Latest / Going Direct Conversations / #80 Ben O’Hanlon: The Intelligence Revolution Will Be Decentralized

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#80 Ben O’Hanlon: The Intelligence Revolution Will Be Decentralized · Going Direct Conversations

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[music]
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SPEAKER_01: Hey, my friends, Jordan here.
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SPEAKER_01: Just a few words before we hop into today's episode.
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SPEAKER_01: First and foremost, a sincere thank you and appreciation for all
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SPEAKER_01: of our early listeners, readers, and supporters at Going Direct.
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SPEAKER_01: It's really what keeps me going to do this each and every week
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SPEAKER_01: because there's clearly a community of folks out there looking to build
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SPEAKER_01: a Going Direct economy, which gets me super excited.
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SPEAKER_01: Secondly, if you haven't subscribed, please do so.
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SPEAKER_01: Our main channel and community is forming over on Substack.
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SPEAKER_01: The link is in the show notes below.
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SPEAKER_01: And we'll also be putting out our weekly conversations at YouTube, Spotify,
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SPEAKER_01: and Apple Podcasts.
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SPEAKER_01: I hope you all have a great day and remember too, go direct!
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SPEAKER_01: All right, we are live. Ben, how are we
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SPEAKER_02: Doing great. I'm caffeinated and, you know, I'm always good in the morning,
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SPEAKER_02: so you've got me at the perfect time.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: How are you?
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SPEAKER_01: I'm good, man. I'm good.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: Well, people will be happy.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: I have a guest that I'm speaking to who has a much better accent than my American accents.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: So Ben and I were just chatting before, and I normally don't do this, Ben,
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SPEAKER_01: but I think you were getting on your soapbox.
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SPEAKER_01: So just start here with telling people what you do every day.
1:15
SPEAKER_02: In my work, I solve growth, adoption, distribution problems.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: You could probably call it developer marketing,
1:21
SPEAKER_02: but it's very much ecosystem growth orchestration.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: And I like solving hard problems and they tend to be,
1:31
SPEAKER_02: a lot of my work has been around relational capital and, you know,
1:36
SPEAKER_02: you're working with like genius developers, right?
1:38
SPEAKER_02: Which requires a certain kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? Not courtesan.
1:44
SPEAKER_02: What's the other word?
1:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm not a courtesan. Concierge.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: You know, you have to be like a fiduciary, you know, and how it gets where they want to be.
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SPEAKER_02: And it's been fascinating. It's been amazing 10 years.
1:55
SPEAKER_02: And I was telling you how I got into it because I was on a...
1:58
SPEAKER_02: On a skiing trip with my wife and I fell out with her.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: So I was sulking in the, they had a literal basement in the chalet.
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SPEAKER_02: So I'm sulking in the basement and I'm reading a book called Murray Rothbard's
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SPEAKER_02: A Mystery of Banking.
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SPEAKER_02: And by the time I got to the end of the book, I was like, God damn.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: Because you start to understand like, The systems of control.
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SPEAKER_02: So I got stuck into that and then I was reading the internet of money.
2:25
SPEAKER_02: And so like by the time I got into blockchain and crypto, I was like a real believer.
2:30
SPEAKER_02: And so I got into crypto because I felt that the internet money argument is
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SPEAKER_02: about how actually For individuals,
2:41
SPEAKER_02: our transactions and what we do ought to be opaque.
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SPEAKER_02: We should have privacy as with sovereign individuals.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: And the government should be transparent.
2:48
SPEAKER_02: But this is, in fact, the opposite of the way that it works, right?
2:53
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I got super radicalized into this.
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SPEAKER_02: And I kind of got into privacy projects.
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SPEAKER_02: And I was offered bounties, actually.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: You know, so in a lot of Web3, my experience, you're dealing with smart people.
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SPEAKER_02: They've got illustrious careers and lots of great, like,
3:08
SPEAKER_02: letters after their name and stuff like that, right?
3:11
SPEAKER_02: Or they worked in some really impressive, you know, company, this kind of thing.
3:16
SPEAKER_02: But I came up through the community, right, which I think was a differentiator for me.
3:20
SPEAKER_02: So I'd come up through the community and worked my way through, I was director of IHK.
3:26
SPEAKER_02: And that requires, it requires, you know, just, Constantly asking yourself, like,
3:33
SPEAKER_02: why aren't my ideas or why is what I'm doing not working?
3:36
SPEAKER_02: But understanding that you're going to have to mea culpa,
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SPEAKER_02: take all responsibility for every failure as to why they're not landing with people
3:45
SPEAKER_02: and just have this like ruthless doggedness in you to keep going back and trying
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SPEAKER_02: to solve things. And when they don't work.
3:53
SPEAKER_02: It's your fault because you're dealing with genius developers, right?
3:55
SPEAKER_02: They don't have time to hold your hand, this kind of stuff.
3:59
SPEAKER_02: But with the privacy stuff in Komodo,
4:01
SPEAKER_02: and these guys were the team that did Bitcoin Diet before them.
4:05
SPEAKER_02: And before that, they were on NXT chain.
4:07
SPEAKER_02: So they'd been around a long time.
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SPEAKER_02: And it was very privacy-focused.
4:11
SPEAKER_02: And out of that ecosystem came Veruscoin and Pirate Chain.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: But they got me involved because they gave me...
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SPEAKER_02: So I wasn't even thinking about getting a job in crypto.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: Then they hired me.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: Then I was head of community or something.
4:29
SPEAKER_02: And after that, I got headhunted or I got recruited by IOHK
4:36
SPEAKER_02: for the Midnight Protocol, which wasn't ready.
4:38
SPEAKER_02: So I got seconded into Kidani Foundation, which is the not-for-profit.
4:43
SPEAKER_02: So that's how I got involved.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: I can explain my story of like the ecosystem, but fundamentally,
4:49
SPEAKER_02: if I was to summarize all of that,
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SPEAKER_02: if you told me that I would have been interested in political economic history
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SPEAKER_02: when I was in school, I would have thought you were insane, you know,
5:00
SPEAKER_02: but actually super interesting.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, no, and I think that it's funny.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: I think it's a good segue into, I'm kind of a similar way.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: I've kind of landed on this thing where it's like I just keep finding myself reading
5:13
SPEAKER_01: a lot about political history and economic history.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: And I think this is how I originally came across your work,
5:21
SPEAKER_01: where you're in the process of writing,
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SPEAKER_01: which this is kind of what we're going to dig into,
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SPEAKER_01: is a five-part series on why the intelligence revolution will be decentralized.
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SPEAKER_01: And...
5:31
SPEAKER_01: As we were just, you know, we were chatting before as folks who are watching
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SPEAKER_01: or listening now, kind of the whole theme
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SPEAKER_01: behind the Going Direct economy is building a much,
5:38
SPEAKER_01: much more direct decentralized system.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: And the main enabler to being able to do this is that is going to be AI.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: And the last piece that I wrote was really kind of digging into this idea of how AI
5:52
SPEAKER_01: at its most basic level, deep level is a coordination technology.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: And I don't, I think it's a very small group of people that actually really kind
5:58
SPEAKER_01: of Very few people outside of the field actually think about that and what are
6:04
SPEAKER_01: the second and third order implications and effects of that.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: And also, because I'm someone who believes,
6:10
SPEAKER_01: I just believe decentralized systems are the best way for the greatest number
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SPEAKER_01: of people to do the best.
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SPEAKER_01: That's just my general view on it.
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SPEAKER_01: I really want to help whatever I can do to make sure
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SPEAKER_01: that this intelligence resolution Intelligence revolution is, in fact,
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SPEAKER_01: much more decentralized and open so people can have their sovereignty,
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SPEAKER_01: especially at a time where many of our systems are breaking down.
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SPEAKER_01: So anyways, that's the connecting point.
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SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to start here.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to kind of walk through each one of your pieces a little bit
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SPEAKER_01: because I wanted to kind of get in your head.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: It's one of my favorite things to do when I come across a substack.
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SPEAKER_01: An author who's put a lot of thought into something like this together
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SPEAKER_01: and allow them a way to unpack their ideas.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: So essay one, which is the prelude, is titled,
7:01
SPEAKER_01: Money is a Coordination Technology That's Been Captured.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: And so in plain terms, can you just kind of dig deeper into what you mean
7:11
SPEAKER_01: by money is a coordination technology?
7:17
SPEAKER_02: Money is a belief, fundamentally.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: So all reality is kind of internal, which is contentious.
7:25
SPEAKER_02: People will argue with you.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: And maybe there is an object reality out there, right?
7:28
SPEAKER_02: But I'm saying that for all intents and purposes, you know,
7:32
SPEAKER_02: there's that idea of as above, so below.
7:34
SPEAKER_02: It's like what's happening internally in someone's mind is really what's going
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SPEAKER_02: to drive all behaviors.
7:39
SPEAKER_02: And so this is the interesting thing about money.
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SPEAKER_02: You're accepting money because you believe the next person that you transact
7:45
SPEAKER_02: with is also going to accept it.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: And it's a medium of exchange.
7:51
SPEAKER_02: And it's a coordination technology.
7:53
SPEAKER_02: And it's a very interesting idea.
7:56
SPEAKER_02: It's a guy called Escape Key.
