Latest / Great Houses / 34. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 6

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34. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 6 · Great Houses

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Gregory Treat: All right.
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Hello, everybody.
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Welcome to episode 34 of The Great Houses Forum.
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We're continuing, continuing our conversation of, uh, the, the
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cursus honorum of the AI future.
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So, uh, last time we talked about how the cursus honorum is, and, and systems like
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that, these intense people-driven systems where you, you progress through a series
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of kind of cultural challenges, uh, is an alternative to credentialing systems.
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It's, it's an alternative to having a big university where everyone comes
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and gathers and is issued a piece of paper saying, "Thou art entitled
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to do a certain thing," right?
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Um, and so one of the things I was trying to do was, was give you an
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idea of what would it look like in terms of the tiers for an I- AI cursus
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honorum to start forming in this, this future that we're about to enter.
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But as I, uh, as I reviewed the, the episode and took feedback from some
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people, it, I, I, it, one of the things that came across to people that was not
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exactly my intention, but we're gonna, we're gonna correct that here today, uh,
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was that, that e- everything came off very much as something that only a, a
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nation state, even something the scale of a modern nation state could run.
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You… The, the idea was, well, you need a senate, a foreign office, a navy, or at
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least, you know, a, a university before you can form elites, uh, in this way.
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And so the scale requirements that people had for starting, um, were
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much larger than I was wanting and hoping for and all of those things.
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And obviously, you know, Rome, Virginia, and Britain, they,
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they are imperial, right?
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They, they are, they, they look imperial.
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They are imperial because empires grew out of this system.
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This is, this is, you know, what they became.
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But the genius of their system, i- in my view, was that what, what they had
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worked really well, uh, at a local level.
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You didn't need the, the… You didn't need central processing centers
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at the scale of tens or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands
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or millions of people for it to work.
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It could work really well and, and, and feed people through the lower
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levels, um, at, at, at something much, much smaller scales than, than
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let's call it the empire as a whole.
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Okay?
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So, uh, you know, one other thing.
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I, I, I want to present to you the idea that maybe you, you could do
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something o- on the scale of six houses within driving range, right?
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You, you, you do need, I mean, as, as is always true, right?
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I'm, I'm, I'm wanting people to understand that you can't do this as
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an individual or as a nuclear family.
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That scale is too small.
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But there's a big difference between the individual and the nation state, right?
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Or even, you know, a, a capital city, a state as, uh, uh, as in
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the modern, you know, federal states like California or Texas.
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Um, you need something where a neighbor can interact with you in
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an afternoon or a night, right?
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Something where it's, it's a day trip.
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Um, you know, you need your neighbors.
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You need the people around you to be able to see how your son is turning out.
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You know, what is, as, as, as Will Tanner likes to say, what is the
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quality of your tobacco leaf, right?
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H- how are the accounts managed?
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How, how does the militia behave themselves?
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You know, if you're, you know, the, the British system had a, uh, kind
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of the, the training method for its nobles was, well, we're gonna have
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all of our, all of our aristocrats are gonna i- issue private IOUs that, that
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operate similar to a private currency.
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Um, and, and, and what you need for these systems is for neighbors to be
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able to evaluate each other and, and to feel the, the right, to feel the
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responsibility in some way to, to do that evaluation and not defer that judgment.
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Not say, "Well, no, it's only the special people in the major credentialing centers
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that can, that can do this thing," right?
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So again, a, a cursus honorum is a household back sequence
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of, of, of real world tests.
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So each rung is an office or some kind of project which is watched and judged by the
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people whose lives are directly affected by the quality of the work put out.
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Not… You know, one of the things about that's just conceptually
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difficult about teachers is when a teacher gives a test, that, that
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teacher's world is in no way affected by the poor quality of your output.
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If you fail every test, in some, some abstract sense perhaps eventually and over
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time a teacher might lose their job if everyone that goes to their class fails.
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Uh, there's no consequences for teachers failing to teach or for students failing
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to learn on the people around them.
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This is all hyper-individual and there's, there… You know, this really
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is some kind of abstract fantasy land.
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There are no consequences.
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There is no skin in the game, right?
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So one, one of the things that, that, that I wanna distinguish from this is
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we, we want… One of the pro- the ways that we talk about this would be having,
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having like a graduation project, right?
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Or a, a, a portfolio project, things that you're building as
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we move through your education.
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And to some extent you can, you know, revamp, uh, your, your high school or your
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college experience around stuff like that.
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Um, but I think it's useful to think, well, what, what if we just did this?
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What if we just said, "Hey, education in the formal sense doesn't matter
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that much," or if it matters, it's not a substitute for, for
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getting out there and doing the work and building your reputation.
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And, and I really believe that, you know, this is how you solve a, a leadership
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shortage, uh, especially a, a high quality leadership shortage, right?
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In, uh, I don't think we're gonna get to it today, but, uh, you know,
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there's this con- idea of elite overproduction and, and as always i-
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in those, those contexts, it's, it's useful to ask, what do we mean by elite
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exactly in this, um- In this context.
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So most of the time, you know, in a credential-based system, an elite is
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someone who has elite credentials, right?
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Which again, the, the whole por- problem we're having here is that elite
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credentials do not line up, uh, neatly or accurately with actual elite performance.
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You know, having people that, that are able to manage major projects, deal with
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issues of life and death, deal with, you know, all of these problems that, that,
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that someone needs, someone needs help, uh, people need help dealing with, right?
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Uh, so if you have a leadership shortage, you have a, a, a, a
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shortage of high quality elites, uh, then I believe that, that the
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cursus honorum is the quickest way to generate a, a surplus of, of elites.
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Yes, uh, Robert, Robert Rowe says, uh, the, the question
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is, is whose elites, right?
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Uh, you know, uh, because pro- probably, uh, probably it's not just
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that they're, they're, they're not elites in, in some objective sense,
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but there's a, there's a directional, there's a directional issue there.
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Uh, because they, they, they're, they're elites embodying the values of some
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group of people w- whose interests might not be aligned with yours, right?
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Okay.
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So let's, uh, let's, let's take some time and do a deeper dive into Rome.
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Um, and, and again, one of the main things I want you to be paying attention
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to is the scale of all of this stuff, because the, the important thing about
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Rome, and the important thing about all of these things, is to notice these
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are attainable scales at something much smaller than a nation state.
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Okay?
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Um, that's, that's, that's the thing that I, I'm, I'm wanting you to, to,
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to keep in mind as we move forward.
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Okay?
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So in Rome, the, the, the climb of the cursus honorum opened
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with being a, a military tribune.
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Uh, you had to have command of the soldiers in the field.
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Um, so the way you got it was that people elected…
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You could either be elected, uh, the, the people famously elect the
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tribunes, the first four legions.
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Uh, as Rome developed and matured that, that very much became a minority.
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Um, but other tribunates were, were named by the commander.
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So if you had a commander of, of a unit or a legion, they would
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just appoint their own tribunes.
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Um, and, you know, e- either way, you're putting… Some- someone is putting
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that tribune over men i- in a situation where real violence is going to occur.
