 It is Wednesday, October 30th, 2019. This is a conclave Nest making Insider Overshare my brain, which I will apologize for upfront and we try to figure out What what's the meaning of interesting topics and today's topic? Which is born from a recent conversation actually several different conversations is like is libertarianism And in fact, I will I'm just gonna leap right in in a couple ways because I'm going to jump over to my brain and I was just on Green markets, but look Here we go libertarianism is over here I was just on it and I just want to go above libertarianism for one moment just out of a sense a spirit of fun to the topic of isms and And one day I decided oh right. There's a lot of isms. So why don't I collect them? So this is this is a through a through C. This is absolutism through caregiver. Give or ism. There's a scroll bar at the bottom so answer That's for homomorphism Trism anarchism, and there are many kinds of anarchism anti-nationalism anti-nomulism autarchism, which one did you notice? Bob ism. I don't remember putting Bob ism in my brain, but it is the the Baha'i faith, which is based on a fellow named Bob Who is kind of the guru of the Baha'i? But there's a whole bunch of isms and and you know as you can see they're all connected cannibalism Both sides ism Which is part of it, which is a word in the Urban Dictionary Bala varianism, Bokananism, those of you who remember Katz Kretl Will remember Grand Falunas and Karasas Absolutely, and your Karas is the basically your posse even though you may not know that they're your posse But those they're like your people and a Grand Falunas is a false Karas And I have that under flat a parody religions and which include Kybology the Church of Kybo which Let's go up here James Kybo Curry basically invents Kybology and then also I almost for this time War my flying spaghetti monster t-shirt, but I decided not to but you could become a pasta fan is another sort of Collection of thoughts of what to do How to how to face the world So from that I want to go back to libertarianism and kind of kind of frame the question here for this this calls quest Which is There are a few things about libertarianism that I like One of them is the idea that that you know People's rights are people's rights and therefore the government shouldn't be intruding on things like Birth control and you know rights for women over their bodies Etc. Etc. There's there's a few libertarian beliefs that I'm like Love that let's go And then there's a bunch of libertarianism that crossed me the wrong way the idea that all government intervention that the state is our enemy And that all government intervention So I've created a thought here that I'd love to elaborate called Libertarian beliefs And um, there's a couple of good wikipedia pages. There's one on libertarianism There's another one called outline of libertarianism, which seems unusual to me, but it kind of goes through more in a stepwise Path through here. Here's the here's the page for libertarianism itself If I go to outline of libertarianism We can see that it's more ordered in the sense of What are the precepts of libertarianism? How does it work? Which is great for our purposes here And um, my browser is not showing it very quickly. There we go finally So here's the nature the origins libertarian policy But it turns out that there are many different branches of libertarianism. So here branches and schools of libertarianism Um, and I didn't there's left libertarianism and right libertarianism I'm sorry And they're quite different. So what I so what I did under libertarianism was I created a thought with only a couple of them I created types of libertarianism And I put just a few of those which I already had collected here But libertarian socialism and our co-capitalism is kind of a form of libertarianism heart libertarianism believe it or not left right Well, uh paternalism Paleo-libertarianism etc etc and I think when I say libertarianism I'm referring to right libertarianism. That's the the piece as most uh, let's say fair capitalism government Let's go a government so small you can drown it in a bathtub as grover norquist so famously said years ago Although i'm not sure he qualifies as a libertarian, but Partly i'm trying to figure out um What are how to frame critiques of libertarianism which so very often opposite thoughts I have an alternate thought critiques of blank So here's libertarianism and I use the the lateral length to jump thought To do critiques. So here's critiques of libertarianism And for example, I have a thought that's reasonably well elaborated called free markets are a myth and I have a thought under that many of our markets are captured and otherwise flawed and uh under that should be You know us local loop duopoly. There's actually a lot of duopoly fake markets over projection of ip Somewhere in here's regulatory capture. There we go And uh all sorts of things like that now What I'd love to end up with which is why I'm consulting sort of the the brain Posse here Is something clear like what what if critiques of liberalism were such a good clear expression Of how to have an interesting conversation with a with a deeply libertarian person That might consider that might give them a lot of resources to go investigate what's up And that might get might get them thinking in in different ways um, that's sort of my goal is is how can I use the brain to collect curate and express um, uh a good solid deep position about something like Hey, you might want to reconsider some of those libertarian beliefs um, because I find I find libertarianism pretty heartless And and trying to figure out how to express that with what to say So with that as an intro and as a framing Let me pause and see where that takes everybody and I'll stop sharing and I'll start re-sharing when it makes sense to Well, I guess I have a question or a thought Because libertarianism tends to be rather polemic as it's discussed And I'm wondering whether if one wants to be persuasive We have to move away from the analytical and more into the personal in some way In terms of less about statements more about thoughtful questions Well, how would you deal with x or I've always thought it was helpful to deal with y in this way. I don't know what to say exactly but I'm concerned because it has an impersonality to it that makes it Out there instead of here in your heart and allows a person to be somewhat divorced from the reality um, I Completely agree and I just I just went to a thought called emotion and membership trump reason most of the time And sorry for the word trump in the sentence here, but I just had to use it But but I I you know What I just stated was I'd like to build a logical argument for this And yet you're saying something I actually believe in just as much Which is that you know the emotional the connective or also My continued membership in a tribe. I believe I belong to so ostracism is a very very powerful mechanism So so those things do in fact Convince people and cause people to think different things And I will also say that I'm so frustrated with the fountain head and atlas shrug Because they they influenced so many people and when people quote Something john galt did as something a normal human would do It pisses me off Just the way it pissed me off when ronald reagan was quoting some of his movies as if those things that happened to him in real life It's like no these are fictional characters and a human author a novelist can make a fictional character do absolutely anything Even things that are pretty unreasonable for humans to do never mind that humans do unreasonable things but but But it frustrates me that there's an emotional connection that the fountain had in particular And it just came up for me the fountain had came up in conversation just this last week Where somebody who's an architect urban planner was highly inspired by the fountain head and i'm like Yeah So so yes, yes, and yes. Yes Well, maybe I don't know you kind of chicken and egg it because I think If you want to ask the right questions, you have to have the right critical line of thinking And so if you can identify the key points that one wants to make Then one can look personally for personal stories or The right kind of question for the other party or something like that. So it's it's a little chicken and egg I don't think it's one or the other but I just wanted