I mean look we're adding a trillion dollars to the national debt every 100 days right now and it's now passing the size of the defense department budget and it's compounding and it's pretty soon it's going to be adding a trillion dollars every 90 days and then it's going to be adding a trillion dollars every 80 days and then it's going to be a trillion dollars every 70 days and then if this doesn't get fixed at some point we enter a hyperinflationary spiral and we become Argentina or Brazil and the following is a conversation with Mark andreon his second time on the podcast. Mark is a Visionary Tech leader investor who fundamentally shaped the development of the internet and the tech industry in general over the past 30 years; he's the co-creator of Mosaic the first widely used web browser, co-founder of Netscape, co-founder of the legendary Silicon Valley venture capital firm andreon Horwitz and is one of the most influential voices in the tech world including at the intersection of technology and politics. This is Freedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Mark and Reon.
All right let's start with optimism if you were to imagine the best possible one to two years 2025 26 for tech for big Tech and small Tech what would it be what would it look like lay out your vision for the best possible scenario trajectory for America the Roaring 20s the roaring 20s. I mean look couple things it is remarkable over the last several years with all of the issues including you know every not just everything in politics but also Co and every other thing that's happened it's really amazing the United States just kept growing if you just look at economic growth charts the US just kept growing and very significantly many other countries stopped growing so Canada stopped growing the UK has stopped growing Germany has stopped growing and you know some of those countries may be actually going backwards at this point and there's a very long discussion to be had about what's wrong with those countries.
There's of course plenty of things that are wrong with our country but um the US is just Flatout primed for growth um and I think that's a consequence of many factors um you know some of which were are lucky and some of which through hard work and so the lucky part is just you know number one you know we just have like incredible physical security by being our own continent um you know we have incredible natural resources right there's there's there's this running joke now that like whenever it looks like the us is going to run out of some like Rare Earth material you know some farmer in North Dakota like kicks over a hay bale and finds like a $2 trillion deposit right I mean we're just like blessed you know with with with geography and with natural resources um energy you know we can be energy independent anytime we want.
This last Administration decided they didn't want to be they wanted to turn off American Energy this new Administration has declared that they have a goal of turning it on in a dramatic way there's no question we can be energy independent we can be a giant net energy exporter it's purely a question of choice um and I think the the new Administration is going to do that um and so we and oh and then I would say two other things one is um you know we we are the beneficiaries and you know you're an example of this for a beneficiary for the beneficiary of you know 50 100 200 years of like the basically most aggressive driven smartest people in the world most capable people you know moving to the US and raising their kids here um and so we just have you know by far the most dynamic you know we're by far the most dynamic population most aggressive um you know we're the most aggressive set of characters in certainly any in any Western Country and have been for a long time and certainly are today.
And then finally I would just say look we are overwhelmingly the advanced technology leader um you know we we have our issues and we have a a particular issue with manufacturing which we could talk about but for you know anything in software anything in AI anything in um you know all these you know Advanced biotch all these Advanced areas of Technology like we're we're by far the leader again in part because many of the best scientists and engineers in those fields you know you know come to the US um and so we we we just we have all of the preconditions for a uh for just a monster um boom you know I could see economic growth going way up I could see productivity growth going way up rate of Technology adoption going way up and then we could we can do a global tour if you like but like basically all of our competitors have like profound issues and you know we could kind of go through them one by one but the the competitive landscape just is it's like it's it's remarkable how U how how much better positioned we are for growth.
What about the humans themselves almost a philosophical question you know I travel across the world and there's something about the American Spirit the entrepreneurial Spirit that's uniquely intense in America I don't know what that is uh I've talked to Saga who claims it might be the Scots Irish blood that runs through uh the history of America what is it you at the heart of Silicon Valley is there something in the water why is there's this entrepreneurial Spirit. Yeah so is this a family show or am I allowed to swear you you can say whatever the fuck you want. Okay so the T the great TV show succession the show of course that with which you were intended to root for exactly zero of the characters. Yes the best line from succession was in the final episode of the first season when the whole family is over in uh Logan Roy and Cal homeland of Scotland and they're at this Castle you know for some wedding and Logan is just like completely miserable after having to you know because he's been in New York for 50 years he's totally miserable being back in in um in Scotland and he gets in some argument with somebody and he's like my he says finally just says my God I cannot wait to get out of here and go back to America where we can fuck without condoms.
Was that a metaphor or okay exactly right and so no but it's exactly the thing and then everybody instantly knows what like everybody watching that instantly starts laughing cuz you know what it means which is it's exactly this I think there's like an ethnographic you know way of it there's a bunch of books on like all like you said the Scots Irish like all the different derivations of all the different ethnic groups that have come to the US over the course of the last 400 years right but it's and what we have is this sort of amalgamation of like you know the you know the the Northeast you know Yankees who were like super tough and hardcore. Yeah the Scots Irish are super aggressive you know we've got the you know the southerners and the Texans uh you know and the and you know the sort of you know whole kind of Blended you know kind of Anglo Hispanic thing with you know super incredibly tough strong driven you know capable character you know the Texas Rangers.
Um you know we've got the yeah we've got the California you know we've got the you know the wild we've got the incredibly you know inventive hippies but we also have the hardcore Engineers we've got you know the best you know rocket scientists in the world we've got the best you know artists in the world you know creative professionals you know the best movies um and so yeah there there there is you know the the the the you know say all of our problems I think are basically you know in my view to some extent you know attempts to basically sand all that off and make everything basically boring and mediocre but there is something in the National spirit that basically keeps bouncing back and it and and basically what we discover over time is we we basically just need people to stand up at a certain point and say you know it's time to you know it's time to build it's time to grow you know it's time to do things.
And so and there's something in the American Spirit that just like Worth right back to life and I and I've seen it before I actually saw you know I I saw it as a kid here in the in the early 80s um you know because the the the 70s were like horribly depressing right in the in the US like it was they were a nightmare on many fronts and in a lot of ways the last decade to me has felt a lot like the' 70s just being mired in misery um and just this self-defeating you know negative attitude and everybody's upset about everything and you know and then by the way like energy crisis and hostage crisis and Foreign Wars and just demoralization right.
Um you know the low point for in the 70s was you know Jimmy Carter who just passed away he went on TV and he gave this speech known as the Malay speech and it was like the weakest possible trying to like Rouse people back to a sense of like passion completely failed and you know we had the you know the hostages in you know Iran for I think 440 days and every night on the Nightly News it was you know lines around the block energy crisis depression inflation and then you know Reagan came in and you know Reagan was a very controversial character at the time and you know he came in and he's like yep nope it's morning in America and we're The Shining City on the hill and we're going to do it and he did it and we did it and the national Spirit came roaring back and you know roared really hard for a full decade and I and I think that's exactly what I think you know we'll see.
