Should the USA Become A Technocratic Monarchy? | Curtis Yarvin

Pinchbeck interviews Curtis Yarvin, the software designer and neoreactionary writer known as Mencius Moldbug, credited with supplying Peter Thiel and JD Vance with arguments for replacing democracy with monarchical or autocratic technocracy. Pinchbeck says in his introduction that they met at Hereticon, the Miami event run by Thiel's Founders Fund, that he disagrees with Yarvin on most things, and that the exchange became abrasive because Yarvin monologued. Yarvin explains the origin of the Moldbug handle in early blog comment culture, then argues that Plato's cave has layers, so that each escape only reaches a brighter fire, and that reaching the surface is bleak rather than liberating. He reads E. M. Forster's story The Machine Stops as a prophecy of a comfortable, machine-dependent population that cannot repair its own infrastructure.

Guest: Curtis Yarvin

In brief

• Yarvin argues that Plato's cave has multiple layers, so people who believe they have escaped consensus reality have usually only found a brighter fire.
• He claims that the historical perspective, once one leaves the informational world of institutions like NPR, is wilder and bleaker and supports no optimism.
• Yarvin reads E. M. Forster's The Machine Stops as an account of a population living in isolated cells, sustained by a global machine no one knows how to repair.
• He predicts that historians a century from now will not classify this period through the Republican and Democratic or red and blue division that dominates it now.
• Pinchbeck presses back throughout and says he had to interrupt forcefully to break through Yarvin's delivery.
• The two agree to a follow-up in which each assigns the other two or three books, with Yarvin naming Julius Evola among his enthusiasms and Pinchbeck saying he wants to work on Yarvin's atheism.

Full text

hey everybody uh today I am speaking with ctis yarvin uh a 48-year-old Berkeley Berkeley based intellectual and software designer uh who has become I guess famous in some ways Infamous in other other ways depending on on where where you're you sit uh as a um philosopher of the neoreactionary or dark Enlightenment movement who's been credited by the new Republic and Vox and other places for um kind of uh inspiring uh Peter teal and JD Vance uh with some of their more extreme ideas around um monarchy and technocracy and kind of the necessity of shifting from uh democracy to something that's more authoritarian or autocratic uh so I met Curtis at hereticon an event in Miami put on by Founders fund Peter Teal's Venture fund and um yeah I mean I have very different opinions or ideas about many things as as ctis does and therefore it was interesting to have this dialogue with him um I hope you enjoy it uh we went on for quite a while uh sometimes it was a little bit abrasive because I found um he was very given to monologues and it was sometimes hard for me to sort of break through uh his uh his communication style and I had to do it a bit forcefully but I hope uh the ideas went out and I look forward to what you think in the comments and please if you like this type of content or want to see more of it please subscribe and like and all that good stuff and uh yeah hope to see you soon I am here with the controversial uh thinker Curtis yarvin also sometimes known by his uh pseudonym menus gold bug is that right moldbug mold bubg moldbug anxious moldbug that's um typically known to the police under under that name how did you come up with that name by the way the pudum uh I was using one of those handles as a um as one of those names is a handle on one uh back when I used to post in comment sections back you remember this thing we had it was like late 90s early 2000s it was called the web we had this thing called the web and there were these blogs I don't if you remember this there was these blogs that people had on their web and they would leave comments on other people's blogs this was like before Twitter it was really it's hard to describe but I used to I used to comment I was a poster and I was a comment poster and I used to comment under those two names and so I decided to put them together and make it memorable I don't know uh yeah I think you and I maybe came a little bit from those early days of Internet culture I was part of like these communities called like echo in New York and the thing art Theory one they're all text based and you know yeah bbs's BBS is basically we on we on uset look look down on on BPS culture we felt that it was that it was inferior but uh maybe we're wrong I don't know certainly for the right BBS I'm sure was a very very fine bbs's it just and we met I guess a week or so ago at hereticon in Miami couple weeks at least Yeah couple weeks at least yeah yeah what was kind of your um perspective what's your perspective on hereticon did you enjoy it did you think it was was a useful event yeah it was fun it's a party I don't know you know people go to parties you meet other people like it's a cool event it's cool people cool location love Miami they didn't feel that like joyful to me or exuberant somehow it felt like very contained would you say that was the case I mean you know compared to let's say that's an interesting that's an interesting question like you know that's an interesting question I suppose that like you know the problem is the problem with becoming joyful or exuberant when and you kind of are LED through are you you Daniel you must be familiar with the metaphor of Plato's Cave can I assume that all of your Watchers know about Plato's Cave or maybe they've di into Plato's Cave um and and it turns out you know the thing about Plato's Cave that Plato doesn't mention is that there's like layers to it so you you find the tunnel at the back of plos cave and you get out and you're like oh my God the sun I'm looking at the sun but it's not the sun it's just a brighter fire and then you have to find the next dunnel and so forth and when you actually emerge at the surface I'm speaking metaphorically here of course we don't actually live underground but when you emerge at the surface it's actually it's like it's depressing it's like scary like the surface is like kind of more you know it's a little too much reality in a way do you know the EM forer Story the machine stops I do I love that story it's an amazing amazing story it's so preent and you know you forer as far as I'm over did not really write much you know science fiction he kind of you know concentrated on the like mildly gay like Merchant Ivory production kind of Market as far as I'm aware uh very sensitive writer but of course he writes this and and should I summarize the machine stops for for your or do you just this is very aod block people know people know people know okay so okay I'll go for it so so you know the plot of the machine stops is just it's incredibly preent Sor I'm going to turn my I'm clipping a little here I think it's incredibly preent because basically in the world of the machine stops for reasons that are unclear everyone lives kind of underground in like little compartments and all of their needs are taken care of by a giant worldwide machine so for example they Zoom with each other this is like 1903 or something so they're zooming with each other and kind of living spread around the world and they're you know transported by all this stuff and you know everything is run by a giant sort of computerized world and of course the plot of the machine stops is that this machine is breaking down and no one knows how to fix it and everyone on the planet are these like kind of Wall-E victims where they just live in this and there's sort of a rumor that out there on the surface they're like Barbarian people living in the wild you know but how barbaric must they be right and fabulous fabulous story with with enormous relevance to to the way we live now and so yeah so so so so my point is that when you're living inside the sort of you know the very comforting information space that you and I grew up in listening to National Public Radio etc etc etc can I do my impression this is John hackenberry for national public radio and the the like and and you grow up inside that world and it's very like comfortable in a way I mean there are certain like scary things about it there there bug bears that you you need to be afraid of but you know it's like when you get outside of that box and you can sort of look at it from the outside from what I would call like a historical perspective you know his the historical perspective is kind of Wilder and more Bleak and really doesn't doesn't kind of lead really to any optimism moreover the thing is that I would say that most you know most of the people say for example hereticon are honestly and I say this with all the love in my heart they're not as pilled as me and so you know the problem is you sort they're not as as pilled as me okay and because they're you know I think I I have to say since I I'm the one that stole the metaphor from the wowski uh I would say most people are not as pilled as me and so when you're not as pilled as me it's like as the layers of reality like unravel you have to become more and more like pessimistic like you know who's really excited right now who's really excited right now is Elon Musk because Elon like thinks he's one in some incredible sense and I'm just like if you were I do not think of Elan is a person who is who's very very pilled at all he's kind of a '90s Libertarian and 90s libertarianism gives him this extraordinary sense of optimism like he's already like done the political equivalent of like reaching Mars or something and actually he's done the qu the political equivalent of like uh I don't know standing on a step ladder to falling off of it hold on let's reel back a little bit um let's reel back a little bit Yeah so let's just the world is the world is actually very Grim from a based perspective okay um and that's why people aren't super happy to like be seeing these things yeah okay so so let's just sort of like uh you know talk about can you give us like you know the maybe like a a preus of what your sort of core beliefs and ideas are wow core beliefs and ideas people describe describe you as as a modist or a neoc cameralist that's used I mean I guess um yeah I mean I'm intrigued I guess I think you and I are in some ways similar like we have similar backgrounds we have completely different political ideology and and spiritual ideologies and so on so it's kind of intriguing that we're coming from you know in some ways overlapping heritages yet we've arrived a very different perspective I think both of us you know you I would say much more than me at this point are you know a little bit what bu Fuller called trim tabs like ideas have like a very strange way of moving through a culture or through a society right like um you know when I wrote my first book breaking open in the head nobody was talking about psychedelics or taking it seriously the book was like I remember I remember what it was like you know cuz I read um let's see when did I get my copy of PE Hall it must have been uh 1994 yeah so you know and then I read his you know the sort of the shulan story is so uh so inspiring such a great book etc etc etc so uh yeah I remember you know remember what that scene was like in the early 90s right and it certainly changed somewhat since then um I would say well you know let me do this let me do this a little differently okay can I do this a little differently than I usually different because you know my my general impression Daniel not to sort of put it in the pejorative terms but I get the impression um most of your audience is what we sometimes call um um lips lips lips or sometimes have you heard the term I I hate to mention this you've heard the term shitlib it's like this like you know rugan you know shitlib is like the the the right-wing version of like rethuglican or these like really like you'll see this kind of really low rent political discourse on like blue sky or gab or something uh but lips would you say that most of your audience is lips yeah I mean I would sure I don't know I haven't pulled my a on that but I would say a lot okay generally look okay so so Progressive sure sure that we like social programs we're we're divers how do you feel how do you feel about how do you feel when I say the name just I'm about to say a name and I want you before I say the name I want you to focus on feeling the emotional veence of this name okay from one very very negative to 10 very very positive okay you're prepared just like emotionally spiritually name responed but I also kind of want to like run like if we're going to have like a bit of a podcast that's right that's right I'm kind of yes head so I asked you a simple question let me run let me run the start I'm answering the question in a way okay so if you're prepared to do this little experiment with me try the name Franklin Delano Roosevelt one out one to 10 actually in preparation for talking with you today I watched your interview with sen ug how how how do you pronounce his name anyway Jen Jen Jen Jen he's Turkish and I like it I mean it was you know it was you know was very respectful but I actually felt that um he made a number of very strong you know counterarguments that I didn't feel you really had much of a of a real response to uh I I recommend that that that we can we can definitely go but but can you give me can you give me can you give me an FDR number like what's your yeah I mean you know I I don't really give a at this point to mest by FDR but it could be a you know it could be a seven you know it seems like he accompl yeah yeah he he accomplished some nice things so so on the scale now if I were to say to you FD was let's choose one of several um epithets I could say that he was a great American leader yeah correct okay I would say that he was a dictator I would say or you could say agree disagree AG ree you could say that he was a monarch yeah disagree okay you wouldn't say that he was a monarch and and and so the thing is okay so in a way that's a matter of that's definitely a matter of opinion and unless specifically FDR is different roles at different times so let's say FDR in 1942 yeah so FDR in 1942 or Churchill in 1942 is I think you