 This is a design from trust call. We are going to talk about words framing vocabulary the history of words etymology Which everybody confuses with entomology, so we're not going to talk about insects today Our our guide into the topic is Douglas Carmichael whom I have known for quite a while and Who has a most interesting life and background and and brain? so Doug I will just pass it to you and Take us in and we'll see where we go Okay, I hope we have a good conversation about this. I'm going to start out by saying something about why I'm interested in this topic To me I think our society is in a lot of trouble and we're going to have to go through big changes and big changes on the order of The end of feudalism the beginning of the industrial age may be the reformation Which shifts it into the cultural space and looking at words that we use in the current economic and political scene Contained traces of origins that have been lost But that might be good to be aware of because we might want to go back to them And so the words I'm going to look at Really highlight I'm going to start out with the word economics itself, which I know Jerry has thought about quite a bit What's striking about This word with whose origin is pretty well known by economists. That is it's from the Greek economy Eco in some form meaning household and no Mia meaning rules of management at that time It was structural So Economics was used by the Greeks in the sense of household management and household for the Greeks meant a state And it was a holistic concept, which is really important the people who wrote about economy in the time of around Athens and Plato Used it in a very holistic sense. So economy meant the household in every aspect The grain the cattle the land the slaves the wife the children relatives and its relationship to neighbors What's striking is that by the time of Adam Smith how much the broader meaning there was lost And that continued in economics stripping out the human and social in The search of mechanical models that were repetitive so that computation was possible I want to think of the value of going back to the original sense of economy as State management where the estate now is the globe It's where we live and it needs a full management And I think the word economy contains implicitly that idea Because it started as a holistic concept There's a lot to say about that the economy for household was pretty clear the Nomia I know Jerry's been interested in the difference between ecology and economy The gnomos is man-made law Logos is natural made law so that one thinks of ecology as the way the natural environment unfolds and Economy as the way the human made economy unfolds makes a good deal of sense But the word gnomos for law has a really interesting origin in Greek thought much earlier Nomi meant As law equal distribution So the idea of Nomia begins with a feeling of trying to create something Now you wouldn't need a law if it was already happening naturally So it suggests that in early Greek society there was already a tendency towards inequality So you needed to have law a system of law to maintain equality among the people This is really important in the way early estates were managed I want to look at the word capital which comes in from the very beginning Capital comes from the Latin cap for head as in the head of a nation The thing that's on top of a column the cap at the top of a column But it also meant a new head of cattle Praise that we still use today How many had you got over your place? It's the measure of wealth that goes all the way through Greek and Roman society So these estates the economy especially in Greece were basically like Texas cattle ranches Raising cattle was the main thing that they did And eating cattle was the main thing that people decided on Which gets really interesting and complicated If we think of early hunters and gatherers going out as a group Making a kill, making a fire and all sitting around and sharing in the eating of this animal The idea of sacrifice which is later ritualized that process By slaughtering usually a cow or bull and sharing it in the community So the idea of sacrifice maintains the culture of the Nomia of early Greek thinking That is it's a way of making sure that everybody participates in the food And we're talking about a lot of food In the Odyssey when Odysseus and his crew would land on an island They would kill a hecatome of cattle for sacrifice A hecatome is a hundred This is a big deal And at the time of Plato in Greece in Athens Athens had a herd of cattle 100,000 head used for sacrifice That is would come in from the countryside, pay the priests to buy a cow Which is then sacrificed in honoring the gods But it just happens that it gets distributed among the population And this was a daily occurrence in Athens I've been trying to pay something in chat but I can't for some reason to get it to go But let me give a reference that's pretty helpful A book by Jeremy McInerney M-C-I-N-E-R-N-E-Y The cattle of the sun is about cattle in Greece, early Greece And just a fascinating thing to read So what's important is the idea that the community distribution of food Is central to sacrifice and central to the raising of cattle That is cap So you can see it this way that the birth of a new head of cattle, a new calf Is capital in that kind of society It was the measure of wealth and it's what you managed for And you can see how important then capital is In the beginning of Western civilization Another interesting book by Gotsman Money Changes Everything That was quite popular about a year ago Takes this back into Mesopotamia And shows that in 4000 BC The Mesopotamians, the Sumerians Understood cattle and exponential growth of herds And could even do loans based on that understanding of growth And the idea that if I let you some cattle You had to give it back to me with interest And the word interest in both Latin and Greek Is the same word that's used for offspring So there's a nexus here of meaning Around what the purpose of an early economy is That really hints at what an economy should be now That is it's the support of the population What happened in the 19th century Was the separation of economy into the mechanical parts That acted like a solar system And the social parts which were to be ignored And all in the seeking to be more scientific And all that I'm going to go on to another interesting word That builds on this, or a pair of words actually Private and property Property is a fascinating word Because we all use it all the time Where does it come from? Property comes as the same root as proper And it meant things like Are you dressed properly for the meeting? That is it was a sign of social rank Like having a sword and a horse In feudal times Was property Showing who you were That that became separated from the person And something that could be sold Took a long time actually So property comes from social status Which I think is pretty interesting Private is more complicated Private comes from Latin pre-Vatis Which means My Latin isn't terrific But the dictionary is telling me That pre-Vatis comes from To remove from the public sphere So the idea of private Is something that was public and got removed And in Latin times and Roman times It meant that it lost its vitality Because it was no longer part of the community So something that was pre-Vatis Was something