Latest / The Aaron Day Show / S3E21: The Video That Changed James Corbett's Life. We Play It Here.
Transcript
- which is, again, why I think it's it's going to be word of mouth that will be the only thing that actually may propagates this online. So what made you decide now to kind of, you know, or I guess within the last three or four months to really to really push this? Is there is there something that? Yeah. Well, yeah, it's a good question. Honestly, I think any time in the past 20 years would have been a good time and presumably any time in my entire lifetime would have been a good time. So I don't know if there's any this has to be happening right now about it. But having said that, I can think of many reasons why it should be happening right now. As you say, this should probably be, you know, they should be dropping DVDs. I guess no one watches DVDs anymore. Leaflets with QR codes. You can go directly to Libertas.Earth all over Washington, D.C. right now, let alone everywhere else on the planet, because obviously I think we have come become unmoored from these philosophical concepts altogether. I think probably not one person in a hundred in America these days, let alone anywhere else in the world, is actively thinking about political philosophy at all, let alone the philosophy of liberty. And of course, we've just seen another the 250th Independence Day come and go. Yay. July 4th, all of that hot dogs and fireworks. But what does it mean? What's it about? And I'm sure you saw the headlines of those startling statistics that 47% of Americans have no idea what Independence Day is even about, etc. And I have often said, as I say, I am now comfortable with saying I am an anarchist. I do not believe in the validity of political authority. I think like Larkin Rose, for example, I think it is the most dangerous superstition, the belief in government authority, etc., etc. But if there is any political document in human history that I can even at least mostly get behind with some reservations, it would be the Declaration of Independence. I think that is the closest that we have seen in terms of uttering and conceiving this idea of trying to put political philosophy, the real political philosophy of liberty into some sort of somewhat political document. And so that's where I would say, hey, this is a great opportunity, guys. Hey, you remember this Independence Day thing you're celebrating, 250th anniversary and all this? What does it mean? What's it about? Hey, I've got this little eight minute flash animation video for you. I think once you watch this, it'll put some of the pieces together. I think it might be an opportunity to introduce this to people who otherwise would have no wouldn't even cross their minds to think about it, let alone to think in this way about it. And as I say, that's I mean, it is a ripe time for this because the more and more we become unmoored from the political philosophies that have guided our forefathers and their forefathers before them for generations, the more we have been had that that education drilled out of us, the worse things get. And I don't think that that's a coincidence. Clearly, tyranny is increasing in the world. And I think that is because clearly people have not thought properly about the political situation and what it means and why we are so invested in this system of representative democracy leading inevitably to democratic socialism leading inevitably to technocracy. That seems to me to be the logical progression of all these steps. And it is because people do not have the philosophy of liberty undergirding their entire intellectual framework. Yeah, that's why I thought the timing is great because people are sleepwalking into technocracy and don't even realize it. And technocracy is absolutely the antithesis of this. I mean, under a technocratic system, you essentially surrender your free will. All of your decisions are being made for you with digital IDs, programmable digital currencies, AI surveillance. And I know it's difficult to broach the subject of technocracy with people because if very few people understand what the Declaration of Independence is all about, almost no one's even heard of technocracy or they confuse it with technology. And so I think this is appropriate to get this out there and to get people thinking about these important ideas and the idea of self-ownership because that really is at the core of all of it. Now, let's be clear. Let's lay it out on the table. The philosophy of liberty, I think, doesn't preclude the possibility of a technocracy from forming. Insofar as if people are knowledgeably informed and give their knowledgeably informed consent to any given sort of system, then that system, there's no, there's no one from outside of that system that can come in and tell people not to do that. So if people are clamoring for the AI data centers and they want to be surveilled and they want Palantir watching over everything they do, and they're gladly signing up for digital ID because they want to do so and there's no fraud or force or coercion, then that is their choice. I would argue with them about that choice, but it wouldn't be for me to step in and stop them from making that choice. However, obviously, that is not what is happening. What is happening are backroom deals that are being cut between basically the intelligence agencies in the military industrial complex and private contractors like Palantir that are doing their dirty work for them in this elaborate system that is designed to bamboozle and trick the public into sleepwalking into this technocracy that