would agree pretty close to unilateral control of the US government sure but I mean I think that that is something that happens in you know high stress situations it's the you know what is the the exemption or the exception where ex there's a life and death emergency to a society and um you know if it if it if it falls that you know somebody can handle that pressure and steps into that role it often becomes powerful I mean you know it is quite interesting how history you know moves through individualities and personalities at certain points you're not going to really I mean I mean as I said I already I already sort you know clocked this kind of argument from the the Chen ugar discussion I mean you know so yeah and and so so so in a way the conclusion that you that I think you draw from that is basically that you look at you know these you can look at figures in American history you know um FDR Lincoln Washington who had pretty much the power over Washington DC that say Tim Cook has over Apple where Tim Cook is accountable he can't order Apple to start putting bombs in all their i Pads and like blow them up you know but you know he's he if he goes crazy like he won't you know be in charge actually you know who's not accountable here are two people who are not accountable to any kind of corporate governance i r for these names Mark Zuckerberg and AG solsberg so one of the things we observe about the New York Times for which you I believe have written is that if you look at the government structure of the New York Times this is the most trustworthy institution on Earth according to just about everyone the governance structure of the New York Times is that of a fifth generation hereditary monarchy and so you know the thing is basically my I also agree with Chen ug's push back which is like yeah it's actually kind of messed up like they often you know get trapped in you know all sorts of uh you know you know slagging off certain you know forces in society or you know they it's not that good that it's a hereditary monarchy actually well that that that is actually like that is the take that I expected you to have and and the thing is I think actually AG by salsberg standards is a relatively weak King I think that in particular when you looked at 2020 uh so AG had many situations where he was for kind of forced to choose between the historical standards of the New York Times and the pressure of his staff and I think he gave into the pressure of his staff and if you look at basically and and I think it's notable also that if you basically go into the past and you look at the great press Barons of America whether you're looking at the salzburgers or um you know Mc Cormack in Cho or who was the family that ran the LA Times CH the Chandler family that R ran the la la times I think what you see is that actually in terms of his ability to like basically literally manage The Newsroom I think that salsberg is really unique I think that you know if you look at what happened to the post when Bezos tried to overrule The Newsroom about a tiny cosmetic thing everyone was just like screw you wasn't seen as so cosmetic but just to kind of extrapolate I mean just because I'm trying to sort of summarize your perspective maybe for people don't know your your work as of yet yeah perspective is this type of CEO type governance like a tech company like Tim Cook you know or Zuckerberg would be the preferable model for a country like the United States in the way it kind of is in a country like Saudi Arabia or Russia or China those would be better mod those would be better model so so so so what I what I observe is that when I look at any large organization I see that basically by far the most competitive form of governance there is a monarchy what I call an accountable monarchy which is a monarchy whose sort of results are in a way accountable to some kind of body whether it's a board of directors or as in China the Chinese Communist party or here you know if the president was really the CEO of the government he could be unelected every four years and um you know but sometimes you see monarchies without this like the salsberg are like Mark Zuckerberg um with these kind of you know uh I don't get into the details but in any case what you see is like the exercise that I ask people to perform somewhere is to basically look around you and basically point to everything in the room that was made by a monarch or in a monarchy or both for example I am looking right now at a Mac Book Pro that Mac Book Pro says designed by Apple in California made in China so apple is a monarchy China is a monarchy California is not a monarchy and if we asked the government of California to make a Mac Book Pro God only knows what they would produce but it wouldn't be very impressive and so we normally if you're a libertarian you basically are likewell ahuh I'm not a Libertarian if you're a Libertarian you're like ahuh the private sector works and the public sector doesn't government has violated the non-aggression principle sorry doing my libertarian impression I I won't you know I assume that probably most of your readers are not quite as fond of Libertarians and um I think we have some overlap some of them are Libertarians okay so sorry I I'm sorry I'm sorry I pretended to do a libertarian typ I'm a member of Mena and I'm not a member of Mena and in any case um you know if you are a member of Mena you understand logic and if you understand logic and you basically think this is a difference between the public sector and the private sector I would encourage you uh to see the recent film Oppenheimer and when we see the film Oppenheimer which I would quarl with a few historical details of it which is basically accurate you notice a couple of things about the manhatt project one is it's a government program two is it is probably the most effective engineering project of all time next to the m I don't think the Mac Book Pro really in like you know cast any shade on the Manhattan Project um third um it seems to be entirely run by Communists and and because one of the things that they portray in Oppenheimer I mean I think they really soft pedal Oppenheimer himself involvement with the party but one of the things that you see that's absolutely real about the M year that Oppenheimer is operating in is everybody smart or cool is a communist okay so ask me basically if your theory is a Libertarian is it basically things are efficient because they're in the private sector and they're done by people who believe in capitalism tell me why the Manhattan Project works so well as a government program tell me why the Apollo program works so well as the government program you the Apollo project to of the one of the other you know basically great you know engineering projects of all time that wasn't even a product of capitalism that was a product of Nazism literally the Apollo program is the Nazi Space Program with like hundreds of scientists including the director moved to Alabama it was actually Nazis who put a man on the moon right so the thing is this idea that like the American system of capitalism is like the only way that you can get anything done is kind of obviously wrong and so when you look at you know what exactly is the difference between NASA today and the Apollo program as led by Dr vendon Brown uh or if you look at you know what is the difference between actually the Manhattan Project's lineal descendant exists in Washington today my mother worked for it it's called the department of energy and so when your question is basically what is the difference between what is the thing where basically apple and the Manhattan Project are on one side of the line and the department of energy and the California Department of Transportation are on the other side of that line that is the line of monarchy versus oligarchy does that make sense so far I can go into a little more detail about what that means it so it seems like your idea is we would have you know something like a dictator or a or or or you know a a a ruler who had Fairly much unilateral and autocratic power over society and we see we see that in countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia right now would you prefer to live in Saudi Arabia or Russia than to live in the US we also see it in places like Elizabeth in England and the France of Louis the 14th and if Elizabeth in England also is and so here's the thing here's the thing so I don't want to keep talking over each other we're gonna have to figure out a little bit because you when when you get going you're on a big stream so I'm going to try to like you know interrupt hit me hit me I mean there obviously different conditions and also in in contemporary you know post-industrial hyper technological Society you know the ruler has a lot more potential capacity to control and surveil than Elizabeth did back in Elizabeth England so my question for you would you actually prefer to live in a country like Saudi Arabia where your where your freedom to think your freedom to express yourself is highly limited because isn't that kind of where we're heading here if we see the the rise of project 25 of the sort of Christian nationalist project isn't that what we end up with here very likely in a in five to 10 years no I think you're basically taking your enemies fantasies and making them your own so two things one if you look at how much do you know about Elizabeth in England like you know Shakespeare you probably read some Shakespeare like you're down with that yeah I was in history classes it's a beautiful period you know and sheti she happened to be a good Queen but the thing is that and we discussed this a little bit before on text and so on you know it in a system where somebody has absolute power and as I said now absolute power is a hell of a lot different than it was back then you know if that goes off the rails you know then everybody is completely screwed and the other thing about it and I'm sure you know this it's like you know cultures like Saudi Arabia and Russia and China have have a have a fear component over them people do not feel they have the capacity to speak to express themselves to gather in public places to protest is that actually what you think is better here is that what you think is better for Human Society well two things one is that there are some people here who have that freedom and other people who don't and it depends depends what's the depends what who is the one who has the freedom and who is the one who don't so if you compare for example the treatment of j6 protesters to j20 protesters you'll see some pretty wide disparities and when you basically look at for example you know who is in practice free or unfree to speak in the Public Square I think you know there was a long time do you remember net neutrality we you into net neutrality it's sort of funny to look back and remember like net neutrality and you know sort of the fear of the like American left that they're going to be like censored in some way as it was like 1955 and actually in 1955 they didn't really have anything to be afraid of either these things sort of look very different from when you look at them from the other side but I mean how many people are getting sent to jail right now for tweets in the UK like they're a little bit ahead of us but they're not very ahead of us you you've seen that you seen that Going On You' seen the guys who you know went to jail for two years in the UK for stickers that's just a little more advanced than we are here you know but of course if you look in the UK let's look at the UK at the difference in the treatment between wait wait wait there also people going to look at the difference between going to jail in the UK for great periods of time because of ecological protests yeah so you had basically like two people who actually like damaged a painting and they basically did this like people blew themselves actually they didn't actually damage a painting on a glass those were sure they they participated in this in this like media they they participated in a media stunt and a judge had enough now imagine if the same people glued themselves to the road to basically you know protest the presence of Somali in the UK imagine that they vandalize basically the Multicultural exhibits in the the British museum imagine how hard they would get the book thrown at them then look at the treatment of the people after the recent riots very similar to j6 treatment people going to multiple jail for multiple years for comments on so so so so wait wait wait wait wa you're making the distinction that from your perspective people who Express a right-wing ideology up until now have been more stigmatized and more oppressed in certain respects than those not only is that liberal not only is that true now not only is that true now I got in trouble I drove away Kevin spacy at the heretic ball uh you know my friend Maria was so mad because she's a huge Kevin spacy fan and I drove Kevin spacy Away by talking about the Hollywood 10 and he was just like drove him away in a car I didn't you drove him away no no no no no no I alienated him he did not want to talk to me anymore uh when uh he waxed you know a poetic about the suffering of the Hollywood 10 and I was like you know the Hollywood 10 were actually the leaders of the CP USA in Hollywood which had turned Hollywood screenwriting into a Closed Union shop for the cpusa you've probably seen hail Caesar and um you know it's not a documentary but you get it I I want to back up a little bit because I the two things that I first just wanted to establish for you know the listeners you whoever they are one was just your basic framework in terms of your ideas you know which I know includes you know you know the red pilling you mentioned the cathedral uh Neo ISM or monism or actually that that an absolutist kind of um let's say dictatorship you want to say or or or CEO Le so so so yeah than what we have right now there's a basic confusion that people have because they believe in this fundamentally stupid idea the stupid American idea of limited government actually there's no such thing as limited government there's Anarchy which is incapable government you see that in like Haiti today but there's no such thing as limited government anywhere ever sovereignty is conserved