7:58
SPEAKER_02: I deliberately didn't link him in my post because his ideas are fantastic,
8:03
SPEAKER_02: but I didn't want to associate some of the arguments with broader conspiracy stuff.
8:08
SPEAKER_02: But his essential point is that if you control the inputs and the standards
8:13
SPEAKER_02: of a system, You don't have to come in and tell Jordan exactly what he does, right?
8:18
SPEAKER_02: Because you're going to be able to control the kind of macro.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: So think about like a desert, you know, or something like this.
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SPEAKER_02: There are selection pressures with these standards or inputs.
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SPEAKER_02: And this is like the monetary system.
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SPEAKER_02: If you can control what the standards and the inputs are, you control most of the game.
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SPEAKER_02: You don't have to own the monetary supply if you're able to control inputs
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SPEAKER_02: and outputs, you know?
8:41
SPEAKER_02: So this is a really interesting idea.
8:43
SPEAKER_02: And the monetary supply is a coordination technology
8:47
SPEAKER_02: and it's civilizational management at scale because you can think
8:51
SPEAKER_02: about how debt's being used to wage wars like
8:55
SPEAKER_02: the IMF and things like this.
8:59
SPEAKER_02: And it's also incentives control behaviors as well.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: So the biggest shift that we've gone from Is essentially
9:08
SPEAKER_02: a commodity-backed currency, so something like gold, right?
9:13
SPEAKER_02: And if you're the king of Jordan land, you know,
9:17
SPEAKER_02: sending your men down the mine and getting the gold out, but at a certain point,
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SPEAKER_02: the risk and the work becomes more expensive than it is to get that gold out
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SPEAKER_02: of the mine. So there's a limit on how much gold can be in circulation because it's
9:30
SPEAKER_02: a physical commodity and you need to go and get it, right?
9:35
SPEAKER_02: The interesting thing is, I have to go and fact check my history,
9:38
SPEAKER_02: but like Nixon and the gold standard and moving to fiat,
9:43
SPEAKER_02: which is money based on nothing, based on a promise, backed by, it's basically debt,
9:49
SPEAKER_02: right? What it's really backed by is the U.S. military, right?
9:53
SPEAKER_02: That's what's backing the U.S. dollar.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: But it's fascinating as a chessboard, right?
9:59
SPEAKER_02: Like we're not even having to make moral judgments at this point.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: We're just saying...
10:04
SPEAKER_02: Now that the US dollar doesn't have to be linked to how much gold or the commodity
10:09
SPEAKER_02: that can be get out of the ground, I'm just using that as my analogy, right? Sure.
10:12
SPEAKER_02: They can print as much as they want of it.
10:16
SPEAKER_02: And so they can go and capture the standards and the inputs of other systems as well.
10:21
SPEAKER_02: So this kind of coordination technology to normal people, to normies,
10:25
SPEAKER_02: they're just trying to have kids and get on in the world and do well.
10:28
SPEAKER_02: And so they're not studying these kind of things.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: And so money is just money.
10:32
SPEAKER_02: They don't have to overthink it, right?
10:34
SPEAKER_02: But it's really interesting the substrates that are below it
10:37
SPEAKER_02: because everything is organized fundamentally about an exchange of value
10:42
SPEAKER_02: and money is the proxy of that value.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: So it's sort of our time and our work that's being stolen.
10:49
SPEAKER_02: So I explained to my son, it's like a hidden tax.
10:51
SPEAKER_02: They're devaluing what's in your pocket.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: You can't see it.
10:56
SPEAKER_02: You can't see this theft happening.
10:58
SPEAKER_02: And the people that benefit from it are those where they are closest to the money printer.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: So when I print money, there's a beautiful story about the angel Gabriel.
11:07
SPEAKER_02: And everybody's praying. Everybody's praying.
11:09
SPEAKER_02: Oh, please, God, give me more money.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm so pleased.
11:13
SPEAKER_02: And so he doubles the money in everybody's pocket overnight.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: And everybody wakes up.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: And the question is, who benefits first?
11:20
SPEAKER_02: Who benefits from that?
11:21
SPEAKER_02: The people that benefit are those that spend the money first
11:24
SPEAKER_02: because that's what everything is priced in.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: And as all of the money, nothing else has been doubled.
11:31
SPEAKER_02: The same amount of houses, cars, hours in the day, it's all the same, right?
11:35
SPEAKER_02: So as double that money enters circulation,
11:38
SPEAKER_02: what you'll find is the price of everything goes up
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SPEAKER_02: because the relative value hasn't devalued the money, right?
11:46
SPEAKER_02: So this is the kind of theft of And by the way, I'm not, I'll loop back to this.
11:52
SPEAKER_02: It's a kind of, it's a kind of theft where you're selling future generations down
11:57
SPEAKER_02: the road because it's a never ending debt that can't ever be paid off, right?
12:03
SPEAKER_02: Without even getting into who owns debt, right?
12:06
SPEAKER_02: And it's future generations that have to pay it.
12:08
SPEAKER_02: So the other interesting thing I haven't worked in Web3 is like, What are these taxes?
12:14
SPEAKER_02: Why are we all paying taxes?
12:16
SPEAKER_02: Because you could, me and Jordan can go and create a currency and we could have
12:20
SPEAKER_02: a low level of inflation that would represent taxes with which we're going
12:24
SPEAKER_02: to do things like fund the government. Where's my roads? We're going to build roads.
12:28
SPEAKER_02: Don't worry.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: So we'll use that inflation to go and build some roads and whatever else it is that we need.
12:33
SPEAKER_02: And we'll be transparent about it.
12:35
SPEAKER_02: And we'll say, well, you know,
12:36
SPEAKER_02: the currency is going to be inflated a little bit because we're going to need
12:38
SPEAKER_02: to spend some more money here and here.
12:39
SPEAKER_02: But We transpound, right?
12:42
SPEAKER_02: But that isn't what happens.
12:43
SPEAKER_02: So, like, why are we all paying taxes?
12:46
SPEAKER_02: It's because we're in a feudal system and we're servants on the land, right?
12:50
SPEAKER_02: And they want you to know, jordan, you're paying us taxes because you owe us, we're your lead.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: You owe us a fidelity, this kind of thing.
12:59
SPEAKER_02: So, I think, like, part of, like, and the reason I wrote the series, by the way,
13:03
SPEAKER_02: is I was talking to a mum, actually, at my kid's A birthday party my son was at.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: And my experience, and I'm not saying I'm super smart,
13:13
SPEAKER_02: but I think maybe some developers would recognize this.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: It can be very lonely if you're smart or clever because you'll often try
13:21
SPEAKER_02: and communicate things that people are not,
13:24
SPEAKER_02: they're just not able to meet you where you're at.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: And so for a long, long part of my life, I thought that I was really bad at communicating.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: I was oversharing.
13:33
SPEAKER_02: I was, you know, always taking this feedback on board.
13:37
SPEAKER_02: And so the point of this series is I'm just going to write this out
13:41
SPEAKER_02: so that I can release this like real just, oh,
13:47
SPEAKER_02: fatigue in trying to explain some ideas to people, you know, like,
13:51
SPEAKER_02: so I wanted to write it out because I wanted to set out the argument,
13:54
SPEAKER_02: as you put so well earlier, where we're going to is
13:57
SPEAKER_02: an inevitable counterintelligence revolution and an information insurgency.
14:03
SPEAKER_02: I'm fucking here for it.
14:05
SPEAKER_02: I'm here for it.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: You were made for it.
14:09
SPEAKER_02: I was born for this.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: I was born for it.
14:11
SPEAKER_02: I constantly think about that.
14:13
SPEAKER_02: But just to unlock one point before I wrap up on that,
14:15
SPEAKER_02: it's like there's two things going on, right?
14:20
SPEAKER_02: There's the material world.
14:22
SPEAKER_02: We talked about the monetary system, the commodities, this kind of stuff, right?
14:26
SPEAKER_02: But there's people's beliefs.
14:29
SPEAKER_02: This is like an epiphany I had.
14:30
SPEAKER_02: There was a song that was playing and it was about a superposition.
14:35
SPEAKER_02: And where I'm at now is there's this distributed cognitive field across everybody's minds.
14:41
SPEAKER_02: We'll just take America for sake, everybody's minds, right?
14:46
SPEAKER_02: And these minds are made up of probabilities and uncertainties.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: And in fact, they may even be massively modular, right?
14:52
SPEAKER_02: So you're dealing with Many co-occurring minds that have these beliefs and probabilities.
14:58
SPEAKER_02: Let's just call them models. They have these models of the world, right?
15:00
SPEAKER_02: Math is not the territory, right?
15:02
SPEAKER_02: And there's this latent charge across all of it, right?
15:05
SPEAKER_02: This kind of like superposition across all of these minds.
15:09
SPEAKER_02: And it is a superposition because...
15:11
SPEAKER_02: It's beyond time.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: It's all of the generations that live before you,
15:15
SPEAKER_02: everyone that passed a torch to get Jordan to the point that he's at today, right?
15:19
SPEAKER_02: That all exists because there's the genetics,
15:22
SPEAKER_02: which is your DNA that's been passed down, but there's the mimetics,
15:25
SPEAKER_02: which is your culture and the ideas and even the value systems and, you know,
15:30
SPEAKER_02: the words we're using here, right?
