Latest / SpaceTomatoes / One Term Only - Evan Jaqua Breaks Politicians Addiction to Power S3-EP10

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One Term Only - Evan Jaqua Breaks Politicians Addiction to Power S3-EP10 · SpaceTomatoes

• 0:00
  Since we've all heard the promises of, you know, anything from no new taxes to no new wars or the lower cost of inflation.
• 0:07
  And none of it's ever come true, pretty much ever.
• 0:11
  Yeah. I mean, that's a risk until things are actually, you know, say, codified in law.
• 0:18
  That, you know, you're going to get somebody who promises to run for just one term.
• 0:23
  But when they do it again.
• 0:25
  But I think, though, I think the voters will hold them accountable.
• 0:30
  All right, everybody.
• 0:52
  Welcome back to another episode of the Space Tomatoes podcast.
• 0:56
  I'm one of your hosts, Havoc.
• 0:57
  I'm the other guy, LX.
• 0:59
  Hello.
• 0:59
  Welcome back.
• 1:00
  All those things.
• 1:00
  There's that other guy, the two bearded guys.
• 1:03
  Today we're joined by a special guest, Evan Jaqua, creator of the Solutions Party.
• 1:11
  Welcome to the show, Evan.
• 1:13
  Well, thank you, Havoc and Alex.
• 1:15
  I have really been looking forward to this show for a long time, and I'm excited to be here,
• 1:19
  and I'm looking forward to a great conversation.
• 1:24
  Well, that sounds like our gig.
• 1:27
  We'll try our best.
• 1:28
  All right. So, excuse me, let's jump right in. What is the Solutions Party and what's the premise of it?
• 1:39
  Okay. Well, I think it really helps to just give a little bit of a background. I've spent most of the last 40 years, in fact, most of my life overseas.
• 1:47
  I spent 20 years in Japan. I actually got my master's degree there, worked there. I was the Naranani student. I worked for a Japanese company.
• 1:58
  was self-employed. Then I lived in China for a bit, communist China. And then most over the last
• 2:04
  20 years, I've been in South America. And I've had the wonderful opportunity to talk to different
• 2:11
  people around the world about the sort of issues and problems that they see in their government and
• 2:17
  their politicians. And based on those many conversations, I've sort of summarized them
• 2:22
  on my blog, which is solutionsparty.org. I would like to take all the credit for those ideas,
• 2:28
  but really, they were inspired by many people. And what it really comes down to, the core,
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  the scene, the lowest common denominator of all these discussions seems to be something very,
• 2:42
  very basic. And I like to even start off talking about physiology, the human brain. You know,
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  the human brain is a wonderful, amazing thing. But one of its greatest weaknesses is the ease
• 2:55
  with which it forms addictions. You know, people get addicted to alcohol. As I know, in my family,
• 3:00
  we've had lots of issues with that. Drugs, gambling, social media. Yeah, my dad was a tobacco.
• 3:08
  And probably the most addictive thing of all, though, is power. And that once people get it,
• 3:16
  they do not want to give it up and in fact they can completely as john boehner the speaker of the
• 3:22
  house said he said he saw people get a little bit of power and it completely changed them and
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  this is what to be expected if you've ever known somebody with an out of control addiction
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  you know it completely changes them because the addiction becomes the priority you know i like to
• 3:37
  say well you know bladimir putin would probably even be a nice guy if you were a plumber outside
• 3:42
  of moscow somewhere you know you could probably go out and have a beer with them and be a lot of
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  or Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator. Imagine how different he'd be if you were running an
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  Airbnb in Hawaii and surfing every day. What turns these people in those cases from, you know,
• 3:58
  probably ordinary people in normal circumstances into vicious mass burden killers? It's their
• 4:05
  obsession with power. And we see that in our own government. You know, one of the reasons why our
• 4:11
  our legislative branch is so subservient to the executive branch is because our politicians,
• 4:16
  our representatives, and our senators, they are so petrified at the thought of being primaried.
• 4:24
  So they all become compliant. So we have to acknowledge the fact that our politicians'
• 4:31
  first priority is getting reelected and supporting the special interests that help
• 4:38
  keep them in power. And so what I like to say is, you know, Havoc or Alex, if I were your doctor
• 4:47
  and I had to prescribe to you guys a very highly addictive medication, what would be the way to
• 4:53
  prescribe that, but minimize the probability you're going to get addicted to it? Well,
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  I'd give you small doses spread apart. That's exactly how power must be allocated in small
• 5:04
  doses spread apart.
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  So the fundamental idea behind the Solutions Party is one term limits You get one chance to make your mark on history There is no re possibility here
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  In fact, you can't even run for another office
• 5:20
  while you're serving.
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  And that means you don't dedicate 50% of your time
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  to raising funds for your next campaign like they do now.
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  You don't spend your time going to campaign rallies.
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  You don't spend your time with the lobbyists
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  of the special interests that support you.
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  You focus exclusively on your job and history will hold you accountable.
• 5:43
  Now, I just want to say one last thing before I stop this sermon is our problems are complex and they require multifaceted and reinforcing, mutually reinforcing remedies, solutions, which is why I have a whole package of proposals that talk only about no reelection,
• 6:04
  But talk about reforming our political parties, our tribal, mindlessly tribal political parties.
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  Talk about how we can make our journalism robust again, reforming our judiciary, reforming our elections, attacking all of the various weak points of our democracy so that it can achieve its, what I like to say, majestic potential.
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  So in a long, big nutshell, that's what it's all about.
• 6:29
  that's definitely an interesting uh concept i would think a lot of uh the people being governed
• 6:37
  would certainly go for that i think the biggest obstacle would be getting the people doing the
• 6:42
  governing to sign up and say oh that's a good good idea because it would certainly change the entire
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  paradigm for them yeah yeah i mean you're you're you're you're in kind of a a bind here right and
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  And so I guess my first challenge to this is this.
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  You are literally asking the people in power and attracting wealth to themselves to undo that for themselves.
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  And that removes their pull, their ability to attain future power and wealth and everything else.
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  So the only way, how do you get that done without, I mean, you know what I mean?
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  You literally would have to come in, sweep the floor and say, everyone has to go now.
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  I'm on this. You're not going to vote on whether or not you get term limits or not. Here's the deal. It's a done deal. You got to go. Other than that, I don't see how you get that done unless you've got an idea that that kind of surpasses this. And I would even put forward that that things like the Libertarian Party are a great kind of a plumb bob for this. Right.
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  the libertarian party has been trying to get into debates forever. And every time they get the
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  required number of signatures or whatever to get into the next debate, the rules change so that
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  it's higher. Sorry, I can't come into the debate. Right. So how do you get past these types of
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  entrenched systemic nightmarish problems? Gosh, you know, I hadn't thought about that.
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  So I guess our conversation has come to an end. No, I'm just kidding.
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  No, but that's what the true miracle of this is.
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  Now, in an ideal world, all of this would be codified in law, one term, all these rules.
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  But the thing is, is that we don't need that.
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  All you need is the people to buy into that and to vote for candidates who promise, until we have this in law, who promise to serve only one term, just like Abraham Lincoln only served one term, just as he said he would.
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  And so what we need are candidates who would be in lieu of having a hard wired limit who say, I'm only going to serve one term.
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  I'm going to dedicate myself 100 percent to advancing the ideas that I have proposed.
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  I'm going to go into Washington with the idea or the state legislature with the idea of, you know, I'm going to propose those ideas.
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  I'm going to advocate for this. I'm going to fight for this. But I'm going to also understand that a democracy is a competition of ideas and that a democracy doesn't work when you have elected representatives who have the attitude my way or the highway.
• 9:28
  You know, we've always the great thing about our democracy is that precisely because it is a competition of ideas.
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  And if it were an honest competition of ideas by people who, yeah, we want their diversity of points of view, but are also open minded enough to compromise and take the best ideas from across the political spectrum and move forward, which is a far better system than what the autocrats, the autocratic countries are offering.
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  which is one idea, one opinion, no discussion. Our system is inherently far stronger because of
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  the competition of our ideas. And what we need are elected officials who put those, you know,
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  their priorities of serving the public, the general interests first, instead of the special interests
• 10:19
  that feed their addiction that keep them in power If you want to have control over somebody you know the best way is to have control over their addictions which is exactly what we have now So that how I would argue this Let get candidates who promise to serve one term
• 10:37
  So you can't, so don't get me wrong. I think these are valid ideas. I think these are,
• 10:45
  you know, in more a correct direction, at least what we've talked about so far.
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  But again, you're talking about a country that, you know, literally is, you know, so,
• 11:01
  okay, I guess at the root of this, I would posit that the problem is not the system. The problem,
• 11:06
  The system is it's working exactly as designed. And the problem, I think, is something you identified right out of the gate, which is power. And, you know, kind of again, the big piece here is that power is not going to allow itself to be, you know, it's not going to vote itself out of power, money, fame, etc. Right.
• 11:30
  But in the voters, you know, I, you know, I mean, you know, I can tell you're not a young person and you've been around the block.
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  You know, you've traveled, you've seen things, you've probably paid quite a good deal of attention.
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  But getting voters to agree on anything is next to impossible.
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  And there's a real reason for that.
