 Welcome to the 21 convention podcast today. We are going to be talking to Don Watkins and Eric Daniels and this gets into a pretty heady discussion if you do not know who these guys are you will not be disappointed by what we discuss because it is a absolute explosion of Amazing philosophy mentalities and new ways to live if you are a new to the 21 convention channel Click the subscribe button get involved with what we're doing and let's get into this amazing interview All right, we got Don Watkins Eric Daniels the 21 convention podcast. What's happening? How you doing? Good. Good. Good Good to be here. Yeah. Hey, let's talk about philosophy, you know, there's so much stuff that we could talk about but You know even with you know, Anne Rand philosophy in that direction Educating man, but what's this all about? We hear this all the time of the 21 convention We see it as an ongoing theme, but we don't always connect it to all the Paleo stuff diet stuff, you know lifestyle dating. Yeah, where does this play into it? I mean it's so I ran was a 20th century novelist and philosopher She wrote I mean dozens of books and famous books at shrug the fountain had a lot of people probably heard of red And the I think the connection it's interesting the 21 convention that I did a couple years ago about the idea of self The idea of the self-made man. I mean I ran really taps into that American ideal in her novels and her characters A number of her characters and even just the idea that she presents of The whole person is really that you are a being as she said of the self-made soul So it's really that you're not just a self-made man in the material sense and the physical sense But all aspects of your being are really about your control your improvement what you do for yourself And so that whole thing kind of ties into all these areas that people want to improve their lives It's all about taking conscious control and doing that for your life Which she identified what the philosophic roots of that were Did you want to yeah, I mean so the if you can think about it this way she viewed philosophy is in effect The ultimate self-help guide so a lot of like self-improvement stuff is scattered You know, it's a bunch of different ideas and what philosophy is really doing is giving you an integrated view of the world and Of human life and how to achieve human potential and it's doing it with rigor So it's it's saying not just here's some thoughts I had but we need to be able to prove This is the basic nature of reality This is how we achieve reliable knowledge and this is what a moral successful life looks like and so it's basically Allowing you to have a consistent framework rather than just a grab bag of ideas that might clash with one another and not fit together And then I and a framework that's true That's connected to reality so that you can actually achieve your goals and success in reality, you know, this is It's like such an interesting thing because where she came from and where she was speaking from I think is very relevant and This is it's gonna kind of have a little bit of a curveball, but I you know, always loved art I love cinema. I loved theater and one thing that came around with the advent of communism All that stuff was like this really really good art before they killed them all right But like but no, I mean it was like some of the best plays like like all cinema drives from like, you know eyes and sign stuff and it's just like Battleship of Temkin it was like, you know, you know, it was like finally we can speak and have a voice and then it just spun into the You know, there's like the story thing, but she came from you know The the rejection of those things and could you guys speak a little bit about the history of how that yeah Yeah, she was originally born in Russia in the Tsarist period Yeah, she was born in 1905 when the Tsar still ruled Russia and that in that kind of cultural That cultural thing was still there where where many Russians were looking to the West and they were innovating They were doing different things. There was a large French influence I mean Russia was very tied into to Western ideas. Wow, and then she don't yeah And you don't yeah I mean and you know the communist wife that always so she grew up and basically as a teenager saw the Bolshevik revolution And her family was thrown out of its business They tried to flee to the Crimea while the Civil War was going on and ultimately when the Bolsheviks won when Lenin won And the Soviets took over she basically went back to what was then Leningrad and lived until the 1920s when she basically escaped I mean she was she petitioned to have a visa to to leave to go to the United States to visit relatives Which the Soviets allowed? But she knew all along that she would never go back because she knew she was one of those people that the Soviets couldn't tolerate her Ideas already by the time she was in her teens in early 20s completely rejected the idea of collectivism Rejected the idea of you know this forced state of of this collectivist ideal And she knew that she was gonna get into trouble with that She was actually it's interesting that you mentioned that she was a huge huge fan of cinema That was actually the ideal that she had she came to America because she wanted to work in Movies yeah, and then when she got to America she first went to Chicago and then eventually made her way out to Hollywood It's a really interesting story. Yeah, she made her way out to Hollywood and get this She goes and just is trying to find