to be mourned about Because it was a loss Totally different than the modern meaning Of private We could take words like technology Tech is normally treated as Greek For skill, craft, art, things like that That are pretty late in Greek times Fourth, fifth century Its earlier meaning was to engender So that's why it's related to creativity and craft But engender is again sexual And that's one of the things I want to stress Is that early economy And down to hidden now Economy has to do with managing Production, reproduction, sexuality I think sometimes you see the gleaming look In an entrepreneur's eyes They're thinking about opportunity It's really they're thinking that they're conjuring With basic forces of the universe Sexuality and reproduction But it's unconscious So all is to me Hints at what we need to understand About economy now Because it's lost all of its social meanings So economy basically is the autonomous Moving of money around in a society Not for the benefit of the rich Not for the benefit of the society And understanding that laws Might help us understanding where we could go to In a better future And I think we just are going to need that I think we're in such deep trouble And the only way out Is going to be through major cultural change And we're all terrified of that Because it seems to imply A kind of authoritarian basis I'm stuck there myself I don't know quite what to do about it But it's what I think about a lot When you say stuck Doug, when you say you're stuck there What do you mean stuck? I think we're stuck in early lock-in To an ownership society A split between workers and capital I mean the idea that we have capital It's owned by someone, not everybody Is really weird when you think about the history Of economy in Greece Economy at equal distribution We have no principle of equal distribution Except trickle down Which doesn't work And especially it's not going to work In an algorithmic society Because like the horse whip people Went and worked in factories When the horses were gone That's not happening now Because if we need new jobs In this economy There are staffer undergraduates Who are already trying to write algorithms To do that job with a computer Not with a person So people are competing with something Really new That wasn't true with technical changes In the past So, you know And you've got to take it That the economy that we have Is wrong in the deepest sense Because it's killing us It's taking our planet in a direction Of global warming Not of wood The obvious thing is That the economics Notice economics is interesting Economics is the description Of an economy I'm going to round up a little bit here Most societies do not have these two words In French Economy is both Outside of the west People don't have a word for economy So they have to make it up If they're going to be in dialogue with the west In China, for example The two characters that they've picked To replace the word economy In translation To translate the word economy Shows classical texts That's one character Being pushed forward in history So in a way If we think of economy As household management How to make the whole thing work going forward The Chinese equivalent Has somewhat the same sense But it's more deeply cultural Economy I think we would be better off If we'd never have the word It implies a coherence Amongst stuff That's false Economy is not a coherent Single system It's a conglomerate A symbol of many changes Over a long period of time I'm going to stop there And see what kind of conversation we get into Well, you said the two characters In Chinese Hannah, we can't hear you very well Your voice is breaking up a bit Can you hear me now? That's better, thank you You said the classical The two signs in Chinese Was classical what being pushed forward? Classical texts Like Lao Tzu and Confucius Classical texts It's the character for those So in a way The way the Chinese have chosen To translate the word economy Is in the moving their culture forward Yes I could put something in I really apologise I'm between meetings So I'm sitting in a hotel So you're going to have to get a close up here But super interesting What you're saying Thank you, Doug I find that it's quite interesting Jerry and I had a little conversation About a language Where I have a very strong opinion About if anyone is going to Be able to change The political scene That we see now very strongly In the US and in the UK But also in the rest of Europe So most of the West really If anyone is going to change That successfully From the left or the right They're going to have to invent A new rhetoric Because all the language That we use now to describe Is that it just becomes a mud wall Between the two sides I completely agree with that And if you look at the difference Between Western language Which tends to like rigid Well bounded concepts Very different in the Chinese I've been learning Chinese For the last four or five years And it's just fascinating And because the Chinese much prefer A fluid boundary between concepts Compared to the way we do it So it's easier to evolve Chinese Than it is I mean we're not going to give up these words Like the current use of economy As mechanical systems No The continuation of Of that In the say On the political spectrum Is An observation that The people who are trying To change rhetoric now And even trying to change Economy Through sharing economy Through Those entrepreneurship Driven by large businesses Etc etc It's interesting that That Innovators are being brought to the forefront With a new language Based on the old language Unfortunately Still with a new language That the public actually believes Because Is rooted in caring And in community So I think As a comment to what you're saying Something is happening But it's very interesting That it's coming from Business And not from society Where society should really be The river sensitive community And businesses are known to be Individualists making money Through capitalism I'm quite into the whole Social entrepreneurship And that side of business And there are some very very strong Forces there but there's also a Huge culture and that also Lies in the public That would be very very difficult to change I don't know if anyone has any comments on that I have tons of comments But I'm going to hold back for a little bit Because I'd love you guys to all jump in I've made a long list of things to jump in with But Travis Peter You guys too if you want to Take this wherever you like I'm going to try to throw something in And not be too discontinuous with Previous comments I like that all of you are saying I think that When we're talking about We're talking about culture Meaning making that we have The stories that we tell ourselves about How we relate to each other in our world And language is of course An important part, an essential part Of how we tell those stories It seems like the kind of planetary crises That we are confronting right now We need new stories And I think stories are a little broader than language Though I really like how Doug is Describing the stories underlying The language and how they come about From where I'm standing I don't see how We will be able to Usher in a new set of stories With the status quo As we are I think maybe this is what Doug was saying When he doesn't see a way forward However, things do change pretty rapidly When you have