 Hey Stacy. Hi. Hi. I'm surprised we're the only ones here. Are we in the right place? Wow. Yeah. Well, look at that. I went up this morning. Hello. That is, that is not, that is not Jerry. Where is Jerry? Did somebody? Hey gang. Hello. We look serious today. Greetings. Everything okay? Yeah. No, I'm, I'm being stupid about my priorities and like not making enough of revenues for the family. So that's actually a crisis. But other than that, things are good. It's nice to be retired. Holy smokes. Yeah. Yeah, this is, this is amazing. It makes an amazing difference if you don't have to worry about where the next paychecks coming from. Good program that is. In time. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Hey everyone, did everyone see the announcement to go use a spreadsheet for today for how we check in and all that. I'm going to move myself. Oops. I rebooted my machine. So I've got to reopen that most calls channel. And my spreadsheet says that class is so okay. It's funny because when we do a spreadsheet for signups. And I think few people are going to actually use the spreadsheet to sign up, but, but now we have class and parmigid. So why don't we just start that way and see if anybody else wants to sign up as we talk. Please do so. And we will use this. So the spreadsheet is not just before the call. It's actually to be used during as we move. And as we hit topics, if you come up with a breakout topic, you'd like to suggest put that in the spreadsheet as well. Hey, parmigid. Glad you're here. So, class, you've got the, you've got the con. I do. I know, I know, you do. Well, I think my, my, my big thing this week is the menus of change initiative at Harvard, combined with the calendar Institute of America. I'm going to put, should I put it in the chat or let me put it in the chat right now. In the matter most chat would be great. Yeah, where's the most chat is right here. Okay, so am I in the right place. Did I put it in the right place. You just put that in. Yes, exactly correct. Okay, good. Good. So, when you look just at the topics that are highlighted in this menus of change, I mean, you can imagine how radical this is unless you're really in the, this is, this is the leading conference to corporate America food service. And the corporate chef and the food and beverage director from Marigold hotels for Disney for McDonald's go for the annual conference. And, and when you went and what totally got me excited was the opening speech by Jeffrey sucks. And I'm not sure if this is behind the wall because I had to register for it. But see if this if this will open up here. And if you have a chance later on to look at the opening session where Jeffrey sucks was addressing it he actually was saying things like Coca Cola, Nestle Pepsi co other new cold companies of the 21st century. Wow. So food is the new food is the new cold. What is the new cold. That is amazing, you know, because when I worked at Disney. I mean one time I was, they put me onto a project of socially responsible merchandising for children right so I was, and that was international for all the same parks in France, Japan and so on. I had to partner this Coca Cola and Nestle, you know, because they are corporate alliance partners for for Disney and they're spent like 3040 million dollars each to have their products featured in the same parks. So, so this has come a really long way, you know, to to acknowledge the damage these companies are doing in the in the food system and by that with that, not just in agriculture but also in the health of the population. So that that was that was astonishing. The other thing is, yesterday I participated in a call with the global regeneration call that this David and Gil was on there as well, he's not here now. And they are forming a team to participate in the challenge that Elon Musk was just putting out, putting up a $100 billion funds to come up with ideas for carbon sequestration. And the, I mean, the only really viable thing that hasn't been done yet at scale is to change the food system and the way we we interact with nature that was also a comment that Jeffrey sucks was making. The, in his comments, he was saying that he and the academic group in general has focused on the energy systems for most of these years. And it is now coming to the forefront that it is literally impossible to meet the IPCC goals for 2050 without land use management changes, without land use changes and land use of course is primarily I mean instantly first off, agriculture, aquiforce tree before anything else. So, I think we're on a good path. But now comes the question how, how do you communicate this out. So we had the, the Institute for evolutionary leadership this week has no beta sin on and we had no discussions yesterday to prepare for a conversation we have with no beta sin tomorrow, where we were able to to formulate questions for her. And I was leading, I mean, I was like discussion lead for, for, for one group at five groups. My, my, my summary was if storytelling is, or if story is the guiding force for people to behave or to guide to to to guide our actions or the way we perceive the world around us, the way we respond to stimuli. How do we get story about climate change and environment and so on into the public in ways that make them actually respond. And, and no beta sin, and, and other thinkers have been focused on it's a one one on one thing right I mean you have to convince one person at a time. And to me, that sort of doesn't make any sense because when you look at the power of propaganda to, to inside masses of people to collaborate and also in the way that you will Ferrari defines storytelling as the clue that allows mass movements that allows millions of people to collaborate around the same idea. So the question to me then is, how do we get away from this one on one which, you know, I mean we have been doing this for many decades now trying to help people understand what climate change is all about and create a mass movement to where the mass movement becomes effectively a propaganda tool, but for the good this time you know because propaganda is neutral it's just it can be used for good and bad. It can be an interesting part of the conversation tomorrow you know how can we shift from this one on one and reach out to people and find people in their space, you know where they are. And with that comes to mind spiral dynamics right because we have to talk with people within their context that means you, we have to translate the information in ways that it becomes alive to, to people in different parts of the economy and the parts of society and, and, and find meaning and I use the example of energy, you know we have spent several decades, educating the public on turning down the service start insulating your house, driving a more energy efficient car. I mean, when you think about energy, we have a deep seated almost instinctive understanding what it is where it comes from their coal fired power plants and all of those things. We do not have that understanding when it comes to food and when it comes to the way that our, our behavior, our, our, our preferences now impact the entire environment and around us so that in a nutshell that was sort of my week so far. That's cool you have a lot of exciting stuff coming up. I put a link to Nora Bateson in my brain she's super interesting she has a whole riff on the warm data about how the context of data emerges and is really important I don't know enough about it to to explain a bunch. I'm interested in, you know, maybe at next week's check in how Nora, the conversation with Nora went and what you all learned and so forth. And then I putting right now in the matter most chat, an article about a field trip that was done on a ship. I'm out to the Pacific gyre. And I'm just being introduced to one of the guys who organized this trip, who works for the ocean plastics leadership network OPL and I'm mentioning all this because what they did, and the food systems industries have already have done this may not I don't know and I don't know the equivalent is. But what they did was they took a whole bunch of corporations and lobbying for them to like get on board this ship they had 150 people on the ship, took them out to the Pacific gyre put up but put them into like snorkels and chuck them out into the into the gyre into the plastics and a bunch of other things. And then they sat and talked and they had to bunk together so like the guy from Nestle was with the guy from green the person from Greenpeace and things like that, and apparently it was really interesting now there was nobody on board ship from big oil so no petroleum companies, but the whole trip was about plastics from, you know, at all scales and plastics are sort of far worse for the environment than anybody thought they were. It was really hard to get them out of the oceans, so one of the big movements