work doesn't speak great English and Goes to a movie set and you know because that's where the movies are made and she's waiting at the gate and Cecil B. DeMille actually drives off the the studio a lot and sees her and he's like you know you look interesting Like you're not the average American woman just sitting there So he gives her a ride and she connects up and then he gives her like you know a basic job I don't know if Don if you remember what what job she gets you just like a basic job and extra things like that Starts working ultimately starts. Yeah, ultimately starts working in costume departments And then screenwriting and then you know, there's a number of movies actually now that that were based on some of her screenplays Wow, so she basically worked her way up through Hollywood And then and then decided to turn her attention to writing novels and then ultimately after the novels into writing philosophy So it's crazy because one of the most prolific filmmakers of that time and I forget her name was was a female Yeah, and that's so rare and I ran Female you don't see that. Yeah as a philosopher as a writer as a massive producer of cultural influence Um, dude, that's that's nuts. Yeah, it's really yeah, yeah, she's really yeah, she's got a really interesting biography I mean she worked in RKO studios for a while King Vidor Was it he was the producer of the the Fountainhead movie I think and so yeah She had all kinds of Hollywood connections back in the day and you know was actually, you know So so connected in Hollywood so to speak that she actually was she actually testified before the House on American Activities Committee along with You know Bogart and all these other people That and Ely Weasel and all you know all these other people that that were involved in Hollywood at the time So she was really plugged in to the movies. So what about this Philosophy that she kind of laid out that's built a foundation for you guys because you two guys are You know, I guess rooted connected it a similar philosophy but expressed into completely different things like what is the baseline of And I guess you already talked about it But what is the baseline of her philosophy that came out in your expression of you know your book and what your work is now? I mean if you're gonna boil it down It's a complete reverence for the individual and then for what makes individual success possible Which is reason and those are really the two essentials. It's that you should approach your life Through reason through trying to understand the world logically, which is not an anti-emotion view She's very pro-emotion because your whole goal is as an individual to achieve your happiness But how do you achieve it? You achieve it by really thinking about what's right and what's good And so there's a real focus on how the individual can achieve the greatest possible in his life And then how you gear a society towards enabling and freeing the individual to achieve the most of his life So I focus mainly in my work on politics on what are the social political conditions for the individual to thrive and prosper But that's all built from having a view of what it means for an individual to thrive and prosper Most people today basically think well, it's subjective And if you're if you're for the individual flourishing then you're for the individual just doing whatever he wants, right? Yeah And her view is that no you you need to really really think about what's good for your life in the same way That you have to think about what's good for your health So if I came out with a health book that said all right don's heed in this guide to health smoke Yes your cocaine Everybody'd say whatkins you're crazy. That's not going to lead to health But when you ask about the health of a life, which is human happiness It's well, it's clearly whatever you desire whatever your own thing is and her view is there's definitely differences among individuals You know, I devoted my life to writing into politics into speaking other people to exercise other people to being architects and so on But that there's certain fundamental truths of what's good for a human being and that that's what the purpose of morality is It's to identify those basics and the most basic thing is a commitment to rationality, which is always going by reason Only going by reason. Hmm Why is it that you guys think that? academia, I mean maybe now, but He's never picked up on her philosophy. I mean she's always been a black sheep. I mean, you know, you know never Yeah, I'd say one thing about that. There's a lot to say about it But one thing is this has been true historically that There's always a mainstream in academia or whether it was the church at one time There's a mainstream body of thought and when a new kind of thinker comes along So when Descartes comes along challenging the whole approach Of the catholic church before him philosophically, they don't go. Hey, those are great ideas You get a complete resistance because what you have is an innovator saying you don't have a couple wrong conclusions Your whole approach is wrong. So I ran to saying the whole way you guys are doing philosophy or think you're doing philosophy is wrong So it would be ridiculous to make to think that they were going to go. Okay, that sounds cool I think there's that's one fundamental reason why she's saying your whole way of thinking about philosophy and all the conclusions You've come to are wrong. Yeah, and I mean another another big thing I mean I worked in universities for