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  what you know if we all said hey what do you want to eat for lunch right right off the bat our desire
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  is going to be different it doesn't make it wrong it doesn't that's hard enough when you get two
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  people voting on that question right and so and so now you're talking about people agreeing to vote
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  in a candidate uh and you know people have ideas that they want to push across i i you know personally
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  uh, uh, anyway, I don't see how you can take such a divided group of people and, and realizing
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  if you just sit back for a moment, just literally sit back for a moment and realize the division
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  is all manufactured, right?
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  Of course.
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  And you can point this out to them and they will defend the division.
• 12:47
  Okay.
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  How do you get them then to say, oh, yeah, we're going to do this and we're going to hold them accountable when you've got situations historically that I've seen all the way from days to now where, you know, the promises are made.
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  They're not kept. There's no accountability. Congress has had a dismal rating for I don't even know.
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  gosh, last 35 years, it's been like in the under 20%, you know, approval rating. And yet the same
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  people are still in Congress from when I was, you know, from Carter era. So, you know, I see what
• 13:29
  you're saying, but I guess my concern is how do you practically get this movement going? And how
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  do you practically influence the public? And Alex and I like to talk about this. We have a diverse
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  group of friends and some of them are, you know, we are all on varying levels of the spectrum of
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  political ideology, right? We come together every year and we have an absolutely great time for four
• 13:54
  days at my house and we just hang out and go do goofy stuff and sing karaoke and we all get along.
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  But if you try and convince people outside that this is a reality and the manufactured division is just that, manufactured, they will defend the division and tell you you're wrong.
• 14:17
  Well, you know, this brings up, you know, the division actually benefits to the, you know, dividing people, exacerbating division, stoking emotions, getting one group to play off against another.
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  This is the oldest trick in the book.
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  And how do they achieve that?
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  Well, they achieve that through misinformation, through lies, through stoking the culture wars.
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  Now, I think that people are sick and tired of things how they are.
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  And so I think people will be receptive to these ideas.
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  Now, when you're talking about, you see, the thing is you can have –
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  But the people are sick and tired.
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  Yep.
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  I'm just going to say you can have –
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  Okay, go ahead, please. No, I was just going to say.
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  No, no, no, no, please.
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  I was just going to say that, you know, when we're talking about candidates for office, whether they're more on the conservative side or the liberal side, you know, they're going to be competing for that office.
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  But that's good. That's a great thing.
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  But the point is, is that if the ones that are running for that office, whether they're liberal or conservative, promise to serve only one term, that's the key.
• 15:28
  Now you know that why you know you bring up a lot of points and this is exactly why you have to have a whole what I would say a spectrum of different things of proposals that you want to implement to address these different problems
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  Now, why do we have this division? Why do we have this? Well, so much of it has to do with our
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  journalism. Our journalism, you know, in the old days, let's just say before the internet, you know,
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  So, you know, if you want to start a newspaper, say, it was a huge investment.
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  You had to buy the printing presses.
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  You had to have reporters.
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  You had to have a way to distribute the papers.
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  You have an advertising department starting a news television syndicate or radio syndicate.
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  It was a huge investment.
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  Now anybody with a laptop and a web page can start a quote-unquote news site.
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  So the basic model of news has broken down.
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  That's why so many small-town newspapers and others have gone out of business.
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  so we have to recognize that the traditional model of news is is no longer uh except for a few cases
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  has uh has broken down and so what a lot of these major stations have done or you know channels or
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  news organizations have done is they've switched from being uh trying to provide the news in a more
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  or less honest way they become more entertainment channels they become more in the business of
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  emotion manipulation. Just as the author Tobin Smith, I think it was a former Fox News,
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  he wrote a book on this subject. And what was the first thing it would discuss every morning? Well,
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  what are the stories that can stoke people's emotions? What are the stories that can get
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  people feeling that daily dose of rage that they're addicted to? And so this is what our
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  news organizations in so many cases have become. And this is why the division has become so
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  so pronounced and so um so out of control so one of the things that we need to do if you think that
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  um that this the pen is mightier than the sword which i happen to believe is that we have to
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  consider that our journalism is as important to our national defense as our armed forces our armed
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  forces protect us from enemies from without our journalism protects us from enemies from both
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  within and without. And so what I've proposed some ideas to help make our journalism robust again,
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  because I think that once we have a widely trusted, our journalism and our news organizations
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  are more widely trusted, I think that'll go a long way to help reducing the division,
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  because so much of the division now is due to the fact that our journalism is so untrusted.
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  And that means the politicians and the entertainment news, entertainment channels can control the narrative, which for a politician to be able to control the narrative is, you know, is the cat's meow.
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  We don't want the politicians to control the narrative.
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  We want people to have the facts and that will go a long way to keeping the politicians honest.
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  And we also have to implement real ramifications for politicians or candidates who lie.
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  and uh you know like if i'm if i'm if i'm you know interviewing for a job with you and you catch me
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  lying during the interview you have every right to kick me out of the interview if i'm working for
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  you and i lie to you about some aspect of my job you have every right to fire me well our politicians
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  when they lie they violate the sacred responsibility of a democracy and that is to be truthful to the
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  voters, because just as a market economy assumes that the consumers have a perfect knowledge of
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  their choices, a democracy assumes that the voters are perfectly informed. And we've got to work
• 19:22
  things back to a place where our voters, our electorate, our public, the citizenry,
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  has much more faith, has a common set of facts that we can believe in and keep our politicians
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  on us. So I think the division comes back to a couple of things. For one, the lack of trust in
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  our journalism, and two, our politicians who will say anything, who will say anything to stay in
• 19:47
  office, no matter how outrageous. So go ahead. I was going to ask, how do you enforce even the
• 19:57
  promise that they would only run for one session in there instead of keeping running again?
• 20:05
  When the incentive is there, you know, these politicians get their salary, but then they walk out having, you know,
• 20:14
  portfolio was worth hundreds of millions of dollars because of whatever they're doing in there.
• 20:18
  And that incentive would be much more than a promise, I would think, since we've all heard the promises of, you know,
• 20:24
  anything from no new taxes to no new wars or the lower cost of inflation.
• 20:29
  And none of it's ever come true, pretty much ever.
• 20:32
  Yeah, I mean, that's a risk until things are actually, you know, say, codified in law, that, you know, you're going to get somebody who promises to run for just one term, but when they do it again.
• 20:50
  I think the voters will hold them accountable because I think voters will have voted for them precisely because they made that promise.
• 20:55
  And if they violate that promise, I think that they will they'll be treated accordingly when the elections come around.
• 21:04
  I mean, that, you know, that is the one risk is that you get liars who are going to say, oh, yeah, I'll only be one term.
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  And I promise not to run for another office while I'm serving.
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  But then they drink the Kool-Aid and they say, you know, if it's not me, you know, I'm the only one who can solve these problems type of stuff.
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  And that is a risk.
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  And until things are, you know, hopefully at some point actually written into law, that is something that, you know, you can't guarantee against.
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  You know, you just can't.
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  But I think, though, that if people buy into this idea of one term, and this, by the way, is not only my idea.
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  It's the great conservative writer Thomas Sowell.
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  He said the problem with term limits is the S, and that once you have even one re-election, that's going to become the priority.
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  That's going to become what their first priority is.
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  And so I think that people in this country are ready for a change.
• 22:05
  I think people in this country are sick and tired of the division.
• 22:08
  And, you know, I participate a lot on X, and I engage with people who can be really vicious.
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  I mean, as you know, they're just really vicious.
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  They start off with insults.
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  But I have found that if you engage with them and you get beyond that first wall of just rage and emotion, you actually can have a pretty productive conversation.
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  and even if you agree to disagree,
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  I have found that,
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  I have friends across the political spectrum
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  and they're all great people.
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  Whether you're talking about people
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  who are hardcore MAGA
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  or people who are socialists,
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  the thing is that
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  we all want the same thing, really.
• 22:44
  We all want freedom
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  and we all want prosperity.
• 22:47
  The bad news is we have different ideas.
• 22:49
  Well, that's actually the good news.
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  We have different ideas.
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  Let's hear the ideas.
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  Let's hear what they have to say.
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  Let's not demonize people,
• 22:56
  knee-jerk demonize them.
• 22:58
  Let's hear their ideas and and decide which ideas we like best and move forward.
• 23:06
  Yeah, on the on the on the journalist, journalistic reform portions.
• 23:12
  Right. So, you know, you did point out something and I want to believe at this point that there is truth to it.
• 23:20
  I remember growing up and watching news and I still to this day want to believe that what we were being told was truthful and accurate.
• 23:32
  But I have very low confidence of that.
• 23:37
  I guess one of the things, excuse me, that I that I would point out, though, is that, you know, while our journalism has been largely turned to entertainment.
• 23:49
  Right.
• 23:50
  And, you know, I would even go as far as to say, you know, a propaganda wing.
• 23:55
  I don't disagree.
• 23:58
  One of the one of the things that that is, you know, quite interesting to me.
• 24:03
  And I think, you know, I I I recognize this as being a huge positive is there are a lot of guys with a laptop out there that are doing journalistic work and exposing things that no media has ever dared challenge.
• 24:19
  No media has ever dared to err or try to. You know, I mean, we could just go straight back to Julian Assange, right? One man with a laptop is what started that. And I'm sorry, but exposing Abu Ghraib would have never been done by a media outlet in the United States, no matter what independent, you know, organization you put as oversight, because it would be damaging.
• 24:45
  and that's a scary thing to me, right?