to make sure it was both So so I I think what you're saying is that you can lard a logical argument with personal stories and and connective things So there's a there's a mixture possible of the two strategies, which I think makes lots of sense and it is true Um Gene michael any thoughts on on any of this stuff Or or or even like my framing of this I think I've got more feelings very good. I think I have more feelings than thoughts about this one Excellent I'm stuck with the Personal belief that libertarianism is a all failure It's um An emotional pathology These guys are dead. Mm-hmm They're wrapping themselves in uh excuses that have the depth of in rand To the extent that they're a club They're a club of losers and incompetence at the social level A third of silicon valley is strongly libertarian these people are not entirely dead No, no, no, they're not none. Yeah, the walking dead the the technical dead if you like, but It's like the the current analysis on how do you change people's minds Seems to say you don't Huh, so say more They may change their minds But it it takes a bit of a bump to get them to trip over to quote one of the lines that Gene pointed me to um I've just been Involved in a little argument with not a climate denier Because he won't deny its climate, but he's denying that it's anthropomorphic. Mm-hmm And just watching his head spin That was fascinating And after you know playing with it for a little bit, I mean we were just juggling You know I gave up because What am I trying to do and why? And so that's that's the question that's sitting for me at the moment Jerry you call it A meeting i'll join in if i've got time and absolutely but when I looked at the topic of this one I thought Why bother what what is the what is the purpose? That's available to us And here a strategy for turning the libertarian into a decent human being Is there a thread this is just popping in and I'm sorry to be interrupted But but it seems to me that Most of at my core. I'm an extreme independent And very Centered in my personal value framework And for the most part the rest of the world can have their own personal value framework because that's part of Mine is your entitled to your own framework The tricky space is the community dimension Of the extent to which we attempt to impose our framework on other people who have different viewpoints And when you institutionalize it it gets even worse so Maybe the thread to explore Is that boundary of personal freedom With social responsibility In multiple dimensions because Yeah, so how do we get on with libertarians rather than how do you change a libertarian? Can we find values that we share from which we can do something constructive? For the whole Which eventually could evolve to a better sense of community. Maybe that's too optimistic, but no No, I think it's the absolute requirement. I think we've got to do exactly that My question is why do you have to change a libertarian's mind to achieve it? Well, I came here because I had no clue what a libertarian was to begin with so I read this so I read this paper It sort of gave me a basic set of concepts That says this is what a libertarian thinks I looked at the wikipedia page first and I got lost in it because it segmented into so many pieces that it Was like me and my dog named arrow in the pointless forest And I don't know there are certain things that that seem to make sense, but there are certain things that my experience says Are inconsistent with history Um, you know There are no free. It's a free markets. There are no free markets. I've never I've never seen one There are there a fiction of somebody's mind I mean, you you you can't have a a free market when You know, you have access to one electric company and one water company and you know, and And there are certain things that you Can't you can't avoid you can't do without but there aren't alternatives Um, and then the the comment about limited government Well, some people talk about big government and little government How about the appropriate sized government that enables you to accomplish what you want to accomplish? and my experience is that People contort their beliefs about these labels so that they mean whatever they want them to mean I mean republicans are not what republicans used to be Democrats are not what democrats used to be They've sort of changed their set of Organizing beliefs over time just to be different And you know the For me the appropriate question is what is it we're trying to accomplish and what what helps us get there? um, and thank you for Taking us in these different directions all of you because you're reminding me of a bunch of stuff that I've thought of over time And I've been I've been going to the places in my brain as we So, uh, you know, everybody knows the saying lord acton saying power corrupts absolute power corrupts. Absolutely So here's absolute power corrupts. Absolutely, which is from lord acton But um, I actually borrowed that and I have a I talk about how centralization corrupts and Centralization is a form of exercise of power. So so I don't think I'm not that far afield from what what was being said But one of the problems here is that libertarians, for example Are completely freaked out about Stalin and Mao like Freak the hell out and there's um, so murray murray rothbard So here's murray rothbard and gene Mises hyac a bunch of those are basically the the founders of the other intellectual forefathers along with an ran Of libertarianism. So there's a mises institute murray rothbard was the the director of it and he he wrote Here we go He wrote this note down with primitivism a thorough critique of polanyi years ago Which was a critique of the great transformation, which is one of my favorite books And so he's critiquing polanyi and basically if you read this this letter I'll post the the link in our chat if you read this letter There a it's not thorough Um b he's putting words in polanyi's mouth that polanyi is not saying does not mean does not intend polanyi is an economic historian Who's using facts and data to try to say hey? This is what happened when we destroyed the old ways we used to live together and converted it all to industrial economy Um, he's not saying we should go back, you know, he's the russo noble savage argument Which is the first thing that libertarians will bring up and others other conservatives He's not saying that whatsoever He's just saying hey, we screwed up a bunch of pretty high functioning ways of working In the middle of feudalism, which is a low functioning way of working But this is this is how it was and so There's a whole bunch of here, which is about institutional design public goods The public good, you know public goods dilemmas what what what should we fund together? How do we how do we manage the commons together? and one of the One of the really important parts of this to me is this whole notion of governing the commons and of realizing that we have commons So another another touchstone for me here is that we used to think about commons Like we used to understand how to live in community on the commons, and I have a whole thread here on that Which is um, here it is. So we used to know how to live. Oops. Let me click properly on that So it goes to the middle We used to know how to live in community on the commons And if you go back to the Māori tradition, you have the word kaitiaki, which is stewardship or custodianship You have a waka one out gathanga, which is establishing relationships. You go to the Kechua and Aimaata traditions There are words for all these kinds of things that this was like baked into Evolved societies back in the day, which we sort of stomped on and we turned commons into natural resources, which is another thought I have we basically Stopped thinking about these as commons just like we stopped thinking about humans as citizens and we turn them into consumers We turned the the commons into natural resources, which companies With their own privileges and rights and more rights than humans do and no death penalty We basically took them out and said, you know, go crazy. Take care of the earth So when you transform commons into resources, you basically dissolve them here. I'm quoting A piece commenting in the new society by Gustavo Esteva Who I met years ago in Oaxaca, Mexico because he ran the University of the earth And studied under Ivan Ilich Etc. Etc. So