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At, at a minimum, uh, you know, clearing bandits, um, and frequently going
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out there and actually expanding or defending the territory of the empire.
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You know, Rome was basically always at war from probably 300, uh, BC on,
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uh, you know, as they're, as they're fighting the Punic Wars and then kind
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of consolidating their, their rule and, and bumping up into, um, bumping up into
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the, the Persians off, off to the east.
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Uh, so you, you had to have skill in leading men, um, i- through a violent,
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um- through a violent e- encounter.
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You had to have some level of respect, right?
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Military leadership in Rome, and, and we'll, we'll, we'll talk more
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about this later, was, was a, a, a very in-depth thing, right?
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If y- you had the right to tell someone to go on a suicide mission.
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You had the right to, to, to, to send people to their deaths.
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Um, and so they had to respect you, right?
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'Cause, 'cause the downside of them not respecting you… Like i- if, if, if
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you're gonna tell someone, "I need you to go on a suicide mission," and they've got
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courage, and they, and there's, there's something that they believe in, uh, many
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times they'll do it, especially in a, in a culture where that's the, that's the, the,
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the way that things are expected to go.
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But if they don't respect you, these guys are gonna find some way
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of, of, of taking you out, right?
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Uh, there, there were… Now, if you were of sufficient rank, maybe there'd
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be an inquiry, but what are you gonna do to guys that are, that are in, in,
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you know, leading the charge, right?
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There's, there's no effective way to threaten guys whose, whose casualty rates
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are, I think, above, you know, 25%, right?
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'Cause just the, the odds of them making it, you know, to
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the point where the inquiry was finished is, is effectively nil.
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So they don't care.
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If they don't respect you, you're not gonna make it out, okay?
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And Rome, of course, is doing this, um, you know, i- is making this the,
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the, the gate for their leadership track because it wants itself to
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be known as a city of soldiers.
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It conceives of itself as a city of soldiers, right?
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And, and formally you, uh, you had to serve 10 years as a tribune.
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Um, though, you know, there's a lot of evidence that that was
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not always exactly how it worked.
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People were… One of the, the, the methods that we think happened was,
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um, was that people would be listed as tribunes and then not actually
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join their unit in the field.
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But no matter… So that might happen for four or five,
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maybe as much as eight years.
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But you had to serve some time in the field, right?
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Um, that was, that was a big deal, and if you, if you kind of cheated
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your way through, people, people… without a really good reason,
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people thought less of you, right?
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Um, so for instance the, um, the Fabian family, the House Fabius, right,
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they, they g- they got knocked down to one member, a 13-year-old boy.
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10 years later he's serving… Uh, nine, uh, yeah, nine years later.
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So between 13 and 22 he, he climbs several ranks and is seated in the Senate.
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Um, he pr- he didn't serve, uh, right, by definition, he didn't
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serve 10 years as a tribune, right?
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Something else was going on there.
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Uh, but generally that was the rule, okay?
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So then next was the questor, someone who audited the public money, either
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figuring out how Rome's treasure was being spent in the capital or watching
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a pr- provincial governor's books.
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This was both to prevent the governor from being cheated by the locals and
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of course to prevent Rome from being cheated too much by the governor.
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Um, the, the, the questor was elected by, um, by the tribal
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assemblies, and, you know, this is, this is very interesting, right?
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And we start getting into these, these, the Roman tribes.
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So, you know, the, the, the Roman tribes are, are a fascinating, a fascinating
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thing to, to explore, um, because they, they very quickly just kind of
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became like, like pure associations.
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They didn't really hold any property.
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They weren't… Uh, there wasn't a, a relevance to them other than this was
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the tribe, and if you were de-listed from the tribe, like by the censors
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for instance, um, then, then that would cause you political problems.
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The, the quaestor, uh, uh, was, was elected by, by, by tribes,
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and the tribes, you know, started out as these geographic entities.
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By probably 100, 200 years into Rome's history, you know, the Roman Republican,
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uh, phase, they, they really had ceased to be any meaningful, uh, geographic
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limitation, 'cause property changed hands and people moved back and forth.
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They were just these pure, uh, kind of like historical associations.
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Uh, similar in many ways to kind of modern voluntary associations.
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Though, though, though, there was a, a clear bloodline component,
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but you could be adopted into a tribe, you could be listed.
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There were ways of kind of getting from one tribe to another.
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Um, it was, uh, it was an interesting sort of flexibility of these
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self-constituting, self-constituting.
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So, you know, one of the things is, you know, like a, a, a censor
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could ban you from the tribe, right?
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Could require you to be de-listed from your tribe, which would hurt you in
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a, in a variety of political contexts.
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But later, the tribe could, like, be, "Oh, well, you know, we, we really want
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this guy listed in our, in our, in our tribe. We think he belongs here." Um, and
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they could, they could put you back in, which is a kind of a, a fascinating thing.
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So.
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So then above the, uh, the aedile, uh, above the quaestor is, is the aedile.
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Uh, and they, they ran the, the city, the city of Rome's working order.
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They controlled the markets, water supply, you know, which involved aqueducts,
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and was a, you know, the, the… Rome was famous for the engineering
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that went into its, its aqueducts.
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Um, if you're not familiar with that, I, I encourage you to, to watch a…
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Well, I don't know if I encourage you to watch, but, uh, you could watch,
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uh, Life of Brian by Monty Python.
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There's some fascinating, fascinatingly historically accurate things in there
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about how Rome conducted itself.
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the tribal assemblies also a- a- elected the aediles, uh, the aediles.
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then you had the, the, the plebeian ideals, uh, and then you had the,
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uh, the, the standard, the, the, the, the cheral ideals, And you had
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to administer all of these things, especially for the, the curial aediles,
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the, the higher rank of aediles.
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Uh, they, they administered the games, and one of the things that
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you were expected to do as a, as an aedile was fund the games, uh, out,
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actually out of your, your pockets or out of the pockets of your house.
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Your, your, your household was expected to contribute to the games.
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So y- you know, technically you could run.
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There was, there was ways for, uh, for non-patricians to become, uh, the, the
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curial aediles, but it was very difficult to do unless you had a financial backer.
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So someone, someone with a lot of money had to back you, otherwise you wouldn't
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be able to function, um, as, as an aedile.
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So the, the … One of the famous stories, Julius Caesar, when he was serving as,
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as aedile, um, leveraged the assets of House Julius basically, like, to the
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brink, all, all the way up, um, in, in various stunts, including he, he had 320
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pairs of gladiators in silvered armor.
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He had the, the armor c- you know, plated in silver and was gonna march through.
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He actually apparently had more than that, and there was a, uh, there
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was an act of the Senate to restrict him so that he could only have 320
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guys marching in the silvered armor through the streets of Rome, right?
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Um, this is an extreme case of an unpaid office that, that, that cost a fortune.
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And the, and the point here was if you didn't have a substantial fortune behind
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you, either personally that you'd created somehow or, um, a, a, a household that
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could, that could back you, whether it was your own or some- some- some
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other household, um, then, then you were gonna be selected out of this.