is about how to prevent them from getting into the oceans anymore to at least not keep making the situation worse. But, but the trip sounded really interesting and I know some of the players. I learned about this from a friend Tom Gruber who was on board ship as kind of the photographer for the trip. And he's not he's a, his side dishes of photographer he's also the co creator of Siri, and he's he helped sell Siri to Apple. And I've known him for a really long time super smart guy. But he was the photographer so he and he's done some beautiful nature photography underwater photography all that kind of stuff. But turning this into a shared experience that allows for a lot of time for these people to rub against each other and get to know each other and try to solve problems together feels like a fruitful thing. I don't know if you've seen things like this happening around food or if it's interesting, but I know some of the people sort of involved in this kind of thing. Yeah. No, I, I, that hasn't happened yet. I think, I mean, plastic is one thing, you know that I was actually looking at, I forgot the word where but it is possible to change plastics composition. So it becomes the credible and reusable, and that's simply an investment decision. And these don't make the investment decisions because they're not forced to and it just costs more money. But but the plastic, the plastic problem can be solved. But it will require significant investment. And so far, now there's no will for that. I mean in the food business, but but that's that's just like you know investing and it doesn't change the business model. It's just, it's just doing something the problem in the food business is when you look at a company like McDonald's, you know they have something like 34,000 restaurants which are basically all serving the same core food. And their business model slides on an industrial form of standardization, you know where the kitchens themselves are basically assembly lines, there's nothing being cooked. They don't have a knife in there to cut the tomato, you know, it all comes in from the outside frozen. They're ready to serve the sauces are made in huge batches in factories and all of that. And so for them. The idea of sourcing fresh local food is a massive challenge to their business model. Another industrial supply chain is has vertically integrated into complementary structures, and the ownership behind those structures. You know, it's very centralized. I mean these are people that they're so beyond rich you can't even know fasten this but when you look at from Tyson foods, you know where you get the British stock or Monsanto, which make GMO to different seeds and sell the chemicals to raise them, you know, all the way through the supply chain, Cargill and then Nestle and so on. For them, you pull one part out of this chain and the entire thing crashes. Right. So that's the problem they're faced with and now that's so this is what we call I guess, creative destruction, which will which is facing the industry. You know, and they are fighting as hard as the oil industry to prevent that from happening. And one of the things I think you just described happening is that we're de skilling the whole chain. If nobody in the kitchen anymore knows how to wield a knife and do like the chef's work what they're doing is assembly, then you can't actually, you can't actually do the work of cooking in a normal way in that kitchen so the whole the whole system is has got to be reconfigured which is which is a huge challenge. And you reminded me of an article I read yesterday which I just posted in the chat about Exxon mobile, and this little activist hedge fund called engine number one. That just won three seats on mobile's board by lobbying really, really hard crossing their fingers hard during the board meeting elections, and suddenly they represented and that's really interesting as well because when you need to tip large enterprises one way to do it. You know cranky the boards are one way to do it is to get on the on their boards. And I don't know if anybody's doing that in the food system, I mean, I would love to be on Monsanto slash bear for a recap of their. That would be a great fun thing. Yeah, the problem, again, is that the, the energy sector is well understood. So this kind of activism is the outcome of decades of lobbying against these oil industries where finally there is enough public support to do something here and and the investment industry also I mean blackhawk has been supporting this guy. So there is enough support. The food industry is not fully is not understood. You know, the public does not get the link between how we how we consume food or the types of foods we consume and the damage that does in the environment and the emissions it creates on top of it, right. So, so there is a huge education gap, a communications gap with the public in this regard that makes it very difficult to. I mean, when you when you think of my name in my gosh I work for the Walt Disney company for 21 years right and by all means to them, print images everything right I mean you couldn't you could not say anything or do anything but just impinging with the public persona that the print that corporate branding was the nurturing right. And so, but still they are able to bring our child meals with Coca Cola and Nestle right, and no one catches on to that and do Kellogg cereals no for children's breakfast which is 40% sugar. And, and so, until the public begins to understand that the moment there is a breakthrough here. Disney will be one of the first companies to to exit this. This existing strategy and shift into something else but so far, the pressure simply doesn't exist. I realize I'm monopolizing a conversation I apologize anybody else with thoughts for for Claus and where he is in the food system, and all of that. Thank you for joining that and Eve thanks for joining us. He's a dear old friend of mine, and we're just doing a check in and today we changed our protocol a little bit we put a spreadsheet up for signing up for checking and usually I just sort of go through the gallery view myself and just kind of pick my way through trying to find people who didn't get a chance to check in previous week and put them up first and stuff like that but we're moving it around, and then we're going to do 45 minutes of plenary and then break up into breakouts and I'm just going to ping Hank to make me a host because we're in somebody else's zoom not mine. So I can figure that out but I'm doing that on the side, and the second person in the batting order for Q is project. Hi. What, what do you want me to do like update or. Sure, what sort of what any things have been happening for you and questions, you know for us to put in front of us or anything like that. Okay, and I'll just do a quick comment. Following classes. Information that's really really interesting. I don't like football at all. In fact, I'm not a sporty person in any way shape or form, but it's interesting. It's an interesting observation that in the UK. It was a footballer who she'd somebody who stood up for the fact that children were starving in the UK, because of, you know, the way the economy is going and food banks. And he he's actually put pressure on the government to put policies in place so that children can be fed. So that's a really interesting thing to see. And also, it was a footballer who during one of the interviews, took the bottle of coke off from the camera view and chose what glass of water to drink. So, yeah, you know maybe football's got a place in the world after all as far as I'm concerned. Let me maybe talk a little bit about this. Where's the book. Okay, so here's a book called a Lucas plan. And it's by a lady called Hillary Wainwright, and somebody else that I haven't met called David well, Dave Elliot. So in the 70s. Lucas aerospace was like facing redundancies and all the rest of it because of the financial situation. And Hillary came up with a Lucas plan which is all about instead of everyone losing their jobs, why don't we like try and find as a community, what can they build that's going to be good and all the rest of it and help society. And basically, this book is all about how management and political will stop that process from happening. And like the conglomerates and corporations got their way, and so on. So, where I live in Coventry, a similar thing is happening now, but with the Rolls Royce workers. So management want them to lose 10% of their pay, lose their kind of job security and then after that the whole thing will be sold off and shut down and probably stuff's going to be starting to be made in China for much cheaper like they're not worried about global warming they don't want to think about anything green for another 10 years and so no you're battling up against this kind of mindset. So what we've been doing is trying to