sorry for the long riff and the many different Haifei. I'm sort of weaving through the brain here but I'm trying to sort of Activate and show you all the different parts of this This ticket this ball of twine around these issues And seeing if we can't distill them or synthesize them a little bit because you see when I do purple thoughts Purple thoughts are usually sort of distillations And I call them out with with I use yellow and purple to to accentuate things in my brain to draw my attention and others to these things and Trying to figure that out. So I will I will pause again What's this distinction between purple and yellow Jerry in your coding system? It's um, it's a Threaty distinction yellow. I tend to use for non controversial things Excuse me. So types types of libertarianism was yellow Articles about libertarianism. So when something gets crowded in my brain I usually first thing I do is I create a sub thought called articles about x And I color that always yellow because I'm about to collect a whole bunch of stuff that's going to disappear from view Um at the top level and it's important that other people go. Oh, what's yellow? I'll go click on that And once you know that once you know my little my little tropes here about coloring things You'll go to the color thing first when you see it when you see a crowd And so the yellow ones are usually non controversial. The purple ones tend to be more my opinion or my insights about stuff um So I think I think that's probably the Thank you And yeah, and the key institute is what it's the major american think tank on libertarianism Mises is, you know, the pretty more international, but there's a bunch of these and and they've gotten Very visible in the last 30 years as part of The conservative agenda to create think tanks to buttress conservative thought So the heritage foundation american enterprise institute a whole bunch of others basically come out of They come out of gold gold waters loss In the election of I guess 64 Basically, there was a crisis of conservatism when gold water lost And everybody was like, oh my god, we're we're losing everything. We're not we've got to change everything we're doing And that was a real milestone in the conservative movement As far as I can tell this is all amateur history. So Uh, but those things that I just said I've also gotten my brain So I'll just might as well go there since we're having that kind of conversation But if you if that particular point right there, we used to know how to live in community on the commons. Yes Come Communities, not what it used to be Not at all. So that's why I say whether with an emphasis with an emphasis on live So that as as community deteriorated And the focus was not on live and became on money The commons are just a resource to be mined And the tragedy of the commons is a vicious thing because it says If if I don't take it somebody else will So in terms of of managing the commons There are only a couple approaches to to dealing with that structure and one is The the participants realize that if they don't manage the commons They will lose it completely And if they're not willing to do that and it is sufficiently important Some higher authority needs to manage them Yes, and so tragedy the commons Garrett Hardin's 1968 paper is under A thought I have here called landmark papers that fucked up the world And I only have two things here. I have Milton Friedman's New York Times magazine cover story from 1970 the social responsibility of the ability of businesses to increase its profits Which leads us to directly to Reaganomics later and that tourism And the tragedy the commons and I hate the tragedy the commons. I think it's uh, it was it was basically an uninformed rumination, which I don't mind except this one took this one ate our brains So when somebody says commons instead of thinking Oh, all the important stuff that we share that we have to maintain or we all die instead of thinking that Everybody thinks oh no tragedy the commons, which immediately takes us to well commons are impossible to manage So why bother? At least that's the logic I see happening over and over and over again and so the problem here is we have to revive people's interest in the commons which Which david bollier and a whole bunch of people are doing a really good job of In oops, let's go to commenting instead. There we go living in the commons and david bollier in particular sort of a Prime example of this trying to help us understand What does it mean to live together in the commons again? Right and so I have a whole bunch of stuff under david. He's written a bunch of books and articles that are really good He is a defender of the commons I don't know how many people I have here. I should probably put Lynn Ostrom here There we go She was a defender of the commons because she was trying to help us figure out how to take care of commons the the diggers Were defenders of the commons so back in the levelers and the diggers basically The levelers were called levelers during the english civil war because they were going and leveling out fences and ditches that have been put in to wall off Land during the early enclosure movements And so they were trying to level the land again to say no no no We all live on the land and the land is for all of us to to you know to work together now I will I will point out that In an era of nomadic peoples in an era of moving around You could do this and there's a whole train of thought about how native americans and aborigines all Basically managed the landscape instead of any particular asset And It's really a question who wants the playing field, isn't it? Very much so but also But also about how do we see the playing field and and one of the important things here for me is That there are scripts running in our heads that we don't realize were put there Through titanic battles That are going on to this day So for example, there are conservative scripts Uh, here we go. How conservatives took over the agenda Oh, no, I had to go to the well, let me go to the other one. Sorry Okay, um Go ahead make an analogy here or metaphor. Yes, please In my advancing age, I have to do things to take care of myself and My partner and I are playing duplicate bridge once a week. Yeah, very good. Lots of fun Meet all sorts of people. Well, not all sorts of people And whatever but their politicals are these are people I would never ever Meet great conventional circumstances of my my lifestyle my politics my direction my whatever I mean might but That we're in different packages Fine when we're playing bridge The rule set with in which we play Makes it possible for us to play. That's this question that you can only compete inside cooperation You cooperate on the rules within which you complete We've had the enclosure of the commons The leveling attempt And really if if if you've got a level space then you can have a quasi free market and open society and network of Commonalities or whatever If you don't have a living playing field, it's all talk. It's all It's all those books. I mean, I'm very impressed with David Bodley. But What what we're going to do write some more books and get the job done the books aren't doing it Well, people are actually out there doing commenting. I mean, there's a whole Totally On a statistical level or an overall overall game plan all these energies seem to exist as resistencies to a status quo The whole ptp foundation, you know Striving mightly to create commons everywhere. Of course. They are as was the cooperative movement Is it do not seem more on when the two words neither on work with each other? So, um, you know, then they're not actually doing anything except Outlining the problem in more detail and accuracy and whatever not solving it Because the problem is the playing field. Yeah, so I kind of disagree with that in the sense that I see them a drawing attention to things that work so that others might be them Agreed be putting open source plans for everything out in the open so that everybody can Do them and riff on them, right? See participating in and structuring their own efforts in ways that are ways that are Commoning like meaning using cooperative structures open source A whole bunch of other stuff like that. So so I see them act and maybe d Knitting together or bridging a lot of these movements that don't know how they're connected So for all of which all four