• 24:49
  So while I agree that journalistic reform needs to happen,
• 24:53
  I think really what needs to happen is there should, you know,
• 24:56
  honestly, it should just, I don't know.
• 25:01
  I have a thing.
• 25:03
  I don't want to control journalism, right?
• 25:05
  It goes back to the First Amendment, right?
• 25:08
  If I take a laptop and a pen and I want to go cover a story
• 25:11
  and write about it, I should be able to do so.
• 25:13
  on that same vein, if I write a piece that is BS, I should be called out and I should be,
• 25:21
  I should have to retract that and, you know, update that. And I think, you know, we lack any
• 25:28
  kind of a system for that. So how do you keep the, the, you know, freedom of the press and the
• 25:35
  first amendment tied together, but then reform journalistic integrity? Sure. That's a very,
• 25:43
  very good question. And I'm not, you know, railing against the one guy with the laptop,
• 25:47
  but the problem is, is that there's so much stuff out there. Nobody knows what's true,
• 25:51
  what false And you know this is especially crucial in as these deep fakes become more sophisticated because for example if somebody makes a deep fake video you Alex of robbing a bank and posts it or doing something awful
• 26:11
  OK, how are we going to know if that's true or not?
• 26:14
  Some people are just going to automatically believe it's true because they want to.
• 26:17
  And other people might be more skeptical.
• 26:20
  So what is the solution?
• 26:21
  Well, I think that, OK, we don't want to take anybody's freedom of speech away.
• 26:25
  And so what I am proposing are two things is one, let's have an organization like this is a society of professional journalists and maybe other independent organizations. Let's have a certification process. So like if you get a journalism degree, you automatically get certified. If you have a, you know, a long career in journalism, you're automatically certified. But that in itself is not enough. You've got to grade the journalist.
• 26:54
  So how do we grade the journalists based on things like the neutrality of their articles, the relevance of their articles, the fact-based nature of their articles, the neutrality, these things?
• 27:08
  How do you evaluate that?
• 27:10
  And how do you evaluate news organizations in general so that they are evaluated as neutral, as providing relevant neutral or providing at least a balanced different points of view?
• 27:21
  Well, you have an evaluation system.
• 27:23
  And how would that evaluation system work?
• 27:25
  It would be something like Rotten Tomatoes, where you have a whole bunch of different critics.
• 27:29
  And a lot of these could be AI programs, by the way.
• 27:32
  You could have independently developed AI programs, which will –
• 27:35
  I'm not saying –
• 27:36
  That's a terrible idea.
• 27:38
  Terrible idea.
• 27:39
  Well, okay.
• 27:40
  I'm not saying that that would be the only one.
• 27:43
  But you would have a series of AI programs on one hand.
• 27:45
  But you would also have professional evaluators who would evaluate, you know, given articles and given journalists, you know, their tendency over time.
• 27:55
  And based on that, you generate an average grade.
• 27:58
  Now, the higher the grade is, the idea is to have a national press fund, is what I call it, into which the government contribute, corporations contribute, citizens can contribute, anybody can contribute.
• 28:10
  And if you're a certified journalist, you would automatically qualify for a stipend for each article you write.
• 28:17
  That would bring back small-town journalism, which is pretty much dead in our country, which is a tragedy because small-town journalism has acted as a watchdog on local corruption.
• 28:28
  And the higher your evaluation, the bigger your stipend.
• 28:32
  And on the other hand, if your grade falls below a certain level, you actually risk being decertified.
• 28:40
  Now, the thing is, you don't have to be certified to call yourself a news station.
• 28:46
  Fox News, for example, or MSCBC could continue to operate just as they are now.
• 28:51
  They just wouldn't be certified.
• 28:52
  And, you know, any guy with a laptop could still continue to publish what they want.
• 28:56
  They just wouldn't be certified.
• 28:57
  But if they published a video of LX robbing a bank, well, the first question is, was that
• 29:02
  video posted on a certified news site or was it posted on Joe's Weekly World news site?
• 29:08
  And if a certified news site posts it, they would say that we cannot verify that this is an authentic video or this video is not authentic we've shown or they don't publish it at all.
• 29:23
  I think this is what you have to have.
• 29:25
  You have to have just like we certify doctors, we certify lawyers, we certify truck drivers, we certify despedious engineers.
• 29:31
  We should have a certification process in place for our journalists and a way to evaluate them in ways that give them incentives, that give them incentives to write better articles and to write more relevant and neutral fact-based articles and give opinions that are based on principles.
• 29:52
  And when I say principles, not the sort of journalists who are opinion columnists who will change their opinions if you just switch the names of the people or parties around, which is a big problem.
• 30:04
  I was going to say, so you're talking, again, we're going to go back to the human condition.
• 30:11
  Fields like this tend to quite often be biased one way or another, period.
• 30:19
  It's just a fact.
• 30:19
  I'm going to go back to the year 2020 and you can watch what happened.
• 30:24
  And I'm sorry, but that was a massive bias.
• 30:27
  Now, how do you keep the bias out of that group and who audits the auditors?
• 30:32
  If you've got a group of independent journalists that are in this group, who's auditing that group and who's auditing that?
• 30:39
  You see what I'm saying?
• 30:40
  How do you actually keep that group from becoming, you know, swayed and, you know, weighted towards, you know, one ideology or another or bias?
• 30:51
  Human bias is a reality.
• 30:53
  Look, anyone says they're non-biased is absolutely completely full of what's in the back pasture.
• 31:00
  OK, and it's just a reality.
• 31:03
  We all have biases and we can go back to the lunch thing, right?
• 31:08
  Like, I don't want to eat liver.
• 31:09
  I am biased against liver Sorry just not going to happen And no doesn matter who prepares it Well yeah that you you exactly right That just why you have to have multiple
• 31:20
  many, just like you have many movie critics. Some critics are going to look at a movie
• 31:24
  and 90% of them might say it's a great movie. 10% of them will say it's trash,
• 31:29
  but this is why, and you have to have faith that not all of them, it's not going to be just lemming
• 31:33
  that you're going to get a variety of opinions and you try to keep it honest. Now you,
• 31:37
  You say that, you know, about the AI idea.
• 31:40
  Well, you know, I actually worked in AI.
• 31:42
  And I know it, believe me, I know it's not a panacea.
• 31:46
  You know, I tell people, well, you know, there's a real solution to out of control AI.
• 31:51
  It's called unplugging the machine.
• 31:52
  You know, I, and so, you know, why AI is not perfect.
• 31:58
  It actually can, I think, this is one of the things where it could actually help be a check on the human element, the human.
• 32:05
  Now, these AI programs are going to have some bias built in, but they're going to have different – anybody who could develop an AI program to evaluate through these evaluations.
• 32:16
  They would have to – in order for these things to be recognized about, they would have to go through a series of evaluating some standard articles.
• 32:24
  And if they pass that, then they could be included in the evaluation process.
• 32:31
  But who – so, and again, back to the biases, right?
• 32:34
  Who develops those standards?
• 32:36
  And when you look at that, you're going to have embedded biases in there.
• 32:42
  Yeah, I think.
• 32:43
  I mean, I hear what you're saying.
• 32:45
  And here, I think there's also a stark contrast, right?
• 32:49
  Growing up, we had two news cycles every day.
• 32:53
  That was it.
• 32:54
  Five o'clock news and the 10 p.m. news.
• 32:56
  That was it.
• 32:57
  That was it.
• 32:58
  There wasn't, you know, you had a newspaper and that was it.
• 33:01
  nowadays you've got you know every every news outlet in the world is on this 24 7 365 i've got
• 33:09
  to have some kind of uh something coming out like every 30 seconds i've got to keep this going like
• 33:15
  sponge these people in and i would argue that's more problematic outside of independent journal
• 33:22
  journalism which i i put more weight into because again you know and yeah there's a lot of you know
• 33:29
  hokey ones out there, but there's a lot of them that have come up with stuff that just
• 33:35
  we would have never known.
• 33:37
  But anyway.
• 33:37
  Sure.
• 33:38
  I totally agree.
• 33:39
  But I would argue giving them only those two one-hour slots would probably solve a good
• 33:45
  deal of this.
• 33:46
  If you've got one hour that you've got to tell what happened in the entire day and hit
• 33:52
  all the highlights and the key points and the rest has to come out on a printed newspaper,
• 33:56
  you know there's not a whole lot of room for op-ed in that yeah we see you know as you say
• 34:05
  bias is always going to be there but I have a little more faith in that you know people who are
• 34:11
  who are certified evaluators but you know and you have a different group of them a different
• 34:18
  cross-section of them that when all the averages come out you're going to get something that you
• 34:24
  It's going to be a lot closer to a – I was not completely unbiased, but a lot closer to an unbiasing.
• 34:32
  Now, is this a perfect solution?
• 34:34
  No.
• 34:34
  But it's, I think, a far better system than we have now because if you – you can continue to watch the news, the entertainment, political infidelity channels that are not certified.
• 34:46
  You can continue to read Joe's Weekly World News site, which is uncertified.
• 34:51
  No problem at all.
• 34:52
  But I think that a lot of people are going to want to, when the chips are down, they're going to want to get their news from the certified, highly evaluated news sites and journalists.
• 35:06
  There certainly will be a number of them, right?
• 35:10
  And, you know, I think this is an interesting idea, right?
• 35:15
  I don't know that I, the stipend piece of it is a little concerning to me, especially because donations from, you know, pretty much anywhere.