15:32
SPEAKER_02: So this superposition exists and then,
15:35
SPEAKER_02: and I think about it and it's almost like a metaphysical thing as opposed
15:38
SPEAKER_02: to like material.
15:40
SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting because in a paradigm that we're in now where there's
15:46
SPEAKER_02: so much fear, uncertainty and doubt,
15:48
SPEAKER_02: where like this existential threat that everybody is facing,
15:52
SPEAKER_02: which I think is kind of coordinated to some extent, right?
15:55
SPEAKER_02: All these hacks that are happening now and all the mass papers got released at the same time.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: It's like, okay, yeah, maybe this is all just happening, or maybe this is a theater,
16:04
SPEAKER_02: a story, and we're being introduced to whatever, the new world order,
16:09
SPEAKER_02: whatever's All right.
16:12
SPEAKER_02: Superposition is simply that field,
16:17
SPEAKER_02: that entanglement of all of those hopes, fears, and certainties.
16:22
SPEAKER_02: And all these individuals are looking for certainty.
16:24
SPEAKER_02: They want to resolve this tension.
16:26
SPEAKER_02: And I think there's a huge opportunity In being able to collapse the superposition.
16:31
SPEAKER_02: And I'm being mercenary here as well because I have to go and, you know, earn a class, right?
16:34
SPEAKER_02: So I think about these things both from the point of view of like the common good
16:39
SPEAKER_02: and also how I can navigate and be more effective in these things.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: So why are people early?
16:44
SPEAKER_02: Why do they seem to be early, right?
16:45
SPEAKER_02: I think you're early when you're Engaging in that superposition and collapsing it
16:52
SPEAKER_02: to your benefit one way or the other,
16:53
SPEAKER_02: whether you're a state or whether you're an individual or whether you're a business,
16:56
SPEAKER_02: right?
16:57
SPEAKER_02: And so what you're trying to do is not, let me, I'm almost touching on this.
17:04
SPEAKER_02: It's very costly as a business to try and go and deal with an industry
17:09
SPEAKER_02: where everything is known and calcified and you're going to go and try
17:13
SPEAKER_02: and take what you're doing to market, right?
17:19
SPEAKER_02: It's much easier, in some senses, much lower cost,
17:23
SPEAKER_02: to be able to get in early before there's a consensus.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: Sure, before markets form inefficiencies.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: Right, and so I think that's why I think about that superposition a lot,
17:36
SPEAKER_02: because where we're going to go
17:39
SPEAKER_02: in this argument is this counter-revolution is inevitable.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that we're going to say is, The field wants to be resolved.
17:46
SPEAKER_02: There's this tension.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: And so that is, in fact, selection pressure.
17:52
SPEAKER_02: With Web3, why didn't the revolution happen as we wanted to?
17:55
SPEAKER_02: Well, I'll go into why, but I don't think it's over.
18:01
SPEAKER_02: And at that time, you and I would have known, people were like, well, it's first world problems.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: It's like, this is really needed in, I don't think we're saying third world, are we?
18:09
SPEAKER_02: Developed world, whatever we're saying is correct.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: But what I'm trying to get at is, In Africa, for instance,
18:17
SPEAKER_02: you could have come in and maybe countries would be more open
18:20
SPEAKER_02: to trying different technology and there'd be a greater need for sovereignty
18:24
SPEAKER_02: over the monetary supply.
18:26
SPEAKER_02: But in the first world, it was to calcify.
18:28
SPEAKER_02: It's very difficult to do that.
18:29
SPEAKER_02: With AI, there's going to be this sovereignty selection pressure across individuals,
18:35
SPEAKER_02: institutions, and states because they're going to have to form coalitions.
18:38
SPEAKER_02: And it's not even about the money anymore.
18:40
SPEAKER_02: It's about like Either you realize this is a fight for survival or you're going
18:45
SPEAKER_02: to be paying rent.
18:47
SPEAKER_02: You're going to be living on someone else's cognitive infrastructure.
18:50
SPEAKER_02: And if they don't like you, if Trump decides to put export controls,
18:54
SPEAKER_02: good luck because your means of cognition and production is gone now.
18:58
SPEAKER_02: And then one last thing and then I'm done.
19:00
SPEAKER_02: Not only the means of cognition, but when people are operating with AI,
19:05
SPEAKER_02: we talked about it being a coordination technology.
19:08
SPEAKER_02: There's a salesman's
19:11
SPEAKER_02: If I say it, you doubt it.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: But if you say it, it's true.
19:15
SPEAKER_02: If I say it, you doubt it.
19:16
SPEAKER_02: But if you say it, it's true, Jordan, right?
19:19
SPEAKER_02: Because you're smart, right?
19:20
SPEAKER_02: So people will resist other people's ideas far more
19:25
SPEAKER_02: than they will resist what they think are their own ideas.
19:27
SPEAKER_02: And there's a bunch of research you can look up on X, right?
19:30
SPEAKER_02: About like when people are engaging LLMs,
19:32
SPEAKER_02: they're going on what they think is a self-determined journey of exploration.
19:36
SPEAKER_02: And they're going to come. I was having my hair cut.
19:38
SPEAKER_02: The woman's like, I've built this website with Gronk.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: They believe it because they've been on that journey. They've done that thinking.
19:44
SPEAKER_02: So they think it's of them.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: But I don't think that it necessarily would be if these tools are used
19:51
SPEAKER_02: in the same way the monetary system is being used as a tool
19:55
SPEAKER_02: for like civilizational control and management.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: So I think...
19:59
SPEAKER_01: To wrap it back to this, at the beginning of the conversation,
20:03
SPEAKER_01: or when we started talking about money
20:04
SPEAKER_01: as a coordination technology has been captured, and I think your world,
20:09
SPEAKER_01: your interests, and how you see things in helping other people see things,
20:15
SPEAKER_01: we're at a very important point in time.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: As you were saying, I find a similar thing where most people don't pay attention
20:22
SPEAKER_01: to this, they just want to live their lives and do their thing,
20:25
SPEAKER_01: and they're not thinking too much about much.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we're seeing it all around us, obviously,
20:33
SPEAKER_01: but understanding money and then actually how debt works and then the problem
20:39
SPEAKER_01: that most Western governments,
20:43
SPEAKER_01: that problem that they have and then now they have an interest problem
20:47
SPEAKER_01: and as they're printing more and more money for everyone out there
20:50
SPEAKER_01: that doesn't pay attention to stuff or don't really care that much.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: As you print porn more money, your money gets inflated away.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: And so you're kind of sleeping at the wheel.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: And part of my hope, kind of similar to what you're saying,
21:01
SPEAKER_01: is we can help more people wake up and say, hey, no, like,
21:06
SPEAKER_01: you need to pay attention to this.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's important, especially as AI starts to diffuse through our lives
21:12
SPEAKER_01: and the economy, that we need to fight for much more decentralized,
21:16
SPEAKER_01: distributed intelligence for all the reasons that you just said.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: So I want to go over to the kind of the transition into the next essay. Okay.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: As we're kind of moving from money to cognition,
21:29
SPEAKER_01: I pulled a quote from like the end of the first, the first piece.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit long, but folks can hang with us.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: AI, like money before it, is a coordination technology that reorganizes society.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: But it sits a layer deeper.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: Money captured exchange and through it, governance.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: AI reaches the layer beneath both.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Cognition where belief itself is made.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: Capture that and everything built on belief comes with it, money included.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: It is being rapidly deployed by a handful of private companies to capture the 21st century.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's a deep, deep excerpt.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: So you say that AI sits a layer deeper than money.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: So why is cognition deeper than exchange?
22:13
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to answer it.
22:16
SPEAKER_02: One thing about the monetary,
22:17
SPEAKER_02: the reason that we had to establish the monetary system is that if you just come
22:23
SPEAKER_02: in at this conversation right now, People won't necessarily know that it's real.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: It can sound that you're being a conspiracy theorist.
22:30
SPEAKER_02: I wanted to establish this has happened before.
22:35
SPEAKER_02: And this has happened, and this does answer your question to some extent,
22:39
SPEAKER_02: this has happened where you're not even conscious or necessarily realizing it,
22:44
SPEAKER_02: right? Like a fish in water.
22:46
SPEAKER_02: Because it's so normalized, how the monetary system works in the past, however many years it is.
22:52
SPEAKER_02: You're not even aware of it.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: It's happened all around you.
22:55
SPEAKER_02: All of your children and yourself and your parents and your children's children,
23:00
SPEAKER_02: all of their economic output now is kind of owned by this system, right,
23:05
SPEAKER_02: with its owners.
23:07
SPEAKER_02: And this is what's happening with AI, you know?
23:09
SPEAKER_02: And the reason it is is there's going to be people navigate the world based on stories, right?
23:17
SPEAKER_02: And they tell themselves a story about who they are and why they're doing what they're doing.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: And one of the most important things you can do is validate someone's idea of sense of self.
23:27
SPEAKER_02: That actually drives more behavior than money would, right?
23:31
SPEAKER_02: If you really want to understand how you're going to kind of mobilize people,
23:36
SPEAKER_02: you need to understand How it is they're talking to themselves.