Big, exogenous Shocks to the system And that seems like what we're setting ourselves up for I think one of the questions that Can I interrupt for a second there? Yeah The way you use the word exogenous I think is a bit Mistifying because it says that it's Kind of out of our control The things that are causing us Problems are Indogenous to the system They're with us, we're part of it Yeah, it's true Slip of the tongue But I think Slip of the tongue that is not just It's Slipped for a reason We're so inundated with that kind of Language One of the Maladaptive stories that we've told ourselves Is man's separation From nature And That we are somehow apart from it And I think when we think about exogenous That's one way to look at it So Where I was going with that was just that I think we need to be ready with Stories that are More Regenerative, more holistic Being ready for when For when Some major shocks to the system Get to a point where there's A possibility of those stories being Taking up more So how do we become better Storytellers Watching our language such as What you were just saying Doug about exogenous Well let me build on what you're saying A little bit I think that if we look at economy Over the Thousands of years since 500 BC in Greece It started with narratives And the narrative structure And economics comes all the way up Basically through Adam Smith Then it starts getting mechanized In the quest for Political Hegemony By a small number of people Going back To the stories then As the model In what it was like in the past That's why I say economy for the Greeks Was a state management It was the whole thing Which we have lost so much No, here's the problem for me Let's say we start getting better narratives How do they help people break Out of things like The ownership of capital The narrow holding Of land in the world I think we need land reform of some kind The rich are going to give up The riches that they've got Without a tremendous fight That's what really Scares me In the context of climate change Which I think Makes everybody more entropic And less coherent in their actions So I'm really puzzled I think that understanding The organic basis Of what an economy ought to be Really highlights the fact that The task in the future is to feed each other We're going to have to really think about that And we're not prepared at all I live in a pretty agricultural place The agricultural people here Have no idea What's coming They just don't You're muted Travis I think we need to I don't think that there's going to be That we're going to get off course Or get back on course without You know Basically being forced into Massive disruption and upheaval And I think that there are ways That we can start to tell stories That connect to That's such a kind of Lay the path Such a Such a Point the way in particular directions And it's not like I personally I don't know what the pathways are necessarily But I've found myself kind of Really looking at a lot of these Planetary crises in the past A couple of years and there are I think Some Entry points I just had a kid a couple of years ago And that is probably one of the only Ways where people Their actual Lives can have a reorientation Towards To you know intergenerational Concerns and that's an entry way To start telling stories I think that There's there's some movements that They don't go deep enough like you're talking about like Land reform and all these kind of things that are So deeply entrenched even our Monitor system Has a Very poor basis They get some superficial levels So there's things like Financial independence That are Ultimately at the core anti-consumerist Which starts to get you to reflect on Consumerism while not Discarding all these other aspects I've been thinking recently about Is there a bridge Like looking at some of the Crises we're likely to confront in the next Couple of decades It's hard to predict when Things like thinking about a Retirement account Or a 529 plan These things don't make sense That much anymore looking forward So are there ways of like converting Like what's the story connecting What it means to be preparing For your future for security Which isn't really going to be there For your family What is it What's like a what's the next What's something that's More interest bearing in the future I think you might be able to tell a story About regenerative Circular economies there And productive soil and these sorts of things I think that the slow money movement Is an example of starting to Cultivate some of those stories Now those are examples where People are Laying the groundwork for something It's not being taken up widely But there are different points in people's lives When they're looking at these planetary crises Where they might start prepping At some point it might hit some tipping point Where it takes on a much wider Deeper force in society Are we going to jump in? Yeah Could I just comment on that? Please, then we can go after Doug First one thing Jerry, would you send All the comments that you're creating afterwards? Yes Thank you I wanted to reply to what Doug All said to what Travis said now So Doug, you said How are these narratives Going to help us change this Mindset of Aggregating wealth From the top all the time Or that's at least how I heard it I can't remember your exact words And then Travis, you responded with The perspective of crisis ahead And what am I going to do To keep my family safe, etc And I just wanted to contribute with The perspective From a psychological Point of view And you have to stop me when it gets all too Ruru But What actually drives Capitalism and that mindset Where you keep aggregating wealth When you've actually created it already So you've got a bank account With 200 million dollars You still think that you should work 10 hours a day and create more And you're not sharing Because it's for you and your family That is actually a scarcity Mindset driven by the fear That there isn't enough And so Now we actually have true crisis All around the world ahead Which could spark More fear and More scarcity mindsets So in order to get away from that There is only one thing That will work The only thing that gets people out of Poverty Out of a scarcity mindset Because we've only really got eyes for it When it's about poverty and not about Wealth, but it's the same thing The only thing is human connection The moment you start Building more human connection And you realize That you're not in this alone You build community Which funnily enough Is what Doug was saying That economy comes from That it was for everyone With the sacrifice, etc Once you start building that That little scared mongo on this side That keeps saying you must Sacrificate more wealth Kind of calms down a bit until he dies She dies, whoever it is It dies And I just think that's Interesting because many of the Initiatives That are being driven now Like sharing economy The word says it Is about community Social media started Creating Lots of communities That's then gone a little bit Haywalk and that's probably because We still have the old mindset So new ways Of building community Whether that's through narratives And new language or what it is We do, I think that action must be There to build the human connection Otherwise it won't work I think it's important To look at historical examples Of how what you're saying could possibly Happen. One