But I think that's what could happen here and I just did a super long podcast on Milton Friedman with Jennifer Burns who's this incredible professor at Stanford and he was part of the Reagan so some there's a bunch of components to that one of which is economic yes and one of which maybe you can put a word on it of not to be romantic or anything but Freedom uh individual Freedom economic freedom political freedom and just in general individualism. Yeah that's right yeah you know America has this incredible streak of individualism you know individualism in America probably PE I think between roughly call it the end of the Civil War 1865 through to probably call it 1931 or something um you know and there was this like incredible r i mean that period you know we now know that period is the Second Industrial Revolution and it's when the United States basically assumed Global Leadership and basically took took over technological and economic leadership from from England.
Um and then you know that that led to you know ultimately then therefore being able to you know not only industrialize the world but also win World War II and then win the Cold War um and yeah you know there's a massive industrial you know massive individualistic streak um by the way you know Milton fre Milton fredman's old videos are all on YouTube they are every bit as compelling and inspiring yeah um as they uh as they were then um you know he's he's a singular figure and many of us you know have you know I never knew him but um he was at actually at Stanford for many years at the Hoover institution but uh I never met him but I know a lot of people who worked with him and you know that you know he was he was a singular figure but his his all all of his lessons you know live on or fully available.
Um but I would also say it's not just individualism and this is you know one of this is one of the big things it's like playing out in a lot of our culture and kind of political fights right now which is you know basically this feeling you know certainly that I have and I share with a lot of people which is it it's not enough for America to just be an economic zone um and it's not enough for us to just be individuals and it's not enough to just have line go up and it's not enough to just have economic success there are deeper questions uh at play and and and also you know there there there's more to a country uh than just that and and you know quite quite frankly a lot of it is intangible.
A lot of it is you know involves Spirit um and passion and you know I said we we have more of it than anybody else um but um you know we we have to choose to want it. The way I look at it is like all of our problems are self-inflicted like they're you know decline is a choice you know all of our problems are basically demoralization campaigns you know basically people telling us people in positions of authority telling us that we should you know we shouldn't you know stand out we shouldn't be adventurous we shouldn't be exciting we shouldn't be exploratory you know we shouldn't you know this that and the other thing and we should feel bad about everything that we do and I think we've lived through a decade where that's been the prevailing theme and I I think quite honestly as of November I think people are done with it.
If we could go on a tangent of a tangent since we're talking about individualism and that's not all that it takes you've mentioned in the past the book the ancient city yes by if I can only pronounce the name French historian num I don't know that was amazing. Okay all right from the 19th century anyway you said this is an important book to understand who we are and where we come from so what that book does it's actually quite a striking book um so that book is written by this guy um as a I'm let let Lex do the pronunciations the foreign language pronunciations for the day um he was a professor Classics um at uh the sbon in um in uh Paris you know the top university uh at um in the in the actually in the 1860s so actually R around after the US Civil War.
And he was a Sant of a particular kind which is he and you can see this in the book as he had apparently read and you know sort of absorbed and memorized every possible scrap of Greek and and Roman literature um and so it's like a walk like index on basically Greek and Roman everything we know about Greek and Roman culture and that's significant the reason this matters is because basically none of that has changed right and so he he he had access to the exact same R materials that we have we have access to and so there you know we've learned nothing and then specifically what he did is he talked about the Greeks and the Romans but specifically what he did is he went back further he reconstructed the people who came before the Greeks and the Romans and what their life and Society was like and these were the people who were now known as the as the indo-europeans and these were you may heard to these these are the people who came down from the steps and so they they they came out of what's now like Eastern Europe like around sort of the outskirts of what's now Russia.
Um and then they sort of swept through uh Europe they ultimately took over all of Europe by the way you know almost many of the ethnicities in the Americas the hundreds of years that follow you know are Indo European and so like you know they were this basically this Warrior basically class that like came down and swept through and and um and you know essentially um you know populated much of the world and there's a whole interesting Saga there but what he does and then they basically they from there came basically what we know is the Greeks and the Romans were kind of Evolutions off of that um and so what he reconstructs is sort of what like was like what life was like at least in the West for people in their kind of original social State.
And the significance of that is the original social state is this is living in the state of the absolute imperative for survival with absolutely no technology right like no modern systems no nothing right you've got the clothes in your back you've got your you know you you've got whatever you can build with your bare hands right this is you know predates basically all concepts of of of Technologies we understand them today and so these are people under like maximum levels of physical survival pressure and so what what social p did they evolve to be able to do that and then the social pattern basically was as follows um is a a three-part social structure family um tribe and city um and um zero concept of individual rights um and essentially no concept of individualism.
And so you were not an individual you were a member of your family and then a set of families would aggregate into a tribe and then a set of tribes would aggregate into a um into a city um and then the morality was completely it was actually what n talks n talks about the morality was entirely Master morality not slave morality and so in their morality anything that was strong was good and anything that was weak was bad and it's very clear why that is right it's because strong equals good equals survive weak equals bad equals die and that led to what became known later as the Master Slave dialectic which is you it more important for you to live on your feet as a master even at the risk of dying or are you willing to um you know live as a slave on your knees in order to not die.
And this is sort of the the derivation of that moral framework Christianity later inverted that moral framework but you know the the original framework lasted for you know many many thousands of years no conserv individualism the head of the family had total life and death control over the over over the family the head of the tribe same thing head of the city same thing and then you were morally obligated to kill members of the of the other cities on on contact right right you were morally required to like if you didn't do it you were a bad person um and then the form of the society was basically maximum fascism combined with maximum communism right and so it was maximum fascism in the form of this like absolute top- down control where the head of the family tribe or city could kill other members of the community at any time with no repercussions at all so maximum hierarchy but combined with maximum communism which is no market economy and so everything gets shared right.
And sort of the point of being in one of these collectives is that it's a collective and and and you know and people are sharing and of course that limited how big they could get because you know the problem with Communism is it doesn't scale right it works at the level of a family it's much harder to make it work at the level of a country impossible maximum fascism maximum communism and then and then it was all int intricately uh tied into their relig religion and their their religion was it was in two parts it was uh veneration of ancestors um and it was veneration of Nature and the veneration of ancestors is extremely important because it was basically like basically the ancestors were the people who got you to where you were the ancestors were the people who had everything to teach you right.
And then it was veneration of nature because of course nature is the thing that's trying to kill you um and then you had your ancestor every family tribe or city had their ancestor gods and then they had their um they had their nature Gods. Okay so fast forward to today like we live in a world that is like radically different but and the book takes you through kind of what happened from that through the Greeks and Romans through the Christianity and so the but but it's very helpful to kind of think in these terms because the conventional view of the progress through time is that we are you know the cliche is the Arc of the moral Universe you know benro Justice right or so-called wig history which is you know that the Arc of progress is positive right and so we we you know what you hear all the time what you're taught in school and everything is you know every year that goes by we get better and better and more and more moral and more and more Pur and a better version of of ourselves.
Our Indo ancestors would say oh no like you people have like Fallen to shit like you people took all of the principles of basically your civilization and you have deluded them down to the point where they barely even matter you know and you're having you know children out of wedlock and you're you know you regularly encounter people of other cities and you don't try to kill them and like how crazy is that and and they would basically consider us to be living like an incredibly diluted version of this sort of Highly religious highly cult-like right highly organized highly fascist fascist communist Society. I can't resist no that as a consequence of basically going through all the transitions we've been through going all the way through Christianity coming out the other end of Christianity nature declares God is dead we're in a secular society you know that still has you know tinges of Christianity but you know largely Prides itself on no longer being religious in that way.