what you mean when you say limited government is just that the um is just divided government you just have multiple different powers if all of those Powers agree you know if the supreme court orders you uh you know to stand on your head and shave your balls uh you will stand on your head and shave your balls and so to say that there's one party that in some cases pushes back against other parties such as true always and there's a basically this kind of fundamental American mistake of basically uh it's actually in In classical political science is called Imperium and imperio um which means basically conflicting Paths of authority I mean you can easily imagine what kind of computer we'd be using this on if Apple was governed by a supreme court A legislature um and and a powerless president so what you see when you see basically when you talk about limited government you know you're basically you are not saying that the state does not have the power to knock on your door right now today and send you to Guantanamo it's not supposed to send you to Guantanamo but it could and so the thing is you have certain levels of protection against that I have certain other levels of protection against that uh you know but these are all like you know what we see in in the C of case of this crazy Trump law fair is that you know if you have a judge you can do anything and a judge is just a guy in a Black Rob obviously it's imperfect but the whole point is that there's something called the rule of law right rather than just the rule of power and and the rule of law and how does that law how does that law rule does it express itself through men in special clothing or men or women in special clothing like what what it it it expresses itself through hundreds of years of interactivity yes which hundreds of years of of interactivity legal codes there are protection which these people which these people can simply ignore well and simply ignore we can ask we can ask ourselves and I think it's an open discussion who's ignoring it more for what purposes whether it's actually the the the the the the quote unquote you know liberal or the Libs what you call them or if it's more perhaps the uh the rightwing more yeah well the the I mean the thing is what's amazing about this country is basically just trying to get you to I'm just trying to get you to sum up like you know the core beliefs and core ideas in like a minute or two that you that you believe are really essential that you want to project into the world all right sovereignty Sovereign Sovereign sovereignty is conserved all governments are absolute uh there is no such thing as freedom in any sense uh your only choice democracy is not really an option especially when the people are as weak as they are your only choices are between monarchy and oligarchy which is to say dictatorship and bureaucracy okay those are your only choices you know and okay go ahead go ahead so so if you like if you prefer bureaucracy to dictatorship um that's great uh go with what we have now you should be aware definitely prefer bureaucracy the dictatorship 100% you should be aware you should be aware that bureaucracies tend to deteriorate over time you basically well you know the thing is a dictatorship is also called a monarchy what we're really looking at when we look at a dictatorship two things I want to go back to your point about Saudi Arabia and Russia because actually when we basically look at examples from monarchy in the 20th century this is a very very very strange set of monarchies because all of these monarchies since Napoleon and including really Napoleon are basically competing against anglo-american world power and so they all have this element of being rebellions against a larger International order and so that feeling of basically being Louis the 14th or even Eliz well Elizabeth the first felt a little besieged Louis the 14th after he established after he defeated the FR did not feel besieged at all and it's that sense what creates the sense you know it's like when you talk about say infringing the freedom of speech Frederick the great one of my favorite um monarchs had this great line about the freedom of the press he said they say what they want and I do what I want amazing amazing Monarch really really fabulous and like the the and so when you look at these horrid 20th century monarchies they come out of you know they come from strange sources like China's very successful monarchy you know has to emerge from like maoism which is this insane 20th century phenomenon there's nothing like Nazism maoism stalinism you know these are 20th century phenomena we don't see them previously in European history at all and so understanding why this century is special and dangerous and scary especially when we look at you know the average monarchy in it is like we just don't see anything like Hitler before the 20th century and the closest things we do see to these kind of outbreaks of like you know Mass homicidal savagery really that starts in like the Reign of Terror in in the late 18th century and that's a very much a left-wing phenomenon and so you know to think of this sort of Rebirth of barbarism in late European Society is like to me all of this is an epiphenomenal on of the Revolutionary age these are you know and so you know that's why when we look for example you know even at a you know like someone like buele in El Salvador who's just revolutionized that Nation um and like just the amount of Liberty that bukel has created in El Salvador by becoming a dictator is absurd like people you can go read the New York Times on it read The Economist on it it's like people are like wow I can like walk across town now and not be killed you know I walked around the main square of the old District of El Salvador carrying a laptop right in my hand you know and so like you know that's an enormous creation of Freedom the trade-off is between freedom and security that that for you is the I know I think that I think that the trade-off is not between freedom and insecurity because I think that in El Salvador people have much more of both their freedom is greatly you know as I like when 40% of Americans and this is what this is a recent Galla poll when 40% of Americans are physically afraid to walk outside their homes at night okay that's demented and like you can say well they've been they've been Fox News is programmed to be them to be afraid oh my God have you read you know it's like when I read the way crime used to be reported in this country my favorite example is I was in a used bookstore about 20 years ago and reading basically like the Napa Valley Journal okay the Napa Valley journal from like um you know may of 1940 and like you know the German pancer divisions are slicing through France and that is obviously the top headline in the Napa Valley journal and then you scroll you look down the page and you see on the front page someone in Fresno passed a bad check and he's suspected of having come to Napa like the level of Tolerance in like old-fashioned pre-war American Society for like crime and disorder was comparable to the level of Tolerance you see in Japan today which is none you can leave your laptop on the subway in Japan you get it back you know and as long as it can be tracked you in some ways you'll get it back you know and so you know that's a tremendous Freedom have you been to ja you must have been to Japan I've only you feel I haven't been to the airport pretty much okay but I just want to like um um go into a few questions here um actually I'll ask you this question I have a friend who I've been working with and framed a came up with a bunch of questions for you that I thought were very interesting oh excellent okay uh okay let's assume that monarchy is a pathway that we need to go in order to reign in the elites would you say that's one of the main ideas for for you know we have well reain in the Elites reain in the elites is a is a tough question because the thing is you know I think that a lot of Americans especially Trump voters kind of you know don't really want to Elite admit the eliteness of the elites and I don't think that's where you want to go with that and like you know because when I go to a gathering of American Elites honestly I love these people like they're my people like I can you know like like hang with them all night long uh you know I can give them engage them in interesting political discourse as long as I'm kind of careful of about that I love our American Elites the problem is they're just like it's not and I love even my my parents worked in the Deep State like my father was a senior Foreign Service Officer like I know the Deep State not because I worked there myself but I grew up inside the Deep State these are great people it's like the structures that don't work it's the structures that basically take this enormous volume of like great great people and produce this incredibly bumbling inept Danger iously incompetent government okay so what you know in in the discussion with Chen you know where he sort of I think came around and you sort of agreed was that the problem with instituting dictatorship is you know you get sort of one shot at it and if it's the wrong person then you're you know super super screwed right and so when you look at when you look at when you look at where that's sort of a reasonable fear in some ways and then but when you cut off history before 1900 and you say basically you know the the genetic Lottery like with hereditary monarchy which is not necessarily the best form of monarchy although it's pretty common and it works pretty well um I'm a big fan of the if you know the term five good Emperors uh Gibbon reading the on the Roman Empire you know identifies the time between um got it was the founder hadrien and um and Marcus aelius is basically the best government that man had ever had of course he's writing before the American Revolution which obviously created a much better government than Marcus stupid Aurelius what an idiot right you know um I mean we've all seen what a doof as he is in Gladiator right and so uh you know I'm I'm a big fan of that system they had this sort of weird adoptive succession thing that was actually kind of cool I looked to into it in once and I'm like hm the five good Emperors seem like they're adopting like arming young men maybe it's actually the five gay Emperors uh but you know whatever their sexuality they delivered amazing government and then Marcus aurelus had the bad idea of giving the emperor to comus and we've all seen that movie right you know and although I hear there's a sequel that came out um and so when we look at basically European history we see certain results from monarchy when we look at Roman history we see other kinds of results and uh I think that you know many of those things sort of relate to like you can't separate government from the people the time the system the religion etc etc etc but we just don't see there's a lot of Kings in European history there's a lot of countries there's a lot of kings and we see a lot of funky stuff you know we see some bour kind of activity but we just don't see anything like Hitler question for you what would be the legitimacy what what would I mean so if you look at you know medieval kings or Roman emperors was a religious you know ultimately there was a divine right there was a sense that the king you know had had some kind of dispensation on on a spiritual level now I know that you're basically a committed atheist you know so so what is the what what would give a dictator a legitimacy to the extent that everybody just gives up their freedom to dissent or their freedom to protest and so on up to that oh yeah when when you use two things when you use when you use the word Freedom uh you know if you've read Hobbs probably Hobs is referring to the way freedom is used in his time which is of course the late 17th century later 17th century I can give you a very specific example for my life if I if I had been living in China or Saudi Arabia and had the spiritual crisis I had in when I was young and wanted to write a book about psychedelic drugs I would not have been able to possibly do that that would have been completely I mean you know in the US was already a little bit of of a push because there was so much Social repression around it but there wasn't like literal repression so like there's reason there's a reason why Democratic societies like America as chaotic as they are are also extremely Innovative they produce new and original thought because people aren't forced to correspond to a pyramidical structure with a hierarchal leader at the top it allows for a lot more Innovation which is a bit chaotic but is actually much more interesting and Humane and it allows for like human ferment and and dissent and so on well okay multiple things so one actually I think that you know there's certainly there's there's a bunch of interesting truths in what you say and you know these things are echoed in both of my kind of favorite periods in political science which are of course like ancient Greece and the Victorian era both of which had very similar kinds of attitudes and there's no question that that for example when you look at kind of you know even Plato and Plato is not a big fan of democracy you know um Aristotle is not even a big fan of democracy although he finds it imp politic to be as as uh as um reactionary as Plato but Plato is really the ultimate you know reactionary he's really a tyrant uh you know sympathizer and you know kind of a Sparta you know in a way and uh but even Plato you know acknowledges basically that in especially the sort of the transition from tyranny to democracy in the sense of like breaking open a system there's a lot of positive energy in that and for me there's a couple of questions about of interesting question about how that positive energy sort of works as effectively as possible because again there was also a lot of positive energy in Frederick the great uh Prussia there was a lot of positive energy I mean Louis the 14th uh you know France Elizabeth I England there's an enormous flowering of culture in Elizabeth's the first England and yet Elizabeth the first has a secret police Elizabeth the has censorship um Elizabeth there's a play by Ben Johnson called the aisle of