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You weren't gonna be able to play this game, okay?
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Um, another, another thing to think about here is that, uh, many men would,
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would stop at the rank of aedile.
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this is the rank, this curial magistracy.
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You would gain the, the ius imaginum, the right to, the, the, the right of
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images, which is a, a Roman death mask, and I talked about the Roman death mask
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with these, these wax images cast, uh, at, at various times, including at death,
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and they were kept in the family atrium, um, so you could kind of walk through
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and see your ancestors, see their faces.
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It was a, it was apparently a very lifelike, uh, semblance of the faces.
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And then at certain times, uh, different rituals that a city would have, you
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could, you could have someone wear the mask, and it was like your ancestor was
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still walking around, you know, visible.
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Um, and, and this was, this was a pretty significant
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incentive for a lot of families.
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You know, in, in any given generation, not every family is gonna have a consult.
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Not every family is gonna rise to the highest heights of, of
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Roman, uh, you know, Roman virtue.
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But basically, if you were a family of means and your, your, your kids did well,
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you, you could expect if you have two or three sons, that at least one of them
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is gonna rise to the rank of, of, of the curial magistrate, the, the aedile.
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Um- And so that was kind of the, the, the thing that drew everyone in
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was this, was this, this third tier.
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This is actually, you know, three tiers from, from the, the top.
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Um, and that's, that was enough to, to kind of get people out of bed, um,
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in a way that I, I … You know, in our current setup, you have to win.
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You have
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You, you keep running, um, and you have to win at a, at a much,
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much higher level, uh, distinguish yourself, uh, from the crowd at a, at
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a much different level in order even really to be, to be able to survive.
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If you become an aedile, and then the next step was to be, to enter the Senate,
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um, you're, you're pretty much set.
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You're gonna be able to leverage that into wealth and power and s- and,
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at a minimum, sustain yourself for the rest of, of, of your life, so.
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So that brings me to the Senate, and after serving as an aedile, uh, induction
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into the Senate was traditionally treated as a matter of right.
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Again, the … If, if, if the censors, uh, didn't like you, uh, they, they
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could delay you, um, perhaps until y- after you'd served as praetor or
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otherwise distinguished yourself.
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But the assumption was that if you successfully served as an aedile, you
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conducted yourself well, you did a couple of games, people cheered your
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name, right, and your family's name, then that would mean that you were
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gonna reach the Senate at some point.
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And, and the Senate is, is interesting 'cause it was
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it's kind of this holding tank for all of the top guys in the
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emper- in the empire, right?
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Uh, trad- uh, before, there's, there's kind of two versions of the Senate.
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Prior to Sulla, it was about the top 300 men or so who had proved
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themselves loyal and capable in the service of the republic.
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Um, and then after, uh, after, uh, Sulla, who was, who was a dictator and a
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and he, he reframed certain things about Rome.
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He's kind of a, a precursor to Caesar.
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He was able to, um, get things to the point where when he stepped down, there,
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it wa- there wasn't an immediate, uh, civil war that, uh, that, that happened.
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There was a civil war within, I think, 10, 10 or 15 years
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of his death, but there wasn't
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It, you know, it didn't immediately collapse as soon as he died,
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as opposed to Caesar, right?
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As soon as Caesar dies, bam, people are, people are going hammer and
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tongs at this, uh, pretty quickly.
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So that was the Senate.
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Now, kind of alongside the Senate is this concept of the, the, the
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centuriate, uh, assembly, the, the, the Comitia Centuriata.
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And the two highest offices, the praetor and the consul, were
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both filled by that same body.
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And one of the interesting things about Rome was that, that every citizen
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voted, but they did not vote as equals.
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Men were sorted by property into classes, and each class was broken
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into voting units called centuries.
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Um, you know, precisely how many people were in these centuries kind
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of varies from, from point to point.
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Um, and then the political centuries, uh, so, you know, initially, presumably
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at some point in the, in the ancient past, a century was 100 men, and
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then traditionally in Rome, that got knocked down to about 80 men.
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Um- But then the political centuries had very flexible amounts of people in them.
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Sometimes they had, um, they had 100 people, sometimes they had way more.
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Uh, occasionally they would have way less.
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But, but the, the, the, the bulk of the 193 votes were distributed to men
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whose net worth would allow them to buy their own Roman soldier's kit.
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You know, like, like Paul talked about the, the, the Roman soldier's kit and
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the, the armor of God in Ephesians, right?
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The belt, the breastplate, the shoes, the shield, the sword, et cetera.
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Um, and interestingly, this was also… Like, the, the amount that it cost
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to buy a kit for one person, the full panoply, the full Roman panoply, uh,
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was also the amount that it would take to field, to, to, um, to, to
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feed 80 men in the field for a year.
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Uh, so, so there's, there's some really interesting, uh, parallels there.
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Um, and we'll, uh, and we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll come back to that in a
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second So, um, the, the, the, the next assumption, um, position and the next rung
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up from being, you know, kind of merely a successful senator was to become praetor.
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And, and the praetor was, um, was Rome's chief legal magistrate.
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So a citizen with a grievance brought that grievance before the praetor
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and, and the praetor would decide whether the claim would be heard.
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He, he would frame the exact question in dispute, and then he would kind
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of hand it to a private judge, uh, to, to try the, to try the facts.
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Um, though again, the, the judge, the praetor is serving in this context i- in
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the role that we in, in, in modern America would think that a judge serves, right?
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So the, the, the private judge that they talk about, that guy functions
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much more similarly to what we would, we would think in the modern day of
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that, that's the role of a jury, right?
20:31
Determining the facts, figuring out what actually happened.
20:33
But the praetor was the person who decided, you know,
20:35
matters of law, as it were.
20:37
Um, so, uh, his jurisdiction, yet there were two types.
20:40
There was the, the, the, the praetor urbanus, which, um, which heard
20:43
disputes between citizens, um, and, and the praetor peregrinus, which
20:47
handled cases touching foreigners.
20:49
Um, and then Rome, you know, kind of added more and more praetors, and
20:53
they, and they, they would go out and, and serve in the provinces, uh,
20:56
dealing with provincial governors.
20:58
Um, and so they also, Sulla restructured them so that they would stay, they
21:03
presided over the standing criminal courts for crimes like extortion,
21:06
murder, treason, uh, electoral bribery.
21:09
And, and the thing about the praetor was, uh, within his domain, um,
21:13
he, he was responsible for seeing that the law was executed, right?
21:18
Uh, you know, the, the, the deeper power of, of, of the praetor was that
21:21
he could, he could issue edicts, right?
21:23
Uh, so, uh, uh, when he took office, he would kind of publish… This is, this
21:27
is early in, in the Roman Republic.
21:28
He would publish the claims and defenses that he would recognize that
21:31
year, and critically, where there was a problem that the, that the old law
21:35
offered no remedy, he could create one.
