Tim has on Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug, executive producer of the film "Alex's War", Gray Mirror on Substack) is a software engineer, internet entrepreneur, and blogger. They discuss taking acid as a precocious young man, the historical inaccuracies from Caesar to the American Revolution, the early days of the internet, what tech people really want, the three types of government, and the actual deep state.His substack: https://graymirror.substack.com/The movie he exec produced: https://twitter.com/alexswarmovieSUPPORT OUR SPONSORS:HELIX BED▶▶ https://www.helixsleep.com/timd for 200 dollars off Mattress orders and two free pillowsWATCHES▶▶ for 20% off go to https://www.vincerocollective.com/timdillon🔒 VPN:Get three months free▶▶ https://www.expressvpn.com/timdillon📦 BOX OF AWESOME▶▶ http://boxofawesome.com use code TIMDILLON at checkout for 20% offCRYPTO▶▶ http://exodus.com/tim to start free. Over 4 million people trust Exodus to manage their crypto. Join the movement away from traditional finance by downloading Exodus.ONNIT▶▶ Go to http://onnit.com/tim for 10% offEVERY MAN JACK▶▶ https://www.everymanjack.com to get 20% off your first purchase use code DILLON🎧 HEADPHONES:For 15% off!▶▶ https://www.buyraycon.com/tim👨🦱 HAIR LOSS:▶▶ https://www.keeps.com/TimDillon💆THERAPY▶▶ https://www.betterhelp.com/TIMDBIRD DOGS!▶▶ https://www.birddogs.com/ use code TIMDILLONATHLETIC GREENS▶▶ https://athleticgreens.com/timdillonMASTERWORKS▶▶ https://masterworks.art/timSIMPLI SAFE▶▶ https://simplisafe.com/timdillon to save 20%MUD\WTR▶▶ https://mudwtr.com/tim use code TIM for $5 offSTARTMAIL: start securing email privacy!▶▶ https://startmail.com/timd for 50% off your first year!Watch SteveWillDoIt's Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC55JghDUfUatuLc1wp4uGoA▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐃:📸 Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/timjdillon/🐦 Twitter:https://www.twitter.com/TimJDillon🌍 Tim Dillon Live Dates!:http://timdilloncomedy.com/#shows📹 Subscribe to the channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4woSp8ITBoYDmjkukhEhxgListen on Spotify!https://open.spotify.com/show/2gRd1woKiAazAKPWPkHjds ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▶▶ Ed McMahonbenavery33@gmail.comhttps://www.instagram.com/benaveryisgood/https://twitter.com/benaveryisgood▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬#TheTimDillonShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Humanizing Myself at Twelve00:03:37
And I think you're going to be loud enough.
Oh, yeah.
How's my hair?
Perfect.
You need a hair and makeup girl.
You don't have one?
We don't have one.
We can't afford that.
You know, I've heard that shit before.
We actually could, but, you know, I mean, when you go over what you pay, I know, I know.
It's too much.
I know, I know.
And you just get used when you're really bootstrapping.
Yeah.
You get used to not fucking wasting fucking money.
That's the whole thing.
And I know so many people who actually spend more money to feel more legitimate.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
That's called in the startup industry.
That's called playing house.
And it's everyone, including us, does it with the first money they get?
Right.
So.
And they go, let me feel, let's feel more legitimate.
Yeah.
Because we're spending the money.
Exactly.
All right.
Let's get this.
We're in.
We don't tell you when we're in.
Oh, we don't.
We just go in.
Excellent.
Yeah.
So I can tell my acid story.
I'd love to hear it.
All right.
Let's hear it.
Curtis Yarvin is with us.
Google.
Brilliant.
That's a brilliant trick.
And all right.
So, you know, Tim wanted me to humanize myself a little bit.
Yes.
Because it's good to be human.
And so one of the best ways, you know, to humanize yourself, besides wearing an authentic Shea shirt, this is actually made in Cuba, by the way.
It was given to me by my friend Sam Frank, who visited that country.
I love that.
I can't prove it, but I believe you.
It is absolutely true.
Amazing.
You can inspect the label later.
But anyway, so acid.
So I guess my acid story is from 1997.
Do you remember?
And where were you in 1997, Tim?
I was 12, but also starting to do my first acid drop was 13.
Wow.
Okay.
That's very early.
So I was just to set the stage, I was precocious in a number of things.
And I actually skipped three grades before high school.
I grew up as a foreign service brat.
And when I was 10 and 11, I was three grades ahead in the English school, Nicosia Cypress, which was a little British public school where we wore uniforms and had houses just like in Harry Potter.
I love that.
And should I look at the camera?
No.
Okay.
And then my parents, as diplomats do, moved back to Washington.
And I was sent to Wild Lake High School in Columbia, Maryland, a distant suburb of D.C., as a 12-year-old sophomore.
So basically, I've, you know, I've just.
So you were a 12-year-old.
A 12-year-old sophomore in a public school in Maryland.
Did the kids think that was cool or did they hate you?
Well, I think the thing is that would, you know, for when that's an excellent question.
And I think that basically, you know, that was.
It's in my head.
I'm like, which movie is exactly.
Which movie is it?
Right.
And so, you know, when you look back at that, you basically, you know, if you're in that role, kids, and, you know, I hope young people aren't watching this because we're about to talk about drugs, but the worst possible.
And worse.
And worse politics.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's just a segue, right?
You know, you know, nobody really cares about acid, but, you know, what we'll get into after that, you know, that's the real truth.
And it's not DMT either, right?
You know, but in any case, it really depends on the behavior of the kid and how he sort of behaves in the context of the people around him.
If he's just like really sweet and funny, it's one kind of movie.
But if he's a little arrogant asshole, it's going to be the other.
And which one were you?
It was the other.
Okay.
So, so.
Burning Man and Politics00:08:43
In any case, that led me going to college.
I went to Johns Hopkins because that's where they had CTY, which now since the summer will be known as the Fire Festival of Nerd Camps, but we won't get into that catastrophe.
Is that when you're a young person and you're going to learn?
And you get like good test scores.
They do like advanced, you know, you'll sit, you'll do like algebra in like a week and a half by sitting and doing algebra all day for like six hours by yourself.
By your fucking self.
There you go.
Right.
So this is, this is like, you know, this is like intellectual like fucking boot camp.
My daughter was supposed to go to it, but it got canceled two days before the event this year.
Thank you, Johns Hopkins.
Anyway, so I went to Johns Hopkins as a freshman because it was there.
You know, no respect to Johns Hopkins, but it sucked.
So I transferred to Brown.
So I graduated from Brown in 92.
And then I went to grad school in computer science at Berkeley.
And I lasted for about a year and a half at Berkeley before I decided that academia sucks, even in computer science.
And it's a lot of results where.
And it was just a bad run of systems professors at Berkeley too.
So anyway, I was like, I've got to drop out and like seek my fortune in the new multimedia boom, the multimedia bubble of the early 90s, which CD-ROMs, 500 channels, like, you know, you experienced this as retro, but for me, it was real.
Right.
And I lived it, right?
You know, in any case, basically, I got a job in that bubble.
And then I also basically got into the early internet.
So the early internet in its capacity, which is amazing, because you talk about it was like decentralized.
It was a decentralized social network.
It actually worked.
It had no central government.
It was not censored.
It fucking worked.
It was called Usenet.
That's right.
And, you know, let me, you know, we're going to get, you know, I know everyone wants to get to the acid, but let's talk about Usenet for a second.
Yeah, please.
So Usenet was actually, it was a decentralized social network that worked.
It was utterly amazing.
It was like if Reddit was decentralized and had an ontology, which means like an actual map of its content rather than like, and it had like a democratic governance structure.
It was republic.
It was not a dictatorship like Reddit.
And it was utterly amazing.
And here was the problem with Usenet.
Basically, we were on this thing.
Nobody knew about it.
I remember the first time I read about the internet in the New York Times.
It was like seeing your cousin in the New York Times in 1988.
And it was about a worm that was on the internet.
It was just like, wow, the New York Times is writing about the internet.
Right.
So Usenet basically, the reason that Usenet worked, we all thought was that because it was a decentralized social network and the future of humanity.
That's what we all just naturally assumed is that we were part new.
We knew it.
We didn't believe it.
We knew it.
It turned out that actually what made Usenet special was that to get onto Usenet, you had to be a college student or work at a tech company.
Interesting.
And so you didn't, it wasn't.
It was, it was, yes.
Right.
It wasn't everybody.
It wasn't everybody.
It was basically, you know, it had, it had a quality filter, which was a human filter, which was an elitist filter.
Right.
You know, it's like if you go to Burning Man, have you been to Burning Man?
I haven't.
You haven't?
I haven't either.
You know, someone drank.
I feel like I want to go, but I'm sober.
And I feel like, is that, you know, I've always talked on the show about like missing something in life and then not being able to go back to it.
Yeah.
Like being able to realize.
You know, some very sick adults wanted to like replicate summer camp because they had never gone.
And you go, this is, you look at it and you go, this is, it makes me feel physically ill.
I don't know if being a sober guy at Burning Man is a good thing or is it, am I trying to recapture something?
I really, I really, you know, I couldn't tell you.
I'm a widower.
My wife had gone to Burning Man a couple of times.
I never have.
And my fiancé is a burner.
Oh, okay.
So basically, this gives me, you know, certain, you know, we'll get back.
We'll get back to that situation, I promise.
But it's interesting to compare Burning Man as a community to Usenet as a community because both of them have a sense that in certain senses they're superior to everything else in the world.
Right.
And in certain senses, they are superior to everything else in the world.
In other senses, like if you look at, for example, the total fertility rate of burners, you're going to find a very low number.
Right.
And so, you know, or, you know, that sort of a community that exists by sort of almost that reproduces itself that lasts over time because Burning Man is not super young that sort of reproduces itself by intake rather than by fertility.
Right.
There's something slightly imperfect about that.
And both communities have a barrier to entry.
And the barrier to entry.
So the barrier to entry is what I was about to talk about.
It's basically the barrier to entry, you know, that sort of creates a filter.
You know, I was talking to, you know, I'm going to protect his name, an intellectual, you know, who knows the Burning Man organizers well.
And I was asking him.
Steve Bannett.
I'm kidding.
No, Steve, Steve runs.
Steve runs.
Never mind.
But Steve actually fat.
You know, but it's right.
You know, but the talking to the guy at Burning Man.
Yeah, talking to the guy at Burning Man.
And I'm like, why does Burning Man have, you know, if you go to Burning Man, to me, from what I've heard of Burning Man, not being a burner, not wanting to embarrass myself, but I think that what makes Burning Man special is the feeling that everyone at Burning Man has that anyone you meet there will be like an old friend you haven't met yet.
Right.
And, you know, and that's an incredible feeling in a community.
And that's an attitude, right?
That's an attitude.
That's an ethos.
You know, there's all this public ethos that sort of comes with the 12 principles of Burning Man, one of which is radical inclusion.
Everyone is welcome.
Is that similar?
Would you say Bohemian Grove is the same thing?
You know, yes.
Bohemian Grove has a much more explicit barrier to entry.
Anyway, I'm talking to this guy, you know, very, very, very intelligent, interesting individual.
And I'm basically like, what is it about Burning Man that causes this feeling of togetherness, right?
And, you know, he's like, well, you know, we don't use money.
You know, there's a number of principles of Burning Man, you know.
And I'm like, you know, well, basically my perspective is the reason that this is the case is that pretty much everyone at Burning Man is like pretty much everyone else is at Burning Man as a person.
Moreover, what accomplishes this is a principle that you might call radical exclusion, which is that it really sucks to get to Burning Man.
It's really hard to be at Burning Man.
You're basically punishing yourself.
You know, this fucking playa is like hell.
Right.
And you're punishing yourself to get there.
It's hard to get a ticket.
It's hard to find a camp.
It's basically, it is, as you say, essentially the same thing as Bohemian Grove.
It has a slightly different community.
Actually, Bohemian Grove, I was just hearing someone who's talking to someone who's, I guess he's a guest at Bohemian Grove because his father is a member.
Bohemian Grove basically actually started out as literally Bohemian.
Originally, it was like an artsy fartsy club very much like Burning Man and that served a similar kind of community, people who would have found bohemians who would have found themselves very, very welcome and found like felt really completely right at Burning Man.
And so in both of these cases, what's creating the feeling, just this incredible social feeling of togetherness is like a policy, an effective policy of radical exclusion.
Right.
And when this policy breaks down, as it did in the internet in the event that is known as Eternal September, it's called Eternal September because every year in September, a bunch of clueless newbies, a lot of internet slang like newbie was invented on Usenet.
A lot of clueless internet newbies who were freshmen would descend.
And then AOL that sent the little discs in the mail or that.
AOL basically gave all AOL users access to Usenet, which was basically sort of, you know, as if you let, you know, the entire 25 million population of Lagos, Nigeria into Brooklyn.
Right.
Right.
And so.
So what happens to Usenet after what happens to Usenet is that it simply becomes unusable without being an aristocracy.
That's right.
Without being elitist, without basically its passive filter, it's just unlivable.
AOL Users in Brooklyn00:09:54
And, you know, what precedes its death, and this is sort of only a symptom in a way, some people think this caused it, is basically it started developing binaries newsgroups in which people used Usenet to trade like wares.
And so that got everyone's, you know, like the result was that all ISPs basically pulled Usenet access.
Anyway, it imploded and it died.
And it was basically because it was essentially a high trust network.
And, you know, I don't know if you know the work of Robert Putnam.
You know, he's a sociology at Harvard.
Right.
So, you know, he did this famous thing called Bowling Alone in which he examined the decline of high trust social networks.
It's a great book.
He follows it up with, I forget the title of his, it may have just been a paper.
He does this paper in which he found that basically the more variety it is, and I'm using that word very intentionally, the more variety there is in a community, the lower trust it is.
And so if you have like Chinatown where it's basically all Chinese people, there's a lot of trust, you know, you know, and as soon as...
Why is that looked at today as something that's bad?
Because variety is a synonym for diversity.
Okay.
And see, I always look at it.
I grew up in Long Island and Long Island.
My grandparents were from Great News.
Okay.
Yeah.
Now, and that's a great point, right?
So Great Neck, you have Persian restaurants and a lot of Sephardic Jews that live there.
And in other towns, you would have Irish and Italian people.
And nobody, there was, of course, Long Island was racist and people made jokes and whatever, but there was no violence.
Right.
There was absolutely, there were no riots.
There's no Persian on Italian riots.
Like the Italians don't take it up with the Persian.
There's none of that.
Like the Buddhists and the Tamils in Sri Lanka, right?
Yeah, there was no like, you know, there was no West Side story happening.
So to me, I always go, you have different groups of people that choose to live within some in-group preference.
Right.
Right.
And they can date other groups.
Why is that a bad thing?
I think it depends on whether in certain cases you might sort of develop a function where you say, okay, if you examine the kind of conventional narrative that, for example, everyone at least pretends to believe on their college application essay.
That's sort of a nice randomization because who is the admissions officer?
We don't know.
Right.
But we're pretty sure of what they believe.
And you'll notice that this person basically, that feeling of in-groupness, what the great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun called Asabiya, the feeling of, you know, it's us against the world.
There's this old Somali proverb.
Actually, a number of countries claim it.
You know, me and my country against the world, me and my clan against my country, me and my tribe against my people.
I have that tattooed on my lower back.
All right.
I have a tram stamp of that Somali.
Holy shit.
And of course it ends with me against my brother, right?
You know, right?
And, you know, that's a little, you know, that's a little Somali, but, you know, that's like, that's not exclusive to Somali.
Many, many countries claim that proverb in a way.
So what you'll notice is, for example, imagine you were in a world, you know, let's take the like nascent Persian eye Italian.
Is that rustler eye Italian?
Can I say I Italian?
No, no, Italians we abuse on this show constantly.
Awesome, awesome.
Also, actually, can I tell you a joke relating to that?
Absolutely.
Are you familiar with the work of Garibaldi?
Slightly, like not, you know, not have you intimately.
And have you ever been to Italy?
I've never been yet.
Which part, where in Italy would you like to go?
I'd love to go to Rome.