dogs which is lost we actually don't have the play because it contained all of these like satirical references to prominent you know figures and Queen Elizabeth had a baned uh and I believe you know through the author in the Piller so you know this is actually it's a very generative time it's a more generative time than ours and yet for example in Elizabeth in England as I don't know how exactly it works in Saudi Arabia but kind of can imagine I can imagine in Saudi Arabia the government has a list of everyone in the country and is like you have to go to mosque every Friday well guess what unless you're an aristocrat in Elizabeth in England it works exactly the same way the parish priest has a list of people in his congregation and if they don't show up at church every Sunday he's like whatat the hell ptis I have a question and he has the power to enforce that and so the thing is that when we see like these correlations in the modern world if we think that the correlations are causitive in this kind of simplistic way these things should not be true and yet they're true and so I think you know there's no question that like China and Saudi Arabia are very um you know they there societies that are hostile to the freethinking intellectual in more or less measure I mean you could write that book in China probably be a little hard to publish it but you could certainly write it would never be able to write that in you could write it you could write it for you okay have you heard of this book unhuman no okay the book is unhuman the secret history of communist revolutions and how to crush them now both Donald Trump and and Vance JD Vance blurb this book positively who wrote this book who wrote This Book uh Jack poovak po you know you know you know like like I I think that basically because I'm basically a nice person I haven't met either of these individuals either banon or pic I definitely know who they are that's um you know I'm advance you know the thing is you know but but uh yeah but the thing is basically like you know there's a sort of feeling that you get in Silicon Valley when like some like big famous person like you know invests some Penny any amount of money and your stupid ass startup and you're just like like you're just like Founders fund has discovered my genius and then like Founders fund goes and invests like 10 times as much money in something you look at and you're like this is total right you know so I can't really be responsible for like you know um um I'm probably wrong about that but I can't be really be responsible for you know Vance or anyone's opinion of this posic but but if you ask me about a specific thing in the book I'm happy to tell you my opinion so so the book basically says that liberals leftists you know certainly socialists and Communists are quote unquote not human okay and they don't actually have to be treated in the what is the what is what is the quote there they're probably yeah yeah yeah yeah no you're you're reminding me of of where the quote comes from somebody must have been very inspired by this post-war polish mercenary named Rafal ganavi and you know the problem is they've taken a joke and made it unfunny which is like classic American rightism the joke if I may repeat the joke can I repeat the joke I think this is where they got the idea yeah okay they're basically some someone is interviewing gon gunovich and Gan gunovich and he's like you know what does it feel like to take a life and gon gunovich is like I wouldn't know or what is it like to take a human life and he's like I wouldn't know I've only called Communists and you know the thing that um you know um obviously if you're a communist that's not very funny it reminds me of a joke though that an Israeli Air Force officer kind of and I the kind of Ariel Chiron leanon War days you know was asked a similar question so I just I found I found the quote from UNH humans just to read it to you let's hear it by by becoming consumed by nihilism unhuman oppose everything that makes up Humanity as they are they are opposed to humanity itself they Place themselves outside of the category completely an entirely new misery driven subdivision the unhuman they specifically reject the human rights of others so if and when they get their way they will human you they convert and that which they cannot convert they destroy so about you know you know when I when I look finished about leftists and even Democrats they talk about there being completely devoid as you also say of genuine Compassion or concern for equality or Justice quote they don't believe what they say they don't care about winning debates they don't even want equality they just want an excuse to destroy everything they want an excuse to destroy you okay now I think the book just to continue the book Praises people like Francisco Franco and austo pin okay it says they praised Franco as someone who unified all conservatives Catholics and anti-communists under the make Spain great again a little bit familiar phrase there okay so you know we know Franco was a fascist dictator rul Spain from 1939 until 1975 executed intellectuals poets like fatrio garci Lara you know so L's death oppon of helicopters so Pinay offered reciprocal punishment to the Communist revolutionaries demoralizing their cause and diminishing their ranks all allies of anti-civilization were ruthlessly excised from Chilean Society the story of tossing Communists out of helicopters hails from pin's illumination of Communism during the mid to late 1970s okay more let's see what JD V says about the book past Communists March in the streets waving Red Flags today they March through human resource departments College camp in courtrooms to wage lawfare against good honest people and UNH humans Jack pabic and Jo josu reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back yeah I mean the the like I think that there's a style in you know I don't think that's a very I'm I think a pretty good of what I would call the American Progressive mind and um you know I I can you know you Donald Trum and I about the book The far-left murdered 100 million people in the 20th century and repeatedly shown they will stop at nothing to achieve their totalitarian goals they have torn down countless societies using a sophisticated Playbook of propaganda the only way to stop them in the future is to use their own subversive Playbook against them unhuman reveals that Playbook and teaches us how to deploy it immediately to save the West Donald Trump Jr so it's certainly true that farle has killed 100 million people in the 20th century you know and and so so you know far rst did rack up a certain level of Body Count themselves uh you know and and the the like uh you know sort of no one's Heritage really emerges in a way from that Century it's all like you know there's this line from Alexander solier niton that I really love where I'm curious to what you think of this line he says the line between good and evil runs through every human heart yes of course yeah yeah yeah and so and and so the thing is that basically like I find that you know I understand where that picture of uh communist uh you know uh communism comes from I personally actually I own a she Gara shirt also liberal Democrats not just Communists liberal Democrats they're saying another question you're supporting as far as I understand it this movement towards Trump and anism and whatever it's going to become and behind that is you know Opus day you know a lot of religious fundamentalism anti-abortion which I know you don't support so you're an atheist don't you have a little bit of fear what's going to happen if the religious right truly get their hands on the levels of power in the US I used separation of church and state how is that going to work out in your proposed monarchy so I grew up a good question you know I grew up worried about the Moral Majority or remember the Moral Majority the moral major the Moral Majority was uh you know Tipper Gore the band Tipper Gore parental warnings 80s you know like like do you remember did you actually see the frying pan commercial so you know to drugs with your brain like frying like an egg uh do you remember those dare commercials of course okay okay okay okay yes sorry I'm like you know um you know yeah I um you know when I think of those commercials I always think of there was a GU a boss I had in the 90s where um you know I was a young young engineer in my one quick Point Curtis I really love I loved your comment about the RO the line between good and evil runs through every human heart so don't we as thinkers and intellectuals have a sort of moral responsibility to promote the good side of that you know the the the the our moral responsibility our moral our moral responsibility as you know I I sometimes describe myself I don't like the word historian uh because it it seems to involve some kind of credentials uh you know I sometimes think of myself as a student of history but you know the thing is student is really too inadequate a word um you know I'm more like you know history doesn't need to be studied in a way it's just like when you when you sense the immensity of all of these human lives and human experiences you realize that you're not really studying history you're actually worshiping history and and until you come to it with this level of attitude of respect uh I think you're doing it a disservice and what I would say specifically to poic and Bannon is I think that basically writing that way about American progressivism liberalism socialism communism whatever the you want to call it uh it's really all the same they make it and and and and and you know when you there's no lying anywhere right you know and and when you want to basically write the story of that what I tell everyone to do is like shut up with this I mean I I yes I was about to say something nasty what I want to say is the thing to do if you're thinking like this the thing to no no I wasn't saying something nasty to you I was saying something nasty to them okay I don't want to say anything nasty to anyone what I basically want to tell people to do is like you know recognize that when you're talking about the dead people of the 1930s like you need that as a student of History you need that basically level of almost worshipful respect and until you apply that to Communists you're not going to understand communism and not understanding communism is like why are you even bothering uh your whole point of a book like that is try to try to help people understand Communists and communism and I'm like okay the first thing you need to do what I would say to Jack bobic if he was sitting right here in the room with me right now after reading a book like that as I would say okay you need to sit down and study American communism in a totally different way than you're studying right now and you need to take an entire freaking weekend here is a website you should read it is called marxist. org and on it they have the entire Archive of the new masses which is an incredible Magazine from the 1930s we talked about this a bit Read that read that read that live inside it absorb its worldview and then you'll be able to say something about these people okay well they are saying something about those people and what they're saying but they're not not in a way but the here's the thing here's the thing here's the thing Daniel going to be here's the thing what happens when you when you here's the here's the problem this is the reason why they basically feel they have an excuse to write and think in this historically illiterate way they kind of don't know any better and they don't know any better because you know I'm sorry to say that basically the way most most people think about Franco or pachet or musolini or Hitler or even Stalin or any of these regimes has a similar paper thin and cardboard quality and the thing is it's like basically you don't really if you think of you know Franco even the Nazis if you think of these them as these caricatures from a Marvel movie you're basically doing the same thing as pesobic and Bon you're really like you're just not you don't have the vibe of History like you know and and like when you get the vibe of History like you're basically like you sort of see the level of like pure tragedy that sort of like the 20th century is just a tragedy beyond the imagining of Shakespeare and like and that is a different my perspective is we're heading into worse tragedy and I'm very conf I mean when you look at for instance and I know we don't agree about this anthropogenic climate change and the impact it's likely to have in the next 5 to 10 years you know we're looking at I would say many millions of climate refugees I would say that one reason for the for the for the uh growth of global right-wing populism right now is actually CL can I can I make a recommendation can I make a recommendation to you which is similar to my recommendation for Jack pesobic and so forth what I would recommend is basically it was around 1995 or so that of course you can get older do you have a Lexus Nexus subscription I do not okay um um and since you do not you will have to rely on like shitty public domain tools essentially basically so so you know as it happens I know something about this because um not to share any secrets here but my own Dear Mother worked at the department of energy and environmental efficiency in the 80s and she worked specifically with a guy named Joe Rome RM who if you don't know the name was sort of the Anthony foui of climate change in terms of being like so so let me let me the second question that I meant to ask you the first question being sort of you know kind of like you know kind of let me let me share I want to say a little bit about your background because I do think it's both this aspect of it but then also the fact that your grandparents were actually what I would recommend what I would recommend if you basically are up in the middle of the night and can't sleep because of climate fear is you basically go back to the earliest wave of writing about the climate crisis uh you know in the mid 90s you could even go and rewatch that Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth and you basically see the name 2020 because it's a nice round number is frequently used at this time and