21:38
Um, he couldn't create an infinite amount, but one of the interesting
21:42
things about Rome is there, there isn't, a lot of these things, there
21:45
aren't hard and fast rules, right?
21:46
It was, "Hey, you can solve problems within your ambit, but we're not gonna
21:51
say you can only create one rule." Like, that's kinda how we would,
21:53
it would be portrayed in, like, a modern historical, you know, fantasy.
21:56
"Ah, you get, you become this, this position. You get to create one rule."
22:00
Well, I mean, it typically was one rule, but a, but a praetor could,
22:03
could, could solve the problems.
22:05
A- a- and this is interesting because it, it- It solves a problem that we're
22:10
having right now, which is that we have many, um, we have many district attorneys,
22:15
we have many, you know, law enforcement officials that don't seem very concerned
22:21
with actual law and order, right?
22:23
Many of them and their, their promotions, their incentive structures
22:26
are built around, uh, basically prosecution success rates, right?
22:31
So there's a percentage of cases that they've tried and a percentage of
22:34
cases that they've won, and they're trying to make that, that, you know,
22:37
the, the percentage of cases they've won compared to how many they've tried
22:39
as high as possible, which means not taking difficult cases, um, even when
22:45
they're pretty sure that this was a, a, a bad dude that did a bad thing.
22:48
And frequently, um, and more and more we're, we're seeing that taking technical
22:52
cases, uh, against people who are kind of living their life in an ordinary fashion.
22:57
And many, many of those things, uh, strike people that, that are involved with them
23:01
as very unfair, deeply unfair, okay?
23:05
And I'll note, you know, again, we're, we just hit, uh, this
23:08
is, this is the, the 250th year of, of America by some accounts.
23:13
And, um, and we're really struggling with how to solve this problem.
23:17
We are really struggling to, you know, make sure that laws
23:20
are actually being executed.
23:23
Uh, right?
23:23
The, the, the, one of the chief questions before the Supreme Court is, you know,
23:28
the, the executive's, uh, m- mandate in the Constitution of the president is, you
23:33
know, he shall, you know, take care that the laws be faithfully executed, right?
23:37
Uh, we have a problem with that throughout our entire system.
23:40
There really, uh, um, even though that's, that's the text of what he's supposed to
23:43
do, the president really in many ways, his power to take care that the laws be
23:47
faithfully executed is deeply constrained.
23:49
Um, and, and it's causing a bunch of problems.
23:51
Rome did not have many of those problems while its praetors were strong, okay?
23:57
Um, so after the year of serving as a, as a, as a magistrate generally in Rome,
24:02
uh, he would often be sent out to govern a province and command his legions.
24:06
Uh, he wielded the power of imperium, um, over a whole province with the legal
24:11
right to call Ro- Roman citizens to arms, to requisition, requisition property, and
24:16
to command with anyone with a military rank under his own, which was basically
24:19
anyone, uh, every w- every Roman that w- happened to be in his territory.
24:23
It'd be very unusual for there to be somebody higher rank than the provisional
24:27
governor in, in his, uh, in his province.
24:30
So, uh, and again, you've, you've got that, that military command structure.
24:34
You can tell somebody, "Hey, go out here and take a hill." And, uh, and if it's
24:38
a valid cause and, and there's, there's any reason, you know, why, why this is
24:44
a good idea, the, the, the laws of Rome are gonna land pretty hard on, on, on,
24:48
hey, if a c- if the commander tells you to do something, you need to do it.
24:52
Okay?
24:53
Um, and you know, this is the point, this goes back to the point
24:55
I, I made on, on Will's show.
24:57
Rome had a, a unitary structure of, of, uh, of authority.
25:01
You were not a full praetor unless you both judged and ruled, right?
25:05
And so, and, and in addition to having the ability to tell someone, "Hey,
25:08
you know, go, go take that hill," or, or, "Go, go, go, go accomplish
25:12
this military objective," um, you were also the chief judge, right?
25:16
So you retained your judicial powers and authority.
25:18
So if he gives you an order and you don't obey it or you, you know, violate the
25:22
laws of Rome in some way, he could charge you with a crime, and he would decide
25:26
the law as, as applicable to the facts.
25:28
Again, you know, there, there would be a, a private judge, which is, you
25:31
know, more similar to our jury, but, but the praetor had immense power.
25:35
Okay?
25:36
So that's the praetor.
25:38
Then, uh, the, the, the The top in, in terms of rank, the thing that
25:42
people were trying to climb to i- in, in the normal track was the consul.
25:47
And, and the consul was similar to the praetor except he was a judge and then a
25:50
military official, except his jurisdiction included the entirety of Rome.
25:54
Um, there, there tended to be two consuls unless some emergency was happening.
25:58
Usually one of them died or, you know, the, the, the most common
26:01
way for there to only be one consul is if one of them died in battle.
26:04
And there were two, number one, so they could be a check on each other, but
26:06
also so that one of them could go out into the field and one of them could
26:10
stay home and, and govern Rome in the absence of the other consul, 'cause
26:14
they wanted that, that authority.
26:16
Okay?
26:17
Um, you know, it's, and it's interesting to think about, you know, 20 men enter as
26:20
questors, uh, each year for most of Rome's history, and only two would reach consul.
26:25
Um, that, that's, that's, you know, over, over time, that's creating an
26:29
enormous pool of guys that have some level of experience governing, um, and,
26:36
and don't reach the top of their system.
26:37
Okay?
26:38
Um, so again, they, they would serve for a year, and then they would go back into
26:43
the Senate and, and, and they would stay in the Senate for the rest of their days.
26:45
So that was the, uh, the highest office that was regularly filled.
26:49
Um, and yes, there was a lot of honor, there was a lot of, uh, there was a,
26:52
there was a lot of sense that, that this guy represented Rome, right?
26:56
Famously, there's the, uh, there's the, the, the line from, uh, from the
27:00
series Rome, uh, where, where one of the consuls was killed by, by the Egyptians.
27:05
Those t- terrible people, those Egyptians.
27:07
Um, and, and his enemies are very upset that a consul was, was
27:16
killed and, and especially that, that his body was dishonored.
27:18
That was, that was seen as, um, as an offense against Rome itself.
27:22
Not a good thing, right?
27:24
So kind of in parallel and, and, and, and in a way that, that-
27:30
was in some ways over the, the consuls and in some ways under
27:33
them are the censors, right?
27:35
So the censors are also elected by the centuriate assembly, um,
27:39
and, and by the middle republic, they're, they're normally, uh,
27:42
former con- for- former consuls.
27:44
You don't, you don't really want someone who hasn't served
27:46
as a consul to be the censor.
27:48
Um, and so they, they would serve for 18 months, uh, once every five years,
27:53
and they would, they would do a census.
27:55
They would investigate the citizen body.
27:56
They would add and remove names from the senate roll, and they had broad
27:59
powers to censor citizens for a variety of, of poor conduct, right?
28:02
This is obviously… This is where we get the English word to, to censor,
28:06
like as in, as in censorship, right?
28:09
So their main thing was what was called a nota censoria.