You'd love to go to Rome.
That's right.
Rome.
Yeah, Rome is around the middle of Italy.
Yeah.
So, you know, Garibaldi, of course, you know, well, you know, you probably, I can't really tell the joke if you don't know the story of Garibaldi.
But in case you do, in case you do, there's something very that they say about Garibaldi in parts of Italy, but only parts of Italy.
I think they say it in Rome, which is that Garibaldi didn't unify Italy.
He divided Africa.
Right.
So, sure.
So, I mean, there's IITians and there's IITalians.
Anyway, anyway, so let's take, for example.
Let's take, for example, suppose you have two groups in a society.
You have Persians and I Italians.
I don't know any racial slurs for Persians, but I know they're there.
Can we, what about, what about Dune Kuhn?
Let's just say Persian.
Oh, God.
Whatever.
Our friends Persian and our own, but go on.
All right.
Sorry.
Are we still on YouTube?
Thank you, Tyron.
You know, yeah, that's, I mean, frankly, I'm not even sure that's accurate.
I'm not even sure that's accurate.
But, you know, in any case, it's not usually what I think of when it when it comes.
Right, right.
You know, the, I mean, rugs.
I mean, anyway, rugs.
Rugs.
More rugs than dunes, I think.
Okay.
But the, let's not go there.
Anyway, we've got Persians and I Italians.
And let's examine basically one of the ways we can understand there is a potential conflict between any two groups within group status.
So, you know, as the great German political philosopher Carl Schmidt once said, the essential political distinction is that between friend and enemy.
So to a Persian, all Persians are friends.
To an IITalian, all Italians, north or south, are friends.
Okay, now within the I Italian community, it's like the proverb.
Right.
But, you know, the thing is when I Italians think about Persians, basically they just, you know, they don't, they don't even think about them.
Right.
You know, actually, I think it's the other way.
But, you know, in any case, basically, so there's a couple of things you can say about this.
First and foremost, basically, one of the questions you can ask about the narrative is, does the narrative promote ocebia among Persians or I Italians?
Are I Italians, for example, taught in the schools to think, you know, all I Italians must act together ever since the Persian attacks?
In fact, on Rome, you may recall, did you know that there was a Roman emperor that was captured by the Persians?
And then, you know, I forget later Roman Empire, he's captured by the Persians and he's basically uses a footstool for the Persian emperor to mount his fucking horse.
Amazing.
Amazing.
And when he dies, like his skin is stuffed with straw and preserved.
Right.
Didn't last to the lot of things have gone on.
But, you know, but in any case, you know, so this is what assholes these fucking Persians are.
Right.
Right.
You know, and so if you go over to the Persians then, you know, so you have all these stories.
There's sort of a group litigation.
It's like the basically the I Italians have this brief against Valerian.
It was Valerian.
The I Italians have a grief.
Thank you.
Jesus Christ.
The I Italians have a brief against the Persians, right?
They've been victimized by the Persians since the days of Valerian, who was just not treated like war crime.
Look at that shit.
Right.
You know, right?
A war crime, right?
You know, and the thing is, that's like typical, you know, frankly, that's typical Persian behavior.
Right.
Right.
Whereas the Italians, of course, founded fucking civilization, right?
You know, and so then you go over to the Persian side and do they have a brief against the Italians?
Or does the narrative teach them to be like, you know, we Persians, you know, came down from the hills in the time of Darius, you know, and like basically the Italians have been calling us names, you know, and sort of all of this stuff.
And like, we never set out to attack Rome.
You know, like, yes, Valerian himself, war criminal, right?
Right.
You know, and so what's the narrative there?
Whereas basically, and the thing is, from sort of a kind of natural pattern of human history, the narrative there that you would expect, that's the narrative you would expect.
Right.
And if instead the narrative among the Persians is, you know, we Persians, you know, committing wrongs for many years.
You know, we founded an empire.
Who do you think we conquered to found that empire?
Who became our slaves?
You know, look at what we did with the Jews.
We did something with the Jews, right?
You know, not good, right?
You know, that's in the Bible, but it's true, right?
You know, and you're basically like, you know, like we Persians ourselves, you know, we're like modern Germans.
Like we have to take it, we have to be accountable for our actions over the centuries.
It's like the thing of two different movies, you said.
Right.
Right.
So the thing is, basically, once you imagine one of these movies, you can imagine sort of the other movie.
And then your basic question is like, what you're looking at here, sort of in one case or another, is what the great Italian political scientist, Gaetona Mosca, who is best accessed in The Machiavellians by James Burnham, a book I've been promoting for like 10 years.
Great book.
Great.
Have you read that?
I've read that.
It's fucking awesome.
The first, like, you know, like, imagine the first chapter.
You're learning boxing.
Like your first chapter, you're like, I'm going to take out Muhammad Ali.
Burnham is like, I'm going to take out Dante.
Yeah.
Right.
Dante.
It's an amazing book.
He's like, I'm just going to fucking deconstruct your ass, Dante.
Right.
You know, and amazing fucking book.
So Mosca has this concept of the political formula.
The political formula is basically something that you believe whose practical effect on your behavior is to cause you to support the government, is to support whatever is the regime or the powers that they.
So basically, we can assume that within this narrative where basically the Italians are all like super like Asabiya, like I Italian pride, and the Persians are like, yeah, we Persians, we did it.
Like, you know, I've committed Persian crimes, right?
Or my ancestors committed Persian crimes.
Bat Coronavirus Research00:14:31
Right.
You know, and so if you see basically, I'm not going to like try to translate that into today because you probably have an IQ of over 90 out there.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, but the, you know, both of those things for the communities in which they are believed will turn out to be basically political formulas.
They will turn out to be things that are believed that basically strengthening pathologies.
Yeah, they're also kind of pathologies.
So the thing is that basically, you know, sort of the sum.
This is a smart episode, folks.
If you can't handle it, really, you know, yeah, we do enough dumb stuff here.
Yeah.
So basically, you have these memes, these ideas that are political formulas that basically strengthen the regime, whatever it is.
And so, you know, sort of the essence of my like, I'm sorry, we will get to the acid story.
No, that's fine.
Keep it.
No, no, it's okay.
I love this as a club.
We're close.
We're close to the acid story.
Okay.
So in any case, we're these political formulas in, have you heard of the marketplace of ideas, Tim?
Are we in that marketplace right now?
Are we selling shit in that?
We're in the bazaar.
We're in the bazaar.
You know, you're like, the war world is so fucking.
This is not the cathedral.
It's the bazaar.
It's the bazaar.
Now Spotify, what they call us, we can be in the cathedral.
We will walk right into the cathedral.
That's a good question.
Hey, let's get some hits on this.
Spotify the cathedral.
That's an interesting question.
That is an interesting.
Okay, let's table that one.
Down the road.
I don't want to get that deep.
Okay, I want to keep this shallow.
I want to bottom out at like 95 IQ.
Okay.
Like Mad Damon, like janitors at Harvard.
Perfect.
Right.
You know, so anyway, so, you know, in the marketplace of ideas, we entrust a lot of things to that marketplace.
We say, for example, of virology.
We say, hey, who should make decisions about virology?
And our answer is the virologist.
Right.
How's that working out for you?
Yeah.
Right.
And so, you know, the conclusion is that basically, you know, those systems were put in place to basically take power out of the hands of politics and politicians.
That was the early progressive movement under T.R. Woodrow Wilson.
And the thing is, when I say take power out of the hands of politics and politicians, what I really mean is take power out of the hands of democracy.
And so basically we sort of kept this form of government in name, the way Britain is nominally like a monarchy or something because it has this crown Kardashian, you know.
But we moved it to these marketplace, these specialized marketplaces of ideas in the world of experts.
And we said, you know what?
This world of experts is a marketplace of ideas.
And this is a world in which ideas are competing with each other.
And, you know, people may be right, they may be wrong.
There's a lot of bias.
There's a lot of sellers.
The things that are good and cheap and efficient are going to beat the things that suck.
We encompass every time we fly on an airplane.
I've been on a lot of airplanes recently.
We encompass that to a marketplace of, to an actual marketplace.
Sure.
The marketplace of ideas is analogous to that.
It should work.
And the truth will out-compete fiction.
And I think truth overall in these marketplaces does out-compete fiction.
The problem is that power also outcompetes weakness.
And so we have these ideas that are basically empowering or self-empowering that basically sort of, you know, like dominate these markets and become basically there's totally unaccountable and there's no power that can remove them.
So for example, you know, one of the things that...
So for example, just the experts, right?
Yeah.
These experts.
Council on Foreign Relations, are those the experts?
Those are definitely the experts.
International Monetary Fund, are those the experts?
Sure, but here's another example.
Here's another example.
Basically, you know, Peter Dazak and his friends.
Yes.
Yes.
You may have covered that.
Yeah.
Well, we haven't covered it, but I know what you're talking about.
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
So the best place to read about Peter Dazak and his friends is in all places, one of my favorite magazines.
It's called Vanity Fair.
And for some reason, Vanity Fair has done some very good articles lately.
I'm not sure what happened there.
Maybe they took some acid.
I don't know.
We'll get to the acid soon.
But they did two really excellent articles about the birth of COVID that were not, you know, basically beholden to the virology industry.
And I think that basically probably the previous industry that has done as much damage as the virology industry to human health is probably the tobacco industry.
And so basically, when you sort of look at what happened in virology, it's sort of as good a case against the American system as Chernobyl is against the Russian system.
The difference is it killed about a thousand times as many people.
Right.
Maybe 10,000.
Not clear.
A lot more.
And, you know, essentially what happened here is, you know, there's a funny way to tell the story about COVID, which is a kid.
Remember, I grew up as a kid.
And you were one of the first people on the internet to say this is going to be a problem.
Yes.
Yes.
I was saying I was, I was, I started writing a piece in the middle of January.
I actually started investing in COVID.
I bought like deep out-of-the-money puts.
Wow.
It was insane to be betting on COVID because you become like pro-COVID.
You start fucking your book.
That was really weird.
That really biased my coverage.
But I'll admit that.
And that's sort of in a way, that's the same effect as the effect that corrupts these systems.
So what happened in the case of here's my narrative of COVID.
So when I was a kid, I was in the Commonwealth world in like Cyprus, and it was very easy to get like British books.
One very common form of British books were these books by Gerald Durrell, brother of Lawrence Durrell, HBO, where someone had the, you know, the Durrells in Corfu had this beautiful, you know, why not show that was basically made out of his wonderful memoirs.
Absolutely great to read when I was 12.
And Durrell was a zoologist and he went around collecting little fluffy animals from like imperiled Commonwealth countries in which barbarians were about at the gates, right?
It was just a crazy times like the 50s and 60s.
Everything is falling apart, right?
And he's collecting beautiful fluffy animals for his little zoo back in England.
And he does well with us and he does well with his books.
He founds a zoo in Jersey, not New Jersey, but Jersey.
And he basically, you know, creates this organization called the Wildlife Trust, which is dedicated to getting rich old ladies to give money to go and collect little fluffy animals.
Sounds like a win.
Along comes this guy, Peter Dazak, who has some like bullshit degree from somewhere, but is really a science administrator.
And he decides, and he becomes the administrator of the Wildlife Trust.
And he decides that he can start getting grants, bigger grants, better grants, by changing the mission of the Wildlife Trust slightly to have it go around instead of collect little fluffy animals, collect viruses, specifically bat coronaviruses.
So he turns the Wildlife Trust into something called EcoHealth Alliance, if you've heard the name, which is an organization that basically kind of gets massive grants and redistributes them to scientists to basically find and study bat coronaviruses.
And some of this work is done in China.
This is not really a thing about Chinese science.
Maybe it's something about how like sloppy things are in China, but like there's a word for like, I'm going to butcher the Chinese.
This is a Chinese word you were saying.
Cha wu duo.
Cha wu duo.
It means you did a grant.
I speak Mandarin.
Oh, awesome.
Awesome.
My daughter speaks Mandarin.
I was like, wow, you just fixed that.
Yeah, I speak fluent Mandarin.
Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome.
So basically, so this research into bat coronaviruses is subcracked, subcontracted, which is to like biosafety level two, you know, leading in like the boondocks of China, right?
You know, Wuhan.
Wu fucking Han.
Wu, right, right.
You know, it's not Shanghai.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, and it's like, what would be the American equivalent of Wuhan?
Detroit.
Detroit.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
If we heard that they were doing the most important or any kind of important virus research in Detroit.
In Detroit, we would be asking more questions.
Right.
Right, right, right.
So this research is basically subcontracted to Detroit.
Now, two things about this research.
One is its justification is to, quote, predict the emergence of novel coronaviruses.
The cause of this research was the original outbreak of SARS.
Right.
And in fact, one of the people involved in like virology governance is a technical advisor to the Steven Soderberg film Contagion, which is well worth watching, which is from the mid-aughts, I think, which is basically explicitly about a bat coronavirus.
Yes.
So because this happened, basically bat coronaviruses are a problem.
And because it's a problem.
So we're getting, we're popping the stack now.
So getting back to this problem.
So, okay, bat coronaviruses are a problem.
Therefore, they're important.
Therefore, you can get grants to study them.
You don't have to rely on little old ladies anymore.
Instead of collecting animals, you're collecting bad viruses, which means you collect bats.
So basically the same thing, right?
Right.
You're getting all these grants to study bat coronaviruses.
The more important your work is, the more money it will get.
Makes sense.
We allocate money by importance.
Yes.
Right.
The more dangerous bat coronaviruses are, the more money you will get.
Now, bat coronaviruses are bat viruses.
To operate in humans, they have to mutate.
They have to be changed.
They have to be mutate either naturally through passage or artificially in the lab and we know that was going on.
And we know that basically in the course of like four days, the like head virologists of the world changed their minds, which they'd come into like, this looks like a lab leak to this doesn't look like a lab leak.
There will never be any accountability for these motherfuckers.
And there's no power that's going to say, hey, science, you're fucked.
And the way in which science is fucked is like, this is a good example case, because basically here is this problem of like bat coronaviruses.
It's a real problem.
No one disputes that.
It SARS really emerged from animals.
It was not a weird Soviet experiment that escaped, right?
So it is possible for this to be a threat.
Because it is possible for it to be a threat, it is a problem.
Therefore, one can get grants to study this.
The worse a problem it seems to be, the more grants you're going to get.
So you have basically a feedback loop in the marketplace of ideas in which this idea basically brings power to that market.
So if you're basically a bat coronavirus researcher and you're like, you know what, what are we going to do if we predict an outbreak?
It's like predicting, I predict there will be an earthquake in the Bay Area.
Okay, let's build our houses a little stronger.
You know, what have you actually done here?
Like, was any of this research useful in solving the actual outbreak?
Absolutely not.
The profit motive in the marketplace of ideas can corrupt.
Right, but it's not specifically.
It's sort of when you think of a profit motive, that's not really the way academics think.
They think of like an empire building motive.
They think of like, my career is more successful if this is a bigger problem.
Yes.
You know, and so they basically play Pokemon with bat coronaviruses and then they like mutate their fucking Pokemon to make them as dangerous as possible in like basically low-rent Walmart tier labs in Detroit.
Right.
And then they're basically like, you know, when you step back, the important thing is when you, when you pull the camera back and you look at this behavior, okay, this is absolutely blaming China for this.
No, but we're letting China off the, and we are a fan of China on this show and we believe in one China.
We don't even know what Taiwan is.
Incredibly based.
Incredibly based.
But this isn't a China problem.
This is a U.S. problem.
This is a problem with the way we do shit.
And we basically said, we're going to take the experts.
You know, who's going to watch the watchdogs?
Ancient political question.
And they're like, well, why don't the experts watch the watchdogs?
Excellent answer.
And then the question is, who watches the experts?
And they're like, well, you know, I guess they could watch themselves.
Right.
And when they watch themselves, they do shit like this, which is every bit as dumb as like what was done in fucking Chernobyl, where they're like, let's turn off the backup, backup, backup safety systems to prove that our reactor is safe if we turn off the safety systems.
That breakdown of COVID was the best I've ever heard.
Thank you.
I have never heard it anywhere else.
Thank you.