• 35:28
  That's an interesting one.
• 35:29
  Not certain.
• 35:30
  I have to give that a lot more time.
• 35:33
  Can I just jump in there really quickly?
• 35:35
  That's why it's got to be, we don't want something like where we have the Washington Post, which is beholden to Jeff Bezos.
• 35:42
  You know, nobody in the Washington Post is going to write a negative article on Jeff Bezos.
• 35:47
  Or if you're getting funding directly from the government, you know, you might be very hesitant to write an article that, you know, could be interpreted as going against the powers that be in the government, which is why you have to have the funding, the stipend coming from a source that is not tied to any one thing.
• 36:06
  And that's why I call it the National Press Fund, into which, as I say, the government
• 36:10
  contribute, corporations contribute, individuals contribute.
• 36:13
  And then, so suppose you're a college student, you get your journalism degree, you move back
• 36:19
  to your small town in Lincoln Missouri and you start up your own local news site And you can count on you know if you writing relevant articles well articles you know you certified and you getting a certain grade for those
• 36:33
  articles, you can actually make a living as doing that. I mean, let's make journalism a viable
• 36:39
  career again, because right now it's just not, I mean, our journalists, they're actually encouraged
• 36:45
  to write clickbait. This is like, you know, like the Oregonian, used to be a great newspaper. And
• 36:51
  Now their articles are, you know, they're all trying to write clickbait, you know, regardless of how irrelevant or how biased or whatever.
• 36:59
  And we don't want that.
• 37:00
  We want to encourage our journalists, for one thing, to write.
• 37:05
  This is all about giving incentives.
• 37:08
  It's giving them incentives to write genuine fact-based articles that are as neutral as possible and evaluating them.
• 37:16
  And the better their valuation, the larger the stipend.
• 37:22
  And this would work for news organizations as well.
• 37:24
  We want to get their pay, their way of their living independent from any powerful organization, any powerful conglomerate or the government.
• 37:37
  We want their livelihood to be based on their dedication to being the best that they can be and not just going for clickbait or anything that's going to stoke people's emotions and get them coming back for that.
• 37:56
  Just like as the former Knox Fox news host said, they do these rage-baiting news stories because people – that's what sells.
• 38:07
  People get addicted to that.
• 38:09
  It's what every one of them does.
• 38:10
  Every single one of them.
• 38:13
  It's just the way of the world today.
• 38:15
  If you want any attention, you have to grab it in like, you know, the first, you know, fraction of a second.
• 38:22
  And if you don't, then they move on.
• 38:24
  So a non-click-baity title becomes a bunch of background noise.
• 38:30
  Even if it's the best article ever, you're going to be dependent on other people actually reading it and then sharing it and saying, no, you guys really need to read this, which is sad, but that's society today.
• 38:43
  I mean, you know, I remember when, you know, a 15, 20 minute YouTube you could send to someone and they're like, oh, yeah, let me check that out.
• 38:50
  And now if you send them a five minute YouTube, they're like, it's too long.
• 38:54
  Right.
• 38:55
  Yes, I know.
• 38:56
  I know.
• 38:57
  Yeah, I get it.
• 39:00
  Yeah. So, you know, like I say, this is, you know, there's never a perfect, it's never,
• 39:07
  there's no such thing as a perfect solution, but this, as I say, this I think would go along.
• 39:15
  Yeah, this is definitely, I think, you know, something that has merit, right? So what about
• 39:21
  the pool of, of, you know, auditors? I'm going to call them auditors because that's essentially
• 39:26
  what they would be. What about the pool of auditors? I would, you know, my brain goes in order to make
• 39:33
  that the most non-biased and fair that you could, so you got the right people, it would either have
• 39:43
  to be, I would almost say it would have to be voluntary. It would have to be people that have
• 39:49
  a passion about journalism and improving it just for that reason. And we're willing to spend some
• 39:55
  of their time simply because of their passion for accurate reporting. What are your thoughts on that
• 40:02
  though? Well, yeah, that's a, that's a really good question. And I have grappled with that myself.
• 40:08
  You know, one, one idea is to actually do the exact same thing with, with auditors is to give
• 40:15
  them a stipend and you know, base if their evaluations on, on in general are within certain
• 40:22
  standard, you know, over time, over standard, you know, certain standard deviations, they would,
• 40:27
  you know, qualify for a stipend and be evaluated accordingly. You know, this is a tough problem.
• 40:34
  It may be, it'd be better to have just a combination of professional auditors,
• 40:41
  AI programs, and just the general public. And you take sort of just like when you look at a movie,
• 40:46
  a movie review, you have the critics evaluation and you have the audience evaluation. And there
• 40:51
  There have been times where, you know, the critics love it, the audience hates it, and vice versa.
• 40:56
  And so, you know, you have to have sort of a multiple, you know, check system.
• 41:02
  And again, none of this is perfect, but the idea is to try to instill confidence that a certified journalist with a good evaluation is that you can probably count on them being a lot better source of news and information
• 41:20
  than a non-certified reporter of news
• 41:26
  or journalist or news organization.
• 41:29
  So that's the basic premise
• 41:32
  because as it is now,
• 41:34
  our journalism is just not trusted.
• 41:37
  And this is why our politicians can control
• 41:39
  narrative. And this is, that's, that's a dream come true for any politician. If any negative
• 41:44
  news comes up, they can just say, oh, that's negative, that's fake news. And we've got to get
• 41:51
  to a point, you know, back to a point where if, if they're, they're called out on something that
• 41:57
  they said that they, you know, they have, they can't just say, oh, that's fake news because we
• 42:02
  have many certified nudicides have shown or have said that this is, have reported that what this
• 42:09
  politician is saying is is just not true and uh we've it's absolutely there's an easy easy
• 42:17
  litmus litmus test for that are their lips moving
• 42:21
  well yeah this well this is exactly why um another proposal is to hold our politicians
• 42:31
  accountable for lying because lying you know lying to get a job is a bad thing lying on the
• 42:37
  job is a bad thing. But I would argue that lying to get elected is, as I've said earlier, a
• 42:42
  fundamental violation of the sacred responsibility of a candidate or a holder of political office.
• 42:50
  We are entrusting them with the sacred power of the people. They should be getting that privilege
• 42:57
  because, not because they're lying, not because they're going George Santos on us, but because
• 43:03
  they are, because we like their ideas, we like their vision. You know, I like to think about,
• 43:10
  you know, I've been in sales. My original field is technology, but I've been in sales. And I can
• 43:15
  tell you the best salespeople are the ones who can talk to their customers honestly about the
• 43:21
  pros and cons of their product. They can even speak respectfully of the competition because
• 43:27
  they can make the case that their product or their service is the best return on investment.
• 43:33
  The worst salespeople are the ones who will say anything to make a sale and who will say just absolutely absurd things about the competition.
• 43:41
  Whenever I hear a salesperson like that, I just walk out of the room.
• 43:44
  And our politicians now are basically fourth rate salespeople.
• 43:48
  They'll say anything to quote unquote make the sale.
• 43:52
  They'll lie.
• 43:53
  They're used car salesmen.
• 43:55
  Yeah, that's basically what they are.
• 43:57
  And, you know, if you are really confident in your ideas and you shouldn't need to lie, you know, that's what I think the thing, the key thing about a democracy is, is if your ideas are, quote unquote, really the best ones, let's say, over time, your ideas will prevail.
• 44:18
  And so, you know, if you're really confident on your ideas, you shouldn't need to lie about what you stand for or what your opponent stands for.
• 44:27
  You should be able to speak respectfully and debate respectfully with your political opponents if you are really confident in your own ideas.
• 44:40
  It's exactly that.
• 44:40
  Lying is just inflating the truth a little bit to, you know, get the desired result.
• 44:46
  Yeah. Well, I don't know. I think our politicians are just they just literally say anything now. Literally. That's probably true.
• 44:57
  Well, I mean, it's I'm just going to go back to I really believe that this is not a new thing. But that being said, here we are.
• 45:07
  Yeah, it's not a new thing.
• 45:08
  I can clearly remember, you know, how how we were going to be economically better off.
• 45:16
  And there was a very large vocal movement about the fact that we were about to cross the one trillion dollar death deadline.
• 45:26
  You know, so it's not the lies have been going on and they, you know, and it seems to just be a systemic part of the system.
• 45:35
  Right.
• 45:36
  so yeah I don't know I would love that if they were were held accountable for that um
• 45:42
  and I think that's a lofty goal to go for but at the same time you're asking the people that
• 45:48
  can lie to you and promise you whatever they want uh so that you'll give them money not to
• 45:54
  do that anymore and then they don't get money or re-elected and that right there is seems to be the
• 46:01
  biggest trap right now um for me anyway yeah that's why that's why we've got that's why we've
• 46:07
  got to elect new people new people who are going to go in and and but we don't even elect the people
• 46:14
  we don't even elect the people here let's be real about this nobody asked me if i wanted
• 46:20
  freaking was it trump and harris on a ticket nobody they said here's your candidates
• 46:26
  you've got to elect one of them and and you know i i i feel very strongly and differently than
• 46:34
  than than i i would imagine well i i yeah no sorry i think uh uh uh uh
• 46:42
  uh charles spurgeon said it what best right of two evils choose neither So you made a choice by not making a choice absolutely in our song about that somewhere yeah but you see the thing is so so so going to that
• 47:03
  how do we get the people that are going to promise this to be elected when we don't even
• 47:07
  get to choose who gets up onto the election platform well i i think that um
• 47:15
  I think that, you know, I'm a little more optimistic that independent candidates can actually win elections if their message gets through.