you know Dozen years the other the other unfortunate thing about the universities and this is true more I think in the humanities fields and the kinds of fields that you would have been appealing to philosophy history political theory those kinds of things But it's true. I mean and unfortunately as we see with some of the ideas about medicine and health and other things It's true really across the board Unfortunately, the universities in a way are designed and set up as As turf protection organizations people have their turf. They want to protect it And so when someone comes in like don says to challenge something they they're threatened their position is threatened And the and the problem with it is is this is in complete contrast to Private businesses. Yeah, private business somebody comes in with an innovative idea. You don't like it. They say fine I'll start my own business. I'm going to innovate. I'm going to do it And I'm going to out succeed you and I'm going to displace you in the market The university is largely now, of course, there are private universities But because of the massive government influence in terms of funding research funding Publish your shares man. Yeah, publish your shares all that stuff is basically tightly controlled And if you lose that that's high stakes for them, but there's no profit motive for them There's no there's no underlying thing that says you've got to be better and watch the innovations and improve in order to survive Otherwise you're dead and and that just doesn't happen in the university. I think the bummer about universities, of course, there's like great stuff about it, but The is that the the running from the capitalism, you know that that that she is You know attached to and you know, and here's what's interesting is she wrote books So she had a creative expression and most philosophers or a lot of philosophers did yeah You know to promote their or you know to to put into application of their philosophy But very very different, you know, very different, you know atlas shrug the fountain had very different than you know, like Let's say thomas pinches the postmodern guys or or whatever. Jacques Derrida was doing and You know, it she just had a very very different angle. Um What is it that You think like kept her in the dark because I you know, you see the capitalism side, but she what if you okay if you read those books That's one thing, but if you read your actual philosophy, yeah, it's it's much different Yeah, it's not necessarily promoting one way to do something. That's actually the ideology that the the root the general underlying foundation Foundation philosophy behind it. What do you think stopped there? Um, I mean in part, you know You know The the the thing I mean the publication of those two books her first novels, right her publication of her novels were Basically, they're coming out of time in american culture when left-leaning ideologies, you know non anti-capitalist ideologies are basically at their height Right in the 1930s through the 1950s 60s the 60s. There's a whole revolution You know all kinds of ideas are upturned and new things are coming out But she's riding in that middle period during the rosevelt years During the years when americans basically had had collectively said we've given up on these ideas And she comes along and says no no no Essentially, I've seen these ideas real double down full stop in russia You know, I know what it really looks like. Yeah, you guys are just flirting with it Yeah, I think you know what it's about So she comes along and and very strongly as you said very strongly goes Completely to the opposite pole in a sense and says you guys are as with don says you're you know You're not just wrong in an application. You're wrong in fundamental approach You're wrong in the way you think about things. You have to start completely from the ground up And so that's one of those things that when when a thinker is that radical And it doesn't just challenge. I mean, you know, you look at something like an aggressive Yeah, and you look at something like the protestant reformation You know luther comes along criticizes the church calvin criticizes the church and the catholic church has to respond But they're all still christians, right? They're all still working within the framework of you know Ultimate salvation jesus as the leader of the church, etc. They have a lot of differences about how the church is structured Whether you should read the bible in latin or in the vernacular all these kind of particulars And so it's and and you think the protestant reformation fundamentally changed the map of europe wars hundreds of millions dead because of this All of those things But that's not nearly as radical as what iran is doing iran is going along and saying it's not just your particulars It's you have to go back to the the very fundamentals of philosophy Which is the which is the most fundamental, you know in a sense ideas about all ideas And that alone i think when you have that kind of philosophic change is inevitably going to be Polarizing it's inevitably going to be she's going to make herself an outsider because it's it's not even the same language for them You know, it's it's not you know calvin comes along and luther comes along They at least speak the same language. They have the same framework. They're like, oh, no, you shouldn't do the liturgy This way you should do it that way they're saying she's saying i don't care what you're doing You're wrong from the beginning you've got to start over