28:12
Uh, so that, that, that nota censoria could force a guy to be
28:15
dropped from the rolls of his tribe.
28:17
It could make him an, an, it was called an orarius, make him
28:20
tribeless if he was a knight who…
28:22
Which mean- meant he'd been assigned a public horse by, by Rome, uh, 'cause,
28:26
you know, early in Rome's history, horsemanship was a very new technology.
28:29
It was very expensive.
28:30
It was very hard to get, uh, breeding lines of horses that could
28:33
carry a, a man in battle, um, even an unarmored man, uh, in battle.
28:38
And, uh, so, so those things were restricted to, to, uh, to Rome, and
28:43
then, um, then they were assigned out.
28:46
There was 18 centuries, uh, so, so 1,800 men that were Knights of Rome at any
28:50
given time for most of Rome's history.
28:52
Um, later on, you know, horse lines that could carry knights in battle, carry
28:57
men in battle became more and more and more common until basically if you were
29:00
rich enough, you could just buy one.
29:02
Um- But for, for a while there, they were kind of restricted assets
29:06
that only the state could have, and the state kind of doled them out.
29:09
Uh, but a censor could say, "Hey," a- a- and the censors would
29:12
actually figure out, like, were you ta- taking care of your horse?
29:15
And if you weren't taking care of your horse to their satisfaction, they, they'd
29:19
strip you of your knighthood, and you'd, uh, you'd kind of have a bad time there.
29:22
Um, now it w- it was public shaming rather than a criminal conviction,
29:25
um, and the next pair of censors could, could reverse it, and it didn't
29:29
always bar a, a later magistracy.
29:31
But the main thing about the, the nota censoria was they, they would,
29:33
they would publish their reasons.
29:35
They'd go through, and they'd say, "Well, here's what we found out about this
29:38
guy, and here's why we think he's a bad person, and y- he should not be trusted.
29:43
we should not, as a city, give him power, and here is why." Now,
29:47
the people could ultimately, you know, reject that over, over time.
29:51
There were ways of kind of worming your way back into all of the rights
29:54
that the censors could strip you of, except membership in the Senate.
29:56
If the, if the censors stripped you of membership in the Senate, that
29:58
was very difficult to come back from.
30:00
I think only, um, only a couple people actually managed that.
30:05
Um, but if, you know, if the evidence was severe, it could easily
30:08
end a political career, right?
30:10
Uh, now, m- m- a lot of this revolves around the, the, the story of Paulus
30:13
Emilius, um, which, which I talked about in, in one of my early episode.
30:18
S- uh, so the, the censors stripped him of his tribal identity
30:21
because as dictator, he restricted heavily the powers of the censors.
30:25
He made, he, he, he, he took away a lot of their, their,
30:29
their abilities 'cause they were interfering in the governance of Rome.
30:33
Um, so they cut him off, uh, from, from the tribal assembly and, and therefore
30:38
from election as, as an ideal until, until the tribe was able to enroll him again.
30:42
Um, there is some dispute about whether the censors had the power
30:45
to strip a man of the right to hold, uh, any kind of office, um, with,
30:49
with thinkers and writers in the late republican, early imperial period
30:52
arguing persuasively against it, though I'll, I'll note that the context
30:56
suggests that, that the earlier censors would have not agreed with that.
31:00
The earlier censors would have said, "Nope, we, uh, we have the right to
31:03
completely strip somebody of their ability to serve in Rome," okay?
31:08
But regardless of the, the precise legal powers held by, by people that,
31:12
that, that, that were called censors across five, uh, centuries, a notice
31:16
censuria, uh, against a man while he was trying to be elected, uh, any,
31:20
uh, uh, into any office higher than a questor would injure his, his tribe,
31:24
his patrons, and the voters' confidence.
31:26
Um, and, and this is particularly true when you understand what the
31:30
censors were allowed to consider in wielding their vast powers, right?
31:33
In, in the modern day, and, and this is typical, you know, most of the, the
31:36
Greco-Roman, uh, world had this concept, well, you know, I mean, yeah, it matters.
31:40
If, if you have a scandal, that's bad.
31:42
But we really care about, like, public fitness.
31:45
That was not Rome's opinion.
31:46
They did not, they did not dis- draw a distinction between private
31:49
actions and, and public actions.
31:51
Uh, more than, than any other city in the Greco-Roman world, and arguably more than
31:55
any other polity in history, uh, with the possible exception of, there were certain
31:59
Chinese dynasties that, uh, that, that had a, a legal framework called legalism.
32:03
Like, they, they, they o- they really heavily indexed on what is the
32:07
law, what is the letter of the law.
32:08
But they, they focused on this household, this household qualification.
32:13
Greek observers treated this as Rome's distinctive oddis- oddity.
32:16
Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes censors looking into people's
32:20
private lives, and, and Plutarch says no household was free of them.
32:22
'Cause I mean, these people, they could basically show up and demand to be taken
32:27
through your house to observe how you behaved, how you treated your family.
32:31
And, you know, the theory was, was pretty simple.
32:33
Uh, private government was the, was the sample, the training
32:36
ground for public government.
32:37
A good paterfamilias was the working model of a magistrate 'cause you,
32:41
you were judging your household.
32:43
and positions within the house were, were constantly referred to.
32:47
Uh, Cicero, uh, kind of alludes to this in, when he's talking about, he says
32:51
that the, the statesman is the field superintendent and the, the household
32:54
superintendent of the commonwealth, right?
32:56
If we view the whole of, of, of the Roman state as one household, then learning
33:01
how to serve your house, to manage disputes, to, to get people to work hard
33:07
together, um, was, was, was critical.
33:10
the other, uh, recorded grounds for, for, uh, a nota censoria in, in their private
33:14
life included neglecting your land.
33:16
Uh, if a man let his fields, orchard, or vineyard run to waste,
33:20
uh, the censors would, would severely, severely, uh, punish him.
33:24
Um, another one was luxury and waste.
33:26
If you had, you know, silver plate, bl- uh, banquets, expenditures that
33:30
showed a man could not keep his house in order, if you, if you engaged in
33:33
too much conspicuous consumption, especially early in the republic, right?
33:37
They, you know, this was, this was one of the values of, of
33:40
guys like Cato the Elder, right?
33:42
Cato was very much, "Hey, the problem with Rome is that there's
33:45
too much money floating around and people are spending too much money.
33:48
Um, if you, if you wanna spend money, do a public triumph, do a public feast,
33:51
uh, invite all of Rome to celebrate.
33:53
But if you're having private banquets where you're spending money, um,
33:57
just to, just to benefit yourselves and to benefit your faction," that
34:01
was, uh, that was frowned upon.
34:02
Okay?
34:05
So, uh, another interesting thing was celibacy, when a man ought to
34:08
have been producing, uh, citizens.
34:10
Um, so they, the people, there, there's this famous speech by a guy named, uh,
34:14
uh, Metellus that, uh, "The city cannot be safe without frequent marriages."