• 47:28
  And I happen to believe that people are sick of both parties, which is one reason why I have proposed, you know, let's disband political parties after 16 years.
• 47:38
  Because what happens with political parties, just like with any organization, they become institutionalized where their core mission becomes secondary to other priorities.
• 47:50
  And so party politics, George Washington, you go back to the founders.
• 47:54
  They said, absolutely not.
• 47:56
  This is this is a trap.
• 47:57
  If you get into this, exactly.
• 48:00
  Exactly.
• 48:01
  So that's what George Washington said.
• 48:03
  He warned us and rightfully so against political parties.
• 48:07
  Now, let's think about political parties. In theory, they should be a big tent under which people of similar ideas and beliefs can organize and present candidates accordingly. But what happens to these political parties over time?
• 48:21
  Well, they start becoming institutionalized, which means their first priority is winning elections at all costs, increasing their power, supporting the special interests that keep them in power.
• 48:33
  They become these vicious, mindless, tribal organizations.
• 48:37
  So we want the best of both worlds where we have political parties where people can organize and present candidates accordingly.
• 48:44
  but we don't want them around long enough where they become institutionalized
• 48:49
  and other priorities become job number one.
• 48:55
  And so that's why—
• 48:56
  I would disagree on that, and here's why.
• 48:59
  Okay.
• 49:00
  Not that I don't think it would be better to have them limited and, you know, etc.
• 49:07
  But my disagreement comes with this.
• 49:09
  I don't think we should have any tent or, or any party that anyone should ever be under.
• 49:16
  You should be looking at the candidates based on their merits, holding them to account based on their merits.
• 49:22
  And it shouldn't matter what color lapel pin they wear or tie.
• 49:28
  It should only be based on the merits, the pros and the cons of the person that you're trying to, you know, go in.
• 49:35
  The second you introduce a party, it doesn't matter.
• 49:38
  Now that you're telling, look, we can get our ideas across if we expand our party.
• 49:44
  It'll happen in two months.
• 49:46
  It's not going to take 16 years.
• 49:48
  So, you know, it's just like, you know, people, right?
• 49:51
  I mean, people will organize into groups based on the flip of a coin and then defend their group at all costs.
• 49:58
  You flipped a coin, dude.
• 49:59
  That's your allegiance here.
• 50:01
  Yeah, but we're heads.
• 50:02
  We're better.
• 50:03
  You know what I mean?
• 50:04
  It's human nature.
• 50:05
  It's just human nature.
• 50:06
  You can see this through multiple sociological studies, sociologists through history, philosophers.
• 50:15
  You know, you call tribalism.
• 50:18
  Tribalism is built into our genetic code.
• 50:22
  How do you survive on the savannahs?
• 50:24
  Just where they live.
• 50:26
  Yeah, well, you're exactly right.
• 50:28
  We humans are, by nature, very emotional beings and very tribal beings.
• 50:32
  And so, you know, our democracy or our former government is where you're actually trying to build a society based on ideas, not based on tribalism, because tribalism has been the traditional way that people have organized their societies.
• 50:48
  And so, you know, you make a really good point.
• 50:50
  You know, maybe political parties in and of themselves should be X.
• 50:55
  But I happen to think that, number one, political parties, if they're only around temporarily, can actually serve a useful purpose.
• 51:04
  And number two, I think that the political parties should not be, what do I want to say, you know, a lemming sort of organization where everybody has to agree on the same.
• 51:19
  And I, you know, what I like to say, you know, when I tell people if this actually becomes a political party, Solutions Party becomes a political party.
• 51:27
  Number one is that we would only be around for, you know, a limited amount of time.
• 51:31
  Number two is that we actually welcome diversity of ideas.
• 51:34
  You don't have to agree with all of the different proposals.
• 51:37
  You know, just a couple of proposals is one that, you know, the idea is that you're only going to serve one term and you're not going to run for another office or that office ever again while you're serving that one term.
• 51:49
  But other than that, you know, the field is open for different ideas.
• 51:53
  You know, somebody like, for example, one of the ideas is reforming the judiciary.
• 51:58
  Well you might not buy into that but that OK You see right now our political parties have just become these you know ultra lemming organizations where everybody got to toe the line
• 52:12
  Just, it's no different than it is like what I saw in communist China.
• 52:15
  I mean, I should say it's no different, but, you know, in communist China or North Korea, if you deviate, you know, you go to the firing squad.
• 52:24
  It's not quite that extreme here. But, you know, we both look, we can look at our political parties. And right now, look at like what's going on with the Democratic Party. You've got this, this, this, the traditional wing that's just petrified because of the Democratic Socialists of America, you know, the rise within that.
• 52:43
  And on the Republican side, you have the contest between the MAGA wing and the more conventional wing.
• 52:50
  And I would argue that these are actually good.
• 52:52
  We should have these debates within our political party.
• 52:54
  We shouldn't demonize them.
• 52:55
  It shouldn't be my way or the highway.
• 52:59
  This is the only way.
• 53:00
  We should have these healthy debates within the political parties.
• 53:04
  Now, whether or not political parties should be completely made obsolete, that's a really good point.
• 53:09
  A really interesting thing to think about and debate the pros and cons.
• 53:17
  But I have – my proposal is basically, okay, let's try to get the best of both worlds where political parties can serve a purpose, but let's just make them temporary so that they don't become, like I say, institutionalized, which means that they –
• 53:32
  You know, organizations tend to become institutionalized where their core mission becomes secondary to, you know, to other priorities.
• 53:42
  Like, let's look at very briefly, just look at Boeing.
• 53:45
  You know, their core mission was to build aircraft, but then they started putting more emphasis on stock price and profits.
• 53:52
  And they started making a lot of bad decisions.
• 53:55
  And, you know, they ended up losing a lot more money.
• 53:59
  Their profits went away and their stock price tanked.
• 54:02
  And this is just one example, but organizations tend to become institutionalized.
• 54:08
  So the solution when it comes to political parties, I believe, is that you just make them temporary.
• 54:15
  And this also applies to the government employment, which is why I proposed let's just make government employment wherever possible temporary.
• 54:24
  There are no more career government employees.
• 54:26
  You work five years and then you move on.
• 54:29
  And by the way, during those five years, if you can find ways to make the government more efficient, you'll get a commission. We'll give these temporary young, ideally young people right out of high school or college, these jobs, train them on what they need to know, and then give them incentives to make the government more efficient.
• 54:46
  and so i love that idea but i mean honestly a baboon could make the government more efficient
• 54:53
  uh you just let them loose in the office i mean literally it's that bad milton friedman said it
• 55:00
  best if you know if you gave the government control of the saharan desert in in a matter
• 55:06
  of years there'd be a shortage of sand yeah well this is this is exactly why you know talking about
• 55:13
  institutionalized, what is the core reason that things become institutionalized? Because people
• 55:17
  within the organization, they want to expand the power of the organization, and they want to use
• 55:22
  the organization as a vehicle for career, their own greedy career-based goals. And so that's why
• 55:31
  you've got to, again, make the employment temporary, and you give them so that there is no
• 55:37
  lifetime bureaucratic mentality involved here. This is, I think, the core reasons why,
• 55:42
  you know, governments end up functioning so poorly is because you get lifetime bureaucrats
• 55:48
  with lifetime bureaucratic mentalities who you get turf wars, you get, you know, people who want
• 55:53
  to use it for their own career advancement. Okay, let's make that a thing of the past. Let's
• 55:59
  make government employment temporary. You give people incentives. There's no long-term interest
• 56:06
  here. So there's no reason, you know, this is not going to be a long-term career path for you.
• 56:10
  And while you're there, you know, we're going to give you incentives to find ways
• 56:14
  to make things more efficient, which is exactly the opposite of what we have now.
• 56:18
  You know, our government organizations are encouraged to waste money so that they keep
• 56:22
  getting the same amount of money. I see this everywhere, not only in this country.
• 56:27
  Yeah. In Japan, for example, you know, there was a project right outside of an apartment,
• 56:32
  a road enhancement project went on for two years and most of the guys were just sitting around and
• 56:40
  they were just wasting money because they had to spend the money that the government had allocated
• 56:44
  to them and we want to turn that on its head we want to encourage people who are working government
• 56:50
  let's if they can find a way to save let's say a million dollars a year they'll get a 10 percent
• 56:54
  or not 10 percent a one percent commission for five years on that on that um on making that
• 57:00
  I think if you have people who are embedded there who can find ways to make things better I think young creative minds joining government for temporary just for temporary purposes will find ways to make government more efficient Now well is it a panacea Of course not But much better than having it run by lifetime government employees who have that lifetime bureaucratic mentality
• 57:26
  yeah as someone who will probably never get to visit a lot of the places where you've lived i
• 57:34
  would be interested in hearing some of your experiences on how these different places
• 57:39
  differ not only politically but maybe culturally from what we have here and and do you think we
• 57:45
  have it better here or do you think there's things that we could adopt from these other countries
• 57:49
  well i i think you know the great thing about america is not that we're perfect
• 57:56
  But the great thing about America is that we have the potential to really learn from our mistakes and improve.
• 58:04
  As Winston Churchill said, you know, Americans always do the right thing after they've done everything else.