And will I hear it anywhere else?
Who the fuck knows?
And that's the problem.
Because by the way, you just did in a few minutes, in the most succinct way I've ever heard.
And I read and listen to stuff all the time.
You literally broke down not only the problem, but what incubates the problem and why the problem won't go away.
Yeah.
Okay.
In fact, these motherfuckers are getting even more funding.
That's right.
Because their shit is important.
Wow, I mean, because their shit is important.
The funding is going to be off the fucking chats.
I mean, the things they're going to be making now?
Yeah.
No, no.
And just, you know, there's more research for, I mean, everything involved in this, right?
And so inevitably, there's a little skepticism around gain of function.
You know, it's like you don't want to call it that, you know, but this is everywhere.
You know, it's like I have a friend who is, I'm going to disguise his identity.
He's a leading figure in a film in a field that is related to physics.
Okay.
And it's related enough that he knows physics quite well.
And I was talking about him talking about this problem with him.
And he was like, oh, yeah, you know, why, you know, in physics, it's so bad that there are entire workshops about string theory that aren't about string theory.
They just have to actually pretend to be about string theory because the string theorists are in command of the funding because physics is funded by physics.
So the thing is, when that starts to happen in like the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, right?
You're basically just like the idiots are in charge and doing idiotic things and there is no accountability for them anywhere in any possible way, shape, or form.
Big Sound Physics Workshops00:11:57
Right.
So let's get back to the acid.
So I think motherfuckers deserve a break after that.
Yes.
Anyway, so digesting it because that, I mean, by the way, and not even to just be overly complimentary, but like it's amazing that not only has that not been talked about more broadly, but it hasn't been put in a context that people can understand.
Well, and not only understand that this is a huge problem, but that it is by design and the design continue itself perpetuates.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, thank you for that.
And this is poverty.
This is everything, right?
Yeah.
This is poverty.
This is homelessness.
I was in San Francisco.
There are guys with like devil horns on all fours on centers.
You were in Door Street.
You were in Door Street.
Where was I?
I was in the piss orgy rally.
I was in El Feralito eating a quesadilla in the mission and I'm watching all this stuff go on.
And I love that city, but it has problems.
It has issues.
And I'm going and I'm looking at it.
I lived there for 20 years.
And I'm looking at these compassion centers, homeless centers.
Navigation centers.
On every street.
They're navigation centers.
And no one's in them.
And no one cares.
No, it's insane.
And it has nothing to do with anything.
And it's run by the homeless industrial complex.
That's right.
You know, like, and like the chief executive, I'm not giving too much away, but like the chief expert of the San Francisco homeless complex was actually my girlfriend 20 years ago.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
You did it.
Yeah, right.
So, so, you know, and that really informed me a lot about this kind of mentality, right?
Yeah.
Anyway, like, yeah, it's, it's, it's sort of everything.
I've had this sore in my mouth on the right side of my mouth forever, and I keep biting my cheek and any because I keep biting my cheek, which makes it like get inflamed, and I keep biting it again.
Yeah.
You know, thank you for helping me make my fake smooth brain just because you look like a hockey coach from the 70s.
It's such a comforting form.
Do you use, do you use, let me, here's a question.
Yes.
Do you ever use the accent?
Do you talk in the New York accent?
I don't, I, I just, whatever accent I have, which is kind of, I guess, East Coast, vaguely racist.
Right.
That's just what I do.
I was in New York and I was hearing, you know, people talk the way my grandfather talked.
And, you know, and I can kind of do that, but I also feel like I'm kind of ripping off the sopranos or something.
Yeah.
I mean, I just, it feels kind of fake.
I have a Long Island accent, which I think is, it's in a weird way.
It's subtler.
It's subtler.
It's kind of, it has a little hint of Boston, New England too.
So let's get to the next one.
You're a dad.
Anyway, anyway, you know, this is just a lead up from my biography.
So I dropped out of grad school in 1994.
And I'm also really have a social life again after really not having a social life in high school and college because I was like totally the wrong fucking age.
Right.
But I start grad school.
I mean, it was a crime to go on a date with you.
Yeah.
Exactly.
That's true.
That's right.
I wasn't really thinking about that, but you know, it's wild.
Very true.
It's wild.
Right.
So, so, you know, you know, but as you see, I'm a normal human being.
Of course.
No, but, you know, yeah, I know you're laughing deep down inside me.
Never mind.
But the, in any case, I drop out of grad school.
I'm like, here's my plan.
I'm going to drop out of grad school.
I'm going to go succeed in the new CD-ROM and multimedia bubble.
And I'm going to make.
What year is this?
1994.
Okay.
I'm going to make a pile of money.
I'm, by the way, going to move my very sophisticated girlfriend who is seven years older than me and has issues, who I met on the internet because we were both little rock stars in this little fucking literary group.
On Usenet?
On Usenet.
Fuck yeah.
TalkBazaar if you're out there listening.
Fuck.
Fuck yeah.
You know, I was on Talk.Bazaar and Alt.peeves.
I have like juvenilia all over these things.
Yeah.
And really quality people.
I used to like on alt.peeves, I used to flame Charlie Strauss, the well-known science fiction writer, all the time.
He now hates me.
All these people hate me.
It's really sad.
It's crazy that the people's idea of you is radically different, really, from what I find.
Let's get to the acid.
Let's get to the acid.
Flattery shit later.
You know, acid, right?
So in any case, I drop out to work at this funky little like Hollywood associated company called Chaos Tools.
We actually ever see the VR film Lawnmower Man?
Yeah.
Lawnmower Man.
Chaos When They Made Good Things.
Oh, that was fucking amazing.
Chaos Tools did the graphics for Lawnmower Man.
I love it.
So I'm working at Chaos Tools.
I'm working on XAOS, Chaos Tools, also known as Chaos Inc.
And they did, you know, Photoshop plugins.
And they also like, they needed, like, they basically did this project that was like way above their britches.
It was sort of like in the end, the thing that I did that actually kind of worked later.
But that was, that's my like future career.
This was my present one.
It was actually a shit show and a disaster and like an insane experience.
So this in 1997, like this collapses.
Like, you know, my whole social group has collapsed in a series of like insane infighting because we're basically like, you know, I'm maybe more asocial than some of these other people, but they're all sort of doing this thing where they're well outside high school, but they behave like high school kids.
Right.
You know, and I thought I was doing something different, but I was actually doing the same thing.
And many such cases, as our president has said.
And the, and, you know, this explodes.
My relationship with this troubled woman explodes.
And basically all I have is a job offer from a company in Berkeley, a lease on an apartment and a company and, you know, in Berkeley and some family back on the East Coast.
Right.
So, you know, what do you do in a situation like that?
So basically, my feeling was that the right thing to do was to take a shit ton of acid and go see the new John Wu film.
I think that's correct.
I think that was absolutely the right thing to do.
In a way, that was kind of the birth.
I mean, and when I say like, like, I'm, you know, I was reasonably experienced at dropping acid by myself, as one should be.
I mean, when a full-grown man, don't try this when you're 13.
But like, you know, you can sit and like in the closet, you know, for eight hours on acid.
Yes.
You're a man, right?
You know, and there's, I mean, it's not the only thing that can make you man.
It's just one of them, right?
You know, so it's a Native American ritual.
It's a Native American ritual.
Exactly.
Well, I didn't have any peyote and I couldn't sit in the smoke shop, but Smokehouse, but I could go see and see the new John Wu film, which I knew nothing about, which was in fact, if you're familiar with the film, it's called, it's with Nicholas Cage and John Travolta.
Yes.
It's called Face Off.
That's right.
And, you know, it has this wonderful signature move where he's like, I'm going to take his face.
And absolutely brilliant.
And, you know, so to see this with no expectations, no spoilers, no nothing on just like, you know, oh, and it was also my birthday.
And I forget that part.
It was 1997, so I was turning 24.
And I was like, okay, why not do this?
And I was like, wow.
You know, we were talking about this earlier on the show or perhaps before the show.
I'm not sure when you started filming.
And, you know, it really is an important part of a certain kind of experience.
And, you know, that experience should be as intense and disturbing as possible.
Yes.
And, you know, knowing that that, you know, and now I'm going to describe, you know, okay, we're getting into the difficult.
I guess we covered some difficult political stuff earlier.
Sure.
You know, we'll get to harder stuff later, maybe, but let's go.
You know, so, but the next thing I did, which really, I think it honestly, I only lasted that this company.
Are the same people in Silicon Valley?
Silicon.
I love that you say silicone.
That's so like.
Keep saying, no, no, no, never change.
A friend of mine does that, and it's like perfect.
Yeah.
Are they the same people?
Because when I look at the ruling class, I feel like the people that are there.
If you look at the campaign contributions from Google, they're about 99% blue.
Right, but we know the least about, like, we know what motivates Wall Street guys.
It's a lust for gargantuan sums of money.
What motivates these tech utopians?
I'm going to surprise you.
I'm going to surprise you.
It's a lust for gargantuan sums of money.
Wow.
Okay.
And so there we go.
Here it is.
Got to ML.
So not to be too shocking or anything.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, but not that I made.
Is Marin County expensive?
I had no idea.
And so, you know, I never actually have really succeeded entirely in Silicon Valley.
I've sort of like semi-non-failed.
It was my next, so I lasted like nine months at this company.
I sort of never quite clicked with them socially.
I think I was just a little too weird.
I'm really the only one who wound up with like weird politics.
It was very apolitical time, though.
But, you know, they were great.
The 90s was great.
They were great.
And then I worked at the, then I actually made some money in the dot-com bubble, which became my like nest egg to do this insane thing that I did later.
But let's go back to the start of this company.
We're not going to talk about.
So I arrive at this company and I start there and I was like, wow, this is an insane experience.
We're not going to talk about acid anymore.
This is just mushrooms.
We're also not going to talk about the time I smuggled mushrooms back from Japan after 9-11 in a jar of miso.
We're not going to talk about that.
That's amazing.
And so, yeah, we're not going there.
I think the statute of limitations is bad.
They will come for you.
Yeah, exactly.
They'll probably use that as their excuse to.
That'll be Vanity Sarah's next.
Exactly.
After 9-10.
Exactly.
The man who drove America crazy.
Right.
You know, anyway, so the Miso wasn't very good for them.
You know, in any case, so I have a bag of mushrooms and I find basically, you know, the coolest person, like the hippest hippie dude, he's wearing like tie-dye there.
And I noticed that the UC Theater, the repertory theater right around the block from her office is playing a film that I wanted to see.
And so I suggested this guy.
His name was Jimmy.
High, if you're right there, Jimmy.
He's like I want to go see.
Why don't we take some mushrooms, which is perfect kind of timing.
Mushrooms is shorter, you know, shorter trip.
Why don't we go take some mushrooms and go see the film that's showing at the UC?
And he's like what's the film?
I'm like it's called Dust Boot.
He's like what's it about?
I'm like it's like I don't know footwear or something.
Yeah, I don't know if I actually said that, but have you seen Dust Boat?
Yes um, have you seen it on acid?
Not yet, you know it has to be the.
You've seen the director's cut right, the three hour version.
I've seen the really long one, the real.
Yeah, that's the director's cut.
That's the director's cut.
You know, imagine like you're there right, you're watching the movie in the theater, like big big, big sound.
Yeah, big sound, big sound, big sound, big screen, big picture.
You're like you know basically, you know, 500 feet under the strait of Gibraltar and like British destroyers are trying to like crush you in an instant yeah, by throwing garbage cans of t and t into the water.
Yeah, for about 45 minutes, as they're living in that, in that acme explosion of a car.
Right, it's not, I mean it's not really claustrophobic.
Well, it is cool claustrophobic right, you know.
But um um yeah, he was.
I think he was okay with me after the relationship never really became warm, you know.
Stopping Blogging in 201300:11:29
And when, when did you leave TECH?
When did I leave TECH?
So you, when were you just like i'm gone?
So so basically, twice you've been writing under mentor small bugs I was writing.
So I see yeah, let me like finish my like stupid ass biography.
So um, because i've told it in the hopefully a non-boring way, so it's great.
So the um in any case.
So I worked at this company um called it first, had this cool name of Unwired Planet.
Um, which was a cool, that's cool name right, love it.
Unwired Planet.
And we did smartphones before the smartphone.
We were doing smartphones in the 90s wow, smartphones in the fucking 90s.
We had this modified version of Html called Wml.
Some of you assholes out here are so old that you actually work with Wml.
Um, we shipped about a billion Wap browsers and I was the browser guy.
I wrote the, rewrote the browser core.
So technically, about a billion units of my code were shipped, for which we were paid nothing at all, and about like 30 000 people used the thing actually, and it was a terrible fucking user experience.
One time I was actually, I actually tried to use it to get directions.
Yeah, like you know um, like 1999, i'm like trying to drive somewhere and i'm like wow, this is your own cut, you're using your own code.
Yeah, i'm using my own code.
I tried to avoid using it because it was just too embarrassing.
I mean, the thing is, we didn't control the end-to-end experience right, like this is how crazy it was at the firm in Berkeley.
Um, you know okay, I named Chaos Tools, this is Geoworks and um basically, we did.
The Japanese were the people that had smartphones first, and the Japanese, you know, these Japanese hardware companies that we were working with had this idea about how to build smartphone software, which was very simple, which is that they would design the experience and we would.
They would send us screenshots and we would write code that looked like the screenshots.
You will notice that, for example, Windows is not developed this way.
Right, this was basically doing software in the way a Japanese hardware company thought you should do software.
Right, you know, software is one of Things the Japanese are notoriously worse at.
And so, you know, this is a sort of very painful experience, kind of like you want to, you know, this is the future, you want to do it, but you're basically working in this just like completely retarded way.
And then I moved to Unwired Planet, which was in the same industry, which was trying to solve the same problem, but they were like more sophisticated.
And so they were building like relationships.
And so they hired, for example, this guy who is the former like Secretary of the Interior under Carter or some shit like that.
And they knew how to schmooze.
And their basic principle was like, we're going to schmooze it up with the carriers and basically get the carriers to ask for this product and tell them about the wonders of the internet.
And I don't want to descend too deep into like business speak here.
For sure.
But, you know, this company was run by one of these types you find in Silicon Valley named Elaine Rossman.
And Alan Rossman, I'd heard like really bad things about Elaine Rossman from the GeoWorks people because a lot of him, them worked with him at this ATT attempt to do mobile phones in like 1991, early 90s, which got like blown apart by this guy.
Anyway, he was sort of one of these like Steve Jobs wannabes.
And so, you know, I sort of imagine him like flanking the halls like Jeff Goldblum in Steve Zasoo, you know, like, right.
He was basically talked about as if he was Jeff Goldblum in Steve Zasau.
I forget the name of the company.
Yeah, yeah, the underwater.
Yeah, There you go.
There was the accent.
Underwater.
Underwater.
And so anyway, so, you know, I moved to his company because they seem to actually be getting shit done in like, you know, Europe and America and, you know, meet this guy.
I never worked directly for him or anywhere close, but he looks like a homeless chess player.
But anyway, he has Lynn is very, very nice and Belgian.
You know, anyway, so we had this plan of basically creating this alternate world of like self, the cell phone internet.
And I was lucky enough to be one of those, you know, there's sort of three kinds of people in Silicon Valley.
There's people who don't make any money.
There's people who make money off shit that doesn't end up working.
And then there's people who make real money off of shit that works.
So it's very lucky to be someone who made a little bit of money off of shit that doesn't work.
Anyway, sort of the world conquering attitude of phone.com, which we changed our name to, which is sort of the CTO was like phone.com.
So we went to the dorkiest name ever.
Unwired planet, much better.
I know, I know, but it was the day of the portal, and our CTO was like browsing the domain name registry.
He's like, I can buy phone.com for $50,000.
He should have just kept it.
And does this.
And then we become phone.com.
And then we go public.
As phone.com.
As phone.com.
And there was a little contest within the company to choose the stock symbol that we would go public under.
Yeah.
And one of the things that I'm saying.
Please don't tell me it's like a phone, like an actual phone.
No, no, no, it's a four-letter symbol, right?
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, not a logo.
It's a stock symbol, right?