34:19
Uh, on the other hand, if you had a disreputable union, if you, um, if you
34:23
worked as, as an actor, if you had a freed woman or a prostitute as a wife, uh, the-
34:28
these were things that were not okay.
34:31
Um, we didn't, th- th- they didn't like that.
34:33
And the censors, again, would take note of that, and they would write up these
34:36
things saying, "This is why we don't like this guy," But most of all, the, the, the
34:39
main thing that the censors were concerned with was bad household government.
34:43
Uh, so if you had an improper divorce or a broken betrothal, something that showed
34:47
that you weren't, you weren't willing to carry out orders… Now, the critical
34:51
thing about the betrothals, um, and, and marriages too for that matter, many
34:55
of these were not, like, your choice.
34:57
They were arranged by your father or by some, you know, elder male
35:00
in your, in your clan or tribe.
35:02
And so if you broke a betrothal, if you show you didn't have concern for the, for
35:07
the wishes of your immediate ancestors, that was seen as, as being disrespectful,
35:11
as something that indicated, hey, this guy is not going to, uh, not going to,
35:15
to be respectful of, of the traditions of, of, of the ancestors of Rome, right?
35:19
And, and, and everything that we're, that we're trying to do here, if you
35:22
were too harsh or too indulgent with your wife and your children, if you put your,
35:25
your sons in the wrong schools, right?
35:27
There was a, there was an edict in 92 BC against, um, against putting your, your
35:33
children in, in schools, uh, i- under tutors that would kind of stir up dissent.
35:38
Uh, if you were cruel to slaves or clients.
35:40
You know, it's, it's really interesting because we think of, you know, the,
35:43
the paterfamilias, the power of life.
35:45
He's got the power of life and death over everyone in his household.
35:49
Yeah, but, right?
35:50
Um, if he behaved in a way that, that showed that he was cruel,
35:56
that showed that he was, um, he did not care about the people under
36:00
him, um, then he would be shamed.
36:03
He would be publicly stigmatized.
36:05
Um- And I think that's, that's important.
36:09
Now, there was a practical reason for this, right?
36:10
In a, in a world where household loyalty is the core of morality, which, which it
36:14
was in, in, in early Rome, a man could be expected to steal from his employer
36:18
or from the state if his father or his father's patrimony was in need, okay?
36:22
Um, and the solution to this was, well, let's… We're, we're gonna restrict some
36:25
of these key offices, especially offices where somebody is handling money, to
36:29
people whose households are rich, okay?
36:31
Um, that's, that's why the, the, the idols had to, had to fund the
36:36
public games out of their own purse.
36:37
They weren't, they weren't given money from the state.
36:39
Now, uh, higher ranks, obviously a praetor or a consul, they
36:43
are dispersing public money.
36:44
That's, that's how that works.
36:46
but you, you need those guys to be people that their households are doing okay.
36:49
They're not, they're not ever put in a position where they're
36:52
tempted to take from the public household to, uh, from the…
36:56
Sorry.
36:56
From the, from the public funds to boost their, their private household.
37:00
So… And, you know, one of the things is, y- formally, the censors hold the, the
37:05
same power over, over everyone of rank.
37:07
Um, the only office they could technically bar you from was the Senate.
37:11
Uh, but for praetors and consuls, these higher ranks that held imperium, Rome
37:15
relies really heavily on the judgment of the censors, both to reveal the state
37:18
of a man's character and his purse.
37:20
Rome was being asked to trust this man with a court, an army, a province.
37:24
They were much less likely, To do that with a man that had been marked by the
37:27
censor's disapproval, And obviously, um, you know, I, I mentioned this a little
37:31
bit last week, Paul incorporates language that would have struck the original
37:35
hearers as very similar to this, right?
37:36
He talks about in the, the pastoral epistles, "An elder must preside over
37:40
his own house well, must manage his household well. He must keep his children
37:43
in submission with all dignity," right?
37:45
Um, "If a man does not know how to preside over his household, how will he take
37:48
care of the church of God?" Uh, you know, these, these things would have struck
37:53
people as, as hitting similarities to taking on public responsibilities to the
38:00
city, especially to the city of Rome.
38:01
And, and, and my view, Paul is trying to communicate to, to the early
38:05
Christians that they should view eldership as a high office, right?
38:09
That, that, that… As equivalent to wielding the imperium of Rome even.
38:12
Um, which, you know, kind of shifts the mindset, I think, that, that,
38:16
that we have towards those, those, uh, those verses when you understand
38:19
that, that this is the language.
38:21
And I'm not saying that Paul was, was, was trying to draw a,
38:25
a direct immediate comparison.
38:26
Obviously, Paul views the, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of
38:29
the world as very different, right?
38:31
There's, there's, you know, there's a few bits on that in
38:32
the Bible, in the New Testament.
38:34
Uh, but, but in terms of if these are similar competing kingdoms,
38:38
the elders had a, a rank.
38:40
They, they were able to dispense the, the, the, the sword of
38:44
Christ, if you will, right?
38:45
All, all of that language is, is much more natural when you understand that
38:50
Paul is drawing on kind of this rich heritage of people thinking publicly
38:54
about what kind of person and what kind of household should a person, uh, that
38:58
we entrust with the imperium have, okay?
39:01
In, in the Roman, in the Roman context.
39:03
And this is particularly true, uh, because, you know, these guys,
39:06
the, the household has to serve while the main guy is away, right?
39:10
Uh, so the household… A household that remains faithful while its head serves
39:13
elsewhere shows that he formed people, delegated authority, and set habits that
39:18
do not depend on his, you know, standing there, there making them happen, right?
39:21
A prospective elder or prospective prater's house should show that his wife,
39:25
his children, and the children he has entrusted can exercise real responsibility
39:28
without disorder or concealment, that is a, a critical piece of, of what's going
39:34
on in these, um, in these passages, right?
39:37
We're, we're thinking about how do we get super high quality
39:40
guys, super high quality guys.
39:42
So we're gonna take a, a little bit of a deviation.
39:44
Uh, at this point we're talking about the, the, the centuriate assembly.
39:47
and again, I, I said, as I said earlier, every citizen of Rome
39:50
voted in the centuriate assembly, but they did not vote as equals.
39:54
Voting as equals is not really a thing that they did.
39:56
Um, the Athenians flirted with, with some level of voting as equals,
40:01
especially, especially as they moved into, uh, the, the, the hoplite or the,
40:05
the, the… There was a period of time where, uh, Athens actually had citizens
40:09
rowing in its, uh, in its, in its navy.
40:11
They had, they had citizen rowers, and so they needed a huge amount of people to,
40:16
to cooperate to make their navy dominant, and that, that drove, uh, demands
40:20
for, for broader democratic rights.
40:23
Rome did not do that.
40:24
Rome, Rome needed… You know, Rome's navy was never super good, frankly.
40:28
Um, they, they kinda were outmatched in, in, in most times and places.
40:32
Their ar- their army, their, their, their military was pretty good as a whole.
40:36
Um, but they, they did not do that.