Well, I mean immediately people are going to be hostile to that even if they tend to be Otherwise sympathetic about certain of her ideas They're just going to be hostile because Fundamentally reconsidering your basic ideas Is something that's very very difficult to do. Yeah, take one example before you get started Let's pause for one second. All right, we got to take a quick break and we'll be right back with what don's got to say All right, we're back don Watkins. What were you about to say? So eric mentioned that she's challenging things from the ground up and take a core example of it You have people who are willing to challenge conventional wisdom and all sorts of issues on scientific issues and religious issues She's one of the few in history moral Revolutionaries she's saying that our whole way of thinking about what's right and wrong Is wrong and so take the issue one of the issues. She's most famous for which is she's pro selfishness She thinks that an individual should be committed Consistently to achieving what's best for his life neither sacrificing himself to other people nor others themselves Now what have we been taught is the like least controversial idea on earth? It's that selfishness is bad And now she thinks if you really understand what it means to be devoted to your own happiness If you really have an understanding of what that looks like then it's actually the most noble thing that a person can do But partly what she's challenging is the idea that being devoted to your self-interest that being selfish means As we talked about doing whatever you feel like being like a burning maid off or being like a playboy Her view is that no, it's something much harder It's being much closer at least in his productive career of a steve jobs Somebody committed to creating values to being rational in pursuit of the best life possible And that is something so different So I mean if you think about who her heroes are her moral heroes the people she holds up as exemplars So on one hand it's people like the founding fathers But it's also people like isaac newton and then it's also people like steve jobs or like uh, Andrew Carnegie people who are great productive exemplars in every sort of field And the idea that that's what morality could be sanctioning and holding up is the what we should be striving for rather than say Hanging out in a soup kitchen and doing your duty and serving god or serving society That is something that virtually no other thinker in history has ever held And so I mean you're really talking about somebody who's Tapping into one of the most deep rooted views that human beings hold which is right and wrong and saying The way you're thinking about it is totally wrong. Yeah, man, it's a total side note, but Isaac Newton was was insane. He was you know that he created The prancipia mathematician in split light In one year and then the rest was kind of like this like yeah Yeah While he's on his like on the farm sitting out all alone because he's waiting out the the I think there was a No, it wasn't like it was uh, maybe uh Rapture some sort of some sort of uh, yeah disease and he's just like sitting by himself thinking through these things Yeah, it's amazing. It's just nuts and the sad thing is is all those guys like john lock and Edmond haley were like trying to do alchemy. Yeah. Yeah, they're still coming on the end of that Yeah, I'm still coming on the end of that kind of uh pre-modern mind But but man in all those guys amazing stuff And uh, actually some more productive than Newton, but that one or those two things were just freaking Nuts. Yeah. Yeah the optics on there. Yeah. Yeah, but this is so just to go back to what I said before This is what it looks like to have a commitment to reason and what that makes possible So newton's commitment to really thinking through the nature of the universe made possible our Traveling to the moon among a million other achievements and that like that's her view of that's what on what reason unlocks It's in effect a flashlight that helps you guide your way around reality and ultimately a giant spotlight You know it's so this is odd and this goes into your speech of uh Somebody asked you a question about conspiracy stuff because newton also tied to like the invisible college and And haley and all these guys were you know thinking about all this stuff when this wasn't the case They were guys that had a love of science and exploration and Turned it into a level of reason You know of thinking these things through and how can this these insane philosophies, you know be put into an application of you know building Scuba gear to you know the comet to calculus and all this sort of stuff but You know, where do you see that happening in this culture now with you know minds unifying and connecting because people that were fans of iron rands work Came from the outside. They're not of the norm. They're not of the mainstream. You know she like selfishness um You know aligned with kind of like hokey philosophy and all that sort of stuff So where are the you know, where are the real minds of change happening in today's culture? Well, I mean, I think the the easiest place to see it is a place like silicon valley where you've people devoted to Making something great and making something new and challenging the way things are done I think you see it in other places But that's certainly I think the most obvious example of that sort of attitude and approach towards life And notice it's also one of the most free Parts of the economy one of