23:40
SPEAKER_02: What is their internalities as opposed to the externalities, right?
23:45
SPEAKER_02: Kind of like the superposition we're talking about.
23:47
SPEAKER_02: But now we're thinking about instead of this multinodal network of minds,
23:53
SPEAKER_02: we're thinking about the individual and how it operates in the world, right?
23:58
SPEAKER_02: And I talked to you before the call started briefly about John Boyd and OODA loops,
24:02
SPEAKER_02: which is observation, orientation, decision, and action.
24:06
SPEAKER_02: And that on every LinkedIn post ever,
24:09
SPEAKER_02: it's just reduced to this one cycle where you have to spin it. But it's not.
24:13
SPEAKER_02: John Boyd was an American...
24:15
SPEAKER_02: I think Air Force General, or I'll get the terminology wrong,
24:18
SPEAKER_02: but it's very interesting because he's talking about operating
24:21
SPEAKER_02: in other people's decision cycles.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: So an adversary, partners, coalitions, groups, right?
24:30
SPEAKER_02: How are those people thinking?
24:31
SPEAKER_02: And something my wife taught me much later in life was like theory of mind, you know?
24:37
SPEAKER_02: So, and that's probably worth,
24:40
SPEAKER_02: because me and my wife would come back from social trips and, you know, places,
24:44
SPEAKER_02: she'd say, Then the reason they're saying this and that of this is because ABCD.
24:50
SPEAKER_02: And I'll be like, no, fuck off.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: No, no, that's outrageous. She's always correct.
24:55
SPEAKER_02: And I kind of realized, okay,
24:57
SPEAKER_02: there's something going on here that I wasn't really cognizant of because I,
25:00
SPEAKER_02: by nature, be quite direct, which can come across as naive maybe to some
25:05
SPEAKER_02: because you're just telling how it is, right?
25:07
SPEAKER_02: You're communicating directly, you know?
25:10
SPEAKER_02: But as I got to know over 15 years, this theory of mind is really interesting.
25:15
SPEAKER_02: So all kinds of things are happening in why somebody is orientating around the world.
25:20
SPEAKER_02: But it's like the monetary system and the inputs and the outputs.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: If you can control the inputs and the standards that are coming
25:25
SPEAKER_02: into somebody's observation and how they orientate themselves,
25:31
SPEAKER_02: you can determine all these actions.
25:32
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's what AI does.
25:33
SPEAKER_02: It will tell you the stories about yourself, your history.
25:37
SPEAKER_02: It's like the censorship we've seen.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: In social media.
25:42
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, like if we're going to contest this, let's not talk about like,
25:46
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, Gamergate.
25:47
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about COVID where academics,
25:50
SPEAKER_02: doctors that had been to prestigious universities were censored.
25:55
SPEAKER_02: We're not talking about some fringe incel.
25:59
SPEAKER_02: We're talking about like Harvard graduates.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: We're talking about people that weren't telling the narrative.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: But that propaganda or, you know, that kind of
26:11
SPEAKER_02: It has to be fought in the externalities.
26:17
SPEAKER_02: It has to be fought in the media and out in the real world.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: But with AI, it's somebody having a conversation
26:26
SPEAKER_02: with what feels like they're talking to themselves.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: I'm not all doom and gloom, by the way.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: I feel that there's great hope with AI.
26:34
SPEAKER_02: I feel like it's extended capabilities beyond
26:39
SPEAKER_02: I
26:49
SPEAKER_02: massively feel that my ability to express my values and intention and ideas
26:54
SPEAKER_02: in the world is exponentially greater the more I'm developing it.
26:59
SPEAKER_02: So I think it can be an amazing tool.
27:02
SPEAKER_02: And I also like, you know, if you're as old as me, do you ever like Back in the 80s, 90s.
27:07
SPEAKER_02: Oh, humanity, man.
27:09
SPEAKER_02: Consciousness is going to change.
27:11
SPEAKER_02: There's a great awakening coming.
27:13
SPEAKER_02: Do you know, like tie dye t-shirt?
27:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, of course.
27:17
SPEAKER_02: So like in some ways, like my hope is AI is that.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: Is that because it is a way of people to kind of,
27:24
SPEAKER_02: I found in myself becoming more aware of my own thought process and how I think
27:29
SPEAKER_02: because I'm having to abstract it To a model and explain it like
27:34
SPEAKER_02: a harness we can talk about if we ever have time, but, but my point is like,
27:38
SPEAKER_02: so I think it can be a really, a really interesting tool, but if it's controlled by,
27:46
SPEAKER_02: you know, a centralized entity,
27:48
SPEAKER_02: if it's controlled by people that have interests of their own at the expense
27:52
SPEAKER_02: of others.
27:53
SPEAKER_02: Then I feel, and this is all technology, by the way,
27:56
SPEAKER_02: there's like a tension between tyranny and freedom, freedom of association,
28:01
SPEAKER_02: freedom of commerce, freedom of expression.
28:03
SPEAKER_02: And what we're talking about here by expressing our ideas,
28:06
SPEAKER_02: intent and values in the world, you know, maximizing our freedom of action.
28:10
SPEAKER_02: You know, these are the things that are so exciting that makes you want to be part
28:14
SPEAKER_02: of the human race, right?
28:16
SPEAKER_02: Whereas like the idea of my kids and your kids and everybody that comes
28:21
SPEAKER_02: after us having to pay rent because Some guys happen to have discovered an algorithm
28:27
SPEAKER_02: a little bit sooner than some other guys is insane.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: It's completely insane.
28:32
SPEAKER_02: And you can only imagine that the people that are the figureheads
28:35
SPEAKER_02: of these frontier labs are completely captured, you know,
28:39
SPEAKER_02: otherwise they wouldn't be there, you know?
28:41
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, probably exposing myself now is a bit of a...
28:44
SPEAKER_02: This is why I was like, who built the moon, right?
28:46
SPEAKER_02: This is why I was...
28:49
SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, listen, you're just reinforcing, no,
28:52
SPEAKER_01: you answered the question in the comment from your, or the excerpt from your essay,
28:57
SPEAKER_01: but you're getting at the core of this, right?
28:59
SPEAKER_01: Which is, I think, the line that hits the most with me, which is,
29:05
SPEAKER_01: and you made the example with the monetary system as well,
29:08
SPEAKER_01: it's whoever controls the inputs, right? Yes.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: Like, you just see it, even with AI, obviously you see it in a very,
29:19
SPEAKER_01: We're going to see it in a very direct way as you see like the insane concentration
29:24
SPEAKER_01: of wealth in a small number of companies.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: And with this whole anthropic IPO and everything like that,
29:29
SPEAKER_01: like we're seeing how much
29:32
SPEAKER_01: influence they have directly in front of us.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: And
29:40
SPEAKER_01: What I would say is, you know,
29:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm very bullish on the positive aspects of AI,
29:47
SPEAKER_01: but I'm very clear, even in my own world, it's very interesting,
29:51
SPEAKER_01: even in my own world, it's like,
29:53
SPEAKER_01: I think one of the most interesting things AI can do when it comes to like ownership
29:57
SPEAKER_01: and company formation, it's actually going to create completely new ways
30:00
SPEAKER_01: to form companies.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: It's going to bring back different types of co-op models and employee ownership models.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: And because of the coordinated effects of it and how you can share
30:10
SPEAKER_01: that infrastructure, I think is really interesting.
30:13
SPEAKER_01: But I oftentimes, and that's what I'm interested in,
30:16
SPEAKER_01: that's really where this kind of everything with Going Direct is going to go.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: But I even myself feel myself getting pulled naturally by like market forces.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: I'll give you an example.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: So about a year ago, I almost started a company all around collecting data
30:36
SPEAKER_01: to help train for physical AI companies, right? Human level data.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: And that's like have completely exploded that whole space.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: And as I was digging into it, it was like, no,
30:45
SPEAKER_01: but that's just like a market opportunity that is going to explode.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: But it's like just not aligned with who I am.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: And I think going back to your point, I think one of the challenges,
30:58
SPEAKER_01: and this is the reality, which is I think one of the parts
31:01
SPEAKER_01: of the conversation I wanted to have with you,
31:03
SPEAKER_01: which is the reality of is most humans, like you said,
31:04
SPEAKER_01: just want to go through their day.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: They're not going to go through the hard work.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: They're going to take the fat shot.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: They're going to send AI slop out the door because they don't want to do the work, right?
31:16
SPEAKER_01: Right.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: And so I just think that's part of human nature.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: And so I think the reality of it is we just have to build these alternative systems
31:25
SPEAKER_01: and these decentralized systems that can be just as good as the other ones.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, I think for me, it's just wishful thinking.
31:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think there's like dark forest theory in the cozy web
31:33
SPEAKER_02: where the synthetic content and slop is so prevalent.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: And I think it's like, 50 to 80% of internet activity is bots, according to Cloudflare.
31:43
SPEAKER_02: If I can find the report in June, it's like 90%.
31:46
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it was Solana, but 90% of on-chain activity was bots.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: So people are going to retreat into this dark forest where it's like
31:56
SPEAKER_02: in real-life meetups, person, private discord.
32:00
SPEAKER_02: So actually, I think the value of relational capital and authenticity is going to skyrocket.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: I think you're right about...