40:39
They, they always preserved this idea of, hey, the property that you have,
40:43
the, the, the voice that you speak with, um, is, is mediated against
40:48
how much you're managing and how successfully you're managing it, right?
40:51
So to, to understand the centuriate assembly, uh, you have, you have
40:56
the knights, um, and initially they had no property, uh, requirements.
41:00
The knights later on, they would, come to a place where, they'd, they'd
41:04
eventually assign the knights a income requirement or, or excuse me, a, a
41:07
wealth requirement that was about two to three times, two to three times
41:11
the, the requirement for class one.
41:13
Uh, especially as, again, you know, being a knight, riding a horse became just a
41:16
matter of can you, can you buy a horse, 'cause horses were no longer restricted.
41:20
They had 18 votes, uh, for the centurions of, of the knights, and then, uh, 80 votes
41:25
for, um, for the first class, which had, uh, 100,000 units of, of copper that…
41:32
Then the unit of copper is pronounced asses, right?
41:34
Or asses.
41:35
Um, and that's… It, it's really interesting.
41:38
That would be about $470,000 of copper today.
41:41
And those two groups, the, the first class and the knights,
41:44
constituted a flat majority of, of the centurion assembly, right?
41:47
So they could, they could set policy, they could elect.
41:51
They, they could elect the censors and the consuls and the, um, and the praetors.
41:54
And if those people were unified, if they were all on the same page, which meant
41:58
if there was a threat to their interest, a global threat to their interests, uh,
42:02
then they could just, they could just pass policy Now one of the things, you know,
42:07
obviously you're looking at, at, at vast historical differences, vast economic
42:11
differences, but there's a real argument for, uh, pricing things in metals.
42:14
Uh, so pricing things in metals creates, uh, possibilities
42:17
for cross-cultural parallels.
42:19
Gold is one example.
42:20
So for instance, 200 silver dimes is one of my favorite statistics.
42:23
200 silver dimes in, in 1962 or 1964, the last year they were issued,
42:28
bought one hour of, of, of legal time, the, by the average billable hour.
42:32
Um, interestingly, uh, those same 200 silver dimes in a weight of silver
42:37
still buy about an hour of legal time.
42:39
Um, you gotta have, you gotta have rolling averages of how you're
42:42
counting the silver, but, uh, but, but that's, that's been a very durable
42:45
relationship despite all of the, the games we play with currency.
42:48
Um, so, uh, selected prices repeatedly return to recognizable
42:53
gold and silver ranges even after decades of dollar inflation.
42:56
So a good men's suit, uh, lo- you know, there's lo- lo- a lot of people that
43:00
have said, you know, for an ounce of gold you can have a good bespoke suit.
43:03
housing has, uh, the median American home has been near 200 ounces of
43:07
gold for a lot of times, especially when you, when you understand that
43:11
the, um- when you take it on, on like a five to 10-year rolling average.
43:14
Um, a military equivalent personal weapon, um, is about, uh, one ounce of gold
43:19
and, and you know, we've, we've recently had… Gold has recently increased
43:22
massively in the last four to five years.
43:24
Uh, but um, so we'll, we'll have to see if, if these things, uh,
43:29
if these things come up, right?
43:31
Uh, but, but a military-grade firearm is, is about an ounce of gold.
43:35
Um, right now at this moment because we have this massive upswing it's,
43:39
it's not, uh, but, uh, we'll see if, we'll see if it catches up.
43:42
We'll see if it catches up.
43:44
Uh, one of my favorite, uh, statistics in this vein is the, the
43:48
44 ounce, uh, the 44 ounce metric.
43:50
So, uh, it is a fact that, uh, in, in no year in our, in our history in which
43:55
American workers were paid less on average, uh, than, than 44 ounces of gold,
43:59
uh, has, uh, replacement fertility, right?
44:02
A replacement fertility is, um, is, uh, 2.1 children per woman, um, and 44
44:07
ounces of gold, uh, is about $200,000 a year at, at, at current gold prices.
44:12
And, and you know, i- in, in modern surveys, this, this number has held fast.
44:16
Uh, so that, that 44 ounce is drawn from similarities, uh, between how
44:21
much Henry Ford paid his workers priced in gold and certain modern
44:25
surveys that have said, "Well, kind of the middle class has low fertility.
44:29
The, the poor have relatively high fertility," um, because they get paid
44:33
for, for more children, kind of like the welfare queen, welfare baby type of thing.
44:36
And then at the other end of the spectrum in, a K-shaped sort of a way, once
44:40
you get above a certain number of your household income, then fertility
44:44
also starts to, to tick up, and that number is about 44 ounces of gold,
44:49
which is, which is really interesting.
44:50
So anyway, I wanted to include that 'cause, 'cause that,
44:53
that stuff fascinates me.
44:54
But back to Rome.
44:55
Livy's the, the, the, the copper units that Livy's talking about, these,
44:58
this is liberal bronze, you know, and it's, it's really interesting.
45:01
Um, you know, copper is the main ingredient in bronze,
45:04
so this is about 33,000.
45:06
So for a first class family you need about 33,000 kilograms of copper, which is
45:10
about $470,000 in today's metal markets.
45:14
Uh, it's about, uh, two semi-truck loads of copper, right?
45:18
Uh, if you, if you wanted to think of what it would look like or, uh,
45:21
an, an interesting statistic that the, uh, the AI suggested to me
45:24
was, um, about 24,000 flock cameras.
45:28
Uh, which, which is, you know, enough to blanket a small town.
45:31
what I find fascinating was that, you know, in the ancient world, the, um,
45:36
the first class fortune would feed about 80 men in the field for a year.
45:41
And that same weight of copper, if sold, uh, would also feed about 80 men, uh, for
45:46
a year in, in the modern context, right?
45:48
If you're, if you're buying food.
45:49
Um, so, so that, that, that number appears to have an
45:53
interesting durable relationship.
45:54
if you, if you price what it costs to deploy a company, it's also
45:58
about, you know, $370,000 a year, to deploy on, on a per man basis.
46:02
That now If you say you, you have to, you have to look at that, that number
46:06
is drawn from what does it cost to deploy a company, not what does it
46:09
cost to deploy an individual soldier.
46:11
Um, and, and these figures don't include pay, but the Roman calculation
46:13
didn't, didn't include pay either.
46:15
one of the things that I wanna, I wanna make clear to people is that, that this
46:20
is, this is something the size… This is not a nation-scale project, right?
46:24
Uh, if you've got a mega church, you know, 2,000 people per weekend or a
46:29
mid-sized RIA, you know, $2 to $5 billion under management, um, that is enough
46:36
scale to build this machine, right?
46:39
That is the size that you would need to have in order to, to play this game, which
46:46
is a, again, that's, that's a lot more substantial than an individual household,
46:50
but it's not, it's not unattainable.
46:52
It's… And it's also not something that, that requires
46:55
the scale of a nation, right?
46:56
so I, I was, you know, going through, this is, again, this is the, the, the cursus
47:00
honorum of an, of an AI, of the AI future.
47:02
Uh, so what else could you buy?