Um you know we being the sort of most fully evolved modern secular you know expert scientists and so forth have basically re-evolved or Fallen back on the exact same religious structure uh that the indo-europeans had uh specifically ancestor worship which is identity politics um and nature worship which is environmentalism um and so we have actually like worked our way all the way back to their cult religions without realizing it and and and it just goes to show that like you know in some ways we have fallen far from the far from the family tree but in some in some cases we're exactly the same. You kind of described this Progressive idea of wokeism and so on as uh worshiping ancestors identity politics is worshiping ancestors right it's it's it's tagging newborn infants with either you know or responsibilities or you know levels of condemnation based on who their ancestors were the Indo Europeans would have recognized it on site we somehow think it's like super socially Progressive.
Yeah and it is not I mean I would say obviously not you know get get nuanced which is where I think you're headed which is look like is the idea that you can like completely reinvent Society every generation and have no regard whatsoever for what came before you that seems like a really bad idea right that's like the cambodians with year zero under P pot and you know death you know follows it's obviously the Soviets tried that um you know the the you know the the utopian fantasists who think that they can just rip up everything they came before and create something new in The Human Condition in human society have a very bad history of of causing you know enormous destruction so on the one hand it's like okay there there is like a deeply important role for tradition and and and the way I think about that is it's the process of evolutionary learning right which is what what tradition ought to be is the distilled wisdom of all and and you know this is how IND Europeans thought about it should be the distilled wisdom of everybody who came before you right all those important and Powerful learned.
And that's that's why I think it's fascinating to go back and study how these people lived is cuz that's that's part of the history and you know part of the learning that got us to where we are today having said that there are many cultures around the world that are you know mired in Tradition to the point of not being able to progress um and in fact you might even say globally that's the default Human Condition which is you know a lot of people are in Societies in which you know there's like absolute seniority by age you know kids are completely you know like in the US like for some reason we decided kids are in charge of everything right and like you know they're the trend setters and they're allowed to like set all the agendas and like settle the politics and settle the culture and maybe that's a little bit crazy but like in a lot of other cultures kids have no voice at all no role at all because it's the old people who are in charge of everything you know they gerres and it's all a bunch of 80-year-olds running everything which by the way we have a little bit of that too right.
Um and so I I would say is like there's a down there's there's a real downside you know full traditionalism is communitarianism you know it's ethnic particularism um you know it's ethnic chauvinism it's um you know this incredible level of of resistance to change um you know that's I mean it just doesn't get you anywhere like it it may be good and fine at the level of individual tribe but it's a societ society living in the modern world you can't evolve you can't you can't Advance you can't participate in all the good things that you know that that have happened and so you know I think probably this is one of those things where extremeness on either side is probably a bad idea um and I but you know but but this needs to be approached in a sophisticated and Nuance way.
So the beautiful picture you painted of the Roaring 20s how can the Trump Administration play A Part and making that future happen. Yeah so look a big part of this is getting the government boot off the neck of the American economy the American Technology industry the American people um you know and then again this is a replay of what happened in the 60s and 70s which is you know for what started out looking like you know I'm sure good and virtuous purposes you know we we ended up both then and now with this you know what I what I describe as sort of a form of soft authoritarianism you know the good news is it's not like a military dictatorship it's not like you know you get thrown into Lu Bianca you know for the most part it's not coming at four in the morning you're not getting dragged off to a cell.
So it's not hard authoritarianism but it is soft authoritarianism and so it's this you know incredible suppressive blanket of Regulation rules you know this concept of a ocracy right what's required to get anything done you know you need to get 40 people to sign off on anything any one of them can veto it you know a lot of how now political system works. Um and then you know just this general idea of you know progress is bad and technology is bad and capitalism is bad and building businesses is bad and success is bad um you know tall poppy syndrome you know basically anybody who sticks their head up you know deserves to get it you know chopped off anybody who's wrong about anything deserves to get condemned forever you know just this this very kind of you know grinding you know repression and then coupled with specific government actions such as censorship regimes right and Deb banking.
Right um and you know Draconian you know deliberately kneecapping you know critical American Industries um and then you know congratulating yourselves in the back for doing it or you know having these horrible social policies like let's let all the criminals out of jail and see what happens right um and so like we we've just been through this period I you know I call it a demoralization campaign like we've just been through this period where you know whether it started that way or not it ended up basically being this comprehensive message that says you're terrible and if you try to do anything you're terrible and fuck you. Um and the Biden Administration reached kind of the full Pinnacle of that in in in our time they they got really bad on on many fronts at the same time.
Um and so just like relieving that um and getting kind of back to IR reasonably you know kind of optimistic destructive um you know progrowth frame of mind um there's just there's so much pent up energy and potential in the American system that that alone is going to I think cause you know growth and and and and and spirit to take off and then there's a lot of things proactively that yeah and then there's a lot of things proactively that could be done.
So how do you Rel that to what degree has the thing you describ ideologically permeated government and permeated big companies. Disclaimer first which is I don't want to predict anything on any of this stuff because I've learned the hard way that I can't prct predict politics or Washington at all um but I would just say that the the plans and intentions are clear and the Staffing supports it um and all the conversations are consistent um with the new Administration and that they plan to take you know very rapid action on a lot of these fronts very quickly they're going to do as much as they can through executive orders and then they're going to do legislation and and Regulatory changes for the rest and so they're they're going to move I think quickly on a whole bunch of stuff.
You can already feel I think a shift of the national Spirit or at least let's put it this way I feel it for sure in in Silicon Valley like it it you I mean we we you know we just saw a great example of this with what you know with what Mark Zuckerberg is doing um you know obviously I'm I'm involved with with his company but you know we we just saw it kind of in public the scope of and speed of the changes you know are are reflective of of sort of this of a lot of these shifts but I would say that that same conversation those same kinds of things are happening throughout the industry right and so the the tech industry itself whether people were Pro Trump or antitrump like there's just like a giant Vibe shift mood shift that's like kicked in already.
And then I was with a group of Hollywood people about two weeks ago um and they were still you know people who at least at least vocally were still very antitrump but I said you know has anything changed since since November 6 and they they immediately said oh it's completely different um it feels like the Isis Tha um you know woke us over um you know they said that all kinds of projects are going to be able to get made now they couldn't before that you know Hollywood's going to start making comedies again you know like it it they were just like it's like it's like a just like an incredible immediate uh environmental change.
And I'm as I talk to people kind of throughout you know certainly throughout the economy people who run businesses I I hear that all the time which is just this this last 10 years of misery is just over I mean the one that I'm watching that's really funny I mean Facebook's getting a lot meta is getting a lot of attention but the other funny one is Black Rock which I'm not which you know and I don't know him but I've watched for a long time and so you know the Larry fin who's the CEO of Black Rock was like first in as a major you know investment CEO on like every dumb social Trend and Rule set like every all right I'm going for it every retarded every retarded thing you can imagine.