of the very few I think is the rise of Christianity Which was A stress on human relationships And a relationship to God And it was Powerful and tore apart The old society in Oakland, Newen I think that what we're Going to have to go through is as big As that In terms of its Shifting Our whole feel for what reality Is and what counts. I'd love To think that it could be done in a Positive way. That is the Idea that we return to a state Management. Our task is To manage the globe for the good Of everybody. It's a pretty Compelling story potentially I don't know how to tell it Yet But I think that's kind of where we need To go. But I'm very struck By how Both of you are saying things Which imply a lot of time Decades. I don't Think we have decades. I'm thinking of things like the caravan Coming up through Mexico Is the kind of an event Which could trigger Worldwide repercussions I mean, what's going to happen to those people? That story will dominate the next Couple of weeks. Are there opportunities For that? I know when Princess Diana died In the automobile crash The worldwide sympathy For her was amazing. It's like where did all that come from? How do people in India In Southern Chile, wherever Understand who she was That they could all react emotionally that way? But I think A better future is going to have to build on Something which is already latent in people That we need to Fair it out. It's not clear to me The timescale of what I think what Anne was describing And what I was describing. I think that these things need to Will happen quickly Because like you're saying We don't have that amount of time. At this point. Doug, Peter Just put the Chinese characters For Xinyi And I don't know tones. Can you see the chat? I've got a chat window open But it's not showing for some reason. Let me close it and reopen it. Puzzling. Puzzling. Oh, there we go. Oh yeah, we've been chatting like crazy. I've been sort of summarizing What you've been saying and other comments. So I've got to put my glasses on In order to read this little tiny stuff. Yeah, the character on the left Is the character for classical texts. And it's got The thing on the left hand side Of the left character is thread And underneath Is a thing That actually represents an old trowel And so it has to do with The Work that holds together a culture The character on the right The top part of it On the right Means standing And on the left Is the three things That look like commas Means water So it's the flow Of all that As a work moving forward So those are the right characters. Love that. Thank you, Peter. Before I jump Into a couple of things. Doug, could you talk a little bit about Cattle and chattel? Yeah, it's just Historically it's the same thing. Chattel was In a way a miswriting of cattle. Very similar. The fact that In Rome Cattle was The measure of wealth So it was used as collateral For loans. And there was not money In early Rome Right up through the Caesars So everything was done In notational script Around cattle Chattel. And so the original meaning of cattle Back when was more than cows Was like it could go beyond What we think of today as cattle Which is only cows, right? It kind of broadly meant your assets? Yes, although In practical terms In Greece There were no markets That you couldn't go to a market and buy a tin pot Everything was made In the economy of the estate With A small amount Of bartering and trade on the ages But very small. So cattle was the measure You had the bride price Was of giving a certain amount Of cattle to the father Was of the daughter What's A bit shocking is the language For The way cattle were handled And the way women were handled Quite similar as for slaves They were all treated As assets of the male odor. And that's Kind of exactly where I want to head Because there's a couple other books I want to bring into the conversation And I think this whole thing threads together Really interestingly And Several different angles here Marvin Brown In the East Bay has a book out Where he talks about how Adam Smith A couple things Adam Smith Was in Glasgow Glasgow was very wealthy because it was The best protected port in the British Isles From those miserable French And Spanish raiders So Glasgow gets really wealthy for trading For America's There are three commodities That make Glasgow really wealthy The biggest one is tobacco Which Sir Walter Raleigh popularizes in England And takes over England Smoking becomes the rage But Smith's funders His backers, his patrons Are the tobacco lords of Glasgow The second commodity is sugar The third commodity is cotton Those are the three commodities Coming out of the new world And yet Marvin points out that Smith fails to write about slavery In the wealth of nations So he's basically writing what we think of as The ur economic text And he doesn't talk about The thing that is fueling the economy That he lives in Which is just really striking to me Then I'll bring in a second book Which is The American Slave Coast By Ned and Connie Sublette A couple And I thought I was already Hardened and jaded about how terrible Slavery was and all that They posit that nobody In the American colonies Could imagine America surviving Without slavery They could not imagine the economy Etna in Connecticut Was selling life insurance against slaves Rhode Island Was the slave shipbuilding capital New York was financing Cotton, shipbuilding, everything Smith was as complicit as the south And they say that the American Revolutionary War Was actually a successful civil war That the whole story About no taxation without representation A noble independent cause Was actually a cover story Because Americans couldn't conceive Of their economy without slavery And the abolition happens In the UK before it happens here I think that's all correct And when you listed the three things Tobacco, sugar I think that Actually a major part Of trade with slaves Yes, well Until the abolition of slavery Britain is completely complicit in the slave trade And the British ships are many of the slave ships I mean the great houses In England were built On slave, the one In What's the popular video From the last few years Downton Abbey That house was a slave house Built with slave labor As was the White House With money from the selling From the slave trade So all of this And then if we bring in David Graber's Debt the first 5,000 years Where he talks about how early money Was for incommensurate things Like a bride price Or like a slave That money wasn't For buying that pot It was really for buying these incommensurates early on That gets really interesting And then I'll bring in another book Which is about the rise of consumerism I think it's called The Origin of Everything And it says that The abolition of slavery Leads to a rise of consumption Because Before slavery Gets abolished Wealth In fact, what you were saying earlier That wealth was cattle I think wealth was chattel And it was humans and slavery Really, how many humans do you control Was your measure of wealth Until we abolish slavery Oops, that's not so socially good anymore Then it becomes Shows of ostentation Then we get luxury goods Then we get wealthy people Start buying things and places And spending money No longer how many humans do you control But how much money do you have And then there's a bunch of other stories that flow in here That help those people get wealthier