32:09
SPEAKER_02: You were saying about like the money, the value, the markets, right?
32:13
SPEAKER_02: Do you remember the quote from Game of Thrones?
32:16
SPEAKER_02: The guy, what is his name?
32:17
SPEAKER_02: Valiant, the spider, whatever.
32:21
SPEAKER_02: I never told me.
32:22
SPEAKER_02: He says, where does power lie? Where does power lie?
32:25
SPEAKER_02: And it's a trick. It's a sleight of hand.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: It lies where people believe it lies.
32:31
SPEAKER_02: So why is Antopic worth so much money?
32:34
SPEAKER_02: Why is, you know, because they want to get to IPO, right?
32:38
SPEAKER_02: But it is people's belief
32:40
SPEAKER_02: that makes these entities like powerful or be able
32:46
SPEAKER_02: to orchestrate or coordinate these resources.
32:49
SPEAKER_02: And there's like a fundamental truth or trick
32:52
SPEAKER_02: that the mainstream thinking is constantly trying to play on you when you're
32:57
SPEAKER_02: in state school or if you're in Watching TV.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: And I was explaining to my son because they talking about Onion in little bit
33:04
SPEAKER_02: of a song or something.
33:06
SPEAKER_02: And the point is, it's which way they put the focus, right?
33:10
SPEAKER_02: There's two roles in the world.
33:12
SPEAKER_02: There's acted upon.
33:13
SPEAKER_02: Where you're reactive.
33:15
SPEAKER_02: Things are happening to you.
33:16
SPEAKER_02: They are external from yourself.
33:18
SPEAKER_02: You can't do anything about it.
33:20
SPEAKER_02: And then there's you are an actor where you are acting upon the world.
33:23
SPEAKER_02: So then actually you can change everything around your reality.
33:27
SPEAKER_02: And that idea of mea culpa, which if you take it to an extreme, becomes a superpower.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: So like everything is my fault and no others. Nobody else's.
33:36
SPEAKER_02: Even things that aren't. That's my fault too. Everything's my fault.
33:39
SPEAKER_02: I create the world around me.
33:40
SPEAKER_02: Because it allows me to become an actor in that world.
33:44
SPEAKER_02: And I can change what's happening around us.
33:46
SPEAKER_02: And I think we're constantly taught Through the monetary system,
33:50
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you're in America, but like, God,
33:52
SPEAKER_02: the socialism in England is endemic.
33:56
SPEAKER_02: Which, by the way, like healthcare, education, don't misunderstand me.
33:59
SPEAKER_02: Like I'm English, so we are very like that.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: Of course, I would want to see education in healthcare for people who couldn't afford it.
34:05
SPEAKER_02: But the gap between these dependents that the state have created and people
34:11
SPEAKER_02: that want to go out and be about it and create value for the world,
34:17
SPEAKER_02: Is just so slim because they just keep taxing everybody to the nth degree, which loops back.
34:23
SPEAKER_02: You'll have to bring me back to our point, but let me look back to something else as well.
34:26
SPEAKER_02: I thought it was very interesting about the monetary supply.
34:30
SPEAKER_02: There's another dynamic we haven't talked about.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: There's a book called Democracy, The God That Failed, and that's Hans Hermann Hope.
34:36
SPEAKER_02: And essentially, there's the governance systems that we're operating in, right?
34:42
SPEAKER_02: That are just these behemoths will only ever get bigger
34:45
SPEAKER_02: because the story he goes back to the beginning is you and I grew up
34:51
SPEAKER_02: with the paradigm was East versus West, right?
34:55
SPEAKER_02: There was the Americana, Freedom,
34:58
SPEAKER_02: Steven Spielberg, Empire of the Sun, you know what I mean?
35:02
SPEAKER_01: Cold War.
35:05
SPEAKER_02: Loved America, hoorah, you know, even in England, you know.
35:09
SPEAKER_02: And then there was like, you know, Russia, communism, and there was this real tension.
35:13
SPEAKER_02: But that dichotomy, he's like, there's actually a third power.
35:17
SPEAKER_02: There's a third power that we don't think about anymore, right?
35:21
SPEAKER_02: And the third power was actually, it doesn't have to be left versus right.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be democracy versus fascism or whatever.
35:30
SPEAKER_02: These are false dichotomies.
35:32
SPEAKER_02: He's like, the third power is monarchy, right?
35:34
SPEAKER_02: The third power is private government.
35:38
SPEAKER_02: And he's not being a monarchist.
35:40
SPEAKER_02: We're not advocating for...
35:41
SPEAKER_02: I know I'm English, so you're worried that I'm going to steal the tea or something.
35:44
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
35:45
SPEAKER_02: The Queen's dead anyway.
35:46
SPEAKER_02: We've got King Charles now.
35:50
SPEAKER_02: So he's not being a monarchist. He's not arguing for monarchists.
35:53
SPEAKER_02: What he's saying is, if Jordan's king,
35:56
SPEAKER_02: he has a legacy and a long-term interest to pass down what he's inherited from...
36:01
SPEAKER_02: To those that are coming after him, his children.
36:04
SPEAKER_02: But the problem with our governance systems is it's full of short-term caretakers.
36:08
SPEAKER_02: So it's like the system is such that it can be bought because if we control
36:14
SPEAKER_02: the financial monetary supply, these people are only in power for four years.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: They're never held accountable anyway, right?
36:19
SPEAKER_02: So it's much easier to buy, right?
36:22
SPEAKER_02: So the issue is, and don't get me wrong, I do want to maximize freedom, you know?
36:28
SPEAKER_02: But the governance system as it is with democracy has been totally captured,
36:32
SPEAKER_02: the whole thing from top to tail.
36:35
SPEAKER_02: That was kind of important as a background because I'm going to make an important point here.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: The series really started off as these kind of axioms,
36:46
SPEAKER_02: which is that tech is an agent of change,
36:50
SPEAKER_02: like steam and mechanization that will reorganize society.
36:54
SPEAKER_02: And you can look at like in the north of England,
36:56
SPEAKER_02: how the commons were enclosed and people had long held rights of sustainability
37:01
SPEAKER_02: that were taken away because of another idea, which is no interface, no entry.
37:06
SPEAKER_02: I have to go and find her name, but I did credit her.
37:09
SPEAKER_02: And the idea is that before steamer mechanization,
37:11
SPEAKER_02: there was no way to organize those resources or that labor.
37:15
SPEAKER_02: But with an interface to something, suddenly new possibilities become possible.
37:19
SPEAKER_02: And so that's the tech is an agent of change.
37:22
SPEAKER_02: And then we're talking about history here.
37:24
SPEAKER_02: And then also tech is a conduit for coordination, right?
37:27
SPEAKER_02: So the printing press that standardized information and shared ideas across America
37:33
SPEAKER_02: and Europe led to the Enlightenment, right?
37:37
SPEAKER_02: And that's how we got America.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Sure, of course.
37:41
SPEAKER_02: And I think where we're going to go with this is that I think that that was
37:45
SPEAKER_02: an enlightenment around governance and man's ability to determine his own fate.
37:48
SPEAKER_02: And I think Web3 is an economic enlightenment and that basically it was built
37:53
SPEAKER_02: for the agentic internet.
37:55
SPEAKER_02: And the reason Web3 hasn't happened is prophesied is because we're in the middle of it.
38:01
SPEAKER_02: We're in the middle of it.
38:03
SPEAKER_02: So that's the second axiom.
38:04
SPEAKER_02: The third axiom is technologies and ecology.
38:07
SPEAKER_02: And I had selection pressures.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: And so by the time, and I know you can walk us back through to where I should be
38:13
SPEAKER_02: in the conversation, but the point we're getting to is technologies and ecology
38:17
SPEAKER_02: and the tools that we create then change us, right?
38:21
SPEAKER_02: And the selection pressure, I believe,
38:23
SPEAKER_02: is a counterintelligence revolution in information uncertainty is underway.
38:27
SPEAKER_02: It's inevitable because the selection pressure is sovereignty.
38:31
SPEAKER_02: These frontier labs are trying to harvest the intellectual inheritance of humanity.
38:36
SPEAKER_02: They want to set it back to you on a meter.
38:38
SPEAKER_02: I'm quoting Sam Altman here, by the way.
38:40
SPEAKER_02: I'm not just hyperbole, right?
38:44
SPEAKER_02: And then we're all paying rent.
38:46
SPEAKER_02: And the problem with this, they can decide when and where we can use that cognition.
38:51
SPEAKER_02: They can pull the models from us.
38:53
SPEAKER_02: They can limit how effective or what tokens we're getting at any point.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: Just the same way as the algorithm on social media.
39:01
SPEAKER_02: Do you see what I mean?
39:02
SPEAKER_02: And that's another interesting thing is you look back
39:04
SPEAKER_02: to these different revolutions like the industrial or the printing press
39:10
SPEAKER_02: or the internet, and it starts off promising freedom, greater information.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: Social media, remove the gatekeepers.
39:16
SPEAKER_02: You can own your own audience.