you basically can see what the best climate scientists the leading the most prestigious climate scientists of 1995 say what is going to happen to the world in 20 or 30 years they had a situ little situation down at the Embarcadero in San Francisco where someone very very enthusiastic and like the year 2000 draw these like water marks of like where the water would be in 2020 and like left them up uh you know indelibly and uh you know how fast how fast do you would you say the oceans are are rising how many how many millimeters per year okay Curtis So I you know I I know how to handle these types of discourses I mean if we want to get into it yes the oceans are not rising at some vast rate okay but what's amazing about the climate crisis is occurring at a faster rate than even predicted by most climate scientists and and sort of you know e environmentalists 20 years ago I mean both warming is is is skyrocketing you know insects are gone resour are depleting I mean there's massive droughts there's massive forest fires I know you sent me that thing about how hurricane damage when you account for population has not gotten significantly worse I don't agree with that I think I I go with the mass you know the large preponderance so this is an interesting science which says that we are in huge problem right now you know and that we don't even have out of it it does say that it does say that it does say that and my problem is what what I was about to explain with my mother's background is um I kind of feel broadly like I know how that sausage is made and I know what's in the sausage and because and I also have I mean I dropped out of grad school in science it was computer science it was a very different field but you know I do have a sense of what American Science or modern science which is really American science is made of and and how it works uh I feel like basically science John rockstrom yeah I know I know I know I know it's all but since we won the war It's All American um you know the the the the i' actually I think that if you want to have this discussion it might be more interesting too because I think I feel like you have a a strong attachment to it that's fine given given given given given given your understanding given where your information space is you're very right to be concerned okay but let me actually you know note you know a couple of things one is yes climate science is telling you that there is a crisis but I would just note that it's kind of an interesting kind of Crisis because it's a kind of Crisis where if you were not consuming media that would tell that was telling you it was happening you would have some trouble knowing that it was happening and that's an interesting kind of Crisis and I sort of want to hold that because there are many crises that aren't really like that right you know and that's not even true anymore Curtis I mean I mean just last week there were huge fires like unprecedented unprecedented drought fires in Prospect Park you could see you ctis people used to drive across down the highway their windshields would be covered with insects there's like zero insects anymore in their windshields Curtis when my mother was a kid she could walk across the Hudson River it was covered it it was frozen solid when I was a kid I could walk I could skate on the lakes in Central Park you know it's that and now that's not even the case they don't even freeze over you know it's so that was the in November in New York I mean this stuff is really happening the the the number of times I remember I was a kid in the uh in the 70s and I remember take you to actually accept anthropogenic climate change as a as a as a dangerous so I so basically good question good question so first of all the most reliable um climate records are unquestionably satellite records uh that are basically made by measuring microwave emissions from the top of the atmosphere and so if you look at the two groups that that have kept the satellite temperature record which is much much less susceptible to kind of interesting kinds of um uh adjustments than landbased temperature records which are just inherently a lot more fluffy what you see is that since the 1970s um I think the world has wared about maybe a degree centigrade and so if you basically last year it was almost 1.5 last well so that's from the that's from the that's from the landbased temperature record uh which again is a little so we can call it so we can call it we can call happen in the oceans we can call it 1.5 we can call but the thing is those huge die offs happening in the oceans again it's not like you were swimming in the ocean and they're just like oh my God huge die offs you you right about it right and and and the thing is there's nothing wrong with reading about it there's nothing where we all read the news we all you know understand the world I read go and investigate I reads of people who go and you know take they dive into the ocean they study the the the constituents of the ocean they know how much CO2 is being absorbed by the ocean one million tons of CO2 in the air per hour they know all these things two things one one is that basically did you catch any of the climate presentations at hereticon so fossil fuel the Geo the Geo geoengineering so the thing is if you want to basically cool the planet uh you know if you think that the planet is too warm cooling it with stratospheric sulfur dioxide is incredibly cheap and easy if you want to basically reduce now you switch now you've switched to TS because before you were so my point and now you're saying probably do have to cool it down atere I think both of those I think both of those things are true I think it's not really a problem and I think that if we wanted to deal with it it would be fairly straightforward so here's another here's another here's another Engineers who are doing the sulfur in the atmosphere project I've also read other things about it that that would cause massive disruptions in you know crop rotations Africa plus you know turning the sky a kind of dull orange I mean b basically you know I mean you know people who take this stuff seriously would say that it's like yeah the whole planet is on the verge of of of of of a heart attack death and you know we're going to add more smog to it to try to keep industrial civilization smog is smog is nous nous oxides smog Is nitrous oxides at lower levels there's also basically the ocean fertilization acts directly on co2 remov circulation knew that we disagreed from my I just want to put it out there so so so so in a way in a way I want to like I haven't really talked about I I accept that basically you're seeing all all of these reports and they're giving you uh like I I sort of want to understand I want to explain why I basically feel that you can't trust climate science because I think that I can explain it in terms that you'll understand go for it can I try that yeah can I try that can we start with Biology sure okay so uh there was a nice quote um from do you know who Lena Chan is uh yes she's part of the part of the Dra Stic open source team that was you know investigating and I think the summary of basically where covid came from uh that she came up with is uh you know essentially that in 2018 and 2019 there were scientists in Wuhan talking about let's put a horn on a horse and then uh you know a year later I actually looked into that early early on I I read the scientific papers in from coming out of Wuhan and I recognized that it was clearly you know almost you know 100% clear that that lab was was trying to take was taking Corona viruses from bats adding HIV elements to them to make them more communicable to humans yeah I don't yeah I don't know if the HIV specifically but they were adding the fur the paper yeah yeah yeah yeah they were with it in exactly but like it was it was a way for the us to continue its bow Warfare program right because I don't agree I don't agree with that at all I don't agree with that at all my understanding of basically it wasn't coming out of the bow Warfare program it was coming out of the predict program run by Peter daak at Echo Health Alliance in any case and well okay okay the point is basically here is the interesting and relevant point about this the interesting and relevant point is that the work that was being done in Wuhan which um you know the most you can say if that wasn't a virus that leaked from this work it was just like they were doing something insanely risky and dangerous and then in a wild coincidence something an accident happened that was caused by something else but looked exactly like what this risky and dangerous thing would have caused so the fundamental question is not was it the risky and dangerous thing the fundamental question is why were they doing the risky and dangerous thing you're with me so far yes and the question of why they were doing the risky and dangerous thing you know can be answered by actually reading their Grant proposal so if you read The Proposal this grant was turned down partly because it was I think embarrassing for reasons we're about to see uh but they probably did the work anyway the grant proposal that which is normal in that in that field the grant proposal that was closest to the work that became Co was what was called the defuse protocol and the I want to make sure we tilt back to the climate climate situation we're going to tilt back to climate Okay so basically what was the defuse protocol the defuse study was we are going to go into the bat caves of LA and Southern China we're going to cor collect all of the bat Corona viruses and we're going to mutate them to be more dangerous to humans in humanized mice this is what they did okay that's just a fact that's what this lab program was doing and if you ask them why they were doing this of course this is funded by grants and they write a grant application and what the Grant application says is super interesting it says we are going to predict the emergence and that's why it has this sort of ridiculous acronym that um you know evaluates to the word predict we are going to predict the emergence of these virus is and actually what is really amazing and what most people haven't noticed about diffuse program is maybe and this is just of course ridiculous which is we are getting to climate so this is maybe ridiculous but you know just like what were they going to learn by predicting this oh I predict that there's going to be a pandemic okay does it help you fight the pandemic no does it help you do anything about the pandemic no um actually they had a solution to that if you read this grant proposal their proposal is to vaccinate all the bats in these caves against all the corona viruses with gummies containing vaccines okay this is deranged uh for more reasons than like you can possibly imagine but the thing is why are the best the question is why are the best virologists in the world doing this deranged stuff because these are the leaders of virology that is the important question here and I believe that answering this question has some relevance to The Climate story so can I answer this question for you and then we'll move it to the climate story absolutely here's what here's what happened in covid what happened in Co was we got SARS one SARS one was a genuine zoonosis and if you've seen the Steven Soderberg film contagion actually people who worked on SARS one were technical advisers on contagion which is like Proto covid in a film from like six years from before covid which is incredibly weird but it's actually not that weird because what happens in SARS is here's this extremely dangerous virus it escapes it does exactly what they say you know it a bat infects a civicat which starts infecting people this virus kills like 20 or 30 perent of the people it infects it's really bad but it's not very contagious SARS one happens because SARS one happens a bunch of virologists are like hey we've been warning for many many years about the dangers of like virus emergence from the woods well now we've shown that it can happen it's a real thing and the world has woken up to the threat of bat Corona viruses so in order to basically get funding have you ever applied for a grant I guess not a science grant because you're not really a science person uh you know the structure of a grant proposal is here's a problem therefore my research is important therefore because it is related to the problem therefore you should fund my research so the fact that SARS one was a problem created all of these very long digression I'm still not quite seeing that the fact that SARS one we'll get there the fact that SARS one was a problem created a market for Grants to basically deal with this problem but there's actually no way that virologists can deal with a problem but they can study it and when they study things when they write Grant proposals everyone wants their Grant to be funded and the structure of a grant that can be funded is here is a problem of public concern so it is a problem of public concern that b Corona viruses could come out of the Jungle therefore scientists should study this okay could B what would happen to make bad Corona viruses come out of the Jungle well they're bad viruses they can't really infect hum very effectively directly but they can mutate okay well we could sit around let's study this process of them mutating to become more dangerous we could sit around and wait for them to mutate but that would take a long time so why don't we actually try to evolve them to become more dangerous in our labs and then we can basically evolve them to infect mice and then we can write a paper which is truly alarming that says hey this bad virus out of the jungle a few things happened to it and it basically killed all the mice with human lungs in our study and that's a paper that makes even more of a splash because your goal in science is to make a splash your goal in science is to basically say something important again let's get back to the climate we're done with we're done with saying there's a market for Grants Market there's a market there's a market for ideas there isn't really a biospheric collapse it's just that you know scientists are seeing a market there a market there's a market for ideas and so when I look at climatology people have been study we