And help them create lock-in So that wealth continues to trickle To the top, you know, the top of the economic pyramid Which is a different story But I just want to explore this territory Slavery, humans Value Shows of status All these things connect pretty well together for me But none of these things None of these things are well known The word property as what's proper Shows of social rank in society As a key thing to do In order to maintain your power Hannah, jump in Yeah, I think we've definitely lost the meaning of The connection between property and property But I just wanted to comment on what you said Jerry From that book That they could not imagine The economy without slavery And I just have to comment That that is not such a foreign thought today I had a sort of tragic comical laugh About Jeff Bezos of Amazon who came out To say that he wants to be A philanthropist now He wants to spend all his millions On the grace of good And I just thought, well, maybe you should Put your own house in order first Because he literally Employs slaves Who are not allowed a single break And he has to work However many hours Without going to the loo They sort of piss and bottle or whatever So I think a lot of the economy is based still On the modern type of Paid slavery It's almost an insult to people Who were set slaves to call it slavery But I hope you see the point of the comment Thank you And I just think that's a very hard Nut to crack It's obviously the ones you have the most If we continue in that Lingo slaves or Very poorly People working in very, very poor conditions Those who have the most Have the most power to change But they are also the most resistant to change So how do we crack that one? I'm not sure land use is going to be enough So that's another thread I wanted to weave in here Which is To people of privilege Any of these changes look like loss All of these changes look like loss And there's like Relative and absolute Stuff you have If you have a lot of stuff Often you want more stuff It's sort of a competition against others It's not like we work until we have enough That we're not going to die And then we get busy helping other people Not at all Otherwise nobody would make more than like 3 million dollars Because if you put that away you can live off the interest And you're good Everything over that amount is surplus That you don't really particularly need So How did we get into that position? One of the things about rich people Is that they do not have surplus money All their money is doing something And if they lose some They've got to reconfigure their whole portfolio That's not true if they gain Because it's much easier to add in Than to take out And the richest people Are actually quite anxious About loss Because they're going to have to do the hard work Of reapportioning their portfolio Well worse than that Worse than that They could suddenly go from being high status individuals To being below To being low status To being negative status individuals If society flips on these measures There's already of course Protests movements against the 1% And Occupy and all those such things Those are signs of the people with pickets at the door Nick Hanauer does a very nice job of saying Hey wealthy people like me There are going to be people with pitchforks In the streets if we don't straighten this thing up He's really trying to come at this By talking about the issues But I wanted to come back I lost my thread a moment ago But I wanted to come back to this notion Of everything feels like loss Because it also ties into Me Too And Black Lives Matter I think these things are all threaded together Because for Me Too Men in power are like If we start opening the door up And be equal about everything Then we lose power status Control over a bunch of humans So they can't really go along with the program Because it just feels like loss Hannah go ahead Well I would tie it back into Psychology and say It's still the scarcity mindset So in the scarcity mindset Anything that you've accumulated That you then have to pass on Is a loss And it's the only way you can see it So again Human connection Anything like that Will help But I think we have Some very strong examples It's not a case I've dug into So I don't know if there's a backstory That I'm not aware of So please correct me if I'm wrong But if you look at Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Who at some point Gave everything away and then rebuilt it They must have had a very strong Belief that They are good at making money So they can do it again Also they must have been aware That they've already built a very Strong network that will help them Rise again and do something And I'm sure also they didn't give Everything away so they had something To invest still But Some way if Psychologically speaking You're very well connected to yourself If you know yourself well If you dare trust The Community you're in Then it doesn't matter if you lose everything I've personally lost everything Several times in my life And it's not set me into Some kind of frenzy Because I know I'm very good at Making something again So it's a very fundamental Difference between a person Who is well grounded and well connected So has a great community And then this person who is probably Quite removed from self And feeling of self and therefore Thinks I have to run all the time Otherwise everything's going to break down Another book I really love on these Topics is The Great Transformation By Carl Polanyi I've got a short video out on TGT and He says a lot of really genius Things including How we lived before the Industrial Revolution And one of the things I just remembered Where I was going with Polanyi One of the things Polanyi says Is that the word poverty The concept of poverty is new In about 1650 That before 1650 We might all die of the plague We might all die of a crop failure We might all die because there are huns Who are able to run back behind the fortifications Of time, granted But the idea that one family In the village is going to sink Under and maybe starve to death Because they don't have a job And they are poor It's not part of the culture And then unemployment Is a new word in about 1750 And there are two kinds of unemployed There are the chronically unemployable People too disabled to do useful work And then there are the unemployed Who must be pressured to go find Work because there is this General feeling in capitalism That unless the threat of mortal Imminent doom is in front of you Nobody really wants to work That's another story So there is a series of scripts And stories that have been built And sold to us That form the current kind of Economics that we are in And sort of the story Doug That you started us on here One of the interesting side notes here Barry Lynn The guy who got kicked out Of the new America foundation Because of Google funding and all that He's tracked the history Of how did we go from treating Citizens as consumers And he can point to the philosophers Who have influenced the economists Who influenced the policy makers Who influenced the politicians Who basically set in motion All of the different things Busy protecting consumers What you care about is everyday low prices When you're busy protecting citizens You care about freedom of speech You care about fairness and equity You care about a whole bunch of other things And so all the things