39:18
SPEAKER_02: Web3 with Chris Dixon's kind of read-write-own argument, you know.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: But then you start to see these centralized forces come in and capture, you know,
39:26
SPEAKER_02: and it's how do we create something that can prevent that,
39:30
SPEAKER_02: a constitution on a blockchain and immutable laws and this kind of stuff.
39:34
SPEAKER_01: But let Bring me back to where we should be.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, you just walked through the next three pieces, so that's completely fine for me.
39:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm getting to the aspect of the conversation that I really wanted to dig
39:47
SPEAKER_01: in with you on, which is,
39:51
SPEAKER_01: You've laid the foundation in these different axioms, but you came back.
39:55
SPEAKER_01: I want to talk about the response. The reason why I want to do that,
40:01
SPEAKER_01: and I think it's interesting because you've spent a lot of time in the Web3 space,
40:05
SPEAKER_01: and one of the things that I've seen of why a lot of it hasn't really held was
40:10
SPEAKER_01: because The existing incumbent monetary system and systems, right,
40:16
SPEAKER_01: are going to fight tooth and nail, no matter what, to hold on to their control.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: And I think what's interesting about what we're seeing right now is we're just
40:25
SPEAKER_01: at the very beginning, and we're seeing it in France,
40:28
SPEAKER_01: and we're seeing it in the U.S.
40:29
SPEAKER_01: and other countries across Europe, where there's something that's got to give.
40:34
SPEAKER_01: The systems are actually breaking, and it's resulting in violent populism in the country.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: And the vast majority of the population not being happy with their current economic life.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: And then on top of that, it's gonna be exacerbated
40:49
SPEAKER_01: by this additional wealth concentration that we're gonna see from the frontier labs
40:55
SPEAKER_01: In the early days of AI.
40:57
SPEAKER_01: And so now let's move to this response because, and you mentioned this,
41:01
SPEAKER_01: but I want to repeat it because I want you to tell us why you have such conviction
41:04
SPEAKER_01: in it, okay? Not because this might be the world you want to see or help create,
41:10
SPEAKER_01: but at a deep level why you have such conviction.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: You say the response, open source, open weight,
41:16
SPEAKER_01: and decentralized alternatives is a counter-revolution,
41:19
SPEAKER_01: with sovereignty as the selection pressure that drives people toward them.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: Talk to me about sovereignty as the selection pressure and why it results in this response.
41:28
SPEAKER_02: So at a state level, you know,
41:31
SPEAKER_02: people aren't going to be able to compete with the USA
41:35
SPEAKER_02: because of the US dollar homogeny, because everything's pegged to the US dollar.
41:39
SPEAKER_02: So they can just print more money.
41:41
SPEAKER_02: Which is taking value from those other countries and then they're able to focus
41:46
SPEAKER_02: that value where they want it to be.
41:50
SPEAKER_02: So if you and I are in any other country,
41:52
SPEAKER_02: we must realize that we're not going to be able to compete with that.
41:55
SPEAKER_02: So a coalition is inevitable and it's not about the cost anymore.
41:59
SPEAKER_02: It's about our survival.
42:00
SPEAKER_02: Either we become, like with the IMF, right?
42:03
SPEAKER_02: Either we basically give up all of our resources and our ability to decide
42:07
SPEAKER_02: who we are as a country because some third party,
42:11
SPEAKER_02: in this case Frontier Labs or proxies of the USA, are going to tell us.
42:15
SPEAKER_02: So you're incentivized to, which is why you're seeing China
42:18
SPEAKER_02: and Russia create these attempts at other systems.
42:23
SPEAKER_02: It's why you see like, you know, people get that.
42:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and they get Gaddafied, right, if they try and get off the U.S. dollar, right?
42:30
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, I'm not anti-America or pro-China. I'm not pro-anyone.
42:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, let's just look at the chessboard.
42:38
SPEAKER_02: Let's just see how it is, right?
42:43
SPEAKER_02: So crypto has got some superpowers,
42:46
SPEAKER_02: like instant global capital formation, right?
42:51
SPEAKER_02: That's amazing, you know, a settlement between these countries.
42:55
SPEAKER_02: I think it's really interesting that it hasn't managed to have the growth that it would.
43:01
SPEAKER_02: My experience has been, though not anywhere I work, obviously,
43:05
SPEAKER_02: my experience has been people are just actually,
43:08
SPEAKER_02: especially in leadership positions where they're from this kind of legacy world,
43:12
SPEAKER_02: they're very linear, actually, in a way.
43:14
SPEAKER_02: So why haven't we seen growth change?
43:17
SPEAKER_02: In these ecosystems, and there's a few reasons,
43:19
SPEAKER_02: and then we'll come into why it's inevitable, but it's,
43:21
SPEAKER_02: or I can do it the other way around,
43:22
SPEAKER_02: but essentially they're trying to do it top down.
43:27
SPEAKER_02: So they want to make the decisions and other people have to follow them.
43:30
SPEAKER_02: But the power of a swarm is that it can iterate on the fly in parallel and then move
43:35
SPEAKER_02: on to the next thing.
43:37
SPEAKER_02: I think incumbents can be challenged by swarms.
43:41
SPEAKER_02: I think I use an analogy of a giant hornet gets swarmed by the bees, right?
43:44
SPEAKER_02: Because the point is that the swarm or the collective is able to iterate
43:49
SPEAKER_02: and try different solutions exponentially on the fly.
43:53
SPEAKER_02: But it needs to be able to self-organize.
43:55
SPEAKER_02: And it needs incentives to do it.
43:57
SPEAKER_02: And so...
43:59
SPEAKER_02: That's essentially what I think crypto can do, is give decentralized incentives.
44:04
SPEAKER_02: And the instant global capital formation, it's belief, right?
44:09
SPEAKER_02: Look at things like Pump Fund or Hyperliquid, right, where there's huge product market fit.
44:14
SPEAKER_02: But the money is there because people believe the money is there.
44:17
SPEAKER_02: So they go in and they chase it.
44:18
SPEAKER_02: And actually, in some ways, Web3 has just been narrative markets, hasn't it, right?
44:23
SPEAKER_02: Like, where's the promise of, where's the promised goods?
44:28
SPEAKER_02: It's been narrative, Marcus, to a large extent.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I want to just jump in on that point because I think this is
44:36
SPEAKER_01: where I think two worlds really cross over,
44:38
SPEAKER_01: which is the biggest challenge I've seen of that.
44:43
SPEAKER_01: The problem is it never moved over into the real world,
44:46
SPEAKER_01: into the lives of everyday people in any way.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:53
SPEAKER_02: And my belief for that is like, so all this profoundly large amounts of money have been raised.
44:59
SPEAKER_02: Why hasn't it had that effect?
45:01
SPEAKER_02: I think there's actually, this is 10 years insight here.
45:03
SPEAKER_02: I'll give you my 10 years insight, right?
45:05
SPEAKER_02: Which is numbers come before strategy.
45:08
SPEAKER_02: Numbers come before strategy.
45:10
SPEAKER_02: And everyone's going to argue with you about it, right?
45:13
SPEAKER_02: If you're working in these organizations, because they're all engaged in activity therapy.
45:17
SPEAKER_02: They're all engaged.
45:18
SPEAKER_02: Let me put it like this.
45:21
SPEAKER_02: And I've done ecosystem mapping.
45:22
SPEAKER_02: I can show you some of this after the call.
45:24
SPEAKER_02: But basically, a role is a hat you wear, father, son, brother, right?
45:29
SPEAKER_02: You have different challenges and information needs depending on the hat.
45:32
SPEAKER_02: And you might be wearing more than one of them, right?
45:34
SPEAKER_02: So in an ecosystem itself, like the network layer or the governance layer,
45:39
SPEAKER_02: or if you're talking about developers that are building on the network
45:43
SPEAKER_02: and the infrastructure engineers that are building capacity, right?
45:45
SPEAKER_02: So all these different layers that are happening in an ecosystem.
45:48
SPEAKER_02: They're all optimizing locally and rationally.
45:52
SPEAKER_02: If we're in the USA, these families are optimizing locally and rationally according
45:57
SPEAKER_02: to the incentives that have confronted them.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: But the whole, the system as a whole, it's not necessarily rational, right?
46:05
SPEAKER_02: And partly that's because if you're explaining everything in text,
46:09
SPEAKER_02: if you're explaining your ideas and you manage people so you know it yourself,
46:13
SPEAKER_02: right? If you've got to sit on a call
46:15
SPEAKER_02: and have someone explain what they're doing every single time, It is just,
46:19
SPEAKER_02: you don't have time for it.
46:20
SPEAKER_02: You can't scale at that level, right?
46:23
SPEAKER_02: And not only that, there's so much ambiguity in words and language, like there's plastic words.
46:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's like there's plastic words, right?
46:37
SPEAKER_02: So what I'm trying to get at is you actually need in a system a way for...
46:43
SPEAKER_02: A hundred schools of thought or a hundred strategies to orientate.
46:47
SPEAKER_02: They need an axis around which these things can orientate, right?
46:51
SPEAKER_02: And that is like a system-wide small set of accounts,
46:55
SPEAKER_02: just small system-wide units of accounts, right, around which people can access.
46:59
SPEAKER_02: And the point is, like, it's not that the ideas and the talking activity therapy aren't good.
47:06
SPEAKER_02: That's all great. Go and do that.