but what's up to me like more than I'm sorry Jerry to be sort of this is bad protocol for these things Jamming the space and I think I've jammed the whole thing. No, I I lost And sorry, I lost a little bit of what you said I was a positive But it's You know, I I've been a dedicated Thumbler of the top For 30 40 years You know, I've followed the the collective work job and I've read many of the books My estimate is we're still losing The many of the books about what everything commonality politics life Ecosystems entropy at it all together Why are we still in this mess? And what's the score and the score looks basically like, you know lines 85 christian zero at this point You know, I'm it's it's I think these energies and Predigious literature are in some way a symptom of our failure not our success And it's it's only when the playing field changes that we can get on with Playing cards. I mean I I I want a community where I don't care what the guy thinks I I don't care what he does. I care what his behavior is his responsibility. That's it. He can think Unicorns and fairies. He can think magically in all directions. He can be a libertarian or a malice Provided we get along So how do we get along? It's the absolutely baseline conversation for me not Not why should we or All that I'm sorry to be so I'm in a bad mood today I'm so sorry, Michael. I hope you're getting into a better mood by working this out of your system. Yes. Yes This is pretty much better. I thought you were in a good mood, Michael But we just started our You know, you've heard a b2b and p2p and all this and we just launched the b2p process It's Beer to the people Our money is is in circulation a whole 500 bucks of it is out there to change the world, but it's People are unified around things that bring them together not around discussions about which and what and where It's it's it's so often it's the man sitting around the coffee table discussing politics or whatever and The real energy is going on in the background This is another expression of that from my perspective Excuse me I've been very devilish today in the advocacy. That's all right. That's speaking of speaking of which Jamai, how was tenure forecast and how? I'll bring you a little up to speed on the conversation here in effect, but How's how's how's the forecast the forecast event went very well My particular part of it was giving a 30 minute Talk on climate and It uh Had several people tell me afterwards that they had started to cry by the end. So my job there was done Were you by any chance videotaped I was uh, and I believe that those videos will eventually be made public um The I can read you the in my concluding paragraph because this is the what This is a remarkable point in history Our past theories and practices have failed us the futures that we that we imagined we'd have that we'd hope for Have been washed away in front of us We can see with greater clarity that ever before the interwoven consequences of our decisions And we are now left with the most terrifying of opportunities We have to create something new and uh So, you know, I was basically up there with a scary voice and I'll dressed in black And uh doing my usual the world was the world was ending do something about it. You bastards talk and uh So close to valfurgis not So um, but uh the the whole event went very well actually went better than I expected it to and uh But this is more of of a um A conversation for next week, I think for for the uh for the other not not the ijb Sorry, what do you mean next week? Oh, sorry the uh, your your usual monthly. I'm suddenly blanking. Oh, the Call this is more of a wreck wreck thing than an ijb thing. I'm here to listen and learn No worries and and so let me take up because I saw you post um that last paragraph to facebook And and I had this reaction to it, which is um, I don't know that we need to invent something new I think we need to synthesize the best of the old and the best of the new While dropping a lot of these scripts from from our heads And so a part of what I believe is that our our brains have been eaten. It's a little bit like toxoplasmosis or Parasite fungi cordyceps cordyceps. Thank you very much Here we go and tomo pathogenic fungi like Cordyceps and and others it's a little bit like them if they take over the body of an ant or a wasp or a beetle Which then remarkably while still being eaten and being turned into food still goes about doing its thing Until as a last gesture it goes up onto a leaf or a branch and bites down on it and then becomes a Basically a launch platform for more spores of the parasitic fungus That is what the belief scripts have done to us They've basically allowed us to convert our entire world from what it was before Not that it was all golden and idyllic before but it changed our minds about how we see each other How we see the the earth resources all the stuff we're talking about um, and so To me the most productive thing we could do is share what works figure out how to live together While drop it while noticing and then removing from view as many of these dysfunctional scripts as possible. So one of the scripts is People won't work unless they're hungry unless they're starving That's a basically a conservative mean that that unless the threat of starvation Faces people they will not go do anything productive I believe this is complete bullshit and all the studies of basic income and and uh, direct cash subsidies and all that kind of stuff say There's no correlation. There's a couple really good recent articles about this anyway, but it's a mean And it's a fundamental meme. It's one of those things like time equals money Or scarcity equals value. That's really hard to flush from the buffers So to me, that's one of the big questions is how do we do that because If we can do that we can then have very productive very local conversations about How do we govern? What do we do? What are our models? Let's make it all work So so scarcity doesn't equal value? No For some people For me in general, no, so so um, here's the meme scarcity equals value Which is sort of a conservative capitalist point of view And um, and it goes along with maximizing sureholder value and a bunch of other stuff But basically that means you generate artificial scarcity and um, what I'm interested in is business models and other sorts of things around abundance That's entirely possible to to have you know profitable business around abundance like open source software Right, yes, but for those people who are in certain businesses scarcity is profitable Uh scarcity is uh, so I went to business school and scarcity equals value is kind of a way of saying It's okay to go create artificial scarcity where there wasn't scarcity because that's the only way there's a viable business I didn't say it was okay. I said they do it That's because we've given them social license to do it Because the playing field is tilted that okay, absolutely and we okay, so so you're not like an okay thing because everybody knows that scarcity equals value Okay, so you're not saying the statement is false. You're simply saying it's inappropriate No, I'm saying scarcity can in some cases equal value But as a general blanket statement that you hold all of reality up to is bad It's very dysfunctional Yes, it's it's bad. It is dysfunctional yet In in the current construct they get away with doing it all the time Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean the financial people buying up aluminum and moving it around in warehouses So that it's not available to inflate the price Yeah, um, yes Right Exactly. Okay. Um, so so you just reminded me of a thought I put in my brain long ago Which is conventional wisdom that has been proven obsolete. These are means we should flush So maximizing a shareholder value tragedy of the commons is here If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist the invisible hand At markets are the best way to allocate resources nature red and tooth and claw All those kinds of things and we had a there was a rex call I think long ago in 2015 called. What are your scripts where we covered some of these sorts of things? Uh, and this is all under scripts. We have running in our minds That are you consider them obsolete or simply it or insufficient Uh, not sufficient. I think they're damaging. I think they're I think they're not insufficient I think they're actually