country forced to, um, c more territory to the common person back in the 1920s when they created the social contract after the market crashed, after communism and after anarchism were dangerous political forces that threaten to destroy the livelihoods You’re talking about the FD.

They made a grand compromise and that was, I think one time where things shifted to be more equal and they actually had to give up. But the O elites only gave up power and money when they absolutely have to when it’s an existential crisis. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. With the advent of technology, this flows into our AI conversation.

They will no longer be in a position to be threatened by people anymore. And that’s the problem. Why? ’cause the army of the future is controlled by them in a button. And the people, the poor people who used to be in that army, and you would have to convince them for ideological reasons or partisan reasons to join the military or support violence.

Those National Guard troops in DC right now are people. They’re humans. Those ice agents who are going around, those are people, those are agents. You had to convince them to do that. And how did you convince them? Hey man, illegal immigration is a huge problem. It’s uncontrolled, desperate, wild criminals are coming in.

Why don’t you do something to help us? Okay, I’ll do that. Even if they’re lying to themselves, that’s why they’re doing, it’s a human. Now, imagine that ice. The military police armies are drones. Yeah. And that there are, there’s a group of 5,000 people in the United States who own everything, who control that with a button.

You don’t have to convince anybody of anything anymore. That’s the end. I hear you. That, that to me is decline. That’s scary. That’s, that could be very scary. The time. But that’s what I mean by decline is that like the elite will be able to take 99% of the pie. Now they have seeded some benefit to us common people and to poor people.

But they don’t, they won’t have to do that anymore. That’s decline. And how does this current wave, how does the MAGA populous movement, which wants to create, um, more benefits for the common person here in America? That movement is seeding the ground, is laying the groundwork for that future of decline where we have nothing.

And this administration is handing over that power to these forces out of. Directly personal interests, you know? Mm-hmm. But the power being used right now was built over decades by other people on the opposite side of the political spectrum, who had also, who had good intentions, who created these tools of power.

But in the entire, through course, the entire history of this trend is the concentration of power. Yeah. Away from where it went in the 1920s. And it’s been little by little, it’s created successes for the middle class after World War ii, that was a blip of cooperation politically. That was a blip of seeding the ground to the masses.

And now since then, all that has happened. And you can look at any economic indicator you want. You can look at real wages. Mm-hmm. You can look at the concentration of wealth, you can look at the Genie Index, you can look at equality, you can at the concentration of power of money, it’s all trending towards what I think is the inevitable decline of the elites have finally found a way to no longer need a middle class.

That’s decline. And that’s political. It’s economic. Yeah. But it’s, it’s, it’s mostly economic. Well, let’s say the trend then, uh, just to sum, summarize, what you’re saying is if the trend is a, um, a centralization of power instead of a, uh, decentralization where, you know, you, you have, um, more power, maybe distributed.

So if you have this centralization of power away from the people, that could be one thing, but at the same time, one thing to consider with ai. So one aspect of it is, like you’re saying, it’s the ability to, to exert power more easily as a, as a central power. Um, watch people, uh, snoop on all our conversations, et cetera, and maybe control and maybe intervene more, uh, more directly, um, in a way that they couldn’t before.

On the other hand, because AI is so disruptive and will, as we’ve said before, will cause a mass, um, a mass wave of unemployment. You could also envision another wave or another instance of what happened in the 1920s and thirties, which is you had all these people suddenly on the street in the, in the breadlines, all this stuff, and that causes another angst and another desire for, for another, a new agreement, right?

So I mean, who, who, who’s to say which way it will go in this country? We’ve, we know that in other countries it’s gone more totalitarian. Uh, but it could happen that there’s another FDR wave, right? Because there’s, so, I mean, again, I would say that there does seem to be some sort of connection that I have yet to kind of study well enough of this delayed effect of the, the movement from, um, I don’t know, agrarian to industrial society.

In the US And I don’t know that that necessarily results in, in the Great Depression. I think maybe it’s something I heard. I’m not sure. Again, I, I feel like it’s still a bit of a loose connection there, but it’s possible that there’s always, you know, again, there’s a lot of folks that are like, I’m desperate, I’m hungry.

The government needs to do something. They go me, the government means to take care of me or give us more power. I don’t know. It’d be, it is interesting to, to play with that idea and, uh, just, it’ll be interesting to see what happens actually. Yeah. I mean, me too. You’re right. But to me, I think what is dangerous?