support the workers in Rolls Royce. And on the third of July, we're going to have a contingent come down, all the way from Glasgow which is miles away from where we are, just so that we can have like a workshop and a chat about let's talk about, like, the Lucas report mark two, and having learned from all the things that could go wrong. You know, maybe markers Rashford yes thank you for Kennedy he was the footballer. Yeah, so this is quite an exciting kind of project that's happening at grassroots so we're going to see what kind of plan we can come up with and more importantly like who can we find that's going to stand behind it because until we get people understanding the significance of these kind of everyday things that are going on and putting their foot down and saying, you know, it makes no sense, you know we're behind the workers and so on, and things aren't going to change so I'll let you know. One, one quite interesting thing is I've managed to get my local good water which is like a Sikh temple religious community. So they, they've agreed to give us a room because they've got an educational kind of set of buildings. I'm hoping that that can be a way to for the message to reach down to kind of ordinary people, but you know, we'll see how it goes. So that's one of the things happening in my world. I love that. That's a really generative thing you just put on the table and I just wanted to, instead of me jumping in which I'm, which, which I'm about to because I've got a lot of things I wanted to ask and say about what you put on. I'm going to go quiet for a second to see who else would like to, who else was like would like to comment on this Eric it looks like. Well, not directly on this. Sorry. Maybe it's better if you comment first because I have a question of something that happened in three meetings before. Oh, okay, I'll come back to you Eric. Yeah, I just want to echo the sentiment around soccer and how it relates to the work I think with the videos that we've been talking about as well and talk about how that inspires change and kind of as close as mentioned a couple times getting young people and getting influencers involved. Like I know right when I was a huge star, but that single act. I think it dinged Coke stock stock value by $4 billion. It was a pretty substantial impact so like getting people who already interested about these topics involved in these conversations I think would go a long way in making change. Obviously that's that's a known thing and then just on the, on the UK side. Someone recently mentioned the transition network. It's not too big in the US right now but it's a group that's fairly active in the UK and I think that could be another group for us to try and learn a bit from, but thanks very much. That's awesome. Anyone else on this topic. So let me a couple things I had the Lucas plan in my brain but only the little, the littlest tip of it but but what you were saying was was triggering a whole bunch of other memories. That, for example, most famines are economic. They're not calamities like like communities store grain they say communities groups of people together do their best to save for crises. The great Bengal famine. Like there was plenty of rice in the granaries there's plenty of food around nobody had money to buy it, and the British would not release the food. And insane numbers of people died of salvation. I'm reading a book called I mentioned this I think on last week's last week's call it's called the anarchy. And it's about the taking over of India by the French and the British first it turns out first the French started getting militaristic than the British. And in its detail. It's absolutely fascinating. It's like I had I had in my mind, a really broad brush, massive sweep story, and this book is helping me at least put smaller strokes on it and still I know the story and I know authority on this topic. But the degree to which humans have got run contrary to what's good for humans over and over and over again in the world is astonishing. That never mind slavery never mind all the other you know systemic racism, all the other kinds of things that are going on so. So we ignore really interesting alternative forms of organization. And if they require things like land reform class you're like, you know land management and land use is really important in making progress on climate change. Yes, and that is just this gigantic political hot potato that we don't seem to be able to conquer because the crisis is not critical enough and then and disaster is not actually happening. Disaster is not actually happening to force people off the land or to make the land worthless, you know, so that nobody cared that it got refactored or reused or something like that. It's weird humans are terrible at this collective and politics tends to Trump. If you look at the word advisedly politics tends to Trump, our ability to cooperate to do things that might actually be good for humanity in the long run project project that you want to jump back in. There's the farmers crisis going on in the Punjab right now, where they're trying to take over the use of the land that the farmers have been doing and people, you know, they're not getting it or they're not getting it. The current farmers rebellion is that there was a government subsidy program that guarantee the minimum price for their grain, and there was a bill in Indian Congress to get rid of that subsidy which would mean throwing the farmers into the open market, where, and I have a thought in my brain that basically says that small farmers have been under siege worldwide forever. Like you don't want to be a peasant almost anywhere on earth, because you are the people that everybody rings dry. And, and so I think the farmers are like that we're going to be naked and we're all, you know, this is going to be cataclysmic but it's interesting that they're they're defending a government protection system that was there for them, which was actually helping them maintain actually helping them sort of stay in place. That's my understanding of the crisis. I think the propaganda is probably going to show the government in a good light. One of the things that I've noticed about governments is that they will extend a biscuit, you know, in place of a meal, but then they'll take that biscuit away quite soon afterwards. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. Trying to be thoughtful about all this. The Rolls-Royce workers probably should not be making cars, which means that their jobs should go away. The secondary form means pushing current use like cows off in order to grow food. All these have people who lose out in the transition process. And we need to do something to protect people who are losing their livelihood and place to live through the transition. Mostly, but I don't see any other way. I don't think people are resisting because they don't understand it. I think they're resisting because they don't see how they're going to make a living in any proposed future. So better to just hold on. So we've got to find a way to protect people who are losers in the transition. Which, weirdly, one of my arguments about white privilege is that to white people who have a lot of privilege, all of these movements out there from Black Lives Matter to Me Too, to everything else, feel like loss, loss of status, loss of privilege, loss of position, possibly loss of job, who knows, you know, they just feel like loss. And so your general statement, Doug, I completely agree with is that to cause things to shift and change, we need to take care of the people who will be losing things. And I don't know what take care of means. I mean, I'm really interested in what take care of means in the context because one approach is, well, let's just give everybody a basic income and have done with it. You know, and there are lots of other sorts of things that might come up. So Klaus, Klaus and then Shimon. I had to respond to what Doug was just saying, you know, the business climate leaders isn't going to ask me to put together a webinar on biofuels. And partner with a guy who used to be the CEO of a biofuel company, an SNI fuel company. Well, I dived into the research and we had to back off because when you look at the statistics currently there's 38 million acres of corn being corn for biofuel that's the size of the state of Iowa. And that takes resources for water because some of that is being irrigated with the Ogallala Act River, which is being depleted. So in 2022, the current mandate, or the current support structure for the USDA for the corn ethanol industry is going to expire. And this will be a huge political fight, obviously, because basically these corn ethanol farmers, which are huge farmers by operating 10, 20,000 acres of land are going to be faced with no more government subsidies. So, so I was saying why would we step into this