Yeah every ESG and every like every possible saddling companies with every aspect of just the these crazed ideological positions and you know he was coming in he literally was like had AG aggregated together trillions of dollars of of of of of of shareholdings that he did not that were you know that were his his customers rights and he you know seized their voting control of their shares and was using it to force all these companies to do all of this like crazy ideological stuff and he was like the tyho Mary of all this stuff in Corporate America and and he in the last year has been like backpedaling from that stuff like as fast as he possibly can and I saw just an example last week he pulled out of the whatever the corporate Net Zero Alliance you know he pulled out of the crazy energy energy energy stuff and so like you know he's backing away as fast as he can he's doing remember the Richard prior uh backwards walk Richard PRI had this way where he could he could back out of a room while looking like he was walking forward.
And so um you know even they're doing that um and just the whole thing I mean I if you saw the court recently ruled that NASDAQ had these crazy board of directors composition rules one of the funniest moments in my life is when my friend Peter teal and I were on the the The Meta board and these NASDAQ rules came down mandated diversity on corporate boards um and so we sat around the table and had to figure out you know which of us counted as diverse and the um very professional Attorneys at at meta explained with a 100% complete um straight face that Peter teal counts as diverse uh by virtue of being LGBT and and this is a guy who literally wrote a book called The diversity myth yeah um and he literally looked like he swallowed alive goldfish um and and that and this was imposed I mean this was like so incredibly offensive to that like it just like it was just absolutely appalling and I felt terrible for him but the look in his face was very funny um and it was imposed by NASDAQ you know your Stock Exchange imposing the stuff on you and then the court whatever the court court of appeals just nuked that you know.
So like the these things basically are being like ripped down one by one and and and what's on the other side of it is basically you know finally being able to get back to you know everything that you know everybody always wanted to do which is like run their companies have great products happy customers you know like succeed like succeed achieve outperform um and you know work with the best and the brightest and not and not be made to feel bad about it and I I think that's happening in many areas of American society.
It's great to hear that Peter teal is fundamentally A diversity higher. Well so it was very you know there was a moment so so Peter you know Peter of course um you know is is uh you know is is publicly gay has been for a long time you know but you know there are other men on the board right and you know we're sitting there and we're all looking at it and we're like all right like okay LGBT and we just we keep coming back to the B right.
Um and it's like you know it's like all right you know I'm willing to do a lot for this company but it's all about sacrifice for diversity. Well yeah and then it's like okay like is there a test like you know um so oh yeah exactly how do you prove it the questions that got asked you know what are you willing to do. Yeah and I I've become very good at asking um uh lawyers uh completely absurd questions with a totally straight face and do they answer with a straight face law sometimes. Okay I think In fairness they have trouble telling when I'm joking so you mentioned the the Hollywood folks maybe people in Silicon Valley and Vibe shift maybe you can speak to um preference falsification what do they actually believe.
How many of them actually hate Trump what like what percent of them are uh feeling this Vibe shift and are interested in uh creating the Roaring 20s in the way they've described. So first we should maybe talk po population so there's like all of Silicon Valley um and and the way to just measure that is just look at voting records right and and and what that shows consistently Silicon Valley is just a you know at least historically my entire time there has been overwhelmingly majority just straight up Democrat. Um uh the other way to look at that is political donation records and again you know the political donations in the valley you know range from 90 to 99% you know to one side.
And so you know we'll we'll I just bring it up because like we'll see what happens with the voting and with donations going forward. Um I we maybe talk about the fire later but I can tell you there is a very big question of what's happening in Los Angeles right now um I don't want to get into the fire but like it's catastrophic and you know there was already a rightward shift in the big cities in California and I think a lot of people in LA are really thinking about things right now as they're trying to you know literally save their houses and save their families.
But you know even in San Francisco there was a big right there was a big shift to the right in the voting um in um in 24 so we'll see where we'll see where that goes but you know you observe that by just looking at looking at the numbers over time um the part that I'm more focused on is you know and I don't know how to exactly describe this but it's like the top thousand or the top 10,000 people right um and um you know I don't have a list but like it's the you know it's all the top Founders top CEOs top Executives top Engineers top VCS you know and then kind of into the ranks um you know the people who kind of build and run the companies um and there there you know I don't have numbers but I have a much more tactile feel you know for for for what's happening.
I the big thing I I have now come to believe is that the idea that people have beliefs is mostly wrong um I think that most people just go along um and I think even most high status people just go along and I think maybe the most high status people are the most prone to just go along because they're the most focused on status um and the way I would describe that is um you know one of the great forbidden philosophers of our time is the uni bomber uh Ted kazinski and amidst his madness he had this extremely interesting articulation you know he was a he was a he was an insane lunatic murderer but he was also you know at Harvard Super Genius um not that those are in Conflict um but shot fired.
Yeah but uh he it was a very bright guy and he he did this whole thing um where he talked about basically he he was very right-wing and talked about leftism a lot um and he had this great concept that's just stuck in my mind ever since I read it which is see this concept just called over social overs socialization. Um and so you know most people are social most people are socialized like most people are you know we live in a society most people learn how to be part of a society they give some different to society there's something about modern Western Elites where they're over socialized um and they're just like overly oriented towards what other people like themselves you know think um and believe and you can get a real sense of that if you have a little bit of an outside perspective which I just do.
I think as a consequence of where I grew up um like even before I had the views that I have today there was always just this weird thing where it's like why does every dinner party have the exact same conversation why does everybody agree on every single issue why is that agreement precisely what was in the New York Times today um why are these positions not the same as they were 5 years ago right um but why does everybody like Snap into agreement every step of the way and that was true when I came to Silicon Valley and it's just as true today 30 years later and so I I think most people are just literally take I think they're taking their cues from it's some combination the press the universities the big foundations so it's like basically it's like the New York Times Harvard the Ford foundation and you know I don't know um you know a few CEOs um and a few public figures and you know maybe you know maybe the president if your parties in power and like whatever that is everybody just everybody who's sort of good and proper and Elite and good standing and in charge of things and a sort of correct member of you know let's call it Coastal American society everybody just believes those things and then you know the two interesting things about that is number one there's no Divergence among the the organs of power right.
So Harvard and Ne believe the exact same thing the New York Times The Washington Post believe the exact same thing the Ford foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation believe the exact same thing Google and you know whatever you know Microsoft believe the exact same thing um but those things change over time but there's never conflict in the moment right and so you know the New York Times And The Washington Post agreed on exactly everything in 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 and 2020 despite the fact that the specifics changed radically the the lock step was What mattered um and so I I think basically we we in the valley we're on the tail end of that in the same way Hollywood's on the tail end of that and the same way New York's on the ta end that the same way the media's on the tail end that it's it's like some sort of collective H mind thing and I just go through that to say like I don't think most people in my Orbit or you know let's say the top 10,000 people in the valley or the top 10,000 people in La I don't think they're sitting there thinking basically I have rocks I mean they probably think they have rockle beliefs but they don't actually have like some inner core of rockle beliefs and then they kind of watch reality change around them and try to figure out how to keep their beliefs like correct.