We're talking about are the modern story Which has eaten our brains And since we know No much history we don't know what life was like before So the story of redistribution And I really like the idea that sacrifices Were in fact part of the redistribution Part of the feast The common feast thing Because I hadn't thought about it that way at all But I also One last thing, I also happened to believe That sometimes things catalyze very quickly And that we can go from seeing one way To seeing a different way In very, very quick order That the question is what causes it To cascade, what causes it To trickle across society and to catch fire And these days we've seen through Unfortunately the negative uses of social media And so forth, but things trickle really quickly I watched Instant messaging go from being A weird geeky little thing That only a couple thousand people were using To being absolutely mainstream In two years time probably And No early instant messaging company Spent a dime on marketing None of them spent any money on marketing It was just a tool so useful That you were motivated to infect All of your buddies with ICQ From Yahoo Messenger All these early tools So all of a sudden everybody's got instant messenger How do we do this for a radical Story about the regenerative economy And I think all of us know a whole bunch Of people who are working very, very hard To get that done We just don't see any of them That have actually caught on and caught fire yet Well I like the idea Of calling it a regenerative Economy because it takes us back To sexuality and reproduction And Which I think is maybe one of the places That people have deep beliefs about That could be built on Part of the problem with the messaging Is it's the kind of change That builds on what is Without threatening anybody in the process Well we're talking about With social change really Requires a major loss Of something By a significant part Of the population And my feeling is That penetrates way down Because The major resistance to climate change Change Is people afraid of losing their income They can't see Where they could be They're also afraid of losing Their social network So I actually Think the big fear here Is a loss of belonging And the far Right worldwide has created A series of narratives that are all connected together That don't make sense to the left That just don't make sense, it's like how could you possibly Believe that bundle of shit And yet that package Of beliefs are part of membership In a group that gives and we Really want to belong so part of this I think is about wealth and not losing your wealth But part of this is about status Community connectedness And the right since Gingrich basically made it so that Out of line you are cut away You basically are ostracized from the herd The right does not have a lot Of tolerance for dissent from the right Although I'll say their tactics And strategies are incredibly Creative these days Hannah I just saw your note about having to go Thank you for being here, really appreciate it Thanks So sorry to jump in As you were talking Doug but I think this is as much About the social soft side Of community and belonging As it is about the hard stuff about Hey I might lose all my savings or I don't know how else To make money and I will add That there's one way of looking at this About not threatening the people Who will be affected during this change The thing I'm trying to crack in my head Is how to have them see That life might actually be a lot better Through this change even for them Which requires Seeing them in a different light Not as the other and the enemy But as a productive A productive part of the change But that their lives will be Improved at the end of it Consumerism Needs to be Repurposed as A loss of Like the Latin Privatis To remove from the public Private means to be dead Well and a Really big piece of the right is Libertarianism Which is basically The peak Philosophy for the things you're just talking about Where private property Is dominant, the ownership society Is what we want, free markets Will fix everything, the invisible hand Will sort things out We need as little Government intervention as is humanly possible Sort of the Libertarian Bible And there's A group of anarcho-libertarians Or I don't know exactly what the category name is Who see that Traditional Libertarianism is missing Any part of the human social side And are trying to bolt that back on And I'm unclear who that is And whether they're succeeding Or not, because I agree with their critique The government is too big and has Basically interfered in too many things in our lives Wow, so much to think about I know, I know So many little Pandora's boxes We could just open now For me Part of the problem of the rising of a new Story is it might not be The one that we like I think of a fairly obvious Future scenarios as lots of mafias I don't want to go there So my fear, one of my Current fears, for example, is that Fake news and the post-truth Era is not a Four or a ten-year Detour, but rather a 200-year Era that Much as Romanticism was backlash against The Enlightenment And World War I Basically showed us the Enlightenment Wasn't actually going to solve everything But in fact, these new technologies Could be as hideous As they were cool and progressive I think we could hit 200 years of not knowing What's true anymore Because deep fakes And all this kind of stuff, we haven't seen How that plays out yet Peter, do you want to jump in voice-wise Or are you in a place where you can't Speak? I'd love to know How all of this is crossing your Riddar I think we have a photograph of Peter Without the real person He was on video very briefly But he may also Not be standing next to the mic anymore So, yeah Go ahead, Doug I was just going to say I couldn't figure out how to post it In chat, but at my website Which is dugcarmichael.com Link to keywords I already posted it to the chat early Okay, so many, many more Yeah And send any other links you want Or tell me now and I'll look them up And post them to this chat, but I'll send the chat To the list, to the whole list As well as the link to The video when it's on YouTube So we can all refer to this I mean, partly the good news Is that I think a lot of people see this I mean, if you look at David Bollier's work On commoning and Silke, Hellfric And a bunch of others And then all the people working on regenerative economics They're, they see The things we're talking about and they're busy acting On it The problem is that, you know, there's Decades and decades and decades Of critiques of capitalism and consumerism None of which I've ever won I look at the postmodernists At Lacan, Derrida and Foucault And Deleuze and all those people I never took a philosophy course In high school or college or anything like that But you can't Miss that their critiques Were actually quite accurate They were saying, they were saying Extremely perceptive things It's that the problem is They ended up saying them only to themselves Because their language got so stupid and arcane That they marginalized themselves Almost out of existence It was too easy to make fun Of the postmodernists So we end up with Popomo I think that's only one example Like, you can look at Marx's critique Where, you know Revolution is inevitable You can look at Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb Green Revolution