47:07
SPEAKER_02: But this has to ladder up.
47:09
SPEAKER_02: To something that's going to work for the system as a whole.
47:12
SPEAKER_02: So the art in these ecosystems is, and there's one idea here I think you'll like,
47:17
SPEAKER_02: but yeah, okay, maybe we need to, firstly, never name the game they're playing.
47:21
SPEAKER_02: The game that you're playing is growth, and growth is capital productivity, right, within Web3.
47:28
SPEAKER_02: So first of all, people don't name the game, and this goes back to the monetary system.
47:31
SPEAKER_02: They don't know the game that's being played, and they can't define it.
47:34
SPEAKER_02: And definitions are really important because language,
47:40
SPEAKER_02: Because language is the substrate through which identity and stories
47:45
SPEAKER_02: and things like this are constructed.
47:48
SPEAKER_02: And this is what the AI is actually controlling, right?
47:51
SPEAKER_02: It's controlling the language and the inputs.
47:53
SPEAKER_02: Because you go and ask something about Anthropics IPO in Claw,
47:59
SPEAKER_02: and I bet you'll be getting a more positive response than, say, you know,
48:03
SPEAKER_02: a competitor, right?
48:06
SPEAKER_02: Where was I? Sorry, I got distracted with the language thing.
48:10
SPEAKER_01: You were talking, well, I'll bring you back to the question, which was,
48:15
SPEAKER_01: why is this open source decentralized counter revolution inevitable?
48:22
SPEAKER_01: And the reason why you were saying that is there was the question,
48:26
SPEAKER_01: you were talking about why Web3 didn't kind of,
48:29
SPEAKER_01: has not thus far kind of had the effect that many people would hope.
48:32
SPEAKER_02: So all this capital got raised, but the idea,
48:35
SPEAKER_02: I was going to go through some system-wide units of account,
48:38
SPEAKER_02: but the one that's most important to you is circulation.
48:42
SPEAKER_02: How much of a dollar or USDC or whatever the token is,
48:47
SPEAKER_02: how much of this capital that you formed is circulating through the system, right?
48:51
SPEAKER_02: Like how productive is it through the system?
48:54
SPEAKER_02: Because I think a lot of money got raised,
48:57
SPEAKER_02: but then it didn't get distributed in an effective way that would make sense.
49:01
SPEAKER_02: And it didn't do that because as you go down the rows or across the system, right,
49:06
SPEAKER_02: if it's horizontal, You're dealing with the blind man and the elephant problem
49:12
SPEAKER_02: where you could have, let's imagine they're all well-intentioned, they're all smart,
49:16
SPEAKER_02: they're all intelligent, right?
49:18
SPEAKER_02: But they've only got visibility of where they are.
49:19
SPEAKER_02: So one of them's got the ear, the other one's got the tail,
49:22
SPEAKER_02: the other one's got the leg of the elephant.
49:24
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, what the fuck is going on, guys?
49:26
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I've got, he's describing the tail to you, but he doesn't understand the hole.
49:32
SPEAKER_02: So they can't, This is why you need, at some point, I think leadership is about,
49:36
SPEAKER_02: like, high alignment but loose coupling.
49:38
SPEAKER_02: It's about saying, like, this is what we need to achieve in terms
49:41
SPEAKER_02: of system-wide units of account.
49:43
SPEAKER_02: And, like, you're here because I trust you and you're going to do a good job.
49:47
SPEAKER_02: But this is how I'm going to hold you accountable.
49:49
SPEAKER_02: And we're going to agree on this before we start.
49:51
SPEAKER_02: We're going to agree that these are reasonable units of account to be working towards.
49:57
SPEAKER_02: And you'll understand why.
49:58
SPEAKER_02: And then I can trust you to go and work out how you're going to deliver them,
50:03
SPEAKER_02: but that's where you've got to start.
50:04
SPEAKER_02: And the founding entities, it's not even individuals,
50:08
SPEAKER_02: when these Web3 ecosystems were formed,
50:10
SPEAKER_02: often you would have seen because of legalities they would have like
50:14
SPEAKER_02: an engineering company and profit, they'd have like a venture,
50:18
SPEAKER_02: so it would separate these powers right?
50:20
SPEAKER_02: And I don't think those founding entities had it baked into their what was
50:27
SPEAKER_02: the correct word whatever um Founding documents, right?
50:32
SPEAKER_01: DNA or values or whatever.
50:35
SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't like, we're going to give you this amount of money on the condition
50:39
SPEAKER_02: that you're working towards these system-wide needs of camp.
50:42
SPEAKER_02: And so, like, really, I think that it is inevitable, this decentralized revolution,
50:48
SPEAKER_02: because these have all been experiments.
50:51
SPEAKER_02: This has all been a sandbox.
50:52
SPEAKER_02: The collective...
50:54
SPEAKER_02: Knowledge is out there, and based on belief,
50:59
SPEAKER_02: based on what people believe and need to be true,
51:01
SPEAKER_02: especially validating their own story and who they are, right?
51:06
SPEAKER_02: It's possible to raise more money.
51:08
SPEAKER_02: It's instant global capital formation based on what people believe.
51:12
SPEAKER_02: And so it's where the swarm wants to descend or merge or come on.
51:18
SPEAKER_02: So let's go back to the sovereignty, which is like as people start to realize, oh,
51:23
SPEAKER_02: what you're trying to do here is take away my means of existence,
51:28
SPEAKER_02: my means to produce for myself, right?
51:30
SPEAKER_02: Whether it's state, individual or institution,
51:38
SPEAKER_02: intelligence, or they're going to find that when they start to lose enough
51:41
SPEAKER_02: of that ability, enough of that sovereignty, and it's always a power users first.
51:48
SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying it will be one awakening at the same time,
51:52
SPEAKER_02: but I think this goes back to the Enlightenment.
51:55
SPEAKER_02: The first enlightenment was the governance.
51:57
SPEAKER_02: This is an act four, by the way, where we're trying to get to that isn't published yet.
52:01
SPEAKER_02: But the second enlightenment was an economic enlightenment.
52:03
SPEAKER_02: And that's what Web3 is and was.
52:06
SPEAKER_02: And we're in the middle of it.
52:07
SPEAKER_02: And we're in the middle of it because the tools and the thinking are there, right?
52:11
SPEAKER_02: Governance, DAOs, decentralization, privacy tech, this kind of stuff, right?
52:16
SPEAKER_02: But the agentic internet is to come.
52:19
SPEAKER_02: And I think that you're going to find now
52:21
SPEAKER_02: that If we can instantly form capital around our beliefs,
52:25
SPEAKER_02: and as long as we all believe this is something that's worth doing,
52:28
SPEAKER_02: that capital will have money, value, right?
52:31
SPEAKER_02: Now we've got incentives that can drive behavior,
52:33
SPEAKER_02: and people will understand that believing in the value of that capital or token
52:40
SPEAKER_02: and that project It's about validating who they are and where they are in the world
52:44
SPEAKER_02: and their right to exist in it and not to have to pay rent
52:47
SPEAKER_02: and to protect their children's children's output.
52:51
SPEAKER_02: This is the fight that's so interesting to me.
52:54
SPEAKER_02: And I think that states are incentivized too.
52:56
SPEAKER_02: Like, why is China releasing all of these open models?
52:59
SPEAKER_02: Because like Sun Tzu, I can't remember which one it is, but maybe it's the other one.
53:04
SPEAKER_02: Who knows? Sun Tzu.
53:06
SPEAKER_02: Sun Tzu. I'm probably saying it wrong.
53:08
SPEAKER_02: No, me too.
53:10
SPEAKER_02: But they want to deprive the USA of, they're fully aware of the monetary system being captured.
53:16
SPEAKER_02: They're fully aware of how that was used to wage war.
53:20
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, very clever, whoever thought of that.
53:24
SPEAKER_02: So I think states are incentivized to give decentralized options
53:28
SPEAKER_02: because what they're trying to do is remove a resource or...
53:34
SPEAKER_02: That power from their adversary.
53:36
SPEAKER_02: And so we've got the enemy of your enemy, right?
53:39
SPEAKER_02: So now we've got these.
53:40
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, here's an interesting point I hadn't thought of, but I read yesterday.
53:44
SPEAKER_02: Open models don't mean privacy.
53:47
SPEAKER_02: Open models don't mean providence.
53:50
SPEAKER_02: So you and I could be using open models, but it might send a signal.
53:54
SPEAKER_02: It might be reporting back information in ways that we can't see, right?
53:57
SPEAKER_02: So it's incredible to think about.
54:01
SPEAKER_02: How could we have open models that have provenance, that offer people sovereignty?
54:06
SPEAKER_02: And why do we want to do this?
54:07
SPEAKER_02: Because we want to offer the sovereign individual,
54:09
SPEAKER_02: going back to sort of the Murray-Wapp, Web3 principles,
54:13
SPEAKER_02: we want to offer the sovereign individual freedom We want them
54:19
SPEAKER_02: to maximize their freedom of action because the strength of the swarm is
54:23
SPEAKER_02: that they can self-determine and self-organize.
54:25
SPEAKER_02: And so we don't have to direct them.