• 58:11
  And I think that that's where our greatness lies.
• 58:15
  And not that we're, you know, the cat's meow in this case in every way.
• 58:19
  But, you know, the fact that we have it still within our power to change things.
• 58:25
  As long as the people have the power, there is hope that change can be brought about.
• 58:31
  Now, I talked about the inspiration for this.
• 58:34
  Well, it's actually based on the commonality that are independent of the different cultures.
• 58:39
  The government corruption, like I've seen the government corruption in Japan.
• 58:43
  I see it all the time in Peru.
• 58:45
  In China, it's obviously in an autocratic system, corruption is rife.
• 58:49
  It just, you know, it's really ironic because China is supposed to be a communist society, yet they have the government, you know, the party bosses are as rich as anybody else in the world.
• 59:04
  and um you know it's this happens in every autocratic society you know whether you're
• 59:11
  talking about uh nicholas maduro whether you're talking about putin whether you're talking about
• 59:15
  kim jong-un these guys are they're not interested in a classless society they're interested in
• 59:21
  expanding their own power and enhancing their own wealth and so you know the corruption is something
• 59:26
  that is worldwide and i see it all the time in peru i actually work with the military a lot in
• 59:33
  Peru. And the impression I have is that a lot of these officers, higher echelon officers,
• 59:39
  have joined the armed forces, not so much to defend the country, but to pillage the country.
• 59:47
  It's just a feeding fest, a feeding, what's the word I want? A feeding frenzy. And I think we
• 59:54
  have that somewhere in our Pentagon budget as well, a feeding frenzy of tax dollars.
• 1:00:01
  And that's one of the reasons why another proposal is a worldwide war on corruption.
• 1:00:06
  Now, I know everybody is tired of hearing war on this, war on that, war on drugs, war on terror, war on this, war on that.
• 1:00:11
  But I do think that a worldwide organized war on corruption, based on some of the proposals I've made, based on some of the conversations, would actually resonate with people because people around the world are so sick of it.
• 1:00:27
  You know, they're sick.
• 1:00:29
  Like in Peru, for example, the revolving doors of politicians who say they're going to fight corruption.
• 1:00:35
  They get into office and they drink the Kool-Aid and they're just as corrupt.
• 1:00:39
  It never, ever ends.
• 1:00:41
  And in the case of Peru, they should actually be a quite wealthy country because they've got incredible natural resources.
• 1:00:48
  And they could actually.
• 1:00:51
  What's that?
• 1:00:52
  You say you say a worldwide war on corruption.
• 1:00:55
  So you accurately pointed out the terminology leaves something to be desired given historical reference.
• 1:01:06
  But that means that are you talking about an activist type of a position where you get the locals in each place to go and do this?
• 1:01:16
  Or what do you help me understand what you mean by a worldwide war on corruption?
• 1:01:23
  Well, it's got to be addressed at multiple levels, whether we're talking about, you know, at the individual level, the cop who asked for a bribe or in the government bidding process.
• 1:01:35
  Let's take an example of the government bidding process.
• 1:01:37
  Right now, I can tell you from experience that the committees that make the bids are the ones who also decide the winner.
• 1:01:46
  Well, they're in bed with certain, you know, suppliers.
• 1:01:50
  Okay.
• 1:01:50
  Well, let's have the bids. Okay, you can have a committee that actually formulates the requirement for the bid. But let's have the bids evaluated by a completely independent, even maybe one that's not located in the country, which will evaluate the different bids based on, you know, the real variables that matter, you know, the price offered, the delivery times.
• 1:02:20
  any other goodies that they're throwing in there.
• 1:02:23
  Because as it is now,
• 1:02:25
  as it is now these bidding committees,
• 1:02:29
  you know, they put in
• 1:02:29
  conditions that will favor one supplier, the supplier wins, and they get their kickback.
• 1:02:37
  And so the corruption exists all the way from the lower level, like the customs officer who
• 1:02:45
  gets a bribe to let somebody into the country, or I've experienced corruption at the local level
• 1:02:51
  by the local police. You didn't have your headlights on on this highway, so they're
• 1:02:57
  going to charge you 500 bucks you know well let's have let's have all that being recorded
• 1:03:02
  and videotaped and analyzed uh in real time uh from this point on because uh that's one that's
• 1:03:10
  one idea for where this petty corruption can occur let's have these uh these lower level
• 1:03:17
  government employees monitored and and you can have their content automatically analyzed and you
• 1:03:23
  give them incentives to not be corrupt. If they've gone, you know, for a couple of years without any
• 1:03:29
  incidents, a suspicious incidents, you give them a raise. But if they are caught, there got to be
• 1:03:34
  severe ramifications. The same thing with bids. This has to be organized, I think, in a worldwide
• 1:03:42
  way, because I like to say corruption anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere. And so,
• 1:03:47
  So I think that...
• 1:03:50
  So I agree with you on premise.
• 1:03:53
  I think that, you know, tackling that is something that is a global problem.
• 1:03:57
  But at the same time, global policing just doesn't work.
• 1:04:04
  You know, there's absolutely no point where it's ever really provided any benefit and has been used as an oppressive tool more often than anything else.
• 1:04:16
  and so when I talk about global
• 1:04:18
  I guess the
• 1:04:19
  concern I have is
• 1:04:23
  when you say global what I think
• 1:04:25
  would be a much better
• 1:04:26
  and easier thing to tackle is
• 1:04:28
  to say you know
• 1:04:30
  let's start where it matters
• 1:04:33
  right a country wide
• 1:04:35
  right that's exactly right
• 1:04:37
  but that's what I mean when I say global
• 1:04:39
  I mean all around the world not that we're
• 1:04:41
  the only thing where I would bring in
• 1:04:43
  an external country
• 1:04:44
  involved in
• 1:04:46
  what I'm proposing involved in maybe the affairs of this country A and country B is when it comes
• 1:04:54
  to these government bids. And that is that you simply have organizations that would evaluate
• 1:05:00
  those bids and choose the winner independently of, say, the bidding committee, the one that came,
• 1:05:08
  that would evaluate the bids based on the real variables that matter. And they would also look
• 1:05:13
  at the bidding conditions. One of the tricks that some of these government organizations do
• 1:05:18
  is they'll, when they publish the bidding conditions, they'll put some completely impossible
• 1:05:25
  condition, like all of the technical documents have to be translated, officially translated,
• 1:05:30
  which, you know, if they've told their supplier ahead of time, okay, we're going to put this
• 1:05:35
  condition, get all your documents translated in time. So they have all of their documents
• 1:05:40
  translated in time when the bidding documents are actually published, but nobody else can possibly
• 1:05:46
  meet those translation deadlines in time for the bid. Conditions like that should be called out.
• 1:05:56
  In Japan, for example, I tried participating in some local bids there. I thought, well, Japan,
• 1:06:02
  this place would certainly be fair and square. But what did they do? They would publish bids,
• 1:06:08
  say for, you know, we were in the field of aviation lubricants. The government would post,
• 1:06:14
  yeah, we want lubricants, but they wouldn't say which kind of lubricants. They would say nothing.
• 1:06:19
  They would only tell their preferred supplier what the lubricants they want. And if you wanted more
• 1:06:23
  information, you couldn't request it, you know, through fax or through email. You had to actually
• 1:06:29
  go to the government office and request to see the details of the bid that they were conducting.
• 1:06:37
  It's things like this that, you know, whether it's Japan and, you know, in this country, you know, how many times have you heard no bid contracts?
• 1:06:47
  Or, you know, in Peru, I've seen it.
• 1:06:49
  This is a problem that exists worldwide, and it has to be addressed at the local level.
• 1:06:53
  But I think that if it were – if people around the world – if this were being done simultaneously around the world, there would be real momentum instead of just in one particular country.
• 1:07:06
  And the only thing, the policing, which I don't really like that word too much, would be for these government bids.
• 1:07:13
  You've got to have an independent way that completely takes the local officials out of it because they will try to rig the bid in a way that favors their preferred supplier.
• 1:07:26
  so i'm just going to posit this but i mean given everything we've talked about so far
• 1:07:33
  i think it would be uh i don think it a stretch and i i think it pretty reasonable to assume that government is the problem well you see that what uh ronald reagan said government is not the solution
• 1:07:49
  government is the problem and i i say you know well i actually would say it's i would say a
• 1:07:55
  little differently i would say politicians are the problem uh you know politicians are the ones
• 1:08:00
  who uh in whom we we entrust the sacred power of the people and they're the ones
• 1:08:05
  who can make our government work a lot better.
• 1:08:10
  And I think that that's one of the reasons
• 1:08:11
  why we've got to have our politicians
• 1:08:14
  working for the general interest,
• 1:08:16
  not the special interest,
• 1:08:18
  while they're focused 100% on doing their job
• 1:08:20
  and why they do this government reform.
• 1:08:22
  Like I say, let's make government employment temporary.
• 1:08:26
  Let's find out the places where corruption
• 1:08:29
  is likely to occur
• 1:08:31
  and put into place some countermeasures.
• 1:08:35
  And some of the countermeasures I've proposed.
• 1:08:37
  Now, are these perfect?
• 1:08:38
  No.
• 1:08:39
  Let's talk about them, make them better.
• 1:08:40
  These ideas aren't the do all and be all.
• 1:08:43
  They are a starting point.