Kind of pushed that kick the can down the line Yep So I think what's different this time around Is that these The impact of our Ecological exploitation Is going to be Coming to bear So all the externalities of those systems Both the social and the ecological systems Are The bills come and do At one point does ecological disaster Trigger activity On the far right So that we all are pulling On the rope in the same direction Or does it ever? It might not ever One of the weird ironies here Is that our biggest billionaires All have projects to Populate other rocks They basically all have space travel projects Partly, I believe From the belief, the common belief That we've already screwed up this rock And we're probably not going to save it We had better populate other planets Or satellites or something We better get off this rock Or we're all going to be extinct as a species Which I think is a really cynical way To be, I like to say I've read enough good science fiction To know that you don't want to be on the first thousand spacecraft Leaving this rock To me, the fact that These rich people want to use our money To get away from here Is really hilarious And disastrous They get placed to the weakness of our education That they can hold on to such ideas Contrary To what the science itself tells us About how hard that would be About how hard it would be To settle other places, you mean? Or what? To get out of here and go somewhere else It's inevitable that somebody is going to be Terraforming something out there And At some point that happens And it's just like 50 years from now, people will look back With a little chuckle at the days When humans actually piloted cars And owned their own cars That will be a It will look as antiquated as When we look at an 1890s Film reel And see horses and buggies in the streets So What is your Favorite Movement, actor Who's got a piece of this Right, we've mentioned a few of them But can we get a little more specific? Who's actually pushing on this In the right ways? I think What's been said in a way Hits at the fact that a lot of people are Many many many But it doesn't go here into a solution That's where we're stuck And the different solutions Don't pull together So you have donut economics And you have the 2% solution And you have creating shared value And you have, I collect them all And I put them in my brain And they each have kind of A different process A different metric Oh, I forgot, integral And all of the, you know, Teal oriented stuff, holocracy There's a whole bunch of these Some of which end up sounding more like religions Than, you know, viable movements My favorite at the moment Is Andreas Malm Who wrote a book called Something about this Gathering Storm, I've forgotten I don't have it quite right But the storm is in it And it's basically saying Given the pressures that we're under We've got to move to an authoritarian solution And hope is Can be a soft authoritarianism Very smart And here's another book which I'm in the middle of Called Climate Capital Or maybe Climate Capital It's an amazing, really good book He's really smart He's young I would watch him very carefully Very interesting Travis, any One more I want to add And it's a little On the solution side Roberto Unger Who's in law school at Harvard All his courses are online In videos and YouTube These basic view Which is That advanced production In like Silicon Valley Has a spirit of cooperation And learning and innovation That is held very narrowly In the business world So that most businesses Are still old hierarchical Structures He says the positive future Requires that we distribute That model of advanced production To the whole world Rapidly And it makes a tremendous difference Because those people are then Given the right to innovate In their local circumstances Which is what they're going to need I just posted a link To Unger in my brain I've got a lot of stuff on him He's really good The three kinds of work Work is an honorable calling Which offers dignity and role fulfillment That offers no dignity or authority And work as transformative vocation The struggle against existing Limits of society For example One of the things that Unger raises for me Is the question Of All of our hopes about How things could change Leave out the question Of leadership Do we need an elite If so, how are they selected And how are they rewarded What's really striking Is we pay a lot of attention To economy but very little attention To political theory People don't know things Like the difference between democracy And republic These are words we throw around Without really understanding them Capitalism, democracy, trust It's just amazing how thin The soil is over these words In our culture One of the things about leadership For me is a fascinating subject And Every now and then I'll say things like George W. Bush actually was a pretty Decent leader I don't agree what he did, but how do you take The world's superpower and throw them into a war A $3 trillion war With a country that didn't Attack them that is halfway across the world That's leadership Right? No, it's leadership, misleading And et cetera, et cetera Is a form of leadership And I think looking at Trump As a leader is a really Interesting exercise Super interesting exercise because I put a bunch of videos out a week after the election In 2016 Where basically I said, wow As far as I can tell, Trump's path To squeezing An electoral college victory What he did was the only way A guy like Donald Trump could have become president As a small example Trump could not have Survived a single debate that was Actually a debate Right? Ted Cruz is a Yale debate society champion Hillary Clinton knows all the facts Can clearly win a debate So Trump knew And I can see him just sitting there brainstorming With his twitter thing A day or two before each debate Like what am I going to do to this one So that everybody's talking about What a crap head I am For the three days following the debate And nobody worries about What was said in the debate So I believe that Trump understands New power Jeremy Heimans just wrote a book about New power and I'm not sure I like the framing Because it doesn't explain Trump All that well, but I think that Trump understands new power better than anybody Else did in the political sphere And I don't think the left or the press Have figured this out yet I'm not sure That the far right is just going to continue on Its role until we figure out What is the antidote to these methods Because trust has been weaponized A whole bunch of things are happening And that unfortunately is a form of leadership All of that is leadership Of the kind Of the opposite kind of the kind You're looking for Doug And the leaders that I think we here on the call Are looking for Those methods and they don't have a good answer A good response other than Standing on policy points that sound Like they came out of the 70s or 80s Is it Your understanding that the people Who could have been good leaders Hopped it out of the leadership ladder Early because it was just too daunting Or dangerous No, I fear I have a more Negative take on it Which is that almost nobody near Circles of leadership understood the new dynamics And nobody figured out Countermeasures I completely agree with you there And the failure of the progressives To understand the people Who voted for Trump is one of the great