then has them in its clutches, which, as you say, I think is the opposite of what this philosophy of liberty is expounding. So I think, again, we have to understand what this is and what it isn't. This isn't even necessarily an argument against government itself. As I say, if you want to choose a leader for yourself, to rule over you and you agree to abide by that system voluntarily with full knowledge of what you're doing, have at it, have fun. But that doesn't obligate me to be part of that system. And that, I think, is what we need to be arguing for. It's kind of like during the COVID times. If someone else wanted to wear a mask because it made them feel better, who is it for me to tell them that they can't wear that mask in the exact same way is if I'm not going to wear a mask because I know it's totally useless, who are they to be able to tell me that I have to wear a mask? It goes both ways. And freedom is a wonderful thing, but a messy thing, because it means that we cannot impose our views on anyone else. Well, I think that the whole area of consent is an interesting one, because at what point do you really truly have informed consent? You know, what are those dividing lines between force and fraud and not having that? Excellent point. Especially, not even just technocracy, but algocracy. Because clearly, we are being shaped by algorithms that we may not even be aware are operating, but are clearly shaping our viewpoints, our entire lives at this point. For people in your audience who might not be aware of the scope of this problem, I always invite people to look at the Selfish Ledger, which was an internal Google video from several years ago. It's just, I think, 10 minutes long. And it goes through how, yes, even internally at Google, they are fully aware and fully operating on the principle that algorithms and things that are happening behind the scenes on these websites that you're visiting and these apps you're using are going to shape your life. And if they can do that to any one individual, they can shape your decisions so that you'd end up being this type of person or being that type of person or going in this direction or that direction. If they can do that individually to any one person, then they can do that to individually to each and every person. And once you start talking about shaping the entire human population like that, you talk about a type of control that has, I think, never even been envisioned by even the most dystopian of dystopian sci-fi writers in the past. And yes, I think we need to confront that idea. What is informed consent and how are, how is what we believe we are being shaped by algorithms that we don't even know exist. And I'll give an example of that, actually, even in my own case, how much of who I am today is authentically some perfect and untouched me. And how much is it I've been influenced and shaped by various things that have been put in front of me for my attention over the years. And I have a podcast episode on this subject specifically. It's called pricking the filter bubble. And in that I tell the story essentially about how I fell down the internet rabbit hole towards 9-11 truth and things like that. How essentially how I became the James Corbett of the Corbett report and how much of that was shaped by, for example, what YouTube was recommending me on the sidebar back in those early days of YouTube before the algorithm even became a shadow of what it is today. It was still there. It was still operating and it was sending me in a certain direction that ended up with me here at the website doing what I do. So again, how much of me is authentically me? And at what point does voluntary informed consent actually come into the picture when we're talking about being shaped by things that we do or don't see that we'll never know what you don't see because YouTube or whoever isn't showing it to you. Yeah. And one of the initiatives that I've launched a couple of initiatives that actually dovetail with this very nicely. I actually started out with a website called ownnothing.org. And the original idea behind this was I was writing an article and I started thinking about these click wrap agreements that we sign. Your Microsoft terms of service, your rental car agreement, your stock brokerage agreement. And I started looking into these things. No one reads these. And in fact, it turns out that it would take you, I think the average person now signs 200, 250 of these a year. It would take you two hours a day, 365 days a year just to read these contracts. So of course, no one does it. You just skim through the end. So they're like, well, okay, well, what's in these things? And so I put you, you know, put AI to use and decided, well, okay, nobody reads this, but what if you could come up with a score where they'd analyze, well, what are we giving up in terms of your privacy, your ownership and everything else? And I came to the conclusion that, you know, we largely already own nothing. And that one of the most important things that we can do is kind of reclaim our free will along a number of different dimensions, owning your own mind, owning your privacy, owning your money, your attention, your body, your food, your kid's future, what you bought, your word and AI. And in fact, so this is kind of what I've been working on is trying to push, finding, you know, tools and resources that help people in each of these areas. And I've even kind of launched a de-Googled phone that comes, you know, pre-installed with a bunch of apps, privacy apps, whatever. And in fact, I'm going to link Libertas Earth to this