’cause right now you can create that movement that you’re talking about. Mm. Um, through mass action. That’s how, that’s actually how the MAGA movement happened. Right. They took control over the political destinies. They, they pushed off this traditional Republican cast. They, uh, held liberals that they created movement and it’s very successful political movement.

Yeah. And it, you know, I, I have to say, I give them less credit. For succeeding than I do Giving fault to, to the liberal movement for letting themselves like an so out talked with the reality that it was just like a, it was a slam dunk. It wasn’t, it wasn’t a hard shot to take. I’m not talking about the, well, I’m not talking about the leaders of the MAGA movement.

I wouldn’t give them credit. I would give credit to the common people who are like, you know what, this makes sense to me. The other stuff doesn’t. I’m talking about those people, those people who showed up at the ballot box, who talked to each other. This is heavily discounted in liberal circles. They do not know why the MAGA movement isn’t just Trump and a handful of people.

Convincing a bunch of stupid people to do stuff. It’s not that at all. We’re talking about actual thinking, people sharing. I agree. Grassroots action. This, I mean, liberals used to like routes grassroots action. They weren’t manipulated. They weren’t pushed into it. Talking about normal, everyday Americans who talk to each other on social media, talk to each other over the phone, talk about how crazy the world is, and they have gone with this movement that they have com passionately fallen in love with.

Yeah, it’s not top down. You’re talking about a bunch of people enough who have connected and they’re angst their fears, their anxieties, their hopes, um, you know, in my opinion, a misplaced nostalgia. America has always been a struggle. It’s never been, it’s never been at Paradise for the Medium class, just even after the post World War II period where there’s all this opportunity mobility.

That was a fluke. We the medium, you know, voting class of people who, like, if I lost my job, if you lost your job tomorrow, we’d be fucked. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s the middle America, right? Those people of different races, different cultures, they like different things that those people. Us, we have all this in common and we have been successfully divided, you know?

Totally. When I look at a person in the middle of Louisiana who rides a swamp boat and who loves MAGA and has all the MAGA stuff, has a golden sneakers. That’s my brother man. That’s like someone who’s in my boat. He just doesn’t realize it. I, I wish there was a better way to convince him or her that we are in the same boat and we’re being divided by pretty superficial shit.

’cause the real shit that matters, like my kids over there in the room, that, you know, that car in my garage, that shit is the real shit, man. That’s the stuff about like, can we live our lives? Um, and this part is bullshit, like the, you know. That doesn’t divide this median class, what I’m talking about. Right.

And the MAGA movement, I think has been grassroots. I think people have, yes, they’ve surfed the wave. Just like with all movements, it’s been co-opted, manipulated, pushed in the right direction. So the system can benefit, but that’s why it’s so important not to stay in the ideological pigeonhole. Yeah. Why it’s good to get outta the partisanship.

Why a personality of cult is the democracy killer. That’s a democracy killer. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. People who might have been in the cult of like the, the, oh, I’m with her. Hillary, she’s a woman. Let’s vote for her. Obama Obama’s great. Obama’s like flawless Trump. Trump is the king. He can do whatever he wants.

No, man, that’s ruin. That’s a road to ruin. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a road to line. I’m worried that we’re gonna get to the point where mass political action isn’t enough. The consciousness that we can develop among each other that our interests are aligned is not enough. Um, when. The elite can control us through technological means.

And I’m talking about information manipulation. I mean, that’s already happened. This, that’s been, that’s been happening. You think newspapers were owned by poor people? Come on. To me, I’m talking about robots in the streets with guns. I, it seems farcical, but they’re controlled by ai. The elite don’t even have to have anyone in charge of it.

The AI doesn’t. Yeah, but they could have done that before. I don’t think AI changes. It’s not just ai. We’re talking about autonomous weapons programs. Sure. We’re talking about factory automation. You don’t need factory workers. You don’t need armies Police. The power. Why if Venezuela is doing so terribly, how come the people don’t rise up?

’cause the military’s on board. That’s why the military protects Maduro. It’s like they did in Spain during its fastest period, just like in Chile under Pinot. She, this isn’t new. This isn’t like some amazing thing. Nicaragua, which is a quote unquote socialist Marxist, whatever, is controlled by the police in the military, right?