mess, right, and there's a no win political scenario there as a why don't we shift course and instead focus on structural changes that happen in the economy so for example, we can say that trend lines on water, you know, water becoming such a precious source will mean that we cannot grow any kind of food crop to make biofuel, because it nothing that impedes with the food supply but on the other hand, there is this exciting research in the European Union that has commissioned the first biomass fuel, a biomass plant that converts biomass which is a waste product that goes into the dump and creates methane gas, and use that instead to create alcohol for jet fuel. Right, so there, so then you have algae, which is being developed as a source for biofuels. So why don't we just like in the energy sector, the cold plants shut down but then you do wind and solar instead right so why don't we show how the economy is shifting into a direction where some things will just have to go away but other things are opening up and and and help people see the future, you know help people understand where the economy is drifting so to maintain a sense of support and positivity. Thank you. I'm she moved and Eric and Stacy. Just in response to a couple of the comments that were made and then it's sort of connected to what I'm working on right now. A couple of things that I've noticed actually the Wall Street Journal had an article about the SEC actually requiring major companies to report on their environmental liability, moving forward. I think that's been a tremendous game changer in other industries and can be environmentally as well. So in addition to investor active investors joining boards, that requirement with people following up on it can be really important. Another thing that I've been following which is also relevant to this conversation is that insurance companies are starting to question how to ensure some of those corporations that could potentially have liability because of the way they're impacting the environment and things of that kind. Again, pushing those organizations through either the insurance companies or SEC would be very important. The point that I really want to sort of like share or the what I'm working on which is very relevant to what's being discussed about workers moving forward is actually I presented last week at the international conference on salutogenesis. My work on the opioid epidemic. I find that what's happening in the States for those who are not familiar with open epidemic is essentially a canary in the coal mine kind of thing of what's going to happen when people are going to start losing work communities when they're going to disintegrate. There's going to be loss of organizing institutions for people to make meaning out of their lives and invariably, we're going to probably face bigger and more diverse what I think case and anger is called the visas or death of despair and in their book, death of despair and the role of capitalism. I think it's like a little roadmap. Anyways, I've been actually working on the issue of the opiate epidemic which is also actually an issue in Scotland when they close some of the coal mines and started sort of like focusing on how to make people have meaning and purpose in their lives. So I've been focusing on it for the last five years, and July, this July, I'm actually going to make more public, my work on the Citizens Commission and other ways to sort of like engage with the opiate epidemic in a way that's meaningful for people. So, anyone's interested can share more on that. Thank you, Simon. And if you can put some links if you have an article, you know, posts or videos or other things that are the result of your work, we'd love to see them and link them up. Thank you. Eric and Stacy. It's not really vaguely related, but it's like a more overarching thing as a associative thinking with what I heard say. I only recently heard about the VCO, I don't know what the VCO is, it's a trade organization started in Holland, and what surprised me. This is the Dutch East Indies trading company, right? Yeah, yeah. I never knew how powerful, how big it was. Really? It was apparently as big as all, like if you're relatively speaking, the amount of money that went through it, it's as big as our current corporations put together, our biggest corporations like Apple, all the big ones together. It was huge, and so much money went through them, and in about a few hundred years they were bankrupt, they were declared bankrupt, and their policies and ways of dealing with natives with people was just mainly slavery and just taking whatever they could and selling it somewhere for incredibly high margins like spices and other commodities, and just this amount of what strikes me there is the amount of aggression that the whole economic system has, and it just does what it does. Whenever it can do, and it's kind of forced, I wonder what is like the, there's, right now there's like corporate social responsibility, there is taxes, there is also in Holland, now there is the government didn't do enough for climate change that can be challenged. But I wonder like what is the force that can really turn those bigger companies to make, to really change and shift their perspectives on how to deal with all of it in a more ethical way. So I wonder if ethical taxes is the way, is that the strongest force, or is it these liabilities, or when will there be like a big enough leverage for the most fundamental changes to take place, and that's like an open thought that I have, like what's really the strongest thing that we can have to change the attitudes. Eric, thank you. I think, I think you're voicing nicely a way of looking at the major questions that many of us are looking at. It's like, what lever do we push on to change the system toward being better for humanity. It's like, really, where's the lever. In the back of my mind, like, whenever there is a business opportunity, it will be taken so it's a very strong force and aggression will always be there like, so how do you then push up against the pressure of the opportunity. I think I've mentioned this before, but one of my favorite peanuts cartoons has Lucy getting her test in school, and it says explain World War Two, and then the line below it says use both sides of the page if necessary. Because this is a giant, giant question. This is really, this is really a question about what it will how do we organize the society for the next couple hundred years right. And, but I wonder if there's like one large leverage point that's maybe also a question that's like with all of this. And I'm ambivalent on that I'm ambivalent on that because Milton Erickson was a hypnotist therapist back in the Great Depression, who was known for basically inducting people into trance and then offering their unconscious some alternative behaviors and then he had some people curious yet people that he would just do one one induction with and then they would change their behaviors. And I've been looking for what's the equivalent for society, and I'm land, and I'm landing on, if we could convince people that we are actually interdependent humans sharing a large home called the earth, instead of rugged individuals who's who are competing against other people in households for scarce resources, if we can cause that flip a bunch of other stuff tumbles. And yet, I don't think that's the only place and I think one of the conclusions we're coming to in conversations like this, you know, GM is, we need to push everywhere all the time together and one of those is going to in retrospect, be the lever that sort of tipped us. Doug and then I wanted to go to Stacy and then we're at time to hit the breakouts. You're proposing that people change their minds. My view is that that doesn't make any difference. It's not about thoughts. It's about actions. And how we get from thoughts to actions is our sticky point. I think that's one of the next couple sentences like do you have a, what's your favorite path to get from thoughts to actions because everybody's frozen on this. There are, there are hundreds and hundreds of entities organizations white papers proposals manifestos to try to get people to do the right thing. And yet, here we are. Well, I don't think we can persuade them with thoughts, I think that we're going to see systems collapsing, and people are going to gather in the street and talk about what to do about it. So Eric recommends putting LSD in the water, which are still assignment I mean it's not more natural, right. Sounds reasonable. So just to go to what Eric was saying, and this might sound naive but what would it look like if corporations were taxed based on how many people they employed, and the proportions between the highest earners and the lowest earners. Oh my God is their tax rate varied by the differential between highest the lowest paid. So that was that's