so that when people get this phone, they can actually click to it right off the phone, because this is critically important. And it's really hard, as you said, to own yourself if you're not even aware of what's influencing you. And we go through this situation where, you know, the first seven years of your life, you have no conscious filters. So whatever goes in is kind of becomes your programming that you have to kind of recognize at some point down the line, you can address, then you go into government schools, you receive indoctrination for, you know, whatever it is, 12 years. And then you have media, politics, and everything else. And so it's quite an effort. You're starting out, most people aren't aware, you're kind of starting out in a deficit, and you have to become aware of those things. And I think this is critically important, as you said, even in your own journey. But with this video and the information at Libertas Earth, you can begin to realize, okay, hey, wait a minute. Yeah, I do own my own life. But I think, isn't it one of the scary things that people have with this idea is that if you own your own life, you also have to take responsibility for your own life? Absolutely. Yes. I wouldn't want anyone to come away from our conversation, and I don't think they would come away from the video, but I wouldn't want them to come away from it by thinking this is some sort of utopian solution to everything. And don't worry, all problems will be solved. Let's just make everybody free. No, obviously, to put it in Spider-Man terms, with great freedom comes great responsibility. Yes, of course, if you own yourself and your life, and you're responsible for your life, that is a burden. Absolutely. And I understand why for most people, most of the time, they can't be bothered with a burden like that. Oh my God, just, you know, tell me what to do, tell me where to go, give me my hot dog and beer and I'll be happy. And that is the trade-off which is leading humanity to the collective slaughter pen. And I say that advisedly, I say that quite literally in a number of ways. I think we are heading towards the extinction of the human species, not necessarily at the point of a gun being herded into the slaughter pen. No, I think many people are going there willingly, again, depending on how we talk about that voluntary consent, but making the trade-off of freedom for convenience. And perhaps there's no better sort of encapsulation of that than what you're talking about with the terms of agreement, accept, accept, whatever, who cares? I'm not going to read all that. Let me just accept and I'll get this thing that I want. And that is essentially what we're doing. Not just in terms of the apps we're downloading or whatever, but literally everything that we're doing. It's convenient. I'm just going to go along with what's happening. And so, yes, yes. For example, as people may or may not know, over at corporatereport.com, I have a regular podcast called Solutions Watch where I'm trying to look at all sorts of different ideas for confronting the growing technocracy enslavement state that we see growing around us. But pretty much the bottom line, common factor amongst all the ideas that I offer is something along the lines of, yeah, but you'll actually have to do something. You'll actually have to get off your butt and do something to make it happen in the real world. And that's work. And I know a lot of people don't like that. They want the easiest possible way. And what could be easier than, hey, this politician has come along and is promising me that he'll do X, Y, and Z. I'm going to vote for that politician. And I push the button and then go back to my life and everything's, I don't, at least that's my responsibility in the representative democracy system. And I don't have to think about it. Whereas in a world of freedom, you have to take your own safety and freedom and relations and all of that. You have to take that as responsibility and treat it as the responsibility that it is, which is work. And so I'm not here to offer some sort of utopian fantasy solution where everything's going to be all right. No, there will still be problems in the world, but the difference will be that you actually own yourself in a world that is based on the philosophy of freedom. And you actually get to make decisions for yourself and your loved ones that at the very least can create the type of, you can carve out the type of space that you want for yourself and your family in this world in negotiation with other people, which is always, I mean, that is essentially the human condition. We are in, we are in this big human species. We're all always negotiating with people all the, all the time, every, every day. But the difference in the world that we have been steeped in, that we've been born in, that we've been indoctrinated in the public schooling system is that we have been indoctrinated to accept the fact that there is always this silent middleman in every interaction that we have. The government is there between every interaction you have watching over the shoulder, making sure you don't do this or you don't do that, or coming in to take you away if you do something bad, bad as defined by the government, of course. And so again, I'm probably preaching to the choir when it comes to your core audience on issues like this, but for people who have never thought about that silent middleman in every transaction that we have and how that skews the types of transactions that we have, well, this is a good opportunity to start thinking about that. David Well, you know, you