So a friend of mine was talking, my like office mate was talking to me later.
He's like, well, you know, I was going to send in the suggestion that for phone.com, it should be PHCM, which could be pronounced fuck'em, right?
And then he was like, no, that would be unprofessional.
So we go public.
And of course, not only is our stock symbol fuck'em, but we later merged with software.com whose stock symbol was SWCM.
Everybody thought them.
Fuck them.
Exactly.
You said it, right?
You know, I thought, you know, you'd never get it.
But, you know, in any case, basically, needless to say, if you bought fuck'em at the IPO, at its peak, it became like a $10 billion company.
If you bought and held, you know, it became worthless.
Right.
So if you bought and you sold when you shut, you made a lot of money.
You made a lot of money.
And if you were employed as a pre-IPO employee, you know, stock.
You got stock.
This is the day of the classic stock option.
So I basically wound up with, I think, you know, you know, in terms of the problem was I sold the stock and then I bought other technology companies because I was convinced that the future was happening.
The future was in fact happening.
It wasn't happening quite yet.
Right.
Right.
So, you know, if you bought like web van stock because you believed that online grocery delivery was the future, which I did, and it was 20 years later.
You still got fucked in the ass.
Right.
So, you know, with the ex and other people got fucked in the ass worse.
Other people ended up with actual like tax liabilities.
Anyway, the bubble explodes.
I switch companies.
You know, then I'm like, okay, wow.
You know, I had this plan when I dropped out of school, like that I was going to do like independent computer research, science research.
I just met my wife at that point.
And, you know, the company I was working for, which was like a Japanese-owned company that used to be, remember the Palm Pilot?
Yes.
Like they bought the code for that.
It was, it was a shit show.
And it was on its way down and everything was on its way down.
And it was early, you know, 2002.
And I just met my wife and she, we didn't get married for eight years, but she was like, go for it.
Right.
So I quit my job and I was like, okay, I'm going to do the thing that I wanted to do when I dropped out of grad school.
I'm going to basically do effectively an unsupervised PhD thesis in computer science.
And so that's kind of what I spent from 2002 to 2013.
I spent doing.
And by like 2011 or 2010, I had two kids and was completely out of money.
And I also was depending on the kindness of my wife and my mother, neither of whom was rich.
My wife just had a day job as a tech writer.
And they basically were like, hey, you know, you got to actually fund this and make this a thing or get a fucking job.
Because basically, like, here I was for the last 10 years as a parent with kids, basically, no income to speak of, no savings.
And what am I doing?
I'm doing these insane fucking projects.
One of them is just this weird ass blog, right?
You know, and the other was unqualified reservations.
Unqualified reservations, right?
Which someone has, you know, extracted from Blogspot and which would have banned it long ago and put it up on unqualifiedreservations.org.
By the way, my current blog is the Gray Mirror.
That's Gray with an A, The American Way.
And the and you're writing this as a hobby.
Yeah, I'm writing it as a, you know, it was a hobby.
It's not, there's nobody's blogging as a profession in fucking 2010.
Right.
Right.
So, you know, by 2013, not even in 2013.
Right.
Right.
So by 2013, basically, like, you know.
Do you notice the readership growing?
Yeah.
The readership definitely growing.
Right.
You know, there was definitely a real readership.
I was definitely like a nano celebrity in a way.
I was already used to being a nano celebrity on the internet.
I was a nano celebrity when I was 19 on the internet, but it was a much smaller like internet.
It was used.
And it was not, it was Usenet.
And it was not for Landing Cut.
It was just in this.
It was for shaming that writer.
And it was, it was just in this weird ass literary world.
Gotcha.
You know, and which is actually like a lot of that early useness stuff became foundational and became sort of part of core internet culture.
Right.
Like through like a lot of it went to like something awful.
Right.
Right.
You know, in any case, you know, so I basically stopped blogging in 2013 because I had to turn this thing into a company.
It's called Urbit.
This is still exists.
It's out there.
Please don't look into it.
It's not cool at all.
And I mean that it's also too complicated to use.
And remember our talk about barriers earlier?
Yes.
You do if you have an IQ of over 110.
If you don't, never mind.
It doesn't matter what we're talking about.
You know, let's get to some jokes, drugs, drug humor.
Right.
In any case, so I started this thing.
And then, you know, of course, because I have this interesting like checkered reputation, the association of my checkered reputation and having this like cool, insane, because basically what I was doing for those 11 years was I was saying, okay, here's how we normally build computing systems.
This way that we do it comes, is very accidental and came out of history.
And if you have literally, if you're wearing an Apple Watch, it works the way it does because it's basically a structural copy of an IBM mini computer from, or not digital, a deck mini computer from like 1975.
And because that's the way computers worked in 1975, certain decisions have been taken that can't be untaken.
It's the way like evolution can't design like a human with six arms.
You know, right?
You just can't have a mutation that does that.
And so you're sort of locked into this one kind of way of doing things.
And so what I was trying to answer was the question of if you rethought this from scratch, like imagine you get like a USB drive with like the operating system from an alien spaceship.
Right.
And it's got, it doesn't have anything that reminds you of like a, you know, they didn't have a digital equipment corporation that made a machine called the VAX in 1976.
Right.
So, you know, how's it going to work?
It's going to be sort of completely structurally different.
And so like my thing is so different.
This was stupid, actually, but I was like, this is going to be so different that zero means true and one means false.
Right.
That's actually just mathematically more beautiful, you know, for stupid reasons.
It causes all kinds of stupid bugs.
But in any case, this is still, this is still a thing.
This is still a thing in, you know, 2022.
But we won't look it up because it's too complicated.
It's too complicated and you want to understand it and it's not cool.
How I Doxed Myself00:03:10
Okay.
So in any case, in any case, basically, so I basically quit.
You know, I ejected myself.
I have actually no association with the project at all.
Now, I do have some urban real estate, but I have no stock in the company.
I have no power.
I'm not involved with it.
I can't even tell you how to use this thing.
Actually, it's probably too complicated for me.
Founders Farewell.
There you go.
Sevre, right?
Did you leave?
Was it amicable?
Were you like, I'm out?
Oh, yeah.
I pushed myself out.
I was always completely in control of the company.
So it was more than amicable.
And I'm good friends with the founder, but again, not very cool.
You know what's cool is that picture there?
That's a still from Godard's contempt.
Yeah, I was just about to say that.
Did you recreate?
No, I wasn't.
No, no, that's not me.
That's Bernardo.
Yeah.
That's some famous iItalian actor.
Yeah.
It's actually an iItalian.
That's actually the, that is the via, God.
You enjoyed anonymity for a long time, right?
Well, here's actually, no, actually, I doxed myself fairly early in the blog.
Okay.
Here's a funny story about the way I doxed myself.
What are you laughing at like a lunatic?
Just the, it's just a look.
Because you said you like the anonymity.
He goes, no, I doxed myself very early.
It's just a funny, quick.
Yeah, that's a villa by the author of Caput.
Caput with two T's.
Look that up.
He designed this villa.
He was a fascist novelist.
He designed this great novelist.
He designed this villa himself.
Just look up Caput with Two T's villain.
And great having this guy.
I love real estate.
Yeah, yeah.
This is amazing.
If I can afford this, if Urbit takes over the world.
Oh, my God.
Caput with a K. K, K. With a K. Of course it's a K. Gotcha.
There, Igvilla.
Look for the... Jesus.
Curzio Malaparte.
Look up Curzio Malaparte.
Curzio Malaparte.
God, he's just dominated by like ad searches, right?
You know, every internet is fucked.
There it is.
Probably.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's the Via Malaparte.
Stunningly beautiful and like this modernist fascist Italian right there.
Exactly.
Exactly.
As I always say, the art is the best part of fascism.
Yes.
And the, especially in fucking Italy.
Right.
You can argue with that about Germany.
Italy just.
You know, in any case, where were we?
So, yeah, so I. You dox yourself early on.
Yeah, I doxed myself early on.
So in the way in which I doxed myself is somebody read my blog.
This is a funny story, actually, with no point to it.
But, you know, I basically, somebody contacted me and was like, hey, the way you posted about computer science is like sufficient to identify you.
He mails me and I'm like, ah, shit.
You know, anyone can tell.
And then this is like 2008, 9 or whatever.
And, you know, at the start of COVID, I moved to a small town in Nevada.
You know, Nevada, excuse me.
If you say Nevada in Nevada, you're going to have problems.
Right.
And it's like Persians and Italians, right?
I just call the whole state Vegas.
Operating from the Shadows00:03:43
Yeah, exactly.
So I moved to kind of a northern suburb of Vegas, which has a French, I prefer to think of it by the French name.
You know, the actor who was in the professional Jean Gerard des Pardu?
No, no, no.
Jean, Jean, Jean, you know, Renault.
Renault.
So exactly.
Renault, yeah, yeah.
You know, it's a much more Target, right?
You're going to the Target in Renault, right?
You know, and anyway, so I moved to Reno or Remo.
And I become friends with this guy who also from, you know, same general vague community rationalist or whatever in Renault.
And it turns out, and I become very good friends with him.
And then he's like, you know, Curtis, did you know that like in 2009, I was the one who sent that email.
And he was like, you know, it was actually pretty hard to figure out who you were.
I'm sure someone would have done it.
Right.
And so actually like operating out of the closet has had a couple of different effects.
It's had the effect of making sure that my like technical work, like my other career in like complicated computer science shit, will always sort of be like basically in computer science, in systems at least, you're trying to establish like a standard.
And so having this sort of baggage around your neck, for example, there's a Linux file system called ReiserFS, which is very innovative, interesting file system and was really one of the leaders to become the future of Linux.
You've heard of Linux.
It's this nerd thing.
And the file system is like a nerd part of it, like the liver, the liver of the operating system is the file system.
And you can kind of swap them out, which I wish you could do with livers, frankly.
Yes.
And you can kind of swap them out.
And Riser FS was the leading one.
And then Hans Reiser, that like autistic weirdo who developed and designed this very innovative file system, murdered his wife.
Right.
And the, you know, let's get Hans Reiser up here.
And so, you know, I didn't murder my wife.
She died of completely natural causes in the hospital.
Yeah.
You know, sorry.
Condolences.
Thank you.
And you can go to my website and read my poetry about it.
You know, and the, in any case, you know, that crippled, you know, his adoption as a standard.
Right.
You know, on the other hand, it's basically like having this, yeah, exactly.
Looks just like me.
Hair's a bit shorter.
You know, and same exact.
Same right.
Same expression in his eyes.
That was right.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, and the so he kills his wife and it hurts.
And it hurts the adoption of his technology.
That's right.
Even though it's actually genuinely brilliant technology.
One has to do.
It hasn't committed any murders at all.
One has to do.
And hasn't committed any murders at all.
But in any case, basically, but it's also like not a sort of social network that like people are on.
And so, you know, in a way, however, so that's sort of a negative effect.
But there's also kind of a positive effect in that, remember how we were talking about Burning Man?
Yes.
Like the playa is not the Caribbean.
You know, imagine if they held Burning Man in like, you know, Waterdale.
Right.
You know, like it would turn into like, you know, Freaknick.
Right.
Right, right.
And it would not be an environment in which anyone you meet is an old friend you've never met yet.
Right.
So, you know, operating out of the shadows has kind of created.
Operating out of the shadows creates this barrier to entry where you're like, okay, but there's something funky and weird about the founder.
He didn't kill his wife.
Maybe he was canceled in some way.
Monarchy, Oligarchy, Democracy00:13:42
Right.
Do I dare to use this?
And the thing is, if you're a person whose answer to that question is yes, bear in mind, this is like not something cool that you should look into.
Right.
Okay.
And it's too complicated for you to use.
It frankly doesn't work very well.
You know, I'm just, you know, I'm not sure from what I hear about the engineering since I left.
You know, it's really, it's just like, you shouldn't go there.
But the thing is, basically, like, like, like, you know, having those barriers to entry is a crucial part of like quality control.
Now, the problem is, of course, it's sort of also like inimical to growth.
Like Clubhouse is another good example of that.
Do you remember Clubhouse?
I was big on it.
Yeah.
I was into Clubhouse too, right?
I was in a club.
And then suffer quality.
It had an eternal September.
It had a real problem.
And it was very funny.
It was a big degree.
Well, technically.
It was a small group of people that, and it was very interesting because they would bring on like people every now and then.
I was a comedian.
So I would just sit in these rooms and listen to tech guys talk.
Mark Andreessen is on there like all the fucking time.
There would be a time to go, this guy, now we need someone to be funny.
Yeah.
And then I'd be funny.
Right.
And you should have Mark, you know, go and.
And then it all worked.
Do you want to see, like, you should go and see if Mark Andreessen will do your show?
Yeah, but then there was like, they started to do like struggle sessions in the rooms.
And then there was one room called Saudis and Jews.
That got wild.
That room got wild.
And I'd go in there every now and then and say, I'm half Saudi, half Jewish.
Yeah, It gets us back to the persons in the Italian.
It just degenerated so rapidly.
Right, right, right.
And it just became this like toxic fucking jungle, right?
And this is what we're doing.
And people play in America kind of in a lot of ways.
In your estimation, we have, because it's not a democracy.
It is more of an oligarchy.
Yeah.
And that's been proven.
Columbia Review or Princeton Review, one of them, I think Columbia did a study where they went, by any rational standard measure here, this is not a democracy.
No, it's not barely a Republican.
You know, who are the people who even matter, right?
You know, but yeah, it's like, it's a shit show.
And it's basically like, you know, these are sort of to the corruption by like power that we talked about in virology and the sort of like corruption by like low quality, which isn't really happening.
Imagine if just like there was like virology inflation.
Yeah.
So like anyone could call themselves a virologist.
Right.
Right.
You know, or like you could basically like Harvard like lowers its standards.
So you're basically like, you know, Harvard is selling, you know, Harvard virology PhDs for $4.99.
Right.
Right.
You know, what happens to the virology community then?
And what do they start to believe, right?
Well, we just, in my whole life, all we've ever seen is political scandals and disasters with absolutely no accountability.
Yeah.
And so here is here is in here.
And here is, here was sort of the like, the thing is, normally when you say, let's take power, you're like, okay, you have, you know, let's get back to like political basis.
We get back to political theory here.
We were having an interesting conversation, but it was too fun.
Yes.
And, you know, I want to get people back to like things that are hard to understand to drive the stupid people away.
Yes.
I want actually your viewership to go down because let's gatekeep because barriers to entry are really important.
In any case, so to gatekeep a little, let's go, you basically, what you, you know, the sort of the first conclusion to like jump to when you're in sort of a problematic situation is you're like, okay, I'm in a problematic situation.
Instead of like trying to solve this, it's like debugging is sort of the art for this.
You know, if you're, if you're a coder and you fix bugs, you have the mentality that the bug will never defeat you.
If you're beaten once by a bug, it like changes you like honestly as a man or a woman or a person.
And so you never let that happen.
Right.
And so you have to have like, you know, in order to basically step back to a place where you know that you are right about everything, you have to say, let me start by assuming that I know nothing.
And so I'm living in the year 2022 and like stuff is a little weird.
Right.
Like the narrative is weird.
And maybe it's weird like in the same way that like the narrative was weird in like the Soviet Union.
And you're just like, can I really, you know, the Soviet Union actually, it's funny.
There was, you know, I'd love an English translation of this if like you're a rich person out there.
There was something called the great Soviet Encyclopedia that was basically produced in like the 1960s.
It was like Soviet like Wikipedia, except it was done by the, you know, Supreme Soviet.
Right.
And so basically it was like the Soviet line on everything, the Soviet line on literature, the Soviet line on biology, the Soviet line on history.
And so it would have an entry for, say, the English Civil War, which would be a Soviet interpretation of the English Civil War.
It would have a section on the Revolutionary War, the American Revolution that was a Soviet interpretation of the American Revolution.
And if you think there's only one way to interpret the American Revolution, well, like, when was that ever true?
Right.
Right.
And there's just like the view that like.
You smashed the American Revolution.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Can you do it very quickly?
I can do it very quickly in like 15 seconds.
The American Revolution is the Vietnam War in the 18th century.