wrong-headed Um, and so so the tragedy. Yes, there are tragedies of commons. That's how a lot of civilizations have died But the idea that commons are unmanageable because they always degenerate into tragedy is the is the mean this carries And that's very dysfunctional because what we need to do urgently is figure out how to manage our commons again We need to identify them learn to respect them again and learn to manage them And if and if we don't that will become a tragedy Correct. If we don't we basically follow the the path of other civilizational, uh, you know agglomerations that kill themselves off Which is what we're busy doing. We're doing now at a global scale Instead of at Easter Island when we farm away all the trees and suddenly there's no trees and then there's no crops and then Who's we white man? I mean, let's get back to the That the the issue here is colonialism Yes, right societies killed themselves off by overgrazing by whatever they they were into What was their gig and they pushed it and they overwhelmed the resources and they grew out Unlocalized level not as a planet not as an entire species and Even in those communities there was substantial periods of comparative stability because you had to get along with each other to the point Wasn't you know, perfect awesome All that stuff, but it was like you got along with your neighbor bigger than you or whatever And now we're in a different place The place we're in is the place where the game is rip and run We are driven by a monetary incentive system, which is pretty inescapable Whether we think it's about not and I agree that we do think about it and we have these tropes and memes in our minds which are pretty simple They either be eaten me first and screw you Um, those are the the axiomatic drivers of our world Until we change that we're going down Until there's another way to do this stuff. We've had it next Well, my my hero Ricardo Samuels said the kindergarten is a good place to start It don't stay there right to start teaching people and unfortunately unfortunately, this is a this is um been learned by by authoritarian dictators and all that as well, so You know, you get the you get the nazi youth Uh and and all of that because if I can get you when you're seven years old I can mold you for life kind of well, okay, so so the you know, and The nature of scientific revolutions by whoever it was I forget um and you know, he said that that you know The the way that you change is to teach Then the new paradigm to the next generation the difficulty of in doing that is it's The existing people under the current paradigm that are doing the teaching Yes Um, and if we have a centralized education system This this comes back to one of the many issues that are sort of eddying around our topic here If we if we overly centralized education system, we create bottlenecks where you can control that Who's teaching and what they what they get to teach and here I have a whole riff on the texas school board Um and and basically their dysfunction Uh, oops got to spell it right Uh And basically conservatives figured out that that was true. And so conservatives basically Took over The texas school board and which dictates what texas can be brought into, you know, half of the schools in the country public schools So over centralization of education then creates Exactly the kinds of dysfunctions that we're talking about which is one reason to have less centralization and more unschooling or de-schooling Um, I'm I I've been at school many times And I the best thing I got out of it was even there we go This is what I thought I'm looking for the market economy requires a market society. Yeah, go ahead That one. Thank you. Michael. What was the best thing you got out of school? Even illich de-schooling society The school is by nature going to argue for school It's me Thomas Kuhn saying let's educate him. He was already a product of about 40 years of institutional education by the time he voiced that thought So, uh, much as I approve of the generality of the direction. I just don't believe it We've been trying education for an awful long time. It works just about as good as religion It doesn't so So I'm I'm I'm basically saying In my perspective as far as I can see the money is a real problem and we're screwed. How about we have our own money? Who would like their own money? That's a co-an Who would like their own money? And I'm torn on that because own money That's a great term stay torn. Don't don't answer the co-an. Please That's the brain Just bear in mind that it's a question that can be answered everybody on the planet and every corporation and every municipality Wouldn't you like your own money? Your response is almost invariably Yeah, but but But I'm focusing on the yeah side of it because in two people are drawn by their By what draws them They ain't going anywhere. So And we've just Question Michael in terms of my money because if I have my money What use is it to me because no one else wants my money? But yeah, that's the um, what's his name hymen minsky line. Anybody can create money. The hard part is getting other people to take it Right. So the real point of your money is not what you get. It's what you give it's about saris in network It's um, it's putting the egg for the chicken We we tend to look at money as the entitlement to have to get how much money did you get for that? What are you going to get for your money? You know, it's a getting thing Pulls us towards I totally agree that it's the giving or how one uses their money. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no You're up a stage yet. Okay. What the what action? Results in there being money I mean The irony with your money is you can't actually have your money You can give other people your money Other people have your money. What you've got is obligation If you've got any of this local soft stuff You've got other people's promises You're you're not engaged as a promise are if you're in the credit side of that economy It's only if you're in the negative side if you're one of the issuers So by issuing promise We give promise to others In the credit side of the economy So What what happens is that this sort of money enables me to be a carpenter to be a baker to be a consultant to be a designer to be whatever And be acknowledged for it So it's the act And then because we're in a circulatory feedback community A bio a bio mimicking condition We will get the results of our product in that context if people like it we'll get credit if people don't like it We'll get pissed off So it's it's like you act and the money results rather than Show me the money. What can I be guaranteed for it because that's back to the atomistic the whole economy must be All that stuff whereas when it's you do something And because of the nature of the systemic relationship between the players, I mean, what song are we singing around here? Are we in the tune of C major or is this key or something else, you know, what point of the spectrum is this Conversation taking place on but it's all about individuals acting And seeing the consequences from their community's response to them That's the difference And when I when I talk about having your own money, I mean participating in those are networks Which I I never argue as a contradiction of or an opposite to an alternative to I presented as You're doing all that. Why don't you do this too? What's to lose? Who's on first? Is it still working? Well, that's what I said We're to the people We're showing these guys you can go into this pub and there's a jar on the counter and we'll have a photograph of it in a couple of days And it's got this money in it and it says support the fire rescue fund We at the pub want to support the fire rescue fund If you put cash in this jar and take out the coupon the cash goes to the fire rescue fund The coupon come over here and it buys you half your beer It's 50% coupon on the beer So of course the uptake is is quite predictably high The benefit to the Customer there's a benefit to the fire rescue fund The question is how long does it take the business to gent to recognize the benefit Of having its own money in persistent circulation In addition to their usual stuff, which is the conventional fiat money, which is here and gone here and gone here and gone Here they've got money that's here and here and here and here So it's a bit like the marshmallow