studying so the arous effect which is what we're talking about with when we talk about global warming was discovered by the Swedish scientist early Nobel Prize just global warming it's the planetary boundaries there's nine of them we cross six of them I I hear you I hear you but let's let's focus on let's focus on global warming for the moment so you know arenus discovers global warming in the 1890s and so you find something interesting so this effect was known for most of the 20th century and you find something interesting and had some pretty sophisticated science before 1975 you find something what I think is that this is clearly happening I mean there's like a 40% or 30% drop in in agriculture in England alone last year because because of deles because of flooding and Spain's agriculture just got WI out you know these changes are happening rapidly if you're holding a technologically euphoric position you know you can't allow this into your Consciousness because it's like it it it goes against this effort to create like a futuristic te technophilic society that is what people like Peter teal and Elon Musk are pushing on us you know that's why they're not even this is this is this is way before Peter teal and Elon Musk were born and so when you notice when you when you yeah yeah yeah yeah but I'm just basically doing this thing where you basically I sort of refuse to automatically privilege right now above the past and and like that's one of our major sort of disagreements right and if you basically look at the way that people wrote about the arenus effect in 1940 or whatever climatology before 1970 generally speaking had this interesting pattern where seemingly everyone who a climatologist basically assumed that warmer is better and so when people write about the effects of fossil fuel usage in the 1940s they're just like oh yeah and this is another great thing about burning fossil fuels it makes the Earth warmer and when climatologists studi the history of human climates for example for example there's a period in U before the little ice age called the medieval warm period but the med medieval warm period was also named by these ignorant scientists they called called it the medieval climate Optimum they called it the medieval climate Optimum because before people started thinking in this post 1970 kind of way everyone who had thought about climate across history generally assumed without even thinking about it without even questioning the thought they were just well obviously warmer is better especially given the fact that as you probably know global warming is concentrated near the PO so the places that you'll notice really that you really would have trouble avoiding noticing global warming or you wouldn't pinch yourself to say is this real if you live in gome Alaska you're not pinching yourself to say is this real because in gome Alaska the climate change is not four degrees Centigrade it's not one degrees Centigrades it's more like three you know I don't know the number but it's higher and it's something that's very unambiguously notable in Nome Alaska of course if you're in Nome Alaska you don't spend a lot of thinking wow I wish the world I'm glad we're agreeing that anthropogenic climate change so so so so so so when we basically look at what is truly remarkable about the feeling of yeah I'm what's called a luk warmer it's a I mean I don't know how you would defy I don't know how you would deny the like physics right it's more a question of the physics on the very very complicated system that Earth is Earth's atmosphere so if you look at for example if you want to look for a climate scientist that I you know really respect it would be someone like say Judith Curry who ran the um the Georgia Tech climate Center for many many years um and uh you know so so if you if you can't sleep at night read some Judith Curry um but you know in any case my point is that when you look at the information Market the thing that jumps out at me about the market the way in which the market for information about climate just a quick wait wait I'm almost done with this I'm almost done please let me finish the thing is what changes uh you know in the sort of postar day environment for the market for climate studies is basically that there is a very large market today for climate studies about this is a bad thing or this is important or the impact of this is very large there is basically no market for studies you know that are like increasing carbon dioxide is increasing crop yield or something nobody cares nobody gives a rat's ass nobody gets excited about it at all you know and so what you see is this you know we live and this is if there's one idea that I want to like get across to like my like fellow liberals because I as I said I too grew up listening to to NPR if there's one idea I want to get across to kind of my cultural liberals and Li Arians actually because both liberals liberals and Libertarians have this kind of naive belief in like the mar especially Elon Musk sorry I was about to use a curse word but especially Elon Musk has a big belief in the marketplace of ideas and if you believe in the marketplace of ideas you're basically like in the marketplace of ideas people love truth and they hate and I'm just like I don't think that that's actually the way it works in the real world I think that there's a lot of evolutionary forces in Market places of ideas and I've just described the like the force of evolution that made virologists believe that they should inflict like a pandemic on the world which is like the opposite of what virology is supposed to be for I just I would just say do I get a chance to speak next has been a very long yes yes do you understand the point that I'm trying to make about Mar I completely disagree with you I think that we're in an emergency biospheric emergency situation I understand that I understand that I understand that but just I understand we're seeing massive droughts we're seeing dayers we're seeing huge changes to you know systems you know like and we're seeing and that's the point that I was trying to make before is the rise of right-wing populism which I see as a terrible phenomenon you seem to like you know leading to somebody like Donald Trump de demonizing illegal immig ANS creating camps on the southern border to potentially do whatever they want to these people that is all linked to this biospheric collapse that's taking place it's linked to why food prices are going up agriculture is getting harder to to to sustain and food is becoming more expensive you know resources are depleting this is actually happening people are moving North because their whole countries are breaking down on my corner there's a processing center for uh Asylum Seekers for refugees I saw these long lines of black young men there you know I was like coming from let me talk for a second where are these guys coming let me talk for a second Ivory Coast okay what's happening in Ivory Coast right now 50% of the world's chocolate is grown in Ivory Coast okay three companies well Nestle and Hershey's are the main are the main companies there they worked with the I'm sure despotic government which is hyper corrupt 80% of the country is deforested at this point those people are fleeing a collapsing country that a combination of our climate change that we've admitted through our through our stuff and our corporations their exploitative practices have made these societies untenable for many people Syria where they're just basically you know the Europe is just not even taking their boats anymore letting those people die at sea because they don't want to deal with it you know so for me this is like yeah that is what's happening you know and and that's also leading to this right-wing populist movement now I want to get into a few other topics with you one is you've said some things that I know they were joking but I found very disturbing for instance you talked about you know turning the underclass to biodiesel you know you know you know like like like like you have to understand I'm sorry you know that was basically being um I really try not to be a trollish philosopher uh you know but sometimes I go over the limit actually I wasn't proposing turning the underclass into biodiesel I was basically trying to separate the externalities that um not even the under was multiple kinds of things we mean when we say underclass I was I trying to separate basically what is humanitarian treatment of these people with the externalities that they inflict on others and my point there was essentially that if you look at basically what is the most compassionate way so if you go to San Francisco for example you'll see you have this huge uh enabling industry that you know loves to give you know addicts like f with this with this insane addiction fent and all stuff is obviously horrific and reprehensible you know so so so so when I look at it's horrific and reprehensible and I think that basically it stems from a kind of loss of kind of the understanding of the state as in loco parentis in a way because it's absolutely clear if you talk to any specialist what these people need they need to be put in like kind of in in care groups that are very very far from any of these stimul that they get and they need to kind of have their life rebuilt in like small caring like there's a really good when my wife passed I redirect I was like if you want to give charitable donations give them to this organization in San Francisco called Delany Street and Delancy Street uh is an amazing organization and everyone who works at Delany Street except the director uh Mimi I forget her name uh is a former Street bump everyone who works there is a former a street BM they don't take government money they and what you do when you enter Delany street is you surrender your freedom completely and you're basically like I have up my life completely and uh I am not you know in charge and therefore you will tell me what to do you will give me a job you will tell me like who I can date and not date you will take a kind of almost what you might say totalitarian control of my life and for someone who is on the street that's exactly what they need for you and me no that's not exactly what they need but for someone who's on the street basically Liberty is a curse to these people and it is also a curse to the people around them who get their car windows broken on a regular basis I do think that you and I probably have different perspectives on the origin of these problems and also what exacerbates it so for instance you know profit-seeking you know corporations like the one run by the sackers which can I can I recommend can I recommend another can I Rec can I recommend another guest to you um I would love it I think you would have a great conversation with my friend Jared clickstein by the way I really appreciate so much that you're willing to have this conversation with me it means a lot to me I'm very grateful actually that you're this open and I I actually do feel that you have kind of like a good heart like I feel like you have a like a sort of like a personal warm generosity and and I and I really appreciate that and I appreciate your willingness to have this kind of dialogue with me now I do want to get into something though you know which we discussed a little bit in our text exchanges around your perspective is that people you know you said people should either work or not eat okay um I want to just talk a little bit about that you know in terms of this you know technocratic corpor corporation which our civilization would become you know that sounds pretty strict and Str and also kind of curious with you we've talked about legitimation before what legitimates a contemporary post-industrial dictatorship if it's not anything having to do with anything religious or spiritual or metaphysical it would simply power for power's sake and no law you know above that you know I don't see what where the legitimation comes from you know I don't see from your perspective as an atheist why you give a crap if people work or if they just you know look at the daisies or you know write poetry all day well I don't want them buring my H down and um so but I think this is you know this question this question of of of I think that you know we're in some of the most interesting terrain of the conversation here to be honest and and like and I think that it really bearss it has an interesting yeah it's a fascinating conversation because I think that you know one of the things that there are many beliefs that we almost all share today that someone from almost any period in history would just find just not only bizarre but just like self-evidently insane and so one of the things that basically you know I think very strongly and I think we we discussed this a little in our our text exchange it was about maso's pyramid of needs and you of course are a burner you've been to Burning Man several times and 18 18 times I went to that place 18 time very powerful and I heard they this was the first year they didn't sell out of tickets so maybe there's a some kind of decline you know the Zoomers Laugh at My reverence for burning man I I I'm I'm very like I can't help but be impressed by the church of burning man right it's an amazing it's an amazing phenomenon and the thing is basically Burning Man is a festival for people at the top of the Pyramid of maso's pyramid of nits they are all going there for sexual for self-actualization they are not going there because they are thirsty they're not going there because they are hungry or cold they will be all of these things out on the CLA right you know um but that's okay because it's a place where not only are they there for self- actual ation everyone else there is there for self-actualization because no one would frankly go to this God for second place for any other reason and if you imagine holding Burning Man in Fort Lauderdale or even on say Jeffrey Epstein's Island someplace nice uh you quickly see why it's absolutely necessary for you know Burning Man to be in the Black Rock Desert which is let's face it a hole although frankly you know one to know is if you ever want to tease Elon Musk or Elon supporters just tell them that if Mars was on Earth it would be by far the worst place on Earth and it