It's essentially a civil war between two British political factions by proxy.
And that's why the sort of violent events in it don't really seem to make sense in the same way that you look at the Vietnam War and you're like, how is this not like World War II?
Right.
You know, that's the American Revolution.
And a great way to read about it is if you just go to Google and you type in true history of the American Revolution, works fine.
And you'll actually get a book that was written in 1903.
Just go there.
So that's actually kind of cool.
See, the internet sometimes fulfills its promises.
It has its perks.
Like, you know, when Bryn and Page were like, we're going to digitize all the books like before 1923, all the books that are free, they're like, they weren't thinking like, what's the average like political opinion before 1923?
Where is it in the Overton window?
It's not even in the Overton fucking building.
Even relating it to the Overton window is hard.
And so in any case, when you see this problematic situation, what you want to do is to go back to like where you know nothing.
And one way to do that is to go way back in time and look at basically the first person who ever wrote coherently about political science, assuming that nobody knew anything is Aristotle.
And so if you go back to Aristotle's system of political science, first of all, in the same spirit as James Burnham's The Machiavellians, you don't actually need to read the politics.
You should just read the Machiavellians.
But, you know, it certainly doesn't hurt.
And Aristotle points out that there are basically three forms of government, monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy.
Government of the one, government of the few, government of the many.
When you're identifying an oligarchy or aristocracy, your question is always who matters?
Who is in the loop?
There's actually this great Armando Yanucci film called In the Loop.
Like there's this whole like little mini genre of like how the government actually works, which is like the British show Yes Minister, In the Thick of It.
All of Yanuchi's films are actually kind of like realistic.
They're like more realistic than they're not completely real, but they're like more realistic than like CNN.
And so if you want to look at how things work.
Well, the Chronicles of Narnia is more realistic than CNN.
That may very well be.
That has the same initials as well.
In any case, so there's three kinds of government.
There's monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy.
The government of the one, the government of the few, the government of the many.
And when you look at the way things work now, it's essentially an oligarchy of prestigious institutions.
One way to ask the question of like who's in power?
Like how does power actually work?
Not like what's written, you know, in this piece of paper, but like who actually matters is to say, imagine, and you can, you have to be able to say this for any regime, any kind of government.
So imagine that you're like a Nazi from outer space.
Remember that film Iron Sky?
You're a Nazi from outer space, and your goal is to like turn the world Nazi.
Your goal is to get as much Nazi power as possible.
So the question is, and you can take over a certain number of people's brains.
You can attach a little like Nazi unit to their brain that turns them into like secret Nazis.
Right.
So without revealing themselves, they try to kind of guide everything in a Nazi direction.
So they might be like, you know, writing a story about Epstein.
They might kind of emphasize his Semitic background.
Right.
You know, and so they kind of try and sort of tilt reality.
And so, and I'm skipping, you know, ahead because the question is, who would they take over?
Who wouldn't?
And the answer would be, I'm not sure which institution they would want more, whether it's Harvard or the New York Times.
Right.
I don't know.
It kind of doesn't matter, or it's hard to tell because they agree with each other completely.
Like Harvard, the State Department, and the New York Times, like, you know, they're like peas in a pod.
They never fight with each other.
This is our cathedral.
This is a cathedral where you have all these, you know, supposedly independent institutions that all agree with each other.
They come to the same conclusions.
They come to the same conclusions.
And those conclusions.
And why do they come to the same conclusions?
Let me finish for a sec.
Why do they come to the same conclusions?
They come to those same conclusions because those conclusions act as political formulas for exactly this system.
They cause people to think basically, you know, experts should be in charge and we should give them a lot of money.
And so basically, like, nobody's in charge of this.
Right.
And the thing is, when you talk to people, the more important they get, the more they will be like, people are locally in charge.
You have these little emperors like the Peter Dazzaks of the world.
But overall, nobody's in charge of this thing.
And that's what makes it an oligarchy.
And one thing that you've said that's very interesting is an oligarchy tends to produce a very uneven, disjointed strategy for governance.
Yes, because nobody's in charge.
And so because nobody's in charge, there's no accountability.
There's no organization that can be like, you know, that's sort of superior to Peter Dazak that can say, besides taking like a vote of Congress that says this guy will not get any more funding.
Moreover, if he doesn't get funding, all of his people will still keep getting funding.
So when you, there's no way to like cut off that, to amputate that poisonous arm.
Right.
And so, you know.
You have the same critiques of society or you share some critiques with people on the left, like a Chris Hedges.
Sure.
Right.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's very easy to see like pieces of this system, and a lot of people see it very clearly.
And it's your foreign policy, like with Chris Hedges.
I think there's like a very similar take of this as like a self-licking.
But his take would be strengthen public institutions, more unionizing, more.
Yeah, which is like giving more money to Peter Dazak.
Right.
And so my take basically as a foreign policy take is just shut it all down.
Right.
Close all the bases, all the embassies.
You know what?
If you want to deal with the government of France, send an email.
If it's really complicated, maybe you can zoom.
So it's unwinding the empire.
It's unwinding the empire.
It's an American Gorbachev doctrine.
And so the argument or the question is, what happens in that power vacuum to Russia and China?
Sure.
But let's, that's a pretty deep hole.
Let's pull out of that hole.
Sorry.
And it's a deep fun hole.
But let's pull back to the basic, like the basic political theory.
So what you're looking at here is basically when you look at democracy as a form of government, basically where power is actually broadly spread across the population and power in the sense that the population is constantly sort of making actual choices.
Like any actual power figure who's not symbolic.
Politic.
Like, you know, let's execute Socrates would be an example of like a democratic decision, right?
You know, and so literally they executed the greatest philosopher in history based on an internet poll.
Okay.
That's democracy.
Right.
So, you know, more generally, the equation of democracy and politics is interesting.
This is something you can find people uttering the same rhetoric in the early 20th century where they basically condemn.
You'll notice that in the English political language as it stands, the word politics has a negative connotation.
If you're politicizing anything, you're going to politicize U.S. foreign policy.
It's very bad.
But democracy has a positive connection.
Right.
Right.
So what gives, right?
You know, and it's like, then you're like, basically, you look around the world and you notice, you know, weird anomalous things.
Like, for example, you ever heard of North Korea?
Like, do you know the official name of North Korea?
What's the official name of North Korea?
I don't know.
The DPRK.
It stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
So that's one place name and three synonyms for democracy.
Yeah, sounds good.
So basically, what democratic means today is just legitimate in some abstract sense.
And so, you know, basically that's how like the European Commission, which is basically about as accountable to like the like voters of Europe as like Kim Jong-un is to like might, right?
You know, is basically represents democratic democracy and like civil society.
That's another euphemism for oligarchy that you'll hear.
You know, respected institutions, how are they respected?
You know, it's like if you go to Wikipedia, Wikipedia has the policy of reliable sources, which are prestigious institutions.
Jefferson and Hamilton's America00:15:53
And like ostensibly, that's sort of an objective thing in a way.
But if you go to like the page for that and, you know, with the question, like, what is a reliable source?
Basically, what you'll find is that a reliable source is a source that is reliable.
Are these consolidations of power and influence among elites inevitable?
They are inevitable in an oligarchy.
And so basically, they're sort of an inevitable part of oligarchical governance.
What happens?
And so the way they evolved, which is sort of useful to know, is that basically if you look at the U.S., this is like short, simple U.S. political history as like quickly as I can give it.
So basically, in the 1890s, the U.S. is in what's called the Gilded Age.
And power in that age is sort of relatively decentralized and it's kind of in the hands of sort of corrupt politicians who are easily bribed by like large companies.
And it's the Gilded Age.
It's the robber barons.
Sort of all these stereotypes are basically kind of true.
And government is basically, you know, the effect is like China.
Like you'll notice there's a lot of shit that was built then.
They seem to have been able to do things very, very quickly.
They also empire fucking state building is like, you know, being built faster than like my friends like Vacation House.
Like there's like there's some right.
There's like some kind of capacity in that in that society that has vanished.
It's also like very corrupt, which no one thinks is a good thing.
And like there's just, it's like fucked in a lot of ways, right?
And the thing is that the power is not in the hands of the sort of most socially dominant classes at the time.
Power is not in the hands of the smartest people.
The idea of a professor telling what the government, the government what to do would be like having like a programmer tell the government what to do.
It'd be like, what?
Like, why?
It would be insane.
It would be insane.
Right.
And the thing is, but basically there's a kind of a sort of like a thermal inversion of power whenever like the best and the smartest people are not the people running the show.
And so the old intellectual classes, sort of where this movement starts in America, at least in Britain, it's the Fabians.
In America, it's the Mugwumps, the liberal Republicans, people like Charles Francis Adams Jr., who's like one of my favorite writers ever, his brother Henry Adams, who wrote the education of Henry Adams.
They're kind of doyens of this very aristocratic.
Imagine if like, you know, David Foster Wallace was also a Kennedy, right?
You know, like that's like the level of status that these motherfuckers have.
They were blue bloods.
Total blue bloods.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, and very sophisticated and also the best intellectuals of their time.
Right.
Right.
Adams is the editor of the North American Review, which is like the New Yorker of its time, or rather the Vanity Fair of its time.
And I'm sorry.
And the, and, and, um, and so basically you have the intellectual elites who are realizing the power of like science and thought, who are like at the head of this revolution.
And then they look at the most important function in the world, government, and it's being run by these like corrupt, like boss tweed motherfuckers and just like fucking Irishmen.
I mean, Italians, you know, and like people of just like no class and civilization, right?
You know, and who are stealing, who are in fact corrupt and who have no vision whatsoever and are just like letting shit happen.
And why did the Empire State Gilding, you know, you know, get built in 12 months?
Because like, you know, some WAP made a million dollars on the permits, right?
You know, and you're just like, this is unacceptable.
Like this is not a way we can live.
Right.
And so basically that turns into this philosophy of like contempt for politics and politicians and the idea that this should be this sort of cosmetic process and then real policy should be made by experts.
And so experts who are people who have universities.
Now we can't build any affordable households.
And so basically, here's like the biggest mistake in a way that was made with this.
You know, when you go sort of very, very far back, they're like, okay, democracy doesn't work.
Democracy doesn't work because basically the people will just have their votes stolen by these like clowns.
The people do not vote for philosopher kings.
They do not like philosopher kings.
They vote for like thieves and clowns.
It's like imagine, you know, think about elections and some.
What about George W. Bush?
Think about elections in some, you know, America at the time.
You got to remember, America at the time is a third world country.
It's a rising third world country.
And so you're like, basically, you know, let's think about a random third world country.
Let's say Paraguay.
Do you know anything about Paraguay?
Not a ton.
Do you think the citizens of Paraguay are entitled to, you know, are actually capable of like devising the right policies for the future of Paraguay?
Not at this time.
Not at this time.
That is an excellent answer.
Not at this time.
And that leaves the possibility.
Okay.
That leaves open the possibility that the citizens of Paraguay could be educated.
Their brains could be extended with additional lobes.
They could become like citizen philosophers like the citizens of Athens who executed Socrates.
I'm not saying this couldn't work.
And, you know, one of the things you see is that as systems become smaller and more like democracy at Burning Man, it's not a democracy, but you could imagine it being democracy.
It would still probably be fucked.
But like, you know, currently it's some kind of oligarchy or it's a complete autocratic despotism.
Yes.
Right.
You know, you could imagine it as a democracy and maybe that would not be fucked.
Right.
But if you try to imagine, say, let's make say, since we mentioned it, Detroit is going to be democracy.
Yes.
And then the citizens of Detroit will elect a king of Detroit who is actually has absolutely an emperor of Detroit, who has absolute power over Detroit, right?
You know, are they going to like, or that, no, even better, let's say direct democracy, they will decide the laws of Detroit themselves and they will execute people by internet polls that like work if you're only geolocated to Detroit, you know, right?
And yeah, the, you know, like, you're just imagining an insane shit.
So no one, did anyone ever believe in democracy?
So democracy basically, you know, if it's funny, if you go to the Wikipedia page on Athenian democracy, there's an interesting line from a modern scholar, which is like, you know, it's interesting that so many cultures have tried to copy this system of government.
All we have, all the writing, all the writing from its own period was just like, this was the worst shit show ever devised.
Right.
You know, and so even in kind of this best case scenario, basically, like what you're seeing is like it had a really checkered reputation.
And it was considered basically, you know, between, you know, until essentially the like 18th or maybe even early 19th century, it's generally considered a slur.
It's like saying fascism or communism, right?
It's basically democracy is like mob rule and everyone knows that's bad.
And so it was, you know, then even in school when we were being taught about democracy, they would, they would always say, we are a republic because we don't want mob rule.
Right.
And so, and that was what that reflects is basically the original foundation of the Constitution, which is basically the Constitution is a right-wing coup.
And it's a right-wing coup because the articles of Confederation, which are much more democratic and much more rob rule, mob rule, and much more Jacobin, as they would have said in those days, because remember, the fucking French Revolution is fucking going down.
That's right.
Right.
You know, and it's a fucking shit show.
And like Thomas Jefferson is over there basically being like the Jane Fonda of the French Revolution, right?
You know, and he's, he's like, oh, yeah, you know, we got to kill some aristocrats.
You know, the blood of the, you know, the Tree of Liberty, right?
You know, you know, Thomas Paine is even worse.
Thomas Paine basically goes over there and he's like those Americans who like went to China and like hang up with Mao.
Right.
You know, and, you know, he gets so into French politics.
He gets himself in fucking trouble.
Right.
You know, and so the Americans who created the Constitution, notice that you don't know anything about the Articles of Confederation period except that it happened.
Interesting.
And complete historical blackout.
It's a complete, you don't need names of the people involved in events.
13 years of American history, right?
You know, like counting the, like, I mean, the constant, it has continuity with the whole revolution.
There's a Congress during that whole period, right?
It's an utter shit show.
And states are like almost going to war with each other.
Like Rhode Island basically has to almost be convinced to join the Constitution by a fucking blockade.
Right.
Right.
You know, crazy ass shit.
Right.
You know, and I mean, crazy ass shit goes like American history before the Revolution is like, that's a period of like over 150 years.
You've never heard of like Eliza Ruler's rebellion and shit, like insane the regulator war, never heard of it.
Right.
You know, insane historical blackout shit just because I'm a public school kid.
Literally, history started with Lizzo.
Yeah, history started with Lizzo.
So basically the Constitution, you know, which they did mention a couple of times, you know, as like it was, you know, printed but printed by God, you know, as they say in Utah.
And the Constitution is a right-wing coup that basically intends to install this like dual, very Silicon Valley structure.
It's like, you know, Eric Schmidt and Larry Page.
No, no.
What it's actually installing is basically a monarchy with George Washington as the like figurative monarch and Alexander Hamilton as like the startup CEO dude who actually does everything.
Right.
Right, right.
And Alexander Hamilton, by the way, was a black man.
Let's just go with, let's don't, don't, don't question.
Don't know.
Oh, stay off the fucking internet.
Don't go off the fucking internet.
Alexander Hamilton was a black man.
Okay.
He may not have been a black man, but how much do you like your job?
Alexander Hamilton was a black man.
Is that really the going thing now?
Okay.
No, it will be.
Alexander Hamilton.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
An African-American gentleman.
Yes.
Was the first king of America.
Okay.
And so, you know, basically he is running the U.S. government like a startup.
Right.
He's completely in charge of it.
He's like fucking Elon Musk and nominally is the Secretary of the Treasury.
Jefferson is the Secretary of State.
He's just like, this Hamilton motherfucker is running everything.
What the fuck, right?
You know, of course he is because he's basically Thomas Jefferson is a wonderful eccentric guy, just kind of a blowhard.
And like Hamilton actually knows how to get it done.
He's getting done.
He's getting shit done.
Right.
And so if you look basically at American history, it's again, pulling the camera way the fuck back.
It's this Constitution is this really cool design because it basically has structures that are designed to be stand-ins for sort of all three forms.
Originally, it was designed for the set, for the House to be very democratic, which is why like the mob power.
Now, of course, the House has a 98% incumbency rate and seniority rules that basically appear to have been copied from the most serene Republic of Venice.