test for the two-year-old If the business can keep its fingers out in the cash park for a couple of weeks Business gets money forever God I'm ranting today Practice I'm going to start speaking again This is James you remember this stuff from Way back I expect I bombed From a great height at an IFTF in what I think 2007 or something Jerry you got me in there, didn't you? Yeah, that was um, I don't know what year that was but uh, but yes Long time ago long on a planet far far away. It seems yeah So let me let me pause for a second because we've been at this kind of an hour and You take us gently back to the question I was posing at the beginning and see if we can't synthesize a couple things out of where we are because I think we've Touched a whole bunch of things And I'm I'm really interested in creating a handy package to hand somebody that would let them cruise through a bunch of ideas and ponder you know Ponder the implications of their belief system because I guess what I'm saying Uh, is that practical? doable What how how could I make it better brain? their their beliefs In this case libertarianism, but it could be anything it could be creationism it could be Judaism Roman Catholicism, you know kind of pick your ism it could be anything Or it could be some you know specific thing like the tragedy the comments. That's uh You know, I feel like I've got a lot of stuff in the brain that debunks the tragedy of the commons and the tries to frame it But I'm really interested in making it more powerful more visible more palpable more useful I'm okay. So What do you mean by debunk the tragedy of the commons? Um, we talked about it a few moments ago and and I thought you agreed that left to its own devices Without the people engaged smartening out it will become a tragedy Uh, it takes cooperation It takes that sort of wisdom and cooperation to manage commons. Well Okay, so yes Um, so yes, what even to realize them at some point, you know, um, I put a link into an oatmeal comic In the chat, um, which deals very expressly with the difficulty of getting somebody to change their mind in any way Um, and basically it is, you know, a nice two or three minutes. It's nicely done, but it comes out with Suffer the interaction the the maligda I mean, you got it easy for you to say rules, you know, like when people are spun they're spun and um, Basically expect emotional outrage resistance and paradigm block that everything you offer somebody that you don't already know Take it or leave it and I you know, I I'm trying to pour Fresh oil on these waters Reignite them in a way I don't think there's a way to change people's minds with ideas I think they change with action Mm-hmm Well, okay, and the the action produces a result That that gets them To think about something differently. Well, well the results of the action. I don't care what people think about I care what they do and I I recognize the thinking can often help and augment that but Functionally, we don't think about Balance when we ride a bicycle We balance But we but we learned balance through experience and therefore we don't have to think about it anymore So to Idea is going to do it for us But before they could not think about it. They had to think about it All right, I I still remember when I learned to drive a car And I'm driving down the road both hands on a wheel focus intently on everything in front of me Because I don't know what in hell I'm doing And now I drive from here to wherever Listening to the radio talking to my wife and thinking about something else and I don't even remember the trip All right, so it's the way that we Learn to manage complexity by sort of I'm ingraining it into our being Though there's a belief there that has developed over time through that experience and and If I am going to change my behavior The belief has to change And that's what I kind of what I mean by the scripts in our heads. Those are the belief systems that are all linked together And and for most of them we have we have Integrated them into our being to such an extent that we don't know what we believe until something sort of pings it Right and and here the bicycle learning to ride a bicycle is a really really really interesting example because When you learn to drive a car you go to driver's ed. You learn traffic rules. You learn like the pedals and all that I could sit down and try to explain to you how Gyroscopically a bicycle is staying up and it would mean nothing to you and it wouldn't help you ride the bike And and when somebody's trying to help you ride the bike they can kind of say steer this way It doesn't actually even help that much the act of Moving it and like mastering control is is a physical thing that incorporates riding a bike into your body and In some way, but but there's almost no explanation to it The only time I ever saw Doug Engelberg Who is at a conference in San Francisco in 2004 Where he described teaching his children to ride a bicycle By sitting them on the bike full standard bike. No training wheels. No crap Move the handlebars. He would say I will hold the bike as long as you keep the handlebars moving We will move forward when you say forward and we will stop when you say stop and I will hold you up And if they stop moving the handlebars if they stop the to and fro he stopped moving Done two or three minutes. They're riding a bike riding a bike They've incorporated the sway and the swerve into their Experiment it's done how they do it um There's a little dog park where I take my mom often to go walk around and there's kids riding little bicycles around the park And half the kids, uh, the little kids have training wheels and I curse them every time But just under my breath and half the kids are on little slider scooter, whatever you call them Basically bikes with no pedal Which is how you should learn to ride a bicycle because you know you can learn the balance on that one And then you can just add the the the power to it But but the training wheels are what we're doing sort of with the wrong scripts in our heads in the rest of society And and michael, I think what you're trying to do is you're trying to give us a bicycle for a different kind of Money and money is buried in the limbic system in ways that gene is trying to describe I think So so our our attitudes our approaches our hoarding and husbanding of money are Absolutely the fact and one of the thoughts of memory is like we suddenly after the industrial revolution This is one of the things that polanyi says Suddenly everything almost everything had a price Well and before the industrial revolution everything did not have a price. There were no prices on things Yeah, it's like a universal solvent Yeah substantial money became the universal solvent. That's why I call it colonialization It's the and michael hudson calls it the parasite that took over the world, you know, right? I also think that it's deeply related to the difference between in and out It's a boundary consideration Say more well Normally conventional money is outside us It is a bill or a coin or a bearer bond or something That exists as a thing of value and now it is in my possession, but when I spend it, it's gone Thing outside me And that buys very strongly into me as the egocentric Collector of properties, you know, what have I got? How much have I got? What happens to it when it when I let you know the giving and getting becomes about crossing the interface between my wealth space And the alien space out there the in to the out and Conventional money is I feel almost um the universal solvent Reduces everything the same value equation which is me against you It's not just five restaurants in time competing against each other the restaurants are competing against the The shops that are competing against the amazon amazon is competing. We're all competing amazon has super imposed That um One currency to measure them all problem that we got into so many years ago And I I think the the issue is variety. There must be complex self-managing systems That are the expression of the behavior and attitudes and beliefs and actions of those involved And that that that I agree with wholeheartedly how How does your thinking about money map to the older thinking of the meta currency crew basically? Arthur Brock and uh john michel It's not that old. That's new thinking. This is all they've been on this project for 25 years michael. Uh, well