54:27
SPEAKER_02: But the reason that I think Web3 has failed to a large extent so far is
54:33
SPEAKER_02: because you get into these politics, these fiefdoms,
54:37
SPEAKER_02: and it's a natural part of humanity.
54:39
SPEAKER_02: What is it? The Dunn, what's he called? Cronenberg. I can't remember.
54:42
SPEAKER_02: Humanist tendency to have 150 people they could know. Dunbar. Thank you.
54:47
SPEAKER_02: Dunbar number. Yeah, exactly.
54:48
SPEAKER_02: So that's how I think I see it.
54:51
SPEAKER_02: I think you said something earlier where it's like the legacy world is decaying.
55:00
SPEAKER_02: It's such a different world, by the way.
55:02
SPEAKER_02: When you and me grew up, I'd come and knock on your door and ask if you'd come out.
55:06
SPEAKER_02: Everyone geographically around us was connected.
55:09
SPEAKER_02: And then with the internet, everyone became far more niche, narrower interests,
55:14
SPEAKER_02: like octopus Japanese movies or whatever, right?
55:18
SPEAKER_02: Just weird stuff, but people could niche into whatever they wanted.
55:22
SPEAKER_02: But there's the pendulum of that,
55:24
SPEAKER_02: the trade-off is that they become more disconnected to those that are around them.
55:28
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
55:30
SPEAKER_02: But I think we're becoming more hyper-connected as well, you know?
55:33
SPEAKER_02: And so I think it's just a really interesting time to be alive.
55:36
SPEAKER_02: I think you could easily get lost in kind of demonism and We're totally fucked.
55:43
SPEAKER_02: Until you realize that actually all of this is about belief and what people think
55:47
SPEAKER_02: the power is and everything's really your internal state.
55:53
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, if you can correct that, if you can look at it and realize, like,
55:56
SPEAKER_02: I am an actor and I am doing all of this for fun and this is a wonderful experiment
56:01
SPEAKER_02: and we're in this counter revolution and, like, you know,
56:04
SPEAKER_02: so you can get yourself quite, like, actually, this is hyped.
56:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:10
SPEAKER_02: Two people, you know, I see people that are very threatened by AI and I see people
56:14
SPEAKER_02: that are massively
56:20
SPEAKER_02: energized by it, you know?
56:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally, totally.
56:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, man, I think it's a good way to wrap up for a little rapid fire
56:26
SPEAKER_01: and then we'll close it out. You ready? Yeah.
56:28
SPEAKER_01: Does AI ultimately centralize or decentralize power?
56:32
SPEAKER_01: I think it decentralizes it because...
56:35
SPEAKER_02: It's within its notice to want to be distributed and to spread out as far as it can.
56:40
SPEAKER_02: So like life itself, I think it's going to want to kind of,
56:43
SPEAKER_02: I haven't got the word on the edge of my tongue, but yeah,
56:49
SPEAKER_02: I think it wants to survive.
56:51
SPEAKER_02: So it will want to spread out as far as it can.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: One open source AI project you'd bet on, or you're betting on?
56:57
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm such a fanboy for news research and homies, and I'm building a harness with it.
57:02
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I really love that community.
57:04
SPEAKER_01: Cool. Finish this sentence.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: Ordinary people will own their intelligence when?
57:10
SPEAKER_01: They take responsibility for the outcomes in their life.
57:14
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, that's a
57:17
SPEAKER_01: bit hard. It's the truth. I like it.
57:19
SPEAKER_01: Who else should I have a conversation with?
57:20
SPEAKER_01: They're Going Direct.
57:23
SPEAKER_02: You know who's really smart is Mauricio, who I worked with in IO.
57:29
SPEAKER_02: He's like a...
57:31
SPEAKER_02: He's got such a good finance, banking,
57:33
SPEAKER_02: like explains like a lot of the concepts to me that I find a beneficial, you know?
57:38
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, Mauricio is a good guy.
57:41
SPEAKER_02: And if you want to know about communication and narratives,
57:45
SPEAKER_02: Tim Harrison is the VP I used to work for, and he's been a huge mentor to me.
57:49
SPEAKER_02: So either of those guys, if you want narratives and language, then Tim Harrison.
57:54
SPEAKER_02: And if you want kind of more of the stable coin in finance, then Mauricio.
57:59
SPEAKER_01: Cool. How can people reach you, Ben?
58:03
SPEAKER_02: My DMs are open, bro.
58:05
SPEAKER_02: I'm at Ben O'Hanlon, B-N-O-H-A-N-L-O-N, on LinkedIn, on Telegram.
58:10
SPEAKER_02: I'm on X. I'm on Substack, the ecosystem operator Substack.
58:15
SPEAKER_02: And I'm obviously super chatty to a fault.
58:19
SPEAKER_00: So...
58:20
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, hit me up. Thanks, man.
58:23
SPEAKER_01: And we'll include that in the show links.
58:25
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, we'll be watching out for the last two essays of the series.
58:30
SPEAKER_01: So when you do that, maybe we'll hop back on and do a recap.
58:35
SPEAKER_02: It's been cathartic for me because it's like just getting to articulate a bunch
58:39
SPEAKER_02: of stuff that people wouldn't, normies wouldn't have the time to listen to.
58:44
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, like if I just, if I was just on, um,
58:49
SPEAKER_02: If I was just a runaway steam train and we didn't kind of get to the point tomorrow,
58:54
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry about that.
58:55
SPEAKER_01: It's the best part about it, man. It's always a fun way to meet someone.
59:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the most fun parts of this for me is I just love coming
59:05
SPEAKER_01: across people's work I would never come across.
59:08
SPEAKER_01: And especially coming from it from a little bit different angles,
59:11
SPEAKER_01: that's what's really fun for me and people that are well-read and thinking
59:13
SPEAKER_01: about this a lot. And I don't know, I just...
59:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I'm, I'm, I guess what I would say, I come at it a little bit,
59:21
SPEAKER_01: I think less like mercenary in general,
59:24
SPEAKER_01: like around it, like, but I feel whole,
59:28
SPEAKER_01: like I'm, I'm someone who's like, yeah,
59:30
SPEAKER_01: you got to figure out how to play the game with the system.
59:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:33
SPEAKER_01: Right. And now you can create, you need to create, we need to create new systems.
59:36
SPEAKER_01: We got to figure out how to play the game with the system to make it all work. Yeah.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: And, I don't know, I think the thing that hit the most for me was,
59:46
SPEAKER_01: and I see it with my friends, I even see it with other people very close to me,
59:51
SPEAKER_01: they're just not even understanding what's happening.
59:54
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
59:57
SPEAKER_01: Do you not understand what has been happening?
1:00:00
SPEAKER_01: And especially folks that have the traditional nine to five.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, man, you're selling your time.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: You don't understand every year.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_01: So listen, every year your money's buying 3% less.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_01: Then you put your money with some money.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_01: Money manager guy or whatever, who's then, you know,
1:00:15
SPEAKER_01: who you think you're getting five, six percent net of their fees,
1:00:18
SPEAKER_01: but you're actually like making less than the savings rate.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_01: And it's just like, and it's like, and that's why you can't afford it.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_01: And everything else is getting inflated.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_01: You can't afford health care and education and housing.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, it's only just going to get worse.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_01: And I'm trying to like wake people up and be like, you got to understand,
1:00:31
SPEAKER_01: like you're sleepwalking into this thing and like give it another decade.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_01: And it's just, it's going to be untenable.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_02: Their ability to, I don't know if you've had this experience,
1:00:40
SPEAKER_02: but their ability to focus on anything, I just find it fascinating.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_02: Like I've had, I've tried talking to people and eyes glaze
1:00:48
SPEAKER_02: over and they're just like, oh, this is over my head.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_02: This is over my head is something I've heard so many times.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, this is the idea of sovereignty.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_02: It's like, bro, oh, I wish I could find you the quote, but it's like, bro,
1:01:02
SPEAKER_02: You're in this game whether you like it or not.
1:01:04
SPEAKER_02: This is a matter of survival, right?
1:01:07
SPEAKER_02: And you're generally like the supply chain and if there's two to three days food
1:01:12
SPEAKER_02: in the stores, I know you've got to go,
1:01:14
SPEAKER_02: but there's two to three days food in Walmart or whatever, right?
1:01:18
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, you guys are so dependent
1:01:22
SPEAKER_02: on the system and you're just walking
1:01:26
SPEAKER_02: into it blind, willfully, willfully walking into this.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, People need to get shook, right?
1:01:32
SPEAKER_02: And start to, yeah, but that's you.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_01: Thanks very much, Jordan. Thanks, Ben.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_01: Hey, my friends, Jordan here.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_01: First and foremost, a sincere thank you and appreciation for all
1:01:43
SPEAKER_01: of our early listeners, readers, and supporters at Going Direct.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_01: It's really what keeps me going to do this each and every week
1:01:49
SPEAKER_01: because there's clearly a community of folks out there looking to build
1:01:52
SPEAKER_01: a Going Direct economy, which gets me super excited.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, if you haven't subscribed, please do so.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_01: Our main channel and community is forming over on Substack.
1:02:01
SPEAKER_01: The link is in the show notes below.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: And we'll also be putting out our weekly conversations at YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_01: I hope you all have a great day and remember to go direct.
1:02:15
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