And so it's this amazing bulwark against democracy.
And it creates like the Nancy Pelosis of the world that make the Supreme Soviet look like the Baltimore Orioles.
But in any case, the original design is like you take all three forces in government, the force of democracy, the force of aristocracy in the Senate.
The Senate was supposed to be aristocratic, and it was for a while before like the 15th, whatever the gas amendment, the direct election of senators.
And then the presidency was the focus of monarchy.
And the Supreme Court was originally supposed to just be like digital organ.
But again, that's another structure of oligarchy.
And that's a very, very low frequency oligarchy, which has very slow turnover.
And then the power dynamic between all of these institutions is left entirely unspecified.
This is how basically, in a way, it's sort of Hamiltonian government is like killed with Marbury versus Madison, which you probably read about in public school, where the Supreme Court is like, no, actually, I read the Constitution and it doesn't say this, but they meant we're in charge.
And so what's neat about this system and what has made it like survive a lot of crises that really probably should have killed it is that basically about every 75 or 80 years, you have a regime change in the United States.
You have a replacement of like the whole actual structural forces of government under the same name, which is a very common thing in history.
And it leads to-go into this more.
And it leads to like a different structure of forces.
So basic, and it centers around a president who is actually a monarch, not in that they call themselves king.
As you know, the Roman Emperor is never called.
FDR is an example of that.
FDR is an example.
And who else?
Lincoln.
Lincoln.
There you go.
So basically, what you have in all three cases is you have basically this startup regime.
And this startup regime, in Lincoln's case, one of the interesting things about Lincoln from a Silicon Valley, I'm just going to start saying Silicon Valley.
It sounds better.
It sounds better, right?
And it has all these like salacious overtones.
Yes.
And one of these Silicone Valley things is that you look at the Lincoln administration.
And you notice that the Lincoln administration is run by this weirdo, self-educated, wild genius political talent, Abraham Lincoln, really the first great American politician.
And some might say Jackson, some might say Van Buren.
Like Lincoln is like a combination of Jackson and Van Buren.
And he's like a Machiavellian genius and he's also like a genius orator.
And he really convinces people to this day, like think that Lincoln had like some kind of like philosophy.
Lincoln's philosophy was whatever is good for Abraham Lincoln.
And, you know, and he was a master politician.
And basically, FDR's philosophy is also whatever is good for FDR.
I think, I want to think Washington and Hamilton are like pure.
But the thing is, even with this level of like, you know, I don't really approve of Lincoln and FDR.
I don't approve of a lot of things that went on in their regimes.
However, one notices a couple of things about them.
One is that basically, if you look, for example, at the Lincoln administration, you'll see that a lot of it, the government that Lincoln controls, mainly focusing on the war effort, is controlled by these young 20-something guys, Nicolae and Hay.
Hay later becomes the Secretary of State in like the McKinley administration.
And you're just like, aha, I see an organization run absolutely from the top down by a pair of guys in their 20s.
Where have I fucking seen this before?
Right.
Oh, fuck.
Where have I fucking seen this before?
And they win, right?
You know, and they win because they're awesome.
And then you basically see that these regimes are created as these monarchical structures.
Then kind of central power kind of decays and they become oligarchies.
And it's like once there were like wires going up to the wheelhouse and the wires are cut.
Why does central power decay?
It's central power decays because everything, you know, it's like that's asking why do people die?
People all die for a different reason.
They die in different ways.
Let's skip forward to the FDR regime.
So the FDR regime is this quintessence of this like university driven revolution because we were the universities for 100 years ago for the fucking, for the fucking upper class.
They're from, you know, for like the 500 families, like the people that actually matter in this country.
The University Driven Revolution00:07:30
Like, and the, you know, this is a revolution of the university class.
FDR himself personally, like Lincoln, I guess, is not really a manager.
FDR is actually in some ways a lot like Trump.
He's a very vain person.
He's quite intelligent.
He's like not really into books.
He's like totally dominates a room when he comes into it.
He's like the most charming person in the world, very shallow.
But there's a huge difference between FDR and Trump, which is that FDR is from a super, like one of the most aristocratic American families.
Roosevelts.
The Roosevelts has huge confidence and he knows how to delegate because every time Trump tries to delegate, he's like, can I trust this person?
What if he's trying to become bigger than me?
What if Steve Bannon is trying to exceed me?
And he's like the worst fucking, you know, anyway, I don't say that.
I hate saying bad things about people, even if they're Donald Trump.
I think Donald Trump would make an excellent chairman of the board.
And that is the right job for him.
He should be promoted.
It's a promotion.
It's a more important job being chairman of the board than being CEO.
And so, Donald, if you're listening, stay off of Urbit.
But also.
Oh, he's going on Urbit.
He's on his way to Urban.
Stay off of Urbit and start thinking of yourself as like the CEO emeritus.
And you've made so much.
So anyway, so getting back to FDR and like this is sort of the birth of what we call the deep state.
Right.
Originally a Turkish word, I think first popularized by my friend Steve Saylor.
And Peter Del Scott had deep politics, maybe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's close.
It's the same basic thing.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, Scott was very familiar with like the sort of, you know, foreign, you know, like the eight industrial complex, you know, which my father worked for, you know, and the whole foreign policy insanity.
Yeah, the whole apparatus.
You know, that's just one arm of this deep state that was created by trusting the experts, right?
You know, nobody even knows what it's fucking for anymore.
Right.
Like nobody even knows what it's fucking for.
And people just like make up reasons, like, we got to predict all the viruses, right?
You know, that is the level of like top-level geostrategic thinking in U.S. foreign policy is at the level of let's collect all the viruses.
Right.
You know, but going back to sort of the, you know, the birth of this system, like there's a couple of things that I say to describe like the New Deal and the New Deal era.
One is I was particularly struck by a book in Theodore White's Making the President 1960, a very famous political book, in which he's talking to one of the Kennedy people or one of the older people who's kind of involved in like the new frontier.
And when we think about the new frontier, we think about the Kennedy world.
And there's this kind of edge of monarchy to like Kennedy world because this is a big family.
And right, you know, Roosevelt had kids as well, but they were just like incredibly corrupt, incompetent fucks.
And there was no way to take them seriously as politicians, you know, unlike say Teddy Kennedy.
Right.
Maybe it was a more serious time as well.
But the thing is, you see all of these monarchical complex complexes developing.
Right.
And so you see that when you have someone like FDR, who I encourage like all of my fans, but especially the libs to think of when they think of monarchy, when you see someone like FDR, basically, like, you know, and you see that, okay, he's not technically a hereditary monarch, but like the sort of attributes of hereditary monarchy that are like hereditary succession start forming as they have formed for thousands of years throughout human history.
So like, you know, you start to, from this perspective, you start to lose your kind of temporal exceptionalism.
You're like, history isn't ending at all.
And like government is kind of the same thing it's always been.
Right.
Right.
And, and, you know, if government is the same thing it's always been, it's easy to look at FDR's world and see a couple of different things.
One is, remember, I was talking, there was a guy like T. H. White, T.E. White, something, I forget his name, author of Making the President 1960, is talking to someone who remembers the New Deal era.
And he's basically in the New Frontier Act.
And when we think of like the New Frontier in Camelot, this is like the most exciting time ever.
This is like, my God, like being a frontiersman, like, you know, like, you know, Kennedy has Robert Frost read at his inauguration.
Biden has Amanda Gorman.
One of these things is maybe not quite like the other.
Right.
You know, like, and so you have this like, you know, excellence at the top and the sense of like heredity sort of forming.
And you're just like, what does this, what does this like Kennedy cult of the Kennedys have to do with like the American Revolution, right?
You know, and so you're seeing all these things develop.
Those things are way more intense in the Roosevelt era.
This guy who remembers the New Deal is like, oh yeah, you know, everything seems kind of dull and drab in the new frontier to anyone who remembers the New Deal.
That's how like how much fucking startup energy the New Deal had.
It's like working at Google in 2003.
Right.
Basically, you know, here is, you know, let's say you graduate from Harvard in like 1936 versus 2016.
If you graduate from Harvard in 1936 with a degree in this new field of economics, a field that has basically been completely reinvented in the last 20 years, you're like, oh, you know, I'm a Harvard man.
I'm really smart.
And I know somebody who knows somebody who knows Tommy Corcoran, Felix Frankfurter, or someone like that.
And somebody calls somebody and I get a phone call and they're like, would you like to come to DC?
Yeah.
And concealing your excitement, you're like, sure.
Okay.
I'm not doing anything else this time of year.
And you come to, but what would I be doing?
And, you know, the voice on the phone is like, we don't know, and it doesn't matter.
Come to DC, right?
And you come to DC and somebody puts you in an office and is like, okay, your job is to go, here's $5 million.
Your job is to go electrify Arkansas.
Like, you know, that's the New Deal experience.
That's a fucking startup experience.
And you're like 21, right?
And you're like, okay.
And you get it fucking done in like nine months.
Yeah.
Right.
And like that is what created the enormous faith in like the powers of the U.S. government that people had at that time.
It actually, the New Deal actually got shit done.
And ever driven on Route 1?
It's a New Deal project.
Of course.
Imagine that happening now.
Imagine, you know, right?
It is the laugh, right?
You know, and so it's this amazingly effective thing.
It's full of the best people in society.
And it's like incredibly dynamic.
It gives you incredible levels of like personal responsibility at incredibly young ages.
Now, imagine you graduate from Harvard in 2016 with a degree in economics.
You're like, okay, I'm going to apply for an unpaid internship on the Hill.
Do they pay their interns?
I don't know.
They make no dick, right?
You know, in any case, you really should have family that can help you out because you got to spend $1,300 on a room the size of a shoebox.
And then you're on somebody's staff and you're answering letters from Pork Pie, Iowa.
And then, you know, like, did they ever write?
Then, you know, even when you, after 20 years, you're not even writing legislation.
Certainly the senators, like the, you know, the congressmen never write any legislation.
They barely look at it.
They pass these bills they haven't even read.
The staff doesn't even write the legislation.
They get, they collect, they edit the legislation.
They get lines from like lobbyists and activists, which are the kind of two real sides of Congress.
Harvard Economics Internships00:15:34
And you're just like, this is like this insane thing.
And like as a young person, there's just no like joy in it.
So as a young person, your mind naturally turns after 75 or 80 years.
And by the way, let me finish explaining what happens at the top.
So FDR is not a brilliant manager.
He's a brilliant collector of talents.
He's like more like Peter Thiel than Elon Musk.
And so he basically collects these entire talents at the head of these or this organization and does all these like completely unethical things about World War II.
I always recommend Nicholson Baker's book, Human Smoke.
It's sort of one of the few, it sort of gives you the right mood of World War II, which is not a Marvel movie.
And that's, you know, as much as I want to, it is not a Marvel movie.
Right.
You know, and so FDR in 44 realizes that he's dying.
Anyone who's in the know knows he's dying.
Remember, the fucking people out there are so brainwashed by the cathedral of that time, they don't even know he's paralyzed.
Interesting.
They don't even know he's right.
They don't even know he's fucking paralyzed.
They don't know he's had like a private subway station in New York for like, you know, it's like, this is a level at which like, if you look at the distance at the level, how easy it is to like contain the truth from the perspective of the media at that time, it's just like this.
Amazing.
Right.
You know, it's amazing, right?
You know, it's Orwellian.
Like Orwell worked for the BBC, right?
He knew this, right?
You know, and so Roosevelt in 44, he's dying.
He knows he's dying.
Everybody who's in the know knows he's dying.
The public is informed that he's in the best of health, fit as a fiddle.
Right.
And anyone who looks at him can see he's dying.
And so his previous vice president has been Henry Wallace.
Now, one thing to understand about the 30s, which was sometimes called the Red Decade, is that in the 30s, everyone who was cool was communists.
Okay.
Just read a book by Eugene Lyons called The Red Decade, and you'll see that clearly.
A communist or a communist sympathizer.
My grandparents were actually communists.
This is a non-debatable historical fact.
So, you know, but basically, the communists are at this time, they're selling like one or two percent of the population.
If you look at the people who voted for the same guy, Henry Wallace, in 48, when he ran on the progressive party ticket, note that word progressive.
Yeah.
That's also what my grandparents called themselves.
In fact, they were card-carrying communists.
You've heard that word somewhere else, progressive, right?
And its meaning has never changed.
It's just like most people who call themselves progressives don't even know the history of the word.
They're like those people in like New Mexico who still practice like the Jewish rituals, you know, but don't even know they're Jews, you know.
And but that's where, you know, like even cancellation, that's a that's a communist practice that comes from an internal, like like internal, if you read a book called The Romance of American Communism, there are all these like cancellation memoirs from like the 50s, right?
From inside the party.
Yes.
And so anyway, but FDR realizes that he intends to found a regime.
He intends to found something that is his, that will last for many years, certainly into the 2020s, after him.
And therefore, America must no longer be a monarchy.
What must happen is that basically all of these bright, amazing people, like the best and the brightest, right?
You know, in the 60s, it's still kind of the best and the brightest.
You can use that without like joking.
Like nobody, nobody would describe like Susan Rice as the best and the brightest, right?
You know, and she's not dumb, right?
You know, actually, her son is like a famous-based Stanford person.
Susan Rice is not dumb.
This is public.
And Susan Rice is not dumb.
For sure, she's not dumb.
She's not dumb, but she's not fucking Dean Acheson.
John Bolton is also not Dean Achenson.
You know, I read fucking John Bolton's book, and he's like, basically, he's like, I am the second coming of Dean Acheson.
Yeah, he's like, you have the same muscles as he's not.
Dean Achinson avoided wars.
Well, you know, I can say some things about the inaccurate.
Sure.
But I mean, John Bolton loves it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In any case, basically, like these are pygmies.
And so, you know, what you see is basically FDR does this faryonic thing, where as his successor and vice president in 1944, he picks Harry Truman.
And who the fuck is Harry Truman?
Harry Truman is a nobody.
So what?
And like, he's a nobody of like very limited intelligence, very limited.
He's not really prominent.
He's a member of like the Pendergast boss faction.
He's not even a progressive Democrat.
He's not even a New Dealer.
Right.
And so basically, by picking someone who's not even a New Dealer, which is a masterstroke, it was FDR's finest stroke because he's basically saying, who is going to succeed me?
The answer is a nobody.
And it's immediately reminiscent of Alexander the Great when he was dying.
I don't know if this story is true.
It's a story I've read.
It's a cool story.
He's dying and all of his like henchmen, he's like 30 or something, all of his henchmen are gathered around him.
And they're like, who shall inherit the empire of Alexander?
Who shall be the next, you know, who shall the kingdom go to?
Who should the empire go to?
And his last two words are tokra tos, which means to the strongest.
Ah.
And so, you know, almost these people almost like figured of like pull out their fucking swords and like the funeral ropes.
Right.
Right.
You know, and so, but FDR is doing something slightly different by saying power should go to nobody.
He ensures that Harry Truman does not have the gravitas or power to actually command the deep state.
That's right.
And so he basically lets the deep state command him and give him little teleprompter scripts to read.
He's not like demented and he doesn't start reading the directions on the teleprompter, but he basically is like inaugurates the era of the kind of semi-figurehead president.
President.
And power has a vacuum.
You know, since he's Eisenhower, Eisenhower is openly saying, yeah, I don't really know what goes on.
I don't really know what goes on.
And since then, Nixon does this thing.
Nixon does this thing where he's like, no, I will really be the president and try to regain command of the bureaucracy.
Good luck with that.
This is the way Bolton and Barr also think.
Bolton and Barr also have this thing of like, let's actually try to, we're the grown-ups in the room.
We will actually make the U.S. government work.
No, you won't, you fucks.
You know, and like, go like shave your mustache and retire, right?
You know, and so that basically sort of brings us to the like political structure of today.
That's how we got to the oligarchy we're in today.
If you pull back from that story of like where the deep state is the new deal, it's the personal regime of FDR without the person of FDR.
The New Deal comes into play.
All of the people, the architects of the New Deal, become the heads of all these institutions.
All of these institutions are now more powerful than Harry Truman.
The great foundations.
Right, the Great Foundation.