something I think you could get most people behind that idea. There's a wrinkle to that, which is that for a lot of executives they really don't care about the cash compensation the thing we all call salary, they really only care about the options packages because those are so gigantic. In comparison, and your options package value varies wildly with stock actual price in the market, so that those numbers like are all over the place but the payoff is so gigantic. So if you could wrap in the share of ownership of the enterprise into that measure I think that would help a whole bunch, because what we have is companies that are being managed for the benefit of the few largest shareholders who turn out to be the the executives who got these monster stock packages. Yeah, and I'm also really focused on the numbers of people employed, like I was reading about that. I forgot how many billion dollar business, they employed 500 people. That's crazy. But anyway what I that's not what I wanted to say what what my comment was really about you know we've been bringing it back to GM and what we could do, because I have been thinking yesterday that it would be really interesting. Going towards the videos if we took people that were interested in soil and food and farming, and paired them in a call with those people that are working on economic things like for example, could the template that Kevin's using in his project be used in farming communities. And just as a group brainstorming, could we come you know just, you know just an imaginary and type of thing, could we come up with something that would really be interesting, and a value to all the people in that work group. So we're driving where I'm hoping we're steering our GM, which is to have sort of project interest, we were sort of calling them quests we're trying to find a language for it, but but how do we focus people together and then, how do we find the resources in the world that are really useful and really good, and then make them even more usable and visible to everyone else. So, if there's a template for Kevin's projects for funding for people who don't have a rich, you know rich rich family and uncle. We have replicable and usable and adaptable locally so that it's not a blueprint that has to be followed exactly but it's a series of tools that people can use. And I think also, let's then leave experts at hand who can be hired in to do those things and I think a big piece of the new economy is people who discover what their skills are and are available worldwide to provide those skills for compensation for everybody around And I'm hoping that'll work so I think we need to prototype more of that and get more legs under us to get that down. Well, so the last thing I just want to say is, let's, it starts right here with us, like just, like let's just try it, just with us and get the people dynamics worked out. I agree. And Phil, we got, we got a work cut out your next. And to that point, in terms of what we can do. I think, obviously, if we could bring in certain levels of taxes certain kind of governmental reforms that's a great step but for us as individuals, and for those that have organizations. I think I'm in groups ago GM are a great place to start kind of coalitions or co-ops of organizations and people that only agree to work with people that are following certain standards or certain. And what kind of would face the outline with the pay scale. There's things like the B Corp certification that kind of a carrot way of doing that like you become a B Corp you can you can only have so much disparity between the highest and lowest paid people you like you have to have that to be a B Corp but maybe if we can create some sort of functioning co-op or coalition of people that holds certain standards in terms of regenerative practices, eco friendly practices that employ employee friendly practice. I think that's a great first step that we can actually take just to put that out there. And we're I think we're we're slowly to slowly moving in that direction. I mean we have the generative commons conversations on Wednesdays that are trying to figure out what is the set of agreements and can we can be glued together a series of other umbrella ideas about how to work together in this new environment. And then we've got clauses leading conversations into how do we rethink the food system and we're trying to figure out who runs something that turns into an action oriented venture there. There are only 11 of us which I don't know if that is good for breakouts or if we should just continue in plenary and keep going and I think it depends a bit on whether there are a couple topics that we would like to split into the next person who was in the queue for plenary but we were sort of out of what was going to be plenty of time as Mark Tebow who had to drop off the call. I love he put his name is as name it as Mark El Condor Tebow. I think it's great. And we had question we in the breakout topics we had spiral dynamics what specifically what does spiral dynamics tell us about storytelling to update and look at existing quests. So one study Greek classical literature is it a good idea or a bad idea and also is what culture going too far all interesting questions. And then which pressing issues to go to and focus on through systems and systems thinking etc etc those are the things that were up for breakouts so should we should we do to break out so should we stand plenary raise your hand if you think breakouts to breakouts. So cool is that you're raising your hand yeah you're raising your ritual hand. So that's three for breakouts are kind of staying in plenary wins the moment. And I think this is our warm up for doing breakouts. So why don't we just do this again next Thursday. And then I think we'll have, we'll have more breakouts and set them up and go do it again. The topics I just named or anything else where would it would be it would be nice to talk about a topic now rather than doing the normal chicken route. So which of these topics sounds really good John go ahead. I don't know if this is this feasible, but it's a it's a kind of a spin out from a couple of the earlier conversations we had this week. The global frame on it would be how can we replace or repair their autocracy. If that's too hard. We could narrow it. There is a proposition from a philosopher Chicago. She doesn't use this word but it's kind of like non bonnet binary autocracy in the sense of she she has this way of saying well you know bad things happen to people that's luck. Good things happen to people. That's more luck than we think. But we you know she wanted she wanted some kind of a thing that didn't blame people or buffered the blame for negativity but enhanced the reinforcement for for doing something that was contributory. That was a very vague philosophical position that she outlined in a and it's I think it's in the New York Times or no it's it's Eric as recline the podcast. You know I like where she was trying to go but I didn't think she got there. And I don't know whether we could but you know is there anything we could do that would that would replace or reform meritocracy. Love the topic also and just want to know what what does everybody think about meritocracy before we before we try to fix the reform it is meritocracy or a good thing or a bad thing in your head. Because there's a lot of kind of baggage around the word so anybody. Well it seems to me that meritocracy goes along with complexity and expertise. And we built a system that really requires a meritocracy. We'd have to have a different kind of system. The Greeks had the fascinating thing in Athens of drawing lots to fulfill bureaucratic roles. And the result was the population had to be educated to fulfill those roles, and the roles had to be simple enough they could be performed by ordinary people. So the interplay between the structure and meritocracy seems to be very tight, and you can't deal with one without the other. So now the Greek cleteritarian of the Lincoln in our chat. That was so is that merit. Generally is that meritocracy is sort of meritocracy or I thought meritocracy was, you're better at this so you should do this thing for us all or something like that and that sort of tradition, or the drawing by a lot of positions was not actually meritocratic, but rather I totally agree that the Greek example is an anti meritocracy approach. They were trying to sort of run the run the jobs around everybody so that anybody might have that job. But the jobs had to be simpler. Yes, because anybody might have that job. I totally agree. I was going to say there's a quote about what do you think about civilization I think Gandhi or someone said yes it you know it's a good idea. And I think the same about meritocracy, because at the moment, you know you are rewarded for things that I question as a as these the qualities we really want