47:04
What, what, what could you buy in the AI space for, uh, 33,000
47:08
kilograms of, of, of copper?
47:09
And the answer is, one eight P GPU machine with, uh, 1.1 terabytes of fast
47:14
memory, which is enough, um, over a… I, I think the, the way that I, uh,
47:19
that the AI explained to me, Nothing, nothing probably that you can have in
47:22
your house is gonna be as good, uh, on a one-shot level, as the frontier models.
47:28
But if you're looking at, well, what would you need to compete in terms of
47:32
coding or penetration testing or the other kinds of base- the basic things
47:36
that you need to be able to do that people are using AI for, um, in the present,
47:39
certainly any kind of content creation.
47:42
Um, if you're doing a five-hour session, you can be competitive with local models
47:46
and locally licensed models, um, at, at 1.1 terabytes of, of fast memory.
47:51
Like, you, you, you can-- That can allow you to have one serious household
47:55
operator or maybe a small practice sharing, sharing the machine, right?
47:59
And again, that's priced right at about four hundred and seventy thousand
48:03
dollars, um, which, which is interesting.
48:05
Now, I mentioned earlier that the, the knights had, uh, later on… Initially,
48:08
the knights didn't have a, a property requirement, but later on they were,
48:11
they were given a property requirement.
48:13
Um, and that property requirement, it was, was kind of a combination of
48:17
copper and silver, but it was, it was ba- somewhere in the vicinity of eight
48:21
hundred and twenty-five thousand to one point s- uh, uh, one point oh six million.
48:25
Um, and then, and then senators, uh, after Augustus raised the qualification,
48:30
had to show about four to five times the first class, which is, you
48:33
know, two to two and a half million.
48:35
it's fascinating to think about, well, well, what, what could you buy?
48:38
Um, so you could buy two of those eight GPU machines in the knightly band, right?
48:43
Um, or four of them, two of the, the newer eight GPU machines in the
48:46
senatorial band in that, that, you know, one point eight to, to two
48:49
point three million dollar range.
48:51
Um, the other thing you could buy, we talked earlier, uh, in the
48:54
series about the, the weede- the weeder, the, the laser-based weeder.
48:57
The Carbon Robotics laser weeder is also in this, in this senatorial
49:02
fortune class, I give you all of these things because I want us to understand,
49:08
hey- You don't need something the size of a nation state to do, to do
49:12
this type of cursus honorum stuff.
49:14
Um, again, as, as I said at the beginning, I, I think six houses,
49:18
um, coming together, maybe six to 10 houses, the, the, the Jewish minyan is
49:22
famously 10 houses that come together.
49:25
They, they are able to build something.
49:28
That, that's the- they consider like that minimum household unit.
49:31
That's the… Or the, excuse me, that, that minimum, uh, public unit that, uh,
49:34
that allows them to start a synagogue and start playing these kinds of public games.
49:38
That's the size that you need to, to, to foster children between houses.
49:42
It's the size you need to, you know, start acquiring some of these properties.
49:46
Um, that's a very doable size, right?
49:50
And so that, that, that was kind of the point of this episode.
49:52
I wanted to present all that to you guys and, and make sure that I was kind of on,
49:56
on the record as the cursus honorum is a thing we can start and start producing
50:01
and start producing high-quality people.
50:03
Uh, it does take a certain scale, right?
50:06
It's not something, uh, it'd be difficult for you to start with
50:09
just your family living in like a, a prepper, you know, a prepper compound.
50:13
But if you've got any kind of scale at all, even something the size of
50:17
a small town by modern standards, you can play this game, right?
50:21
A single, you know, mid-sized, uh, megachurch or mid-sized RIA
50:25
firm is going to be able to, to provide the necessary structures.
50:29
I mean, assuming everyone's on board or most people are on board, they're
50:32
gonna be able to start doing this.
50:33
They're gonna be able to start recognizing.
50:34
You know, I, I know, um, pastors of local churches that, that de facto
50:38
act as censors, that, that, that, that go in and they investigate.
50:42
They know the, the condition of a guy's household, and people come to them and
50:46
say, "Hey, should I invest in this guy? Should I go into business with this guy?"
50:50
And the pastor, you know, will usually not, like, divulge exactly what he knows
50:54
in, in kind of the way of the old censors.
50:56
Though every now and then you find a pastor that does exactly that,
50:59
which is, which is hilarious.
51:00
Um, but, but they will say, you know, "Let's, let's, let's guide the community
51:04
away from that." Um, there are, uh, you know, in, in, in many contexts,
51:08
there are local investors that kind of serve this function of, of the senior
51:12
statesman of the house kind of dr- saying, "Hey, let's, let's mentor some people.
51:17
Let's, let's give some people a project," right?
51:19
Um, if, if there's some folks that would say that the, the modern kind
51:22
of aristocratic path is, uh, i- in our current culture is to, to do a startup
51:27
and have an exit and maybe do an IPO, and that's kind of what gives you the
51:30
wealth to, to play the higher level games.
51:33
Um- You know, again, you don't need, you don't need a, a
51:38
infinite scale to do that, right?
51:40
Any, any mid-sized community that decided to throw its weight behind,
51:43
especially in the age of AI, right?
51:44
Where what you need are people that know what they want building, people
51:47
that can describe the attributes that they're looking for building with AI.
51:52
And the main cost is basically keeping those people working, keeping those
51:57
people fed while they do something that has a long-term payout.
52:00
A community of any size can accomplish that.
52:03
there's, there's several communities that, that, that sponsor this, uh,
52:07
or sponsor might not be the right word, but that, that I have, I have
52:10
welcomed in, uh, to, to the forum.
52:12
Exit Group, uh, Joshua Sheats' Radical Personal Finance Community,
52:15
and the Classical Society.
52:16
and all of those, I, I… are, are either at or very quickly approaching the scale
52:21
where they could do this by themselves.
52:23
If you consider, you know, the larger, maybe we might call it the liberty
52:26
community, the conservative community, there are lots and lots of players who
52:30
could do this, start doing this, start producing high-quality leaders, um,
52:35
that would be, be able to participate in, in more interesting things
52:38
at, at state and national scales.
52:41
I don't know that that's like a magic bullet solution to our political process.
52:44
Ag- again, one of the things I wanna distinguish is, is I don't want you to
52:47
think of it as, well, we, we just need to produce high-quality people, we're
52:52
gonna then be able to get them elected.
52:53
Though, it would be great if we did that, and we got them elected.
52:56
But I think more in terms of just basic competence, right?
52:59
Can your government or can some local body get the roads paved and make
53:04
sure that there's internet and make sure that there's, you know, housing
53:08
and food and all of this stuff that, that, that we need to, to, to survive
53:11
and thrive and, and move forward?
53:13
And again, as I've said before, I think all of those are gonna be
53:16
increasingly mediated by and through AI.
53:19
So, um, all right, folks, that, uh, that concludes, uh, my prepared remarks.
53:24
So thank you all for, for being here, and let's, let's move into the Q&A.
53:28
All right