Often in about 20 years ago, you know, françois a little later than that Um and meta currency and scepter are products of about 2008 2010 Scepter was a new branch off before they did hollow change, but the meta currency stuff goes goes really far back. Well It emerged from um from the late 2000s And this was out of a conference in barred new york in 2004 where I was with brock and eric harris brawn I mean for a couple of years then eric and harris and Created the meta currency. So when I say it's it's new. I mean in that sort of chronology Okay, and um, it's it's very good because they're defining how you define The act of in interaction and expectation right the semantics of their Cyber currency stuff is terrific I wish they would do it And that's been the big distinction I've had with that field for the last 15 20 years is I think there's poverty on the street There's poverty in the villages. There's poverty all over the damn world. And I think it can be solved very quickly if we just act intelligently and sensibly Who am I to say that? You see so so you can it's you can see the dilemma Yeah, the gene can see the dilemma um Yeah, I I think Money is the measure. It's it's it's it's a symbol system. It's a human artifact. It's a technology And we have locked ourselves into one technology, which is the technology of the big club money as power money as As a form of enclosure And we've used it to Basically to wipe out indigenous communities worldwide and biological communities worldwide Right And we're going to carry on until we're dead so poverty is one of those words that really frustrates me because In again the great transformation Pauline talks about how poverty is a new word in the 1650s At the beginning of the industrial revolution because not everything had a price. You didn't have to buy everything And all of us in the village might die because of a plague a famine or huns on the on yon hill over there And you kind of look toward where the castle is it's like I and my family are not going to make it into the castle walls So we might all die But the idea that one family in the village is going to go under because they don't have a job is nonsense They like unheard of not a thing anybody understands unemployment is a new term around 1750 because then employment becomes a thing But One of the uh sustainable development goals is basically making sure that nobody nobody is in poverty I would love there to be a framing of this so that people Wouldn't have to be earning any kind of currency, but would be fat and happy. Yes. You have also a basic economy Something like that. Yeah Yeah, I think that's perfectly available And it's by counterpart pointing the conventional money with the Collins money the community money, right It's because that is the expression of people's contribution and interaction in that community of paper Whereas the other stuff is the denial of all that So have you looked at marina's universal basic assets? Don't know that one. No, and I know I haven't read it. So so I don't really know But she's working she's working some of these angles as well I I'm I'm a little suspicious of assets. That's the snapshot. It's the time slice Flow is the thing that creates the assets. So the flow is a much more interesting to me I look for verbs not nouns and I think the asset concept is back in the nano space and they do it be acquisitive and You know retentive pretty anal stuff. Did you ever hear did you ever hear of uh, david bomb's rio mode? Uh, no So in his book wholeness and the implicate order he invents a hypothetical language called rio mode Rio is flow like a rio stat, right? And so it's basically a verb centered language Because his critique is that we are in a noun centered world and our language reflects that we have subject verb object Yeah, right. So he tries to invent just a hypothetical language Uh called rio mode, which I know not that much more about and there isn't that very much about it on the web But uh, but I've got it under hypothetical languages next to Uh Mesa angela sol re sol vendor good Uh row e prime Well, there's an analogy here to um How r e a accounting, you know mccarthy's r e a accounting. Yes resources events agents Um is focused actually on the verb Yeah, because unless there is an event Well, unless there's an event, what the hell, right? So The economy in r e a terms is the activity on the edges between nobles So it's all edge based conventional accounting You know corporate accounting tax accounting economic accounting gdp accounting is Entity based Not about flow. It may say there's this accumulation of aggregate flows, but it says nothing about patterns And it's focused entirely on where do we end up who's got what it's the balance sheet world so r e a and real sound entirely compatible, but if they were bombed around anymore You'd probably be able to make that They're all tied together somehow. I think we're moving to verbs nouns nouns of passe And we've moved considerably far from libertarianism and all that And we're getting close to the end of our call time Um, so I wanted to just bring that back to the center of the table and see what thoughts anybody has as we wrap this call I kind of toward pointing back toward the topic of Libertarian belief systems How to have an interesting conversation both logically and emotionally about The implications thereof And and I'll point out that you know the neoliberal agenda and a bunch of other things and half of silicon valley Are deeply influenced by the libertarian belief systems and I run into you know More than a handful of people in my life regularly Who are very deeply convinced that you know libertarianism is the way to go and We're motivated by an rand and fountainhead or whatever way back when And and my experiences in trying to plum into it. We're really frustrating So at the same time that I read the great transformation, which is clearly a book that has influenced me a lot I also read hayek's book the road to serfdom Where polanyi is an economic historian and he's got facts and tables and he says here's what happened Here's what the data were none of that Hayek is scared shitless that the new deal is going to turn america into Stalinist russia that is he is He is shitting his pants on paper That that is going to happen and he makes all these assumptions and he throws away everything else And it's insane and I'm like, how does anybody like this guy? Like like you can smell the fear on the paper and and the same thing with rothbart's letter about don't pay attention to polanyi Well, that's all how we fight a battle over ideas Right and right now their impeachment process is going on Yesterday a highly decorated Soldier basically justified that trump In fact did say barisma and whatever during the call and the far right's answer to this is He was born overseas. He's a trader or a secret agent. He's clearly not a patriot And I was like seriously people But but but really what you have to think of at that point is like Oh, apparently this is the best you've got because apparently the actual arguments about the case You were unable to refute on any basis whatsoever because the attempts to hide all these things and bury them are failing And so it looks like impeachment's, you know imminent and hopefully pretty swift and then who knows what happens, but We're facing these conversations right this minute in the public sphere which is why this topic has a lot of energy for me is that is that A lot of what we do and say every day is based on these belief systems We have and I'm trying to hack away at them to figure out How do we take the best of the old and the best of the new including the best of libertarian thinking? And fuse it into something useful purposeful and very fractal very decentralized Michael in the way you're talking about money I'm talking about sort of belief systems Not that I want there to be like Like little pockets of places where people believe in, you know, marquis de sade as a belief system But rather How do we create lots of conversations so that this can settle into different places and have the sense of locality that that and specificity and personhood Of place that makes it take root and actually be deeply grounded Maybe I say too much there, but any any sort of closing thoughts from from any of my closing thought is that we should have this conversation in a week After I go figure out what