• 1:08:45
  But I think that the general idea, the basic idea behind them is valid.
• 1:08:49
  Let's tweak the parameters.
• 1:08:52
  Let's make them better.
• 1:08:53
  But I think that when it comes at the petty level, there are ways we can address that now.
• 1:08:59
  The technology exists where we can address that now.
• 1:09:02
  When it comes to the really big corruption at the national level, bids level, there are ideas, some of the ideas I've proposed I think would help go a long way based on my experience with bidding in these countries that would make things a lot fair.
• 1:09:16
  Because I can tell you this, where I work in Peru, I have got some really fundamental advantages over the competition for reasons I won't go into.
• 1:09:27
  And I should be winning the vast majority of the bids.
• 1:09:29
  Why don't I?
• 1:09:30
  because of the corruption.
• 1:09:33
  And so based on these ideas or this experience that I've had,
• 1:09:38
  I've formulated these ideas,
• 1:09:40
  and it all comes down to these greedy government,
• 1:09:44
  lifetime bureaucrats who are using their position to enrich themselves
• 1:09:50
  and the good of the public be damned.
• 1:09:54
  And so based on that experience,
• 1:09:58
  that's the inspiration for some of these ideas.
• 1:10:03
  All right.
• 1:10:05
  I'm still going to posit my question.
• 1:10:08
  Okay, sure.
• 1:10:09
  No, no, I enjoy this.
• 1:10:11
  Please push back.
• 1:10:12
  No, I appreciate it as well.
• 1:10:16
  It's been a really good conversation.
• 1:10:18
  My general opinion is that there's, you know,
• 1:10:22
  my general opinion is this.
• 1:10:26
  Government is a tumor.
• 1:10:28
  And there's only one way to take care of a tumor. That's to eradicate it. It's my personal opinion. I, you know, unaffiliated with any party political anything or political person in any way, shape or form.
• 1:10:43
  um so that you know hey we're all individuals we get to have our own our own thoughts and our own
• 1:10:49
  beliefs uh and you know while i think these are all you know i think these are good ideas for
• 1:10:56
  reform right i really do i i would i would say that you know some of them i think you know need
• 1:11:03
  need some testing right there needs to be some real testing that goes on at a local level to
• 1:11:09
  see if you can actually get something like this done. And I think a lot of this needs to be put
• 1:11:15
  into an activist type of a position, right? Because I just, you know, to get the support for these
• 1:11:22
  ideas across the board, I mean, you're going to have to have, you know, activists out there,
• 1:11:29
  you know, espousing the ideas, talking about them and trying to put them in action
• 1:11:33
  at a local level and then show benefit to that at a local level, which should start to bubble up.
• 1:11:41
  Right. I do like the idea of limits on parties, but I also don't think we should have any party.
• 1:11:48
  I think every single political position. Well, I think they shouldn't exist, but that's that's my personal opinion.
• 1:11:56
  Um, you know, I, I live rural and, uh, you know, we don't, we don't rely on any of that stuff. Right. I mean, you know, there are certain things that exist like roads. Okay. But I have a 300 yard long driveway and nobody maintains that for me. Uh, we were capable of doing this before roads were put out here. So, but that being said, I think the idea behind it, the original idea was that you would be voting for candidates.
• 1:12:26
  that have a position that is for the populace, right? The populace they represent. And I think
• 1:12:34
  the, you know, the, the original ideas, you know, you can argue the merits of democracy versus what
• 1:12:40
  we have, you know, which is more of a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, republic, right. But when you get to
• 1:12:49
  a place this large where you got this many people in this many you know things I don know that a true democracy ever would succeed there You just have very small very highly populated centers dictating what everybody else did
• 1:13:04
  Right.
• 1:13:04
  So I guess the thing about this is parties breed that lemur mentality.
• 1:13:12
  And it's just a reality that a human will literally divide themselves based on the flip
• 1:13:19
  of a coin or the color of the shirt they may be wearing. Right. Um, so I would say, you know,
• 1:13:26
  espousing the idea of people getting back to this, this person is, you know, has our best interest
• 1:13:33
  is going to do the things that are better for us, not for his, you know, his pals, you know,
• 1:13:39
  over at company X, Y, or Z, et cetera. Um, and you know, I think one thing you should really
• 1:13:46
  throw in there is maybe a return to the, the old ways of, of funding these people as well,
• 1:13:52
  which is you got a stipend for your time sitting in the Capitol after that, man, you're, you're,
• 1:14:01
  you're on your own, right? This isn't like meant to be something that pays your salary. It never
• 1:14:06
  was. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah. And I agree. I think that that's why I think that anybody who
• 1:14:12
  serves elected office, you know, they have to live under a microscope or under, you know,
• 1:14:20
  a looking glass during that time. You know, if they're going to, if somebody wants to lobby them,
• 1:14:25
  okay, lobbying will be permitted, but it has to be done in a public format with an announcement,
• 1:14:31
  you know, so that people can attend the lobbying session.
• 1:14:36
  Why would we want lobbying at all?
• 1:14:40
  Right.
• 1:14:40
  That's that's again goes back to the root and the crux of the problem where you have uber wealthy people coming in to lobby their position on a certain topic.
• 1:14:51
  And they're using funds to do it that they happen to have that.
• 1:14:55
  Right.
• 1:14:55
  I don't.
• 1:14:56
  Alex doesn't.
• 1:14:58
  You don't.
• 1:14:58
  Yeah.
• 1:14:59
  Right.
• 1:14:59
  And so they are now becoming the representative or the represented as opposed to the people that are supposed to be being represented.
• 1:15:09
  I honestly think that all of the money going into politics, the entirety of it should be limited in size and it should be very small and it should absolutely have to come from an individual.
• 1:15:29
  Right. I mean, if you just take it all the way out, right. I think the more you look at taking
• 1:15:34
  away their money, the more the power is gone as well. Like the desire for power with no wealth,
• 1:15:41
  I think is going to be a very, very limited portion of the population. Like, Ooh,
• 1:15:47
  look at how powerful I am driving my Yugo. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think though, okay. You know,
• 1:15:54
  one of the reasons that, you know, these very powerful special interest organizations,
• 1:16:00
  people have such power is precisely because they do contribute lots and lots of money.
• 1:16:06
  So, but, you know, when I say lobbying, okay, that doesn't, okay.
• 1:16:10
  Again, I think that whoever is represented or whoever is representing the people
• 1:16:16
  and the companies in their district or whatever,
• 1:16:18
  to have the idea of a company or individuals coming to give their point of view,
• 1:16:27
  to make a pitch, proposals to that politician, but in a public format where, by the way,
• 1:16:32
  if they're going to make a presentation, they have to publish that presentation before they meet with the lobbyist.
• 1:16:38
  And anybody can attend that.
• 1:16:41
  And then after they made their presentation, other people can provide feedback or different ideas on that.
• 1:16:48
  But it would not in any way be tied to, you know, campaign funds.
• 1:16:53
  And not only that, you know, we have to have.
• 1:16:59
  Why do we want corporations to be driving the direction in any way, shape or form?
• 1:17:06
  And I'm just going to say this blatantly, because here's the fact.
• 1:17:11
  A corporation is run by a very small group of people.
• 1:17:15
  You're literally taking all of the people in an area.
• 1:17:19
  In a corporation, it could be 100,000 people.
• 1:17:21
  You mentioned, you know, that aircraft company.
• 1:17:25
  That could be, you know, I don't know.
• 1:17:27
  I'm imagining it's at least 100,000 people in there.
• 1:17:30
  Now you've got lobbies, lobby going on from a very small group of people.
• 1:17:36
  And they're essentially, you know, I mean, that's their representation.
• 1:17:41
  I think corporations should have zero influence in politics.
• 1:17:44
  Zero. None.
• 1:17:46
  Unless it's a warning to the politicians saying, hey, you know, this thing we just found is dangerous and there needs to be guardrails.
• 1:17:55
  Outside of that, I don't think corporations should be involved in politics at all.
• 1:17:59
  You make a product, you do a service, you do a thing.
• 1:18:02
  the only way they should be ever be involved in politics is like you know that standard something comes along and goes well hey we need toilets Oh hey we bid on your toilets right
• 1:18:12
  Okay.
• 1:18:13
  But corporations aren't people.
• 1:18:15
  And that, in my opinion, is just a blatant fact, right?
• 1:18:20
  Right.
• 1:18:20
  Now, if the, you know, the people in that small group want to put their presentation as themselves.
• 1:18:27
  Okay.
• 1:18:28
  but you know the problem that we have is the next thing you know these corporations maybe they're
• 1:18:34
  not funding them maybe they're just some gifts here or maybe they oh hey yeah let's take a
• 1:18:39
  vacation we'll go on my yacht we'll take my private jet we'll go to my private island
• 1:18:44
  you know what i mean people don't usually have that influence and if you you know if you take
• 1:18:51
  the take this again i think putting the power back into the represented's hands is the goal right
• 1:18:57
  So I would argue that corporations shouldn't even be in that picture.
• 1:19:03
  Okay.
• 1:19:03
  Well, I think, though, that if you make the lobbying public and people have to apply to lobby and the topics that are going to be proposed will be published ahead of time, whether you're talking about a company or whether you're talking about an individual, whether you're talking about a charity, whether you're talking about a local Indian tribe or a Native American tribe,
• 1:19:26
  You know, anybody can petition to, you know, spend a half an hour giving a presentation to their politician, but this will be published.