never know with these things. I always thought, you know, I have an audience that it's pro crypto. Actually, it's kind of all over the map because it comes from different sources and different kind of parts of my life that are now intersected through this podcast. But I remember, you know, with cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, the whole idea behind it was, hey, here's an opportunity to have a currency that has no third parties that people use for peer to peer transactions. And now, as we sit here today, it's turned into this thing where, you know, you have a company like Michael Saylor Strategy, which is selling shares in its company. So you're getting an ownership stake in a company that bought some Bitcoin, but doesn't even have it in its own custody. And then it's subject to all the rules and regulation. It turns out you're now more steps removed from actual ownership of the asset today than you were certainly when Bitcoin was launched. And it's even worse now, I would argue, than fiat because it's highly surveillable. So, but what I found is that, you know, with the idea, the early movement of Bitcoin, people were excited about this idea of peer to peer and that I would own this in my own self custody. And now people have never even heard of that idea. They don't even know that that was the original concept. So, getting these ideas out there and this video and talking about the importance of self-ownership is important, even to people that may be listening to this or people that have gotten into crypto and heard one thing and don't realize what the existing thing is, because the threat here is really substantial. This is needed because we have going on now the Clarity Act, which is the latest, which is, you know, I would rebrand it the you will own nothing bill, because what the Clarity Act is going to do is take everything that you own, not just the money that you use to buy and sell things, but your stocks, your bonds, your house, and it's going to create a digital token that represents those things. And that digital token is going to be subject to government regulations, surveillance, and it's going to have all of these third parties in it. So, what you talk about with these, you know, the middle layer with government has somehow, the powers that be have figured out a way to take the concept of peer-to-peer and turn it on its head and invert it. And so, it's very important that people understand self-ownership in this context, because everybody is about to be completely dispossessed from everything that they think they own. You are completely right about that. And it's hard for people today to understand that unless they were there. I believe I started accepting Bitcoin in 2013, something along those lines. So, early, early times, at least relatively speaking. And at that time, I would, I would say that the overlap of people who understood the philosophy of liberty and people who were interested in cryptocurrency was almost a circle. I mean, it was, it was a lot of overlap. Now, it's a tiny sliver, and we need to improve that massively. Otherwise, as you say, the entire point of cryptocurrency was the disintermediation. That was, I mean, has anyone even read the original white paper? Of course, it was about getting rid of the central banks. And that was the very fundamental premise of this idea. And why are, why would people adopt it anyway? And we have moved from that to a time where people are scrambling to adopt so that they can be compliant, so that they can file their taxes properly. So that they can then gamble in essentially a new type of casino, an online digital casino, which, like every other casino, is rigged anyway. So, yes, the, the, the, the, the disconnect between the underlying philosophical backing and the technology itself has become far too great. And if, yes, if nothing else, if Libertas.Earth could introduce or reintroduce the Bitcoin community and cryptocurrency enthusiasts generally to the concept of the philosophy of liberty and why maybe they shouldn't be using Bitcoin at this point, maybe looking for privacy respecting coins. I mean, that's, that, that would be to the, to the good of humanity, I'd say. Well, I know we're almost at the top of the hour here. So I guess to, in wrapping this up, I see that there's a section here for promoters. So what can people do? You know, let's say people have listened to this. They've, they've watched the philosophy of liberty video. How, how can they help? And, and what is the promoters section about? So promoters in this case is just a simple link swap idea. So for example, if you go ahead with your D Google phone idea of putting Libertas.Earth on the D Google phone, then let us know about it. And then we'll be happy to put a banner up for your, your, your phone on the, the promoters page. It's, it's just that simple. If you want to promote this great. And then we'll promote you back. And that's, people might remember that's the way the early worldwide web used to work. And maybe that's, that's kind of the model going forward. It's not a paid thing at all. You don't have to pay, but if you, if you want to promote your business by helping promote Libertas.Earth great. Well, I know I'll be promoting it on all my sites and on the D Google phone as well. And I think this is a terrific work. So thank you for, for everything that you're doing on this and thank you for, for coming on today to, to share this with my audience. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for talking about this incredibly important topic. All right. Talk to you soon.