would be worse than Camden New Jersey um and and certainly worse than the Black Rock Desert um and the the the and and but the thing is when you go to Burning Man you notice a couple of things one is that again all of these people are at the top of maso's pyramid of needs and for me that's really what defines an aristocrat and an aristocracy if you look for example if you go back even to early communism uh leftism has always been an aristocratic movement in my view there was never an idilic period when it came up from the bottom it always comes down from the top and so you see for example trosky writing about the new Soviet man and he's basically like he has this famous passage where he's like um you know ordinary humans will rise to the level of a Newton or an Einstein and above those Peaks new new heights will rise right incredible right and then you look at the Soviet Union you're like well that was a show you know and and the um and and you know this sort of comes from this basically like ultimately the kind of the dream of the 20th century Noble is that the way we sort of Heal the World is to make everyone into Nobles like us and so this feeling of like we are going to make and I remember believing this so strongly as a kid I believe that through education we could make the planet into a world of like burning man dwelling Nobles and then you go to Burning Man and how's the uh how's the racial diversity at Burning Man Daniel is it is it strong is it not so strong how would you compare to the average Clan rally you know uh especially these days the clan is pretty based you know I wouldn't be surprised if you saw you know more uh you know um and what's astounding given the proximity to Silicon Valley is that you might say the demographics of Burning Man are the same as the demographics of Google but it's really not so because basically you'll see a lot more Chinese and Indian people at at Google than at Burning Man at burningman it's basically like like brightening white you know and so you're just like that's like you know really something and then you're just like I had this um you know um um in any case what you're looking at at Burning Man and I think if you were to take a like 14th century Italian Noble in his like beautiful broade coat and with his rier and whatever a reader of uh castillon is the you know the courtier I guess 15th century even 16th century um he would recognize the burners off with also their very own elaborate costumes he would recognize the burners as fellow Aristocrats you know castillion would say well this this is very up and very weird but these men are as dedicated to self and women are as dedicated to self-perfection as the courtiers of ancient Italy in a different way they are but they are and so you know when I basically look at you know for example one of the proposals to like fix this awful economic system that we live in which you know I call it capitalism or whatever but it sucks right um you know is for example The Proposal of universal basic income and you know whenever I sort of argue with a Ubi proponent um I have a number of of bits that I do and one of my bits is the Jan Austin bit because I'm like if you've ever read any Jane Austin you know exactly the best case scenario for basic income and they're just like uh what do you mean what do you mean uh and I'm like well Mr Darcy he's got a Ubi he's got a th000 pounds of year a year he didn't do anything to deserve that money that's a Ubi basically and one of the kind of traditional definitions of nobility is basically a noble is somebody who doesn't work who has a ubii and so when you basically look I think I mentioned to you before one of my favorite essays and and sort of a exemplary of maybe my political philosophy is Oscar Wild's the soul of man under socialism yeah yeah basically and he foresaw a future where uh you know humans would be liberated by machines to do what he felt was you know our our you know I might have a slightly different perspective but his thing was you know cultivated Leisure you know that people more Aristocrat the Leisure to to cultivate their unique individuality and develop a lot of anger against those who do that's right and and you know there's sort of there's only one problem with that which is that you know it's sort of do you know what a Skyhook is logically it's like basically if you have like one facius statement like two plus 2 equals 5 you can if you assume that 2 plus 2 equals 5 you can construct this enormous world of like fantasy mathematics on the theory that 2 plus 2 equals 5 you know similarly if you you know there's a statement that a lot of Americans believe we're all or a lot of people are most people around the world believe today and it's a very old line it's um all um um all men are created equal and I'm like let's evaluate the truth of that statement for the moment shall we dare to evaluate the truth of it and one of the things that basically if you're evaluating the truth of the stat one of wait wait wait wait can I can I finish my bit it's a bit this a short bit it's a short bit long so this is a sure I'm doing the weave I'm doing this is Trump's America I'm doing the weave not even the weave it's a bit it's a single bit it's not even woven right so and here in Trump's America we do the weave you know we're gonna make America weave again uh you know and um see and and um so uh you know one of the things about truth is that basically there's a kind of backd Doorway to identify an untruthful statement which is simply that you can make it truer if you can make any statement truer then maybe it's not completely true and so when I take the statement that all men are created equal and I'm like how would I make that okay it's clearly there's some metaphysical sense there but like objectively how would I make that trer and and I was just like well what if I were to say in this house we believe that all identical twins are created equal and I do believe that all identical twins are created equal in a in a much sort of deeper sense than the belief that all men are created equal and so the thing is if you basically believe and I used to believe you know there's a sort of you know if you know the Thomas gy elgy in a country churchyard you know poem I used to believe very very strongly that the kind of premodern world was basically full of like kind of frustrated Geniuses who could have been Einstein but instead they spend all day plowing a field for 40 years and then die or they could have been Shakespeare or whatever and whatever and you know and and that assumption my assumtions by the way those are not my assumptions okay okay so the thing is if those are not your assumptions basically you know you kind of have to admit that the average I mean what I would say Aver is a bit over the average the average planetary IQ is something like 85 it's not even 90 it's like 85 and so you know I don't know that you spend a lot of time dealing with people with an IQ of 85 or even frankly 115 I'd say 115 is almost kind of out of your Social Circle um you know but 85 is kind of something else and the thing is when you're thinking about a human being with an IQ of 85 you have to recognize both that this person is not the same as you in many senses and that he is also truly human in other senses and so your question of basically what is the right way for this person to live what is the way for this person to live that that's my question so let me answer it my the question of like what is because it came back to like you know you gota you should be working to eat or whatever the question of what do sort of the way that a person that an ordinary normal human being lovable in all the ways that humans are lovable should live basically what we see is that if we basically when we're looking at Nobles we're looking at people who are the result of a lot of selective breeding of various kinds they're really unusual Tomatoes not all tomatoes are created equal these are really unusual Tomatoes when you take a tomato and there's a lot of in this world besides IQ IQ isn't everything by any means uh you know our brains are really really complicated things and but when you take someone who is that is kind of like I would say one of my critiques of some of your way of thinking is a kind of um kind of uh what's the right word uh amplification of IQ and intellect as as something that is good in in of itself I mean I would say yeah I mean let me just finish for a second you never let me for a second without cutting me off you so like you know our bodies have a lot of different types of cells you know we have liver cells we we have brain cells we have heart cells we have skin cells you know there there is a differentiation in the human Community we all are created equal you know as skin cell is just as wonderful as a heart cell you know it needs energy it needs care it needs love it may maybe need a different type it needs a different that's exactly right it needs a different kind of and and the thing is you you're really unlike to be able to take at least all efforts to basically take say you know not even non-european populations but like pre-industrial populations like you take like Brazilian Indians from the Amazon you and I have some difference of opinion and that I don't think we know at this point what's nurture and what's nature from a very early age and what are what are kind of like you know how how people are so even at have you know given expectations or ideas about what they can be you know even maybe in the in the womb I mean I think if it was possible I think if it was possible for the magic of Education to turn gypsies into Jews we'd probably know well actually I disagree with you there was one there was one um kind of um i' have to I can look it up I'll try and for new yor there was a rich man who graduated from a very you know deprived High School I think in the South Bronx or something you know he made a fortune and many years later he came back and he was like okay I'm going to take that that the earliest class maybe it was Kindergarten and anybody cuz it's like they think they had a dropout rate of like 90% or something and he's like any kid who makes it all the way through high school and graduates I will give them a full college scholarship okay and instead of it being like a 10% you know graduation rate it was like a 95% graduation rate and not only did it pull up that class it pulled up the other classes before and after because everybody suddenly saw there was a possibility to escape this nightmare you know that they were trapped in well actually there's a lot more possibility that humans have than you may be giving them credit for coming out of the go back to the Solan in line you know yeah I think that that you know if you look at um if you want me to find that study I'll hunt it down yeah yeah I mean I I like you know I I mean you know actually College graduating from high school today is something that really a hardworking person within 80 or 80 5 IQ is very much capable with of and even going to college uh that says actually I think in some ways more about what we've turned education into then which is a strange strange thing by historical standards um you know but in terms of when you're looking for effects of impacts that basically raise intelligence people have looked for that Holy Grail very very very hard in lot of the places that it might be found and you kind of have to admit that it might not be there and if you admit that it might not be there then you might need a system that was designed for basically ordinary humans with an IQ you might need a system well because you might you might because you might need a system you might actually want to at least think about the problem it's worth it's worth you might find that people have a lot more possibility if they have hope and if they have something to Aspire to that actually that moves a society in a completely different direction and if you look at societies like I know you don't like to talk about various indigenous Societies or say indo-tibetan societies you know people were not garbage you know the the the lowest common person was fully contributing to that Society it's only this society that discards people okay that treats them like garbage that's what's that's what's important that's what's important we're agreeing vly we're yelling at each other other because we agree talking over me over and over again you're not letting me finish my statements I'm letting you speak at Great length and you're not letting me finish my statements I'm agreeing with you vehemently okay and sorry I that that doesn't really let's move to another that's works and wait wait wait this is a hugely important topic like I want to explore that agreement it's really important right because the thing is basically you know the idea of treating large numbers of large percentage of the population is human garbage is not present in the world in the pre like revolutionary world that is not an idea that they have that is absolutely not an idea that they have and that is just not the way it's done and the thing is you know that when you look at for example let's look at you know one of the things that you know though many of us like you know of course we see like heredity working in our daily lives our smart friends have smart kids and we all but we all know like people who are like in the smart tier of society or whatever whose parents are just like these like really ordinary average people we know that it's not you know it's not deterministic like that like there are these weird you know smart people have stupid kids stupid people have Smart Kids it happens and peasants have smart kids and what would happen basically so for example Cardinal Woolsey who was basically um Henry the prime minister and you're just like oh my god there can't be any social mobility in the world of Henry VII who cuts his the heads off his wives second one second I just want to say that like you know America under the flawed Democratic constitutional republic that we had you know from the 1930s till maybe January 5th when this idiot gets in inaugurated provided was an incredible meritocracy and the reason for that is because it actually tried to provide for people you know that you know that the the tax rate on the wealthiest