• 1:19:36
  It will be public and people, other people can attend to give their point of view and their pushback on whatever proposals they have.
• 1:19:42
  I think personally, whether we're talking about companies, organizations, people, that everybody who is under that influence of that politician who's making, who's proposing ideas that will influence their ability to do business, for example, or their ability to, in terms of a charity, to provide services to their local community.
• 1:20:02
  I think anybody should have the right to make their proposals and their ideas to the politician, but in a public way.
• 1:20:11
  And so that it's not private lobbying so that people can provide pushback.
• 1:20:16
  And we get an exchange of point of views.
• 1:20:18
  I think that a company's point of view or the upper management point of view is something that a politician, you know, maybe should hear.
• 1:20:26
  But they don't hear it in a private setting.
• 1:20:28
  setting. They hear it in a public setting and they get feedback and they get pushback from people who
• 1:20:34
  are, you know, opposed to those different proposals. And I think that would be a good
• 1:20:38
  thing. You get those proposals, counterproposals, ideas and pushback in that sort of public setting.
• 1:20:47
  I think that would be a good thing. Now, the other thing that is crucial is that once a politician
• 1:20:53
  or an elected official leaves office in this one term, what's envisioned in a one term thing,
• 1:20:57
  is that they should absolutely not be, you know, go to one of these large companies that had lobbied them earlier.
• 1:21:09
  And, you know, there's, I don't think you could actually prohibit that.
• 1:21:13
  But if they do that, that will influence how they will be viewed historically.
• 1:21:17
  And I think that when you only have one term, I think that you only have one chance to make your difference in history.
• 1:21:25
  it's just like an Olympic athlete they only have that one chance to make that gold medal
• 1:21:30
  they're going to want their legacy to be a positive one and not one that oh yeah okay right
• 1:21:35
  after they left office they went and joined this company as a high-paid consultant and by the way
• 1:21:43
  they're during their time in office they also made a lot of proposals that would have
• 1:21:48
  that would have benefited that company people will put you know two and two together and that
• 1:21:53
  person's legacy will be judged accordingly. I mean, again, this is all about incentives. You're
• 1:22:00
  trying to give elected officials incentives to do the best they can. Is this perfect? No. But I
• 1:22:08
  think it's far better than what we have now. Yeah, I think enough money, they probably don't
• 1:22:14
  care what their legacy is. They'll be happy in their mansion on their private island doing
• 1:22:18
  whatever they want to do, driving their Bentley and flying in their jet.
• 1:22:23
  I like to think that humans are better than that, but some aren't, period.
• 1:22:28
  And this is provable.
• 1:22:29
  You're exactly right.
• 1:22:30
  You just look.
• 1:22:31
  You're absolutely right.
• 1:22:33
  You're going to have – but I don't think everybody is going to be like that,
• 1:22:38
  that they would rather go down in history as somebody who made a difference
• 1:22:45
  and not somebody who used their time in office for their own personal benefit.
• 1:22:51
  I personally believe that.
• 1:22:52
  You're going to have some people who will, of course,
• 1:22:54
  but I have a little more faith that the people who really value
• 1:22:59
  and honor the sacred responsibility that they've been given
• 1:23:03
  and this one chance that they've been given
• 1:23:05
  would rather be sincere in their efforts to work for the general interest
• 1:23:15
  and not feather their own nest in one way or the other.
• 1:23:18
  And the other thing,
• 1:23:19
  is, you know, this insider trading stuff.
• 1:23:23
  Anybody who's elected into office, you know,
• 1:23:25
  should be expected to be under a microscope.
• 1:23:28
  And, you know, how are they using their office to,
• 1:23:33
  are they using their office to enrich themselves
• 1:23:35
  through insider trading?
• 1:23:37
  That should be something that, you know,
• 1:23:38
  if you're going to be elected,
• 1:23:39
  you're going to be an elected representative,
• 1:23:41
  you should expect that you're going to be
• 1:23:44
  living under a microscope.
• 1:23:45
  Right now, right now, our politicians,
• 1:23:48
  people in power can monitor us, you know, pretty much 24-7 through our smartphones or whatever.
• 1:23:54
  Well, let's turn that around. Let's have our elected officials. They're going to be the ones
• 1:23:58
  who are going to be monitored and closely watched during their time in office.
• 1:24:05
  All right. Well, I think this is a good place to start wrapping things up.
• 1:24:10
  I think it's been a great conversation and I really do appreciate your enthusiasm and your,
• 1:24:15
  you know your your positive views here i i i wish you well on your journey um and uh
• 1:24:23
  one one question that we like to ask all of our guests is throughout our lives we you know there's a
• 1:24:30
  a figure right that uh has a massive impact on our lives influences us greatly and could be an
• 1:24:38
  author historical figure sixth grade science teacher mom politician would you like to give a
• 1:24:44
  shout out Well you know that a very tough question because honestly I had so many people wonderful people influence me in many different ways But if I had to give one if somebody put a pistol in my head said name one
• 1:24:57
  I would probably name the historian Carol Quigley, who wrote the book, The Evolution
• 1:25:02
  of Civilizations. That book has been an inspiration to me ever since I was in my early 20s. And it
• 1:25:11
  provides a wonderful way to analyze history, an analytical way to analyze history. Whereas before
• 1:25:18
  Carolyn Quigley, it tended to be just sort of a random selection of different facts to weave a
• 1:25:24
  narrative. He actually proposed an analytical way to analyze history, and in particular,
• 1:25:29
  the rise and fall of civilizations and the commonality that existed in all of those different
• 1:25:35
  cases. And that's one of the reasons why I talk about organizations becoming institutionalized,
• 1:25:41
  because that's one of the key points that he made as to what leads to these civilizations crumbling,
• 1:25:48
  because the organizations that originally are the source of their power,
• 1:25:52
  they eventually become hijacked by greedy individuals who use that organization for their own personal benefit.
• 1:25:59
  And so I would definitely recommend that book by Carol Quigley,
• 1:26:04
  the great Georgetown University historian called The Evolution of Civilizations.
• 1:26:11
  Yeah, there are a couple others as well that are really good. She definitely, yeah.
• 1:26:17
  You said just one so I giving you my one No no yeah no that no I meant of her books right She you know she written I don know how many books but you know very very great shout out
• 1:26:32
  I love that.
• 1:26:33
  Well, Carol is actually a male.
• 1:26:35
  He's actually a guy.
• 1:26:37
  Yeah, I'm sorry.
• 1:26:37
  You're right.
• 1:26:38
  You're right.
• 1:26:38
  It is.
• 1:26:39
  I'm sorry.
• 1:26:39
  I mean, unless he transitioned, you know, without me knowing about it.
• 1:26:43
  No, I don't think so.
• 1:26:45
  I don't think so.
• 1:26:46
  So, yeah, my apologies for that.
• 1:26:48
  That was incorrect.
• 1:26:50
  And you are correct.
• 1:26:51
  But hey, it's been really great having you on.
• 1:26:54
  I think this has been a fun conversation.
• 1:26:57
  What do you have working or what are you working on right now?
• 1:27:01
  Where can people find and follow you?
• 1:27:03
  What do you got going on?
• 1:27:05
  Well, I just got back from living in Peru.
• 1:27:08
  So I'm just at baby steps right now.
• 1:27:10
  I'm now talking to lots of different local politicians, trying to, you know, just getting started.
• 1:27:15
  Just the first step is just talking to people.
• 1:27:17
  And this is a great example, getting their feedback and trying to get people excited about this.
• 1:27:22
  Will this go anywhere?
• 1:27:23
  I don't know.
• 1:27:24
  But, you know, you don't, you just can't, you just, you know, you've got to make it your best effort.
• 1:27:29
  So the ideas are at www.solutionsparty.org.
• 1:27:35
  My email is info at solutionsparty.org.
• 1:27:39
  I welcome anybody to contact me.
• 1:27:42
  And if you want to start something local, let's see how we can work together.
• 1:27:46
  And again, you don't have to agree with all the ideas on socialparty.org, but let's just
• 1:27:50
  buy into the first step Let find candidates and promote candidates who promise to serve only one term That is the first step Is that the silver bullet that going to solve everything
• 1:28:02
  No, but it is the crucial first step. If you can buy into that, the rest of the ideas, yeah.
• 1:28:08
  When we're talking about journalism, whether we're on election reform, whether we're talking about
• 1:28:12
  political party reform, you don't have to agree with all of those. That's fine. I enjoy the
• 1:28:16
  the diversity, the pushback.
• 1:28:19
  But let's bind that one idea and let's build on that and see where it goes.
• 1:28:26
  All right.
• 1:28:28
  Well, thank you again for giving us some of your time.
• 1:28:31
  Time is our most precious commodity.
• 1:28:33
  And thank you for giving us some of your time as well.
• 1:28:37
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• 1:28:38
  It's pretty much everywhere.
• 1:28:40
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• 1:28:41
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• 1:28:42
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• 1:28:43
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• 1:28:44
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• 1:28:45
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• 1:28:45
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• 1:28:47
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• 1:28:49
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• 1:28:50
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• 1:28:58
  Thanks for coming by.
• 1:28:59
  See you, everybody.
• 1:28:59
  Thank you so much.
• 1:29:00
  I enjoyed this a lot.
• 1:29:01
  Thank you so much.
• 1:29:15
  We'll be right back.