the least controlled by government and that's not an accident In my view and I don't think it would have been in her view Yeah, and I think one of the other areas Today, I mean part of it is an interesting question in that in that the kinds of innovations the kinds of things that are Going to break through like that We don't we don't necessarily see but if you look past like I mean the the sort of internet revolution One of the really really interesting things about that is to me as you said Yeah, some of these people are kind of coming from the outside. They're not within the mainstream because Well, they're probably bucking the trend. I mean, they're they're coming along and they're doing something different What's really really interesting about that space in the economy that it is free. It's very very innovative It's very very past paced what that means is in a way The the the funnel of talent is actually getting much much bigger Right before the funnel of talent was was controlled by the elite universities the the top, you know The fortune the top fortune companies it was it was a very clear hierarchy a path of if you want to be successful Here are the you know 20 different things that are available to you now if you want to be successful There's an entire world out there for you to do it and the means I mean basically the guys who who took the internet which was a government project that really had no economic value and Massively translated it into something that people could actually use. I mean, you know You think back to when people said, oh, you know what you're going to be able to buy and sell stuff Like what's this internet thing? You know when it first came out people thought people thought yeah Yeah, yeah, we're now going to right people thought, you know, what what's the usefulness of this like, you know I mean I get email but what's the useful and people couldn't I mean in in the mid 90s people couldn't even imagine the kinds of value that have been created by Basically these tools not just the infrastructure itself, but the actual ways of communicating You know twitter facebook any of these things the the idea of big data that google kind of innovated You know just take take tons of data and find great computer algorithms to go search through it and find information That people are applying all kinds of other things all this kind of stuff that innovation that that funnel as it were The talent pool can come up from a much much broader area You know you get 15 year old kids writing apps and making millions of dollars You get people coming out of you know people coming out of areas that you don't expect and saying hey I've got a better way of doing this Is there a way that you know that I can get it to people before they couldn't get it to people because You know a big r&d Specialist at some firm wasn't going to do it, but now there's a lot more venture capital There's a lot more there's really just a lot more dynamism in in the creative side of the economy Where I think that's where you're going to see the talent coming from and that's where you're going to see people who say I'm going to live my life. I'm going to do the things I want to do I'm going to I'm going to live for myself and be the best person I can be and be productive and be happy And here's where I can do it You know notice it and notice it applies also in the realm of ideas So before you had a bunch of gatekeepers if you had to you had to get this major publisher to think Yeah, your book will sell or something and so you know at this conference for instance You had people coming at a high intensity exercise for example You'd have to to get those ideas out there You basically have to find a major publisher willing to you know give you a deal Big time but where's the market for I mean the the fact is everybody can get ideas out there now And the challenges you just have to make your ideas Much more appealing and work a lot harder to build an audience rather than find your way through a handful of gatekeepers The way that you did say 30 man, I'll tell you this like just even having this conversation because it's so stimulating and like Really a cool thing. It reminds me of when I was a kid, you know, I was growing up in Orange County and uh Listening to npr and thinking that that was you know, the like but it was so stimulating It was like man, there's like all these great interviews, but I didn't realize how filtered that was You know and how like one sided and then moving around and traveling you're like, whoa, the world is saying a completely different thing I remember I interviewed these guys that uh, oh it was such a horrible horrible thing to say Um, but I was talking to these homeless guys and talking to them about american culture And I said, oh, well, do you have all this hope because you know, you're homeless and the guy was just like Man, he actually said to me. He's like, man, fuck you It's like do you realize what you're saying did you realize what that means and he just broke it down He's like dude. I have religion. I have these things because it's what I believe it Yeah, you know for you who thinks that you just manage like totally took me to school Yeah, but I mean like that's I mean that's the thing like you listen to one radio station now You know, you've got I mean this you know the same one convention I mean just the space in which people can can create and innovate In intellectual areas. I mean whether it's book publishing or podcasts or I mean I don't know hundreds of different ways