to reward people for. You know, intelligence is seen as fitting in a box, and it's like how much you can remember, rather than actually, you know, what are the things that matter to you, and what are the things that you as as you as a unique human are good at and can contribute to the world. And once we sort out those issues. Maybe, you know we're going to get closer to some kind of a world where our contributions actually matter. And I do believe that the world will be a much simpler world because we have made things that don't need to be complicated, really complicated. We have made things simple like finance that actually, you know, that they're not complicated and we've made them look really complicated finance could be very, very simple, and it wouldn't need a huge amount of focused effort from to understand various aspects of finance to all come together and figure out what are the elements that are making it not work. And so, what are the elements that could streamline it better, and then you could put in place like a systems dynamic thing about what's going to react on which bit. And so what, so I think we've got all the skills and we've got all the knowledge it's just getting the right people together. And you know I've spoken to people that have got solutions around investment, for example, but they just need like a protected space and place where they can think through all of that and I'm sure that class as well you know if you got together with people in a protected place and space, and we formed bridges between all these different very clever people at Novesta, because we've got the technology to do one of those things. In principle, it's not beyond our capabilities. Thank you for, in particular, your note about the sort of complexification of stuff that could be much simpler. That's really that crystallize a few things in my head, I appreciate that. And I agree with you. Let's go Stacy clouds me Eric Eve. I was just going to say that I think one of the things that would have to shift is the value that we place on certain roles for the lack of value that we place on certain roles. For example, musicians, every musician I know, except you know that doing full time, they're poor. They work for tip jars, and yet they provide a really valuable service. So if we're going to use a system of meritocracy, we have to place a little bit more value on some of the roles that we haven't always placed value on. So the word merit, right, it's merit is kind of a form of value and value judgment so it varies itself right in there. Yeah, on the surface meritocracy is of course the most logical way for a society to organize itself, you know the brain talent to the forefront, the Chinese society is actually probably the most advanced in in a meritocracy. Now they have this annual competition as to who gets to go to college. And, and you see stories from a from a small village that is honored because one of theirs won the competition and gained access to a university education. But when you look at and so so the idea of bringing of finding and and promoting the most talented people in the society, you know, is, it's just very powerful and I think the Chinese are going to run away from us because that is a 2000 year old habit that the Chinese developed there. But meritocracy, and this is what that is also mentioning is embedded in a bigger system in a larger system and so the first thing that comes to mind is access to education, access to childhood development, you know, developing the potential of a person. And that falls instantly into this hierarchy, you know, of existing wells perpetuating itself, and, and, and concentrating. So it requires a rigorous political system and structure like the Chinese have developed and the Vietnamese and Asian cultures in particular. But then on the other hand, when you look at every major innovation every major breakthrough in the last in the nine in the 20th century came from the United States really. So, so how does that fit together then, where, where, where we have these amazing advances of course. So I mean it's a really complex issue that that has has pros and cons but I believe meritocracy at the end of the day is is the way for a society to organize itself. So let me jump in and then Eric, and in particular I think because what you just said class fits what I wanted to put in the conversation. Which is, I read a book called the institutional revolution, I mentioned that once or twice longer ago on our DM calls and it's about the pre modern British aristocracy and institutions they have, and it's really interesting because it turns out that the British aristocracy raised stupid children, like, like, but if you were an aristocrat, you did not teach your child the modern equivalent of an MBA or anything so that they could run the family businesses. They learned Latin and Greek, they did the grand tour of Europe, they were gentle people, mostly gentle men women didn't get an education then. At a premature like like obeying the laws of the aristocracy of inheritance was primary and you could be a moron and a cruel beast. But if you were first in line you've got all the power all all of everything including the seat in parliament and everything that belong to your, your parent, your dad. And the British Navy was like the aristocracy you inherited naval posts. The army was not you could purchase a commission in the British army. The reason for this was trust at a distance. In the army you can send observers who stand on the hill and look at the bar at the battle and you can tell who's shirking their duty you can tell who turned away in the Navy. Everybody's off like, you know, on an ocean far away in a storm fighting, and they can sort of see what's happening in battle but you don't know you can't really send an observer was going to make it back. Everybody needed to know that when, when Sir Walter rally was halfway around the world doing this thing that he was acting on behalf of the crown, and not on his own interest. And so they that the author of this book points the term hostage capital that the aristocracy were basically hostages to the crown, because they had no useful skill. If they did something terrible and committed treason they'd be beheaded. No big deal you're done and then the title might be taken away. If you did something, you know, bad otherwise if you were disloyal to the crown and were cut away, you then had a really expensive estate in the middle of nowhere, a circle of friends who wouldn't talk to you ever on pain of whatever. No useful skills, etc etc so you were hostage to the entire system, and the expenses you had to keep up for your state and the parties in the hunting with the hounds kept you trapped in economically trapped in the system etc etc. And that was to create loyalty, so that everybody was actually acting toward the crown, and this system which is not meritocratic in the least, gives us rule Britannia and 200 years of domination of like the global economy, and some weird way. So, and idiots, idiots were in charge of battalions and corporations and this kind of thing because inheritance, right, and the monarchy is very it's all about inheritance and I don't understand monarchies like I'm like, why through luck of never mind. Anyway, finding our way to meritocracy is really hard because we've had long standing systems that are completely contrary to meritocracy that we're used to that we defend that whatever whatever. And again, we're back to the earlier part of the conversation of, if somebody is somebody of privileges ox is going to be Gord they're going to do everything in their power to keep that ox safe, and to protect the ox or the golden goose that lays the golden eggs or what have you. It's really, really hard to change the systems, and they tip sometimes dramatically like, you know, China and Mao, and then when they tip sometimes they commit further atrocities so collectivization, you know what what have you, Mao probably killed 20 million people. Sorry to keep riffing but Mao has the for pest campaign. We're going to get rid of rats sparrows. And since I forget what the four tests are, it turns out that sparrows are really important in the ecosystem, and they were really effective nationwide and killing off sparrows. And then all of a sudden they had locust they have insects all over the place that weren't being by the sparrows, they had famine, all created by asinine policies created by idiots. In Russia you have Lysenko is the idea that we're just going to ignore statistics because the statistics aren't really working in our favor so we're going to get rid of the scientists and statisticians and put everything in charge of the of the morons. And that didn't work really well. So, so the largest countries on earth have pursued idiotic policies on all these fronts for lots of human history. And I would love to be part of the