If the right elite classes are co-opted, then you’re done. The elites get the most concentration of power when they don’t need middle class people to hold the guns for them. And that we are very close to that being the possibility. Class, consciousness, democracy, our will as people, will no longer be necessary ’cause we won’t even be needed in the factories where they make the drones, right?

That’s where they’re, they’re trying to get there as fast as humanly possible so they won’t have to create artificial partisanship and ideological fissures. Um, that’s what we’re racing towards. Um, I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think that’s just how power works. That’s how capitalism works, is the concentration of wealth and power.

And so you’re saying it’s more that the, um, it’s not so much about the technology really shifting that’s causing, that could cause such a, a dystopian future. It’s more about the political faction, uh, faction where people are pulling apart from each other. Well, no, that’s always happened. It’s the tools are different now.

So the tools are, so you do think it’s the, you do think it’s the technology. It’s the technology. It’s absolutely the technology. Before you had airplanes, you couldn’t travel halfway across the world. Now people do that on a regular basis. In the middle, in the middle class. Well, we had fairly impressive technology as Russia.

Oh, you know, USSR as North Korea, as China for a long time demonstrated that we, even without amazing technology, you could still do that. You could still control people. Very, yeah. North Korea still, North Korea still has, uh, an elite class in the military. Right. Who keep em afloat. Dito for Russia. The Russia has the oligarchs.

Right. And, and Putin kills off the oligarchs. Nore longer needed. They still need to manufacture consent in elections and fake elections. They need to do that to maintain their power. Sure. There’s a future where they won’t even have to do that. That’s my point. Well, they might, that’s interesting. I mean, that, that, that could be, um, now the, of course the counter argument to that would be that, um, AI is, while it is also, well again, it centralizes power has a potential centralized power also has, it has the potential to decentralized power.

Through, um, if you were to use it in a way to, to break this, let’s say to to point your target at the central centralized power, you could also use it in a way to break things apart too. It’s very powerful both ways, right? To, yeah, you’re right. And that’s what the movie Elysium is. That’s what the movie Terminator is.

Good point. Yeah. Anyway, being of Terminator, I must go. Uh, we have guests coming over, but once again, I cannot have a short conversation with you, Kevin. You stimulate my brain in amazing ways. Uh, and if that sounds erotic good. Yeah, you, you just got me thinking then and uh, as you can probably tell, as anyone can probably tell from this, yeah.

Conversation. We need to have more people. Listen, let’s get some, let’s get some listeners. If you have something to say to us, which come to our website, don’t tell my wife.com. Oh no, sorry, don’t tell my wife pod.com and leave a comment on this episode. Uh, as well as of course, rating this positively, I’m gonna be creating a Twitter account and I’m gonna be, uh, blasting and I’ll probably have Threads account too, just to kind.

Sorry, what is Twitter? That’s right. Twitter, X and x and threads. Oh, X Threads X. Okay. X, I’m not sure. I’m gonna create two accounts and we’re gonna blast both sides of the spectrum with our, uh, with our tweets. I don’t know what you call ’em, our posts. Uh, so that’ll be coming soon. So follow us on either one.

If you’re, if you’re right or you’re left or anywhere in the middle, you’ll find us. Yeah. Wherever you imagine you are in this completely fabricated political, uh, spectrum that it only serves the. You know, the elite, the purposes of the powerful, by the way, I thought I saw a great reel, to your point, uh, that I enjoyed, which was, um, it was a, I love the Nost you’re talking about the nostalgia, how people love the Yeah.

Nostalgia of the us. I am a big fan of the nostalgia videos. I’m kind of obsessed with ’em ’cause they bring me back to my eighties, uh, childhood of simplicity. And there was one that, um, I’ll put it, I’ll try to put it in the show notes, but it was basically, um, the caption was the 1980s. You’re a lower, you’re in a lower middle class family.

Um, and the image in the video was the most beautiful, decadent, uh, suburban house with everything perfect in a beautiful pool and beautiful car. And, uh, this was called lower middle class. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, it’s just an illusion. Okay, fine. Whatever. Let’s, let’s watch it for next time, I guess.

Yes, thank, enjoy and enjoy your, uh, lush lifestyle there. Uh, you know, thank you for your, uh, coffee, sir. Great talk you.