I don't think that's what happens I think what happens is they conform to the belief system around them and and I think most of the time they're not even aware that they're basically part of a herd. Is it possible that the surface chatter of dinner parties underneath that there is a turmoil of ideas and thoughts and beliefs that's going on but you're just talking to people really close to you or in your own mind and the socialization happens at the dinner parties like uh when you go outside the inner circle of one 2 3 four people who you really trust then you start to conform but inside there inside the mind there is an actual belief or a struggle attention with the New York Times or with the uh for the listener there's a there's a slow smile that overtook Mark Andre's face so look I'll just tell you what I think which is at at at the dinner parties and at the conferences no there's none of that.
It's what what there is is that all of the heretical conversations anything that challenges the status quo um any heretical ideas and any new idea you know is a heretical idea um any deviation it's either just a one-onone face to face it's it's like a whisper Network it's like a real life social network there's a secret handshake which is like okay you meet somebody and you like know each other a little bit but like not well and like you're both trying to figure out if you can like talk to the other person openly or whether you have to like be fully conformist it's a joke oh yeah humor somebody cracks a joke right somebody cracks a joke y if the other person laughs the conversation is on yeah yeah if the other person doesn't laugh back slowly away from the scene yeah I didn't mean anything by it yeah right.
By the way it doesn't have to be like a super offensive joke it just has to be a joke that's just up against the edge of one of the use the S bankman freed term one of the shth you know it has to be up against one of the things um of um you know one of the things that you're absolutely required to believe to be the dinner parties and then and then at that point what happens is you have a peer-to-peer Network right you have you have you have a a onetoone connection with somebody and then you you have your you have your your your little conspiracy of thought thought criminality and then you have your you probably been through this you have your network of thought criminals and then they have their network of thought criminals and then you have this like delicate mating dance as to whether you should bring the thought criminals together M. Right.
Um and the dance the fundamental uh mechanism of the dance is humor. Yeah is humor like CU right. Well of course memes. Yeah well for two for two reasons number one number one humor is a way to have deniability right humor is a way to discuss serious things without without without with having deniability oh I'm sorry it was just a joke right so so that's part of it which is one of the reasons why comedians can get away with saying things the rest of us can't is you know they can always fall back on oh yeah I was just going for the laugh but the other key thing about humor right is that is that laughter is involuntary right like you either laugh or you don't and and it's not like a conscious decision whether you're going to laugh and everybody can tell when somebody's fake laughing right and this every professional comedian knows this right the laughter is the clue that you're onto something truthful like people don't laugh at like made up bullshit stories they laugh cuz like you're revealing something that they either have not been allowed to think about or have not been allowed to talk about right or is off limits and all of a sudden it's like the ice breaks and it's like oh yeah that's the thing and it's funny and like I laugh.
And then of course this is why of course live comedy is so powerful as cuz you're all doing that at the same time so you start to have right the safety of you know the safety of numbers and so so the comedians have like the all there no no surprise to me like for example Joe has been as successful as he has because they have they have this hack that the you know the rest of us who are not professional comedians don't have but but you have your in-person version of it. Yeah and then you got the question of whether the whether you can sort of join the networks together and then you've probably been to this is you know then at some point there's like a different there's like the alt dinner party uh the ther middle dinner party and you get six or eight people together and you join the networks and those are like the happiest Mo at least in the last decade those are like the happiest moments of everybody's lives cuz they're just like everybody's just ecstatic cuz they're like I don't have to worry about getting yelled at and shamed like for every third sentence that comes out of my mouth and we can actually talk about real things.
Um so so that's the live version of it and then the and then of course the other side of it is the you know the group chat the group chat phenomenon. Um right and then this and then basically the same thing played out you know until until Elon bought X and until substack took off um you know which were really the two big breakthroughs in free speech online the same Dynamic played on online which is you had absolute Conformity on the social networks like literally enforced by the social networks themselves through censorship and and then also through cancellation campaigns and mobbing and shaming right and and but then you had but but then group chats grew up to be the equivalent of s do right anybody who grew up in the Soviet Union under you know communism know you know they had the hard version of this right it's like how do you know who you could talk to and then how do you distribute information and you know like you know again that was the hard authoritarian version of this and then we've been living through this weird mutant you know soft authoritarian version but with you know with some of the same patterns and what's app allows you to scale it make it more efficient to uh to build on these uh groups of heretical ideas bonded by humor.
Yeah exactly well and this is the thing and well this is kind of the running joke about group the running running kind of thing about group chats it's not even a joke it's true it's like it's like every group chat if you noticed this like every this principle of group chats every group chat ends up being about memes and humor and the goal of the game the game of the group chat is to get as close to the line of being actually objectionable as you can get without actually tripping it right and like literally every group chat that I have been in for the last decade even if it starts some other direction what ends up happening is it becomes the Absolute Comedy Fest where but it's walking they walk right up the line and they're constantly testing and every once in a while somebody will trip the line and people will freak out and it's like oh too soon okay you know we got to wait till next year to talk about that you know they they walk it back and so it's that same thing.
And yeah and then group chats is a technological phenomenon it was amazing to see because basically it was number one it was you know obviously the rise of smartphones then it was the rise of the of the the new messaging services um then it was the rise specifically of I would say combination of What's Happen signal and the reason for that is those were the two the two big systems that did the full encryption um so you actually had you actually felt safe and then the real breakthrough I think was disappearing messages uh which hit signal probably four or five years ago and hit WhatsApp three or four years ago and then the combination of um the combination of encryption and um uh and disappearing messages I think really unleash it.
Well then there's the fight then there's the fight over the the the length of the disappearing mess mes right and so it's like you know I often get behind my my thing so I set to 7day you know disa messages and my friends who you know are like no that's way too much risk yeah it's got to be a day and then every once in a while somebody will set it to five minutes before they send something like particularly inflammatory yeah 100%.
Well what I mean one of the things that bothers me about what's up the choices between 24 hours and you know 7 days one day or seven days and I I have to have an existential crisis deciding yes whether I can last for seven days with what I'm about to say. Exactly now of course what's happening right now is the big thaw right and so the VIP shift so what's happening on the other on the other side of of the election is you know Elon on Twitter two years ago and now Mark with Facebook and Instagram and by the way with the continued growth of substack and with other you know new platforms that are emerging you know like I I think it may be you know I don't know that everything just shifts back into public but like a tremendous amount of the uh a tremendous amount of the verboten um uh conversations you know can now Shi back in into public view and I mean quite frankly and this is one of those things you know quite frankly even if I was opposed to what those know people are saying and I'm sure I am in some cases you know I I would argue it's still like net better for society that those things happen in public instead private.
Um you know do do you really want like yeah like don't you want to know yeah um and and so and and then it's just look it's just I think clearly much healthier to live in a society in which people are not literally scared of what they're saying. I mean to to push back to come back to this idea that we were talking about I do believe that people have beliefs and thoughts that are heretical like a lot of people I wonder what fraction of people have that to me this is the preference falsification is really interesting.