insurgency that inserts a new operating system and new set of principles into civilization. And that takes us toward what class was describing what that was describing, you know, what partners describing how you know how do we do this. So, sorry, long screen but Eric and then Phil. So many things I want to say about this, I'm trying to be brief, I guess, we have, we were not doing breakouts so we have another 22 minutes. So, the best angle at this for me I guess is like, I wrote a governance model which is an alternative to the UN or a compliment. And about three weeks, which was a crazy ridiculous thing to do. But then, what I thought about, okay, how to deal with who gets a vote who doesn't get a vote. I did end up with meritocracy and then I heard also about people saying these criticisms about meritocracy were the issues. And then I understood, okay, what is the difference and probably it's going to be ethical merit and social merit if you put that in front of merit that might change a lot but who determines the ethics and the quality of the ethics and that's really difficult to determine. And I would say a mind like yours Jerry might really help because you've got like this multitude of understandings of system social system social dynamics. And it is very complex and that's one of the big issues we like simplification of course because that makes our lives more simple and makes systems run more smoothly but then when it comes down to ethics. And that's not such a simple level I would say, and then I, how I set it up is the more ethical organization is the more power they get from the beginning on and they can enter the more ethical they proved to be, and then gradually enter. And there's a monitoring body that could be that could be anyone adding their suggestions or criticism and and anyone can monitor so it doesn't depend on their merits, but then there's another. But then one of the top organizations or parts of their organizations is the ethics and activity, which is about in social changes, those are two very fundamental aspects I would say. And then other aspect is, you need neutral people who can look at the big picture, take a step back and see, is this running in a proper way is this according to ethics. And this neutrality often isn't understood, I would say, there's not that many people that understand how to be neutral. Like your opinions, they make part of how you make decisions and I know I can be opinionated but also know how to step back and really put my own opinions on the background and really completely omit them from my judgment and how I made decision on how I'm open to others. So I guess, yeah, there was a few important stuff. And I think the last part that I want to say is, I think there is not a clear distinction between what I would kind of call popularocracy and meritocracy. Someone who is popular doesn't necessarily have merit. It seems they have merit and they get married because people like them, but that's not how it really works. To make that distinction more clear, to have just some books of really good writers that would write simple principles, which indicate what is good merit, what's bad merit, let's say or what's good quality merit and what's bad quality merit could change a lot I would say if these books get spread. So that's my take on it. I love that era, in so many ways and at the end you reminded me of the introduction to Danny Kahneman's book, thinking fast and slow is Kahneman right. Yeah. And he says, look, I'm on the Israeli Defense Forces officer qualification team, and we watch these high pressure simulations where officer candidates are put through all kinds of crap. And then we vote on which ones should make it through into officer thing and etc. And we I've been doing this for a decade and we did studies, we started to see who actually turned out to be a good leader in the field. And it's not that there was zero correlation, zero statistical correlation between our choices of the future officers who are going to be awesome, and who actually performed well in the field. Yet we didn't get rid of that committee and we keep doing that work. And so the intro to his book I'm like, holy shit. And what you just said, Eric is like that's sort of the difference between a popular bureaucracy and a meritocracy it's one of the differences like that person looks like a leader and they yell that the right time and that everybody followed them and maybe that was good and, and maybe that wasn't good for us and so how to know like upfront, what's actually good for humans, and how it's going to work as a is a complicated systems upon systems kind of issue. And yet there I think is a lovely, lovely question to try to tackle. And sorry, so I had to put that in before turning over the mic to you. No worries at all. It was great great insight and I like I'd love to read your, your work on that alternative alternative based on the UN model. And one thing that really kind of sticks with me with meritocracy, like, as cause mentioned China is probably the closest to a successful meritocracy because they have such a clear societal structure societal kind of understanding and definition. That being said, China is one of the world leading producers of greenhouse gases and emissions carbon emissions. I guess one thing I want to make sure we focus on is stepping back from kind of a Western model of what marriage should be and I think everyone is is kind of along those lines but like looking at communities. And in terms of simplifying looking at indigenous communities that are living in a much kind of more regenerative way with each other and with the planet. That may seem simple and maybe not worth merit to some people but I feel like those systems are a much more. It's a difficult transition but the direction we should be moving in is, is that way and outside of the, going back to the societal piece. I think the kind of national identities are diminishing a bit like there is this kind of raising digital society digital culture that transcends borders. So, how we define that society and what, what, what merit means to that society I think is crucial. Oh shoot I just lost the thought I had, because I typed something else in for notes that's what happens when you try to pay attention to anything else. Just this whole notion about what is Oh I know what I was going to say. Thank you. I guess I'm thinking myself. In some cultures, I think in indigenous cultures and I've seen this completely as a naive outsider. Merit is earned through wisdom which is earned through simply aging and participating in community and having been through a lot of stuff, and absorbing ancient wisdom and wisdom along the way. So that's a great form of merit and there are many cultures in which elders are revered or have authority period. There are some cultures in which elders simply have to say and nobody gets to say anything else which like is a is a breakdown of society. And in Western society we so prized youth, and we've so marginalized and deprecated elders that they have almost little little of that role, even though as I glance over toward DC I will note that everybody were angry at in DC is like over 70. Like everybody, including like, you know, the justice of the SCOTUS that people would like to have retire right now so that they can be replaced with somebody's not over 70 etc etc it's like, these are all like older folk running the place which is kind of really strange. So other thoughts on this topic. Accept your meeting. You're trying to find your zoom window there we go. I was, I had a weird comparison in my mind, where is popular, we see a meritocracy, they're different in a way also like Machiavelli is the one that thought the means justify the end. That's how he's often summarized but actually he was thinking about power. He's one of the best thought leaders or philosophers about power. And he's most misunderstood of someone having really bad ideas, what he did, he analyzed how does power really work. He went to the depths of it. And then it's summarized as, Oh, it's that guy, he thinks that yen justifies the means he's really bad guy, philosophically speaking. It's a weird comparison doesn't really hold but there's something about how depth often is lost in house or a certain term is being seen. Like meritocracy is not really meritocracy I think also same maybe with democracy, we currently have is that really democracy, because democracy was created in Athens when there were like a few hundred thousands people that couldn't vote it's a completely different system than billions of people voting through supposed democracy. Well, like India has the world's largest elections, you know, India has the world's largest elections by far, like the number of humans who whose vote has to be collected in India is astonishing. Absolutely, like staggering. And then the distance between that vote and really