that people are communicating ideas That that's I mean to me that is that's opened up a space and it's still you know, it's still sort of in itself out I mean people are still figuring out right now. I think the big change that I see is Uh, now that content creation is is basically limitless. I mean people people now have very very low cost If cost at all right for content creation Uh, the the big question is Uh, who's going to come in and innovate in a way that actually sort of stabilizes that in senses And makes it such that people can search it Can get what they want right the you know sort of Content is out there. I mean, you know, yeah Darden yesterday was talking about how many ebooks are published every day But but how do you search those? How do you you know, amazon hasn't yet figured it out google hasn't figured out But people are working on that problem. I know that I mean, I don't know the people I don't know what company that are with and maybe some kid in a dorm room I don't know but somebody's going to figure out How do I actually target this information get it to the people that want it figure out a way of actually In a sense, it's what happens in markets a lot How do how do you rationalize the market in a way that that actually takes this sort of bubbling up of In this case information and actually gets into the people that want it Same thing happened in let's say the oil industry in the late 19th century You know Rockefeller was a great integrator of all these different production systems All these different distribution systems and he said look oil is an enormously valuable product Everybody's going to want it if they could just get it But there's like the thousand producers a thousand refiners. They're they're scattered all over Ohio and Pennsylvania How do I actually figure out the ways of making this system work? And he comes along and he figures out the innovations and his engineers figure out the innovations And suddenly he's he's basically giving oil throughout the world. Let me shipping it all over the world You know in the space of about 10 15 20 years He's come along from like what is basically just a kind of random market to transforming the whole energy industry And that same thing is happening now I don't think it's happened yet because I still see a lot of churn in that kind of marketplace You know our sort of Published on demand or ebooks or like what's actually going to sort out as the way to get content out there But it's so the pipeline is just so much bigger It's so much bigger than what you know than what you had publishers doing, you know 20 years ago Where you know each house would come out with maybe a hundred books a year I mean now it's like a hundred books an hour, you know or whatever it is I mean, it's probably even more than that, you know Just the the kind of content creation stuff and you think about all those lost opportunities I mean, that's what I always think about it's it's the things that you don't see right I mean a great example of this I always think about uh when people talk about the productivity of an economy And if the economy is is regulated controlled or I mean even take the 19th century, you know south right slave labor You know slave labor adds certain input to the economy But you think about all of the ideas all of the kinds of creativity that that slaves could have come up with But that was prohibited to them by law you think today The the gatekeepers right, you know, which some are enforced by law some are just you know informal institutions But all of the stuff all of the novels that were written that just sat on somebody's bookshelf because nobody wanted to publish it I ran the fountain. Yeah. I was rejected by like 12 publishers. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Yeah But you just you just think about all of the all of the people who I mean and whether it's somebody like Stephanie mire and or you know twilight books or or something else I mean, look, hey, yeah Oh, yeah, but I mean but but obviously tapping into something that was incredibly desired by you know, 13 year old girls I guess but the idea is that in 20 years ago that would have never worked for her, right? I mean, she's now a multi-millionaire, you know a movie franchise a whole book You know a whole book series all of that stuff's possible because she was able to take something that otherwise Would have just sat on her shelf and say to somebody, you know Like hey, do you think this works and now it's not that it's not that really really tight gatekeepers It's now people who are willing to take risks So is it the the marketplace that simulates this or is the marketplace a metaphor for how humans interact? I don't like the word. Uh, I think it captures something right, but it right makes it too It really does make it too much like this mechanical thing What a market is properly speaking is individuals interacting voluntarily Under a rule of law protection of rights protection of property rights in contracts especially And so the right way to think about is These are what happens when people are free to interact voluntarily Such that you and I are only going to deal with each other when we both win And part of what emerges from this is that we both have an incentive to create things that other people are going to find valuable So that we can get a lot of these win-win relationships make a lot of money achieve a lot of our values And so one of the things I always point out, you know, there's such an anti-business view and anti-business