What is the landscape of ideas that human civilization has in private as compared to what's out in public cuz like that the the the dynamical system that is the difference between those two is fascinating like there's throughout history the the fall of Communism in multiple regimes throughout Europe is really interesting because everybody was following you know the line until not but you better for sure privately there was a huge number of boiling conversations happening where like this is this the bureaucracy of Communism the corruption of Communism all of that was really bothering people more and more and more and more and all of a sudden there's a trigger that allows the vibe shift to happen so to me like the the interesting question here is what is the landscape of private thoughts and ideas and conversations that are happening under the surface of uh of of Americans especially my question is how much dormant energy is there for this Roaring 20s where people are like no more bullshit let's get shit done.
Yeah so let's go through the we'll go through the theory of preference falsification just just by the way amazing the books on this is fascinating yeah yeah so this is this is exactly this is one of the UL time great books incredibly about 20 30y old book but it's very it's completely modern and current in what it talks about as well. Well is very deeply historically informed um so it's called private truths public lies and it's written by a social science Professor named Ur Kuran um at I think Duke um and it's it's definitive work on this and so he he has this concept he calls preference falsification and so preference falsification is two things preference falsification and you get it from the title of the book private truth public lies so preference falsification is when you believe something and you can't say it or and this is very important you don't believe something and you must say it right.
Um and and and and the commonality there is in both cases you're lying you you believe you believe something internally and then and then you're lying about it in public. Um and so the the thing you know and and there's sort of two two classic forms of it there's the I you know for example there's the I believe communism is rotten but I can't say it version of it um but then there's also the the the famous Parable the real life example but um the thing that vaslav hav talks about in the other good book on this topic which is the power of the powerless um you know who is an anti-communist resistance F who ultimately became the you know the the president of Czechoslovakia after the fall of the wall but he wrote this book and he he describes the other side of this which is um workers of the World Unite right.
And so he he describes what he calls the parable of the green grer which is your green grer in Prague in 1985 um and for the last 70 years it has been or 50 years it's been absolutely mandatory to have a sign in the window of your story this says workers of the World Unite right. Um and it's 1985 it is like crystal clear that the world the workers of the world are not going to unite like like of all the things that could happen in the world that is not going to happen the commies have been at that for 70 years it is not happening but that slogan had better be in your window every morning because if it's not in your window every morning you are not a good communist the secret police are going to come by and they're they're going to get you.
Um and so the first thing you do when you get to the stories you put that slogan in the window and you make sure that it stays in the window all day long and but he says the thing is every single person the green grer knows the slogan is fake he knows it's a lie every single person walking past the slogan knows that it's a lie every single person walking past the story knows that the green grosser is only putting it up there because he has to lie in public. Um and the green grosser has to go through the humiliation of knowing that everybody knows that he's caving into the system and lying in public and so it it it turns into demoralization campaign it it it's it's not just ideological enforcement in fact it's not ideological enforcement anymore because everybody knows it's fake the authorities know it's fake everybody knows it's fake it's not that they're enforcing the actual ideology of the world's workers of the world uniting it's that they are enforcing compliance right and compliance with the regime man fuck you you will comply right.
Uh and so so anyway that that that's the other side of that and and of course we have lived in the last decade through a lot of both of those. Um I think anybody listening to this could name a series of slogans that we've all been forced to chant for the last decade that everybody knows at this point are just like simply not true. I I'll let the audience you know speculate on those on their own group chats um send Mark your memes online as well please. Yes yes exactly.
But okay so anyway so it's the two sides of that right so it's it's it's it's it's private TR it's public lies. Um so then what preference falsification does is it talks about extending that from the idea of the individual experiencing that to the idea of the entire Society experiencing that right and this gets to your percent's question which is like okay what happens in a society in which people are forced to lie in public about what they truly believe what happens number one is that individually they're lying in public and that's bad but the other thing that happens is they no longer have an accurate gauge at all or any way to estimate how many people agree with them and and this is how you and again this this this literally is like how you get something like like the Communist system which is like okay it you you you you end up in a situation in which 80 or 90 or 99% of society can actually all be thinking individually I really don't buy this anymore and if anybody would just stand up and say it I would be willing to go along with it but I'm not going to be the first one to put my head on the chopping block but you have no because of the suppression censorship you have no way of knowing how many other people agree with you and if the people if the people agree with you are 10% of the population and you become part of a movement you're going to get killed if 90% of the people agree with you you're going to win the revolution right.
And so the the question of like what the percentage actually is is like a really critical question and then and then basically in any sort of authoritarian system you can you can't like run a survey right to get an accurate result and so you actually can't know until you put it to the test and then what he describes in the book is it's always put to the test in the same way and this is exactly what's happened for the last two years like 100% of exactly what's happened it's like straight out of this book which is somebody Elon sticks his hand up and says the workers of the world are not going to unite. Yeah right or the emperor is actually wearing no clothes right you know that famous Parable right.
Um so one person stands up and does it and and literally that person is standing there by themselves and everybody else in the audience is like ooh I wonder what's going to happen to that guy right but again nobody knows Elon doesn't know the first guy doesn't know other people don't know like which way is this going to go and it may be that that's a minority position and that's a way to get yourself killed or it may be that that's the majority position and that and you are now the leader of a revolution and then basically of course what happens is okay the first guy does that doesn't get killed the second guy does well a lot of the time that guy does get killed but when the guy doesn't get killed then a second guy pops his head up says the same thing all right now you've got two two leads to four four leads to eight eight leads to 16 and then as we saw with the fall of the Berlin Wall this is what happened in Russia and Eastern Europe in '89 you when it when it goes it can go right and then it rips and then what happens is very very quickly if it if it turns out that you had a large percentage of the population that actually believe a different thing it turns out all of a sudden everybody has this giant Epiphany that says oh I'm actually part of the majority and at that point like you were on the freight trainer Revolution right like it is rolling right now.
The other part of this is the distinction between the role of the elites and the masses and here and here the best book is called the True Believer which is the the Eric Hofer book and so the the Nuance you have to put on this is the the the elites play a giant role in this because the the elites do idea formation and communication but the elites by definition are a small minority and so there's also this giant role played by the masses and the masses are not necessarily thinking these things through in the same intellectualized formal way that the elites are but they are for sure experiencing these things in their daily lives and they for sure have at least very strong emotional views on them.
And so when you when you really get the revolution it's when you get the elites lined up with or or or or a new either the current Elites change or the new set of counter Elites basically come along and say no there's actually a different and better way to live and then the PE the people basically decide to follow the you know to follow the counter Elite so that that that's the other dimension to it and of course that part is also happening right now and again case study number one of that would be Elon and his you know he turns out you know truly massive following and he has done that over and over in different Industries not just saying crazy shit online but saying crazy shit in the in the realm of space in the realm of atomous driving in the realm of AI just over and over and over again turns out saying crazy shit is one of the ways to do a revolution to actually make progress.