libertarianism is awesome. I love that so I can put this back on the schedule. How about that? lovely lovely That sounds great because I you know I have never really spent any time figuring out What the republicans and the democrats and the libertarians and all the rest i'm actually believe because I think they're all full of shit anyway, so So you've had like a deflection filter up uh to just avoid those avoid diving into it Well, you know when they when they actually when somebody espouses a particular perspective Often I spent some time saying does that make any sense right and most of them don't It is a problem Well, you know and and the So the major part of the difficulty I think is this people's unwillingness to actually Um, do any critical analysis or critical thinking about what people are telling them? You know these well, that sounds good. So as you explore libertarianism for a further conversation I would be equally interested in what are the most high functioning belief systems you've run into Which are the ones you like one of the ones that that smell right that have Some sense of oh, okay, if we all live kind of this way That might actually be a good thing. So maybe we make that part of the conversation as well Okay Good Judy any thoughts? I just wish there were this is Not cogent, but I wish that somehow There could be a groundswell of Connectivity and social responsibility That would sort of eliminate the need for all of this argument. Yeah I I'm seeing that happening now all over the place in in in big ways um, one of the thoughts in my brain that I'll share just as on our way out here is, um There we go 2020 tipping Basically, I have a thought called does 2020 mark a generational tipping point And I point here to Jacinda Arden. Who's the Prime Minister of New Zealand Greta Thunberg? uh, the green new deal generation z's AOC in the squad uh The basically the the parkland kids The sunrise movement All these kinds of things to me Might in fact be a large catalytic Yes, society global scale transformation if they all kind of link arms and manage it to coordinate without Coordinate without centralizing Right and and I think you know, I'm going to make an ijb call about this topic too um, I think that would be really productive because I do see a level of um a renewal of social activism In a somewhat constructive framework more constructive than it has sometimes represented Yeah, and it gives me quiet hope That humanity does have a collective self preservation instinct And that there's wisdom that that instinct has to be around moving toward the good Instead of criticizing the bad And and so I I think that humanity does have that general instinct My fear is that when a pacifist Tried that understands what it's doing with the earth and with one another meets a tribe that has guns germs and steel The winner tends to be the violent one And and we're seeing right now that when the host gets taken over by a virus that's I think clearly malignant in many ways and clever in other ways um, but is serving some people in in in the host That is really hard to remove like like, you know People have been trying really hard to figure out how to how to get trump out of the presidency and he's still president last I checked um, so Sort of from your lips to god's ears, right? Like, uh, yes, I'd like much more of that, but how to me the question How You just rose gary. Oh, sorry I am I back Yeah, the question. Am I back? His voice is back Oh god, I'm still I'm still shaking here. All right. I've got too many tabs open too much too much going on. Sorry How how can groups of people that understand what they're doing survive assault from very small groups that are highly focused Who've decided they have nothing to lose? Who've decided that the path to victory is basically destructive? and that We're witnessing that right now Isis No, no, they're all right Oh that oh that okay. No, no, no forget isis isis is localized isis is not in you know, uh Alabama and Idaho and Oregon Isis is way over on some other part of the world the alt-right is everywhere and is busy Pursuing a scorched earth strategy to try to figure out how to run the table, you know politically So so did you read theocracy and change by mclean? uh, no Go to youtube and look up Nancy mclean democracy And watch some of her videos It's a very thought-provoking piece of work about how the The underlying current that's been in progress for the last 25 or 30 years To do just what you're saying Trump Trump is a distraction Yeah, um Can I summarize my my perspective in tonight? Sure Stop making sense or stop trying to make sense Sense making has to be different from the way we're making sense at the moment I'm not gonna invite anybody stop thinking everybody's gonna keep thinking and reading and I believe we should keep thinking and reading I don't think however. We should expect it to change much I think what has to change is something to do with catching the thinking And turning it on itself the koan And the koan i'm Working up is Do you want your own money? Which I think is applicable at every level and person in the society With very common consequences Um, I mean in terms of we seem to have the similar responses to it, but also that it requires When there's any evaluation of it that what we do is common is in common The common money is what it's about And that that's now here and available You know plug in kick it off. Let's go. So it's it's It's sort of it's it's a bike thing. It's the angle bird move the handlebars and let's get this in In process Love all the technical references the the uh, thinking that's gone on the books it'll be written but Time to get on a bike Everybody get on the bike all right Um, and jean, I did have nazi mclean in my brain and a bunch of comments about her book Which I'll go back and look at again. It looks like a great book Well, just go on some couple of our videos start. I want to go to youtube You know, it's another book somebody told me to read and when would I ever find time? So I go go to youtube and I find I look up nazi mclean democracy and I find a whole list of videos that range anywhere from A minute and a half to like an hour and a half So I start with the shortest ones And listen to two or three of those at 1.25 or 1.5 and and if it seems No somewhat noteworthy for some reason then I begin to pursue some of the longer ones Because you know, I have about as much time as you have And um, it seems to serve me well because I can't remember the last time I ever read a book Though I would like to schedule a future session about the future of society because I have read Well, I have followed the works of five authors That seem to have a consistent thread amongst them And and I'm developing a model of what it is that They're telling Cool great idea But I also I would say could we Could you post the topic for meeting and give us a week to Figure out what we want to bring to the table you bet Helps with the calendar last minute availability. I know sorry I was just like this was sort of a come as you are a call because I haven't had a I get it totally Um, I was going to ask also because I'm aware of rex, but I haven't really actively participated there Is there an easy way to co-mingle the availability of the conversation? So I post all the rex calls on youtube rex is kind of a membership thing that whose membership I've kind of screwed up over time so So the the calls are all available On youtube, but but getting in into that conversations a little a little bit funky. So okay Yeah, I remember that being an element of the site and I didn't have a business basis for getting in at the time That it was going on so that makes sense. Thanks jared cool um, thank you all this has been like peeking intriguing and uh, and gene you have one more thing to say Why are there more people here? I don't know. I will partly because I gave like 24 hours notice. I don't think that helped I I have another comment though relative to the rex because I think there's a lot of it's that's relevant to the ijb stuff Yeah, and so I could perhaps encourage people I'll do some youtubeing and so forth But um, perhaps Watch for topics that would be suitable to bring into this group as well Or merge in some fashion. Mm-hmm. Thanks. Thank you. Yep any other thoughts Um, thank you very very much for lending your neurons to the cause Take care all Have a great day. Thank you