You know, like Carnegie Rockefeller Ford, there's a whole philanthropic industrial.
And they all have exactly the same fucking ideas.
And these ideas are like dumber than a post and smell like shit.
Does this structure work at all?
Does it work at all?
No, no, it has to be completely ripped out.
And here is basically the problem is that it has to be completely ripped out.
And the only sort of form of government that can rip it out is the same form of government that the U.S. goes through every 75 or 80 years.
Which is basically...
And so...
Is the worry because a lot of people that say that read your work and say it's very interesting, but they go, the people that really also seem to like it are people that love or seem to flirt with the idea of theocracy.
So, so, yeah.
So, you know, it's funny you should use the word theocracy, Tim, you know, because have you ever seen signs on people's lawns that tell you what to think?
No, no, no, no, for sure.
Like, and that's another kind of theocracy.
And so, yeah, so, so, so, in a way, it's like, it's an interesting point because in a sense, like you conclude when looking at history that sort of the libertarian kind of freedom of speech world has never exactly been a thing.
Right.
And so, your question of how to sort of do something like that is like, basically, what you have to realize is that most human beings will sort of always believe what they're taught to think.
Right.
And therefore, control of what they're taught to think is sort of always in the hands of someone.
And it should be in the hands of someone responsible who has no need to tell anything but the truth, who has an incentive to tell the truth.
And that's not the religious right.
And it's not the wolves.
No, it's, it's no one.
It's like basically, and here's the thing.
You know, you get into like this like culture war like bullshit.
Like, okay, like, and, and I'm just like, I have less and less patience.
I'm sorry.
I have less and less patience for this shit.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, and when we go back to like Roman history, you know, and one of the things we see in, again, pulling the camera way the fuck back on the history of the Roman Republic.
What we see is that for like 400 years, there's something called the conflict of the orders.
And at first, it's patricians versus plebeians.
Later, I'm going to butcher the Latin.
It's optimares versus populares.
It's basically, you know, optimares are the aristocracy, the blue state.
Popularis or the red state, you know, the populace, right?
You know, and so even now you can you can just sort of discern right and left.
And so in the late Roman Republic, basically this political conflict degenerates into actual civil war because these people had like they had like balls, they had like normal testosterone levels, they like know how to like fight each other, and they were like normal human beings.
They also didn't have postmates, they also didn't have postmates, right?
DoorDash, all the things, also DoorDash, Uber, right?
You know, life was a lot harder, they were a lot harder.
You know, we can go into the whole anti-technology thing.
This is getting a little long, so maybe in a different episode.
Yes.
But I hope you're having fun.
No, I'm listening.
This is fascinating, amazing stuff.
All right.
Really?
All right.
All right.
I'm going to run out of team soon.
My caffeine's going to wear off.
But let me, so, so let me talk, and your brain is probably full.
I mean, it is full, but it's really, this is really interesting stuff.
And again, I think that's the best.
Yeah.
Let me finish with a little bit of Roman political stuff.
Okay.
And we'll get off of political science and we can have a little chill area when we talk about sports or something.
And because you're probably an Islandist fan.
Are you an Islandist fan?
I don't care.
I mean, I've left Long Island.
That's fine.
That's fine.
I have Beverly Hill.
I'm Persian now.
I'm an Arab.
The way, if you want to get, as I call it, like clear-pilled, the way to basically get your head out of this culture war bullshit is to take that attitude toward the islanders and apply it to the Republicans and the Democrats.
That's right.
I agree with it.
It's incredibly refreshing.
And it will leave a chunk of neurons in your head that is the size of a fucking baseball free to think about other things.
That's right.
Okay.
So, you know, and there are many, like, I'm not even saying don't think about political science.
I'm saying take a break from thinking about political science.
Yeah.
And you'll have that baseball free.
And then maybe that baseball can come back with like Aristotle and James Burnham and stuff, but just let it rest.
Right.
Let it chill out.
Let it become like soft, like Kobe Beach.
Yes.
Okay.
So, you know, the, because it needs a fucking break after these last few years.
Oh, for sure.
You know, and in any case, in Rome, you had, you know, the conflict of the orders, you know, in like 80, 90 BC or whatever, becomes a civil war.
And it becomes a civil war between these two tyrants, Marius and Sulla, who are kind of the Hitler and Stalin of the ancient Roman world.
And they're the Hitler and the Stalin of the ancient Roman world because they sort of, they are monarchs and they rule as monarchs, as effectively kings.
But even when they become de facto, they never claim the title of king.
The Caesars never did, right?
And Rex, which means king, is never used, you know, by the emperors.
Imperator just means commander.
In any case, both of these cats, you know, are they're leading a faction in the civil war.
And when their faction wins and dominates all of Rome, they basically govern from one side.
So when you're talking about like the religious right, you know, or the woke left, and you're imagining a dictator who really believes all of these things with like the power of the religious right and the woke left.
The religious right, you know, as Michael Anton calls it, the Red Caesar comes to power, you know, and he's basically like bans birth control.
And then the woke left, you know, comes to power and basically makes everyone gay.
Makes men take birth control.
Makes men take exactly.
Makes men take birth control.
Yes.
Fucking genius comedic line.
You know, and makes men take birth control.
And you're just like, no, right.
And so, you know, what each of these individuals specifically do is when they come to power, they do this thing that's called proscription.
That's like prescription, like your add-oral prescription, but with an O.
And what proscription means is that basically you take your prominent enemies, you kill them, and you give the money to your friends.
So imagine if like Donald Trump is like, now we're going to execute Steve Bannon and like we're going to give the money.
We're going to execute, sorry, George Soros, and we're going to give the money to like Steve Bannon and his friends.
Right.
And then, you know, then Barack Obama, you know, after being like chased through the swamps, the stories of these individuals are incredible.
Barack Obama takes power and he's like, now we're going to take all of Peter Thiel's money and we're going to give it to the underprivileged and also to George Soros.
Right.
And also the underprivileged, but as well, like George Soros.
Right.
You know, and, you know, of course, by far, I'm sure you know this, by far, most billionaires and especially old money is blue.
And the, but it's not all of them.
Not all of it, but most of it.
Right.
You know, and in the size of like, you know, progressive philanthropy as compared to the size of conservative philanthropy is like comparing a Burger King to In-N-Out Burger.
Right.
And.
But I also think the definition of blue has changed because if you look at the military industrial complex, some of those people are identifying as blue.
Yeah, even that, the blue is seeping.
Yeah, it's no longer.
Hillary Clinton doesn't know.
She doesn't feel blue to me.
I mean, I know she's blue.
Yeah, it depends.
It's no longer the age of General Jackie Ripper.
That's true.
Right.
Right.
You know, and so in any case, basically, like these civil wars are like a very bloody time.
Right.
And so, you know, you have this reaction to these civil wars.
Like Sula wins in the end.
And he's like, I am Sula.
I will restore the Republic.
But he can't really restore the Republic because the Republic at a certain level, you know, it's like Paraguay.
Right.
Not at this time.
Right.
And so, you know, the only question is sort of who's basically going to rule.
And I have two stories about that.
Caesar and Roman Civil Wars00:15:45
One is Caesar and Augustus, the Caesars, basically sort of find this kind of different pattern, which works.
They're not red or blue.
This is the most unoriginal metaphor ever.
They're purple.
And they're purple not in that they're centrists and that they want to diffuse power between both of these groups.
Oh, no.
They're monarchs.
Right.
But they're purple monarchs.
They're not, there is no red Caesar.
Red Caesar is Marius.
Blue Caesar is Sulla.
Right.
But Caesar is purple Caesar, which is also, of course, the color of empire.
Right.
As well as, you know, traditionally associated with homosexuality.
Many of these emperors are gay.
And in fact, what's called, I have this other theory that's what's called the five good emperors was actually this like sort of little gay ring that was going on.
So we need a gay to kill Caesar.
I'm like, some say we need a red.
In fact, Tim, I'm not.
Anyway, some say we need a red Caesar.
Some say we need a blue Caesar.
It's possible that following the example of Pius Antoninus, what we really need is a gay Caesar.
But also Hitler was gay.
But I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but Hitler was gay.
But in any case, sort of.
It's going to disappoint so many of his fans.
I know, I know.
I actually had this argument on a podcast with like a real white nationalist podcaster.
And, you know, like some people were very mad about this gay Hill thing.
You know, I think it's very clear.
Libs could be mad about it too.
Sure.
I think it's very clear.
And if a major leader is not surrounded by like women that he's like banging, there's a reason for that.
For sure.
What is the most obvious reason for that?
What about American recent American president?
Never mind.
In any case, I really don't want to go there.
But in any case, Caesar, here's this anecdote about Caesar.
Caesar comes from the popularis.
Yeah.
He starts as a red state politician.
Imagine him as like DeSantis, also a military man.
Right.
And he's basically like fights in the civil wars.
I'm not saying DeSantis is as cool as Caesar.
That's a ridiculous comparison.
Of course.
You know, but the, I mean, Caesar is also a great literary man.
You know, he writes the best prose of his age.
He fucks.
Right.
You know, like a lot of amazing things about Caesar.
But the most amazing thing in some ways about Caesar is what he does when he wins the civil war.
Right.
So there's this incident after, I forget the name of the battle, a battle in Africa.
There's this incident and the last senatorial force in office is led by Cato.
And Cato is like the Bernie Sanders of his time.
He's like completely authentic.
Everybody respects Cato.
Everybody knows that Cato's spirit is the spirit of the old Republic.
But the thing is, the old Republic, you know, it's like Senator Papatine said, the old republic doesn't work anymore.
Right.
You know, and it just doesn't, you know, and I'm sorry, but it doesn't.
And that will be the subject of my next story.
It just doesn't.
And so Caesar, you know, defeats, you know, the last blue state army.
He's sort of the red state army.
And then he defeats Cato and Cato does this thing.
Bernie Sanders would never do this.
He commits Harakiri.
He actually cuts his belly open with a fucking sword and dies.
Yeah, right.
Incredibly based.
Right.
So you have to respect Cato.
But, you know, here's the thing.
In Cato's tent, which Caesar captures, is a big chest full of letters from back home.
And the thing is, knowing about this proscription thing, knowing about this proscription thing, you're like, imagine you're like a rich guy in Rome.
You're not rich, but imagine you were rich.
You're in Rome and you want to protect your villa.
Frankly, you got a pretty nice villa.
Right.
You know, one thing that you might think of doing is writing a letter to both sides and being like, hey, you know, my friend Cato, you know, I love your policies.
You know, your faith in the old Republic is like, you know, and then you would be like, Caesar, you know, your new ways, you know, right, you know, and then, you know, the problem is that basically if Cato's tent gets captured, there's your letter.
Right.
Caesar's like, you know, you know, I'm not feeling too good about you right now.
Right.
And so Caesar's guys, you know, being very practical individuals are like, this is amazing.
What do we do?
Let's, well, how do we, you know, do we start with A?
Do we start with Z?
Like, what do we do with these guys?
And Caesar, being an imaginative strategic visionary whose name would be a synonym for the word king for the next 2,000 years plus, is like, oh, here's what you do.
Take this chest, put it on a bunch of logs of wood, pour olive oil all over it, and set it on fire.
And these guys are like, what the fuck?
And Caesar's like, you don't fucking get it.
We fucking won.
We're all our people now.
Right.
And so, you know, it's sort of Caesar's like genius in saying that basically he's the monarch of like all the fucking people.
Right.
It's like, you know, and here's what happens.
And, you know, Caesar, you know, if you do this, like Caesar could have taken a little more care with his personal security.
Okay.
So if you're out there listening, you know, you're probably the next American Caesar.
Like, you know, don't mess with that stuff.
All of my audiences, little Caesars.
You know, they're all eating little Caesar.
They're eating it right now.
You know, so if you're going to do this, like, you know, you know, just like be sensible.
You know, you know, but Caesar was amazing, but his nephew, Octavian, who becomes Augustus, the next Caesar, also amazing, basically follows Caesar's position.
The whole conflict of the orders, red state versus blue state, it's never heard from again.
It disappears.
Imagine an America in which the red versus blue distinction doesn't matter.
Neither side.
You know, most people, when they vote in elections today, they have a single reason for why they want to vote.
It's like fucking Persians versus Italians.
The Persians vote because they want to defend themselves against the Italians.
The Italians vote because basically they're like, these Persian motherfuckers are going to do to us what we did to Volerian.
Beyond that, nobody's like, this isn't like Norman Rockwell.
No one's like, oh, we need to guide.
Here are my ideas about nuclear policy.
Fuck that.
That's all gone.
It's just self-defense out there.
And so if you can get to a point where the self-defense is no longer needed, you should really be comfortable saying, I'm not going to engage in this ridiculous spectacle again.
That is the way the Romans felt after a few years of the early Roman Empire.
The last Roman Empire that actually tried to hold like elections in the street, like where people could vote Caligula, and it was a fucking joke.
And everybody knew it was a joke, and nobody tried it again thereafter.
And so, you know, basically, you know, that's sort of the way that politics ends.
The way that politics ends is basically people are like, this is just a system.
The system of the conflict of the orders created Caesar.
Caesar couldn't come out any other way than through the civil war.
The next Caesar will somehow come out of the next president who's an FDR, who's a Kennedy, will somehow come out of an American election.
That's the only way you get to be president.
Right.
Right.
And they will just be like, you know what?
I just got elected president.
It says in the Constitution.
I just read the on the bathroom.
I read a couple times.
I had one of those long, difficult shits.
So I read it over again.
It says that the president is a chief executive of the executive branch.
To my mind, that's pretty clear.
It says the Supreme Court can write opinions and Congress can pass laws.
And it is the president's understanding that he's here to execute the supreme law of the land.
I, as president, of course, but I as president will treat the opinions and the laws passed by Congress with as much respect as they deserve.
There's a great deal of expertise there.
I'll listen with great interest.
I'm now.
I'm now sending the Secret Service to the Fed.
They're taking over the Fed.
We're going to fund an entirely new government directly from the Fed.
And the power of the purse, which is...
And is that constitutional?
Yes, it's completely constitutional.
In fact, you would describe this new monarchical presidency as a constitutional presidency.
It's actually a restoration of the real constitution to put the chief executive in charge of the.
But then all the guys at Bohemian Grove kill you.
Unless you have someone who's not going to be able to do it.
Okay, let's go into that.
Yeah.
Let's go into that.
First of all, it's not the guys in Bohemian Grove, it's more the guys at the New York Times.
Yeah.
It's the guys at Harvard.
It's the guys.
But aren't they at the Bohemian Grove?
Yeah, those are like old rich people who don't matter.
You know, like they're not, you know, they got there maybe by mattering at a certain level, but they're not the Nexus.
They're not the Nexus.
We're not even, you know, it's just George Caesar.
You go back to Kennedy.
Kennedy wanted to govern like a monarch.
Yeah, Kennedy, Kennedy, and he kind of did to some extent.
He did just.
But it's like the successors of like the Georgetown world.
But so Kennedy, they take Kennedy out.
In any case, yeah, sure.
I don't fucking know what happens with Kennedy.
Okay, let's just guess.
Like, I'm a Kennedy agnostic.
Who's guess he's taken out?
I'm a Kennedy agnostic.
In any case, we have this deep state.
So basically, you have a new president who comes in.
Yeah.
Now we got out of the past.
We spent a while talking about the past.
Yeah.
Actually, let me talk a little bit more about the past.
Okay.
Most people don't know the name of Pompey, P-O-M-P-E-Y.
Pompey was called Pompey the Great.
He was kind of a proto-Caesar in some ways.
The reason they called him Pompey the Great is that he solved a big problem that Rome had, which was a problem with pirates.
Right.
Rome in basically his day was like Mexico with fucking drug lords.
You had these like pirate organizations, pirate armies, pirate kingdoms, whatever.
And Rome gets all of its like food from, you know, it's starting to get more and more, at least at the time, of its food from North Africa.
It's got to get there over the sea.
Right.
Pirates can just rob that shit.
And they do.
And it's becoming a problem.
And the way that the Republic deals with pirates is just not fucking working.
It's like the way that like Mexico deals with drug lords.
Whatever they're doing is not working.