bias Particularly big business bias But we live in a world where right now there's people Thinking about how to make your life more entertaining how to make better music for you How to send you in the coolest theme park ride show you the coolest shows keep you alive longer and healthier and more enjoyable They're sitting around thinking about how to do that for you Why so that they can get all the things that they want so they can reap immense profits That's what a market is and that's amazing. Yeah, and I I mean I'm I'm with donna You know the marketplace metaphor, you know grows out of it actually historically grows out of a time when Regulatorily, you know the English or the French monarchy said you can only bring your goods And sell them to other citizens on these days in these locations. There was no private transactions There was it was literally a physical marketplace that there were market towns and people who had you know It was largely agricultural products because two three four hundred years ago But basically they were only allowed to sell at certain prices under certain conditions, etc And that's what a marketplace was now people use it as a metaphor the marketplace of ideas that you know the marketplace But what it really is like what don said it's it's basically the perspective if you think about what's driving these changes it's the perspective that uh It over despite a lot of bad things over the course of the last 50 years There is a way in which private transactions and private innovation have actually been opened up Partly by technology partly by ideas You know now and I mean, you know, I hate to I hate to have to say that Ronald Reagan was right about one thing or another But there was one thing, you know, if it if it moves tax it if it doesn't you know, I forget how how does he say that? It's you know, basically regulated if it moves regulated, you know, if it makes money tax it, you know Basically you just the government's going to find a way So what's actually happening is that there's a kind of uh cat and mouse game where the areas of innovation Are constantly pushing outside of those regulatory bounds As they're doing so they're creating an enormous value And and in some ways making the case themselves that the regulations aren't working So they want to to sort of forestall that and keep that away But basically all of these private transactions all of these people acting individually and their ability to do so under A stable rule of law system, which is you know, try doing this in the Middle East Try doing this in Africa try doing this in a place that's unstable. Why are you going to spend the time? Why are you going to invest hundreds of hours of your own time uncompensated on the idea that you might be able to produce a Product that somebody's going to want to buy in the United States You've got that freedom and we've got that ability because you know, hey if I get the actual great product out there People are going to buy it Right out there you say, well, you know, the government might just ban it The government might tell me they might throw me in jail They might tell me that I'm destabilizing the regime They might do any kind of number of things in the United States with the rule of law with respect for property rights With respect for contract you can do those things now you have to succeed on your own merits Right, you have to be an innovator. You can't just try to do this and hope that somebody buys it You actually have to come up with innovative stuff But you hold the promise that if you do The other side of that equation is that there's people like you me others that are going to buy that stuff Yeah, you know man, we got to uh, we're out of time in like one sentence maybe three What gives you hope what gives you hope for you know, humanity america? What's going on? What I think this discussion sums it up as much problem as we have today We still have the freedom to get our ideas out there We have a better way to get our ideas out there And I think that it's good ideas that are really the key to winning the future And we we have the potential to unleash them the goals to make them as persuasive as possible and as compelling as possible So that we win that battle of ideas Great I mean and the thing the thing for me the the the content is open the pipeline is open There's a lot more ideas out there What's most encouraging to me is actually the larger percentage of people that I that I meet that I encounter That are willing to take the responsibility sort of self-responsibility to figure the things out I know the information's out there like don says like I know that the good ideas are out there They just have to get to people and part of that is the delivery But part of it is also I meet a lot more people. I think I mean maybe I've got a sample bias, but Uh, uh, a bias you know a bias sample But I think there are more people who are willing to say I'll figure this out for myself I'm not going to trust, you know some government somebody to tell me these things If they do that the ideas are out there and they're going to find them great stuff Yeah, Eric Daniels Don Watkins Awesome. Thanks for having us. Thanks Thank you guys so much for watching. I love doing these interviews I love doing these podcasts and if you could keep this message going if you're on social media Pass it on and of course subscribe to us on our youtube page So you could get updated on all the cool stuff that we are doing here. I'm steve mayeda signing off. Let's stay in touch