Yeah and it's like well and but then there's the test is it crazy shit or is it the truth. Yeah right and and and you know and this is where you know many there are many specific things about elon's genius but one of the one of the really core ones is an absolute dedication to the truth and so when Elon says something it s like crazy shit but in his mind it's true. Now is he always right? No sometimes the Rockets crash like you know sometimes he's wrong with he's human he's like anybody else he's not right all the time but at least my my through line with him both in what he says in public and what he says in private which by the way are the exact same things he he does not do this he doesn't lie in public about what he believes in private or at least he doesn't do that anymore like he's 100% consistent in my in my experience by the way there's two guys who are 100% consistent like that that I know um Elan and Trump.
Yeah whatever you think think of them yeah what they say in private is 100% identical to what they say in public like they are completely transparent they're completely honest in that way right which is like again it's not like they're perfect people but they're honest in that way and and it makes them potentially both as they have been very powerful leaders of these movements because they're both willing to stand up and say the thing that if it's true it turns out to be the thing in many cases that you know many or most or almost everyone else actually believes but nobody was actually willing to say out loud and so that they can actually catalyze these shifts and I I mean I think this framework is exactly why Trump took over the Republican party is I think Trump up there on stage with all these other kind of conventional Republicans and he started saying things out loud that it turned out the Bas really was they were either already believing or they were prone to believe and he was the only one who was saying them and so the ma again Elite masses he was the elite the voters of the ma masses and the voters decided you know no no more bushes like we're going this other direction.
That's the mechanism of social change like what we just described as like the actual mechanism of social change it is fascinating to me that we have been living through exactly this we've been living through ex everything exactly what Tean describes everything that VAV hav described we you know black squares an Instagram like the whole thing right all of it and we've been living through the um you know the True Believer Elites masses you know thing with you know with a set of like basically incredibly corrupt Elites wondering why they don't have the Lo masses anymore and a set of New Elites that are running away with things and so like we're living through this like incredible applied case study of these ideas and you know if there's a moral of the story it is you know I think fairly obvious which is it's is a really bad idea for a society to wedge itself into a position in which most people don't believe the fundamental precepts of what they're told they have to do you know to be to be good people like that that is just not not a good state to be in.
So one of the ways to avoid that in the future maybe is to keep the Delta between what's set in private and what's set in public small. Yeah it's like well this is sort of the the siren song of censorship is we can keep people from saying things which means we can keep people from thinking things. And you know by the way that may work for a while right like you know I mean again the hard form that Soviet you know Soviet Union owning a mograph pre photocopy there mograph machines that were used to make sist underground newspapers which is the the mechanism of written communication of of radical ideas radical ideas um ownership of a mograph machine was punishable by death.
Um right so that's the hard version right you know the soft version is somebody clicks a button in Washington and you are erased from the internet right like which you know good news you're still alive bad news is you know Shame about not being able to get a job you know too bad your family now you know they hates you and won't talk to you but you know what or whatever the you know whatever the version of cancellation has been and so so so like does that work like maybe it works for a while like it worked for the Soviet Union for a while you know in its way especially when it was coupled with you know official state power but when it unwinds it can unwind with like incredible speed and ferocity because to your point there's all this bottled up energy.
Now your question was like what are the percentages like what what's the breakdown and so my my rough guess just based on what I've seen in my world is it's something like 20 60 20. Um it's like you've got 20% like True Believers in whatever ever is you know the current thing you know you got 20 you 20% of people who are just like True Believers of whatever they they're you know whatever's in the like I said whatever's the New York Times Harvard professors and the Ford Foundation like just they just believe by maybe it's 10 maybe it's five but let's say generously it's it's 20 so so you know 20% kind of full-on revolutionaries.
Um and then you've got let's call it 20% on the other side that are like no I'm not on board with this this is this is crazy I'm not I'm not signing up for this but you know their view of themselves as they're in a small minority and in fact they start out in a small minority. CU what happens is the 60% go with the first 20% not the second 20% so you've got this large middle of people and it's not that there's anything like it's not the people in the middle are not smart or anything like that it's that they just have like normal lives and they're just trying to get by and they're just trying to go to work each day and do a good job and be a good person and raise their kids and you know have a little bit of time to watch the game.
Um and they're just not engaged in the cut and thrust of you know political activism or any of this stuff is just not their thing but then but that's where the over socialization comes in it's just like okay by default the 60% will go along with the 20% of the radical revolutionaries at least for a while and then the counter Elite is in this other 20% and over time they build up a theory and network and ability to resist and a new set of Representatives and a new set of ideas and then at some point there's a contest and then and then and then and then right and then the question is what happens in the middle what happens in the 60% and and it and it's kind of my point it's not even really does the 60% change their beliefs as much as it like okay what what is the thing that that 60% now decides to basically fall into step with and I think that 60 in the valley that 60% for the last decade decided to be woke.
You know extremely I would say on edge on a lot of things and I you know that 60% is pivoting in real time they're they're just done they've just had it and I would love to see where that pivot goes cuz there's internal battles happening right now right so this is the other thing. Okay so there's two two forms of internal there's two forms of things and teer CR teer has actually talked about this professor CR has talked about this so so one is he said he said this is the kind of unwind where what you're going to have is you're now going to have people in the other direction you're going to have people who claim that they supported Trump all along who actually didn't. Right.
Right so you'll have a preference falsification happening in the other direction and and his prediction I think basically is you'll end up with the same quote problem on the on the other side. Now will that happen here I don't know you know how far is American society willing to go any of these things I don't know but like there is some some question there um and then and then the other part of it is okay now you have this you know Elite that is used to being in power for the last decade and and by the way many of those people are still in power and they're in very you know important positions and the New York Times is still the New York Times and Harvard is still hared and like those people haven't changed like at all right.
Um and they you know they bureaucrats and the government and you know senior Democratic you know politicians and so forth and and they're sitting there you know right now feeling like reality has just smacked them hard in the face because they lost the election so badly but they're now going into a and specifically the Democratic party is going into a civil war right and and and and and that form of the Civil War is completely predictable and it's exactly what's happening which is half of them are saying we need to go back to the center we need to deradicalize because we've lost the people we've lost that the people in the middle and so we need to go back to the middle in order to be able to get 50% plus one in an election right and then the other half of them are saying no we weren't true to our principles we were too weak we were too soft you know we must become more revolutionary we must double down and we must you know celebrate you know murders in the street of health insurance Executives and that's and that that right now is like a real fight if I can tell you a little personal story that breaks my heart a little bit there's uh there's a professor historian I won't say who who I admire deeply love his work he's a kind of a heretical thinker and we were talking about having a podcast or doing a podcast and he eventually said that you know what at this time given your guest list I just don't want the headache of being in the faculty meetings in my particular institution and I ask who are the particular figures in this guest list he said Trump and the second one he said that you announced your interest to talk to Vladimir Putin so I just don't want the headache.