Right.
You know, and so, but Rome basically has two forms of like governance.
It has the civilian Republican way of doing things, which is basically like a lot of people with names like Biggest Dickas writing letters to each other.
And it has the military way of doing things.
Right.
And the military way of doing things has like been like testing its ass against the Gauls, you know, for the last like 50 years.
Right.
And it's just like ruthlessly, completely effective.
It basically is like comparing Tesla to the Department of Energy.
Right.
Or, you know, maybe SpaceX to the United Launch Alliance, which is a good comparison because like the United Launch Alliance is like private companies too, but they're not run like a startup, whereas SpaceX is.
And SpaceX is just like, we can do amazing shit for like 120th of the money.
Right.
You know, 20 times faster.
And so the same thing happens.
And, you know, one of the fun examples of this is remember the Obama healthcare signup site?
Yes.
Where they were like, they tried to do it the DC way and they spent $500 million or something and like nothing worked.
And then they got a bunch of people going, come in and do it the Silicon Valley way and they like finish it in a month and like, you know, for like, you know, 75 cents.
Right.
You know, it wasn't that they, all these people are progressives, right?
You know, there's no fucking Republicans on this team, but they're operating the Silicon Valley Way and the Silicon Valley Way is a monarchy.
All startups are monarchies.
All companies are monarchies.
You know, if you drive a car, it was built by a monarchy.
If you watch a movie, it was directed as a monarchy.
If you go to a restaurant, the chef is a monarch.
Right.
Monarchs are everywhere once you see them.
Monarchies are everywhere once you see them because all effective organizations operate as a monarchy.
And this was also true of the Roman military structure.
And so what they do is they basically take this guy, Pompey.
And at the time, Rome was such a healthy place that to be a politician, you had to go and serve in the army.
So Pompey has political ambitions, but he's also a military guy.
And this is like the destruction of Rome in the late imperial days, the separation between bureaucrats and military guys.
And in other words, the State Department versus DOD.
And Pompey basically, they take this guy, Pompey.
I'm not really sure why they chose him.
I'm not an expert, as you can tell.
I'm like a generalist.
And I don't know why they chose him.
The Senate is like, okay, we're going to do this the military way.
We're going to say, Pompey, you have absolute command.
You have like CEO level control of the whole fucking Mediterranean.
Anything that involves the sea, you can do.
Get rid of the fucking pirates.
Right.
And Pompey is like, okay.
And without any computers, without any internet, without any telephones, without any typewriters, without any guns, without any of this shit, in three months, he builds a fucking fleet and basically clears the Mediterranean of pirates.
Right.
And motherfuckers in Rome are just like, fuck.
Because what they've seen is that a completely different way of running a railroad where it's way the fuck better than the one that they're all used to, that they're all invested in.
That's like all basically the normal way of doing everything.
So it's really about the person, right?
It's about the person and the organization structure.
When he looks at the, when he says, let's burn the letters, they're all our people.
Let's retire.
He has to make the right call.
Caesar had a choice to be another Marius.
He basically was like, no, I'm going to be purple.
I'm going to basically govern, you know.
You said before a monarchy was some form of accountability.
Yeah, right.
And that vague.
That was something that the Romans never developed.
And most systems never...
So the accountable monarchy is something that genuinely hasn't been done before.
And is that somewhere?
Is that your idea or is your idea the monarchy monarchy or the accountable monarchy?
My idea is like anything but what we have now.
It's like, first of all, you have to establish, go back to the basic thing, oligarchy is fucked, politics is fucked, which means democracy is fucked.
You cannot basically, if you like, draw a quadrant of like people who believe America is a democracy, people who believe it should be a democracy.
I'm in the corner of it's not and it shouldn't.
But Hitler would be worse than what we have now.
Hitler would be worse.
Okay.
Right.
The thing is, you know, the trains would probably, you know, work a little better, but other things would be worse.
Hitler is like Marius.
Right.
Hitler is like Marius.
He's basically governing from one side.
And so Hitler is the enemy of the German intelligentsia, which happens to include the German Jews.
And then because he's a, you know, he's a fucking idiot, he's like the Jews.
And it would be hard to have a Trump who's very vain and petty and vindictive because Trump would have been like, give me the letters.
Yeah, Trump would have been like, give me the letters.
Trump's not like, let's burn the letters.
Trump is like, give me the letter.
So much.
Trump doesn't even get the point of give me the letters.
Trump doesn't even win the war.
Your point is so correct about there is efficiency to a centralized thing, but the person is the one.
Elizabeth I Versus Elizabeth II00:03:43
Yeah, so the person watches.
So basically, there are two risks in basically, there's just like no alternative besides.
Is it still a monarchy?
No.
No, no, no.
Like compare Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II.
You can't.
Right.
You know, and Elizabeth I is a real monarch.
Elizabeth II is like a Kardashian with a crown.
Right.
So, you know, you basically, if you basically are like, okay, how do you get the next American monarch?
First of all, like the only way that isn't totally fucking scary is like electing a constitutional president and having this president basically rebuild the executive branch from scratch.
Right.
There was some recent writing about this plan that some like Trump associates have of like, maybe if we can like fire bureaucrats, it'll never work.
And I'll tell you why.
Both of them, by the way, my parents and my stepfather all worked in like the deep state for a total of like 80 years.
Right.
The reason why is that if you're used to operating in the private sector, you're used to an org chart which runs from the top down.
So it's like in like, you know, like the platonic ideal of a big company that's run from the top down would be any company run by Elon Musk.
And like, you know, it doesn't matter what the engine engineers, fuel, the engine engineers, it's like SpaceX think that like, you know, the rocket should use.
They could think it should use hydrazine.
Elon thinks it should use methane.
Elon wins.
Right.
It's a real fucking monarchy.
It operates from the top down.
When something becomes a bureaucracy, and by the way, government organizations can operate this way.
The Manhattan Project ran the same fucking way as SpaceX.
Right.
Right.
Government organization.
United Launch Alliance works the same way as the Department of Energy, private company.
Right.
You know, and so when you're a bureaucracy, everyone's job is a process.
When you go to work as like the most junior employee of the State Department, your job is not to get something done.
Your job is to go through a process.
You have a boss.
The reason you have a boss is not that your boss has like a higher level mission to accomplish.
Oh, no.
Your boss is basically who you kick exceptions up to.
If the process doesn't handle something, it has what we call in computer science an exception.
Your boss has a decision to make.
If it doesn't fit inside his process, which is broader, he kicks it up.
Eventually, it will land on the desk of the president who is making decisions all day long.
But if you replace the White House with a magic eight ball, like no American would notice the difference.
Right.
Right.
It's just like, you know.
He's rebuilding an executive branch.
Right.
So what FDR did to solve this problem, FDR was already, you know, the executive branch at its time was much, much smaller and much, much more elite and much, much more somewhat top-down.
He went around it.
He created all these alphabet soup agencies.
He created new agencies and it took him a lot of time to take over like the army and the state department.
He had four terms.
Yeah, right.
Right.
You know, well, three in a, three in a little bit.
Three.
And, but he was going to rule for life, right?
You know, that's another thing that you see with monarchs.
The only one who actually retires is Washington.
And, you know, the.
You think Lincoln would have been forever?
Who the fuck knows?
Perhaps.
And there was certainly no law barring him.
You know, and people pass that law after that amendment, the 25th or whatever after FDR kicks it.
Right.
And so basically, the idea that like, oh, what's wrong with this organization is that it doesn't listen to the president is sort of true enough, but it doesn't capture the sort of real need to like completely restructure these organizations.
Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore00:03:08
If you look at, for example, state, the State Department, 30,000 employees is some of the most elite people in the world.
It's hard to get those jobs.
You have to pass.
It's one of the last, you know, one of the great reforms that created the deep state was like competitive examinations for like government offices, right?
That created the meritocracy.
Carter did away with most of them in 1980, and the rest are sort of being done away with now.
When people hear this and say, when you say run like Tesla company, it sounds, what is the difference between your ideal version of a monarchy and a fascist state?
The difference between the ideal version of the monarchy and the fascist state is two things.
One is that fascism is, again, like Marius and Sola.
Fascism basically is sort of an imperfect monarchy and that it's sort of the victory of kind of one faction in a civil war.
The fascists who sort of came to power, whether they're in Italy, Spain, Germany, or whatever, are sort of always coming to power against the like Mariuses of their day.
They're always, you know, they're virulent and they're fighting against like virulent Bolshevism that does like, and sort of neither of those things exist today, which is sort of very, very good.
Like people like compare, oh, there was street violence in 2016 and also in like, you know, 1932.
I'm like, in 1932, like five people a day are getting stabbed to death in Berlin, right?
You know, and like the communists are giving as good as they get.
Right.
Right.
You know, it's just crazy.
And so you have all of this at that era.
You have all of this kind of locked up potential for violence in the society because it's full of people who've gone through World War fucking one.
Right.
Right.
You know, these people just like kill you as soon as they look at you.
After you've been in the trenches for like a fucking week, you have no respect for life.
So that's part of, yeah, is there a country where you see an example of this?
A better example.
So a better, you know, Singapore is a good example of like, you know, Singapore is a multi-ethnic country, right?
It has, it doesn't have Persians and I Italians, but it has Asian, it has Indians and Chinese.
And, you know, basically, actually, Lee Kuan Yew comes to power.
You know, the Caesar of Singapore comes to power in a very similar way as the original Caesar.
The ruling party of Singapore is still called the People's Action Party.
It was like this like violent, anti-colonialist, basically quasi-communist party.
And basically, it puts forth this guy, Lee Kuan Yu, who becomes like establishes like William Gibson famously called Singapore Disneyland with the death penalty.
You know, I like the Disneyland part.
You know, there are definitely ways in which Singapore could be like more fun, but you can certainly walk around in any part of Singapore at any time of day or night.
Tried that in LA.
You know, and don't actually.
But the kids out there.
Don't try it in San Francisco.
Don't try it in San Francisco either.
You know, you might be able to get away with it in Hano, right?
You know, and the, in any case, got to do this callbacks.
Do you think that's a good question?
So let me finish answering your question for a second.
Hiring a Chief of Staff00:06:58
So that sense of basically like I'm encouraged sort of all the libs and even the cons out there, like, you know, conservatives kind of love FDR, right?
You know, conservatives love the Kennedys, right?
Don't think in terms of Hitler.
Think about FDR and the Kennedys.
Right.
That's your sort of first point.
Like basically, and, you know, if you have to choose, honestly, if you have to choose between a dictator who's on the side of the aristocracy and a dictator who's on the side of the middle classes, it's a really fucking hard choice.
But I, as a born aristocrat, I'm going to choose the blue Caesar just because, you know, when a populist movement becomes anti-aristocratic, people are really right to notice that like Trump's voter base is the same as Hitler's voter base, right?
You know, they're really correct to notice that.
The way this reserves, I like how we've, we've oscillated.
Yeah, I'm just making so many different people move on the red people.
No, I love it.
I love it.
That's right, I'm sorry.
It's just a fact, right?
And it doesn't mean that Trump is Hitler, right?
You know, Hitler would fucking laugh at Trump.
Right.
You know, and the, you know, are you all in for DeSantis then?
Because he's Yale.
You know, I can't.
Florida's fun.
He's so, you know, the thing that's nice about, the thing that I really love about Trump is that he breaks the frame.
I don't sort of feel DeSantis like that.
No, DeSantis has no interest in breaking the frame.
Yeah, and that's right.
And I can't get hot on for him.
You know, I mean, you know, and so that's the sort of the genius.
A lot of the guys that you advise their campaigns or unofficially, because I don't know what you do, but a lot of people.
I am not.
I have no role.
I'm not a player.
Right.
Okay.
So, so.
So people listen to you.
Sometimes.
Sometimes.
You know, you know, the, but really mostly just because I'm funny.
You know, and a guy like Peter Thiel's interest in politics is.
Do you think he's a, is it from a business perspective?
Is it from?
No, absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
From a social media.
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
You know, and this is true of almost like there's no one who wants everyone's interest, whether you're George Soros or Peter Thiel, is not from a mercenary perspective.
Like, you know, once you have billions of dollars, like another billion or two doesn't fucking matter.
Like, you know, the only thing that you can buy with your money at that level is power.
And the only thing that you're interested in using power for is to make a world that you believe in.
All of these people are completely fucking sincere.
You know, and it really.
That's the scary thing.
That's the scary thing.
That's right.
Right.
You know, and basically they're all completely fucking sincere.
You know, and so when you get to basically sort of constructing your kind of new monarchy, the first question, you've got three questions.
Number one, is this person capable?
You know, which unfortunately in the case of Trump is a no.
Again, he's just, he's not, he's underpromoted.
It's like the opposite of like Parkinson's law, the Peter principle.
Like he needs to, he needs to realize that he's a great American.
Donald, if you're out here listening, you're a great American.
You should, you should run in 2024.
You should win.
You should become the chairman of the board.
And you should hire a chief of staff.
You should be like George Washington.
Right.
You should hire a chief of staff who's like Alexander Hamilton and basically do a lot of photo ops, play a lot of golf, say a lot of funny things on TV and on Twitter.
Obviously, they'll give it back to you.
And that's what you should do.
You should be you.
Don't try to be something else.
Don't try to be Alexander Hamilton.
Don't assume that your fucking son-in-law is Alexander fucking Hamilton.
Got Elon Musk.
Do you really think Elon Musk would be this guy?
He could.
You don't have to be an American.
Okay, he's an African-American.
But the thing is that you don't.
My worry about him is he loves the limelight.
He's a little bit more.
Yeah, he loves the limelight a little much.
A little bit on of the ladies.
He loves the limelight a little much.
You know, basically, okay, get Elon Musk, but 20 years younger.
You know, get the guy who's going to be Elon Musk that nobody's heard of.
Easy to find.
You could probably ask Elon Musk and he'd tell you.
When I was doing shows, final question.
When I was doing shows in Palo Alto, I was in San Jose and I'm walking around Palo Alto.
If I'm walking around with you, is it like you could throw a stone and hit a fucking person who could do this fucking job?
Yeah.
I could buy, you know, I couldn't give you a list of 100 people.
I could email you like 10 people and get a list of 100 people who could do this.
When you are in those, in those, in the old world, your old tech world.
Is it a friendly reception?
Is it like, is it like a mystique?
Is it like, that's Curtis Jarvin?
You know, honestly, one of the things that I try to do as a writer that I recommend to anyone who's in the entertainment industry is to basically not consume any content that's about myself.
Right.
So that's a good idea.
I actually have, there was this like Vanity Fair article on the new right.
I haven't read it.
Right.
Jeff Bezos like tweeted it.
I haven't read it.
Right.
You know, and I'm not going to read it.
Sorry, James.
You know, and like the, like, you know, yeah.
Like, so actually, I kind of don't know and I kind of don't care.
You know, the reason I started blogging back in 2007 was like, this is what I believe.
I don't care what other people believe.
This is what I believe to be true.
I probably made some mistakes.
I think, you know, I'm famous for being a little too like COVID crackdown happy.
I'm convinced that this is because I was betting on COVID.
And, you know, so I've made my errors, you know, over time.
That's one of them.
But yeah, the like the approach of just saying what I believe is just one that I recommend to everyone.
But like before even, even like before you like read my shit, like, you know, just like do that thing I talked about with the Islanders.
Yeah.
Like basically stop being a sports fan.
Right.
Like it's like sports fan politics.
It's just like it's pornography.
That's right.
It's fucking the pornography of power.
If you want real, you know, if you want real sex, give up porn.
That's right.
Start by giving up porn.
Yes.
Completely serious about this.
That's it.
And if you want real power, power that matters, power that like, you know, makes this country like what it should be for like fucking red state and, you know, blue state and black and white and green and purple and all fucking people in this country, including even the fucking zombies down on Skid Row.
If you want to basically make this the country that this should be for everyone, just like turn off your fucking politics, turn off the culture war, and basically just start thinking about how the fucking government should work.
Pornography of Power00:00:29
I got two words for you before we get out of here, and you don't even have to respond.
But in my head, after everything you've just said, I got to be honest with you, I think we could do a lot worse.