affecting policy is much different than in essence, when it was much smaller community, everybody could have their say, actually could affect policy. It's not possible anymore so I wonder is that actually still democracy. And by the way, two things about democracy one is, there are so many weird things about American democracy that I don't think we're very democratic at all. Although we hold ourselves up as the world's most democratic country like they were founded on democracy of course, except all the things that are being done right now to prevent democracy from actually working are examples of how broken it is and how we break it on purpose. Jonathan, do you want to jump in? Yes, thank you. Just wanted to say, obviously this thing is big and complex. We're not going to resolve it, not only in this meeting, but probably in several meetings, I mean, fix meritocracy or decide our opinion on meritocracy. But a strategy is to peel off areas of activity in areas of rights in areas of so on. So an interesting one is driving. So not everyone can have a driver's license. You know, there's a floor. If you do certain things, no, you're below the floor, you know, but a lot of people can have a driver's license. So that's an interesting kind of thing. You know, look, there's a floor capability and you got to and you repeatedly get retested on that floor capability or else, you know, you lose certain privileges. Another interesting thing, which I know you're, you'll be up on, Jerry, is traffic circles versus traffic signs. You know, Europe's much better at using traffic circles than we are. We put up a traffic circle and then we put stop signs on it because we think, you know, you don't trust. But the cool thing about traffic circles is, hey, guess what? You're going to have to pay attention here. We're going to trust you, you know, to do that. And lo and behold, the personal story about this is when I developed a relationship with someone who was Swiss and I had to start spending time in Switzerland, I had learned right away that Swiss drivers are much better drivers because they have to be. They're on a two lane twisty mountain road with cows coming across it. You know, if they were much better drivers, they're, well, they, those get eliminated, you know, not, they don't lose their license. They lose their, you know, so that it was just interesting, that whole interaction between the requirements, the floor, the signaling system, you know, the feedback system from how does this work? And we have grossly under optimized how we do that. This has implications for how we define guild journeymen, how we define school, how we define education. Even, even things like the, the economy and cryptocurrency to stretch. But I mean, you know, that idea of let's not try to fix the whole thing. Let's try to do post capitalism. Let's have this fiat area over here that's operating kind of traditionally badly. But let's not try to completely replace it. Let's set something else up over here that partially replaces some of the functions so we can have a laboratory and so we can cross fertilize between the two, because no conception, no matter how well we brainstorm, we'll fix it up front. You're also lighting another little bulb in my head, which is that meritocracy could mean. Let's find a really equitable fair way to pick our next leaders who will tell us what to do. Yeah. And one of the things that's happening right now is sort of large scale decentralization of everything. And what you just reminded me of is my own thesis about design from trust inspired by people like Hans Mondermann who did traffic calming and a bunch of other people who said what if we trust humans. And the result of systems designed from trust is that everybody is respond co responsible for the outcome of the system. What happens in a system designed from trust Wikipedia is designed from trust. So we all, you know whoever's contributing to Wikipedia or reverting bad changes or whatever is in is doing the work of making Wikipedia better. And that's, that's sort of not a meritocracy that's just like a doocracy which is somebody's coined that term already. It's like whoever did the best did the work and kept doing the work and, and in the middle of all that the rules of the system are essential. And to go back to Wikipedia, the rules of the system for Wikipedia emerged from Wikipedia's own work and are a series of things like neutral point of view, no original work. There's a bunch of kind of presets for how Wikipedia works that are, you know, are now time tested but we're new 20 years ago when they were busy like birthing Wikipedia that are very Wikipedia specific in many cases because it's supposed to be an encyclopedia so it's supposed to be neutral. And that's interesting but you don't borrow that rule if you're not trying to do neutrality, but but I think that how communities devolve authority and responsibility for the work of what the community is up to, and then build up their operating principles is really an essential thing to understand also. And I think maybe studying that and finding out who's done really good work on that. And I would like to work in the world is that we're not trying to like reinvent meritocracy or democracy or how these things work but there's just a ton of people out there in the world who've been inventing them. Let's find the best of. Let's make them much easier to implement and use and let's popularize them in ways that we don't have an engine to popularize yet, but, but if we do our work right, our resource becomes really useful and people be like, I need to figure out a group process because we're stuck. Let's go to the thing that OGM built as a resource and that will help us get through class over to you. Yeah, another term that sort of fits into this meritocracy idea is the technocrat. And there has been an attempt to insert technocrats into government because they know what needs to be fixed and they know how to fix it. But then that hasn't worked so well really either because the overarching direction, the social structure of the system is often overlooked by the technocrat and technocrats most often operate in silos because now there are specialists in a specific field, but they don't fully see the entire picture. So there is this interplay between technical skills and know how and, and systems wide or systems impact outcomes that need to be considered. I think the Biden administration, for example, has done a really good job in in laying out some big picture, things that need that require fixing like climate change, like poverty alleviation hunger alleviation and so on. And so every cabinet is which is basically the technocrats sitting in the cabinets are working towards a common outcome. The Chinese are actually amazingly efficient at this. And they're coming in from way behind in the development of the energy structure, for example, but they are leading in nuclear technology right now there is this. It's the salt immersed nuclear reactors. Yeah, and they are leading and they have dozens of these clients under development already. So the Chinese will advance in a very short period of time but at the same time, their role within the community of nations is really poorly defined in their own mind right they don't really see a constructive role or a role that we would consider constructive in the in the community of nations. You know, at least not transparent to us. So, so how does this. How does philosophy, you know, come into play to to guide technocrats towards the way humanity is moving towards. So this this kind of link is, I think is really in need of definition. We're reaching the end of our call and I have to bounce a little bit before the half hour. But thank you for raising all these questions about meritocracy this was really fun. This is a good, good and useful discussion. And I just realized that in my brain, there was a thought called questioning meritocracy and I just put a link to it in the matter most chat, because there's, you know, there's a thought meritocracy inevitably becomes oligarchy, which comes out of the book Twilight of the elites America after meritocracy which was written by Christopher Hayes, Chris Hayes about the he also wrote. He's kind of quiet and he's kind of echoing a book from 1956 called the power elite, which was written by right mills, which is linked back to behemoth, the structure and practice of national socialism, which is an article about the Nazi Party and so I'm just putting my brain and I didn't screen share right there but those things were all threaded together. Any last words for this call. This has been great fun. Thank you, we will experiment again with the format for next week so I'll create a new tab for next week's call in the spreadsheet or erase this one I don't know exactly what I'll do but we'll go in and populate it and see how that works. Thank you everybody.