Intellectual failures of our time Absolutely, absolutely In the videos I recorded I say I don't think that everybody who voted For Donald Trump is a misogynist, racist Homophobic asshole I think there were a whole lot of people Who agreed with Bernie Sanders for example That he was actually broken and they hired Trump in the jobs to be done framework They hired Trump to break the system And today October 22nd, 2018 He's delivering that they're happy His little base of 30% Or whatever the number is that just won't shift They're happy because he's delivering On that particular promise Which is not a promise anybody on the left Most people on the left can internalize And deal with I mean we really don't even Have a left at this point We have a fragmented left We have like 12 lefts I mean there's no Articulate Alternative to Trump That meets his issues And the fact that Hillary's talking about running again She is? Yeah, it's been Unfortunately Can't be serious, that family Chelsea shouldn't run They should step out of politics for good Absolutely, but they're not going to do it Ride their horses off into the sunset And just like live with it Wow That's crazy Well look this has been good I don't know quite how to follow up on it To me the issue One issue is how hard it is To get people interested in the history of these words I think critical And it's a mindset to see that words Have histories It's a different mindset I think we'd like to think that things are Exactly what they appear to be And they're fixed and rigid And so an economy is an economy Period, end of discussion If you were inspired to write another blog post Or whatever and then share it with us On the design from trust list That would be great Whatever other things But it's really good because I didn't realize How many things I've been worried about Actually connect The thread I did earlier with Adam Smith And Marvin Brown And the sublets and all that I haven't sort of put them all together Like that before And I think I'm more worried than before About the lack of Comprehension on the left Of the issues And how to find an adequate response I mean One of the few insights I've had Is that to Trump And people like Trump, attention Is oxygen Attention is oxygen And this hit home for me When the day Mitt Romney tried to stop Trump And Mitt goes In front of the cameras and he says Romney's a terrible person Don't vote for him And then CNN Shows for an hour Chiron across the bottom Trump to rebut On the left a couple talking heads American flags For an hour it's blank And then they give him an hour of free airtime Where he pimps his hotel Eviscerates Romney Goes on to say how great his campaign is We sort of saw I think everybody kind of watched that in horror And he rolls over Romney Like he's just a little bump in the road Like he's a groundhog Unfortunately it's sort of in bed with Trump But runs in CNN news I wish he'd Hold the cameras Turn the cameras to me Stop showing us Trump half way through his hour And then say, you know My fellow Americans we've been hacked The guy we're showing you right now Has figured out how to use us against you Until we figure out These dynamics we're going to show you a lot less of him This is This is also the Attention as oxygen Has a great parallel To Media business model as well Because of course attention Is what makes money For a dying industry So there's an implicit Or structural I guess I would say alliance There So it's real hard to imagine How to break out of that So Trump understood That the media could not shut their eye He understood That their business model required them To be frozen in front of him And to show everything he was doing And as long as he didn't do something so awful That he was going to get blown out of office He could keep pushing that envelope And at some point we're so accustomed To him doing crazy stuff That he has license to do crazier stuff It's really It's this really insidious dynamic That is still playing out That other countries are using Bolsonaro in Brazil Is about to be elected president of Brazil And he is somewhere between Trump And Duterte. He's like crazy He's going to go order his militias To go kill people. And Brazil Is happy because Brazil has had a murder spree My buddy Jame Casio A member of some of our conversations here He just gave a speech in Brazil A couple weeks ago And they did a poll Everybody in the audience had a clicker And they said who are you voting for? Bolsonaro, Habad Or somebody else And they voted And 94% of the audience Was voting for Bolsonaro 1.7% were voting for Haddad And 4% were other And Jame voted for Haddad So he figures there's only two other people in the room Who pressed the button for Haddad Like a shocking percentage Anyway We've gone a long time I'd love to wrap our call But any concluding thoughts from either of you? Just say thanks to Doug I enjoyed all the Unpacking of A lot of that language Particularly property The list that's on my website Goes into a lot of other words And it's amazing how complex it all is And fruitful, I think In the best sense of generative What are my favorite Books? I can't remember his name Williams or something on his keywords Book This moment I typed it into our chat That's very funny What's interesting is Williams It's really good to read But a lot of keywords are not in there Doug, what's the one you mentioned? I bought it but I'm not at home A-N-T-A-L Is the author? Yeah, let me get up from my chair and look at it Yep, I just I have it at home now But no, it's not on Tal Let me just No, it's Ito A-Y-T-O Dictionary of Words and Origins Excellent, I will put that in the chat And then we can wrap our call I can't believe I'm on a chat With three people who coincidentally have read this book I think I'm the only one Who I'm used to like Having seen this Well, I bet you've read Some other interesting things Yeah You know, one of the things about our time Is the stuff that's being written Is really quite incredible Very, very good stuff Agreed We're just not pulling it together Into an alternative After every cataclysm You can look back and find people who saw it coming Who described it The big short is a really good example of this Michael Lewis finds six people Who made a fortune from the disaster Would never want to go back And do it again None of the six It broke their spirits Because they were hated by everybody Going through the process But you can always find somebody who is saying This is going to happen And yet we're mostly not listening to them In the run up to these disasters Right, the scary end Of the big short was I can't remember the guy The one who was the drummer or crazy guy And they're just like Well, his next thing that he's shorting is water Yeah, exactly Damn it Well Really appreciate this conversation I will post it to YouTube Doug, thank you for taking a sin so beautifully Open to any more of this And also, I will say that From the perspective of our conversations Sylvia Clute Who does A version of Restorative justice that's much more interesting Is called Unitive Justice Has taken a long look at language as well So I'm going to build a similar call Around Sylvia And we'll have a similar conversation That'll be really different Because She has a lot of observations That are right in line with what we've been talking about And yet in a parallel universe Good Cool, more soon Thanks Take care everybody