members of society in the 1950s and 60s was over 90% so the whole idea was to take that money and put it back into social services so that everybody had access to public education you know Social Services health care and it was only in you know after the 60s when you had you know right-wing Libertarians like the Koch brothers decided they hated this model of society they didn't want people to have that kind of opportunity they didn't want to have you know you know movements of civil rights they didn't want to ecological if look so they went after if you read dark money by Jane Mayer it was a 35-year plan to destroy these institutions to create their intellectual armatures to to to to forr fers like Charles Murray who wrote the bell curve to create the Heritage Foundation to create this situation we have now we due to the poisonous effect of right-wing media we have a brainwashed you know third onethird of the read have have you ever read a book by Charles Murray I recommend not the B curve which one you recommend losing ground belur no yeah the velro is not a bad book but really what you should lead is read is losing ground and and you know so the thing is if you look at basically you know spending per student in for example inner city school districts it is not low it is actually very very high and the results of that very very High spending uh which was basically which were toted at one time I mean this project of basically leveling Society up in many senses is basically this kind of spectacular 20th century project and I feel that a lot of the reasoning behind it comes really frankly from the experience of our ancestors would you the increasing centralization of wealth in fewer and fewer hands I mean Zuckerberg alone is more worth more than 10% Millennials in the US would you say that is a problem uh I what problems does that problem cause huge problems it creates huge social inequality huge wealth inequality and most people are being starved of of possibility because the wealth is concentrated in such fewer and fewer hands so I would say that starving of possibility is a very interesting problem I think it's a I don't know that the problem most kids in their 30s don't even imagine they're going to own a house they don't they're not getting married they don't they're ever going to have anything like their parents or grandparents did you know the the effect of wealth concentration has been to cut off the future of all these people and they're just walking around having no clue about how to live in the society I I agree that I agree with that I see that completely I think that that there are other economic analyses that are neither Marxist nor libert Arian that I don't think you're particularly familiar with that basically you know would cover that a little better I think I recommended when we talked earlier the Victorian thinker John Ruskin I think you basically find I think there's something in rusin that would really because I have been following your reading list and and even you know I picked up a bunch of books uh and I will keep doing it and we can meet again I'd love it if you read some of the ones that I propos including my books fun we can can we can but I liked F du kange uh I got interested in Himel du kange did you enjoy did you read all of the ancient city I didn't read all of it yet I mean my God my eyes are falling out of my head with all the with all the reading list but I me I'm interested you know you mention uh some I mentioned Ruskin I I mentioned rusin for a reason I mentioned Rus introducing me to thinkers that I don't know yet and I hope that I can do the same with you and I've actually suggested a few that I thought might be f for expanding the parameter of your worldview a little bit if you're open to it I I I I I certainly am and um and I mentioned rusin although you know there's a bit of an asymmetry because you sort of can't help in our society in sort of being kind of deeply steeped in Progressive thought it's kind of all around you even if you're an opponent of it whereas it's relatively rare to be steeped in kind of anti-progressive thought and it was just like discovering like a series of Marvels to me when I started to discover kind of rightwing thought Beyond libertarian know rusin yet it's not going to be that helpful I think and I so r i to bring up one more I want bring one more topic before maybe we fold up it's been like two and a half hours okay that's fine that's fine in terms of moving towards a technocratic monarchy where you have a CEO in charge of Corporation America producing I'm not sure what I guess security at the price of Freedom would be my perspective do you think that Elon Musk is is seeking to make himself that figure do you think that is his plan here no no no I think that actually far from it uh Elon Musk has very little understanding of how the federal government works I think that he uh sort of wants to repair and kind of I think he's he's a Libertarian and the thing is as a Libertarian I think that sort of people people talk about Peter teal and Elon musk's Libertarians these guys have massively benefited from government subsidies from you know working hand inand with different administrations I mean I don't see how they might have a Libertarian kind of idealism but in actuality they're completely down and dirty with whatever they need to do to accomplish their wealth hoarding goals well I mean they they live in the real world they pay their taxes you know uh I mean and and musk is not mud is mud musk is not a um um um well you know Peter T has the world's greatest Roth IRA you may know but and and and and and you have to be impressed by that uh you know but they're very they're very different figures to like to to sort of conflate you know tal and musk is you know the thing that I always want to explain I know and I like we can go into that but I just want I'm sure you know that Elon musk's grandfather was part of this technocracy do Inc and oh yeah the third the 30s technocracy isn't it has no relationship with anything now it's really Rel with with things now because it really does look like if you look at it from a certain perspective that looks like what he's trying to do you know you yeah but it's but Tech and you have an an American technor that goes from Mexico through Canada then if you have a ruler of the of that one and then you have a ruler of the Putin is the r of the raan one it looks like that's what lining up for in a this is insane 1930 I mean if I were to show you like a book of like technocracy Inc which was a thing it was a first of all it was a liberal thing it was a technocracy the original technocracy movement was very much there were little Echoes of it in the new deal it was very much a movement of progressive it's a rule by Tech engineers and scientists right there's no democracy in that model well yeah but the thing is when you basically go back to you know rule by engineers and scientists you know consider the fact that all of climate science is telling you there's a climate crisis and a bunch of Housewives on Facebook are telling you there's no climate crisis and the housewives for some reason canot vote the scientists that's democracy so the thing is if you basically want like to respect engineers and scientists and let them run things and I think that there are significant problems with that approach uh you know as which is sort of where we were going when we were talking about virology and climate science I think there are very significant problems with that approach do I believe like the way Elon Musk does in Vox popul Vox day uh the voice of the people is the voice of God the voice of Facebook is the voice of God the voice of upvotes is the voice of God no I don't believe that the voice that the voice of upvotes is the vot of God I really do not believe that I would be happy to debate Elon Musk on that subject um and uh you know I have um and and so I'm like actually if you see populism you know what you often see in conflicts and maybe this is a note that we could close on because I think it's a what you often see in historic conflicts as well as personal conflicts you've probably seen you know the couple who fights all the time and you look at these people and you're just like the worst part of it is each of them is right about the other and you know when I look at basically red versus blue America I'm just like there's a whole bunch of things I disagree with in there's a different you know I really believe in that you should be as reverent in the face of history as if you as as if you were within a great Temple or cedral right uh and I really like with the Bannon and posic book that you talked about you know earlier I was just like that's not the T right it's not the five um and yet basically when I look at Red versus Blue America you know I can't help but avoid the feeling that there are many very deep sens in which each side is right about the other and that's why basically when you sort of you know to sort of Bring It Around the opening I'm just like actually being like fully pilled is like very depressing like it's really pretty depressing to look at this American political conflict and be like you know the real problem is that each side is right about the other they're not right in all details they're like but they're kind of like they're directionally right I would say that each side is kind of d directionally right about the other even if they're wrong in sort of many many details and so I would say for example that you're analysis of like why libertarianism isn't the thing or doesn't work I would say in the details it's almost wholly wrong but the thing is in terms of your sense of like this is not an economy that is Humane that is working for people that actualizes people to whatever level they're capable of being actualized that has a place that's human for every human being within them you know this I think Hillary Clinton's politics of meeting let's go back to the politics of meeting Hillary was right about that right this is not a like that that sense of enemy like that sense that this is not even for its upper classes this isn't working right never forget the like forget the like fit in the wilderness of Ohio even from the upper class it's like Jesus Christ applying to College can you believe what that is like now it's incredible it's mind-bogglingly it's insane you know and so like this is not a working system and yet basically when you look at the you know the like rques you know it's like you look at like qanon right and qan On's view of the deep state is just this wild fantasy by like some like weird sex criminal in the Philippines or something I don't know who Q is but like you know it's the ridiculous Michael Flynn is basically who people think Q is it's not Michael Flynn but like oh my God it's not Michael Flynn but but like it's it's you know I can't use that word on your show you know but it's like basically it's like it is not mentally stable and yet you know and it is certainly not true and yet you know when you kind of step back and look at it you're just like maybe the real truth about Washington is so much deeper and more weirder and more horrifying but there's an element in which you're kind of getting it right you know it's just like you're completely at to lunch as far as all the details of reality and you don't provide an alternative that is viable in any way shape or form you can't Evan musk doesn't have an alternative that is viable in any way shape or form El musk does not agree with me about all this monarchy like let's be perfectly clear about that right and the the he's not just pretending to be a 1990s libertarian he is in 1990s libertarian and that's why he's going to fail and the like and then you know so it's like the the and similarly like when you look at like the co lab leak this just like the reality that like we trusted and funded these scientists to protect us from viruses and they wind up inflicting these viruses on us is like true now was it a biowarfare experiment was it this was it no it was just human stupidity they didn't mean to do it but it was just inevitable that they would do it but it was just the system was so stupid that they wound up doing it and so you're just like try to give you the last word you gotta wind up a little bit okay you know and so when you have this kind of when you're looking for what historians will think of our period in a hundred years I don't think they'll be Republicans Or democrats I think they'll be able to kind of pull this back and kind of see red and blue for kind of what they are in the moments that they are and and like whenever we look at history it looks gly person I hope we survive 100 years um well you and I are not going to survive 100 years I can tell you that pretty can we take the uh telas virgin blood transfusion yeah yeah you sound super optimistic the way you're laughing about this you know like well you know uh uh at least at least you got your teeth replaced I should do that you know and the it sucks being old man um but uh yeah you know the actually sucks being young somehow I don't know that there's some ideally there's some combination that could be found all right I've delayed we've delayed each other too long but I think we I think we had some fun here and I think we laid down some I think what we should do I I would enjoy doing this with you were up for it well first all I have this young guy who I think would be interesting to talk to you if he wants to might be fun but also I think it would be fun for us to choose like two or three texts the other person read those books then we come back and we're like boom we have like you know a little more frame ofs that would be that would be that would be an interesting conversation thank you so much I like I like that you like the ancient city it's really yeah I'm fascinated by all these books I mean I like you know you know I'm a big fan of Julius aola you know I like also I want to work on your atheism next time so you can work on you can work on my atheism it's a much less atheistic than most people's atheism so you know there's that so yeah yeah a a great thank you for the time all right all right all right it's a pleasure all right take care bye

Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.