Now I I fully believe he uh it would surprise a lot of people if I said who it is but you know this is a person who's not bothered by the uh the guest list and I should also say that 80 plus% of the guest list is leftwing. Okay. Nevertheless he just doesn't want the headache and that speaks to the the thing that you've kind of mentioned that you just don't don't want the headache you just want to just have a pleasant morning with some coffee and talk to your fellow professors and I think a lot of people are feeling that in universities and in other context in tech companies and I wonder if that shifts how quickly that shifts and there the percentages you mentioned 20 6020 matters and the and the the contents of the private groups matters and the Dynamics of how that shifts matters cuz it's very possible nothing really changes you universities and in major tech companies or just there's a kind of um excitement right now for potential Revolution and these new ideas this new Vibes to reverberate through these companies universities but it's possible the the the wall will hold.
He's a friend of yours I respect that you don't want to name him I also respect you don't want to beat on him so I would like to beat on him on your behalf. Um does he have tenure? Yes you should use it so this is the thing right this is the ultimate indictment of the corruption and the rot at the heart of our education system at the heart of these universities and it's by the way it's like across the board it's like all the all the top universities It's like because the the siren song for right what it's been for 70 years whatever the tenure system peerreview system tenure system um which is like yeah you work your butt off as an academic to get a professorship and then to get tenure because then you can say what you actually think right then you can do your work in your research and your speaking and your teaching without fear of being fired right without fear of being canceled.
Um like academic freedom I mean think of the term academic freedom and then think of what these people have done to it like it's gone like that entire thing was fake and is completely rotten and these people are completely completely giving up the entire moral foundation of the system that's been built for them which by the way is paid for virtually 100% by taxpayer money. What's the what's the inkling of Hope in this like what this particular person and others who hear this what can give them strength inspiration and courage um that the population at large is going to realize the corruption in their industry and it's going to withdraw all the funding.
It's okay it's a desperation no no no no no think about what happens next. Okay so let's go let's go through it so the the the universities the the universities are funded by four primary sources of federal funding the big one is the federal student loan program which is you know in the many trillions of dollars at this point and and only spiraling you know way faster than than inflation. Um that's number one. Number two is federal research funding which is also very large and you probably know that.
Um when a scientist at University gets a research Grant the university rakes as much as 70% of the money uh for Central uses. Yeah. Um number three is tax exemption at the operating level which is based on the idea that these are nonprofit institutions as opposed to let's say political institutions. And then number four is tax exemptions at the endowment level. Um you know which is the financial buffer that these places have.
Hypothetically anybody who's been close to a university budget will basically see that what would happen if you withdrew those sources of federal taxpayer money and then for the state schools the state money they they all instantly go bankrupt and then you could rebuild then you could rebuild because the problem right now you know like the folks at University of Austin are like mounting a very Valiant effort and I hope that they and I'm I'm cheering for them but the problem is you're you're now inserting suppose suppose you and I want to start a new University and we want to hire all the free thinking professors and we want to have the place that fixes all this practically speaking we can't do it because we can't get access to that money.
I give you the most direct reason we can't get access to that money uh we can't get access to federal student funding. Do you know how universities are accredited uh for the purpose of getting access to federal student funding? Federal student loans they're accredited by the government but not directly indirectly they're not accredited by the Department of Education and instead what happens is the Department of Education accredits accreditation bureaus that are nonprofits that do the accreditation.
Guess what the composition of the accreditation bureaus is? The existing universities they are in complete control the incumbents are in complete control as to who gets um as to who gets access to fell student loan money guess how enthusiastic they are about accrediting a new University right and so we have a government funded and supported cartel um that has gone I mean it's just obvious now it's just gone sideways in basically any possible way it could go sideways including I mean literally as you know students getting beaten up in the on campus for being you know the wrong religion I just they're just wrong in every possible way at this point um and and they're it's all in the federal text pair back.
And there is no way I mean I my opinion there is no way to fix these things without without replacing them um and and there's no way to replace them without letting them fail and by the way it's like everything else in life I mean in a sense this is like the most obvious conclusion of all time which is what happens in in the business world when a company does a bad job is they go bankrupt and another another company takes its place right and that that's how you get progress.
Um and of course below that is what happens is this is the process of evolution right what why does anything ever get better because things are tested and tried and then you you know the things that the things that are good survive and so these places have cut themselves off they've been allowed to cut themselves off from both From Evolution at the institutional level and evolution at the individual level as shown by the the the the just widespread abuse of tenure um and so we've just stalled out. We we built we built an aifi system an aifi centralized system we're surprised by the results they are not fixable in their current form.
I disagree with you on that I have maybe it's grounded in hope that I believe you can revolutionize a system from within because I do believe Stanford and MIT are important. Oh but that logic doesn't follow at all that's underpants gnome logic underpants gnome can you explain Underpants NOS logic so I just started watching a key Touchstone of American culture with my 9-year-old which of course is South Park. Yes and there is wow and there is if which by the way is a little aggressive for a 9-year-old very aggressive but but he likes it so he's learning all kinds of new words and all kinds of new ideas but yeah go.
I I told him I said you're going to hear words on here that you are not allowed to use right and I said do you know how we have an agreement that we never lie to Mommy I I said not using a word that you learn in here uh does not count as L. Mhm wow keep and keep that in mind orwellian redefinition of lying but yes go ahead of course in the very opening episode in the first in the first 30 seconds one of the one of the kids calls the other kid a dildo right we're We're Off to the Races. Y Daddy what's a dildo? Um yep you know sorry sorry son I don't know yeah.
So um uh the underpant so famous episode of South Park The Underpants Gnomes and so the The Underpants GN so there's there there's this rat all the kids basically realize that their underpants are quite missing from their dresser drawers somebody stealing the Underpants and it's just like well who on Earth would steal the underpant the Underpants and it turns out it's the Underpants Gnomes and it turns out the Underpants Gnomes that come to town and they've got this little underground warrant of tunnels and storage places for all the Underpants and so they go out at night they steal the Underpants and the kids discover that you know the Underpants Gnomes and they're you know what what are you doing like what what's what's the point of this.
And so the Underpants Gnomes present their their master plan which is a three-part plan which is step one uh collect Underpants step three profit. Yeah step two question mark. Yeah so you just you just proposed The underpant Gnome. Yeah which is very common in politics so the form of this in politics is we must do something. Yeah this is something therefore we must do this but there's no causal logic chain in there at all to expect that that's actually going to succeed because there's no reason to believe that it is. It's the same thing but this is what I hear all the time and I'll I will let you talk as the host of the show in a moment but uh but I hear this all the time I hear this I have friends who are on these boards right um very involved in these places and I hear this all the time which is like oh these are very important we must fix them and so therefore they are fixable there's no logic chain there at all if there's that pressure that you described in terms of cutting funding then you have the leverage to fire a lot of the administration and have new leadership that steps up that that uh aligns with this Vision that things really need to change at the heads of universities and they put students and faculty primary fire a lot of the administration and realign and reinvigorate this idea of freedom of thought and intellectual freedom.
I mean think of the term academic freedom and then think of what these people have done to it like it's gone like that entire thing was fake and is completely rotten and these people are completely completely giving up the entire moral foundation of the system that's been built for them which by the way is paid for virtually 100% by taxpayer money. What's the what's the inkling of Hope in this like what this particular person and others who hear this what can give them strength inspiration and courage um that the population at large is going to realize the corruption in their industry and it's going to withdraw all the funding. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.